Washington was not a professional soldier, though he had seen the
realities of war and had moved in military society. Perhaps it was an
advantage that he had not received the rigid training of a regular, for
he faced conditions which required an elastic mind. The force besieging
Boston consisted at first chiefly of New England militia, with companies
of minute-men, so called because of their supposed readiness to fight at
a minute's notice. Washington had been told that he should find 20,000
men under his command; he found, in fact, a nominal army of 17,000,
with probably not more than 14,000 effective, and the number tended
to decline as the men went away to their homes after the first vivid
interest gave way to the humdrum of military life.
The extensive camp before Boston, as Washington now saw it, expressed
the varied character of his strange command. Cambridge, the seat of
Harvard College, was still only a village with a few large houses and
park-like grounds set among fields of grain, now trodden down by the
soldiers. Here was placed in haphazard style the motley housing of a
military camp. The occupants had followed their own taste in building.
One could see structures covered with turf, looking like lumps of mother
earth, tents made of sail cloth, huts of bare boards, huts of brick and
stone, some having doors and windows of wattled basketwork. There were
not enough huts to house the army nor camp-kettles for cooking. Blankets
were so few that many of the men were without covering at night. In the
warm summer weather this did not much matter but bleak autumn and harsh
winter would bring bitter privation. The sick in particular suffered
severely, for the hospitals were badly equipped.
A deep conviction inspired many of the volunteers. They regarded as
brutal tyranny the tax on tea, considered in England as a mild expedient
for raising needed revenue for defense in the colonies. The men of
Suffolk County, Massachusetts, meeting in September, 1774, had declared
in high-flown terms that the proposed tax came from a parricide who
held a dagger at their bosoms and that those who resisted him would earn
praises to eternity. From nearly every colony came similar utterances,
and flaming resentment at injustice filled the volunteer army. Many a
soldier would not touch a cup of tea because tea had been the ruin of
his country. Some wore pinned to their hats or coats the words "Liberty
or Death" and talked of resisting tyranny until "time shall be no more."
It was a dark day for the motherland when so many of her sons believed
that she was the enemy of liberty. The iron of this conviction entered
into the soul of the American nation; at Gettysburg, nearly a century
later, Abraham Lincoln, in a noble utterance which touched the heart of
humanity, could appeal to the days of the Revolution, when "our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty." The
colonists believed that they were fighting for something of import to
all mankind, and the nation which they created believes it still.
An age of war furnishes, however, occasion for the exercise of baser
impulses. The New Englander was a trader by instinct. An army had come
suddenly together and there was golden promise of contracts for supplies
at fat profits. The leader from Virginia, untutored in such things, was
astounded at the greedy scramble. Before the year 1775 ended Washington
wrote to his friend Lee that he prayed God he might never again have to
witness such lack of public spirit, such jobbing and self-seeking,
such "fertility in all the low arts," as now he found at Cambridge.
He declared that if he could have foreseen all this nothing would have
induced him to take the command. Later, the young La Fayette, who had
left behind him in France wealth and luxury in order to fight a hard
fight in America, was shocked at the slackness and indifference among
the supposed patriots for whose cause he was making sacrifices so
heavy. In the backward parts of the colonies the population was densely
ignorant and had little grasp of the deeper meaning of the patriot
cause.
The army was, as Washington himself said, "a mixed multitude." There
was every variety of dress. Old uniforms, treasured from the days of the
last French wars, had been dug out. A military coat or a cocked hat was
the only semblance of uniform possessed by some of the officers. Rank
was often indicated by ribbons of different colors tied on the arm. Lads
from the farms had come in their usual dress; a good many of these were
hunters from the frontier wearing the buckskin of the deer they had
slain. Sometimes there was clothing of grimmer material. Later in the
war in American officer recorded that his men had skinned two dead
Indians "from their hips down, for bootlegs, one pair for the Major,
the other for myself." The volunteers varied greatly in age. There
were bearded veterans of sixty and a sprinkling of lads of sixteen.
An observer laughed at the boys and the "great great grandfathers" who
marched side by side in the army before Boston. Occasionally a black
face was seen in the ranks. One of Washington's tasks was to reduce the
disparity of years and especially to secure men who could shoot. In
the first enthusiasm of 1775 so many men volunteered in Virginia that a
selection was made on the basis of accuracy in shooting. The men fired
at a range of one hundred and fifty yards at an outline of a man's nose
in chalk on a board. Each man had a single shot and the first men shot
the nose entirely away.
