Is it nothing to the British nation; is it nothing to the pride of her monarch to have the last immense North American possession held by him in the commencement of his reign wrested from his dominions ?" Even Jefferson was deluded into predicting that the capture of Canada as far as Quebec would be a mere matter of marching through the country and would give the troops experience for the attack on Halifax and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.
The British Provinces, extending twelve hundred miles westward to Lake Superior, had a population of less than five hundred thousand; but a third of these were English immigrants or American Loyalists and their descendants, types of folk who would hardly sit idly and await invasion.
That they should resist or strike back seems not to have been expected in the war councils of the amiable Mr.Madison.Nor were other and manifold dangers taken into account by those who counseled war.

The Great Lakes were defenseless, the warlike Indians of the Northwest were in arms and awaiting the British summons, while the whole country beyond the Wabash and the Maumee was almost unguarded.

Isolated here and there were stockades containing a few dozen men beyond hope of rescue, frontier posts of what is now the Middle West.

Plans of campaign were prepared without thought of the insuperable difficulties of transport through regions in which there were neither roads, provisions, towns, nor navigable rivers.

Armies were maneuvered and victories won upon the maps in the office of the Secretary of War.