HISTORY

Now You Tell Me

Replacing the discredited Armstrong as Secretary of War was future president James Monroe. One of Monroe's first missives to the president in late 1814 was to inform him that he believed that 100,000 regulars would be required to capture Canada. This was tantamount to an abandonment of the strategy to bring the war to the British by capturing Canada. After two years of war, the US had barely been able to scrape together 35,000 regulars . . . the cost to congress of equipping 100,000 men just to invade Canada was unreachable to the US Government at the time. Shortly after this letter was discussed at the cabinet level, the last US soldiers were withdrawn from Canadian soil.