Yet Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the greatest mind in the American
Revolution, had frantic suspicions. French laws in Canada
involved, he said, the extension of French despotism in the
English colonies. The privileges continued to the Roman Catholic
Church in Canada would be followed in due course by the
Inquisition, the burning of heretics at the stake in Boston and
New York, and the bringing from Europe of Roman Catholic settlers
who would prove tools for the destruction of religious liberty.
Military rule at Quebec meant, sooner or later, despotism
everywhere in America. We may smile now at the youthful
Hamilton's picture of "dark designs" and "deceitful wiles" on the
part of that fierce Protestant George III to establish Roman
Catholic despotism, but the colonies regarded the danger as
serious. The quick remedy would be simply to take Canada, as
Washington now planned.

To this end something had been done before Washington assumed the
command. The British Fort Ticonderoga, on the neck of land
separating Lake Champlain from Lake George, commanded the route
from New York to Canada. The fight at Lexington in April had been
quickly followed by aggressive action against this British
stronghold. No news of Lexington had reached the fort when early
in May Colonel Ethan Allen, with Benedict Arnold serving as a
volunteer in his force of eighty-three men, arrived in friendly
guise. The fort was held by only forty-eight British; with the
menace from France at last ended they felt secure; discipline was
slack, for there was nothing to do. The incompetent commander
testified that he lent Allen twenty men for some rough work on
the lake. By evening Allen had them all drunk and then it was
easy, without firing a shot, to capture the fort with a rush. The