gomery's fall, there was one general burst of sorrow, and a burning desire to retrieve his defeat. Washington overcame his scruples about initiating measures, and, without waiting to consult congress, recommended to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, each to raise and send forward a regiment on behalf of the continent; and the three colonies eagerly met his call, for the annexation of Canada was then their passion. The continental conJan. to gress specially encouraged Western New Hampshire to complete a regiment for the service; and ordered one regiment from Philadelphia, another from New Jersey, to march for the St. Lawrence without delay. These were to be soon followed by four or five more. 1776. March. In the first moments of the excitement, the summons was obeyed; citizens became soldiers, left the comforts of home with alacrity, and undertook a march of many hundred miles, to a country in that rigorous season almost uninhabitable, through snow and over frozen lakes, without tents, or any shelter from the inclemency of the weather. Their unanimity, their zeal for liberty, their steady perseverance, called forth the most confident predictions of their success; but reflection showed insurmountable obstacles. Since congress for eight months had not been able to furnish Washington, who was encamped in the most thickly peopled part of the country, with the men, clothes, blankets, money, and powder required for the recovery of Boston, how could they hope to keep up the siege of Quebec? To maintain a foothold in Canada, there was need, in the first place, of the good-will and confidence of its people. Montgomery had from his birth been familiar with Catholics; but Wooster, a New England Calvinist from a country town in Connecticut, cradled in the hatred of popery, irritated the jealousies of the Canadian clergy, who refused absolution to the friends of the Americans, and threatened them from the pulpit with eternal woe. Nor were his manners and frugal style of living suited to win the Canadian nobility. But, without the support of their priests or their feudal superiors, the fickle and uncertain people could not be solidly organized. It was in the next place necessary to send into Canada an army of ten thousand men, with trains of artillery for a siege, and a full military chest. But congress, in its dread of a standing force, had no troops at all except on short enlistments. Moreover, the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence were more easily used for transportation than the road by land from the colonies to Quebec. By the middle of March no more than fifteen hundred Americans had reached Montreal. The royalists in Canada began to cry victory, and were bolder than ever. 1776. March. The relations with the Indians became alarming; yet Schuyler dissuaded from any attempt at employing them; and congress voted not to suffer them to serve in its armies without the previous consent of the tribes in a national council, nor then without its own express approval. But, to guard against dangers from the Five Nations, James Deane was sent with the returning deputations from the Oneidas and the seven tribes in Canada. On the journey they marched in Indian file, and at sunset encamped in a grove of hemlocks, of which the boughs furnished beds. The council, in which the nations were much divided, began on the twenty-eighth of March with the usual ceremonies to wipe away tears, to cleanse from blood, to lighten the grief which choked speech. The next day was given to acts of condolence, when new trees, as they expressed it, were raised in the place of chiefs who had fallen, and their names published to the Six Nations. On the thirty-first, the confederated tribes gave each other pledges to observe a strict neutrality in the present quarrel. Nothing amazed them more than the flight of the British from Boston. For four months Wooster remained the highest officer in Canada. All accounts agree that he was "unfit, totally unfit," for so important a station, which he had never sought, and which he desired to surrender to an officer of higher rank. Yet he did some things well; in the early part of his command, he arrested Campbell, the Indian agent of the British, and La Corne Saint-Luc, and sent them out of the province. He allowed each parish to choose its own officers, thus introducing the system of self-govern ment in towns. He intended to employ committees of safety and committees of correspondence, and thus lead the way to a Canadian convention, which might send delegates to the general congress. When a friend wished he might enter Quebec through its gates, "Not so, but over its walls," was his reply; and they were not words of rodomontade, for the aged man was brave. He was too old to unlearn his partiality for Connecticut, and sometimes paid his men in hard money, when those round Quebec received only paper; and sometimes granted a furlough which carried pay, instead of a discharge. With Schuyler, who was far the more testy of the two, he had constant bickerings, which attracted the attention and divided the opinion of congress. 