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.

Not only did the metal of such men as he commanded stand fire on the
seventeenth of June, 1775, at Breed's Hill, but when he followed up the
expulsion of the garrison of Boston by the equally aggressive
demonstrations at New York, he gave assurance of the thoroughness of his
purpose to achieve independence, and thereby inspired confidence at home
and abroad. The failure to realize a competent field force for the issue
with Howe, and the circumstances of the retreat and evacuation, do not
impair the statement that, in view of his knowledge of British resources
and those of America, the occupation and defence of Brooklyn and New
York was a military necessity, warranted by existing conditions, and not
impaired by his disappointment in not securing