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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Shoe Of Boston. -- Washington Takes Possession Of Dorchester Heights. -- Evacuation Of Boston By Sib William Howe. 1776. In October, General Gage was recalled and General Howe appointed in his place, to take command of the troops in Boston. On the land side, the town was blockaded by the Americans. The eyes of the whole country were upon Washington and expectation at its highest pitch. It was believed that he had an army adequate to every emergency, and that the British General would soon yield to the force of his arms. But faint were the hopes of the American General of such an issue. Yet, trusting in an overruling Providence, his strength rose in proportion to his difficulties. In a letter to a friend, he says: -- "I know the unhappy predicament in which I stand; I know that much is expected of me ; I know that without men, without arms, without ammunition, without any thing fit for the accommodation of a soldier, little is to be done ; and what is mortifying, I know that I cannot stand justified to the world, without exposing my own weakness, and injuring the cause, by declaring my wants, which I am determined not to do, farther than unavoidable necessity brings every man acquainted with them. My situation is so irksome to me at times, that if I did not consult the public good more than my own tranquillity, I should long ere this have put every thing on the cast of a die. So far from my having an army of twenty thousand men, well armed, I have been here with less than half that number, including sick, fur- loughed, and on command ; and those neither armed nor clothed as they should be. In short, my situation has been such, that I have been obliged to use art to conceal it from my own officers." A resolution had been passed in Congress which Washi...
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