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ferent quarters, that my reputation stands fair, that my conduct hitherto has given universal satisfaction.

"It is a great stake we are playing for, and sure we are of winning, if the cards are well managed."

XXVII

HE MOVES ON NEW YORK-AND THE TORIES

S the twenty-four-year-old Napoleon won his first fame by driving a British fleet and army out of Toulon in 1793, so the forty-four-year-old Washington made his name a world-word by forcing eleven thousand British soldiers and sailors and a throng of 170 sail out of Boston. In both cases, the royalists suffered heavily. Hood left his. Howe took his along.

But Washington's triumph was poisoned with anxiety, for the ships did not sail out to sea as he had expected. They lurked ominously in the lower waters.

He wrote to Ward (whom he replaced in command of the city by Putnam and, a few days later, by Greene) that he had "a strong violent presumption" and was "extremely apprehensive" that something was "meditating," and Howe had "some scheme in view & designs of taking advantage of the hurry, bustle and confusion among our troops which he may immagine his departure to have occasioned." 1

He wrote to Governor Trumbull of Connecticut that in spite of favorable winds the fleet was perhaps unfit for sea:

"But for my own part, I cannot but suspect they are waiting for some opportunity to give us a stroke at a moment when they conceive us to be off our guard, in order to retrieve the honor they have lost, by their shame full and scandelous retreat diminishing from that Lustre and renown which British armies were wont to boast and justly claimed as their right.-Suspecting them of such motives, I shall not detach any more of the Army than what is gone already; untill they have taken their departure and quitted the Coast." 2

He wrote to Joseph Reed:

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"The enemy have the best knack at puzzling people I ever met with in my life. .. What they are doing, the Lord knows. . . . My opinion of the matter is, that they want to retrieve their disgrace before they go off, and I think a favorable opportunity presents itself to them. They have now got their whole force into one collected body, and no posts to guard. We have detached six regiments to New York, and have many points to look to, and, on Monday next, ten regiments of militia, which were brought in to serve till the first of April, will be disengaged.

"From former experience, we have found it as practicable to stop a torrent, as these people, when their time is up. If this should be the case now, what more favorable opening can the enemy wish for, to make a push upon our lines, nay, upon the back of our lines at Roxbury, as they can land two miles from them and pass behind? I am under more apprehension from them now than ever, and am taking every precaution I can to guard against the evil; but we have a kind of people to deal with, who will not fear danger till the bayonet is at their breast, and then they are susceptible enough of it."

These were almost his exact words to R. H. Lee eight months before.

Two days after, on the 27th of March, he wrote to Congress that the British had vanished from the face of the waters so far as it could be read from Boston. Washington continued to believe that they were bound for New York, which was their logical point of attack, and whither he was eager to be making his way over highways that would make his footmen almost as tardy as the ships that marched against the wind.

It is almost impossible for latter-day minds to realize the nature of war in those days of bad roads or none, and seaways that fought the slow-sailing ships with every trick of wind and current.

When a fleet left a port, it was impossible for anybody

ashore or afloat to say where it would arrive, or when, if at all.

Contrary to Washington's shrewdest guesses, Howe was bound for Halifax. It took him only six days to reach there in amiable winds. He began at once to make ready to descend upon New York.

He had left to Washington, according to Stedman, "250 pieces of cannon . . . 4 mortars, 2,500 chaldrons of seacoal, 25,000 bushels of wheat, 2,300 bushels of barley, 600 bushels of oats, 100 jars of oil, 150 horses . . . Sir William Howe might have carried with him the greatest part of the ammunition and all the provisions. . . . Besides these, there were other articles, those of bedding and clothing particularly, of which the enemy stood greatly in need."

Better yet, in the absence of all means of communication, some of the belated supply-ships blundered into the harbor or fell into the hands of privateers, and fetched Washington a dazzling amount of belated Christmas gifts. The "Hope," for example, contributed 1,500 barrels of powder, besides carbines, bayonets, and all sorts of tools.

Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell came along later with 700 Highlanders, who were taken prisoner. Stedman says that Campbell was "treated in a savage and cruel manner" and quotes his letter two years later describing his dungeon "black with the grease and litter of successive criminals."

The British have all too many documents to prove that American mercy was as far from universal as British mercy

was.

Naturally, Washington was covered with laurels. Congress ordered a gold medal struck in Paris; his head was on the obverse, and Boston on the reverse, with Washington on horseback in the foreground and a British fleet very much in the background. Around his head was this Latinity:

Georgio Washington supremo duci exercituum adsertori libertatis Comitia Americana.

Around Boston was this:

Hostibus primo fugatis Bostonium recuperatum XVII

Martii MDCCLXXVI.

With an avalanche of Latin that must have dazed him, Harvard made him a Doctor of Laws.-Georgium Washington, Doctorem utrius Juris.

But "Doctor Washington" was a title that somehow never stuck.

A vote of thanks was conveyed to him from Congress and an address from the legislature of Massachusetts. To these he replied with the nobility characteristic of him.

While he was at Boston there began that endless array of his spurious portraits. Joseph Reed sent him a ferocious. mezzotint made out of fancy by Alexander Campbell, who represented him sword in hand advancing to battle, and Washington commented ironically:

"Mr. Campbell, whom I never saw, to my knowledge, has made a very formidable figure of the Commander-inchief, giving him a sufficient portion of terror in his coun

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Eleven days later he wrote to Reed that he might be "amused" by reading what he had come across "in searching over a parcel of papers the other day." It was "a letter and poem addressed to me by Mrs. or Miss Phillis Wheatley.

. . At first, with a view of doing justice to her great poetical genius, I had a great mind to publish the poem; but not knowing whether it might not be considered rather as a mark of my own vanity, than as a compliment to her, I laid it aside, till I came across it again in the manner just mention."

ד

Phyllis Wheatley was born in Africa and brought to Boston in a slave ship at the age of seven, in 1761. She took

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