Undoubtedly there was the finest material among the men lounging about
their quarters at Cambridge in fashion so unmilitary. In physique they
were larger than the British soldier, a result due to abundant food and
free life in the open air from childhood. Most of the men supplied their
own uniform and rifles and much barter went on in the hours after
drill. The men made and sold shoes, clothes, and even arms. They
were accustomed to farm life and good at digging and throwing up
entrenchments. The colonial mode of waging war was, however, not that
of Europe. To the regular soldier of the time even earth entrenchments
seemed a sign of cowardice. The brave man would come out on the open to
face his foe. Earl Percy, who rescued the harassed British on the day of
Lexington, had the poorest possible opinion of those on what he called
the rebel side. To him they were intriguing rascals, hypocrites,
cowards, with sinister designs to ruin the Empire. But he was forced to
admit that they fought well and faced death willingly.
In time Washington gathered about him a fine body of officers, brave,
steady, and efficient. On the great issue they, like himself, had
unchanging conviction, and they and he saved the revolution. But a good
many of his difficulties were due to bad officers. He had himself the
reverence for gentility, the belief in an ordered grading of society,
characteristic of his class in that age. In Virginia the relation of
master and servant was well understood and the tone of authority was
readily accepted. In New England conceptions of equality were more
advanced. The extent to which the people would brook the despotism of
military command was uncertain. From the first some of the volunteers
had elected their officers. The result was that intriguing demagogues
were sometimes chosen. The Massachusetts troops, wrote a Connecticut
captain, not free, perhaps, from local jealousy, were "commanded by a
most despicable set of officers." At Bunker Hill officers of this type
shirked the fight and their men, left without leaders, joined in the
panicky retreat of that day. Other officers sent away soldiers to work
on their farms while at the same time they drew for them public pay. At
a later time Washington wrote to a friend wise counsel about the choice
of officers. "Take none but gentlemen; let no local attachment influence
you; do not suffer your good nature to say Yes when you ought to say No.
Remember that it is a public, not a private cause." What he desired
was the gentleman's chivalry of refinement, sense of honor, dignity of
character, and freedom from mere self-seeking. The prime qualities of
a good officer, as he often said, were authority and decision. It is
probably true of democracies that they prefer and will follow the man
who will take with them a strong tone. Little men, however, cannot see
this and think to gain support by shifty changes of opinion to please
the multitude. What authority and decision could be expected from
an officer of the peasant type, elected by his own men? How could he
dominate men whose short term of service was expiring and who had to be
coaxed to renew it? Some elected officers had to promise to pool their
pay with that of their men. In one company an officer fulfilled the
double position of captain and barber. In time, however, the authority
of military rank came to be respected throughout the whole army. An
amusing contrast with earlier conditions is found in 1779 when a captain
was tried by a brigade court-martial and dismissed from the service for
intimate association with the wagon-maker of the brigade.
The first thing to do at Cambridge was to get rid of the inefficient and
the corrupt. Washington had never any belief in a militia army. From
his earliest days as a soldier he had favored conscription, even in free
Virginia. He had then found quite ineffective the "whooping, holloing
gentlemen soldiers" of the volunteer force of the colony among whom
"every individual has his own crude notion of things and must undertake
to direct. If his advice is neglected he thinks himself slighted,
abused, and injured and, to redress his wrongs, will depart for his
home." Washington found at Cambridge too many officers. Then as later
in the American army there were swarms of colonels. The officers from
Massachusetts, conscious that they had seen the first fighting in the
great cause, expected special consideration from a stranger serving
on their own soil. Soon they had a rude awakening. Washington broke a
Massachusetts colonel and two captains because they had proved
cowards at Bunker Hill, two more captains for fraud in drawing pay and
provisions for men who did not exist, and still another for absence
from his post when he was needed. He put in jail a colonel, a major, and
three or four other officers. "New lords, new laws," wrote in his diary
Mr. Emerson, the chaplain: "the Generals Washington and Lee are upon
the lines every day… great distinction is made between officers and
soldiers."
The term of all the volunteers in Washington's army expired by the end
of 1775, so that he had to create a new army during the siege of Boston.
