These sedate, cheerful, interested gentlemen were the commander and his staff, arriving to take formal possession of the city. With machine guns and rifles threatening all around them, the silent people of Boston saw their conquerors enter the City Hall, and knew that their sovereignty had passed into alien hands.
VIII
DEFENDING CONNECTICUT
“What is happening in Boston?” The question stood before the United States and there was no answer. All communication with it had been annihilated as if by a lightning stroke.
Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire still were able to reach the rest of the country with entire freedom, except that everything, mail, telegraph messages and freight, had to pass by way of the Lake Champlain Valley exclusively. But Boston, the richest half of Massachusetts, all of Rhode Island and the whole eastern end of Connecticut were as completely cut off as if all that great territory had been torn from the continent and dropped into the sea.
Of the 195 American cities with more than thirty thousand population, twenty-two were in the section that had been lost by the United States. The assessed valuation of those cities alone was more than two billions seven hundred millions of dollars. Ten thousand manufacturing establishments were in the grip of the conqueror.[107]
The grip lay on the captured country like a thing of iron. Telegraph and telephone could be used only under the supervision of soldiers who controlled every central operating station and scrutinized everything, cutting out any expression that did not suit them or refusing transmission altogether. Against these decisions there was no appeal.
Post Offices Occupied
The post offices were occupied by censors. Every piece of mail passed under their eyes and reached those to whom it was addressed only after long delay and generally with parts of it obliterated by heavy daubs of printing ink.
All the springs of creative work were broken. Shops and manufactories were open, under orders from the military commanders, but the owners and managers did not know what to do. They continued to produce, dully and without plan. They dared not make even the most unimportant contract, for no man could guess what might happen next. There was no money to be had, except for pressing needs. The banks throughout the conquered territory had been commanded to hold all cash in their vaults. Every man who applied for money had to prove to military officers that it was for immediate subsistence.
In the banks and trust companies’ offices everywhere there were posted placards reading as follows: