As news of the incident spread, it became a test of the new discipline. Wilkinson’s men were originally militia from New Hampshire, who had reenlisted as regulars expecting to be commanded by their popular lieutenant, Thomas Grover. In the circumstances, a court-martial decided merely to fine Grover for “insulting Capt. Wilkinson, disobeying his orders and insulting language,” a verdict that astonished Washington. He wrote at once to Congress demanding the lieutenant be dismissed considering “the Enormity of his Offence & [its] dangerous and pernicious tendency.” An abject apology secured Grover’s pardon, but the young captain’s stern attitude was noted. Soon afterward he was rewarded by being appointed an aide to General Nathanael Greene, Washington’s most promising commander and an unyielding disciplinarian.
In March 1776, General Gage’s redcoats were evacuated from Boston, marking the end of the first triumphant phase of the war. The nineteen-year-old Wilkinson celebrated by walking over the battleground of Bunker Hill with two of Greene’s staff officers, to absorb its lessons. “Our men were more than a match for the enemy in disorderly skirmishes or behind breastworks and other impediments,” Wilkinson concluded, “but when brought into regular action in open space would have been overwhelmed by their own confusion.”
What the militia needed, the captain decided, was more training and discipline. This was precisely what his general believed. In Nathanael Greene, Wilkinson had found not just a commander he believed in but, as he would soon embarrassingly reveal, a man he could almost regard as a father.
SIX WEEKS AFTER that leisurely stroll across the battlefield, Wilkinson encountered the enemy for the first time, close to Montreal on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. His presence there was the result of Congress’s strategy to persuade Canada to become the fourteenth colony in rebellion against the mother country. A Northern Department was created on the same day in June 1775 as the Continental Army, and an invasion force of three thousand men under General Philip Schuyler was sent to attack Quebec. The assault failed on the last day of the year, and by the early summer of 1776 disease had killed so many men in Schuyler’s army that Washington had to send reinforcements north from Boston, five regiments of militia, and eight of the new Continentals.
Among the fresh arrivals was Captain Wilkinson, who led his New Hampshire company up the Hudson from New York, then by boat across Lake Champlain, and along the Richelieu River in Canada to the banks of the St. Lawrence, opposite Montreal. It was no small feat for a young southerner to lead almost eighty Yankee frontiersmen through country they must have known better than he, sweeping up a score of deserters along the way, and to deliver them all to the officer in command at Montreal, Major General Benedict Arnold.
However black his later reputation, Arnold was the first military hero of the Revolution and, next to Greene, Washington’s favorite general. Nobody better epitomized the rage militaire that gripped Americans than this fierce, dynamic commander who hated retreat and sought to bring the British to battle at every opportunity. In May 1775, within days of the outbreak of war, he had with Ethan Allen led the surprise raid that captured the great fort of Ticonderoga guarding upstate New York and seized almost a hundred cannon and mortars to provide the Continental Army with its first artillery. During the summer, Arnold had gone on to capture a cluster of forts controlling northern New York and the entrance to the Hudson Valley. At the end of the year, he had led an independent column to attack Quebec and been shot in the leg during the assault. Undaunted, he had taken over command and maintained the siege until in April 1776 the approach of a new British army under General Sir John Burgoyne forced the besiegers to withdraw.
The appearance of Burgoyne’s force was the result of the massive buildup of troops undertaken by Britain during the spring and summer of 1776 in response to the Boston defeat. The strategic plan was to encircle the rebels in New England, regarded as the source of the Revolution, in a massive pincer movement. The main army under General Sir William Howe quickly achieved the first part of the plan in August by defeating Washington on Long Island and driving him from New York. Meanwhile in the north, Burgoyne at the head of nine thousand well- trained regulars intended to clear the St. Lawrence Valley, then hook south from Canada toward the Hudson River and eventually meet up with Howe’s troops. Together they would then crush New England into submission.
As the Quebec besiegers retreated up the St. Lawrence, Arnold was sent ahead to hold Montreal, 170 miles to the west, to keep open a line of retreat to upstate New York. In this perilous situation, the arrival of a confident young officer with obvious powers of leadership must have been as welcome as the reinforcements he brought with him. Wilkinson and his company were immediately ordered to dig defensive positions on the banks of the St. Lawrence against British attack.
For all his bravado in taking command, Wilkinson was only nineteen and had seen no action. The tiny garrison of 450 men faced an enemy 1,000 strong, outlying posts had been cut off, ammunition and food were running low, no reinforcements were available, and the British were said to be close at hand. Understandly, on May 24, Wilkinson wanted to send a last letter, but for reasons apparent only to him, it was addressed to General Greene.
“We are now in a sweet situation,” he began bravely, and went on to describe his desperate circumstances with a British attack expected in six hours. “The morning dawns,” he ended, “—that morn big with the fate of a few, a handful of brave fellows. I shall do my part— but remember, if I fall I am sacrificed. May God Bless you equal to your merits. Vale! ”
The message was delivered, and its melodramatic summary of the military position so shocked Greene that he forwarded it, minus the valedictory ending, to Washington. Horrified by what seemed like the impending annihilation of American forces in Canada, Washington promptly sent it on to Congress with the comment that “the Intelligence from [Canada] contained in a letter from Captn Wilkinson . . . is truly alarming.”
But Wilkinson had confused theater with truth, a mistake that would in time become a habit. In reality, the nearest British troops were three days’ march away. Hobbled by indecisive leadership and internal feuding between Burgoyne and the Quebec commander, Sir Guy Carleton, they were moving too slowly to pose any immediate threat. Besides, almost as soon as the letter to Greene had been sent, five hundred fresh troops marched into Arnold’s camp, and in characteristically bold fashion, the general at once began to plan a counterattack against his lumbering foe. Sent to check out the situation, General Schuyler reported to the commander in chief on June 10, “I am happy that Captn Wilkinson’s Conjectures were not realized.”
By then the captain had already transferred his affections from Greene to Arnold and, as he put it, was trying to secure “the preference of an officer, who at that period acquired great celebrity.” To belong to a general’s “family,” his immediate entourage of officers, was a privilege that always attracted ambitious young subalterns. That Arnold, like Greene, should quickly have selected Wilkinson to be his aide indicates the good impression his enthusiasm and intelligence created.