Chapter 10

The Very Flower of the Colonial Youth¹

Asnowstorm pelted Quebec during the early morning of December 31. It fell throughout the day, limiting visibility and muffling sounds. The weather finally cleared during the night. The British ventured out the following morning, New Year’s Day 1776, to inspect the battlefield and retrieve the dead.

At first, they saw nothing unusual in the freshly fallen snow. Then someone noticed a frozen arm protruding through the flurries in the Pres de Ville. They shoveled away the snow and uncovered the body of a rebel soldier. Additional probing and digging turned up a total of 13 frozen corpses. A similarly grim scene occurred on the other side of town, where additional bodies were found. Some civilians came out to watch the gruesome scene as the British removed piles of frozen corpses, their limbs distorted in various positions, in horse-drawn sleighs.

On the following day, Governor Carleton toured the lower town to inspect the sites of the British victory. He was proving to be a humane jailer, and granted Major Meigs permission to visit the American camp to retrieve some clothes for himself and his fellow officers.² The major gave Carleton his word of honor that he would quickly return to captivity. Meigs also was under oath as a gentleman not to reveal information about Quebec’s defenses, but he felt that he could divulge that the governor had segregated the officers from the enlisted men, as was the custom, and that both groups were confined in the upper town. The officers were quartered in the seminary while the enlisted men were kept in the Recollects building that formerly housed a monastery and Jesuit college. It was heartbreaking that, after their terrible ordeal in the Maine wilderness and perilous siege, Meigs and the others found themselves prisoners in the city that they had come to conquer.

Despite his painful wound, Arnold was numb as Meigs informed him that he believed every man belonging to the colonel’s celebrated corps had been killed or captured in the attack. According to the British, 426 rebels were killed or captured in the fight.³ Of this number, 60 were reported to have died in the battle, including three of Arnold’s best officers: Captain Henricks, shot dead while he was taking aim with his rifle from an upper-story window in the Sault-au-Matelot; Lieutenant Humphreys, a promising young lieutenant in Morgan’s rifle company, who died trying to scale the second barricade; and Lieutenant Samuel Cooper, from Handchett’s Connecticut company, killed trying to retake the first barricade. Meigs told Arnold that of the 366 Americans captured, 100 were wounded, including Captain Jonas Hubbard, one of the expedition’s company officers, who was not expected to live.⁴

Those captured unscathed, besides Meigs, included the Kennebec corps senior officers; Lieutenant Colonel Greene, Major Bigelow, Adjutant Febiger, Captain Morgan, and the commanders of the New England musket companies; Thayer, Topham, Hubbard, Dearborn, Ward, Hanchett, and Goodrich. In addition, 15 of Arnold’s lieutenants had been taken prisoner, including Archibald Steele, who led Smith’s Pennsylvania rifle company in the absence of its commander, Captain Matthew Smith. Steele had three of his fingers shot off during the fighting. Eleazer Oswald also was a prisoner. He was part of Arnold’s courageous selected party of 25 volunteers who led the dawn attack against the Sault-au-Matelot. Even the corps quartermaster, Benjamin Catlin, had fought bravely and yielded with the others. Captain Ainslie, who saw them shortly after they surrendered, called them “the Flower of the rebel army.” He noted how they had all been taken prisoner with slips of paper pinned to their hats reading “Liberty or Death.”⁵

Sitting at Arnold’s bedside, Meigs gave a detailed account of what occurred after the wounded colonel left the field. Meigs recalled that the fighting at the first barricade began at about 6:00 a.m. and that the surrender of the last man, reported to be Captain Morgan, took place three hours later. He described how Arnold’s desperate men broke into the buildings along the Sault-au-Matelot during the fighting looking for safe, dry places to remove the wet powder and ball from their weapons and reload them with dry charges. After finishing his unhappy story, Meigs removed a folded piece of cloth from his pocket, opened it, and showed the contents to Arnold. In his cradled hands he held out a pair of gentlemen’s knee buckles that belonged to General Montgomery. It was reported that the general was hit by a bullet to his head and had died instantly. In his hands Meigs also held a gold broach that had been found on Captain Macpherson’s body. A chivalrous British officer gave the relics to Meigs, who said he highly valued them “for the sake of their late worthy owners.”⁶

At the end of their conversation, Arnold handed Meigs a generous amount of money from his personal funds, telling him to use it to buy whatever he could in the city to ease the distress of his imprisoned men. In fact, Arnold had been using his own money and credit throughout the campaign to help keep his troops supplied with food and clothing. Meigs thanked the colonel for his gift and left the room to gather up whatever clothing and personal articles belonging to his fellow officers he could find. He then left the gloomy American camp and silently returned to captivity behind Quebec’s walls.

