The news was a dreadful shock. Hannah’s letter in June assured him “Your little family are all well.”1 Clearly Peggy’s fever had come without warning. It was deadly. She had died while he was miles away, ignorant of her condition. Peggy had always been delicate, aloof, hard to please. But he was devoted to her. Now there was no chance to say goodbye, to tell her how much he loved her. He hadn’t even been able to attend her funeral or comfort their three little sons. After the frustrating and contentious weeks at Ticonderoga Benedict had been longing to return to the refuge of his home and family, to what he called his “safe, happy asylum where mutual love and friendship doubled our joys and bears down our every misfortune.”2 He was just about to set out for that happy asylum when the awful news reached him. He bid a hasty farewell to General Schuyler and galloped off to New Haven, 114 miles from Albany as the crow flies, far longer on the crooked, dusty roads of a hot New England summer. He was anxious, exhausted, racing to get home but dreading that homecoming.
The scene that greeted Benedict at his journey’s end was even more wretched than he expected. The grand house he had built for Peggy was, of course, hushed and darkened in deep mourning. It seemed empty despite the presence of his dear sister Hannah and his little sons. The letter that told him of Peggy’s death also informed him of the Mansfield family’s second tragedy. Peggy’s father, Samuel, had been ill for a long time but Hannah’s letter in June reported the good news that Samuel, “contrary to all expectation, is again able to ride out; and his physicians think he is in a fair way of recovering a comfortable state of health.”3 But, as is sometimes the way with illness, he took a fatal turn for the worse, no doubt badly shaken by Peggy’s death. Three days after Peggy died her “papa” followed his dear daughter to the grave. Yet there was Hannah to welcome him, coping quietly as she had done when they faced their own mother’s death and their father’s alcoholism. She was there, thank God, to care for his three sons. Benedict, the eldest was just seven, Richard six, and little Henry was only three. Would they remember their mother, particularly Henry?
Samuel’s business had been failing. In one of her rare letters to Benedict before fighting began, Peggy asked if they could help him out financially. Now Samuel’s business would be left to his son and partners to manage. Benedict’s own shipping business was in scarcely better shape. Although he had a partner who could take the lead, and Hannah was eager to help while he was away, the American shipping trade was about to become extraordinarily hazardous. In August George III would proclaim his American opponents rebels making their ships targets for every British vessel. At the moment Benedict was worried about his ship, Peggy, due to enter port at Quebec.4 Would authorities there know of his earlier seizure of Canadian craft at St. Johns? Beyond these difficulties his own health became a problem. The gout that occasionally afflicted him suddenly flared up, probably provoked by the good food and drink of home. It kept him in bed with wretched pain for many of the few days he was in New Haven.
Much as he was needed at home though, Benedict could not stay. He had spent a good deal of his own funds to pay for the supplies his men needed at Ticonderoga. He asked to be reimbursed, but the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was more interested in his accounting for every penny of the public funds used for the campaign. Gulled by the attacks on Arnold, the Provincial Congress was exceptionally suspicious of his every expense. While Arnold was commanding the fort at Ticonderoga and Crown Point they sent the Spooner Committee to inspect the forts and assess his command. It had orders to pay only his men who were capable of further service.5 “The very great hardship on the private men, who having served well near two months,” an astonished Arnold protested, “are now to be mustered and if by sickness or hard labor they are reduced and not fit for service . . . they are to lose their former time and service, and reduced to the distress of begging their bread until they can get home to their friends.”6 The committee yielded, but only when the men at Crown Point threatened to mutiny after learning the sick or injured were not to be paid. Still, Congress demanded Arnold appear as soon as possible to account directly to them. It was certain to be a contentious confrontation. The delegates hadn’t questioned the scurrilous reports John Brown and James Easton brought them of Arnold’s behavior or their supposed heroism. Therefore, although Benedict had only been home a few days, he had no choice but to return to Watertown to report to the Massachusetts Congress. He was prepared to give them the financial reckoning they wanted, but meant to insist on being reimbursed for the large sum of £1,060 he had advanced to pay for supplies. In these uncertain times his family would need the money.
His few days in New Haven were busy sorting out affairs at home. Could Hannah manage the household and look after his three little sons? Was his business in as good shape as possible? Little time to grieve. Perhaps that was best. As he later explained, “every recollection of past happiness heightens my present grief, which would be intolerable, were it not buried in the public calamity.”7 And he was determined to bury himself in that public calamity. “An idle life under my present circumstances would be but a lingering death.” If an expedition to Canada which he had recommended to the Continental Congress in June were to take place he wanted to play a part in it, otherwise he planned to join the army at Cambridge as a volunteer. Leaving his dear little family and his good friends with their prayers for his safety and swift return, he galloped off to confront the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and dedicate his life to the cause.