He spoke scornfully of an enemy so little enterprising as to remain
supine during the process. But probably the British were wise to avoid a
venture inland and to remain in touch with their fleet. Washington made
them uneasy when he drove away the cattle from the neighborhood. Soon
beef was selling in Boston for as much as eighteen pence a pound. Food
might reach Boston in ships but supplies even by sea were insecure, for
the Americans soon had privateers manned by seamen familiar with New
England waters and happy in expected gains from prize money. The British
were anxious about the elementary problem of food. They might have made
Washington more uncomfortable by forays and alarms. Only reluctantly,
however, did Howe, who took over the command on October 10, 1775, admit
to himself that this was a real war. He still hoped for settlement
without further bloodshed. Washington was glad to learn that the British
were laying in supplies of coal for the winter. It meant that they
intended to stay in Boston, where, more than in any other place, he
could make trouble for them.
Washington had more on his mind than the creation of an army and the
siege of Boston. He had also to decide the strategy of the war. On the
long American sea front Boston alone remained in British hands. New
York, Philadelphia, Charleston and other ports farther south were all,
for the time, on the side of the Revolution. Boston was not a good
naval base for the British, since it commanded no great waterway leading
inland. The sprawling colonies, from the rock-bound coast of New England
to the swamps and forests of Georgia, were strong in their incoherent
vastness. There were a thousand miles of seacoast. Only rarely were
considerable settlements to be found more than a hundred miles distant
from salt water. An army marching to the interior would have increasing
difficulties from transport and supplies. Wherever water routes could
be used the naval power of the British gave them an advantage. One such
route was the Hudson, less a river than a navigable arm of the sea,
leading to the heart of the colony of New York, its upper waters almost
touching Lake George and Lake Champlain, which in turn led to the
St. Lawrence in Canada and thence to the sea. Canada was held by the
British; and it was clear that, if they should take the city of New
York, they might command the whole line from the mouth of the Hudson to
the St. Lawrence, and so cut off New England from the other colonies and
overcome a divided enemy. To foil this policy Washington planned to hold
New York and to capture Canada. With Canada in line the union of the
colonies would be indeed continental, and, if the British were driven
from Boston, they would have no secure foothold in North America.
The danger from Canada had always been a source of anxiety to the
English colonies. The French had made Canada a base for attempts to
drive the English from North America. During many decades war had raged
along the Canadian frontier. With the cession of Canada to Britain in
1763 this danger had vanished. The old habit endured, however, of fear
of Canada. When, in 1774, the British Parliament passed the bill for the
government of Canada known as the Quebec Act, there was violent clamor.
The measure was assumed to be a calculated threat against colonial
liberty. The Quebec Act continued in Canada the French civil law and the
ancient privileges of the Roman Catholic Church. It guaranteed order in
the wild western region north of the Ohio, taken recently from France,
by placing it under the authority long exercised there of the Governor
of Quebec. Only a vivid imagination would conceive that to allow to
the French in Canada their old loved customs and laws involved designs
against the freedom under English law in the other colonies, or that
to let the Canadians retain in respect to religion what they had always
possessed meant a sinister plot against the Protestantism of the English
colonies. Yet Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the greatest mind in the
American Revolution, had frantic suspicions. French laws in Canada
involved, he said, the extension of French despotism in the English
colonies. The privileges continued to the Roman Catholic Church in
Canada would be followed in due course by the Inquisition, the burning
of heretics at the stake in Boston and New York, and the bringing
from Europe of Roman Catholic settlers who would prove tools for the
destruction of religious liberty. Military rule at Quebec meant, sooner
or later, despotism everywhere in America. We may smile now at the
youthful Hamilton's picture of "dark designs" and "deceitful wiles"
on the part of that fierce Protestant George III to establish Roman
Catholic despotism, but the colonies regarded the danger as serious. The
quick remedy would be simply to take Canada, as Washington now planned.
To this end something had been done before Washington assumed the
command. The British Fort Ticonderoga, on the neck of land separating
Lake Champlain from Lake George, commanded the route from New York to
Canada. The fight at Lexington in April had been quickly followed by
aggressive action against this British stronghold. No news of Lexington
had reached the fort when early in May Colonel Ethan Allen, with
Benedict Arnold serving as a volunteer in his force of eighty-three
men, arrived in friendly guise. The fort was held by only forty-eight
British; with the menace from France at last ended they felt secure;
discipline was slack, for there was nothing to do. The incompetent
commander testified that he lent Allen twenty men for some rough work
on the lake. By evening Allen had them all drunk and then it was easy,
without firing a shot, to capture the fort with a rush. The door to
Canada was open. Great stores of ammunition and a hundred and twenty
guns, which in due course were used against the British at Boston, fell
into American hands.
