Washington, however, hinged his chief objection to these distant enterprises, which he habitually opposed throughout the war, upon the pressing demand for the immediate capture of Boston, and an immediate transfer of the Headquarters of the Army to New York, where, and where only, the Colonies could be brought into close relation for the organization and distribution of an army adequate to carry on war, generally, wherever along the Atlantic coast the British might land troops. As early as June, Congress had disclaimed any purpose to operate against Canada, and Bancroft says that the invasion was not determined upon until the Proclamation of Martial Law by the British Governor, his denunciation of the American borderers, and the incitement of savages to raids against New York and New England had made the invasion an act of self-defence. But there had been no such combination of hostile acts when these expeditions were planned, and Mr. Bancroft must have associated those events with the employment of Indian allies during the subsequent Burgoyne campaign of 1777. The details of the two contemporary expeditions to Canada are only sufficiently outlined to develop the relations of the Commander-in-Chief to their prosecution, and to introduce to the reader certain officers who subsequently came more directly under Washington’s personal command. The substantial failure of each, except that it developed some of the best officers of the war, is accepted as history. But it is no less true that when Great Britain made Canada the base of Burgoyne’s invasion, his feeble support by the Canadians themselves proved a material factor in his ultimate disaster. He was practically _starved to surrender_ for want of adequate support in men and provisions, from his only natural base of supply. It is sufficient, at present, to notice the departure of the two expeditions, that of Schuyler and Montgomery, assembling at Ticonderoga, August 20, and that of Arnold, consisting of eleven hundred men, without artillery, which left Cambridge on the seventeenth day of September and landed at Gardiner, Me., on the twentieth. Several companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania and Virginia which had reported for duty were assigned to Arnold’s command. Among the officers were Daniel Morgan and Christopher Greene. Aaron Burr, then but nineteen years of age, accompanied this expedition.