Voting in the Quebec Plebiscite, 1889.
The Free Quebec Coalition was one of three political parties that formed in Quebec in the run-up to the Quebec Plebiscite of 6 July 1889. The Free Quebec Coalition included the Patriotes and the United Workers of the World and their supporters, and favored full independence from the Confederation of North America, and possibly an alliance with the revolutionary Republic of France.
When the plebiscite was announced, it was generally assumed that the vote would go for independence. However, decades as an underground resistance movement had accustomed the Patriotes to the use of violence to gain their ends, and the F.Q.C. sought to ensure their victory by destroying the offices of opposition parties, issuing death threats, and generally indicating that they intended to resort to civil war if they failed to win the plebiscite. The violence led a number of Quebecois to have second thoughts about independence, fearing that the campaign violence offered a foretaste of life under the F.Q.C. in an independent Quebec. On the day of the plebiscite, the Free Quebec Coalition received only 756,344 votes, 41% of the 1,844,089 cast. Within three months, the Quebec legislature met in a special session to ratify the results of the plebiscite and establish Quebec's associated status.
Sobel does not indicate whether the F.Q.C. carried out its threatened uprising. However, Quebec maintained its associated status with the C.N.A. up until the writing of For Want of a Nail ... in 1971, so presumably pro-independence sentiment remained in the minority and the government of Quebec was able to thwart any subsequent attempts by the F.Q.C. to seize power.
Sobel's source for the Free Quebec Coalition in the Quebec Plebiscite is Armond Fleur's We Leave as Friends: The 1889 Plebiscite (New York, 1945).