Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Washington the Soldier

WASHINGTON
From the St Memin Crayon in possession of J. Carson Brevoort Esq.

WASHINGTON
THE SOLDIER

BY

General Henry B. Carrington, LL.D.

AUTHOR OF

“Battles of the American Revolution,” “Battle Maps and Charts of the Revolution,” “Indian Operations on the Plains,” “The Six Nations,” “Beacon Lights of Patriotism,” etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX AND APPENDICES

“Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command;

The threats of pain and ruin to despise;

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read his history in a Nation’s eyes.”

New York

Charles Scribner’s Sons

1899

Copyright, 1898

BY

LAMSON, WOLFE AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1899

By Charles Scribner’s Sons

All rights Reserved

Typography by Rockwell and Churchill

Presswork by The University Press

DEDICATED

TO THE

Sons and Daughters of Liberty Everywhere

KNOWING

THAT ALL WHO ASPIRE AFTER INTELLIGENT FREEDOM SHALL FIND THE WATCHWORD OF WASHINGTON THE SOLDIER—“FOR THE SAKE OF GOD AND COUNTRY”—THEIR LOFTIEST INCENTIVE.

PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Since the first appearance of this volume, during the winter of 1898–9, the author has considerately regarded all letters and literary comments received by him, as well as other recent works upon the life and times of Washington. His original purpose to treat his subject judicially, regardless of unverified tradition, has been confirmed.

Washington’s sublime conception of America, noticed in Chapter XXXVI., foreshadowed “a stupendous fabric of freedom and empire, on the broad basis of Independency,” through which the “poor and oppressed of all races and religions” might find encouragement and solace.

The war with Spain has made both a moral and physical impress upon the judgment and conscience of the entire world. Unqualified by a single disaster on land or sea, and never diverted from humane and honorable methods, it illustrates the intelligent patriotism and exhaustless resources of our country, and a nearer realization of Washington’s prayer for America.

Looking to the general trend of Washington’s military career, it is emphasized, throughout the volume, that the moral, religious, and patriotic motives that energized his life and shaped his character were so absolutely interwoven with the fibre of his professional experiences, that the soul of the Man magnified the greatness of the Soldier.

In connection with Washington’s relations to General Braddock, mentioned in the First Chapter, it is worthy of permanent record that Virginia would not sanction, nor would Washington accept assignment, except as Chief of Staff. He was not a simple Aid-de-Camp, but of recognized and responsible military merit.

HENRY B. CARRINGTON.

Hyde Park, Mass.,

September 21, 1899.

PREFACE.

The text of this volume, completed in the spring of 1898 and not since modified, requires a different Preface from that first prepared. The events of another war introduce applications of military principles which have special interest. This is the more significant because modern appliances have been developed with startling rapidity, while general legislation and the organization of troops, both regular and volunteer, have been very similar to those of the times of Washington, and of later American wars.

His letters, his orders, his trials, his experiences; the diversities of judgment between civilians and military men; between military men of natural aptitudes and those of merely professional or accidental training, as well as the diversities of personal and local interest, indicate the value of Washington’s example and the character of his time. Hardly a single experience in his career has not been realized by officers and men in these latter days.

A very decided impression, however, has obtained among educated men, including those of the military profession, that Washington had neither the troops, resources, and knowledge, nor the broad range of field service which have characterized modern warfare, and therefore lacked material elements which develop the typical soldier. But more recent military operations upon an extensive scale, especially those of the Franco-Prussian War, and the American Civil War of 1861–1865, have supplied material for better appreciation of the principles that were involved in the campaigns of the War for American Independence, as compared with those of Napoleon, Wellington, Marlborough, Frederick, Hannibal, and Cæsar.

With full allowance for changes in army and battle formation, tactical action and armament, as well as greater facilities for the transportation of troops and army supplies, it remains true that the relative effect of all these changes upon success in war upon a grand scale, has not been the modification of those principles of military science which have shaped battle action and the general conduct of war, from the earliest period of authentic military history. The formal “Maxims of Napoleon” were largely derived from his careful study of the campaigns of Frederick, Hannibal, and Cæsar; and these, with the principles involved, had specific and sometimes literal illustration in the eventful operations of the armies of the Hebrew Commonwealth. As a matter of fact, those early Hebrew experiences were nearly as potential in shaping the methods of modern generals, as their civil code became the formative factor in all later civil codes, preëminently those of the English Common Law. The very best civil, police, and criminal regulations of modern enactment hold closely to Hebrew antecedents. And in military lines, the organization of regiments by companies, and the combinations of regiments as brigades, divisions and corps, still rest largely upon the same decimal basis; and neither the Roman legion nor the Grecian phalanx improved upon that basis. Even the Hebrew militia, or reserves, had such well-established comprehension of the contingency of the entire nation being called to the field, or subjected to draft, that as late as the advent of Christ, when he ordered the multitudes to be seated upon the grass for refreshment, “they seated themselves in companies of hundreds and fifties.” The sanitary and police regulations of their camps have never been surpassed, nor their provision for the cleanliness, health, and comfort of the rank and file. From earliest childhood they were instructed in their national history and its glorious achievements, and the whole people rejoiced in the gallant conduct of any.

Changes in arms, and especially in projectiles, only induced modified tactical formation and corresponding movements. The division of armies into a right, centre, and left, with a well-armed and well-trained reserve, was illustrated in their earliest battle record. The latest modern formation, which makes of the regiment, by its three battalion formation, a miniature brigade, is chiefly designed to give greater individual value to the soldier, and not subject compact masses to the destructive sweep of modern missiles. It also makes the force more mobile, as well as more comprehensive of territory within its range of fire. All this, however, is matter of detail and not of substance, in the scientific conduct of campaigns during a protracted and widely extended series of operations in the field.

Military science itself is but the art of employing force to vindicate, or execute, authority. To meet an emergency adequately, wisely, and successfully, is the expressive logic of personal, municipal, and military action. The brain power is banded to various shaftings, and the mental processes may differ by virtue of different applications; but the prime activities are the same. In military studies, as in all collegiate or social preparation, the soldier, the lawyer, or the scientist, must be in the man, and not the necessary product of a certificate or a diploma. The simplest possible definition of a few terms in military use will elucidate the narrative as its events develop the War for American Independence, under the direction of Washington as Commander-in-Chief.

Six cardinal principles are thus stated:

I. Strategy.—To secure those combinations which will ensure the highest possible advantage in the employment of military force.

Note.—The strategical principles which controlled the Revolutionary campaigns, as defined in Chapter X. had their correspondence in 1861–1865, when the Federal right zone, or belt of war, was beyond the Mississippi River, and the left zone between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. The Confederate forces, with base at Richmond, commanded an interior line westward, so that the same troops could be alternatively used against the Federal right, left, and centre, while the latter must make a long détour to support its advance southward from the Ohio River. Federal superiority on sea and river largely contributed to success. American sea-control in 1898, so suddenly and completely secured, was practically omnipotent in the war with Spain. The navy, was a substantially equipped force at the start. The army, had largely to be created, when instantly needed, to meet the naval advance. Legislation also favored the navy by giving to the commander-in-chief the services of eminent retired veterans as an advisory board, while excluding military men of recent active duty from similar advisory and administrative service.

II. Grand Tactics.—To handle that force in the field.

Note.—See Chapter XVII., where the Battle of Brandywine, through the disorder of Sullivan’s Division, unaccustomed to act as a Division, or as a part of a consolidated Grand Division or Corps, exactly fulfilled the conditions which made the first Battle of Bull Run disastrous to the American Federal Army in 1861. Subsequent skeleton drills below Arlington Heights, were designed to quicken the proficiency of fresh troops, in the alignments, wheelings, and turns, so indispensable to concert in action upon an extensive scale. In 1898 the fresh troops were largely from militia organizations which had been trained in regimental movements. School battalions and the military exercises of many benevolent societies had also been conducive to readiness for tactical instruction. The large Camps of Instruction were also indispensably needed. Here again, time was an exacting master of the situation.

III. Logistics.—The practical art of bringing armies, fully equipped, to the battlefield.

Note.—In America where the standing army has been of only nominal strength, although well officered; and where militia are the main reliance in time of war; and where varied State systems rival those of Washington’s painful experience, the principle of Logistics, with its departments of transportation and infinite varieties of supply, is vital to wholesome and economic success. The war with Spain which commenced April 21, 1898, illustrated this principle to an extent never before realized in the world’s history. Familiarity with details, on so vast a scale of physical and financial activity, was impossible, even if every officer of the regular army had been assigned to executive duty. The education and versatile capacity of the American citizen had to be utilized. Their experience furnished object lessons for all future time.

IV. Engineering.—The application of mathematics and mechanics to the maintenance or reduction of fortified places; the interposition or removal of artificial obstructions to the passage of an army; and the erection of suitable works for the defence of territory or troops.

Note.—The invention and development of machinery and the marvellous range of mechanical art, through chemical, electrical, and other superhuman agencies, afforded the American Government an immediate opportunity to supplement its Engineer Corps in 1898, with skilled auxiliaries. In fact, the structure of American society and the trend of American thought and enterprise, invariably demand the best results. What is mechanically necessary, will be invented, if not at hand. That is good engineering.

V. Minor Tactics.—The instruction of the soldier, individually and en masse, in the details of military drill, the use of his weapon, and the perfection of discipline.

Note.—Washington never lost sight of the set-up of the individual soldier, as the best dependence in the hour of battle. Self-reliance, obedience to orders, and confidence in success, were enjoined as the conditions of success. His system of competitive marksmanship, of rifle ranges, and burden tests, was initiated early in his career, and was conspicuously enjoined before Brooklyn, and elsewhere, during the war.

The American soldier of 1898 became invincible, man for man, because of his intelligent response to individual discipline and drill. Failure in either, whether of officer or soldier, shaped character and result. As with the ancient Hebrew, citizenship meant knowledge of organic law and obedience to its behests. Every individual, therefore, when charged with the central electric force, became a relay battery, to conserve, intensify, and distribute that force.

VI. Statesmanship in War.—This is illustrated by the suggestion of Christ, that “a king going to war with another king would sit down first and count the cost, whether he would be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand.”

Note.—American statesmanship in 1898, exacted other appliances than those of immediately available physical force. The costly and insufferable relations of the Spanish West Indies to the United States, had become pestilential. No self-respecting nation, elsewhere, would have as long withheld the only remedy. Cuba was dying to be free. Spain, unwilling, or unable, to grant an honorable and complete autonomy to her despairing subjects, precipitated war with the United States. The momentum of a supreme moral force in behalf of humanity at large, so energized the entire American people that every ordinary unpreparedness failed to lessen the effectiveness of the stroke.

It was both statesmanship and strategy, to strike so suddenly that neither climatic changes, indigenous diseases, nor tropical cyclones, could gain opportunity to do their mischief. When these supposed allies of Spain were brushed aside, as powerless to stay the advance of American arms in behalf of starving thousands, and a fortunate occasion was snatched, just in time for victory, it proved to be such an achievement as Washington would have pronounced a direct manifestation of Divine favor.

But the character of Washington as a soldier is not to be determined by the numerical strength of the armies engaged in single battles, nor by the resources and geographical conditions of later times. The same general principles have ever obtained, and ever will control human judgment. Transportation and intercommunication are relative; and the slow mails and travel of Revolutionary times, alike affected both armies, with no partial benefit or injury to either. The British had better communication by water, but not by land; with the disadvantage of campaigning through an unknown and intricate country, peopled by their enemies, whenever not covered by the guns of their fleet. The American expedition to Cuba in 1898 had not only the support of invincible fleets, but the native population were to be the auxiliaries, as well as the beneficiaries of the mighty movement.

Baron Jomini, in his elaborate history of the campaigns of Napoleon, analyzes that general’s success over his more experienced opponents, upon the basis of his observance or neglect of the military principles already outlined. The dash and vigor of his first Italian campaign were indeed characteristic of a young soldier impatient of the habitually tardy deliberations of the old-school movements. Napoleon discounted time by action. He benumbed his adversary by the suddenness and ferocity of his stroke. But never, even in that wonderful campaign, did Napoleon strike more suddenly and effectively, than did Washington on Christmas night, 1776, at Trenton. And Napoleon’s following up blow was not more emphatic, in its results, than was Washington’s attack upon Princeton, a week later, when the British army already regarded his capture as a simple morning privilege. Such inspirations of military prescience belong to every age; and often they shorten wars by their determining value.

As a sound basis for a right estimate of Washington’s military career, and to avoid tedious episodes respecting the acts and methods of many generals who were associated with him at the commencement of the Revolutionary War, a brief synopsis of the career of each will find early notice. The dramatis personæ of the Revolutionary drama are thus made the group of which he is to be the centre; and his current orders, correspondence, and criticisms of their conduct, will furnish his valuation of the character and services of each. The single fact, that no general officer of the first appointments actively shared in the immediate siege of Yorktown, adds interest to this advance outline of their personal history.

