Benedict Arnold’s Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada During the Revolutionary War (review)

Arthur Lefkowitz says that his account is not about Benedict Arnold, but he admits that his story of the force Arnold led into Canada cannot be told without him front and center. As Lefkowitz presents him, the B in Benedict Arnold’s name stands for bold and the A for audacious. Such traits were why George Washington chose Arnold to lead the expedition, and, according to Lefkowitz, they defined the Continental Army’s commander in chief as well. Such characterization is part of the sometimes elusive argument in this lively narrative of the challenges that beset the soldiers who trekked through the northern wilderness in late 1775 and then formed the core of Richard Montgomery’s force at Quebec in December. Lefkowitz argues that Washington and Arnold epitomized initiative as they applied their imaginations, ideas from books on military science, and in Arnold’s case Montgomery’s directives at Quebec, to the mission. In the process these leaders learned about the risks and expenses of war while their men learned the reality of self-sacrifice.

Lefkowitz introduces his work as “the true story of a bold plan” (p. xv). That word bold appears often, as do dedication and discipline. Lefkowitz shows how the first two were displayed and the third learned and concludes that the trials and ultimate defeat of the Arnold Expedition trained leaders and men who went on to make major contributions to winning the War for Independence. Although the author does well to point out that the lessons of failure served later success, that is a problematic conclusion to a book that is not about later success but about what happened when plans and theories met reality.

Lefkowitz’s scholarship is based on a mixture of archival and published primary sources and both academic and “popular” secondary sources. He makes particular use of Kenneth Roberts’s March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnold’s Expedition (New York, 1940). Such sources and his writing style indicate that the author had the admirable goal of erecting this history for general audiences upon solid foundations. Lefkowitz does engage in historical debate on occasion. While some people have blamed the bateaux for the expedition’s problems, he puts more of the blame on inexperienced crews (pp. 105–7). He also disputes Daniel Morgan’s version, and the historians who have taken Morgan’s account to be accurate, of the attack on the second barricade at Quebec (fn 125, pp. 342–3). The focus on action, however, may have led to a few slight contradictions, such as when Lefkowitz says that “Arnold’s vocabulary did not include words like caution or retreat,” but then notes how Arnold decided not to risk assaulting Quebec on 13–14 November even though he should have because it was weakly defended, though not so weakly as it was on 4 November (pp. 202–214).

Lefkowitz maintains a conversational tone in Benedict Arnold’s Army as he describes and defines terrain and terms. He includes useful illustrations and maps, though three of the latter were apparently draft sketches that the publisher was supposed to digitize before the book went to press. Lefkowitz helps his readers use their imagination as well as intellect as they review the past.