The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

The American penchant for subjugating those deemed in need of deliverance was hardly extinguished by the calamity in Canada. As the historian Eliot A. Cohen has observed, that impulse would recur often in the centuries to come, “with mixed motives and uncertain outcomes.” Canada proved a foreshadow. Yet even in the summer of 1776, thin silver linings could be glimpsed. The failure to capture Quebec in December precluded having a large army trapped within the walls by enemy reinforcements in the spring. British plans for a thrust into New York were disrupted, momentarily, and some combat strength had been diverted from Howe’s main force farther south. If few American commanders enhanced their reputations—“Canada has been a very unfortunate place for generals,” Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Vose noted in his journal—the hard school of war transformed some amateur soldiers into warriors. The likes of Anthony Wayne and Daniel Morgan had shown their mettle. “The Canada struggle was a dress rehearsal for the war,” historian Justin Harvey Smith later wrote. “It made plain some things that could be done and some that could not.”