WASHINGTON'S HEADS OF LETTER, JULY 10, 1775.
This is about half of the whole as given in fac-simile in Wilkinson's Memoirs, i. p. 855. The original is now among the Reed-Washington letters in the Carter-Brown library. It was the basis of Washington's first formal official letter to the president of Congress, which, as written out by Joseph Reed, is given in Sparks' Washington, iii. p. 17. It shows the degree of attention which the general bestowed on his minutes for his secretary's use.
Washington, on his first arrival, had taken temporary quarters in the house of the president of the college, known now as the Wadsworth house (Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 107; Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 408), till the finest house in the town, one of a succession of mansions on the road to Watertown, was made ready for his use. These houses, which had all been deserted by their Tory owners, gave the name of Tory Row to this part of Cambridge. The one assigned to Washington's use was a Vassall house, later, however, known as the Craigie house, when it became the property of Andrew Craigie, from whose family it passed to the ownership of Longfellow, who died in it. Sparks lived in it when he edited Washington's Writings. It is familiar in engravings. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. p. 113, with a note on various views of it; and for its associations, see Samuel Longfellow's Life of H. W. Longfellow; Irving's Washington, ii. p. 11; Greene's Hist. View of the Amer. Rev., p. 220; Manhattan Mag., i. 119; Mrs. Lamb's Homes of America; Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 415. Among the other buildings of Revolutionary associations still standing in Cambridge are the Brattle house, the headquarters of Mifflin; the Vassall house, where Dr. Church was confined; the house where Jonathan Sewall lived, later occupied by General Riedesel; the Oliver house, now owned by James Russell Lowell; the "Bishop's Palace", where Burgoyne was quartered; and Christ Church, where Washington attended service (view in Mass. Mag., 1792, and compare Nicholas Hoppin's discourses, Nov. 22, 1857, and Oct. 15, 1861). For more of the historical associations of these Cambridge sites, see the Harvard Book; Drake's Landmarks of Middlesex; the Cambridge Centennial Memorial (1875); William J. Stillman's Poetic Localities of Cambridge (Boston, 1876); T.C. Amory's Old and New Cambridge; an illustrated paper in Harper's Monthly, Jan., 1876, another by Alexander Mackenzie, in the Atlantic Monthly, July, 1875; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1858, and Sept., 1872; and the book edited by Arthur Gilman, Theatrum Majorum, The Cambridge of 1776, which has an eclectic diary (by Mary W. Greely) of the siege, purporting to be that of one Dorothy Dudley.
Among the letters now passing through New York was one upon that battle, addressed to the President of Congress, which Washington took the liberty of opening for his own guidance. After instructing Schuyler, who was to be left in charge of the forces in New York, to keep watch upon Tryon[419] and Guy Johnson,[420] Washington the next day (26th) started for Cambridge. On the 2d of July Washington reached Watertown, and on the 3d, under a tree still standing,[421] he took command of the army, which thus passed, in effect, under Continental control, numbering at the time nearly 15,000 men fit for duty.[422] To brigade this army, rectify the circumvallating lines, watch the constant skirmishes, and assign the new bodies of troops arriving to places in the works, was the labor to which Washington devoted himself at once. On the 9th of July he held his first council of war,[423] and on the 10th he addressed his first letter to Congress, describing the condition of the siege as he had found it.
To guard against surprise, and replenish the magazines, required constant diligence, and the supply of powder never ceased to be a cause of anxiety in the one camp, while the diminishing stock of provisions produced almost as much concern in Boston. The beleaguered British, however, got some relief from the exodus of the Boston people, which the stress of want forced the royal commander to permit.[424] So the summer was made up of anxious moments. The independent husbandmen of New England made but intractable raw recruits, and Washington, who had expected to find discipline equal to that which the social distinctions of the South gave to the masses there, was disappointed, and did not wholly conceal his disgust.[425] He grew, however, to discern that campaigns could produce that discipline as well, if not better, than a life of civil subservience. Recruits came in from the South, and when some of the Northern officers saw the kind of men that Morgan and others brought as riflemen from Virginia, their comment was scarcely less austere. "The army would be as well off without them", said Thomas, who, next to Washington, was the best disciplinarian in the camp. Of the generals, Lee was, however, by much the most conspicuous. There was a glamour about the current rumors of his soldierly experience that obscured what might have been told of his questionable character.[426] His eccentricities were the camp talk, and rather served to magnify his presence, while it proved dangerous to perambulate the lines with him and his crowd of dogs, since the exhibition tempted the enemy to drop their shells in that spot.[427] Early in July a trumpeter approached the American lines bringing a letter from General Burgoyne to General Lee, and the camp straightway proceeded to invest the strange general with political importance. Burgoyne and Lee were old campaigners together, and Lee, before he left Philadelphia, had written a stirring letter to the British general on the bad prospects of the ministerial policy. The letter which now came was a reply, and proposed a conference on Boston Neck, to which Congress advised Lee not to accede, and the momentary ripple subsided.[428]