About Canada Washington was ill-informed. He thought of the Canadians as
if they were Virginians or New Yorkers. They had been recently conquered
by Britain; their new king was a tyrant; they would desire liberty and
would welcome an American army. So reasoned Washington, but without
knowledge. The Canadians were a conquered people, but they had found
the British king no tyrant and they had experienced the paradox of being
freer under the conqueror than they had been under their own sovereign.
The last days of French rule in Canada were disgraced by corruption
and tyranny almost unbelievable. The Canadian peasant had been cruelly
robbed and he had conceived for his French rulers a dislike which
appears still in his attitude towards the motherland of France. For
his new British master he had assuredly no love, but he was no longer
dragged off to war and his property was not plundered. He was free,
too, to speak his mind. During the first twenty years after the British
conquest of Canada the Canadian French matured indeed an assertive
liberty not even dreamed of during the previous century and a half of
French rule.
The British tyranny which Washington pictured in Canada was thus not
very real. He underestimated, too, the antagonism between the Roman
Catholics of Canada and the Protestants of the English colonies. The
Congress at Philadelphia in denouncing the Quebec Act had accused the
Catholic Church of bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion. This was
no very tactful appeal for sympathy to the sons of that France which was
still the eldest daughter of the Church and it was hardly helped by
a maladroit turn suggesting that "low-minded infirmities" should not
permit such differences to block union in the sacred cause of liberty.
Washington believed that two battalions of Canadians might be recruited
to fight the British, and that the French Acadians of Nova Scotia, a
people so remote that most of them hardly knew what the war was about,
were tingling with sympathy for the American cause. In truth the
Canadian was not prepared to fight on either side. What the priest and
the landowner could do to make him fight for Britain was done, but, for
all that, Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting
impossible.
Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which held
Canada. He saw that from Canada would be determined the attitude of the
savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the interior; he saw, too, that
Quebec as a military base in British hands would be a source of grave
danger. The easy capture of Fort Ticonderoga led him to underrate
difficulties. If Ticonderoga why not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be
occupied later, the Acadians helping. Thus it happened that, soon
after taking over the command, Washington was busy with a plan for the
conquest of Canada. Two forces were to advance into that country; one by
way of Lake Champlain under General Schuyler and the other through the
forests of Maine under Benedict Arnold.
Schuyler was obliged through illness to give up his command, and it was
an odd fortune of war that put General Richard Montgomery at the head
of the expedition going by way of Lake Champlain. Montgomery had served
with Wolfe at the taking of Louisbourg and had been an officer in the
proud British army which had received the surrender of Canada in 1760.
Not without searching of heart had Montgomery turned against his former
sovereign. He was living in America when war broke out; he had married
into an American family of position; and he had come to the view that
vital liberty was challenged by the King. Now he did his work well,
in spite of very bad material in his army. His New Englanders were, he
said, "every man a general and not one of them a soldier." They feigned
sickness, though, as far as he had learned, there was "not a man dead of
any distemper." No better were the men from New York, "the sweepings of
the streets" with morals "infamous." Of the officers, too, Montgomery
had a poor opinion. Like Washington he declared that it was necessary to
get gentlemen, men of education and integrity, as officers, or disaster
would follow. Nevertheless St. Johns, a British post on the Richelieu,
about thirty miles across country from Montreal, fell to Montgomery on
the 3d of November, after a siege of six weeks; and British regulars
under Major Preston, a brave and competent officer, yielded to a crude
volunteer army with whole regiments lacking uniforms. Montreal could
make no defense. On the 12th of November Montgomery entered Montreal
and was in control of the St. Lawrence almost to the cliffs of Quebec.
Canada seemed indeed an easy conquest.
The adventurous Benedict Arnold went on an expedition more hazardous.
He had persuaded Washington of the impossible, that he could advance
through the wilderness from the seacoast of Maine and take Quebec by
surprise. News travels even by forest pathways. Arnold made a wonderful
effort. Chill autumn was upon him when, on the 25th of September, with
about a thousand picked men, he began to advance up the Kennebec River
and over the height of land to the upper waters of the Chaudière, which
discharges into the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. There were heavy
rains. Sometimes the men had to wade breast high in dragging heavy
and leaking boats over the difficult places. A good many men died of
starvation. Others deserted and turned back. The indomitable Arnold
pressed on, however, and on the 9th of November, a few days before
Montgomery occupied Montreal, he stood with some six hundred worn and
shivering men on the strand of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. He
had not surprised the city and it looked grim and inaccessible as he
surveyed it across the great river. In the autumn gales it was not easy
to carry over his little army in small boats. But this he accomplished
and then waited for Montgomery to join him.
