former to be fops and dandies.  These and a hundred other disputes buzzed and whirled about Washington, stirring his strong temper, and exercising his sternest self-control in the untiring effort to suppress them and put them to death.  “It requires,” John Adams truly said, “more serenity of temper, a deeper understanding, and more courage than fell to the lot of Marlborough, to ride in this whirlwind.”  Fortunately these qualities were all there, and with them an honesty of purpose and an unbending directness of character to which Anne’s great general was a stranger.

Meantime, while the internal difficulties were slowly diminished, the forces of the enemy rapidly increased.  First it became evident that attacks were not feasible.  Then the question changed to a mere choice of defenses.  Even as to this there was great and harassing doubt, for the enemy, having command of the water, could concentrate and attack at any point they pleased.  Moreover, the British had thirty thousand of the best disciplined and best equipped troops that Europe could furnish, while Washington had some twenty thousand men, one fourth of whom were unfit for duty, and with the remaining three fourths, raw recruits for the most part, he was obliged to defend an extended line of posts, without cavalry, and with no means for rapid concentration.  Had he been governed solely by military considerations he would have removed the inhabitants, burned New York, and drawing his forces together would have taken up a secure post of observation.  To have destroyed the town, however, not only would have frightened the timid and the doubters, and driven them over to the Tories, but would have dispirited the patriots not yet alive to the exigencies of war, and deeply injured the American cause.  That Washington well understood the need of such action is clear, both from the current rumors that the town was to be burned, and from his expressed desire to remove the women and children from New York.  But political considerations overruled the military necessity, and he spared the town.  It was bad enough to be thus hampered, but he was even more fettered in other ways, for he could not even concentrate his forces and withdraw to the Highlands without a battle, as he was obliged to fight in order to sustain public feeling, and thus he was driven on to almost sure defeat.  With Brooklyn Heights in the hands of the enemy New York was untenable, and yet it was obvious that to hold Brooklyn when the enemy controlled the sea was inviting defeat.  Yet Washington under the existing conditions had no choice except to fight on Long Island and to say that he hoped to make a good defense.