Washington and His Comrades in Arms: A Chronicle of the War of IndependenceWrong, George McKinnon
History
Washington and His Comrades in Arms: A Chronicle of the War of Independence
Wrong, George McKinnon
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783; Washington, George, 1732-1799 -- Military leadership
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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