GENERAL ARNOLD TO GENERAL WASHINGTON

Montreal, May 8, 1776.

DEAR GENERAL : Your favour of the 3d April I received a few days since, and should have answered by the last post but was obliged to go to Chambly to give directions about some gondolas building there. I heartily congratulate you on the success of your arms against Boston, and am sorry it is not in my power to give you a more pleasing account of our affairs in this country—which wear no very favourable aspect at present. General Thomas arrived here about seven days since, and has joined the Army before Quebeck. General Wooster is disgusted, and expected here daily.

Our Army consists of few more than two thousand effective men, and twelve hundred sick and unfit for duty, chiefly with the small-pox, which is universal in the country. We have very little provisions, no cash, and less credit, and, until the arrival of the heavy cannon and two mortars from Cambridge, our artillery has been trifling; the mortars I expect will reach camp to-morrow, and shells can be supplied from Three-Rivers. I hope they will have the desired effect. The want of cash has greatly retarded our operations in this country. We are fortifying two very important posts which command the river at Richelieu, fifteen leagues above Quebeck, and at Jacques Cartier, which commands a pass between two mountains, eleven leagues above Quebeck. If succours should arrive before we can possess ourselves of Quebeck, I hope we shall be able to maintain these two posts until a reinforcement arrives to our assistance, which we are told are on their way here. These are the only posts that secure the river until you approach near Montreal, and of so much consequence that nothing but superior numbers will oblige us to abandon them. I have mounted three twenty-four-pounders on a gondola, and armed several batteaus, which go down the river to-morrow. These, with a schooner mounting ten guns, and a gondola mounting one twelve-pounder, are all the force we have in the river. Four other gondolas are building at Chambly, calculated to mount three heavy pieces of cannon; but will not be complete these two weeks. To-morrow I set off for the Army, with no very agreeable prospects before me. Should the enemy receive any considerable reinforcement soon, I make no doubt we shall have our hands full; at any rate, we will do all that can be expected from raw troops, badly clothed and fed, and worse paid, and without discipline, and trust the event to Providence. We have received advice that the Eighth Regiment, of about four hundred men, with a number of savages, are coming down from the upper countries. I have posted five hundred men at the Cedars, a narrow pass fifteen leagues above this place. They have two pieces of cannon and well intrenched, by which the enemy must pass. I have only time to beg you will accept my best wishes and respectful compliments, and make the same to the gentlemen of your family.

I am, most respectfully, dear General, your obedient and very humble servant,

BENEDICT ARNOLD.

To His Excellency General Washington.

LANDON CARTER TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.

Sabine-Hall, May 9, 1776.

MY GOOD GENERAL: If ever friendship gave vigor to the nerves of declining age, it will do it now, to enable me to acknowledge the receipt of your favour of March 27. I assure you I endorsed it, “The History of the Evacuation of Boston,” a mere magnum in parvo, and I read it with great pleasure to all our friends around. Permit me to say that you have made good the prediction of my first acquaintance with you—a gentleman as free from reprehension deserved as I was acquainted with; and when you stepped into pub-lick, I left the euges of your conduct to the margin of my own books, to be read by those who study good characters; and every Coriolanus of Rome in the days of the Volsci had a G W against it; whilst every rash Braddock marked an unfortunate Sempronius to preserve his remembrance. Go on, my dear sir, and impress on every memory “the man who resolved never to forget the citizen in the General.” Would to God that such virtue existed in the councils of the present day! that the quiet and happiness of our community may never be impeded by the forgetfulness of the citizen in the rulers, which may turn up! I pray to

God for it, because I think the language of the times seems to have forgotten on what principles this otherwise unaccountable unanimity at first originated. I say unaccountable, for who could have dreamed that when Province was in full rage against Province, not only for territory but even for trade, and that not through the ambition of excelling each other; when even Colonies were eternally venting their internal reprobation against each other, rivers against rivers, and creeks and runs divided in their social happiness; I say, who could have ever expected to see such a continent so cordially united as to resist possibly the greatest power on earth! Certainly nothing but the fear of being enslaved from one end to the other of their extensive boundary ever could have produced so mere a prodigy! And must not Heaven have hitherto indicated their several modes of preservation? Yes, my friend; and without flat tery I say it, time will discover that your social virtue has, like the one Pompey of old, in the style of Cicero, been the favoured means of so much good to your country; for I cannot help foretelling that where you cannot be present with your humanity, discipline, forecast and prudence, we shall still be at a loss; for, believe me, I think that in general we are too much tinctured with either the interest or the vanity which most of us acquire from our cradles. I speak as from myself; it has cost me more labour to conquer such habits than ever Hercules had. Such an Augean stable is the whole world almost! May, then, this truly sublime compliment be paid to every man on publick duty, “That he was a master of himself.” I am satisfied you must conclude what I allude to, therefore I will not trouble you with any stricture on the jargon of the times. I only wish that every one was, as you have shown yourself to be, not so much in quest of praise and emolument to yourself as of real good to your fellow-creatures.

As to news, you must be nearer to its fountain-head than I am, if America can be said to have such a place at this time. I can only say, a few gentlemen from Richmond and Essex have retaken a prize that a Dunmore tender impudently came and took at Hobbs’s Hole, (a mere nest of Tories.) As soon as it was known, they pursued her in open boats, amidst showers of swivel-balls and bullets, and had well nigh taken the tender as well as the prize; but she was so well provided against boarding that it was im-possible for low-sided boats to get on board. An attempt was made to grapple at her stern, in which the only man, a poor slave, was wounded and lost. We have heard since that we killed seven of her men. Some attempted to peep at our boats through her netting, and they, it is imagined, were instantly shot. A brisk gale carried her away; but it is said an armed vessel from Maryland took her in the bay, after killing seventeen men more, and from that report we have heard of the seven we killed; but I know not the truth of it. General Lee has gone on some secret expedition, nobody knows where, and with a tolerable force of men fit for such business; this also but report. Our papers must certainly tell you more than I can do. I could have wished that ambition had not so visibly seized so much ignorance all over the Colony as it seems to have done; for this present Convention abounds with too many of the inexperienced creatures to navigate our bark on this dangerous coast; so that I fear the few skilful pilots who have hitherto done tolerably well to keep her clear from destruction, will not be able to conduct her with common safety any longer; and as this injury has extended even to some members of the Congress, who certainly must issue from the vote of the people to Convention in August next, who shall we have there? I need only tell you of one definition that I heard of Independency: It was expected to be a form of Government that, by being independent of the rich men, every man would then be able to do as he pleased. And it was with this expectation they sent the men they did, in hopes they would plan such a form. One of the Delegates I heard exclaim against the Patrolling law, because a poor man was made to pay for keeping a rich man’s slaves in order. I shamed the fool so much for it that he slunk away; but he got elected by it. Another actually, in a most seditious manner, resisted the drafting the Militia by lot, to be ready for any immediate local emergency, and he got first returned that way. When we used legislation such rascals would have been turned out; but now it is not to be supposed that a dog will eat a dog.

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