Encourged by reports that the Indians and many inhabitants of Canada would welcome an alliance with the American revolutionaries, Washington authorized Colonel Arnold and some 1,100 volunteers to march on Quebec via a trail that ran through the rugged wilderness of Maine.
"I am now to inform the honorable congress that, encouraged by the repeated declarations of the Canadians and Indians, and urged by their requests, I have detached Col. Arnold, with one thousand ben, to penetrate into Canada by way of Kennebec river, and, if possible, to make himself master of Quebec. By this maneuver I proposed either to divert Carleton from St. John’s, which would leave a free passage to General Schuyler, or, if this did not take effect, Quebec, in its present defenseless state, must fall into his hands an easy prey."
General Washington to Congress, 21 September 1775Henry, John Joseph, Account of Arnold’s campaign against Quebec, and of the hardships and sufferings of that band of heroes who traversed the wilderness of Maine from Cambridge to the St. Lawrence, in the autumn of 1775 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1877), p. 1.