For the same purpose, and as a logical predicate for his early comprehension of the real issues involved in a contest with Great Britain, an outline of events which preceded hostilities is introduced, embracing, however, only those Colonial antecedents which became emotional factors in forming his character and energizing his life as a soldier.

The maps, which illustrate only the immediate campaigns of Washington, or related territory which required his supervision, are reduced from those used in “Battle Maps and Charts of the American Revolution.” The map entitled “Operations near New York,” was the first one drafted, at Tarrytown, New York. In 1847, it was approved by Washington Irving, then completing his Life of Washington, and his judgment determined the plan of the future work. All of the maps, however, before engravure, had the minute examination and approval of Benson J. Lossing. The present volume owes its preparation to the personal request of the late Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, made shortly before his decease, and is completed, with ever-present appreciation of his aid and his friendship.

HENRY B. CARRINGTON.

Hyde Park, Mass., Sept. 1, 1898.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.

WASHINGTON THE SOLDIER.

CHAPTER I.
EARLY APTITUDES FOR SUCCESS.

The boyhood and youth of George Washington were singularly in harmony with those aptitudes and tastes that shaped his entire life. He was not quite eight years of age when his elder brother, Lawrence, fourteen years his senior, returned from England where he had been carefully educated, and where he had developed military tastes that were hereditary in the family. Lawrence secured a captain’s commission in a freshly organized regiment, and engaged in service in the West Indies, with distinguished credit. His letters, counsels, and example inspired the younger brother with similar zeal. Irving says that “all his amusements took a military turn. He made soldiers of his school-mates. They had their mimic parades, reviews, and sham-fights. A boy named William Bustle, was sometimes his competitor, but George was commander-in-chief of the school.”

His business aptitudes were equally exact, methodical, and promising. Besides fanciful caligraphy, which appeared in manuscript school-books, wherein he executed profiles of his school-mates, with a flourish of the pen, as well as nondescript birds, Irving states that “before he was thirteen years of age, he had copied into a volume, forms of all kinds of mercantile and legal papers: bills of exchange, notes of hand, deeds, bonds, and the like.” “This self-tuition gave him throughout life a lawyer’s skill in drafting documents, and a merchant’s exactness in keeping accounts, so that all the concerns of his various estates, his dealings with his domestic stewards and foreign agents, his accounts with government, and all his financial transactions, are, to this day, monuments of his method and unwearied accuracy.”

Even as a boy, his frame had been large and powerful, and he is described by Captain Mercer “as straight as an Indian, measuring six feet and two inches in his stockings, and weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds, when he took his seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1759. His head is well shaped though not large, but is gracefully poised on a superb neck, with a large and straight rather than a prominent nose; blue-gray penetrating eyes, which were widely separated and overhung by heavy brows. A pleasing, benevolent, though a commanding countenance, dark-brown hair, features regular and placid, with all the muscles under perfect control, with a mouth large, and generally firmly closed,” complete the picture. The bust by Houdon at the Capitol of Virginia, and the famous St. Memin crayon, fully accord with this description of Washington.

His training and surroundings alike ministered to his natural conceptions of a useful and busy life. In the midst of abundant game, he became proficient in its pursuit. Living where special pride was taken in the cultivation of good stock, and where nearly all travel and neighborly visitation was upon horseback, he learned the value of a good horse, and was always well mounted. Competition in saddle exercise was, therefore, one of the most pleasing and constant entertainments of himself and companions, and in its enjoyment, and in many festive tournaments that revived something of the olden-time chivalry of knighthood, Washington was not only proficient, but foremost in excellence of attainment.

Rustic recreations such as quoits, vaulting, wrestling, leaping, the foot-race, hunting and fishing, were parts of his daily experience, and thoroughly in the spirit of the Old Dominion home life of the well-bred gentleman. The gallantry of the times and the social amenities of that section of the country were specially adapted to his temperament, so that in these, also, he took the palm of recognized merit. The lance and the sword, and every accomplishment of mimic warfare in the scale of heraldic observance, usual at that period, were parts of his panoply, to be enjoyed with keenest relish, until his name became synonymous with success in all for which he seriously struggled. Tradition does not exaggerate the historic record of his proficiency in these manly sports.

Frank by nature, although self-contained and somewhat reticent in expression; unsuspicious of others, but ever ready to help the deserving needy, or the unfortunate competitor who vainly struggled for other sympathy, he became the natural umpire, at the diverting recreations of his times, and commanded a respectful confidence far beyond that of others of similar age and position in society. With all this, a sense of justice and a right appreciation of the merit of others, even of rivals, were so conspicuous in daily intercourse with a large circle of familiar acquaintances, whether of influential families or those of a more humble sphere of life, that he ever bent gracefully to honor the deserving, while never obsequious to gain the favor of any.

Living in the midst of slave labor, and himself a slaveholder, he was humane, considerate, and impartial. Toward his superiors in age or in position, he was uniformly courteous, without jealousy or envy, but unconsciously carried himself with so much of benignity and grace, that his most familiar mates paid him the deference which marked the demeanor of all who, in later years, recognized his exalted preferment and his natural sphere of command. The instincts of a perfect gentleman were so radicated in his person and deportment, that he moved from stage to stage, along life’s ascent, as naturally as the sun rises to its zenith with ever increasing brightness and force.

All these characteristics, so happily blended, imparted to his choice of a future career its natural direction and character. Living near the coast and in frequent contact with representatives of the British navy, he became impressed by the strong conviction that its service offered the best avenue to the enjoyment of his natural tastes, as well as the most promising field for their fruitful exercise. The berth of midshipman, with its prospects of preferment and travel, fell within his reach and acceptance. Every available opportunity was sought, through books of history and travel and acquaintance with men of the naval profession, to anticipate its duties and requirements. It was Washington’s first disappointment in life of which there is record, that his mother did not share his ardent devotion for the sea and maritime adventure. At the age of eleven he lost his father, Augustine Washington, but the estate was ample for all purposes of Virginia hospitality and home comfort, and he felt that he could be spared as well as his brother Lawrence. With all the intensity of his high aspiration and all the vigor of his earnest and almost passionate will, he sought to win his mother’s assent to his plans; and then, with filial reverence and a full, gracious submission, he bent to her wishes and surrendered his choice. That was Washington’s first victory; and similar self-mastery, under obligation to country, became the secret of his imperial success. Irving relates that his mother’s favorite volume was Sir Matthew Hale’s Contemplations, moral and divine; and that “the admirable maxims therein contained, sank deep into the mind of George, and doubtless had a great influence in forming his character. That volume, ever cherished, and bearing his mother’s name, Mary Washington, may still be seen in the archives of Mount Vernon.”

But Washington’s tastes had become so settled, that he followed the general trend of mathematical and military study, until he became so well qualified as a civil engineer, that at the age of sixteen, one year after abandoning the navy as his profession, he was intrusted with important land surveys, by Lord Fairfax; and at the age of nineteen was appointed Military Inspector, with the rank of Major. In 1752 he became the Adjutant-General of Virginia. Having been born on the twenty-second day of February (February 11th, Old Style) he was only twenty years of age when this great responsibility was intrusted to his charge.

The period was one of grave concern to the people of Virginia, especially as the encroachments of the French on the western frontier, and the hostilities of several Indian tribes, had imperilled all border settlements; while the British government was not prepared to furnish a sufficient military force to meet impending emergencies. As soon as Washington entered upon the duties of his office, he made a systematic organization of the militia his first duty. A plan was formulated, having special reference to frontier service. His journals and the old Colonial records indicate the minuteness with which this undertaking was carried into effect. His entire subsequent career is punctuated by characteristics drawn from this experience. Rifle practice, feats of horsemanship, signalling, restrictions of diet, adjustments for the transportation of troops and supplies with the least possible encumbrance; road and bridge building, the care of powder and the casting of bullets, were parts of this system. These were accompanied by regulations requiring an exact itinerary of every march, which were filed for reference, in order to secure the quickest access to every frontier post. The duties and responsibilities of scouts sent in advance of troops, were carefully defined. The passage of rivers, the felling of trees for breastworks, stockades, and block-houses, and methods of crossing swamps, by corduroy adjustments, entered into the instruction of the Virginia militia.

At this juncture it seemed advisable, in the opinion of Governor Dinwiddie, to secure, if practicable, a better and an honorable understanding with the French commanders who had established posts at the west. The Indians were hostile to all advances of both British and French settlement. There was an indication that the French were making friendly overtures to the savages, with view to an alliance against the English. In 1753 Washington was sent as Special Commissioner, for the purpose indicated. The journey through a country infested with hostile tribes was a remarkable episode in the life of the young soldier, and was conducted amid hardships that seem, through his faithful diary, to have been the incidents of some strangely thrilling fiction rather than the literal narrative, modestly given, of personal experience. During the journey, full of risks and rare deliverances from savage foes, swollen streams, ice, snow, and tempest, his keen discernment was quick to mark the forks of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers as the proper site for a permanent post, to control that region and the tributary waters of the Ohio, which united there. He was courteously received by St. Pierre, the French commandant, but failed to secure the recognition of English rights along the Ohio. But Washington’s notes of the winter’s expedition critically record the military features of the section traversed by him, and forecast the peculiar skill with which he accomplished so much in later years, with the small force at his disposal.

In 1754 he was promoted as Colonel and placed in command of the entire Virginia militia. Already, the Ohio Company had selected the forks of the river for a trading-post and commenced a stockade fort for their defence. The details of Washington’s march to support these pioneers, the establishment and history of Fort Necessity, are matters of history.

Upon assuming command of the Virginia militia, Washington decided that a more flexible system than that of the European government of troops, was indispensable to success in fighting the combined French and Indian forces, then assuming the aggressive against the border settlements. Thrown into intimate association with General Braddock and assigned to duty as his aid-de-camp and guide, he endeavored to explain to that officer the unwisdom of his assertion that the very appearance of British regulars in imposing array, would vanquish the wild warriors of thicket and woods, without battle. The profitless campaign and needless fate of Braddock are familiar; but Washington gained credit both at home and abroad, youthful as he was, for that sagacity, practical wisdom, knowledge of human nature, and courage, which ever characterized his life.

During these marchings and inspections he caused all trees which were so near to a post as to shelter an advancing enemy, to be felled. The militia were scattered over an extensive range of wild country, in small detachments, and he was charged with the defence of more than four hundred miles of frontier, with an available force of only one thousand men. He at once initiated a system of sharp-shooters for each post. Ranges were established, so that fire would not be wasted upon assailants before they came within effective distance. When he resumed command, after returning from the Braddock campaign, he endeavored to reorganize the militia upon a new basis. This reorganization drew from his fertile brain some military maxims for camp and field service which were in harmony with the writings of the best military authors of that period, and his study of available military works was exact, unremitting, and never forgotten. Even during the active life of the Revolutionary period, he secured from New York various military and other volumes for study, especially including Marshal Turenne’s Works, which Greene had mastered before the war began.

Washington resigned his commission in 1756; married Mrs. Martha Custis, Jan. 6, 1759; was elected member of the Virginia House of Burgesses the same year, and was appointed Commissioner to settle military accounts in 1765. In the discharge of this trust he manifested that accuracy of detail and that exactness of system in business concerns which have their best illustration in the minute record of his expenses during the Revolutionary War, in which every purchase made for the government or the army, even to a few horse-shoe nails, is accurately stated.

Neither Cæsar’s Commentaries, nor the personal record of any other historical character, more strikingly illustrate an ever-present sense of responsibility to conscience and to country, for trusts reposed, than does that of Washington, whether incurred in camp or in the whirl and crash of battle. Baron Jomini says: “A great soldier must have a physical courage which takes no account of obstacles; and a high moral courage capable of great resolution.” There have been youth, like Hannibal, whose earliest nourishment was a taste of vengeance against his country’s foes, and others have imbibed, as did the ancient Hebrew, abnormal strength to hate their enemies while doing battle; but if the character of Washington be justly delineated, he was, through every refined and lofty channel, prepared, by early aptitudes and training, to honor his chosen profession, with no abatement of aught that dignifies character, and rounds out in harmonious completeness the qualities of a consummate statesman and a great soldier.

CHAPTER II.
THE FERMENT OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

In 1755, four military expeditions were planned by the Colonies: one against the French in Nova Scotia; one against Crown Point; one against Fort Niagara, and the fourth, that of Braddock, against the French posts along the Ohio river.

In 1758, additional expeditions were undertaken, the first against Louisburg, the second against Ticonderoga, and the third against Fort Du Quesne. Washington led the advance in the third, a successful attack, Nov. 25, 1758, thereby securing peace with the Indians on the border, and making the fort itself more memorable by changing its name to that of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) in memory of William Pitt (Lord Chatham), the eminent British statesman, and the enthusiastic friend of America.

In 1759, Quebec was captured by the combined British and Colonial forces, and the tragic death of the two commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, made the closing hours of the siege the last opportunity of their heroic valor. With the capture of Montreal in 1760, Canada came wholly under British control. In view of those campaigns, it was not strange that so many Colonial participants readily found places in the Continental Army at the commencement of the war for American Independence, and subsequently urged the acquisition of posts on the northern border with so much pertinacity and confidence.

