daughter of the Church and it was hardly helped by a maladroit
turn suggesting that "low-minded infirmities" should not permit
such differences to block union in the sacred cause of liberty.
Washington believed that two battalions of Canadians might be
recruited to fight the British, and that the French Acadians of
Nova Scotia, a people so remote that most of them hardly knew
what the war was about, were tingling with sympathy for the
American cause. In truth the Canadian was not prepared to fight
on either side. What the priest and the landowner could do to
make him fight for Britain was done, but, for all that, Sir Guy
Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting impossible.

Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which
held Canada. He saw that from Canada would be determined the
attitude of the savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the
interior; he saw, too, that Quebec as a military base in British
hands would be a source of grave danger. The easy capture of Fort
Ticonderoga led him to underrate difficulties. If Ticonderoga why
not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be occupied later, the Acadians
helping. Thus it happened that, soon after taking over the
command, Washington was busy with a plan for the conquest of
Canada. Two forces were to advance into that country; one by way
of Lake Champlain under General Schuyler and the other through
the forests of Maine under Benedict Arnold.

Schuyler was obliged through illness to give up his command, and
it was an odd fortune of war that put General Richard Montgomery
at the head of the expedition going by way of Lake Champlain.
Montgomery had served with Wolfe at the taking of Louisbourg and
had been an officer in the proud British army which had received