Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec

122 Emery Mills Rd, Shapleigh, Maine

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

6pm

Presented by member Linwood Dall, this program centers around Benedict Arnold’s 1775 expedition through the middle of Maine to get to Quebec City and take it from the British. Dall will also talk about his experience reenacting the Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec in 1975.

In September 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of roughly 1,100 Continental Army expeditionaries on an ambitious secret trek from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to British-held Quebec. The objective was to capture the city, rally French-Canadian support, and block British attacks from the north. Sailing to the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine, Arnold’s men intended to row upriver in newly built bateaux, portage over the Height of Land separating the Atlantic and St. Lawrence watersheds, and descend the Chaudière River into Canada, covering an estimated 180 miles in twenty days.

Instead, bad maps, brutal wilderness, and catastrophic weather turned the journey into a nightmare survival ordeal lasting over six weeks. Heavy rains flooded rivers, destroyed green-wood bateaux, and washed away crucial provisions. Starving troops were forced to eat leather, candle tallow, and their pet dogs, while dysentery and hypothermia forced roughly 300 men—along with a third of the supplies—to retreat. By the time Arnold’s remaining 600 emaciated soldiers reached the St. Lawrence River in November, their arrival was a extraordinary feat of military endurance, though they lacked the manpower and artillery necessary to take Quebec City without reinforcements.

The Arnold Expedition Historical Society (AEHS) helped organize Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec, one of the most ambitious living history events of our nation’s Bicentennial. Reenactors retraced the 1775 Revolutionary War march undertaken by Colonel Benedict Arnold and 1,100 Continental Army troops from Massachusetts up the Kennebec River through the Maine wilderness to Quebec in an attempt to capture the city. More information on AEHS and the historic reenactment can be found at https://arnoldsmarch.org/.

Doors open at 5:30pm for this program at ASHS headquarters, 122 Emery Mills Road. This is a free event and light refreshments are available. There is plenty of parking and the building is handicap accessible.