%135. Montreal taken.%--Meanwhile Congress, fearing that Sir Guy Carleton, who was governor of Canada, would invade New York by way of Lake Champlain, sent two expeditions against him. One, under Richard Montgomery, went down Lake Champlain, and captured Montreal. Another, under Benedict Arnold, forced its way through the dense woods of Maine, and after dreadful sufferings reached Quebec. There Montgomery joined Arnold, and on the night of December 31, 1775, the two armies assaulted Quebec, the most strongly fortified city in America, and actually entered it. But Montgomery was killed, Arnold was wounded, the attack failed, and, six months later, the Americans were driven from Canada. [Illustration: Bunker Hill Monument] %136. The British driven from Boston, March 17, 1776.%--After eight months of seeming idleness, Washington, early in March, 1776, seized Dorchester Heights on the south side of Boston, fortified them, and so gave Howe his choice of fighting or retreating. Fight he could not; for the troops, remembering the dreadful day at Bunker Hill, were afraid to attack intrenched Americans. Howe thereupon evacuated Boston and sailed with his army for Halifax, March 17, 1776. Washington felt sure that the British would next attack New York, so he moved his army there in April, 1776, and placed it on the Brooklyn hills. %137. Independence resolved on.%--Just one year had now passed since the memorable fights at Concord and Lexington. During this year the colonies had been solemnly protesting that they had no thought of independence and desired nothing so much as reconciliation with the King. But the King meantime had done things which prevented any reconciliation: 1. He had issued a proclamation declaring the Americans to be rebels. 2. He had closed their ports and warned foreign nations not to trade with them. 3. He had hired 17,000 Hessians[1] with whom to subdue them. [Footnote 1: The Hessians were soldiers from Hesse and other small German states.] These things made further obedience to the King impossible, and May 15, 1776, Congress resolved that it was "necessary to suppress every kind of authority under the crown," and asked the colonies to form governments of their own and so become states. On the 7th of June, Richard Henry Lee, acting under instructions from Virginia, offered this resolution: Resolved That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.