When Arnold hurriedly galloped off from his Albany mansion Philip Schuyler, commander of Washington’s North Department, knew he had found his man. Schuyler was so impressed by Arnold he wanted him appointed the deputy adjutant general of his department.8 This would have to be done with circumspection though, since the Continental Congress insisted upon its exclusive right to make military appointments. The Congress had had no doubts about its choice of Schuyler as one of its first four major generals. At forty-one Philip Schuyler was a brilliant choice to command the North Department—the principal magnate of the Albany-Hudson region of New York, a patriot although moderate, and a supremely able and talented man. He was tall, dignified, serious. To the sizeable estate he inherited from Dutch forebears, he added large tracts of land, building a vast farming and commercial empire. When he and Arnold met that July Schuyler owned some hundred thousand acres. But he was no mere aristocratic farmer in the British sense. He had also developed a manufacturing center at Saratoga and conveyed the produce of his farms to market in his own ships. He had married into one of New York’s oldest and most influential Dutch families. He and Catherine Van Rensselaer were to become the parents of fifteen children.
More pertinent in the present emergency, Schuyler’s military experience rivaled that of George Washington. Both men had served with the British army during the French and Indian War. Schuyler was commissioned a captain authorized to raise a militia regiment. Serving under John Bradstreet, he had taken part in the capture of Ticonderoga and in the capture of Fort Frontenac. When Bradstreet was made quartermaster general of the British Army, Schuyler served in his department. That experience gave him expertise in the logistics of supplying military forces on wilderness expeditions. Schuyler also knew the Indians of his region well. There was just one potential problem with his appointment: this loyal and able man suffered excruciating bouts of pain from gout, and had serious breathing problems from pleurisy. But when in good health he was superb.
Schuyler had just returned from serving in the Continental Congress at Philadelphia when he and Arnold had their meeting. That assembly had brought the New York magnate into contact with George Washington of Virginia. The two men, alike in many ways, became firm friends and remained so after Washington was appointed commander in chief of the boisterous throng of volunteer-soldiers gathered at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Indeed, Schuyler was among those officers who accompanied Washington on the journey to Massachusetts before heading home to Albany.
On June 17 while Washington and the new officers were riding north the Battle of Bunker Hill took place. It had begun with an amphibious assault by the British across the Charles River from Boston, breaking out of the blockade the patriots had created. As they landed on the Cambridge beachhead the British set the nearby city of Charlestown aflame to punish residents who were shooting at them from their windows. With the smoke and flames of burning homes in the background, the regulars launched three punishing assaults up Breed’s Hill, convinced the American volunteers crouching at its top would break and run. They did not. And although the regulars eventually won the day, they suffered about one thousand casualties, half of all the soldiers engaged. That number included nineteen British officers killed and another seventy wounded.9 The Americans thought nothing of violating the European code of honor by targeting the officers. For their part the Americans taking shelter behind a barrier they had constructed in the darkness the previous night lost between four hundred and six hundred men, only retreating when their ammunition gave out. This battle was a far more serious encounter than the running fight in April as the besieged regulars retreated from Concord to Boston. With so much blood spilled could the two sides still reconcile? Many colonists and members of Congress desperately hoped they could.
Schuyler had heard of the aspersions on Arnold’s character, but he had his own sources. Barnabas Deane, brother of Silas Deane of Connecticut, Arnold’s friend and Schuyler’s fellow delegate to the Continental Congress, had visited Crown Point in May. He assured Silas: “Colonel Arnold has been greatly abused and misrepresented by designing persons,” adding, “had it not been for him everything . . . would have been in the utmost confusion and disorder; people would have been plundered of their private property and no man’s person would be safe that was not of the Green Mountain party.”10 As a New Yorker it wouldn’t have taken much to convince Schuyler that the Green Mountain Boys, along with their claims against Arnold, were to be treated with skepticism. He wrote privately to Deane in July asking whether he could get Arnold appointed his deputy adjutant general for the Northern Department.11 He “dare not mention it in Congress,” he wrote, “and would not have it known that I had ever hinted it, as it might create jealousy. Be silent, therefore, with respect to me.” Arnold was the capable, daring and resourceful man he needed for the expedition that he and Washington had been discussing to conquer Canada. In fact during their meeting Arnold had explained to Schuyler his idea of an attack on Quebec cutting through the Maine wilderness and making use of the river systems flowing north to the St. Lawrence. But first Arnold had to deal with the Massachusetts Congress.
