lished for effect, but a well-grounded and urgent warning to the
country, is confirmed by the situation at the time and the whole train
of events that followed. The campaign of 1776 did indeed prove to be a
crisis, a turning-point, in the fortunes of the Revolution. It is not
investing it with an exaggerated importance, to claim that it was the
decisive period of the war; that, whatever anxieties and fears were
subsequently experienced, this was the year in which the greatest
dangers were encountered and passed. "Should the united colonies be
able to keep their ground this campaign," continued Hancock, "I am
under no apprehensions on account of any future one." "We expect a
very bloody summer in New York and Canada," wrote Washington to his
brother John Augustine, in May; and repeatedly, through the days of
preparation, he represented to his troops what vital interests were at
stake and how much was to depend upon their discipline and courage in
the field.

But let the significance of the campaign be measured by the record
itself, to which the following pages are devoted. It will be found to
have been the year in which Great Britain made her most strenuous
efforts to suppress the colonial revolt, and in which both sides
mustered the largest forces raised during the war; the year in which
the issues of the contest were clearly defined and America first
fought for independence; a year, for the most part, of defeats and
losses for the colonists, and when their faith and resolution were put
to the severest test; but a year, also, which ended with a broad ray
of hope, and whose hard experiences opened the road to final success.
It was the year from which we date our national existence. A period so
interesting and, in a certain sense, momentous is deserving of
illustration with every fact and detail that can be gathered.

* * * * *

What was the occasion or necessity for this campaign; what the plans
and preparations made for it both by the mother country and the
colonies?

The opening incidents of the Revolution, to which these questions
refer us, are a familiar chapter in its history. On the morning of the
19th of April, 1775, an expedition of British regulars, moving out
from Boston, came upon a company of provincials hastily forming on
Lexington Common, twelve miles distant. The attitude of these
countrymen represented the last step to which they had been driven by
the aggressive acts o