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