The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [45]
Arnold, fearful of the British behind him, led a forced march of three miles and then let the men sleep. Greenwood spotted an old wooden windmill and slept inside it, awakened in the morning by the beat of the drums, the early morning light and calls to move out. He watched as General Arnold ordered priests in the village to give him all of the wagons and carts nearby so that he could transport his stores and the sick. An angry Arnold told them that if they refused he would burn down the village; the clergymen agreed.
At St. John’s, along the route toward Sorel, the Americans passed piles of warehouse stores from Montreal that Arnold had taken in the name of the army. They sat on the roadside or in yards; some of the wooden crates had been opened. The supplies, or the “plunder,” as Greenwood called it, had created a major problem for Arnold. He had been given approval from Congress to take whatever he needed from the merchants and swore that he had written down a list of the goods, supplying the name of each contractor or merchant from whom it was purchased—and the cost—for verification. He told Congress, though, that the rush of the retreat prevented a complete listing. He wrote to them, “It is impossible to know one hour beforehand the necessary steps to be taken. Everything is in the greatest confusion, not one contractor commissary or quartermaster; I am obliged to do the duty of all.”1
Arnold had sent the goods to St. John’s and ordered Colonel Moses Hazen to sign for them and post a guard to insure their safety until his army arrived. Hazen, who did not like Arnold, noticed right away that there were no lists of what was in the crates or from whom they had been purchased. Despite what Arnold claimed were orders, Hazen refused to sign and to post a guard and his men opened the wooden crates and removed items from them, further muddling the paperwork on the goods.2 It appeared that Arnold did not have receipts for most of the supplies, either. This “official” removal of captured or commandeered goods, incomplete and questionable paperwork, lack of receipts, and shoddy bookkeeping would be a hallmark of Arnold throughout the war.
Arnold’s army began to approach Lake Champlain in the middle of June. At the same time, an American force of one thousand men under the command of Generals John Sullivan and William Thompson was badly defeated at Three Rivers on June 8. The survivors of that battle were also forced to turn around and retreat toward Sorel in a helter-skelter fashion after losing hundreds of men.3 That expedition had been authorized by Congress, thanks to Arnold’s gloomy letter in April that he ended by warning them that “everything is at a stand for want of resources and, if they are not obtained soon, our affairs in this country will be entirely . . . ruined.”4 Congress was so startled by the letter that it sent a congressional committee all the way to Montreal to meet with Arnold to see what could be done to take Canada. The delegation, led by Benjamin Franklin, was wined and dined by the wily general; they were convinced that they had to send Arnold all the reinforcements they could and that Canada had to be conquered—despite the newly arrived British force.
The country could not be taken, however, and the three separate expeditions of Montgomery, Arnold, and now Sullivan had ended as fiascoes and in hasty exit from Canada. The retreat from Montreal and other Canadian posts had been so badly planned that the group of Americans fleeing ahead of Arnold’s army—moving as fast as it could to leave the hell that Canada had become for its soldiers—believed that the men behind them were not Americans, but the British, and had set fire to a bridge they had crossed to prevent the “Redcoats” from following. Greenwood and the others had to cross the bridge while