On August 1 Arnold presented himself at the Watertown Meeting House to report to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress assembled there. The confrontation was every bit as frustrating as he had feared, the meeting in a church doing nothing to quiet the irascible attitudes of the delegates. They even chastised Arnold for going home to New Haven before reporting to them. The sudden death of his wife apparently was no excuse. The Provincial Congress, as was their habit, appointed a committee to deal with him. In this case its five members were led by Dr. Benjamin Church. Unbeknownst to his colleagues at the time, that good doctor interrogating Arnold was secretly passing information to the British. Church’s duplicity would be discovered several weeks later and he would be arrested. In the meantime he and his committee were busily probing Arnold’s use of public funds in minute detail. For two and a half weeks the committee audited his every expense while Congress refused to reimburse him in full for the money he had contributed. The committee recommended nearly £200 less than Arnold claimed. Silas Deane and Washington continued to urge members of the Congress to reconsider their parsimony but it was not until several months later, in the dead of winter, when Arnold lay wounded in Canada, that they finally agreed to make amends. All this relentless scrutiny would have tried Arnold’s patience even further had he not slipped off during a quiet interval to meet with General Washington. He wanted to press for a new, more important mission, the invasion of Canada.
Arnold took advantage of the Provincial Congress’s proximity to Cambridge to visit the headquarters of George Washington, the new commander in chief. He was keen to tell him of his ideas for an expedition against Quebec and with its capture, control of Canada. Washington’s headquarters on Brattle Street was near Harvard College in the elegant, three-storey mansion of John Vassall, a wealthy Tory who was then in Boston sheltered under British protection.12 The entire area surrounding Harvard College was filled with the men and boys who had answered the Committee of Safety’s desperate call for help keeping the British bottled up in Boston after April 19. The college flanks the Cambridge green, the town common. Harvard had sent its students home and opened its doors to as many of the citizen-soldiers cramming the town as possible. Four of its buildings were housing many of the men while others slept outdoors or were put up in private homes. The college was making other contributions to the cause. The lead on the roof of its main hall was being stripped and melted down to make bullets. Its kitchens were feeding the men nearby. The library collection and other college treasures, however, had been sent to the northshore town of Andover, out of harm’s way.13
Washington and Arnold made quite a contrast as they greeted each other: the tall, dignified, handsome Virginian, and the shorter, stockier, impetuous Connecticut Yankee; the plantation owner and the shipping merchant both now turned soldier. Both had had to acquire learning and gentlemanly skills without the advantage of a college education. Both had an unabashed entrepreneurial spirit and a zeal for the cause. Washington had wanted the appointment to command the new army. While the other delegates to the Continental Congress wore ordinary civilian clothes to their meetings, he appeared daily in the buff and blue uniform of the Fairfax militia. Washington was an aristocrat but he was not a snob. He was anxious to make use of capable, talented men where he found them. God knows he needed them. While he waited a few days before giving Arnold his approval, he knew immediately Benedict Arnold was one of these.
Arnold had conceived of a plan for an attack on Canada’s capital, the fortress city of Quebec, while commanding at Fort Ticonderoga. For years he had traded with the Canadians, sailing his ships from New Haven north to Halifax and other Canadian ports. He made a point of keeping informed about Canadian affairs, asking friends traveling there and others he knew in Canada for reports on British military strength and Canadian attitudes toward British rule. He had secured Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Lake Champlain, at least for the moment, but garrison duty did not suit him. He was too restless, too keen for new challenges, for dramatic action. He was full of ideas to advance the American cause.
On June 13 while still at Crown Point he wrote directly to the Continental Congress on the peril to America with Canada in British hands and the need “to take possession of Montreal and Quebec.”14 He was convinced this would not be difficult, informing the delegates of the exact British strength in these key cities and laying out a plan of action. He estimated that two thousand men “might very easily affect it.” Arnold concluded his proposal with an apology for his impetuousness in writing them, hoping “the urgency of the times and my zeal in the service of my country will apologize for the liberty of giving my sentiments so freely on a subject which the Honorable Congress are doubtless the best judges of, but which they in their hurry may not have paid the attention to which the matter requires.” Rather than rebuilding Ticonderoga, he argued, it would be better to protect the thirteen colonies from attack from the north. “If no person appears who will undertake to carry the plan into execution (if thought advisable),” he added, “I will undertake, and, with the smiles of Heaven, answer for the success of it.” With many delegates ambivalent about the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and desperately wanting reconciliation with Britain, Arnold ventured that “the reduction of these places [Montreal and Quebec] would discourage the enemies of American liberty” and would help restore “that solid peace and harmony between Great Britain and colonies.” On the importance of securing control of Canada, Arnold was right, of course. Its continuing possession under British control threatened the American colonies for the remainder of the war and led to some of its key battles.
