Meantime, while thus overwhelmed with the cares immediately about him, Washington was watching the rest of the country.  He had a keen eye upon Johnson and his Indians in the valley of the Mohawk; he followed sharply every movement of Tryon and the Tories in New York; he refused with stern good sense to detach troops to Connecticut and Long Island, knowing well when to give and when to say No, a difficult monosyllable for the new general of freshly revolted colonies.  But if he would not detach in one place, he was ready enough to do so in another.  He sent one expedition by Lake Champlain, under Montgomery, to Montreal, and gave Arnold picked troops to march through the wilds of Maine and strike Quebec.  The scheme was bold and brilliant, both in conception and in execution, and came very near severing Canada forever from the British crown.  A chapter of little accidents, each one of which proved as fatal as it was unavoidable, a moment’s delay on the Plains of Abraham, and the whole campaign failed; but there was a grasp of conditions, a clearness of perception, and a comprehensiveness about the plan, which stamp it as the work of a great soldier, who saw besides the military importance, the enormous political value held out by the chance of such a victory.

The daring, far-reaching quality of this Canadian expedition was much more congenial to Washington’s temper and character than the wearing work of the siege.  All that man could do before Boston was done, and still Congress expected the impossible, and grumbled because without ships he did not secure the harbor.  He himself, while he inwardly resented such criticism, chafed under the monotonous drudgery of the intrenchments.  He was longing, according to his nature, to fight, and was, it must be confessed, quite ready to attempt the impossible in his own way.  Early in September he proposed to attack the town in boats and by the neck of land at Roxbury, but the council of officers unanimously voted against him.  A little more than a month later he planned another attack, and was again voted down by his officers.  Councils of war never fight, it is said, and perhaps in this case it was well that such was their habit, for the schemes look rather desperate now.  To us they serve to show the temper of the man, and also his self-control in this respect at the beginning of the war, for Washington became ready enough afterwards to override councils when he was wholly free from doubt himself.

Thus the planning of campaigns, both distant and near, went on, and at the same time the current of details, difficult, vital, absolute in demanding prompt and vigorous solution, went on too.  The existence of war made it necessary to fix our relations with our enemies, and that these relations should be rightly settled was of vast moment to our cause, struggling for recognition.  The first question was the matter of prisoners, and on August 11 Washington wrote to Gage:—­

“I understand that the officers engaged in the cause of liberty and their country, who by the fortune of war have fallen into your hands, have been thrown indiscriminately into a common gaol appropriated for felons; that no consideration has been had for those of the most respectable rank, when languishing with wounds and sickness; and that some have been even amputated in this unworthy situation.