Aaron Burr, his military
secretary. His justifiable severity in proclaiming martial law, and in
punishing Tories found guilty of harboring or assisting the enemy,
incurred the ill-will of New York's inhabitants, and militated against
his fortunes when later he fell into disrepute.

Plots against his life were formed, among them most conspicuous for its
scheme of wholesale assassinations being that in which one of
Washington's own guards was concerned, and for complicity in which this
same man, Thomas Hickey, paid the penalty with his life, being executed
on the 27th of June. Two days later a large British fleet was reported
off Sandy Hook, and by the 1st of July there were more than a hundred of
the enemy's war-ships and transports in the bay. The presence of this
immense fleet did not prevent the proper reception of the immortal
_Declaration of Independence_, proclaimed by the Continental Congress at
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776, and which was read to the troops,
amid loud acclaim from officers and common soldiers, on the 9th.

[Illustration: Israel Putnam.

From a painting by Trumbull.]

The arrival of the vast fleet, the subsequent landing of an army of
nearly twenty-five thousand men, and the warlike preparations which the
British were feverishly making looking to the capture of the city, did
not alarm Old Put, with his total force of scarcely seventeen thousand.
He went on as calmly and as determinedly as though himself commander of
the larger army, for the hero of Bunker Hill never anticipated defeat.
He always fought to the last, after making every needful preparation for
whatever event, and at New York, although the chances were all against
him, he did his utmost to bring about success. He had fortified
Governor's Island and Red Hook in order to prevent the enemy's ships of
war from ascending the Hudson; he now sank several old hulks in the
channel for the same purpose; but, notwithstanding, two war-vessels
succeeded in getting up the North River, which they afterward descended,
without injury to themselves.

It having been recommended by Congress that "fire-rafts be prepared and
sent among the enemy's shipping," Putnam acted in accordance with the
suggestion by fitting out fourteen fire-ships for the purpose, though
nothing was accomplished with them. Still persistent in his endeavors to
drive off the enemy, he adopted the invention of David Bushnell, a
native of his own State, which the inventor