done, and, which is mortifying, I know that I cannot stand justified to the world, without exposing my own weakness, and injuring the cause by declaring my wants, which I am determined not to do, further than unavoidable necessity brings every man acquainted with them. If, under these disadvantages, I am able to keep above water (as it were) in the esteem of mankind, I shall feel myself happy; but if, from the unknown peculiarity of my circumstances, I suffer in the opinion of the world, I shall not think you take the freedom of a friend, if you conceal the reflections that may be cast upon my conduct. My own situation feels so irksome to me at times, that if I did not consult the public good more than my own tranquillity, I should long ere this have put every thing to the cast of a die." 21

Sometimes deep melancholy shrouded him in such despair that he repented his whole mission and found no comfort except in the strange Being behind the cold stars over the night-stilled camp, that Providence which he believed in and dreaded, and in whose least mercies he saw an inscrutable wisdom though its kindliness was far less generous and frequent than his own:

"The reflection upon my situation, and that of this army, produces many an uneasy hour, when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in, on a thousand accounts fewer still will believe, if any disaster happens to these lines, from what cause it flows.

"I have often thought how much happier I should have been, if, instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulder, and entered the ranks; or if I could have justified the measure to posterity and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam.

"If I shall be able to rise superior to these, and many other difficulties which might be enumerated, I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the eyes of our enemies." 22

T

XXV

HIS TRY FOR CANADA

HE gnawing restlessness that preyed on Washington was due not only to the troubles with the mercenary

militia and the council of officers who would not let him wreck himself on the British lines, but also to the contrast of the doldrums about Boston with the seething activity in other quarters.

On the sea, along the borders, in the assemblies, everybody else seemed to be doing something while he wrote letters. Only the most amazing power of character in repose could have kept for him the public respect.

Before he had been made Commander-in-Chief brilliant victories had been won. After he took the control, hardly anything good happened.

He loved fearless men like himself and he was particularly drawn toward Benedict Arnold-nine years his junior, born of an old and distinguished family in 1741, reared by a singularly pious mother, and always of a religious faith. Arnold had run away to war as a fifteen-year-old lad in 1756. He had been brought back by a mother who hated war as well as Mary Washington did.

He was already the captain of a well-drilled and welluniformed company at New Haven when the news of the battle of Lexington fired him to march at once with his volunteers, including a number of Yale students. When the selectmen refused to give him the town supply of powder, he threatened to take it by force. Receiving it, he marched straight to Cambridge.

It has been overlooked as a rule that Arnold's company

was in a sense a sacred band solemnly pledged to an agreement containing these words:

"To all Christian people believing and relying on that God to whom our enemies have forced us to apply; and having taken up arms for the relief of our brethren and for the defense of their and our just rights; to prevent disorders, etc., each bound himself by all that is sacred to observe and keep this mutual covenant. ... "2nd. Drunkenness, gaming, profanity and every vice, should be avoided and discountenanced." 1

At Cambridge, Arnold had visited the Committee of Safety and proposed to capture Fort Ticonderoga at the strategic junction of Lakes Champlain and George, where weak British garrisons guarded an invaluable wealth of artillery, small arms, ammunition, and military stores. He was admired and seconded by Dr. Joseph Warren, "the first great martyr of the Revolution," for whose impoverished children's education Arnold afterward provided. Like Washington, he believed in educating orphans.

Arnold hurried away with a Massachusetts commission as colonel, but, outside Ticonderoga, found Colonel Ethan Allen ahead of him with his Green Mountain Boys. After some wrangling, Arnold consented to yield the command, but insisted on fighting.

The patriots, as every American schoolboy thinks he knows, surprised the fort on the night of May 10th, 1775, and when the commander came to the front door in his undershirt, breeches, and bare feet, and asked what was the matter, Ethan Allen called on him to surrender "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress."

This was pretty good for Allen, since, though he was a notorious deist, Congress had not yet given anybody any authority to do anything. In fact Congress had just convened on that very day in far-off Philadelphia, and had done nothing but elect a president and a secretary, ask Mr. Duché to open the morrow's session with prayer, and adjourn.

Allen had eighty-three men and the British forty-eight, twenty of whom Allen had managed to get dead drunk for the occasion. At least the British say that he called on the commander in the afternoon, told a pathetic story and persuaded the trusting officer to lend him twenty soldiers to help him across the lake."

There was no reason why Captain de la Place should have refused the kindly act, for war had not been declared. In any case, Allen mercifully filled the men with rum instead of bullets, and no blood was spilled.

Congress received the news on May 18th and promptly atoned for Allen's deed by ordering an inventory of the material captured in order that it might be returned to the mother country as soon as "the restoration of the former harmony between Great Britain and these Colonies, so ardently wished for by the latter, shall render it prudent and consistent with the over-ruling law of selfpreservation." "

More than a hundred cannon and a wealth of ammunition fell to the firm of Allen and Arnold, who then swallowed up a corporal and eight men at Crown Point. Arnold, seizing the one British boat on Lake Champlain, sailed to St. Johns and took it without trouble.

"These acts of burglarious enterprise secured for Congress about 200 pieces of cannon, and placed Congress . . . in a very awkward position," says Belcher. "In May, 1775, it was no part of their policy to approve of overt acts of war on the part of Patriots. The Congress was not a constitutional body. There was a savour of brigandage in it not quite to the taste of the respectable gentlemen collected in Philadelphia. Hence the war declared itself."

5

Though Stedman says that "the whole military force of Canada, at this period, did not exceed . . . eight hundred men," the British commander, Sir Guy Carleton, promptly

recaptured St. Johns, and fortified it against an attack on Montreal, only twelve miles away. The British agent of the Iroquois Indians joined Carleton with five hundred warriors, and offered to recapture Ticonderoga also, but the Americans held it, except for a few weeks in 1777.

While Arnold usually managed to do more or less financial cheating during the war, he seemed to inspire the more moral elements to cheat him out of his glory. He almost rivaled Washington in the number of times he proffered his resignation, but his purpose was to fight and he was frequently spectacularly brave while revealing also fine tactical gifts. Fortescue calls him "a man of inborn genius for war.

6

As a reward for his splendid achievements on Lake Champlain, Arnold was invited to return to Massachusetts and explain certain money matters. This was the first of a series of such requests. He always displayed a fine explanation and an abundance of indignation, but when a man is forever being investigated, there is likely to be something at the bottom of it. His soldiers loved him in any case. Arnold resigned and returned to Cambridge in July, 1775, finding Washington there.

On his way to Boston, Washington had planned an invasion of Canada by way of Lakes George and Champlain, and instructed Schuyler to make up an army and lead it north to the capture of Montreal.

The way now lay open to that conquest of Canada, which has always seemed so easy to Americans and has brought only disaster when attempted. Great expectations were also cherished of persuading Canada to join the colonies in resisting England. But the Quebec Act had persuaded the French that the British were better friends to Canada than the Americans, who made the Quebec Act one of the causes of the war. A number of Canadians did join the Conti