In 1761, Spain joined France against Great Britain, but failed of substantial gain through that alliance, because the British fleets were able to master the West India possessions of Spain, and even to capture the city of Havana itself.

In 1763, a treaty was effected at Paris, which terminated these protracted inter-Colonial wars, so that the thirteen American colonies were finally relieved from the vexations and costly burdens of aiding the British crown to hold within its grasp so many and so widely separated portions of the American continent. In the ultimate settlement with Spain, England exchanged Havana for Florida; and France, with the exception of the city of New Orleans and its immediate vicinity, retired behind the Mississippi river, retaining, as a shelter for her fisheries, only the Canadian islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are still French possessions.

In view of the constantly increasing imposition of taxes upon the Colonies by the mother country, in order to maintain her frequent wars with European rivals, by land and sea, a convention was held at New York on the seventh day of October, 1765, called a Colonial Congress, “to consult as to their relations to England, and provide for their common safety.” Nine colonies were represented, and three others either ratified the action of the convention, or declared their sympathy with its general recommendations and plans. The very brief advance notice of the assembling of delegates, partly accounts for the failure of North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Georgia, to be represented. But that convention made a formal “Declaration of Rights,” especially protesting that “their own representatives alone had the right to tax them,” and “their own juries to try them.”

As an illustration of the fact, that the suggestion of some common bond to unite the Colonies for general defence was not due to the agencies which immediately precipitated the American Revolution, it is to be noticed that as early as 1607, William Penn urged the union of the Colonies in some mutually related common support. The Six Nations (Indian), whom the British courted as allies against the French, and later, against their own blood, had already reached a substantial Union among themselves, under the name of the Iroquois Confederacy; and it is a historical fact of great interest, that their constitutional league for mutual support against a common enemy, while reserving absolute independence in every local function or franchise, challenged the appreciative indorsement of Thomas Jefferson when he entered upon the preparation of a Constitution for the United States of America.

And in 1722, Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, suggested a practical union of the Colonies for the consolidation of interests common to each. In 1754, when the British government formally advised the Colonies to secure the friendship of the Six Nations against the French, Benjamin Franklin prepared a form for such union. Delegates from New England, as well as from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, met at Albany on the fourth of July, 1754, the very day of the surrender of Fort Necessity to the French, for consideration of the suggested plan. The King’s council rejected it, because it conceded too much independence of action to the people of the Colonies, and the Colonies refused to accept its provisions, because it left too much authority with the King.

Ten years later, when the Colonies had been freed from the necessity of sacrificing men and money to support the British authority against French, Spanish, and Indian antagonists, the poverty of the British treasury drove George Grenville, then Prime Minister, to a system of revenue from America, through the imposition of duties upon Colonial imports. In 1755 followed the famous Stamp Act. Its passage by Parliament was resisted by statesmen of clear foresight, with sound convictions of the injustice of taxing their brethren in America who had no representatives in either House of Parliament; but in vain, and this explosive bomb was hurled across the sea. Franklin, then in London, thus wrote to Charles Thompson, who afterwards became secretary of the Colonial Congress: “The sun of Liberty has set. The American people must light the torch of industry and economy.” To this Thompson replied: “Be assured that we shall light torches of quite another sort.”

The explosion of this missile, charged with death to every noble incentive to true loyalty to the mother country, dropped its inflammatory contents everywhere along the American coast. The Assembly of Virginia was first to meet, and its youngest member, Patrick Henry, in spite of shouts of “Treason,” pressed appropriate legislation to enactment. Massachusetts, unadvised of the action of Virginia, with equal spontaneity, took formal action, inviting the Colonies to send delegates to a Congress in New York, there to consider the grave issues that confronted the immediate future. South Carolina was the first to respond. When Governor Tryon, of North Carolina, afterwards the famous Governor of New York, asked Colonel (afterwards General) Ashe, Speaker of the North Carolina Assembly, what the House would do with the Stamp Act, he replied, “We will resist its execution to the death.”

On the seventh of October the Congress assembled and solemnly asserted, as had a former convention, that “their own representatives alone had the right to tax them,” and “their own juries to try them.” Throughout the coast line of towns and cities, interrupted business, muffled and tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and every possible sign of stern indignation and deep distress, indicated the resisting force which was gathering volume to hurl a responsive missile into the very council chamber of King George himself.

“Sons of Liberty” organized in force, but secretly; arming themselves for the contingency of open conflict. Merchants refused to import British goods. Societies of the learned professions and of all grades of citizenship agreed to dispense with all luxuries of English production or import. Under the powerful and magnetic sway of Pitt and Burke, this Act was repealed in 1766; but even this repeal was accompanied by a “Declaratory Act,” which reserved for the Crown “the right to bind the Colonies, in all cases whatsoever.”

Pending all these fermentations of the spirit of liberty, George Washington, of Virginia, was among the first to recognize the coming of a conflict in which the Colonial troops would no longer be a convenient auxiliary to British regulars, in a common cause, but would confront them in a life or death struggle, for rights which had been guaranteed by Magna Charta, and had become the vested inheritance of the American people. Suddenly, as if to impress its power more heavily upon the restless and overwrought Colonists, Parliament required them to furnish quarters and subsistence for the garrisons of towns and cities. In 1768, two regiments arrived at Boston, ostensibly to “preserve the public peace,” but, primarily, to enforce the revenue measures of Parliament.

In 1769, Parliament requested the King to “instruct the Governor of Massachusetts” to “forward to England for trial, upon charges of high treason,” several prominent citizens of that colony “who had been guilty of denouncing Parliamentary action.” The protests of the Provincial Assemblies of Virginia and North Carolina against the removal of their citizens, for trial elsewhere, were answered by the dissolution of those bodies by their respective royal governors. On the fifth day of May, 1769, Lord North, who had become Prime Minister, proposed to abolish all duties, except upon tea. Later, in 1770, occurred the “Boston Massacre,” which is ever recalled to mind by a monument upon the Boston Common, in honor of the victims. In 1773 “Committees of Correspondence” were selected by most of the Colonies, for advising the people of all sections, whenever current events seemed to endanger the public weal. One writer said of this state of affairs: “Common origin, a common language, and common sufferings had already established between the Colonies a union of feeling and interest; and now, common dangers drew them together more closely.”

But the tax upon tea had been retained, as the expression of the reserved right to tax at will, under the weak assumption that the Colonists would accept this single tax and pay a willing consideration for the use of tea in their social and domestic life. The shrewd and patriotic citizens, however boyish it may have seemed to many, found a way out of the apparent dilemma, and on the night of December 16, 1773, the celebrated Boston Tea Party gave an entertainment, using three hundred and fifty-two chests of tea for the festive occasion, and Boston Harbor for the mixing caldron.

In 1774, the “Boston Port Bill” was passed, nullifying material provisions of the Massachusetts Charter, prohibiting intercourse with Boston by sea, and substituting Salem for the port of entry and as the seat of government for the Province. It is to be noticed, concerning the various methods whereby the Crown approached the Colonies, in the attempt to subordinate all rights to the royal will, that Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, until 1692, were charter governments, whereby laws were framed and executed by the freemen of each colony. The proprietary governments were Pennsylvania with Maryland, and at first New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. In all of these, the proprietors, under certain restrictions, established and conducted their own systems of rule. There were also the royal governments, those of New Hampshire, Virginia, Georgia, and afterwards Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. In these, appointments of the chief officers pertained to the Crown.

At the crisis noticed, General Gage had been appointed Governor of Massachusetts Colony, as well as commander-in-chief, and four additional regiments had been despatched to his support. But Salem declined to avail herself of the proffered boon of exceptional franchises, and the House of Burgesses of Virginia ordered that “the day when the Boston Port Bill was to go into effect should be observed as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.”

The Provincial Assembly did indeed meet at Salem, but solemnly resolved that it was expedient, at once, to call a General Congress of all the Colonies, to meet the unexpected disfranchisement of the people, and appointed five delegates to attend such Congress. All the Colonies except Georgia, whose governor prevented the election of delegates, were represented.

This body, known in history as the First Continental Congress, assembled in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, on the fifth day of September, 1774. Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was elected president, and Charles Thompson, of Pennsylvania, was elected secretary. Among the representative men who took part in its solemn deliberations must be named Samuel Adams and John Adams, of Massachusetts; Philip Livingstone and John Jay, of New York; John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania; Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, of South Carolina; Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington, of Virginia.

During an address by Lord Chatham before the British House of Lords, he expressed his opinion of the men who thus boldly asserted their inalienable rights as Englishmen against the usurping mandates of the Crown, in these words: “History, my lords, has been my favorite study; and in the celebrated writers of antiquity have I often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow, that in the master states of the world, I know not the people, or senate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can stand in preference to the delegates of America assembled in General Congress at Philadelphia.” This body resolved to support Massachusetts in resistance to the offensive Acts of Parliament; made a second “Declaration of Rights,” and advised an American association for non-intercourse with England. It also prepared another petition to the King, as well as an address to the people of Great Britain and Canada, and then provided for another Congress, to be assembled the succeeding May. During its sessions, the Massachusetts Assembly also convened and resolved itself into a Provincial Congress, electing John Hancock as president, and proceeded to authorize a body of militia, subject to instant call, and therefore to be designated as “Minute Men.” A Committee of Safety was appointed to administer public affairs during the recess of the Congress. When Captain Robert Mackenzie, of Washington’s old regiment, intimated that Massachusetts was rebellious, and sought independence, Washington used this unequivocal language in reply: “If the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, I add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled than history has ever furnished instances of, in the annals of North America; and such a vital wound will be given to the peace of this great country, as time itself cannot cure, or eradicate the remembrance of.”

Early in 1775 Parliament rejected a “Conciliatory Bill,” which had been introduced by Lord Chatham, and passed an Act in special restraint of New England trade, which forbade even fishing on the banks of Newfoundland. New York, North Carolina, and Georgia were excepted, in the imposition of restrictions upon trade in the middle and southern Colonies, in order by a marked distinction between Colonies, to conserve certain aristocratic influences, and promote dissension among the people; but all such transparent devices failed to subdue the patriotic sentiment which had already become universal in its expression.

At that juncture the English people themselves did not apprehend rightly the merits of the dawning struggle, nor resent the imposition by Parliament, of unjust, unequal, and unconstitutional laws upon their brethren in America. Dr. Franklin thus described their servile attitude toward the Crown: “Every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King; and talks of ‘our subjects in the Colonies.’”

The ferment of patriotic sentiment was deep, subtle, intense, and ready for deliverance. The sovereignty of the British crown and the divine rights of man were to be subjected to the stern arbitrament of battle. One had fleets, armies, wealth, prestige, and power, unsustained by the principles of genuine liberty which had distinguished the British Constitution above all other modern systems of governmental control; while the scattered two millions of earnest, patriotic Englishmen across the sea, who, from their first landing upon the shores of the New World had honored every principle which could impart dignity and empire to their mother country, were to balance the scale of determining war by the weight of loyalty to conscience and to God.

CHAPTER III.
THE OUTBREAK OF REPRESSED LIBERTY.

British authority, which ought to have gladly welcomed and honored the prodigious elasticity, energy, and growth of its American dependencies, as the future glory and invincible ally of her advancing empire, was deliberately arming to convert a natural filial relation into one of slavery. The legacies of British law and the liberties of English subjects, which the Crown did not dare to infringe at home, had been lodged in the hearts of her American sons and daughters, until resistance to a royal decree had become impossible under any reasonable system of paternal care and treatment. Colonial sacrifices during Indian wars had been cheerfully borne, and free-will offerings of person and property had been rendered without stint, upon every demand. But it seemed to be impossible for George the Third and his chosen advisers to comprehend in its full significance, the momentous fact, that English will was as strong and stubborn in the child as in the parent.

Lord Chatham said that “it would be found impossible for freemen in England to wish to see three millions of Englishmen slaves in America.”

Respecting the attempted seizure of arms rightly in the hands of the people, that precipitated the “skirmish,” as the British defined it, which occurred at Lexington on the nineteenth day of April, 1775, Lord Dartmouth said: “The effect of General Gage’s attempt at Concord will be fatal.”

Granville Sharpe, of the Ordnance Department, resigned rather than forward military stores to America.

Admiral Keppel formally requested not to be employed against America.

Lord Effingham resigned, when advised that his regiment had been ordered to America.

John Wesley, who had visited America many years before with his brother, and understood the character of the Colonists, at once recalled the appeal once made to the British government by General Gage during November, 1774, when he “was confident, that, to begin with, an army of twenty thousand men would, in the end, save Great Britain both blood and treasure,” and declared, “Neither twenty thousand, forty thousand, nor sixty thousand can end the dawning struggle.”

