o render his position
still more formidable. General Howe saw that he must either dislodge
Thomas, or evacuate Boston, and he sent Lord Percy with 3000 men to
effect his dislodgement. Percy embarked in transports, and fell down to
the castle in order to proceed up the river to a low strip of land at
the foot of Dorchester Hill; but a storm arose, and he was compelled to
return to the harbour. It was providential for the British troops
that this storm arose; for the heights of Dorchester are almost
perpendicular, and the force was hence insufficient to accomplish
the enterprise. And the task was soon rendered more difficult. While
Washington still kept up a terrible fire, more men were sent to the
heights; and Thomas, on the advice of Colonel Mifflin, chained together
a number of hogsheads filled with sand and stones, which were to be
rolled down the hill, should General Howe renew the attempt, upon his
advancing columns. The British commander, however, became sensible of
the madness of such an attempt, and resolved to evacuate the town. An
intimation was sent to Washington that Boston would be spared from the
flames if the troops were suffered to embark without molestation. This
notice determined Washington to refrain from hostilities, and in ten
days, on the 17th of March, the British troops quitted the cradle of
the revolution, and set sail for Halifax, in Nova Scotia. Before they
departed the British troops destroyed Castle William, but they
left their barracks uninjured, with a large quantity of cannon and
ammunition, of which Washington was in want. This was a great blunder;
for if they could not have been carried away they should have been
destroyed. And this was not the only blunder committed. In sailing
away, Howe left no cruizer in Boston Bay to warn the ships expected from
England that the place was not in our possession; and a few days after,
when Washington had taken up his quarters in the town, several of our
store-ships sailed into the harbour, and fell into the hands of the
Americans, before they discovered that Boston was lost to King George.
Howe's negligence was even still more disastrous in its consequences
than this; for Lieutenant-colonel Archibald Campbell sailed into the
harbour with seven hundred fresh troops from England, and he was taken,
and became the subject for severe and brutal retaliation. The loyalists
who remained in Boston became also the objects of vengeance; they
were tried as the bet