He underestimated, too, the antagonism between the Roman Catholics of Canada and the Protestants of the English colonies.

The Congress at Philadelphia in denouncing the Quebec Act had accused the Catholic Church of bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion.

This was no very tactful appeal for sympathy to the sons of that France which was still the eldest daughter of the Church and it was hardly helped by a maladroit turn suggesting that "low-minded infirmities" should not permit such differences to block union in the sacred cause of liberty.
Washington believed that two battalions of Canadians might be recruited to fight the British, and that the French Acadians of Nova Scotia, a people so remote that most of them hardly knew what the war was about, were tingling with sympathy for the American cause.

In truth the Canadian was not prepared to fight on either side.

What the priest and the landowner could do to make him fight for Britain was done, but, for all that, Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Canada, found recruiting impossible.
Washington believed that the war would be won by the side which held Canada.