hat province was the
central and all-important link in the confederacy; but he feared it
might prove a brittle one. We have already mentioned the adverse
influences in operation there. A large number of friends to the crown,
among the official and commercial classes; rank tories, (as they were
called,) in the city and about the neighboring country; particularly
on Long and Staten Islands; king's ships at anchor in the bay and
harbor, keeping up a suspicious intercourse with the citizens; while
Governor Tryon, castled, as it were, on board one of these ships,
carried on intrigues with those disaffected to the popular cause, in
all parts of the neighborhood.

Lee arrived at New York on the 4th of February, his caustic humors
sharpened by a severe attack of the gout, which had rendered it
necessary, while on the march, to carry him for a considerable part of
the way in a litter. By a singular coincidence, on the very day of his
arrival, Sir Henry Clinton, with the squadron which had sailed so
mysteriously from Boston, looked into the harbor. "Though it was
Sabbath," says a letter-writer of the day, "it threw the whole city
into such a convulsion as it never knew before. Many of the
inhabitants hastened to move their effects into the country, expecting
an immediate conflict."

Clinton sent for the mayor, and expressed much surprise and concern at
the distress caused by his arrival; which was merely, he said, on a
short visit to his friend Tryon, and to see how matters stood. He
professed a juvenile love for the place, and desired that the
inhabitants might be informed of the purport of his visit, and that he
would go away as soon as possible. For this time, the inhabitants of
New York were let off for their fears. Clinton, after a brief visit,
continued his mysterious cruise, openly avowing his destination to be
North Carolina--which nobody believed, simply because he avowed it.

The necessity of conferring with committees at every step was a hard
restraint upon a man of Lee's ardent and impatient temper, who had a
soldierlike contempt for the men of peace around him; yet at the
outset he bore it better than might have been expected. "The Congress
committees, a certain number of the committees of safety, and your
humble servant," writes he to Washington, "have had two conferences.
The result is such as will agreeably surprise you. It is in the first
place agreed, and justly, that to fortify the town against shipping is