During the summer of 1774 militia companies had been rapidly organized throughout the Colonies. New England especially had been so actively associated with all military operations during the preceding French and Indian wars, that her people more readily assumed the attitude of armed preparation for the eventualities of open conflict.

Virginia had experienced similar conditions on a less extended and protracted basis. The action of the First Continental Congress on the fifth day of September, 1774, when, upon notice that Gage had fortified Boston, it made an unequivocal declaration of its sympathy with the people of Boston and of Massachusetts, changed the character of the struggle from that of a local incident, to one that demanded organized, deliberate, and general resistance.

Notwithstanding the slow course of mail communications between the widely separated Colonies north and south, the deportment of the British Colonial governors had been so uniformly oppressive and exacting, that the people, everywhere, like tinder, were ready for the first flying spark. A report became current during September, after the forced removal of powder from Cambridge and Charlestown, that Boston had been attacked. One writer has stated, that, “within thirty-six hours, nearly thirty thousand men were under arms.” This burst of patriotic feeling, this mighty frenzy over unrighteous interference with vested rights, made a profound impression upon the Continental Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, and aroused in the mind of Washington, then a delegate from Virginia, the most intense anxiety lest the urgency of the approaching crisis should find the people unprepared to take up the gage of battle, and fight with the hope of success. All this simply indicated the depth and breadth of the eager sentiment which actually panted for armed expression.

The conflict between British troops and armed citizens at Lexington had already assumed the characteristics of a battle, and, as such, had a more significant import than many more pronounced engagements in the world’s history. The numbers engaged were few, but the men who ventured to face British regulars on that occasion were but the thin skirmish line in advance of the swelling thousands that awaited the call “To arms.”

Massachusetts understood the immediate demand, having now drawn the fire of the hitherto discreet adversary, and promptly declared that the necessities of the hour required from New England the immediate service of thirty thousand men, assuming as her proportionate part a force of thirteen thousand six hundred. This was on the twenty-second day of April, while many timid souls and some social aristocrats were still painfully worrying themselves as to who was to blame for anybody’s being shot on either side.

On the twenty-fifth day of April, Rhode Island devoted fifteen hundred men to the service, as her contribution to “An Army of Observation” about Boston.

On the following day, the twenty-sixth, Connecticut tendered her proportion of two thousand men.

Each Colonial detachment went up to Boston as a separate army, with independent organization and responsibility. The food, as well as the powder and ball of each, was distinct, and they had little in common except the purpose which impelled them to concentrate for a combined opposition to the armed aggressions of the Crown. And yet, this mass of assembling freemen was not without experience, or experienced leaders. The early wars had been largely fought by Provincial troops, side by side with British regulars, so that the general conduct of armies and of campaigns had become familiar to New England men, and many veteran soldiers were prompt to volunteer service. Lapse of time, increased age, absorption in farming or other civil pursuits, had not wholly effaced from the minds of retired veterans the memory of former experience in the field. If some did not realize the expectations of the people and of Congress, the promptness with which they responded to the call was no less worthy.

Massachusetts selected, for the immediate command of her forces, Artemas Ward, who had served under Abercrombie, with John Thomas, another veteran, as Lieutenant-General; and as Engineer-in-Chief, Richard Gridley, who had, both as engineer and soldier, earned a deserved reputation for skill, courage, and energy.

Connecticut sent Israel Putnam, who had been inured to exposure and hardship in the old French War, and in the West Indies. Gen. Daniel Wooster accompanied him, and he was a veteran of the first expedition to Louisburg thirty years before, and had served both as Colonel and Brigadier-General in the later French War. Gen. Joseph Spencer also came from Connecticut.

Rhode Island intrusted the command of her troops to Nathaniel Greene, then but thirty-four years of age, with Varnum, Hitchcock, and Church, as subordinates.

New Hampshire furnished John Stark, also a veteran of former service; and both Pomeroy and Prescott, who soon took active part in the operations about Boston, had participated in Canadian campaigns.

These, and others, assembled in council, for consideration of the great interests which they had been summoned to protect by force of arms. At this solemn juncture of affairs, the youngest of their number, Nathaniel Greene, whose subsequent career became so significant a factor in that of Washington the Soldier, submitted to his associates certain propositions which he affirmed to be indispensable conditions of success in a war against the British crown. These propositions read to-day, as if, like utterances of the old Hebrew prophets, they had been inspired rules for assured victory. And, one hundred years later, when the American Civil War unfolded its vast operations and tasked to the utmost all sections to meet their respective shares in the contest, the same propositions had to be incorporated into practical legislation before any substantial results were achieved on either side.

It is a historical fact that the failures and successes of the War of American Independence fluctuated in favor of success, from year to year, exactly in proportion to the faithfulness with which these propositions were illustrated in the management and conduct of the successive campaigns.

The propositions read as follows:

I. That there be one Commander-in-Chief.

II. That the army should be enlisted for the war.

III. That a system of bounties should be ordained which would provide for the families of soldiers absent in the field.

IV. That the troops should serve wherever required throughout the Colonies.

V. That funds should be borrowed equal to the demands of the war and for the complete equipment and support of the army.

VI. That Independence should be declared at once, and every resource of every Colony be pledged to its support.

In estimating the character of Washington the Soldier, and accepting these propositions as sound, it is of interest to be introduced to their author.

The youthful tastes and pursuits of Nathaniel Greene, of Rhode Island, those which shaped his subsequent life and controlled many battle issues, were as marked as were those of Washington. Unlike his great captain, he had neither wealth, social position, nor family antecedents to inspire military endeavor. A Quaker youth, at fourteen years of age he saved time from his blacksmith’s forge, and by its light mastered geometry and Euclid. Providence threw in his way Ezra Stiles, then President of Yale College, and Lindley Murray, the grammarian, and each of them became his fast friend and adviser.

Before the war began, he had carefully studied “Cæsar’s Commentaries,” Marshal Turenne’s Works, “Sharpe’s Military Guide,” “Blackstone’s Commentaries,” “Jacobs’ Law Dictionary,” “Watts’ Logic,” “Locke on the Human Understanding,” “Ferguson on Civil Society,” Swift’s Works, and other models of a similar class of literature and general science.

In 1773, he visited Connecticut, attended several of its militia “trainings,” and studied their methods of instruction and drill. In 1774, he visited Boston, to examine minutely the drill, quarters, and commissary arrangements of the British regular troops. Incidentally, he met one evening, at a retired tavern on India wharf, a British sergeant who had deserted. He persuaded him to accompany him back to Rhode Island, where he made him drill-instructor of the “Kentish Guards,” a company with which Greene was identified. Such was the proficiency in arms, deportment, and general drill realized by this company, through their joint effort, that more than thirty of the members became commissioned officers in the subsequent war.

The character of the men of that period, as in the American Civil War, supplied the military service with soldiers of the best intelligence and of superior physical capacities. Very much of the energy and success which attended the progress of the American army was traceable to these qualities, as contrasted with those of the British recruits and the Hessian drafted men.

Greene himself, unconsciously but certainly, was preparing himself and his comrades for the impending struggle which already cast its shadow over the outward conditions of peace. Modest, faithful, dignified, undaunted by rebuffs or failure, and as a rule, equable, self-sacrificing, truthful, and honest, he possessed much of that simple grandeur of character which characterized George H. Thomas and Robert E. Lee, of the American conflict, 1861–5. His patriotism, as he announced his propositions to the officers assembled before Cambridge, was like that of Patrick Henry, of Virginia, who shortly after made this personal declaration: “Landmarks and boundaries are thrown down; distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more;” adding, “I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

By the middle of June, and before the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill), the Colonies were substantially united for war. During the previous month of March, Richard Henry Lee had introduced for adoption by the second Virginia Convention, a resolution that “the Colony be immediately put in a state of defence,” and advocated the immediate reorganization, arming, and discipline of the militia.

A hush of eager expectancy and an almost breathless waiting for some mysterious summons to real battle, seemed to pervade both north and south alike, when a glow in the east indicated the signal waited for, and even prayed for. The very winds of heaven seemed to bear the sound and flame of the first conflict in arms. In six days it reached Maryland. Intermediate Colonies, in turn, had responded to the summons, “To arms.” Greene’s Kentish Guards started for Boston, at the next break of day. The citizens of Rhode Island caught his inspiration, took possession of more than forty British cannon, and asserted their right and purpose to control all Colonial stores.

New York organized a Committee of Public Safety,—first of a hundred, and then of a thousand,—of her representative men, as a solid guaranty of her ardent sympathy with the opening struggle, declaring that “all the horrors of civil war could not enforce her submission to the acts of the British crown.” The Custom-house and the City Hall were seized by the patriots. Arming and drilling were immediate; and even by candle-light and until late hours, every night, impassioned groups of boys, as well as men, rehearsed to eager listeners the story of the first blood shed at Concord and Lexington; and strong men exchanged vows of companionship in arms, whatever might betide. Lawyers and ministers, doctors and teachers, merchants and artisans, laborers and seamen, mingled together as one in spirit and one in action. An “Association for the defence of Colonial Rights” was formed, and on the twenty-second of May the Colonial Assembly was succeeded by a Provincial Congress, and the new order of government went into full effect.

In New Jersey, the people, no less prompt, practical, and earnest, seized one hundred thousand dollars belonging to the Provincial treasury, and devoted it to raising troops for defending the liberties of the people.

The news reached Philadelphia on the twenty-fourth of April, and there, also, was no rest, until action took emphatic form. Prominent men, as in New York, eagerly tendered service and accepted command, so that on the first day of May the Pennsylvania Assembly made an appropriation of money to raise troops. Benjamin Franklin, but just returned from England, was made chairman of a Committee of Safety, and the whole city was aroused in hearty support of the common cause. The very Tory families which afterwards ministered to General Howe’s wants, and flattered Benedict Arnold by their courtesies, did not venture to stem the patriotic sentiment of the hour.

Virginia caught the flying spark. No flint was needed to fire the waiting tinder there. Lord Dunmore had already sent the powder of the Colony on board a vessel in the harbor. Patrick Henry quickly gathered the militia in force, to board the vessel and seize the powder. By way of compromise, the powder was paid for, but Henry was denounced as a “traitor.” The excitement was not abated, but intensified by this action, until Lord Dunmore, terrified, and powerless to stem the surging wave of patriotic passion, took refuge upon the man-of-war Fowey, then in the York river.

The Governor of North Carolina, as early as April, had quarrelled with the people of that Colony, in his effort to prevent the organization of a Provincial Congress. But so soon as the news was received from Boston of the opening struggle, the Congress assembled. Detached meetings were everywhere held in its support, and from all sides one sentiment was voiced, and this was its utterance: “The cause of Boston is the cause of all. Our destinies are indissolubly connected with those of our eastern fellow-citizens. We must either submit to the impositions which an unprincipled and unrepresented Parliament may impose, or support our brethren who have been doomed to sustain the first shock of Parliamentary power; which, if successful there, will ultimately overwhelm all, in one common calamity.” Conformable to these principles, a Convention assembled at Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, on the twentieth of May, 1775, and unanimously adopted the Instrument, ever since known as The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

In South Carolina, on the twenty-first day of April, a secret committee of the people, appointed for the purpose, forcibly entered the Colonial magazine and carried away eight hundred stands of arms and two hundred cutlasses. Thomas Corbett, a member of this committee, secured and opened a royal package just from England, containing orders to governors of each of the southern Colonies to “seize all arms and powder.” These were forwarded to the Continental Congress. Another despatch, dated at “Palace of Whitehall, December 23d,” stated that “seven regiments were in readiness to proceed to the southern Colonies; first to North Carolina, thence to Virginia, or South Carolina, as circumstances should point out.” These intercepted orders contained an “Act of Parliament, forbidding the exportation of arms to the Colonies,” and stimulated the zeal of the patriots to secure all within their reach. Twenty days later, the tidings from the north reached Charleston, adding fuel to the flame of the previous outbreak.

At Savannah, Ga., six members of the “Council of Safety” broke open the public magazine, before receipt of news from the north, seized the public powder and bore it away for further use. Governor Wright addressed a letter to General Gage at Boston, asking for troops, “to awe the people.” This was intercepted, and through a counterfeit signature General Gage was advised, “that the people were coming to some order, and there would be no occasion for sending troops.”

Such is the briefest possible outline of the condition of public sentiment throughout the country, of which Washington was well advised, so far as the Committee of the Continental Congress, of which he was a member, could gather the facts at that time.

Meanwhile, Boston was surrounded by nearly twenty thousand Minute Men. These Minute Men made persistent pressure upon every artery through which food could flow to relieve the hungry garrison within the British lines.

Neither was the excitement limited to the immediate surroundings. Ethan Allen, who had migrated from Connecticut to Vermont, led less than a hundred of “Green Mountain Boys,” as they were styled, to Ticonderoga, which he captured on the tenth of May. Benedict Arnold, of New Haven, with forty of the company then and still known as the Governor’s Guards, rushed to Boston without waiting for orders, and then to Lake Champlain, hoping to raise an army on the way. Although anticipated by Ethan Allen in the capture of Ticonderoga, he pushed forward toward Crown Point and St. John’s, captured and abandoned the latter, organized a small naval force, and with extraordinary skill defeated the British vessels and materially retarded the advance of the British flotilla and British troops from the north.

