That episode at Breed’s Hill, which tested the value of even a light cover for keen sharpshooters, had so warned Howe of the courage of his enemy that the garrison of Bunker Hill had never worried Putnam’s little redoubt across the Charlestown Isthmus; neither had the troops at Boston ever assailed, with success, the thin circumvallation which protected the besiegers.

At Brooklyn, Washington established ranges for firing-parties, so that the rifle could be intelligently and effectively used, as the British might, in turn, approach the danger line.  All these preparations, although impaired by the illness and absence of General Greene, had been so well devised, that even after General Howe gained the rear of Sullivan and Stirling and captured both, he halted before the entrenchments and resorted to regular approaches rather than venture an assault.

If that portion of the proper garrison of New York which had been sent to Canada, to waste from disease and fill six thousand graves, had been available at New York, they might have made of Jamaica Ridge and Prospect Hill a British Golgotha before the lines of Brooklyn.

If we conceive of an invasion of New York to-day, other than by some devastating fleet, we can at once see that the whole outline of defence as proposed by Washington, until he ordered the retreat, was characteristic of his wisdom and his settled purpose to resist a landing, fight at every ridge, yield only to compulsion, enure his men to face fire, and “make every British advance as costly as possible to the enemy.”

The summary is briefly this:  There was an universal revolt of the colonies, and a fixed purpose to achieve and maintain independence.  There was, at the same time, in England, not only a vigorous opposition to the use of force, but a clearly-defined exhibit of the maximum military resources which its authorities could call into exercise.  Imminent European complications were already bristling for battle, both by land and sea, and Great Britain was without a continental ally or friend.  As the British resources were thus definitely defined, so was the military policy distinctly stated; namely, to make, as the first objective, the recovery of New York, and its acceptance as the permanent base for prosecution of the war.  The first blow was designed to be a fatal blow.  It was for Washington to take the offensive.  He did so, and by the occupation of New York and Brooklyn put himself in the attitude of resisting invasion, rather than as attempting the expulsion of a rightful British garrison from the British capital of its American colonies.