The daily life of the Cambridge camp is best seen in the letters sent from it, and foremost in interest among such are those of Washington.[580] From the Roxbury camp there are letters of General Thomas in the Thomas Papers, where is one of Dr. John Morgan, the medical director. Several from Jedediah Huntington are preserved in the Trumbull Papers, and are printed in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xlix.[581] The principal letters from the Winter Hill camp are those of General Sullivan,[582] and a few have been printed written at the Prospect Hill camp.[583]
Something of the spirit prevailing in Watertown, where the Provincial Congress was sitting, can be seen in the letters of James Warren and Samuel Cooper.[584]
There are in the library of the Amer. Antiq. Soc. at Worcester several orderly-books of the siege,[585] and others are preserved elsewhere.[586]
D. The British Camp.—The condition of Boston during the siege must be learned from various sources. The Boston News-Letter was still published, but numbers of it are very scarce for this period, and no other of the Boston newspapers continued to be published in the town.[587] It was a convenient vehicle for the British generals, and any morsel of news likely to be distasteful to the patriots, like the intercepted correspondence of Washington and John Adams, was pretty sure to reach the American lines through its columns. The correspondence of the generals is preserved in the British Archives and in the papers at the Royal Institution (London), and occasionally some few letters, like those of Percy in the Boston Public Library, have been found elsewhere. It is charged that Gage's papers were stolen in Boston.[588] Some new glimpses were got when Fonblanque published his Life of Burgoyne.[589] The best accounts of the succession of events in the town and the daily life are found in Dr. Ellis's "Chronicles of the Siege",[590] and in Mr. Horace E. Scudder's "Life in Boston during the Siege", a chapter in the Memorial Hist. of Boston, vol. iii.,[591] which may be consulted (p. 154) for various sources respecting the details of the privations and amusements of the people and the garrison, and of the vicissitudes of its buildings and landmarks.[592] An account of the British works in Boston is given in Frothingham's Siege of Boston, and the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 79. The current record of the outposts, etc., is noted in Moore's Diary of the Rev., 109, etc. Carrington (Battles, 154) refers to a MS. narrative of experiences in the town by one Edw. Stow. Some of the correspondence of the Boston selectmen with Thomas, at Roxbury, is in the Thomas Papers. It is, however, to the diaries, letters, and orderly-books which have been preserved that we must go for the details of life in the beleaguered town.[593]
E. Boston Evacuated.—The letters of Washington[594] best enable us to follow the movements, but they may be supplemented by other contemporary accounts.[595]
Howe's despatch to Dartmouth, dated Nantasket Roads, is in Dawson, i. 94.[596] His conduct of the siege is criticised in A view of the evidence relative to the Conduct of the American War (1779). Contemporary dissatisfaction was expressed in an ironical congratulatory poem published in London (Sabin, iv., 15,476).
One Crean Brush,[597] acting under orders of Howe, endeavored to carry off the merchandise from the stores of the town, so far as he could, on a vessel put at his disposal. Howe's proclamation in his favor is in fac-simile in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. 97. Brush's vessel was later captured by Manly (Evacuation Memorial, 166). Similar experience in trying to escape with his merchandise was suffered by Jolley Allen, as portrayed in his Account of a part of his sufferings and losses, ed. by C. C. Smith, given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Feb., 1878, and separately. Allen's narrative was reprinted in the spelling of the original MS. in An Account of a part of the sufferings and losses of Jolley Allen, a native of London, with a preface and Notes by Mrs. Frances Mary Stoddard (Boston, 1883). An inventory of the stores left by the British is in the Siege of Boston, 406.[598] In the cabinet of this society is a handbill adopted by the freeholders of Boston, Nov. 18 [1776?], calling upon all who had suffered in property in Boston since March, 1775, to report the same to a committee.[599]
Washington's instructions (April 4, 1776) to Ward are in the printed Heath Papers, P. 4. The Mass. legislature, April 30, 1776, ordered beacons to be set at Cape Ann, Marblehead, and Blue Hill, ready to be fired in case of the enemy's reappearing, which was for a long time dreaded. Ward writes to Washington of his measures in progress.[600]