In 1812, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the acquisition of which country "... will be a mere matter of marching"?

On August 4 1812, Thomas Jefferson, in Monticello, writes to Colonel William Duane. In this letter, Jefferson, famously and wrongly writes: "The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent." Jefferson again repeats a prediction that he had made in a letter of June 28, 1812 to General Thaddeus Kosiusko that the British may burn down Boston and New York. Again, Jefferson writes that the only response would be to burn London, employing "hundred or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness famine, desperation and hardened vice, will abundantly furnish from among themselves".

Jefferson then imagines war bringing revolution to Great Britain. He writes: "But probably the old hive will be broken up by a revolution, and a regeneration of its principles render intercourse with it no longer contaminating. A republic there like ours, and a reduction of their naval power within the limits of their annual facilities of payment, might render their existence even interesting to us."