e rooms was valued above declamation and the practical
sense of Robert Morris counted for more than the finished oratory of
Richard Henry Lee; the times that tried men's souls, when "the summer
soldier and the sunshine patriot ... shrinks from the service of his
country, but he that stands ... deserves the love of man and woman."
Happily for America there were many who kept the faith, who fought the
good fight, during these dark days. Yet one is apt to think that the
Declaration must have proved a vain boast of rebels but for that
Virginia colonel whom the Congress appointed, on June 17, 1775, to be
"General and Commander in Chief of the armies of the United Colonies";
that man so modest that he thought himself incompetent for the task, yet
of such heroic resolution that neither difficulties nor reverses nor
betrayals could bring him to despair; that man of rectitude, whose will
was steeled to finer temper by every defeat, and who was not to be
turned, by any failure or success, by any calumny, by gold, or by the
dream of empire, from the straight path of his purpose.

He had come, in June, 1776, fresh from the notable achievement which
drove the British army out of Boston, to defend New York against the
most formidable military and naval force ever seen in America. With a
rashness born of inexperience or the necessity of making a stand,
Washington carried his undisciplined farmers and frontier riflemen
across to Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, to meet inevitable defeat at
the hands of General Howe. A ship or two, which the slow-moving British
commander might have sent up the East River, would have prevented the
masterly retreat which saved the American army from capture. But Howe
seemed bent only upon occupying New York, which thus became, and until
the end of the war remained, the British and Loyalist headquarters. With
a deliberation that enraged the Loyalist and non-plussed his
subordinates, the general pushed the patriot army northward to White
Plains, missing there a second opportunity to win a decisive battle. But
the capture of Fort Washington on the Hudson opened the river to the
British navy, and compelled the American forces to retreat through New
Jersey, and across the Delaware River at Trenton into Pennsylvania. Half
a year had not passed since the Declaration of Independence when the
cause of America seemed already lost. "We looked upon the contest as
nearly closed," Major Thomas assured his patriot friend