By the tenth of March, the Americans had fortified Nook’s Hill; and this drove the British from Boston Neck. During that single night, eight hundred shot and shell were thrown into the city from the American lines.
On the seventeenth of March, the British forces, numbering, with the seamen of the fleet, not quite eleven thousand men, embarked in one hundred and twenty transports for Halifax. The conditions of this embarkation without hindrance from the American army had been settled by an agreement on the part of the British authorities that the city should be left intact from fire, or other injury, and that the property of royalists, of whom nearly fifteen hundred accompanied the troops, should be also safe from violation by the incoming garrison. As the last boats left, General Ward occupied the city with a garrison of five thousand troops.
WASHINGTON AT BOSTON.
[From Stuart’s painting.]
Of two hundred and fifty cannon left behind, nearly one-half were serviceable. Other valuable stores, and the capture of several store-vessels which entered the harbor without knowledge of the departure of the British troops, largely swelled the contributions to the American material of war.
The siege of Boston came to an end. New England was free from the presence of British garrisons. The mission of Washington to Massachusetts Colony, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army of America, had fulfilled its purpose.
CHAPTER IX.
SYSTEMATIC WAR WITH BRITAIN BEGUN.
Within twenty-four hours after General Howe embarked his army, the American Commander-in-Chief developed his matured plan to anticipate any design of General Clinton to occupy New York City. The great number of fugitive royalists who accompanied Howe’s fleet and encumbered even the decks of battleships with their personal effects, and the necessity of consulting the wishes of very influential families among their number, were substantial reasons for the selection of Halifax as the destination of the ships. But of still greater importance was the reorganization of his army, and a new supply of munitions of war, in place of those which had been expended, or abandoned on account of the siege of Boston. Time was also required for the preparation and equipment of any new expedition, whether in support of Carleton in Canada, or to move southward.
Washington did not even enter Boston until he started General Heath with five regiments and part of the artillery for New York. On the twentieth the Commander-in-Chief entered the city.
The British fleet was weatherbound in Nantasket Roads for ten days; but on the twenty-seventh day of March, when it finally went to sea, the entire American army, with the exception of the Boston garrison, was placed under orders to follow the advance division. General Sullivan marched the same day upon which he received orders; another division marched April 3d, and on the 4th General Spencer left with the last brigade, Washington leaving the same night.