These feverish dashes upon frontier posts were significant of the general temper of the people, their desire to secure arms and military supplies supposed to be in those forts, and indicated their conviction that the chief danger to New England was through an invasion from Canada. But the absorbing cause of concern was the deliverance of Boston from English control.

CHAPTER IV.
ARMED AMERICA NEEDS A SOLDIER.

The Second Continental Congress convened on the tenth day of May, 1775. On the same day, Ethan Allen captured Ticonderoga, also securing two hundred cannon which were afterwards used in the siege of Boston. Prompt measures were at once taken by Congress for the purchase and manufacture of both cannon and powder. The emission of two millions of Spanish milled dollars was authorized, and twelve Colonies were pledged for the redemption of Bills of Credit, then directed to be issued. At the later, September, session, the Georgia delegates took their seats, and made the action of the Colonies unanimous.

A formal system of “Rules and Articles of War” was adopted, and provision was made for organizing a military force fully adequate to meet such additional troops as England might despatch to the support of General Gage. Further than this, all proposed enforcement by the British crown of the offensive Acts of Parliament, was declared to be “unconstitutional, oppressive, and cruel.”

Meanwhile, the various New England armies were scattered in separate groups, or cantonments, about the City of Boston, with all the daily incidents of petty warfare which attach to opposing armies within striking distance, when battle action has not yet reached its desirable opportunity. And yet, a state of war had been so far recognized that an exchange of prisoners was effected as early as the sixth day of June. General Howe made the first move toward open hostilities by a tender of pardon to all offenders against the Crown except Samuel Adams and John Hancock; and followed up this ostentatious and absurd proclamation by a formal declaration of Martial Law.

The Continental Congress as promptly responded, by adopting the militia about Boston, as “The American Continental Army.”

On the fourteenth day of June, a Light Infantry organization of expert riflemen was authorized, and its companies were assigned to various Colonies for enlistment and immediate detail for service about Boston.

On the fifteenth day of June, 1775, Congress authorized the appointment, and then appointed George Washington, of Virginia, as “Commander-in-Chief of the forces raised, or to be raised, in defence of American Liberties.” On presenting their commission to Washington it was accompanied by a copy of a Resolution unanimously adopted by that body, “That they would maintain and assist him, and adhere to him, with their lives and fortunes, in the cause of American Liberty.”

It is certain from the events above outlined, which preceded the Revolutionary struggle, that when Washington received this spontaneous and unanimous appointment, he understood definitely that the Colonies were substantially united in the prosecution of war, at whatever cost of men and money; that military men of early service and large experience could be placed in the field; that the cause was one of intrinsic right; and that the best intellects, as well as the most patriotic statesmen, of all sections, were ready, unreservedly, to submit their destinies to the fate of the impending struggle. He had been upon committees on the State of Public Affairs; was constantly consulted as to developments, at home and abroad; was familiar with the dissensions among British statesmen; and had substantial reasons for that sublime faith in ultimate victory which never for one hour failed him in the darkness of the protracted struggle. He also understood that not statesmen alone, preëminently Lord Dartmouth, but the best soldiers of Great Britain had regarded the military occupation of Boston, where the Revolutionary sentiment was most pronounced, and the population more dense as well as more enlightened, to be a grave military as well as political error. And yet, as the issue had been forced, it must be met as proffered; and the one immediate and paramount objective must be the expulsion of the British garrison and the deliverance of Boston. It will appear, however, as the narrative develops its incidents, that he never lost sight of the exposed sea-coast cities to the southward, nor of that royalist element which so largely controlled certain aristocratic portions of New York, New Jersey, and the southern cities, which largely depended upon trade with Great Britain and the West Indies for their independent fortunes and their right royal style of living. Neither did he fail to realize that delay in the siege of Boston, however unavoidable, was dangerous to the rapid prosecution of general war upon a truly military plan of speedy accomplishment.

His first duty was therefore with his immediate command, and the hour had arrived for the consolidation of the various Colonial armies into one compact, disciplined, and effective force, to battle with the best troops of Great Britain which now garrisoned Boston and controlled its waters.

Reënforcements under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne had already increased the strength of that garrison to nearly ten thousand men. It had become impatient of confinement, and restive under the presence of increasing but ill-armed adversaries who eagerly challenged every picket post, and begrudged every market product smuggled, or snatched, by the purveyors or officers and soldiers of the Crown. Besides all this, the garrison began to realize the fate which afterwards befell that of Clinton in Philadelphia, in the demoralization and loss of discipline which ever attach to an idle army when enclosed within city limits. When Burgoyne landed at Boston, to support Gage, he contemptuously spoke of “ten thousand peasants who kept the King’s troops shut up.” Gradually, the peasants encroached upon the outposts. An offensive movement to occupy Charlestown Heights and menace the Colonial headquarters at Cambridge, with a view to more decisive action against their maturing strength, had been planned and was ready for execution. It was postponed, as of easy accomplishment at leisure; but the breaking morning of June 17, 1775, revealed the same Heights to be in possession of the “peasant” militia of America.

The Battle of Bunker Hill followed. Each force engaged lost one-third of its numbers, but the aggregate of the British loss was more than double that of the Colonies. It made a plain issue between the Colonists and the British army, and was no longer a controversy of citizens with the civil authority. The impatience of the two armies to have a fight had been gratified, and when Franklin was advised of the facts, and of the nerve with which so small a detachment of American militia had faced and almost vanquished three times their number of British veterans, he exclaimed, “The King has lost his Colonies.”

Many of the officers who bore part in that determining action gained new laurels in later years. Prescott, who led his thousand men to that achievement, served with no less gallantry in New York. Stark, so plucky and persistent along the Mystic river, was afterwards as brave and dashing at Trenton, Bennington, and Springfield. And Seth Warner, a volunteer at Bunker Hill, and comrade of Allen in the capture of Ticonderoga, participated in the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington, and the Saratoga campaign, during the invasion of Burgoyne in 1777.

Of the British participants, or spectators, a word is due. Clinton, destined to be Washington’s chief antagonist, had urged General Howe to attack Washington’s army at Cambridge, before it could mature into a well equipped and well disciplined force. He was overruled by General Howe, who with all his scientific qualities as a soldier, never, in his entire military career, was quick to follow up an advantage once acquired; and soon after, the junior officer was transferred to another field of service.

Percy, gallant in the action of June 17th, was destined to serve with credit at Long Island, White Plains, Brandywine, and Newport.

Rawdon, then a lieutenant, who gallantly stormed the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and received in his arms the body of his captain, Harris, of the British 5th Infantry, was destined to win reputation at Camden and Hobkirk’s Hill, but close his military career in America as a prisoner of war to the French.

The British retained and fortified Bunker Hill, and the time had arrived for more systematic American operations, and the presence of the Commander-in-Chief.

Congress had appointed the following general officers as Washington’s associates in conduct of the war.

Major-Generals.

Some of these have been already noticed.

Artemas Ward.

Charles Lee, a retired officer of the British Army, a military adventurer under many flags, a resident of Virginia, an acquaintance of Washington, and ambitious to be first in command.

Philip Schuyler, then a member of Congress; a man of rare excellence of character, who had served in the French and Indian War, and took part in Abercrombie’s Ticonderoga campaign.

Israel Putnam.

Brigadier-Generals.

Seth Pomeroy.

Richard Montgomery, who served gallantly under Wolfe before Quebec, in 1759, and in the West Indies, in 1762.

David Wooster.

William Heath, who, previous to the war, was a vigorous writer upon the necessity of military discipline and a thoroughly organized militia.

Joseph Spencer, of Connecticut, also a soldier of the French and Indian War, both as Major and Lieutenant-Colonel.

John Thomas, also a soldier of the French and Indian War, and in command of a regiment at Cambridge, recruited by himself.

John Sullivan, a lawyer of New Hampshire, of Irish blood; a member of the First Continental Congress, and quick in sympathy with the first movement for armed resistance to British rule.

Nathaniel Greene, already in command of the Rhode Island troops.

Congress had also selected as Adjutant-General of the Army, Horatio Gates, of Virginia, who, like Lee, had served in the British regular army; commanded a company in the Braddock campaign, and gained some credit for bravery at the capture of Martinique, in the West Indies. He was also known to Washington, and shared with Lee in aspiration to the chief command.

If Washington had possessed prophetic vision, even his sublime faith might have wavered in view of that unfolding future which would leave none of these general officers by his side at the last conflict of the opening war.

Ward, somewhat feeble in body, would prove unequal to active service; lack the military acuteness and discernment which the crisis would demand, and retire from view with the occupation of Boston.

Lee, so like Arnold in volcanic temper, would be early detached for other service, in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and South Carolina; would become a prisoner of war at New York; would propose to the British authorities a plan for destroying the American army; would escape execution as a British deserter, on exchange; and afterwards, at the Battle of Monmouth, so nearly realize his suggestion to General Howe, as to show that his habitual abuse of Congress and his jealousy of his Commander-in-Chief were insufficiently atoned for by dismissal from the army, and the privilege of dying in his own bed, unhonored and unlamented.

Schuyler, devoted to his country, with rare qualities as a gentleman and with a polish of manner and elegance of carriage that for the time made him severely unpopular with the staid stock of New England, would serve with credit in Canada; organize the army which Gates would command at Saratoga; be supplanted by that officer; retire from service because of poor health; but ever prove worthy of the confidence and love of his commander-in-chief. Of him, Chief Justice Kent would draw a pen-picture of “unselfish devotion, wonderful energy, and executive ability.” Of him, Daniel Webster would speak, in an august presence, in these terms: “I was brought up with New England prejudices against him; but I consider him second only to Washington in the service he rendered to his country in the War of the Revolution.”

Putnam, who had been conspicuously useful at Bunker Hill, would, because of Greene’s illness, suddenly succeed that officer in command on Long Island, without previous knowledge of the works and the surrounding country; would, feebly and without system, attempt to defend the lines against Howe’s advance; would serve elsewhere, trusted indeed, but without battle command, and be remembered as a brave soldier and a good citizen, but, as a general officer, unequal to the emergencies of field service.

Pomeroy, brave at Bunker Hill, realizing the responsibilities attending the consolidation of the army for active campaign duty, would decline the proffered commission.

Montgomery, would accompany Schuyler to Canada, full of high hope, and yet discover in the assembled militia such utter want of discipline and preparation to meet British veterans, as to withhold his resignation only when his Commander-in-Chief pleaded his own greater disappointments before Cambridge.

The perspective-glass will catch its final glimpse of Montgomery, when, after the last bold dash of his life, under the walls of Quebec, his body is borne to the grave and buried with military honors, by his old comrade in arms, Sir Guy Carleton, the British general in command.

Wooster, then sixty-four years of age, would join Montgomery at Montreal; waive his Connecticut rank; serve under his gallant leader; be recalled from service because unequal to the duties of active command; would prove faithful and noble wherever he served, and fall, defending the soil of his native State from Tryon’s invasion, in 1777.

Heath, would supplement his service on the Massachusetts Committee of Safety by efficient duty at New York, White Plains, and along the Hudson, ever true as patriot and soldier; but fail to realize in active service that discipline of men and that perception of the value of campaign experience which had prompted his literary efforts before he faced an enemy in battle.

Spencer, would discharge many trusts early in the war, with fidelity, but without signal ability or success, and transfer his sphere of patriotic duty to the halls of Congress.

Thomas, would prove efficient in the siege of Boston, and serve in Canada.

Sullivan, would also enter Canada; become a prisoner of war at Long Island; be with Washington at White Plains; succeed to the command of Lee’s division after the capture of that officer; distinguish himself at Trenton; serve at Brandywine; do gallant service at Germantown; attempt the capture of Staten Island and of Newport; chastise the Indians of New York, and resign, to take a seat in Congress.

Greene, would attend his chief in the siege of Boston; fortify Brooklyn Heights; engage in operations about Forts Washington and Lee; take part in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Newport, and Springfield; would then succeed Gates at the south, fight the battles of Guilford Court-House, Hobkirk Hill, and Eutaw Springs, and close his life in Georgia, the adopted home of his declining years.

But, during the midsummer of 1775, the beleaguered City of Boston, astounded by the stolid and bloody resistance to its guardian garrison, began to measure the cost of loyalty to the King, in preference to loyalty to country and duty; while the enclosed patriots began to assure themselves that deliverance was drawing near. Burgoyne, after watching the battle from Copp’s Hill, in writing to England of this “great catastrophe,” prepared the Crown for that large demand for troops upon which he afterwards conditioned his acceptance of a command in America.

The days of waiting for a distinct battle-issue had been fulfilled. The days of waiting for the consolidation of the armies about Boston, under one competent guide and master, also passed. Washington had left Philadelphia and was journeying toward Cambridge.

