So, like a great fan opening out from Providence the armies expanded over the conquered country, and each spoke expanded again. The divisions unfolded their brigades, the brigades their regiments, the regiments their battalions, the battalions their companies, and the companies their detachments, reaching everywhere and everywhere keeping in touch with the main body through the marvelous network of intelligence that grew into being behind the soldiers.[83]
It was as if a vast octopus had crawled from the sea at Narragansett Bay. With its body clinging there, fast to its ocean base, it sent its tentacles into every crevice of the land, and gripped tight.
“It is plain now what he is doing,” said the Chief of Staff to the President in Washington. “He is keeping a powerful retaining force in Rhode Island, absolutely assuring his base and holding the gate open for reënforcements. Westward he is throwing masses of cavalry—probably most of the cavalry that he has—to clear the way for his infantry and artillery to march along the coast to New York. Northward those cavalry masses are screening him against any attempt by our army either to fall on his forces in Connecticut, or to move around north of him and attack the rear of his divisions that are marching on Boston. It isn’t tactics. It’s simple, commonsense use of numerical superiority.”[84]
Making a Fight for Boston
The President played with a pile of dispatches. They were from Boston and New York. “You say that those companies of coast artillery from the south got through!”
“I had a message from the Commander of the Artillery District of Boston,” he said. “The six companies arrived at Fort Banks yesterday morning. They had to go around by way of Lake Champlain and Vermont, but they got through. That will at least give the men some relief if there should be a sustained action.”[85]
“You are sure it was not a mistake to—sacrifice them?” asked the President.
The General shrugged his shoulders. “There are some things that one simply must do,” he said. “We had to give New York and Boston something. We absolutely must make some sort of a fight for them.”
The Commander of the harbor defenses of Boston was not concerning himself about the occult reasons that had inspired the reënforcements. He had been praying for men, for he needed half a dozen men wherever he had one. He needed them for the searchlights, he needed men that he might establish defenses to the land approaches, he needed men for protection of base lines and cable stations. There were scout boats to be manned, and outlying islands to be posted with lookouts to guard against approach of ships in fog or darkness.