n would take place. Then the word went round: "We
shall have the fight today; Black Dick has been smiling." They had it,
and Howe won a victory which makes his name famous in the annals of the
sea.

By the middle of July the two brothers were at New York. The soldier,
having waited at Halifax since the evacuation of Boston, had arrived,
and landed his army on Staten Island, on the day before Congress made
the Declaration of Independence, which, as now we can see, ended finally
any chance of reconciliation. The sailor arrived nine days later. Lord
Howe was wont to regret that he had not arrived a little earlier, since
the concessions which he had to offer might have averted the Declaration
of Independence. In truth, however, he had little to offer. Humor and
imagination are useful gifts in carrying on human affairs, but George
III had neither. He saw no lack of humor in now once more offering full
and free pardon to a repentant Washington and his comrades, though John
Adams was excepted by name * in repudiating the right to exist of the
Congress at Philadelphia, and in refusing to recognize the military
rank of the rebel general whom it had named: he was to be addressed in
civilian style as "George Washington Esq." The King and his ministers
had no imagination to call up the picture of high-hearted men fighting
for rights which they held dear.

* Trevelyan, "American Revolution", Part II, vol. I (New
Ed., vol. II), 261.

Lord Howe went so far as to address a letter to "George Washington Esq.
&c. &c.," and Washington agreed to an interview with the officer who
bore it. In imposing uniform and with the stateliest manner, Washington,
who had an instinct for effect, received the envoy. The awed messenger
explained that the symbols " &c. &c." meant everything, including, of
course, military titles; but Washington only said smilingly that they
might mean anything, including, of course, an insult, and refused to
take the letter. He referred to Congress, a body which Howe could not
recognize, the grave question of the address on an envelope and Congress
agreed that the recognition of his rank was necessary. There was nothing
to do but to go on with the fight.

Washington's army held the city of New York, at the southerly point
of Manhattan Island. The Hudson River, separating the island from the
mainland of New Jersey on the west, is at its mouth two miles wide. The
northern and eastern sides of the island are wash