WASHINGTON AT FOUR PERIODS OF HIS MILITARY CAREER.
[Etching from H. H. Hall’s Sons’ engraving.]

CHAPTER V.
WASHINGTON IN COMMAND.

On the twenty-first day of June, 1775, Washington left Philadelphia for Boston, and on the third day of July assumed command of the Continental Army of America, with headquarters at Cambridge.

At this point one is instinctively prompted to peer into the closed tent of the Commander-in-Chief and observe his modest, but wholly self-reliant attitude toward the grave questions that are to be settled, in determining whether the future destiny of America is to be that of liberty, or abject submission to the Crown.

For fully two months the yeomanry of New England had firmly grasped all approaches to the City of Boston. This pressure was now and then resisted by efforts of the garrison to secure supplies from the surrounding country farms; which only induced a tighter hold, and aroused a stubborn purpose to crowd that garrison to surrender, or escape by sea. The islands of the beautiful bay and of the Nantasket roadstead had become miniature fields of daily conflict; and persistent efforts to procure bullocks, flour, and other needed provisions, through the boats of the British fleet, only developed a counter system of boat operations which neutralized the former, and gradually restricted the country excursions of the troops within the city to the range of their guns.

And yet the beleaguering force had fluctuated every day, so that but few of the hastily improvised regiments maintained either identity of persons, or permanent numbers. Exchanges were frequent between those on duty and others at their homes. The sudden summons from so many and varied industrial pursuits and callings was like the unorganized rush of men at an alarm of fire, quickened by the conviction that some wide, sweeping, and common danger was to be withstood, or some devouring element to be mastered. The very independence of opinion and sense of oppression which began to assert a claim to absolutely independent nationality, became impatient of all restraint, until military control, however vital to organized success, had become tiresome, offensive, and sharply contested. Offices also, as in more modern times, had been conferred upon those who secured enlistments, and too often without regard to character or signal merit; while the familiarities of former neighborhood friends and acquaintances ill-fitted them to bear rigid control by those who had been, only just before, companions on a common level.

Jealousies and aspirations mingled with the claims of families left at home, and many local excitements attended the efforts of officers of the Crown to discharge their most simple duties. After the flash of Lexington and its hot heat had faded out, it was dull work to stand guard by day, lie upon the ground at night, live a life of half lazy routine, receive unequal and indifferent food, and wonder, between meals, when and how the whole affair would end. The capture of Ticonderoga, so easily affected, inclined many to regard the contest before Boston as a matter of simple, persistent pressure, with no provident conception of the vast range of conflict involved in this defiance of the British Crown, in which all Colonies must pass under the rolling chariot of war.

And yet, all these elements were not sufficiently relaxing to permit the enclosed garrison to go free. While thousands of the Minute Men were apparently listless, and taking the daily drudgery as a matter-of-course experience, not to be helped or be rid of,—there were many strong-willed men among them who held settled and controlling convictions, so that even the raw militia were generally under wise guardianship. Leading scholars and professional men, as well as ministers of the Gospel and teachers of the district schools, united their influence with that of some well-trained soldiers, to keep the force in the field at a comparatively even strength of numbers. The idle were gradually set to work, and occupation began to lighten the strain of camp life.

At the date of Washington’s arrival to take command, there was a practical suspension of military operations over the country at large; and this condition of affairs, together with the large display of Colonial force about Boston, gave the other Colonies opportunity to prepare for war, and for Washington to develop his army and test both officers and men.

In his tent at Cambridge, he opened the packages intrusted to his care by Congress, and examined the commissions of the officers who were to share his councils and execute his will. His own commission gave him all needed authority, and pledged the united Colonies to his hearty support. Confidence in his patriotism, his wisdom, and his military capacity was generous and complete. He represented Congress. He represented America. For a short time he withheld the delivery of a few of the commissions. Some officers, hastily commissioned, although formerly in military service, had been entirely isolated from opportunities for knowledge of men and of questions of public policy. The emergency required such as were familiar with the vast interests involved in a struggle in arms with Great Britain; men who would heartily submit to that strict discipline which preparation for a contest with the choicest troops of the mother country must involve.

Washington’s constitutional reticence deepened from his first assumption of command. Frederick the Great once declared that “if he suspected that his nightcap would betray his thoughts while he slept, he would burn it.” Washington, like Frederick, and like Grant and Lee, great soldiers of the American Civil War, largely owed his success and supremacy over weak or jealous companions in arms to this subtle power. And this, with Washington, was never a studied actor’s part in the drama of Revolution. It was based upon a devout, reverential, and supreme devotion to country and the right. His moral sense was delicate, and quick to discern the great object of the people’s need and desire. He was also reverential in recognition of an Almighty Father of all mankind, whose Providence he regarded as constant, friendly, and supervising, in all the struggle which America had undertaken for absolute independence. Under this guidance, he learned how to act with judicial discretion upon the advice of his subordinates, and then,—to execute his own sentence. Baron Jomini pronounced Napoleon to have been his own best chief of staff; and such was Washington. Congress discovered as the years slipped by, and jealousies of Washington, competitions for office and for rank, and rivalries of cities, sections, and partisans, endangered the safety of the nation and the vital interests involved in the war, to trust his judgment; and history has vindicated the wisdom of their conclusion. And yet, with all this will-power in reserve, he was patient, tolerant, considerate of the honest convictions of those with contrary opinions; and so assigned officers, or detailed them upon special commissions, that, when not overborne by Congress in the detail of some of its importunate favorites, he succeeded in placing officers where their weaknesses could not prejudice the interests of the country at large, and where their faculties could be most fruitfully utilized.

If the thoughtful reader will for a moment recall the name of some battlefield of the Revolution, or of any prominent military character who was identified with some determining event of that war, he will quickly notice how potentially the foresight of Washington either directed the conditions of success, or wisely compensated the effects of failure.

Washington never counted disappointments as to single acts of men, or the operations of a single command, as determining factors in the supreme matter of final success. The vaulting ambition, headstrong will, and fiery daring of Arnold never lessened an appreciation of his real merits, and he acquired so decided an affection for him, personally, and was so disappointed that Congress did not honor his own request for Arnold’s prompt promotion, at one time, that when his treason was fully revealed, he could only exclaim, with deep emotion, “Whom now can we trust?”

Even the undisguised jealousy of Charles Lee, his cross-purposes, disobedience of orders, abuse of Congress, breaches of confidence, and attempts to warp councils of war adversely to the judgment of the Commander-in-Chief did not forfeit Washington’s recognition of that officer’s general military knowledge and his ordinary wisdom in council.

These considerations fully introduce the Commander-in-Chief to the reader, as he imagines the Soldier to be in his tent with the commissions of subordinate officers before him.

He began his duties with the most minute inspection of the material with which he was expected to carry on a contest with Great Britain. Every company and regiment, their quarters, their arms, ammunition, and food supplies, underwent the closest scrutiny. He accepted excuses for the slovenliness of any command with the explicit warning that repetition of such indifference or neglect would be sternly punished.

The troops had hardly been dismissed, after their first formal parade for inspection, before a set repugnance to all proper instruction in the details of a soldier’s duty became manifest. The old method of fighting Indians singly, through thickets, and in small detachments, each man for himself, was clung to stubbornly, as if the army were composed of individual hunters, who must each “bag his own game.” Guard duty was odious. Superiority by virtue of rank was questioned, denied, or ignored. The abuses of places of trust, especially in the quartermaster and commissary departments, and the prostitution of these responsibilities to private ends were constant. “Profanity, vulgarity, and all the vices of an undisciplined mass became frightful,” as Washington himself described the condition, “so soon as any immediate danger passed by.” To sum up the demoralization of the army, he could only add, “They have been trained to have their own way too long.”

But the good, the faithful, and the pure were hardly less restive under the new restraint, and few appreciated the vital value of some absolutely supreme control. The public moneys and public property were held to belong to everybody, because Congress represented everybody. Commands were considered despotic orders, and exact details were but another system of slavery.

Nor was this the whole truth. Even officers of high position, whether graded above or below their own expectations, found time to indulge in petty neglect of plain instructions, and in turn to usurp authority, in defiance of discipline and the paramount interests of the people at large.

The inspection of the Commander-in-Chief had been made. Immediately, the troops were put to work perfecting earthworks, building redoubts, and policing camp. “Observance of the Sabbath” was enforced. Officers were court-martialed, and soldiers were tried, for “swearing, gambling, fraud, and lewdness.” A thorough system of guard and picket duty was established, and the nights were made subservient to rest, in the place of dissipation and revelry. Discipline was the first indication that a Soldier was in command.

These statements, which are brief extracts from his published Orders, fall far below a just review of the situation as given by Washington himself. From some of his reports to Congress it would seem as if, for a moment, he almost despaired of bringing the army to a condition when he might confidently take it into an open field, and place it, face to face, against any well-appointed force of even inferior numbers. That he was enabled so to discipline an army that, as at Brandywine, they willingly marched to meet a British and Hessian force one-half greater than his own in numbers, became a complete justification of the patience and wise persistence with which he handled the raw troops in camp about Cambridge, in the year 1775.

His next care was “the practical art of bringing the army fully equipped to the battlefield,” known as the “Logistics of War.” The army was deficient in every element of supply. The men, who still held their Colonial obligation to be supreme, came and went just as their engagements would permit and the comfort of their families required. Desertion was regarded as nothing, or at the worst but a venial offence, and there were times when the American army about Boston, through nine miles of investment, was less in number than the British garrison within the city.

But the deficiency in the number of the men was not so conspicuous and disappointing as the want of powder, lead, tools, arms, tents, horses, carts, and medical supplies. Ordinary provisions had become abundant. The adjacent country fed them liberally and supplied many home-made luxuries, not always the best nourishment for a soldier’s life; but it was difficult to persuade the same men that all provisions must enter into a general commissariat, and be issued to all alike; and that such stores must be accumulated, and neither expended lavishly nor sold at a bargain so soon as a surplus remained unexpended. Such articles as cordage, iron, horseshoes, lumber, fire-wood, and every possible thing which might be required for field, garrison, or frontier service, were included in his inventory of essential supplies.

In his personal expenditures of the most trivial item of public property, Washington kept a minute and exact account. Of the single article of powder, he once stated that his chief supply was furnished by the enemy, for, during one period, the armed vessels with which he patrolled the coast captured more powder than Congress had been able to furnish him in several months.

Delay in securing such essential supplies increased the difficulty of bringing the troops themselves to a full recognition of their military needs and responsibilities, so that the grumbling query, “What’s the use of copying the red-coats’ fuss and training?” still pervaded camp. Plain men from the country who had watched the martinet exactness of British drills in the city, where there was so much of ornament and “style,” had no taste for like subjection to control over their personal bearing and wardrobe. A single order of General Howe to the Boston garrison illustrates what the Yankees termed the “red-coats’ fuss.” He issued an order, reprimanding soldiers “whose hair was not smooth but badly powdered; who had no frills to their shirts; whose leggings hung in a slovenly manner about their knees, and other soldierly neglects, which must be immediately remedied.” This seemed to the American soldier more like some “nursing process;” and while right, on general principles, was not the chief requirement for good fighting zeal.

For many weeks it had been the chief concern of the American Commander-in-Chief how to make a fair show of military preparation, while all things were in such extreme confusion. Washington, as well as Howe, had his fixed ideas of military discipline, and he, also, issued orders respecting the habits, personal bearing, and neatness of the men; closing on one occasion, thus emphatically: “Cards and games of chance are prohibited. At this time of public distress, men may find enough to do in the service of their God and country, without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.” In anticipation of active service, and to rebuke the freedom with which individuals inclined to follow their own bent of purpose, he promulgated the following ringing caution:

“It may not be amiss for the troops to know, that if any man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without the orders of his commanding officer, he will be instantly shot down as an example of cowardice; cowards having too frequently disconcerted the best troops by their dastardly behavior.”

Amid all this stern preparation for the battlefield and its incidents, the most careful attention was given to the comfort and personal well-being of the privates in the ranks. While obedience was required of all, of whatever grade or rank, the cursing or other abuse of the soldier was considered an outrage upon his rights as a citizen, and these met his most scorching denunciation and punishment.

A Soldier was in command of the Continental Army of America.

CHAPTER VI.
BRITISH CANADA ENTERS THE FIELD OF ACTION.

The Continental Army about Boston was largely composed of New England troops. This was inevitable until the action of Congress could be realized by reënforcements from other Colonies. The experience of nearly all veteran soldiers in the Cambridge camps had been gained by service in Canada or upon its borders. British garrisons at Halifax, Quebec, and Montreal, as well as at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and St. John’s, offered an opportunity for British aggression from the north. The seizure of the nearer posts, last named, temporarily checked such aggressions, but seemed to require adequate garrisons, and a watchful armed outlook across the border.

