"Ever since the
report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House,
we have heard but one word--like the whippoorwill, but one
eternal monotonous tone--Canada, Canada, Canada!"
At the outset there appeared no question that the conquest of
Canada could be, as Jefferson forecast, other than "a mere matter
of marching." Eustis, the Secretary of War, prophesied that "we
can take Canada without soldiers." Clay insisted that the Canadas
were "as much under our command as the Ocean is under Great
Britain's." The provinces had barely half a million people,
two-thirds of them allied by ties of blood to Britain's chief
enemy, to set against the eight millions of the Republic. There
were fewer than ten thousand regular troops in all the colonies,
half of them down by the sea, far away from the danger zone, and
less than fifteen hundred west of Montreal. Little help could
come from England, herself at war with Napoleon, the master of
half of Europe.
But there was another side. The United States was not a unit in
the war; New England was apathetic or hostile to the war
throughout, and as late as 1814 two-thirds of the army of Canada
were eating beef supplied by Vermont and New York contractors.
Weak as was the militia of the Canadas, it was stiffened by
English and Canadian regulars, hardened by frontier experience,
and led for the most part by trained and able men, whereas an
inefficient system and political interference greatly weakened
the military force of the fighting States.
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