Editing Hunters' Lodges (section)

== Convention and the Republic of Canada ==
In September 1838, 70 delegates from the western Hunters' Lodges attended a secret, week-long "Patriot Congress" in Cleveland, Ohio. They appointed a provisional Canadian republican government, electing:

# '''President''' [[Abram D. Smith|A.D. Smith]], "chief justice of the peace at Cleveland" 
# '''Vice-President''' Colonel Nathan Williams, "a wholesale grocer" in Cleveland
# '''Secretary of the Treasury''' Judge John Grant Jr, Oswego
# '''Secretary of War''' Donald McLeod
# '''Commander-in-chief''' of the "Patriot Army of the West," Lucius V. Bierce, "an attorney at Akron," mayor of [[Akron, Ohio]].
# '''Commissary General''', a man named Brunson, of Buffalo 
# '''Commodore of the Patriot Navy on Lake Erie''', Gilman Appleby, former Captain of the ''[[Caroline affair|Caroline]]''
# '''Commodore of the Patriot Navy on Lake Ontario''', [[Bill Johnston (pirate)|Bill Johnston]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Kinchen|first=Oscar|title=The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters|url=https://archive.org/details/risefallofpatrio0000kinc|url-access=registration|year=1956|publisher=Bookman Assoc.|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/risefallofpatrio0000kinc/page/38 38–9]}}</ref>

To fund the war, they formed a joint stock bank, the Republican Bank of Canada, with Secretary of the Treasury John Grant, Jr. as President. They printed bills with pictures of Rebellion martyrs [[Samuel Lount]] and James Morreau on them. The official newspaper of the organization was the ''Bald Eagle'' published in Cleveland by Samuel Underhill.