Relive the Revolutionary War!
“We shall certainly be attack’d the first dark night”, wrote Thomas Ainslie, a British customs official in the city of Quebec. The British had been warned by deserters that the American army was planning to attack, and they were on the alert.
When the Revolutionary War began in Massachusetts, the Americans were defending their home turf. But only five months later, they were invading a colony that wasn’t involved in the war at all: Canada.
Canada had only been part of the British empire since the end of the French and Indian War in the previous decade, and most of the people who lived there (other than the Indians) were French Catholics, which made them quite different from most of the people in the other colonies. It wasn’t exactly a foreign country, but it wasn’t too far from it — and there were plenty of people alive who still remembered fighting the French. Now they were trying to convert the Canadians to their cause. As George Washington put it in a printed appeal to the Canadians:
We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property, our Wives, and our Children, we are determined to preserve them, or die. We look forward with Pleasure to that Day not far remote (we hope) when the Inhabitants of America shall have one Sentiment, and the full Enjoyment of the Blessings of a free Government.
… The Cause of America, and of Liberty, is the Cause of every virtuous American Citizen; whatever may be his Religion or his Descent, the United Colonies know no Distinction but such as Slavery, Corruption and arbitrary Domination may create. Come then, ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of general Liberty—against which all the Force and Artifice of Tyranny will never be able to prevail.
At first, the American revolutionary leaders hesitated to authorize an invasion of Canada, but finally they decided to go ahead with it. In New York, Generals Schuyler and Montgomery led the main invasion up Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. But a smaller force — about 1,100 men — took what was supposed to be a shortcut through Maine.
They were led by bold Benedict Arnold. If you think that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, you’re right — but not in 1775. He was dedicated and daring then and for years afterward. And he had a plan.
Using a map that had been made around 1761 by a British officer, John Montresor, he planned to take a relatively small force in flat-bottomed boats called batteaux, and go up the rivers and through the wild, unsettled areas of Maine, and so take the city of Quebec by surprise.
It didn’t work nearly as well as they had hoped. For one thing, the “shortcut” — as often happens with shortcuts — wasn’t so short after all. Their batteaux had been hastily and poorly made; their food went bad and ran out. Sometimes they had to haul the batteaux up the swift, shallow streams with ropes and by holding on to the bushes along the banks. Sometimes they had to carry the batteaux (and all their equipment, including guns, food, ammunition and more) around waterfalls, or over hills from one river to the next. Nowadays we call that kind of thing a portage (which is a French word, pronounced por-TAWZH); back then they stuck with an English term and simply called it a “carrying place.” Arnold summed it up quite nicely when he said, “I have been much deceived in every Account of our Rout, which is longer, and has been attended with a Thousand Difficulties I never apprehended.”
Some of the companies in the rear decided to turn back, since food was rapidly running out (as I mentioned in my previous post). I won’t call them cowards, though; I wasn’t there, and I’ve never been in danger of starving to death. Some men did in fact die of hunger and disease.
At any rate, with great daring and perseverance, Arnold reached the St. Lawrence River with about 700 men in early November and looked at his goal — the city of Quebec — across the river. But it was just a little out of reach…
By the way, Maine was not its own colony, but there were some settlers there, and the region had its own name.
“Address to the Inhabitants of Canada, 14 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0358. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 461–463.]
Montrésor, John. A map of the sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec rivers. [?, 1761] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/74692578/.
“To George Washington from Colonel Benedict Arnold, 27–28 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0224. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 244–246.]
Jonathan Brewer proposes a plan to attack Quebec.
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 you can see that it didn’t work out, by the fact that Canada is not one of the United States.
I’ve read a lot about Arnold’s trek along the rivers and through the woods of Maine and Quebec, but I didn’t realize until today that somebody else was itching to start such an expedition before the war was even two weeks old. 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.
The plan he proposed was pretty much the same one that Benedict Arnold followed several months later. When he said he could “execute” his plan “with all the facility imaginable”, what he meant was that he could carry it out quickly.
I’m sure there was plenty of talk about invading Canada during the early months of the war, but I didn’t know it was formally proposed as early as May 1, 1775, which is when this petition was evidently submitted.
American Archives, Series 4, Volume 2, 462.
A Map of the Sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec Rivers, by John Montresor, ca. 1761. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3730.ar083800