There had been very early urged upon the Massachusetts Committee of Safety more extensive operations into Canada, especially as the “Canadian Acts of Parliament” had become nearly as offensive to Canadians as other Acts which had alienated the American Colonies from respect for the common “Mother Country.” The Canadian Acts, however, had not been pressed to armed resistance; and differences of race, language, and religious forms were not conducive to those neighborly relations which would admit of combined action, even in emergencies common to both sections. But the initiative of a general movement into Canada had been taken, and Congress precipitated the first advance, before Washington became Commander-in-Chief. In order to appreciate the action of Washington when he became more directly responsible for the success of these detachments from his army, for service in Canada, they must be noticed.

The adventurous spirit of Arnold prompted the suggestion that the conquest of Canada would bring disaster to Great Britain and fend off attacks upon the other Colonies. He once traded with its people, was familiar with Quebec, and after his adventure at Crown Point, in June, had written from that place to the Continental Congress that Gen. Sir Guy Carleton’s force in Canada was less than six hundred men, promising to guarantee the conquest of Canada if he were granted the command of two thousand men for that purpose. On the second day of June, Ethan Allen, who had anticipated Arnold in the capture of Ticonderoga, had made a similar proposition to the Provincial Congress of New York. Both Allen and Seth Warner had visited Congress, and requested authority to raise new regiments. Authority was not given, but a recommendation was forwarded to the New York Provincial Congress, that the “Green Mountain Boys” should be recognized as regular forces, and be granted the privilege of electing their own officers.

It is of interest in this connection to notice the fact that when Arnold, in his first dash up Lake Champlain, found that Warner had anticipated his projected capture of Crown Point, as Allen had that of Ticonderoga, he was greatly offended, usurped command of that post and of a few vessels which he styled his “Navy,” and upon finding that his assumption of authority was neither sanctioned by Massachusetts nor Connecticut, discharged his force and returned to Cambridge in anger. This same navy, however, chiefly constructed under his skilful and energetic direction, won several brilliant successes and certainly postponed movements from Canada southward, for many months.

Eventually a formal expedition was authorized against Montreal, and Generals Schuyler and Montgomery were assigned to its command. This force, consisting of three thousand men, was ordered to rendezvous during the month of August at Ticonderoga, where Allen and Warner also joined it.

During the same month a committee from Congress visited Washington at Cambridge, and persuaded him to send a second army to Canada, via the Kennebec river, to capture Quebec. Existing conditions seemed to warrant these demonstrations which, under other circumstances, might have proved fatal to success at Boston. The theory upon which Washington concurred in the action of Congress is worthy of notice, in estimating his character as a soldier. He understood that the suddenness of the resistance at Lexington, and the comparatively “drawn game” between the patriots and British regulars at Breed’s Hill, would involve on the part of the British government much time and great outlay of money, in order to send to America an adequate force for aggressive action upon any extended scale; and that the control of New York and the southern coast cities must be of vastly more importance than to harass the scattered settlements adjoining Canada. Inasmuch, however, as New York and New England seemed to stake the safety of their northern frontier upon operations northward, while Quebec and Montreal were almost destitute of regular troops, and the season of the year would prevent British reënforcements by sea, it might prove to be the best opportunity to test the sentiment of the Canadian people themselves as to their readiness to make common cause against the Crown. If reported professions could be realized, the north would be permanently protected.

Taking into account that General Carleton would never anticipate an advance upon Quebec, but concentrate his small force at Montreal, with view to the ultimate recapture of St. John’s, Crown Point, and Ticonderoga, and estimating, from advices received, that Carleton’s forces numbered not to exceed eight hundred regulars and as many Provincials, he regarded the detail of three thousand men as sufficient for the capture of Montreal. This estimate was a correct one. Its occupation was also deemed practicable and wise, because it was so near the mouth of Sorel River and Lake Champlain as to be readily supported, so long as the British army was not substantially reënforced along the Atlantic coast.

There was one additional consideration that practically decided the action of Washington. The mere capture of Montreal, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence river, and so easily approached by water from Quebec, would be of no permanent value so long as Quebec retained its place as the almost impregnable rendezvous of British troops and fleets. This view of the recommendation of Congress was deemed conclusive; provided, that the movement against Quebec could be immediate, sudden, by surprise, and involve no siege. Under the assumption that Congress had been rightly advised of the British forces in Canada, and of the sentiments of the Canadians themselves, the expedition had promise of success.

There was a variance of religious form and religious faith which did not attract all the New England soldiers in behalf of Canadian independence. This was sufficiently observed by Washington’s keen insight into human nature to call forth the following order, which placed the Canadian expeditions upon a very lofty basis. The extract is as follows: “As the Commander-in-Chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common-sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this juncture, at a time when we are soliciting, and have really obtained the friendship and alliance of Canada, whom we ought to consider as brethren embarked in the same cause—the defence of the general liberty of America.... At such a juncture, and in such circumstances, to be insulting their religion is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused; indeed, instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to those our brethren, as to them we are so much indebted for every late happy success over the common enemy in Canada.”

Washington, however, hinged his chief objection to these distant enterprises, which he habitually opposed throughout the war, upon the pressing demand for the immediate capture of Boston, and an immediate transfer of the Headquarters of the Army to New York, where, and where only, the Colonies could be brought into close relation for the organization and distribution of an army adequate to carry on war, generally, wherever along the Atlantic coast the British might land troops.

As early as June, Congress had disclaimed any purpose to operate against Canada, and Bancroft says that the invasion was not determined upon until the Proclamation of Martial Law by the British Governor, his denunciation of the American borderers, and the incitement of savages to raids against New York and New England had made the invasion an act of self-defence. But there had been no such combination of hostile acts when these expeditions were planned, and Mr. Bancroft must have associated those events with the employment of Indian allies during the subsequent Burgoyne campaign of 1777.

The details of the two contemporary expeditions to Canada are only sufficiently outlined to develop the relations of the Commander-in-Chief to their prosecution, and to introduce to the reader certain officers who subsequently came more directly under Washington’s personal command. The substantial failure of each, except that it developed some of the best officers of the war, is accepted as history. But it is no less true that when Great Britain made Canada the base of Burgoyne’s invasion, his feeble support by the Canadians themselves proved a material factor in his ultimate disaster. He was practically starved to surrender for want of adequate support in men and provisions, from his only natural base of supply.

It is sufficient, at present, to notice the departure of the two expeditions, that of Schuyler and Montgomery, assembling at Ticonderoga, August 20, and that of Arnold, consisting of eleven hundred men, without artillery, which left Cambridge on the seventeenth day of September and landed at Gardiner, Me., on the twentieth. Several companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania and Virginia which had reported for duty were assigned to Arnold’s command. Among the officers were Daniel Morgan and Christopher Greene. Aaron Burr, then but nineteen years of age, accompanied this expedition.

As the summer of 1775 drew near its close, and the temporary excitement of Arnold’s departure restored the routine of camp life and the passive watching of a beleaguered city, the large number of “Six Months” men, whose term of enlistment was soon to expire, became listless and indifferent to duty. Washington, without official rebuke of this growing negligence, forestalled its further development by redoubling his efforts to place the works about Boston in a complete condition of defence. None were exempt from the scope of his orders. Ploughed Hill and Cobble Hill were fortified, and the works at Lechmere Point were strengthened. (See map, “Boston and Vicinity.”) Demonstrations were made daily in order to entice the garrison to sorties upon the investing lines. But the British troops made no hostile demonstrations, and in a very short time the American redoubts were sufficiently established to resist the attack of the entire British army.

A Council of War was summoned to meet at Washington’s headquarters to consider his proposition that an assault be made upon the city, and that it be burned, if that seemed to be a military necessity. Lee opposed the movement, as impossible of execution, in view of the character of the British troops whom the militia would be compelled to meet in close battle. The Council of War concurred in his motion to postpone the proposition of the Commander-in-Chief. Lee’s want of confidence in the American troops, then for the first time officially stated, had its temporary influence; but, ever after, through his entire career until its ignominious close, he opposed every opportunity for battle, on the same pretence. The only exception was his encouragement to the resistance of Moultrie at Charleston, against the British fleet, during June, 1776, although he was not a participant in that battle.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the sea-coast towns of New England began to be anxious as to their own safety. A British armed transport cannonaded Stonington, and other vessels threatened New London and Norwich. All of these towns implored Washington to send them troops. Governor Jonathan Trumbull, of Connecticut (the original “Brother Jonathan”), whose extraordinary comprehension of the military as well as the civil issues of the times made him then, and ever, a reliable and constant friend of Washington, consulted the Commander-in-Chief as to these depredations, and acquiesced in his judgment as final.

Washington wrote thus: “The most important operations of the campaign cannot be made to depend upon the piratical expeditions of two or three men-of-war privateers.” This significant rejoinder illustrated the proposition to burn Boston, and was characteristic of Washington’s policy respecting other local raids and endangered cities. It is in harmony with the purpose of this narrative to emphasize this incident. Napoleon in his victorious campaign against Austria refused to occupy Vienna with his army, and counted the acquisition of towns and cities as demoralizing to troops, besides enforcing detachments from his fighting force simply to hold dead property. Washington ignored the safety of Philadelphia, the Colonial capital, repeatedly, claiming that to hold his army compactly together, ready for the field, was the one chief essential to ultimate victory. Even the later invasions of Virginia and Connecticut, and the erratic excursions of Simcoe and other royalist leaders into Westchester County, New York, and the country about Philadelphia, did not bend his deliberate purpose to cast upon local communities a fair share of their own defence. In more than one instance he announced to the people that these local incursions only brought reproach upon the perpetrators, and embittered the Colonists more intensely against the invader.

CHAPTER VII.
HOWE SUCCEEDS GAGE.—CLOSING SCENES OF 1775.

As the siege of Boston advanced without decisive result, orders from England suddenly relieved Gage from command, and assigned General Sir William Howe as his successor. That officer promulgated a characteristic order “assuming command over all the Atlantic Colonies from Nova Scotia to the West Indies.” He made his advent thus public, and equally notorious. Offensive proclamations, bad in policy, fruitless for good, and involving the immediate crushing out of all sympathy from those who were still loyal to the Crown, were the types of his character, both as governor and soldier. He threatened with military execution any who might leave the city without his consent, and enjoined upon all citizens, irrespective of personal opinion, to “arm for the defence of Boston.”

This action imposed upon Washington the issue of a reciprocal order against “all who were suffered to stalk at large, doing all the mischief in their power.” Hence, between the two orders, it happened that the royalists in the city had no opportunity to visit their friends and see to their own property outside the British lines, and the royalists of the country who sought to smuggle themselves between the lines, to communicate with those in the city, were compelled to remain outside the American lines, or be shot as “spies.”

Up to this time, the British officers and neutral citizens had not been interfered with in the prosecution of their business or social engagements; and the operations of the siege had been mainly those of silencing British action and wearing out the garrison by constant surveillance and provocations to a fight.

Supplies became more and more scarce within the British lines. Acting under the peremptory orders of General Howe, Admiral Graves resolved to make his small fleet more effective, and under rigid instructions to “burn all towns and cities that fitted out or sheltered privateers,” Lieutenant Mowatt began his work of desolation by the destruction of Falmouth, now Portland, Me.

In contrast with this proceeding was the action of Washington. When an American privateer, which had been sent by him to the St. Lawrence river, to cut off two brigantines which had left England with supplies for Quebec, exceeded instructions, and plundered St. John’s Island, he promptly sent back the citizen-prisoners, restored their private effects, and denounced the action of the officer in command and his crew, as “a violation of the principles of civilized warfare.”

Crowded by these immediate demands upon his resources, and equally confident that there soon would be neither army, nor supplies, adequate for the emergency, Washington made an independent appeal to Congress, covering the entire ground of his complaint, and stating his absolute requirements. He wanted money. He demanded a thoroughly organized commissariat, and a permanent artillery establishment. He asked for more adequate control of all troops, from whatever Colony they might come; a longer term of enlistment; enlargement of the Rules and Articles of War, and power to enforce his own will. He also demanded a separate organization of the navy, in place of scattered, irresponsible privateers, and that it be placed upon a sound footing, as to both men and vessels.

Congress acted promptly upon these suggestions. On the fourth of October, a committee, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch, and Benjamin Harrison, started for Washington’s headquarters with three hundred thousand dollars in Continental money, and after a patient consideration of his views, advised the adoption of all his recommendations.

A council of all the New England Governors was also called to meet this committee. As the result of the conference a new organization of the army was determined upon, fixing the force to be employed about Boston at twenty-three thousand three hundred and seventy-two officers and men. Washington also submitted to this committee his plan for attacking Boston. It was approved; and soon after, Congress authorized him to burn the city if he should deem that necessary in the prosecution of his designs against the British army. In all subsequent military operations the same principle of strategic action was controlling and absolute with him.

