THE DEFENCE OF NEW YORK, 1776.
By Henry B. Carrington, U.S.A., LL.D.
[The siege of Boston gave to the Continental Army that instruction in military engineering, and that contact with a disciplined foe, which prepared it for the immediate operations at New York and in New Jersey. (See The Bay State Monthly, January, 1884, pages 37-44.)
The occupation and defence of New York and Brooklyn, so promptly made, was a strategic necessity, fully warranted by existing conditions, although temporary.]
It is not easy to reconcile the views which we take, in turn, through the eye and object lenses of a field-glass, so that the real subject of examination will not be distorted by too great nearness or remoteness.
If we bring back to this hour the events of one hundred years ago, it is certain that the small armies and the smaller appliances of force then in use will seem trifling, in contrast with those which have so recently wearied science and have tasked invention in the work and waste of war.
If we thrust them back to their proper place behind the memory of all living men, we only see a scattered people, poorly armed, but engaged in hopeful conflict with Great Britain, then mistress of the seas, proudly challenging the world to arms, and boldly vindicating her challenge.
In an effort to reproduce that period and so balance the opposing factors that the siege of Boston and the deliverance of Washington at Brooklyn and New York shall have fair co-relation and full bearing upon the resulting struggle for National Independence, there must be some exact standard for the test j and this will be found by grouping such data as illustrate the governing laws of military art.
It has never been claimed that the siege of Boston was not the legitimate result of British blunder and American pluck. In a previous paper, the siege itself has been presented as that opportunity and training-school exercise which projected its experience into the entire war, and assured final triumph. It has not been as generally accepted, as both philosophical and necessary, that the fortification and defence of Brooklyn became the wise and inevitable sequence to that siege.
Let us drop a century and handle the old records.