firmly in his own ideas, and act
resolutely upon them, without fearing to take the responsibility." [M.
Guizot, _Washington_].

He was, however, deeply moved and troubled at the commencement of a
contest of which he foresaw the difficulties and the trials, without
fathoming their full extent, and it was not without a struggle that he
accepted the power confided to him by Congress. "Believe me, my dear
Patsy," he wrote to his wife, "I have done all I could to screen myself
from this high mark of honor, not only because it cost me much to
separate myself from you and from my family, but also because I felt that
this task was beyond my strength." When the new general arrived before
Boston to take command of the confused and undisciplined masses which
were hurrying up to the American camp, he heard that an engagement had
taken place on the 16th of June on the heights of Bunker's Hill, which
commanded the town; the Americans who had seized the positions had
defended them so bravely that the English had lost nearly a thousand men
before they carried the batteries. A few months later, after unheard of
efforts on the general's part to constitute and train his army, he had
taken possession of all the environs of the place, and General Howe, who
had superseded General Gage, evacuated Boston (March 17, 1776).

Every step was leading to the declaration of independence. "If everybody
were of my opinion," wrote Washington in the month of February, 1776,
"the English ministers would learn in few words what we want to arrive
at. I should set forth simply, and without periphrasis, our grievances
and our resolution to have justice. I should tell them that we have long
and ardently desired an honorable reconciliation, and that it has been
refused. I should add that we have conducted ourselves as faithful
subjects, that the feeling of liberty is too strong in our hearts to let
us ever submit to slavery, and that we are quite determined to burst
every bond with an unjust and unnatural government, if our enslavement
alone will satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry. And I should
tell them all this not in covert terms, but in language as plain as the
light of the sun at full noon."

Many people still hesitated, from timidity, from foreseeing the
sufferings which war would inevitably entail on America, from hereditary,
faithful attachment to the mother-country. "Gentlemen," had but lately
been observed by Mr. Dickinson, deputy