Arnold had a force of about 800 in early January to continue the siege of Quebec. It consisted of five companies from the 1st New York regiment, a small Massachusetts detachment commanded by Major Brown, and the Canadian partisans led by Colonel Livingston. Arnold determined to continue the blockade, telling his sister Hannah, “I have no thoughts of leaving this proud town, until I first enter it in triumph.”⁷

Arnold later discovered that a handful of his Kennebec men were still part of his command. They included Lieutenant Isaac Hull and volunteer David Hopkins, both of whom had escaped the British counterattack. Dr. Senter never took part in the battle; he had been ordered to stay at the hospital to care for the wounded. Pierce (the expedition’s surveyor) was also among the living. It was rumored that he returned to camp early in the assault with a case of “cannon fever” (cowardice). Captain Smith, who commanded one of the Pennsylvania rifle companies, had never left camp. Private Henry would only say years later that Smith was “absent for particular causes,” the implication being he was too drunk to lead his company on the morning of the battle.⁸ Another original member of the expedition who survived the attack was feisty Aaron Burr.⁹

Matthias Ogden, Burr’s friend and fellow gentleman volunteer, also lived. He was wounded in the shoulder early in the attack and managed to limp back to the hospital. Besides these men, any other Arnold Expedition veteran still alive either was locked up in a British prison or lying prostrate in Dr. Senter’s hospital with smallpox, typhoid, influenza, dysentery, pneumonia, or trench fever.

News of the American defeat at Quebec soon began reaching the outside world. Colonel Campbell authored one of the first reports within hours of his shabby retreat from the fortified house following Montgomery’s death. Aware that some accused him of cowardice, Campbell blamed Arnold’s Kennebec corps for his flight, claiming that their expiring enlistments had forced Montgomery to execute a desperate attack on Quebec. Unaware of what Campbell had written, Arnold composed his own matter-of-fact report of the attack to General Wooster, who commanded the rebel garrison at Montreal. He begged the general to send reinforcements and to forward to General Washington and Congress the news of the futile American attack on Quebec and Montgomery’s death.

The members of the Continental Congress had no inkling in early January 1776 of the disaster that had befallen their army in Canada. In fact, they were in a confident mood as they awaited the expected news that the brilliant young General Montgomery and the fearless Colonel Arnold had captured Quebec. Congress voted promotions for both officers, Montgomery from brigadier to major general and Arnold from colonel to brigadier general. The delegates were especially thrilled with accounts of Arnold’s courageous march across Maine. “Arnold’s Expedition,” delegate William Hooper wrote home on January 2, “has been marked with such scenes of misery that it requires a stretch of faith to believe that human nature was equal to them.”¹⁰

Representative Joseph Hewes penned an account of the expedition for a friend in which he compared Arnold’s march to Hannibal’s: “that extraordinary March is thought to equal Hanibals over the Alps.”¹¹ Samuel Ward, from Rhode Island, equated Arnold’s achievement to that of the ancient Greek warrior Xenophon, who led his army to safety through hostile enemy territory: “Arnold’s March is considered as the greatest Action done this War. Some say it equals Xenophons Retreat from Persia . . . nothing greater has been done since the Days of Alexander.”¹²

On the morning of January 17, Charles Thomson, the secretary to Congress, interrupted the members’ tedious debate over foreign trade to deliver dispatches that had just arrived by courier from Quebec. While Thomson read the reports, the faces of the delegates turned ashen as they started to comprehend the enormity of the disaster. Particularly alarmed by the tragic news was Samuel Ward, whose son, Samuel Jr., and son-in-law, Christopher Greene, were officers in Arnold’s corps. Congress previously had voted to raise eight regiments for service in Canada, and the news of the defeat at Quebec caused the process to accelerate. New Hampshire received instructions to race to reinforce Arnold in Quebec, and General John Thomas received an appointment as Montgomery’s successor.¹³