On the thirteenth day of October, Congress authorized the building of two small cruisers, and on the thirtieth, two additional vessels, of small tonnage. A naval committee was also appointed, consisting of Silas Dean, John Langdon, Joseph Hewes, Richard Henry Lee, and John Adams. On the twenty-eighth of November, a naval code was adopted; and on the thirteenth of December, the construction of thirteen frigates was authorized. Among the officers commissioned, were Nicholas Biddle as captain and John Paul Jones as lieutenant. Thus the American Navy was fully established.[^[1]]

[1]. See Appendix, “American Navy.”

On the twenty-ninth day of November, Captain John Manly, who was the most prominent officer of this improvised navy, captured a British store-ship, containing a large mortar, several brass cannon, two thousand muskets, one hundred thousand flints, eleven mortar-beds, thirty thousand shot, and all necessary implements for artillery and intrenching service.

As the year drew to its close, the British levelled all their advanced works on Charlestown Neck, and concentrated their right wing in a strong redoubt on Bunker Hill, while their left wing at Boston Neck was more thoroughly fortified against attack.

Congress now intimated to Washington that it might be well to attack the city upon the first favorable occasion, before the arrival of reënforcements from Great Britain. The laconic reply of the Commander-in-Chief was, that he “must keep his powder for closer work than cannon distance.”

On the nineteenth of November, Henry Knox was commissioned as Colonel, vice Gridley, too old for active service. Two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, and twelve companies of artillery were authorized, and thus the American regular Artillery, as well as the navy, was put upon a substantial basis, with Knox as Chief of Artillery.

The closing months of 1775 also developed the progress of the expeditions for the conquest of Canada. The reënforcements required for the actual rescue of the detached forces from destruction, increased the burdens of the Commander-in-Chief. This period of Washington’s military responsibility cannot be rightly judged from the general opinion that Montgomery’s nominal force of three thousand men represented an effective army of that strength: in fact, it was less than half that number.

Montgomery reached Ticonderoga on the seventeenth of August. Schuyler, then negotiating a treaty with the Six Nations, at Albany, received a despatch from Washington, “Not a moment of time is to be lost,” and at once joined Montgomery. They pushed for the capture of St. John’s, under the spur of Washington’s warning; but on the sixth of September and again on the tenth, were compelled to suspend operations for want of artillery, having at the time a force of but one thousand men present, instead of the three thousand promised. Schuyler’s ill-health compelled him to return to Ticonderoga; but with infinite industry, system, and courage he was able to forward additional troops, increasing Montgomery’s force to two thousand men.

Ethan Allen, who had been succeeded in command of the “Green Mountain Boys” by Seth Warner, was across the line, endeavoring to recruit a regiment of Canadians. After partial success, regardless of order, he dashed forward, hoping to capture Montreal, as he had captured Ticonderoga. He was captured, and sent to England to be tried on the charge of treason. In a letter to Schuyler, Washington thus notices the event:

“Colonel Allen’s misfortune will, I hope, teach a lesson of prudence and subordination in others who may be too ambitious to outshine their general officer, and regardless of order and duty, rush into enterprises which have unfavorable effects on the public, and are destructive to themselves.”

On the third of November, after a siege of fifty days, St. John’s was captured, with one hundred Canadians and nearly five hundred British regulars, more than half the force in Canada. John André was among the number. General Carleton, who attempted to cross the St. Lawrence river, and come to the aid of St. John’s, was thrust back by the “Green Mountain Boys” and a part of the 2d New York Regiment.

The treatment of prisoners illustrates the condition of this army. It was not a part of the Cambridge army, as was Arnold’s, but the contributions promised largely by New York, and directly forwarded by Congress. One regiment mutinied because Montgomery allowed the prisoners to retain their extra suit of clothing, instead of treating it as plunder. Schuyler’s and Montgomery’s Orderly Books and letters show that even officers refused to take clothing and food to suffering prisoners until peremptorily forced to do it. Washington was constantly advised of the existing conditions; and when both Schuyler and Montgomery regarded the prosecution of their expeditions as hopeless, with such troops, and proposed to resign, the Commander-in-Chief thus feelingly, almost tenderly, wrote: “God knows there is not a difficulty you both complain of which I have not in an eminent degree experienced; that I am not, every day, experiencing; but we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish. Let me therefore conjure you both, to lay aside such thoughts; thoughts injurious to yourselves, and extremely so to your country, which calls aloud for gentlemen of your abilities.”

On the twelfth of November, Montgomery reached the open city of Montreal; and the larger of the two Canadian expeditions reached its proposed destination. But before the month of November closed, the American force “wasted away,” until only about eight hundred men remained. Expiration of enlistments was at hand. Men refused to re-enlist. Even the “Green Mountain Boys” returned home. This was not the total loss to Montgomery. Officers and men were all alike fractious, dictatorial, and self-willed. They claimed the right to do just as they pleased, and to obey such orders only as their judgment approved. General Carleton escaped from the city in disguise, and reached Quebec on the nineteenth. There was no possibility of following him; and the work laid but for Montgomery, had been done, although at great cost and delay.

Prof. Charles G. D. Roberts, of King’s College, Nova Scotia, in his “History of Canada” (1897),[^[2]] uses this language: “General Carleton fled in disguise to Quebec, narrowly escaping capture, and there made ready for his last stand. In Quebec he weeded out all those citizens who sympathized with the rebels, expelling them from the city. With sixteen hundred men at his back, a small force indeed, but to be trusted, he awaited the struggle.”

[2]. Lamson, Wolfe & Co., Publishers, Boston.

Meanwhile Arnold, after unexampled sufferings and equal heroism, had reached Point Levi, opposite Quebec, on the ninth of November, only to find that the garrison had been strengthened, and that he was stranded, in the midst of a severe winter, upon an inhospitable, barren bluff. The strongest fortress in America, defended by two hundred heavy cannon, and the capture of which had been the inspiration of his adventurous campaign, was in full sight. Every condition which Washington had declared to be essential to success had failed of realization. On the fifth of October Washington wrote to Schuyler: “If Carleton is not driven from St. John’s, so as to be obliged to throw himself into Quebec, it must fall into our hands, as it is left without a regular soldier, as the captain of a brig from Quebec to Boston says. Many of the inhabitants are most favorably disposed to the American cause, and that there is there the largest stock of ammunition ever collected in America.” On the same day he also writes “Arnold expected to reach Quebec in twenty days from September twenty-sixth, and that Montgomery must keep up such appearances as to fix Carleton, and prevent the force in Canada from being turned on Arnold; but if penetration into Canada be given up, Arnold must also know it, in time for retreat.” And again: “This detachment (Arnold’s) was to take possession of Quebec, if possible; but at any rate, to make a diversion in favor of Schuyler.”

But Arnold, on the sixteenth day of October, when, as he advised Washington, he expected to advance upon Quebec, was struggling with quagmires, swamps, fallen trees, rain and mud, snow and ice, about Deer river, and had not even reached Lake Megantic. Men waded in icy water to their armpits; some froze to death: others deserted. Enos, short of provisions, as he claimed, marched three hundred men back to Cambridge. And Arnold, himself, twenty-five days too late, stood upon Point Levi, in the midst of a furious tempest of wind, rain, and sleet, only to realize the substantial failure of his vaunted expedition. Most of his muskets were ruined, and but five rounds of ammunition remained for the few men that were with him in this hour of starvation and distress. Two vessels-of-war lay at anchor in the stream. And yet, such was his indomitable energy, with thirty birch-bark canoes he crossed the river, gained a position on the Heights of Abraham, and sent to the fortress an unnoticed demand for surrender. Then, retiring to Point Aux Trembles, he sent a messenger to Montgomery asking for artillery and two thousand men, for prosecution of a siege. Montgomery, leaving in command General Wooster, who arrived at Montreal late in November, started down the river with about three hundred men and a few pieces of artillery, and clothing for Arnold’s men; landing at Point Aux Trembles about December first, making the total American force only one thousand men. On the sixth day of December, a demand for surrender having been again unanswered, the little army advanced to its fate. Four assaulting columns were organized. All failed, and Montgomery fell in a gallant but desperate attempt to storm the citadel itself. Morgan and four hundred and twenty-six men, nearly half of the entire command, were taken prisoners. Only the grand nerve of Montgomery brought the army to the assault in this forlorn-hope affair,—for such it was. Three of Arnold’s captains refused to serve under him any longer; and mutiny, or the entire ruin of the army, was the alternative to the risks of ruin in battle. Arnold had a knee shattered by a bullet, and the remnants of the army fell back, harmless, to the garrison, and amid snow, ice, and proximate starvation, awaited future events.

The treatment of the prisoners by General Carleton, and the burial, with honors of war, of his old comrade under Wolfe, the brave Montgomery, savors of the knightly chivalry of mediæval times. When his officers protested at such treatment of rebels, his response, lofty in tone and magnanimous in action, was simply this: “Since we have in vain tried to make them acknowledge us as brothers, let us at least send them away disposed to regard us as cousins.”

Almost at the same hour of the day when Carleton passed through Point Aux Trembles, on his escape to Quebec, Washington having heard of Montgomery’s arrival at Montreal, was writing to Congress, as follows: “It is likely that General Carleton will, with what force he can collect after the surrender of the rest of Canada, throw himself into Quebec, and there make his last effort.”

With Arnold three miles from Quebec, intrenched as well as he was able to intrench, confining his operations to cutting off supplies to the city and keeping his five hundred survivors from starving or freezing, and Carleton preparing for reënforcements as soon as the ice might break up in the spring, the invasion of Canada for conquest came to a dead halt. The invasion of the American Colonies was to follow its final failure.

There were heroes who bore part in those expeditions, and their experience was to crown many of Washington’s later campaigns with the honors of victory. Meanwhile, about Boston, enlistments were rapidly expiring, to be again replaced with fresh material for the master’s handling into army shape and use; and the American Commander-in-Chief was beginning to illustrate his qualities as Soldier.

CHAPTER VIII.
AMERICA AGAINST BRITAIN.—BOSTON TAKEN.

On the thirty-first day of December, 1775, Admiral Shuldham reached Boston with reënforcements for its garrison, and relieved Admiral Graves in command of all British naval forces. The troops within the lines were held under the most rigid discipline, although amusements were provided to while away the idle hours of a passive defence.

The winter was memorable for its mildness, so that the American troops, encamped about the city in tents, did not suffer; but the in-gathering of recruits, to replace soldiers whose enlistments had just expired, involved the actual creation of a new army, directly in the face of a powerful, well-equipped, and watchful adversary. And yet, this very adversary must be driven from Boston before the American patriot army could move elsewhere, and engage actively against the combined armies and navy of the British crown.

Indications of increasing hostilities on the part of royal governors of the South were not wanting to stimulate the prosecution of the siege to its most speedy consummation; and although unknown to Washington at the time, the city of Norfolk, Va., had been bombarded on New Year’s day by order of Lord Dunmore.

Impressed by the urgency of the crisis, Washington, on the same day, was writing to Congress in plain terms, as follows, leaving the last word blank, lest it might miscarry: “It is not, perhaps, in the power of history to furnish a case like ours; to maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy, within that distance of twenty, old British regiments without——”

General Greene kept his small army well in hand, watchful of the minutest detail, inspecting daily each detachment, as well as all supplies of ammunition and food; and on the fourth of January, writing from Prospect Hill (see map of Boston and Vicinity), thus reported his exact position to the Commander-in-Chief: “The night after the old troops went off, I could not have mustered seven hundred men, notwithstanding the returns of the new enlisted men amounted to nineteen hundred and upwards. I am strong enough to defend myself against all the force in Boston. Our situation has been critical. Had the enemy been acquainted with our situation, I cannot pretend to say what might have been the consequences.”

The reader will appreciate at a glance the real opinion of the American Commander-in-Chief as to his own immediate future, and the general scope of operations which he regarded as supremely important in behalf of American Independence. He understood thoroughly, that Lord Dartmouth originally opposed the military occupation of Boston in order to prevent a collision between British troops and the excited people, which he regarded as an inevitable result. That distinguished and far-sighted statesman, in order to prevent any overt acts of resistance to the established representatives of the crown at business or social centres, wrote to Lord Howe as early as October 22, 1775, to “gain possession of some respectable port to the southward, from which to make sudden and unexpected attacks upon sea-coast towns during the winter.” But British pride had forced the increase of the army in Massachusetts Colony, and initiated a disastrous campaign. Lord Dartmouth never wavered in the opinion that New York was the only proper base of operations in dealing with the Colonies at large. Lord Howe himself had advised that New York, instead of Boston, should be made the rendezvous and headquarters of all British troops to be sent to America. Only the contumacy of General Gage had baffled the wiser plans of superior authority.

During the first week of the new year, and while the American army was under the stress of reconstruction, Washington learned that General Clinton had been promised an independent command of a portion of the fresh troops which accompanied Admiral Shuldham to America, and would be detailed on some important detached service remote from New England waters. As a remarkable fact, not creditable to the king’s advisers, the Island of New York, at that time, was practically without any regular military garrison; but its aristocratic tory circles of influence could not conceive of a popular uprising against the supremacy of George III. within their favored sphere of luxury and independence.