Arnold’s idea struck a chord. His planned expedition though, aimed to use a customary route through Lake Champlain, the Great Warpath.15 The strategy was first to attack Montreal, then move east to Quebec. Schemes to also attack Quebec directly by way of the rivers through the Maine wilderness or, conversely, for a French attack on New England along the same inland route had been pondered by the British and the French for years.16 A trail between Quebec and the Maine coast through the river system actually appeared on a French map of 1682. During the French and Indian War there was a British plan to send two thousand regulars to attack Quebec using that route through the wilderness of Maine by way of the Kennebec and Chaudiere Rivers. Once war broke out in 1775 there were rumors the British might use that route to descend from Canada and attack New England. In fact a scouting party from Falmouth [now Portland] led by two experienced woodsmen, Remington Hobby and John Gatchell, was sent up the Kennebec River to check whether any Canadians or Indians were on their way south by means of the Maine rivers.17 The two men traveled only as far as they could up the Kennebec, assuring themselves no one was coming down the river to attack Maine. The only man known to have traveled the entire route and surveyed it was a British army engineer, Colonel John Montresor. He had taken a party of Indians on that journey in 1761 and was at the present with General Gage in Boston. Washington was able to get a copy of Montresor’s journal and maps but key material had been blocked out.18 Even more unfortunate, Montresor’s official journal neglected to mention the misery he had suffered as he and his party maneuvered through the forest around the many carrying places between navigable waterways. Years later Montresor recalled how during the journey he was “suffering from a loss of appetite from derangement of my System, for having been distressed by Famine for 13 days.”19
If the Canadians could be persuaded to make common cause with the Americans it would be an immense advantage. Continued British control of Canada posed a constant threat to New York and the New England colonies. Whether Arnold knew it or not when he and Washington met, the Continental Congress had already agreed to a secret expedition to Canada. General Schuyler had been placed in overall command. What Washington had in mind for Arnold was not the full plan Arnold had laid out to the Continental Congress for attacking Montreal, but the daring expedition through the little-known rivers of Maine that he had outlined to General Gates, adjutant-general of the forces in Cambridge.20
Washington was enthusiastic about securing Canada and intrigued by the idea of launching a secret expedition through the Maine wilderness. The main force, led by Schuyler, would take the customary route north and capture Montreal, which was only lightly defended. It would then move east to Quebec where the two armies would meet to capture the citadel. The march through the wilderness along the river systems with their frequent carrying places was daunting, but Arnold was eager to lead such an expedition. Neither he nor Washington knew the problems and suffering Montresor had kept out of his official journals, problems Arnold was soon to find out for himself.
Preparations for the campaign to Canada were already under way. General Schuyler, who was to personally lead the main army of the Canadian expedition knew the area well. His expertise was ideal for the expedition. Washington assigned Schuyler some of the best officers he could spare. Chief among these was Brigadier General Richard Montgomery. Montgomery, like Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, and several other Continental Army officers, was a former British career soldier. And he was familiar with the Canadian region as well. During the French and Indian War he served under General Jeffrey Amherst at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and their present target, Montreal. When that war ended he was stationed in New York. Seeing no opportunity for military advancement during peacetime, Montgomery sold his commission in 1772 and prepared to begin a new life in America. He bought land and married into a prominent New York family, determined to leave politics and the military behind. But as tensions with Britain mounted he was sent as a delegate to the New York provincial congress and then to the Second Continental Congress. Unlike Washington who actively sought a military role in the coming conflict, or Arnold who was anxious to prove himself by undertaking daring expeditions for the cause, Montgomery simply wanted to live the peaceful life of a landowner. He was done with soldiering. Yet he could not disentangle himself from the world about him. As he explained to his wife in despair:
When I entered your family I was a stranger in your country . . . yet without my wish or knowledge they appoint me to the committee from Duchess[county]. The times were such I could not refuse however reluctant . . . Now without consulting me they have made me general. In this capacity I may be of service for a just cause. Can I refuse? . . . Honor calls on me. 21
Washington made Montgomery second in command to Schuyler.
