This conviction increased the zeal of the patriots, and planted the standard of resistance firmer than before.
At a council of war held on the seventh,Sept. 1776 a majority of officers were in favor of retaining the city; but on the twelfth, another council, with only three dissenting voices (Heath, Spencer, and Clinton), resolved on an evacuation.
The movement was immediately commenced, under the general superintendence of Colonel Glover. The sick were taken to New Jersey, and the public stores were conveyed to Dobbs's Ferry, twenty miles from the city. The main body of the army moved toward Mount Washington and King's Bridge on the thirteenth, accompanied by a large number of Whigs and their families and effects. * A rear-guard of four thousand men, under Putnam, was left in the city, with orders to follow, if necessary, and on the sixteenth Washington made his head-quarters at the deserted mansion of Colonel Roger Morris, ** on the
* Washington made the house ol Robert Murray, on Murray Hill (see page 788), his quarters on the fourteenth, and on the fifteenth he was at Mott's tavern, now the properly of Mr. Penlz, near One hundred and Forty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. It was at Murray's house that Captain Nathan Hale received his secret instructions for the expedition which cost him his life. *
** This elegant mansion is yet standing and unaltered, upon the high bank of the Harlem River, at One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Street, a little below the High Bridge of the Croton Aqueduct. Its situation is one of the most picturesque on the island, commanding a fine view of the Harlem River and village, Long Island Sound, Flushing, and Astoria, with the green fields of Long Island beyond. Below are seen the plains of
* The commissioners immediately afterward issued a proclamation similar in character to the one sent out in July. This proclamation, following the disasters upon Long Island, had great effect, and many timid Americans availed themselves of the supposed advantages of compliance. In the city of New York more than nine hundred persons, by petition to the commissioners, dated sixteenth of October, declared their allegiance to the British government. To counteract this, in a degree, Congress, on the twenty-first, provided an oath of allegiance to the American government.