Back at Quebec, Arnold attempted to maintain the semblance of a siege while he awaited reinforcements. Fortunately, Carleton was content to remain behind Quebec’s walls, sallying out only to gather firewood from the derelict buildings in the suburbs while Arnold continued to send emissaries to parley. His missives all received the same reply: “[N]o flag will be received, unless it comes to implore the mercy of the King.”¹⁴

Carleton proved more aggressive in trying to increase the size of his garrison by encouraging his prisoners to join Colonel Maclean’s Royal Highland Emigrants. The governor focused his recruiting efforts on his English- and Irish-born captives who were particularly vulnerable to threats of being shipped back to England to be tried and hanged as traitors. Enlistment efforts started soon after the failed rebel attack when Maclean began interviewing each prisoner, asking them where they were born. He told those who confessed to British or Irish birth that they must serve his majesty in the Royal Highland Emigrants or face the prospect of being returned to England in chains. To sweeten the offer, Maclean offered land bounties and cash to those prisoners who agreed to fight for their mother country. His bribes and threats worked, and 78 men from the Arnold Expedition joined the Highland Emigrants. After taking an oath of allegiance to serve the king, they were issued uniforms and weapons and absorbed into the regiment.

The Kennebec corps officers need not have worried that so many of their men deserted to the enemy, because those who joined the British ranks ran for freedom at the first opportunity. The story of two of them, Edward Cavenaugh and Timothy Conner from Smith’s rifle company, is typical of the outcome of Maclean’s machinations. The two riflemen decided that their oath of fidelity to King George III was not binding, and that they would escape at the first opportunity. Their chance came toward the end of January, when they were on guard duty at the Palace Gate on a moonless night. The gate was locked and the surrounding walls were 40 feet high, but there were deep snow drifts that they hoped would cushion their fall. Deciding to take their chances, they threw their muskets over the parapet then leaped from the top of the wall into the snow bank. Both men survived the perilous jump, grabbed their muskets, and started racing toward the rebel lines. As they ran, the other sentries spotted them and started shooting. Soon cannons opened fire, hurling shells at the two as they raced through the wrecked suburb of St. Roch. Despite the gunfire, Cavenaugh and Conner made it to freedom and rejoined the rebel army with their fine British muskets and warm uniforms.

After a few similar episodes, all the remaining prisoners who had enlisted in Maclean’s regiment were rounded up and stripped of their weapons and clothing. They then were returned to confinement, where their old messmates cheered their return, much to the frustration of a British officer, who wrote in his diary, “[A]s we cannot read their hearts, prudence says keep them close.”¹⁵

Closely guarding the Arnold Expedition prisoners was prudent, as they were desperate, well-organized, and resourceful men. The 37 American officers being held captive at the time attempted various escape plots, including bribing guards, chipping away at doors, and making ropes from bed sheets. But their intrigues were modest in comparison to the massive prison break organized by the 300-plus enlisted men whose scheme included the capture of Quebec. These men hatched their plan when they were transferred from the Rocollects complex to a smaller building in the upper town called the Dauphin Redoubt. Although they were confined to a small section of the building, the structure was old and dilapidated, close to St. John’s Gate, and they were being guarded by apathetic militiamen. The situation was ripe for mayhem, and the quick-witted men of Arnold’s Kennebec Corps went to work at night picking every lock in the building and making knives, swords, and pikes from discarded pieces of metal and wood.

A council of captives organized a carefully orchestrated prison break for the morning of April 1. A prisoner named John Martin volunteered to escape and inform Arnold of their plan. Martin dressed entirely in white clothing, including gloves and a hood made for him by the other prisoners. Under cover of night, he slipped out of the jail and, undetected in his camouflage gear, cautiously made his way to the ramparts surrounding the city, where he successfully made the leap to freedom. Watching from a trapdoor in the roof of the Dauphin Redoubt, the prisoners saw a flag flying from the American lines that the wind seemed to have twisted into a knot. It was a prearranged signal from Martin that Arnold had agreed to attack the city as soon as the prisoners seized St. John’s Gate.