Two inveterate foes of Arnold’s from the Ticonderoga campaign, John Brown and Ethan Allen, also were to be in Schuyler’s army. Allen joined Schuyler’s forces assembling at Crown Point. Brown, whom Schuyler had sent to Canada several times to spy out the strength of British forces and the sentiment of English Canadians, eventually joined the expedition. While neither Brown nor Allen would serve in Arnold’s wilderness expedition, they were all destined to meet when the two American forces converged before Quebec.
Arnold’s expedition, the march through the wilderness, was designed to surprise the Canadians and assist the main army. Washington and Arnold met several times to discuss the plan. The commander was aware of the various complaints against Arnold but had been reassured by his friend Silas Deane and trusted his own instincts. Nevertheless he insisted Arnold meet three conditions before appointing him to lead an army through Maine. First, Arnold had to sort out his problems with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress by presenting them with his full report. Second, he was to put himself under General Schuyler who was in overall charge of the Canadian campaign. And third, he was to treat the Canadians as fellow Americans joining in a common cause against British oppression. To these Arnold readily agreed, and by August 20 Washington had made up his mind. He sent an express letter to Schuyler that a second expedition would be sent through Maine to distract General Carleton and help capture Quebec and that Benedict Arnold would lead it.22 He assured Schuyler of Arnold’s “enterprising and persevering sprit,” adding: “The merit of this gentleman is certainly great and I heartily wish that fortune may distinguish him one of her favorites.”23
Washington estimated that one thousand to twelve hundred men would be sufficient for Arnold’s army. He carefully selected those officers he thought best able to venture with Arnold on this perilous trek. These included four New Englanders: Major Christopher Greene of Rhode Island, Lieutenant Colonel Roger Enos of Connecticut, Major Return Jonathan Meigs of Connecticut and Major Timothy Bigelow, a blacksmith from Worcester, Massachusetts. Among the volunteers was Aaron Burr who would become vice president of the new republic and wage a murderous duel with Alexander Hamilton. Now, like the rest, he was a young man seeking adventure.
Washington also planned to have three frontier rifle companies on the expedition. By September he had six such companies in Cambridge. To avoid upset about which were to go and which were to remain he decided there should be lots drawn. The three winning companies were Daniel Morgan’s men from the Virginia frontier and two companies from the then Pennsylvania backwoods, Captain William Hendricks’s company from Cumberland County and Captain Matthew Smith’s Lancaster County company. These frontier riflemen were a rough but impressive group. It would take an inspiring and courageous leader to win their obedience and respect.
Daniel Morgan would become the de facto leader of the three rifle companies in Arnold’s army. He was a colorful character, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, broad shouldered, brawling, a survivor of some five hundred lashes inflicted for disorderly behavior while serving with the British as a teamster during the French and Indian War. Morgan was immensely popular in Virginia, captain of his local militia company. While Congress specified that each company in their army was to have sixty men, Morgan’s had ninety-six. And they were impressive. When ordered to join the forces gathered at Cambridge off they marched, taking only three weeks to complete the six-hundred-mile journey. Morgan was an excellent man to have on a dangerous expedition and deserved his growing reputation as a daring military leader.24 Arnold’s two other rifle companies of tough backwoods sharpshooters were equally formidable. The company led by Captain William Hendricks of Cumberland, made the 441-mile journey to Cambridge in twenty-six days including stops to see the sights and to tar-and-feather the occasional loyalist they came upon.25
The three rifle companies were markedly distinct from the rest of the troops in their equipment and dress. Each man arrived in Cambridge carrying a long rifle, and with a long knife and a tomahawk at his waist. Their dress was a knee-length hunting shirt of linen or deerskin in a natural linen color, or blue or red usually fringed at the neck, with breeches and boots or moccasins.26 As one of Arnold’s riflemen wrote, their clothing was “by no means in a military style,” but aped “the manners of savages.”27 Yet it was practical and comfortable for wilderness work.
They had one other distinction—even among the self-reliant Americans these backwoods men stood out as fiercely independent. John Joseph Henry, a young member of one of these companies, wrote they were “of as rude and hardy a race as ourselves, and as unused to the discipline of a camp, and as fearless as we.”28 Washington found it especially difficult to get them to conform to military discipline. They resented being ordered to shoulder routine military duties such as digging trenches. Their officers either would not, or could not, control them. In one incident described by a New England officer, a member of Captain Ross’s company was sent to the guardhouse for his refusal to carry out a task.29 Furious at his arrest thirty-two of his comrades marched with loaded guns to the guardhouse swearing they would release him or lose their lives. The sentinels at the guardhouse immediately sent word to Washington who ordered five hundred New England recruits to dash to the guardhouse, weapons loaded. When the angry riflemen arrived they found themselves surrounded by the New England troops armed with muskets, bayonets fixed. Two of the rebellious ringleaders were bound and the disorder ended.
