While we today typically think of America as the United Stated of America, in Wolfe's time the term was used to refer to the North American continent. In this case it was James Wolfe's task to free North America from the French rule and turn it over to England.

Prime Minister Pitt who chose Wolfe to lead out in the attack on Quebec City remarked that: "We must keep Cape Breton, take Canada, and drive the French out of America" (Whitton, p. 223).

As he was preparing to sail to Quebec, James Wolfe wrote: "Being of the profession of arms, I would ask all occasions to serve, and therefore have thrown myself in the way of the American war: though I know that the very passage threatens my life, and that my constitution must be utterly ruined and undone, and this from no motive either of avarice or ambition." (Casgrain, p. 70).