The ringleaders of the breakout, whom their fellow prisoners chose to be officers, selected an old cellar door in the Redoubt for their escape. Unfortunately, John Hall, the British spy, was among the prisoners. He realized that he had to alert the garrison to the dangerous plot without jeopardizing his own life. His chance came on the evening of March 31, just hours before the breakout was to occur, when the provost marshal (the commander of the military police) was in the prison with an armed guard following a report of strange noises coming from the cellar of the building. The timid-looking prisoners insisted that nothing was wrong when Hall stepped forward, claiming he had knowledge of the incident. Armed guards immediately surrounded him and ushered him away. A short time later, all hell broke loose in the Redoubt when a detachment of veteran soldiers arrived and locked all the prisoners in manacles and leg irons. The troopers knew exactly where the prisoners had hidden their weapons and confiscated the lot. They also collared the plot’s ringleaders, who they hustled away for interrogation. The prisoners never saw Hall again, but his former comrades never forgot him. Private Abner Stocking called him a “vile traitor” and remembered that Hall claimed he was a deserter from the British army back at Cambridge.¹⁶ Rifleman John Joseph Henry said that when the leaders of the plot were taken to Governor Carleton, “they found that the wretch [Hall] had evidenced all our proceedings minutely.”¹⁷

Following the failed escape, Colonel Maclean ordered all of Arnold’s enlisted men paraded in the prison yard in chains. The colonel inspected them, accompanied by other officers of the garrison. As Maclean walked along the ranks of shackled men, he stopped in front of a particular prisoner, saying, “This is General such-a-one—that is Colonel such-a-one,” and in this manner pointed out the ringleaders of the failed plot.¹⁸

The American officers drew similar contempt from their captors. The British were astonished at their prisoners’ undistinguished backgrounds. Major Cadwell commented on them in a letter. “You can have no conception of what kind of men composed the officers. Of those we took, one major was a blacksmith [Timothy Bigelow], another a hatter [Return Jonathan Meigs]; of their captains, there was a butcher, a tanner, a shoemaker, a tavern-keeper, etc., yet they all pretended to be gentlemen,” he wrote.

As the months passed, the captives inside Quebec received some indications that American reinforcements had arrived outside the city. Unknown to the Kennebec men, Arnold had been assigned to defend Montreal, while the more experienced and senior General Thomas took charge at Quebec. Cannon fire from new American batteries could be heard in the distance, and there were several false alarms that the city was under attack.

The increased rebel activity provided the prisoners with hope that they would be liberated. However, their situation changed dramatically on the evening of May 5, when rumbling sounds could be heard at Quebec from downriver. The sounds grew louder during the night and were identified as cannon fire. At about 6:00 a.m. on the following morning, a Royal Navy frigate approached the besieged city. Other British ships soon arrived with reinforcements—the Americans had lost the race to take Quebec.

From their fourth-story prison widows in the seminary building, the Arnold Expedition officers glumly watched the spectacle unfolding below them. Captain Dearborn wrote, “[W]e now gave over all hopes of being retaken [by the American besiegers] and Consequently of seeing our families again until we had first taken a Voyage to England and there Tried for rebels, as we have often been told by the officers of the Garrison.”¹⁹ Listening to the cheers and triumphant strains of martial music coming from the waterfront, Lieutenant Colonel Greene turned to his comrades and swore that if he ever got out of prison he would continue to fight and “never again be taken prisoner alive.”²⁰ Sadly, Greene kept his promise; when a party of British loyalists cornered him later in the war, he fought them rather than surrender, and his attackers hacked him to death.

About noon, Governor Carleton ventured out from his winter hibernation to find that the rebels had departed. They were retreating rapidly toward Montreal, leaving behind tons of valuable equipment and hundreds of sick soldiers who were too weak to travel.

The lifting of the siege of Quebec brought some relief for the Kennebec corps prisoners, as Carleton began discussing exchanging them for British soldiers captured by Montgomery the previous year. In a show of good will, Carleton agreed to parole his captives and allow them to return home, provided they signed an oath not to take up arms against the king until such time as they were exchanged.²¹ The governor was feeling beneficent since his army was reclaiming Canada despite thousands of American troops sent north to oppose him. Among the reinforcements who arrived in Canada in 1776 was a young captain named James Wilkinson, whose later deeds included allegedly conspiring with Aaron Burr to create a new empire in the American west. Wilkinson is interesting to this narrative because some historians say that he was on the Arnold Expedition when he first befriended Burr.²² This is incorrect. Wilkinson arrived at St. Johns, Canada, on May 22, 1776, leading a company from Colonel James Reed’s 2nd Continental regiment sent from New York City. He met Burr later in the war.

