In September 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops on an expedition from Cambridge in the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the gates of Quebec City. The expedition was part of a two-pronged invasion of the British Province of Quebec, and passed through the wilderness of what is now Maine. The other expedition invaded Quebec from Lake Champlain, led by Richard Montgomery.

Benedict Arnold was a American-born military officer who served during the American Revolutionary War. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British in 1780. General George Washington had given him his fullest trust and had placed him in command of West Point in New York. Arnold was planning to surrender the fort to British forces, but the plot was discovered in September 1780, whereupon he fled to the British lines. In the later part of the war, Arnold was commissioned as a brigadier general in the British Army and placed in command of the American Legion. He led the British army in battle against the soldiers whom he had once commanded, and his name became synonymous with treason and betrayal in the United States.