Independence (56 page)

But military realities overshadowed everything else in pushing the colonists to declare independence. More bad news from Canada provided the impetus for the final drive to break with Great Britain.

Following the Continental army’s defeat at Quebec on the last day of 1775, only a few hundred soldiers had remained outside the walls of the city. Montgomery was dead, Arnold was incapacitated by his wound, and some five hundred rebel soldiers had been killed or captured in the desperate attack. Its ranks depleted and nearly devoid of artillery, the tiny American army could do little but await reinforcements and try to sustain itself in the face of the brutal Canadian winter.

Even before it was aware of the debacle in Canada, Congress had voted to raise a regiment to replace the men whose enlistments were due to expire at the end of 1775. Within hours of learning of the repulse of Montgomery’s attack, Congress agreed to raise still more men. For the first time it also authorized cash bounties to entice men to enlist. As it searched for supplies—clothing, blankets, arms, wagons, tents, axes, tomahawks, and above all, specie that would enable the army to purchase goods in Canada—Congress redeployed some existing Continental units to Canada. The first of those men were marching northward within five days of Congress’s receiving word of Montgomery’s disastrous assault.
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Congress also replaced General David Wooster, who had become the acting commander in Canada following Montgomery’s death. Now sixty-five years old, Wooster had been the second-oldest of the original general officers appointed by Congress. He was an experienced soldier, having served for several years during the French and Indian War—in which he tasted combat—but by 1775 few any longer thought him equal to the task. One observer caustically remarked that Wooster might function best as “general … of a hayfield.”
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Nonetheless, Wooster was part of the army that invaded Canada, and when Montgomery died, he became the highest-ranking officer in that force. He took charge of the siege operation at Quebec and maintained it for months through the harsh Canadian winter. He won praise from some in Congress, including John Adams, who thought that “Wooster has done that in Canada which Schuyler could not have done. He has kept up an Army there through the Winter.”
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But many congressmen thought Wooster too old for the challenge. Some habitually referred to him as “old Wooster.” Several deputies also wanted to change commanders in Canada because they believed a better man was available. John Thomas had shined during the long siege of Boston. A fifty-two-year-old physician who had served for six years as a surgeon’s mate in Massachusetts’s army during the last war, Thomas had practiced medicine and served in local offices in Kingston, Massachusetts, in the interim between the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. When the Continental army was created, Thomas had been appointed one of the brigadier generals. Washington, a shrewd judge of men, gave Thomas command of the key Roxbury sector during the siege of Boston and also put him in charge of the operation to occupy and fortify Dorchester Heights. Impressed by what it had seen, Congress in March promoted Thomas and named him the commander of all forces in Canada. Congress told Thomas that it wanted a leader in Canada “whose Skill, Courage and Capacity will probably insure Success. In Major General Thomas they flatter themselves they will not be disappointed.”
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Initially, Congress remained incredibly optimistic. John Hancock predicted that the “speedy arrival of troops in Canada will … in all probability put us in possession of Quebec” sometime during the winter or spring. His sanguine mood sprang from the belief that the besieged British within Quebec would run out of food and be compelled to surrender before the St. Lawrence thawed in April or May, enabling the Royal Navy to bring up supplies and reinforcements. “This is a Critical period,” stressed Caesar Rodney, the Delaware congressman, and he added: “We are determined (God willing) to have Quebec before the frost Break’s up.” Robert Morris summed up congressional opinion: The “possession of Canada [is] essential to the welfare of the United Colonies,” for taking Quebec might induce London to negotiate an Anglo-American settlement. At the very least, seizing Canada would shut the door to a British invasion through upper New York.
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Congress may have expected that Quebec would be taken, but mindful of all that had gone wrong in the fall, it sent a team of commissioners northward along with the fresh soldiers. The commission included two congressmen, Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase of Maryland, as well as two prominent Roman Catholics who were not members of Congress, Charles Carroll (a Maryland planter who had written eloquent tracts attacking parliamentary taxation) and his second cousin John Carroll, “a popish Priest,” as a New Jersey delegate crudely referred to the Maryland clergyman. The commissioners were to seek support from Canada’s inhabitants, who had remained perplexingly uncommitted since the beginning of the campaign. Among other things, they were to try to persuade the
habitants
to form a rebel government. That province might then join the American union and enjoy “a friendly intercourse with these colonies.” To facilitate that end, the commissioners were to begin their mission by conveying Congress’s pledge that it respected the Canadians’ right to a “free and undisturbed exercise of their religion.”
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Little time passed before Congress was awash with gloomy tidings from Canada. It was nearly May before General Thomas and the commissioners reached Montreal, their arduous journeys having been slowed by ice-bound lakes and rivers, and roads that had long since turned into muddy quagmires. (Three weeks into the trek Franklin, now seventy years old, so feared that he could not survive the grueling mission that he sat “down to write to a few Friends by way of Farewell.”)
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Thomas rapidly discovered that none of his regiments were at full strength. He estimated that he would have some 20 percent fewer men than promised. He realized too that the artillery and powder Congress had ordered northward had not arrived and that the Continentals’ food supply would be exhausted within two weeks. Thomas additionally reasoned that if he had gotten through from Albany to Canada, it could not be long before British reinforcements—the ones that Lord North had worked so hard to find during the previous summer—reached Quebec. Should they land before the Continentals took the city, “some disagreeable consequence must ensue,” Thomas told Congress in a classic understatement. The only repercussion that he spelled out was that it would mean “we cannot expect … any assistance from the inhabitants.” The commissioners were even more pessimistic. The inhabitants of Canada, they said in their initial report on May 1, would provide no assistance. Whatever the