By the 3d of December Montgomery was with Arnold before Quebec. They
had hardly more than a thousand effective troops, together with a few
hundred Canadians, upon whom no reliance could be placed. Carleton,
commanding at Quebec, sat tight and would hold no communication
with despised "rebels." "They all pretend to be gentlemen," said an
astonished British officer in Quebec, when he heard that among the
American officers now captured by the British there were a former
blacksmith, a butcher, a shoemaker, and an innkeeper. Montgomery was
stung to violent threats by Carleton's contempt, but never could he draw
from Carleton a reply. At last Montgomery tried, in the dark of early
morning of New Year's Day, 1776, to carry Quebec by storm. He was to
lead an attack on the Lower Town from the west side, while Arnold was to
enter from the opposite side. When they met in the center they were to
storm the citadel on the heights above. They counted on the help of the
French inhabitants, from whom Carleton said bitterly enough that he
had nothing to fear in prosperity and nothing to hope for in adversity.
Arnold pressed his part of the attack with vigor and penetrated to the
streets of the Lower Town where he fell wounded. Captain Daniel Morgan,
who took over the command, was made prisoner.
Montgomery's fate was more tragic. In spite of protests from his
officers, he led in person the attack from the west side of the
fortress. The advance was along a narrow road under the towering cliffs
of a great precipice. The attack was expected by the British and the
guard at the barrier was ordered to hold its fire until the enemy was
near. Suddenly there was a roar of cannon and the assailants not swept
down fled in panic. With the morning light the dead head of Montgomery
was found protruding from the snow. He was mourned by Washington and
with reason. He had talents and character which might have made him one
of the chief leaders of the revolutionary army. Elsewhere, too, was
he mourned. His father, an Irish landowner, had been a member of the
British Parliament, and he himself was a Whig, known to Fox and Burke.
When news of his death reached England eulogies upon him came from the
Whig benches in Parliament which could not have been stronger had he
died fighting for the King.
While the outlook in Canada grew steadily darker, the American cause
prospered before Boston. There Howe was not at ease. If it was really
to be war, which he still doubted, it would be well to seek some
other base. Washington helped Howe to take action. Dorchester Heights
commanded Boston as critically from the south as did Bunker Hill from
the north. By the end of February Washington had British cannon, brought
with heavy labor from Ticonderoga, and then he lost no time. On the
morning of March 5, 1776, Howe awoke to find that, under cover of a
heavy bombardment, American troops had occupied Dorchester Heights and
that if he would dislodge them he must make another attack similar
to that at Bunker Hill. The alternative of stiff fighting was the
evacuation of Boston. Howe, though dilatory, was a good fighting
soldier. His defects as a general in America sprang in part from his
belief that the war was unjust and that delay might bring counsels
making for peace and save bloodshed. His first decision was to attack,
but a furious gale thwarted his purpose, and he then prepared for the
inevitable step.
Washington divined Howe's purpose and there was a tacit agreement that
the retiring army should not be molested. Howe destroyed munitions
of war which he could not take away but he left intact the powerful
defenses of Boston, defenses reared at the cost of Britain. Many of the
better class of the inhabitants, British in their sympathies, were now
face to face with bitter sorrow and sacrifice. Passions were so aroused
that a hard fate awaited them should they remain in Boston and they
decided to leave with the British army. Travel by land was blocked; they
could go only by sea. When the time came to depart, laden carriages,
trucks, and wheelbarrows crowded to the quays through the narrow streets
and a sad procession of exiles went out from their homes. A profane
critic said that they moved "as if the very devil was after them." No
doubt many of them would have been arrogant and merciless to "rebels"
had theirs been the triumph. But the day was above all a day of sorrow.
Edward Winslow, a strong leader among them, tells of his tears "at
leaving our once happy town of Boston." The ships, a forest of masts,
set sail and, crowded with soldiers and refugees, headed straight out
to sea for Halifax. Abigail, wife of John Adams, a clever woman, watched
the departure of the fleet with gladness in her heart. She thought that
never before had been seen in America so many ships bearing so many
people. Washington's army marched joyously into Boston. Joyous it might
well be since, for the moment, powerful Britain was not secure in a
single foot of territory in the former colonies. If Quebec should fall
the continent would be almost conquered.