There were six frontier rifle companies in Washington’s army at Cambridge by September and he was determined to send three of them with Arnold. One wonders whether Washington chose these rifle companies for Arnold’s army, not merely for their knowledge of wilderness survival but also to remove troublesome men from his own camp.
This was the human material that comprised Arnold’s army. Yet by the end of their frightful wilderness expedition every journal writer among the group praised Arnold’s courage and leadership.
With plans laid and officers assigned the preparations for the assault on Canada began in earnest. As these arrangements began in August it was already late in the year to launch an attack on Canada before the Canadian winter, which always came early. In addition the British had been given additional time to reinforce their Canadian army. But it was the weather that was to prove the most formidable. General Schuyler had been working feverishly, mobilizing troops and amassing supplies and boats, keenly aware how crucial this planning would be to their success. He arranged for the building of powder mills to provide ammunition along with the construction of boats, docks, roads, and hospitals. While all this was going on Schuyler also took time out to negotiate with the Iroquois.30 By the end of August he had sixty boats ready to launch, able to carry thirteen hundred men and a three-week supply of food.31
Arnold began his own arrangements immediately after Washington appointed him on August 20. He started assembling his army and wrote Captain Colburn, a Maine militia officer with a boat building business in the Kennebec Valley, to find out how soon two hundred light bateaux, each capable of carrying six or seven men with their provisions and baggage, could be purchased or built.32 Colburn replied that he couldn’t even begin building these until September 6. That was not just unfortunate but disastrous, as the speed with which the boats now had to be built meant they would not be made of seasoned wood or well constructed. Amid all his other concerns Arnold insisted that at least his men look like soldiers. Benjamin Thompson, a New Hampshire militia officer, observed them before their departure and, while finding the rest of the American army “not very badly accoutered, but most wretchedly clothed, and as dirty a set of mortals as ever disgraced the name of a soldier. They have had no clothes of any sort provided for them by the Congress,” except, he added, “the detachment of 1,133 that are gone to Canada under Col. Arnold, who had each of them a new coat and a linen frock served out to them before they set out.”33
Arnold ordered his men to rendezvous at the north shore town of Newburyport. From there they were to sail up the Maine coast to the Kennebec River to get their bateaux. On September 14, the day before the final contingent of troops reached Newburyport, Washington wrote to Arnold laying out his mission in detail, being careful to emphasize how important its success and their behavior was to their personal honor and reputation: “You are intrusted with a command of the utmost consequence to the interest and liberties of America. Upon your conduct and courage and that of the officers and soldiers detached on this expedition, not only the success of the present enterprise and honor, but the safety and welfare of the whole continent may depend.”34 He charged, “you therefore, and the officers and soldiers under your command as you value your own safety and honor and the favor and esteem of your country, that you consider yourselves as marching not through an enemy’s country, but that of our friends and brethren.” The men were to behave with scrupulous care toward both Canadians and Indians, paying for anything they needed, behaving with strict discipline and courtesy, showing respect for the Catholic religion, treating any prisoners with “as much humanity and kindness as may be consistent with your own safety & the public interest.” Once in Canada Arnold was to distribute “addresses” written by Washington to Canadians and to convince “those people & such Indians as you may meet with by every means in your power . . . that we come at the request of many of their principal people, not as robbers or to make war upon them, but as the friends and supporters of their liberties as well as ours.”35 “Come then, ye generous citizens” Washington urged Canadians, “range yourselves under the standard of General Liberty, against which all the force and artifice of tyranny will never be able to prevail.”36
With so much at stake, on September 19 Arnold and his little army set sail from Newburyport for the trip along the rocky Maine coast to the Kennebec River, where they were to pick up their bateaux. Private Abner Stocking described the expedition’s departure as the nine hundred men with their equipment and supplies crowded onto nine vessels:
This morning we got under way with a pleasant breeze, our drums beating, fifes playing, and colors flying. Many pretty girls stood upon the shore, I suppose weeping for the departure of their sweethearts. 37
After this noisy leave-taking the secret expedition cleared Newburyport harbor at eleven o’clock bound for the Kennebec River, there to follow Montresor’s route through the wilderness to Canada.