CHAPTER XIII.

INDEPENDENCE.

SHILINGS-VI-PENCE

WAS

WASHINGTON received his commission from Congress three days after the battle on Breed's Hill. The spirit with which he entered upon the responsible duties of commander-in-chief may be learned from his correspondence. To his wife he wrote that he had endeavored to avoid the appointment, from a sense that the duties were beyond his capacity, but that he entered upon them relying confidently upon that ProviBRITISH STAMPS dence which had hitherto preserved him. This spirit he carried through the war.

(for the Amer

ican market.)

On the twenty-third of June, accompanied by a brilliant mounted escort, Washington left Philadelphia to assume command of the army. He was accompanied by two of the four Major-Generals just appointed by Congress, Charles Lee, an officer of uneven temper, who had returned from Europe the previous year, and Philip Schuyler, a man of great zeal for the cause and of high social connections in New York. Two or three hours out of the city they were met by a courier

bearing the news of the battle of Bunker Hill, and Washington eagerly inquired as to the behavior of the militia-men on the occasion. The response satisfied him that the country was safe. The slow journey gave the three officers a good opportunity to discuss the state of affairs, and their time was mostly given up to such a council as was needed by men who had just been chosen to prosecute a war. On the twenty

fifth, the party arrived at Newark, where a committee

of the Provincial Congress appeared to act as escort to New York. They reached that city in the afternoon, and the inhabitants turned out with every attestation of joy, to greet the new com

English Governor, Tyron, had been absent, and returned the

same day,

though at a later hour, and was received with respect by the loyalists; but the people looked upon him with suspicion.

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269

Having placed Schuyler in command in New York, Washington hastened towards Cambridge, with Lee, leaving the city on the twenty-sixth, and arriving at Watertown, where the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was in session, on the second of July. He was greeted with a congratulatory address, as had been the case in New York, and the same day went to Cambridge, where the house of the president of the college had been prepared as his headquarters.* The Commander-in-chief was greeted by thundering of artillery, and the shouts of the multitude. He was in the height of his physical vigor, forty-three years of age, a man of stately person, of elegant and dignified manners, military in his bearing, and, like, all Virginians, perfectly at home in the saddle. Mrs. John Adams wrote, that as she looked on him the lines of Dryden instantly occurred to her :

Mark his majestic fabric! He's a temple
Sacred by birth and built by hands divine;
His soul's the deity that lodges there:
Nor is the pile unworthy of the god.

On the morning of the third of July, Washington, accompanied by General Lee, formally took command of the army, under an elm which is still cherished as a memento of the occasion. The army was drawn up on the Common before him. The soldiers were ill armed. General Nathaniel Greene, commander of the Rhode Island forces, greeted Washington with a soldierly address, and was received immediately into the confidence of the Commander-in-chief.

* This was exchanged after a few weeks, and the house for many years occupied by the poet Longfellow, became headquarters.

Washington found his irregular army stretched out over a territory of some eight or nine miles in extent, holding in restraint the well-disciplined and well-provisioned army of England, which, under Gage, Burgoyne and Howe, occupied Boston, and the shipping in the harbor. The prospect was not cheering, and it became his first duty to acquaint Congress of the

THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

state of affairs, showing the destitution of the soldiers, the need of the appointment without delay, of a quartermaster-general, a commissary-general, and other general officers.

On the Fourth of July, Washington issued an order to the forces, in which he said, that as the Continental Congress had taken all troops into its service,

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they were thenceforth "the troops of the United Provinces of North America; and it is hoped that all distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside, so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole." He added, "The General requires and expects of all officers not engaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine service, to implore the blessings of Heaven upon the means used for our safety and defence."

The ragged condition of the soldiers struck him with force, and he made suggestions towards supplying this want. The number of the troops had been. represented to him as eighteen thousand, but he found but fourteen thousand on the ground. It had been in like manner told him that three hundred barrels of powder had been collected, and he had not been informed that all of it excepting thirty-two barrels had been expended. This startling discovery demanded the most efficient measures for supplying the deficiency. His attention was, in fact, to be almost entirely restricted to the duty of bringing order out of the confusion in which he found affairs, and in strengthening his position. His lack of artillery was to a certain extent supplied in December by the capture of the British brig Nancy, with a complete assortment of stores, among which were two thousand muskets, one hundred thousand flints and thirty thousand round shot, and a little later by the skill of Gen. Henry Knox, who brought from Ticonderoga fifty mortars, cannon and howitzers (dragging them over the Green Mountains by long trains of oxen on sledges.)

Washington was not without other troubles. General Lee did not prove a satisfactory aid. He was unprepossessing in appearance, but was supposed to