On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, the Fifth Virginia Convention began and the Virginia House of Burgesses ended. The final entry in the Journals of the House of Burgesses says “6th of May. 16 Geo. III. 1776 … FINIS.” Edmund Pendleton wrote in a letter to Richard Henry Lee the next day, “We met in an assembly yesterday and determined not to adjourn, but let that body die.” Following the final meeting of the House of Burgesses, the members of the fifth and final Virginia Revolutionary Convention met in the chamber of the House of Burgesses in the Capitol in Williamsburg.

Although most members of the Fifth Virginia Convention had served in Fourth Convention and there was considerable overlap with the men elected to the House of Burgesses, there were 44 new members of the Convention who had not served in the Fourth Virginia Convention and one observer wrote later that the members were “not quite so well dressed, nor so politely Educated, nor so highly born” as the members of the prior Conventions but that they were “full as honest, less intriguing, more sincere.” As its first order of business the Convention elected its president in a contested vote. Edmund Pendleton, who had been President of the Fourth Convention and President of the Committee of Safety that ruled Virginia between the Conventions, was reelected as President of the Convention over Thomas Ludwell Lee who was a radical pushing for Independence, but the sentiments of the delegates to the Virginia Convention were in favor of Independence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Burgesses; https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-virginia-revolutionary-conventions-1774-1776/

On this day 250 years ago, the vanguard of the British fleet — the frigates HMS Surprise and HMS Isis and sloop Martin — arrived at Quebec and disembarked 200 troops. These men immediately joined Royal Governor Carleton’s men to attack the Continental Army’s encampment outside Quebec. American General John Thomas could muster only 250 men to oppose Carleton’s force of 900 men with four cannon, and the Continentals crumbled and fled westward in a panic. The British did not immediately pursue the Americans but captured 200 sick Continentals, gunpowder, muskets and artillery. Just prior to the British assault, General Thomas had written to the American commissioners Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll then in Montreal about his predicament that resulted in this defeat:

Immediately upon the arrival at the camp before Quebec…I examined into the state of the army, and found by the returns, there were 1,900 men, only 1,000 of whom were fit for duty, including officers; the rest were invalids, chiefly with the small pox. Three hundred of those effective were soldiers whose enlistments will expire the 15^th…many of whom refused duty, and all were very importunate to return home. In all our magazines there were but about 150 pounds of powder and six days provisions.

One of the Americans captured that day was Lieutenant Ronald T. McDougall of the 1st New York Regiment, the son of the regiment’s commander Col. Alexander McDougall, who had already lost another son — Lieutenant John A. McDougall — to illness outside of Quebec in late 1775. Alexander McDougall was an immigrant from Scotland who had been the leading Patriot in New York City before the War, and would rise to Major General and serve with distinction through the end of the War. Washington described him as a “pillar of the revolution.”

The American prisoners within the walls of Quebec had been planning a breakout and waiting on the Continental Army’s assault to free them from captivity and were despondent to learn of the arrival of British reinforcements with thousands more on their way. Captain Henry Dearborn recorded in his diary:

This day forenoon, three ships arrived from England to the Great Joy of the Garrison, but much to our mortification as we now gave over all hopes of being retaken, and Consequently of seeing our families again until we had first taken a Voyage to England and there Tryed for rebels, as we have often been told by the officiers of the Garrison, that, that, would be the case.

Lt. Col. Christopher Greene vowed to the other prisoners that if he were ever to be freed “I will never again be taken prisoner alive.” Greene kept that promise and was bayonetted to death when he refused to surrender when surrounded at Fort Griswold near the end of the War.

Sources: Lefkowitz at 108; https://revolutionarywarjournal.com/major-general-john-thomas/; Revolutionary War Journals of Henry Dearborn, 1775-1783, edited by Lloyd A. Brown & Howard H. Peckham, Chicago: The Caxton Club (1939) at p. 82 accessed at https://archive.org/details/revolutionarywar00dear/page/82/mode/2up; https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/alexander-mcdougall/

On that same day in Montreal, the Commissioners were writing to the Continental Congress:

In our letter of the 1st. instant, we informed you of the lowness of the Continental credit in this Province and the necessity of a speedy supply of hard money: unless this very essential article arrives soon, our forces will suffer exceedingly from the want of many necessaries, particularly flour, which might be laid in much cheaper here than it could be supplied from New York, provided gold or silver could be procured to purchase it. It is very difficult to keep soldiers under proper discipline without paying them regularly. This difficulty increases in proportion to the distance, the troops are removed from their own country: the want of money frequently constrains the Commanders to have recourse to violences in providing the army with carriages, and other conveniences, which indispose and irritate the minds of the people. We have reason to conclude that the change of sentiments, which we understand has taken place in this colony, is owing to the above mentioned cause, and to other arbitrary proceedings. If hard money cannot be procured and forwarded with dispatch to Canada, it would be adviseable, in our opinion, to withdraw our army and fortify the passes on the lakes to prevent the enemy, and the Canadians, if so inclined, from making irruptions into and depredations on our frontiers. 

Sources: “The Commissioners to Canada to [John Hancock], 6 May 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0248. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 22, March 23, 1775, through October 27, 1776, ed. William B. Willcox. New Haven and London:: Yale University Press, 1982, pp. 417–419.];