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Page 20
Just as the men at Bunker Hill fought so long as powder and ball held
out, but could not have been led to assail, in open field, the veterans
whom they did, in fact, so effectively resist; and, as very often, a
patriotic band has bravely defended, when unequal to aggressive
action,--so the possession, defence, and even the loss, of New York, as
an incident of a campaign, were very different from an effort to wrest
the city from the grasp of a British garrison, under cover of yawning
broadsides.
History is replete with facts to show how hopefully men will seek to
regain lost positions, when an original capture would have been deemed
utterly hopeless. Poland wellnigh regained a smothered nationality
through an inspiration, which never could have been evoked, in a plan to
seize from the Russian domain a grand estate, upon which to establish an
original Poland.
To have held but to have lost New York, would simply show the defects of
the defence, and the margin wanting in ability to retain, while no less
suggesting how, in turn, it might be regained, at the right time, by
adequate means and methods. The occupation and defence of Brooklyn
Heights was the chief element of value in this direction. It not only
combined the general protection of the city and post, in connection with
the works upon Governor's Island, but to have neglected either would
have admitted an inability to retain either.
British troops at Brooklyn would command New York. American troops at
Brooklyn presented the young nation in the attitude of guarding the
outer doorway of its freshly-asserted independence. It put the British
to the defensive, and compelled them to risk the landing of a large
army, after a protracted ocean voyage, before they could gain a footing
and measure strength with the colonists. It does not lessen our estimate
of the skill of Washington to know that Congress failed to supply
adequate forces; but he made wise estimates, and had reason to expect a
prompt response to his requisitions.
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.
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