habitants
may once have thought about backing the American cause, they were unwilling to cast their lot with a Continental army, which they believed was certain to “be driven out of the Province as soon as the King’s troops can arrive.” With “few friends … here,” the commissioners added, Congress must send lots of money—at least twenty thousand pounds—for the purchase of supplies. It should additionally send more men, “sufficient … to secure the possession of the country.”
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Thomas kept Wooster in charge of the siege at Quebec, but he had already begun to formulate a strategy for what should be done when the British reinforcements arrived. With the concurrence of his officers, Thomas planned to retreat to Three Rivers, about halfway between Quebec and Montreal, and attempt to prevent the redcoats from advancing beyond that point. Once again, the commissioners were less optimistic than the Continental officers, or perhaps they felt less constrained about airing their real feelings. Unless Congress deployed massive numbers of men northward, they told Philadelphia, it would be “better immediately to withdraw” the army from Canada.
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Unbeknownst to the commissioners, the long-anticipated flotilla bringing British reinforcements had arrived at Quebec early in May 1776, two days before they passed on their recommendation to Congress. More than five thousand redcoats were on board, but General Carleton, who had been confined within the walled citadel at Quebec for six months, could not be restrained. He was spoiling for a fight. At the first sight of the British sails, Carleton and several hundred of the ragged defenders of Quebec poured out of their lair and came after General Wooster’s Continentals. What followed was not pretty. The mere sight of Carleton’s advancing soldiers created a “panic so violent” that the rebels dropped whatever they were doing and fled for safety. They left behind five hundred muskets, all of their artillery, and massive amounts of powder. So great was their terror that the rebels even abandoned nearly two hundred sick comrades who were too ill “to come off,” as one soldier put it. Some officers had been the first to flee, deserting their men. The commissioners reported that the army’s “flight was made with the utmost precipitation and confusion.” Seeing what was occurring, several British vessels sailed farther upriver and landed parties of marines here and there in the hope of cutting off the frightened and disorganized rebels. Over the next two days, before Thomas at last brought things under control, the Americans rushed along the muddy river road with “loaded carts driving full speed,” in the words of one British observer. The fleeing Continentals had “dwindled into a mobb,” said an American witness, that was so driven by hysteria that for a second time some disgracefully forsook their comrades, deserting men in poor health who had made it that far but could not keep up.
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General Thomas rushed forward and stanched the retreat. He even refashioned the panicked men into something approaching soldiers. As he did so, he rethought his strategy. Jettisoning his plan to make a stand at Three Rivers, Thomas now envisaged withdrawing to the confluence of the Richelieu and St. Lawrence rivers, near Montreal, where his army would dig in and await the advancing British. But given the number of redcoats known to be disembarking at Quebec, it was the height of optimism to think that the American army could long remain on Canadian soil. In fact, the commissioners advised Thomas that his best bet was to fall back to Isle-aux-Noix, an island in the Richelieu River above Lake Champlain. Thomas was still pondering his options when the commissioners concluded that they could “render our Country no further Services in this Colony.” Franklin and Father Carroll started for home on May 11. Before Charles Carroll and Chase departed a few days later, they beseeched Schuyler, the commander of the Northern Department, to make available every conceivable vessel so that the army could escape Canada.
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By now, the commissioners had concluded that the American army in Canada was rotten to the core: Numerous officers were “unfit,” the men were untrained and undisciplined, “confusion … prevails thro’ every department,” the soldiers had not been paid, and the army had been “reduced to … the scanty & precarious Supplies of a few half Starved cattle & trifling quantities of flour.” If one man was to blame for this gathering disaster, the commissioners appeared to say, it was General Schuyler, who had permitted thousands of men to enter Canada without having “taken care to have Magazines formed for their Subsistence.” But the commissioners also seemed to say that a failure of this magnitude was not the fault of only one man. During their journey to Canada the four commissioners had stopped at Fort Constitution, the only installation on the Hudson River that guarded the highlands above Manhattan. Although the war was a year old, the commissioners found that no artillerymen were garrisoned at the fort, half the soldiers had not been furnished with muskets, two thirds of those with arms lacked bayonets, and the pantry was bare of vegetables. In their own way, the commissioners seemed to be telling Congress that while Schuyler bore responsibility for some of the failures under his command, America faced a bigger problem. The Continental army needed foreign help in waging this war.
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With so many things going badly, the commissioners thought that conditions could not worsen. But the situation soon deteriorated further. General Thomas died of smallpox during the third week in May. Once again, Wooster was in charge. Chase and Charles Carroll, who were still in Canada, had no confidence in him. Wooster’s very presence in Canada is “prejudicial to our Affairs,” they reported on May 27, and they urged Congress to recall him.
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Many in Congress shared the commissioners’ feelings about Wooster, especially after he had lost control of the army at Quebec. That “old woman suffered himself to be surprised” when Carleton and his half-starved army had emerged from behind the walls of Quebec, one delegate raged.
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A sufficient number agreed. Before the end of May, Congress recalled Wooster and named Brigadier General John Sullivan to command the army in Canada. One can only wonder whether many congressmen thought Sullivan would be much of an improvement. He was half Wooster’s age, but before the war he had been a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, lawyer with little military experience. He became a militia officer only in 1773, and before the siege of Boston, the only action he had seen had been in marching his men around the parade ground. Sullivan served in the First and Second Congress and appeared to owe his inclusion in the initial batch of general officers solely to politics. When Chase learned of Congress’s decision, he despaired, remarking that Sullivan was unfit to command the army.
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