When daylight came,—
"Two strong redoubts capped Dorchester Heights."
By the tenth of March, the Americans had fortified Nook's Hill, and this drove the British from Boston Neck. Eight hundred shot and shell were thrown into the city during that night. On the morning of March 17, the British embarked for Halifax.
Five thousand American troops entered the city, under General Ward (the venerable predecessor of Washington) as the last boats left.
On the eighteenth of March, and before the main army had entered Boston, General Heath was ordered to New York with five regiments of infantry and a part of the field artillery.
On the twenty-seventh, the whole army, excepting a garrison of five regiments, was ordered forward, General Sullivan leading the column.
On the evening of April fourteenth, after the last brigade marched, Washington started for his new field of duty.
The siege of Boston is indeed memorable for that patient, persistent pressure by which the Colonists grasped, and held fast, all approaches to the city, until a sufficient force could be organized for a systematic siege; but, as the eye rests upon an outline map of the principal works of the besieging force, and we try to associate Ploughed Hill, Winter Hill, Prospect Hill, and other memorable strongholds, with the surroundings of to-day, we are glad to find an abounding source of comfort in the assurance, that the whole struggle for our National Independence is indelibly associated with the names, the vigils, and the experiences which belong to those long months of education in the art and appliances of war.
Swiftly as that well-instructed army moved to New York, they had only time to gain position, before they realized the value of their training in the trenches and redoubts around Boston; and no battle or siege, including the capture of Yorktown, is without its tribute to the far-reaching influence which that training assured.
The echoes of the national salute which have so recently commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the close of the official career of Washington as commander-in-chief of the army of the Revolution, may well be associated with those midnight salvos of artillery which crowned his first campaign with an enduring success, and, once for all, rescued the soil of the Bay State from the tread of a hostile foot.