It was finally determined to put General Putnam in command at New York, and he was hurried away, with all the troops in Boston but five regiments, and instructions to complete the fortifications commenced by General Lee. Two or three months before, in consequence of the appearance of a British fleet, under Clinton, in the harbor of New York, and the secret plottings of Governor Tryon and the Tories, Washington placed General Lee in command there. Lee at once arrested leading Tories, and sent them to prison, threatening all the rest, in his fiery way, with similar punishment if they continued to aid the enemy. Governor Tryon fled to a British man-of-war in the harbor, accompanied by several of his political advisers, and from those new headquarters he continued secret intercourse with the Tories. New dangers soon arising farther south, General Lee was transferred to the Southern Military Department, with headquarters at Williamsburg.
Such was the state of affairs in New York when General Putnam took command, with not more than eight thousand available troops in the town and vicinity.
Washington ordered three thousand militia to go to his aid from Connecticut, and as soon as he could arrange affairs in Boston he himself hastened to New York with his body-guard, where he arrived on the thirteenth day of April.
Before this time he had learned that General Howe proceeded to Halifax, to await large reinforcements from Great Britain; that his brother, Admiral Howe, with his naval fleet, would join him there, and then the great army would sail for New York.
He did not know, however, at that time, what the British Government was doing "to crush the rebels in North America." He learned afterwards that the king, stung to madness by the failure of his army in Boston, resolved to avenge the defeat by a terrible blow upon New York. He hired seventeen thousand Hessians to join the army, paying them liberally for their services, and these hirelings would swell the invading army to startling proportions.
Notwithstanding the evacuation of Boston, the cause of the patriots never seemed more hopeless than it did when the British army, under the two Howes, appeared below New York.
"Our army in Canada is beaten and shattered," Washington said, "and our cause is lost there. Here it is difficult to tell friend from foe. It is claimed that half of the people in New York are Tories, and what communications they may have with the British army, through Tryon, it is impossible to tell. We have not half the men absolutely required to hold this position, and what we have are poorly clad and equipped, and not half fed. Then we have reason to suspect that the enemy will come with greater inhumanity to man, and that fire and sword will do a more fearful work than ever. What some of the British officers are capable of doing in the way of fiendish devastation was shown in Boston, when the burning of every town between that city and Halifax was ordered, and Portland was laid in ashes."
Washington wrote to his brother:
"We expect a bloody summer in New York and Canada; and I am sorry to say that we are not, either in men or arms, prepared for it. However, it is to be hoped that, if our cause is just, as I most religiously believe, the same Providence which has in many instances appeared for us will still go on to afford us its aid."