The paroled Arnold Expedition survivors sailed into New York harbor on September 12 aboard British transports. About 350 of the original 1,150 members of the corps were allowed to go ashore at American-held Elizabethtown Point, New Jersey, on September 24. John Joseph Henry recalled the event, saying that all the returning men were filled with emotion. Captain Morgan reportedly leapt from the boat that was rowing him ashore, fell upon the ground with arms outspread, and cried, “Oh my country!”

The survivors of the Arnold Expedition returned home to find that many changes had taken place since their ascent into the Maine wilderness. One of the most noticeable was that the colonists were no longer fighting for a “redress of grievances,” but for independence from Great Britain. Another sharp difference was that the seat of the war had shifted from Boston to New York City. Another change, this one more subtle, was the decrease in the number of men volunteering to serve in the Continental Army.

In April 1775, thousands of patriotic Americans flocked to Cambridge to join the rebel cause. The men who volunteered for the Arnold Expedition came from this legion of dedicated, public-spirited citizens who were willing to make personal sacrifices to preserve their liberties for themselves and their children. But a couple of bloody battles, and the realization that the war was not going to end quickly, had sobered the martial spirit of many patriots. Routed and disheartened on every battle front, including Canada, where the rebels had retreated back to Fort Ticonderoga, many Americans were reluctant to enlist, and those serving in the army talked only of returning home. Many of Arnold’s veterans, however, wanted to get back into the war. Their eagerness was rooted in the fact that they were all volunteers who had been selected to go on the Quebec expedition from a multitude of eligible applicants. Even after their march began, the faint-hearted and sickly returned to Cambridge with Lieutenant Colonel Enos. Those men who completed the trek to Quebec and managed to make it back alive were relics of the American patriot virtue of self-sacrifice that reigned during the opening months of the war. General Washington desperately needed such men, who were not only devoted patriots, but experienced, disciplined soldiers.

Daniel Morgan was among the first of the Arnold Expedition men to be exchanged. In fact, he was secretly appointed colonel of the new 11th Virginia rifle regiment even before he was released from his parole. His early exchange was based partially on a letter that General Arnold wrote the commander-in-chief on November 6, 1776, from Fort Ticonderoga, in which he recommended Morgan as an officer distinguished for his “Bravery and Attachment to the Public Cause.” Morgan went on to become an outstanding general who made significant contributions to the winning of American independence, including his command of the American forces at the 1780 Battle of Cowpens, which historians cite as the best-fought battle of the Revolutionary War. Many other officers from the Kennebec corps returned to the war, including Christopher Greene, Henry Dearborn, Christian Febiger, Eleazer Oswald, Samuel Ward, Return Jonathan Meigs, and Timothy Bigelow. Their contributions, plus those of the enlisted men who returned to the army, are unfortunately beyond the scope of this book.

Perhaps the most important result of the Arnold Expedition, and the 1775 Canadian campaign at large, was that it validated Washington’s demand for a professional army. From the start of the war, he had been patiently lobbying Congress for what he called a “respectable army” of long-term professional soldiers. More than any other event, the death of General Montgomery probably shocked the members of Congress into understanding the shortcomings of their high-principled, but impractical, policy of a citizen army composed of one-year enlistees.

Writing to Washington on the subject from Philadelphia on September 24, John Hancock said, “The untimely Death of General Montgomery alone, independent of other Arguments, is a striking Proof of the Danger and Impropriety of sending Troops into the Field, under any Restriction as to the Time of their Service.”²³

As a result of Montgomery’s hasty attack on Quebec and other events, the Continental Army began recruiting men in 1777 who agreed to serve for three years or for the duration of the war. This policy was instrumental in creating trained, experienced regiments of “Continentals,” who constituted the heart of the American army for the balance of the war.

* * *

Although the Arnold Expedition failed to achieve its mission, and its commander, Benedict Arnold, later betrayed his country, the campaign proved to be a vital training ground for future American combat officers. The survivors of the expedition returned home with valuable martial experience and went on to make vital contributions to winning American independence and building the new nation.

Despite its failure, the Arnold Expedition was a spectacular effort by brave men whose perseverance and dedication represents a proud episode in American military history. Although Benedict Arnold’s horrendous treason remains the defining act of his life, his resourcefulness and valor as an American officer enabled him to motivate his troops to perform incredible feats of bravery and endurance on behalf of the rebel cause. We all may learn from their courage, determination, and patriotism.

A modern view of the City of Quebec from Point Levi.
Amy Lawrence

Restoration of Fort Western.
Amy Lawrence