At Portsmouth, which was daily menaced, there was a fortification of some strength. Washington sent General Sullivan there to assist the inhabitants in their defence. Washington wrote:
“I expect every hour to hear that Newport has shared the same fate of unhappy Falmouth.”[104]
Gage was recalled by the British government. The battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of their troops, in Boston, mortified the English.[105] A committee of Congress visited Cambridge to confer with Washington. The British in Boston could be bombarded, but not without danger of laying the city in ashes. After several conferences, reaching through four days, it was decided that an attack upon Boston would be inexpedient. Congress had, however, voted to raise a new army, of a little over twenty-two thousand men, for one year. Mr. Reed, Washington’s highly valued and beloved secretary, found that his private concerns demanded his return to Philadelphia.
General Howe succeeded General Gage in Boston. He was instructed, by his government, that he was commissioned to quell the rebellion of traitors, who merited the scaffold. In accordance with these principles he conducted the war. Great contempt was manifested by the British officers, for every form of religion, excepting that of the church of England. The Old South Church was converted into a riding school, for Burgoyne’s light dragoons. The North Church was torn down, for fuel. Howe denounced the penalty of death upon any one who should attempt to leave Boston without his permission. The inhabitants were commanded to arm themselves, under British officers, to maintain order.
Throughout the country the tories were becoming more and more defiant, and open in their opposition to the American cause. The ice of winter would soon so bridge the bays, that the British troops, in Boston, could, unimpeded, march from their warm barracks, to assail any portion of the extended American lines. The annoyances of Washington were indescribable. It was very difficult to find men ready to enlist. The sentiment of patriotism, as it glowed in the bosom of George Washington, was a very different emotion from that which glimmered in the heart of the poor, obscure farmer’s boy, who was to peril life and limb upon the field of battle, and who, if he fell, would soon be as entirely forgotten as would be the cart-horse he might be driving.
Amid these scenes of toil, trouble, and grief, the American schooner Lee, under Captain Manly, which had been sent out by Washington, entered Cape Ann. It had captured a large and richly freighted English brigantine. Indescribable was the joy, when a large and lumbering train of wagons, in apparently an interminable line, came rumbling into the camp of Cambridge. The wagons were decorated with flags, and bore a vast quantity of ordnance and military stores.
There were two thousand stand of arms, one hundred thousand flints, thirty thousand round shot, and thirty-two tons of musket balls. Among the ordnance there was a huge brass mortar, of a new construction. It weighed three thousand pounds. The army gazed upon it with admiration. Putnam christened it. Mounting the gun, he dashed a bottle of rum upon it, and shouted its new name of Congress. The cheers which rose were heard in Boston, and excited much curiosity there to learn what could be the occasion for such rejoicing in the American camp.
Soon after this Washington learned that Colonel Ethan Allen had been captured near Montreal, and had been thrown, by the British General Prescott, into prison fettered with irons. He could not have been treated more brutally had he been the worst of criminals.
Washington immediately wrote a letter of remonstrance to General Howe. In this letter he said:
“I must take the liberty of informing you that whatever treatment Colonel Allen receives, whatever fate he undergoes, such exactly shall be the treatment and fate of Brigadier Prescott, now in our hands. The law of retaliation is not only justifiable in the eyes of God and man, but is absolutely a duty, in our present circumstances, we owe to our relations, friends, and fellow-citizens.