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 a