A Plan to Invade Canada
You may not have heard that the Americans decided to invade and take over Quebec early in the Revolutionary War. The first part of the invasion was led by Benedict Arnold in September 1775. The journey itself was quite an achievement, but (obviously) it didn’t work out in the end.
But months before Arnold set off into the wilderness of Maine and Quebec — before the war was even two weeks old, in fact — someone else was trying to get a similar expedition started. Jonathan Brewer, Esquire, of Waltham, Massachusetts, submitted a petition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, stating:
That your Petitioner having a desire of contributing all in his power for this Country’s good, begs leave to propose to this honourable House to march with a body of five hundred Volunteers to Quebeck, by way of the Rivers Kennebeck and Chadier, as he humbly begs leave to apprehend that such a diversion of the Provincial Troops into that part of Canada, would be the means of drawing the Governour of Canada with his Troops, into that quarter, and which would effectually secure the Northern and Western Frontiers from any inroads of the Regular or Canadian Troops. This he humbly conceives he could execute with all the facility imaginable. He therefore begs that this honourable Assembly would take this his proposal into consideration, and to act thereon as in their wisdom shall seem meet.
American Archives, Series 4, Volume 2, 462.
The plan he proposed was pretty much the same one that Benedict Arnold followed several months later.
Notes
When Brewer said he could “execute” his plan “with all the facility imaginable”, what he meant was that he could carry it out quickly.
The full map, entitled “A Map of the Sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec Rivers”, by John Montresor, can be viewed on the Library of Congress website: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3730.ar083800