Quebec did not fall. All through the winter the Americans held on before
the place. They shivered from cold. They suffered from the dread disease
of smallpox. They had difficulty in getting food. The Canadians were
insistent on having good money for what they offered and since good
money was not always in the treasury the invading army sometimes used
violence. Then the Canadians became more reserved and chilling than
ever. In hope of mending matters Congress sent a commission to Montreal
in the spring of 1776. Its chairman was Benjamin Franklin and, with him,
were two leading Roman Catholics, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a
great landowner of Maryland, and his brother John, a priest, afterwards
Archbishop of Baltimore. It was not easy to represent as the liberator
of the Catholic Canadians the Congress which had denounced in scathing
terms the concessions in the Quebec Act to the Catholic Church. Franklin
was a master of conciliation, but before he achieved anything a dramatic
event happened. On the 6th of May, British ships arrived at Quebec. The
inhabitants rushed to the ramparts. Cries of joy passed from street
to street and they reached the little American army, now under General
Thomas, encamped on the Plains of Abraham. Panic seized the small force
which had held on so long. On the ships were ten thousand fresh British
troops. The one thing for the Americans to do was to get away; and they
fled, leaving behind guns, supplies, even clothing and private papers.
Five days later Franklin, at Montreal, was dismayed by the distressing
news of disaster.
Congress sent six regiments to reinforce the army which had fled from
Quebec. It was a desperate venture. Washington's orders were that the
Americans should fight the new British army as near Quebec as possible.
The decisive struggle took place on the 8th of June. An American force
under the command of General Thompson attacked Three Rivers, a town
on the St. Lawrence, half way between Quebec and Montreal. They were
repulsed and the general was taken prisoner. The wonder is indeed that
the army was not annihilated. Then followed a disastrous retreat. Short
of supplies, ravaged by smallpox, and in bad weather, the invaders tried
to make their way back to Lake Champlain. They evacuated Montreal. It is
hard enough in the day of success to hold together an untrained army. In
the day of defeat such a force is apt to become a mere rabble. Some of
the American regiments preserved discipline. Others fell into complete
disorder as, weak and discouraged, they retired to Lake Champlain. Many
soldiers perished of disease. "I did not look into a hut or a tent,"
says an observer, "in which I did not find a dead or dying man." Those
who had huts were fortunate. The fate of some was to die without medical
care and without cover. By the end of June what was left of the force
had reached Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
Benedict Arnold, who had been wounded at Quebec, was now at Crown Point.
Competent critics of the war have held that what Arnold now did saved
the Revolution. In another scene, before the summer ended, the British
had taken New York and made themselves masters of the lower Hudson.
Had they reached in the same season the upper Hudson by way of Lake
Champlain they would have struck blows doubly staggering. This Arnold
saw, and his object was to delay, if he could not defeat, the British
advance. There was no road through the dense forest by the shores of
Lake Champlain and Lake George to the upper Hudson. The British must go
down the lake in boats. This General Carleton had foreseen and he had
urged that with the fleet sent to Quebec should be sent from England,
in sections, boats which could be quickly carried past the rapids of the
Richelieu River and launched on Lake Champlain. They had not come and
the only thing for Carleton to do was to build a flotilla which could
carry an army up the lake and attack Crown Point. The thing was done
but skilled workmen were few and not until the 5th of October were the
little ships afloat on Lake Champlain. Arnold, too, spent the summer in
building boats to meet the attack and it was a strange turn in warfare
which now made him commander in a naval fight. There was a brisk
struggle on Lake Champlain. Carleton had a score or so of vessels;
Arnold not so many. But he delayed Carleton. When he was beaten on the
water he burned the ships not captured and took to the land. When he
could no longer hold Crown Point he burned that place and retreated to
Ticonderoga.
By this time it was late autumn. The British were far from their base
and the Americans were retreating into a friendly country. There is
little doubt that Carleton could have taken Fort Ticonderoga. It fell
quite easily less than a year later. Some of his officers urged him to
press on and do it. But the leaves had already fallen, the bleak winter
was near, and Carleton pictured to himself an army buried deeply in an
enemy country and separated from its base by many scores of miles of
lake and forest. He withdrew to Canada and left Lake Champlain to the
Americans.