During Monroe’s control of the War Department for two months, between Dec. 3, 1812, and Feb. 5, 1813, much effort had been made to increase the army. Monroe wrote to the chairman of the Military Committee Dec. 22, 1812, a sketch of his ideas.[155] He proposed to provide for the general defence by dividing the United States into military districts, and apportioning ninety-three hundred and fifty men among them as garrisons. For offensive operations he required a force competent to overpower the British defence, and in estimating his wants, he assumed that Canada contained about twelve thousand British regulars, besides militia, and three thousand men at Halifax. “To demolish the British force from Niagara to Quebec,” said Monroe, “would require, to make the thing secure, an efficient regular army of twenty thousand men, with an army of reserve of ten thousand.... If the government could raise and keep in the field thirty-five thousand regular troops, ... the deficiency to be supplied even to authorize an expedition against Halifax would be inconsiderable. Ten thousand men would be amply sufficient; but there is danger of not being able to raise that force, and to keep it at that standard.... My idea is that provision ought to be made for raising twenty thousand men in addition to the present establishment.” Congress voted about fifty-eight thousand men, and after deducting ten thousand for garrisons, counted on forty-eight thousand for service in Canada. When Armstrong took control, Feb. 5, 1813, he began at once to devise a plan of operation for the army which by law numbered fifty-eight thousand men, and in fact numbered, including the staff and regimental officers, eighteen thousand nine hundred and forty-five men, according to the returns in the adjutant-general’s office February 16, 1813. Before he had been a week in the War Department, he wrote, February 10, to Major-General Dearborn announcing that four thousand men were to be immediately collected at Sackett’s Harbor, and three thousand at Buffalo. April 1, or as soon as navigation opened, the four thousand troops at Sackett’s Harbor were to be embarked and transported in boats under convoy of the fleet across the Lake at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, thirty-five miles, to Kingston. After capturing Kingston, with its magazines, navy-yards, and ships, the expedition was to proceed up the Lake to York (Toronto) and capture two vessels building there. Thence it was to join the corps of three thousand men at Buffalo, and attack the British on the Niagara River.[156]