1776. On the first day of April, Wooster took command of April. the troops round Quebec. The garrison laughed as they saw from the ramparts the general, now venerable from his years, and distinguished by his singularly large wig, walking solemnly along the walls, to spy out their weak parts. Scattered round Quebec, on both sides of the river, and at great distances from each other, lay about two thousand men; of whom not many more than half were able to do duty. How to supply them with food was a great difficulty. The insignificant batteries of three light guns and one howitzer on Point Levi; of twice that number of guns, two howitzers, and two small mortars on the heights of Abraham; and of two guns at the Traverse, were harmless to the enemy; the store of powder did not exceed three or four tons; of shot, ten or twelve; there were no engineers, and few artillerists; of the troops who had wintered in Canada, constituting more than half of the whole number, the time of service would expire on the fifteenth of April, when neither art, nor money, nor entreaty, would be able to prevail on them to remain. Livingston's regiment of about two hundred Canadians would be free on the same day, and very few of them would re-engage. Arnold, at his own solicitation, withdrew to Montreal. The regiments sent forward to Canada arrived at Albany in a very incomplete state, and were further thinned on the march by sickness and desertion. The Canadians, who had confided in Montgomery and given him aid before Quebec, now only waited an opportunity to rise against the Americans. The country was outraged by the arbitrariness of the military occupation; the peasantry had been forced to furnish wood and other articles at less than the market price, or for promissory certificates; the clergy, neglected or ill used, were unanimously hostile; of the more cultivated classes, both French and English, seven eighths were willing to assist in driving back the invaders. The savages kept aloof from the Americans, and it was feared would, early in the spring, fall on their frontier. April. Alarmed by constant unfavorable reports, con- 1776. gress, on the twentieth, urged Washington to hasten the departure of four battalions destined for Quebec, as "a week, a day, even an hour might prove decisive;" but on the twentieth and twenty-first, before receiving the letters, he had despatched them, under Thompson of Pennsylvania as brigadier. Two or three days later, the unsuccessful attempt of the Canadians, near the end of March, under Beaujeu, to raise the blockade of Quebec, became known; and though Washington at that moment was in want of men, arms, and money, congress, giving way to its unchecked impulses, declared itself "determined on the reduction of Quebec," and, without even consulting the commander in chief, suddenly and peremptorily ordered him to detach six additional battalions from his army for service in Canada, and further inquired of him if he could spare more. Late at night on the twenty-fifth, Washington received the order by express; his effective force on that day consisted of but eight thousand three hundred and one; and of this small force, poorly armed and worse clad, he detached six of his best battalions, containing more than three thousand men, at a time when the British ministry was directing against New York thirty thousand veteran troops. The command of the brigade was given to Sullivan; among its officers were Stark and Reed of New Hampshire, Anthony Wayne and Irvine of Pennsylvania. The troops were scantily provided for the march; some companies. had not a waistcoat among them all, and but one shirt to a man. Washington resigned himself to the ill-considered votes of congress, and sent off his best troops to Canada at their word. "At the same time," so he wrote to congress, trusting New York and Hudson River to the handful of men remaining here is running too great a risk. The general officers now here think it absolutely necessary to increase the army at this place with at least ten thousand men." Destitute of hard money, congress requested the New England states to collect as much of it as they could, and forward it to Schuyler. Having stripped Washington of ten battalions, or about half his effective force, they next ordered that provisions, powder, of which his stock was very low, and articles of clothing for ten thousand men, should follow, with all the hard money which the New England states could collect. They were resolved to maintain ten thousand men on the St. Lawrence, leaving Washington very much to his own devices and to solicitations addressed to the colonies nearest him, at a time when it was the grand plan of the English to take possession of Hudson River. 1776. April. For Canada a general was wanted not less than an army. Schuyler having refused the service, and Lee having been transferred to the south, Putnam stood next in rank; but Thomas of Massachusetts, a man of superior ability and culture though of less experience, was raised to the rank of major-general, and ordered to Quebec. In the army with. which he was to hold Canada, the small-pox raged; Thomas had never been inoculated, and his journey to the camp was a journey to meet death unattended by glory. He was closely followed by Franklin, Chase, and Charles Carroll, whom congress had commissioned to promise a guarantee of their estates to the clergy; to establish a free press; to allure the people of Canada by the prospect of a free trade with all nations; and to invite them to set up a government for themselves, and join the federal union. John Carroll, the brother of Charles, a Jesuit, afterwards |