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General Putnam was placed in command at New York, and General Greene took charge of the defences on Brooklyn Heights and of their completion. On the first day of June Congress resolved that six thousand additional troops should be employed from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York, to reënforce the army in Canada, and that two thousand Indians should be hired for this same field of service. To this proposition General Schuyler keenly replied: “If this number, two thousand, can be prevented from joining the enemy, it is more than can be expected.”

As early as the fifteenth of February Congress had appointed Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, as Commissioners to visit Canada and learn both the exact condition of the army and the temper of the people. Rev. John Carroll, afterwards Archbishop of Maryland, accompanied them, and reported that “negligence, mismanagement, and a combination of unlucky incidents had produced a disorder that it was too late to remedy.” Ill-health compelled the immediate return of Franklin, but the other Commissioners remained until the evacuation of Canada. The scourge of small-pox, to which General Thomas became a victim, and other diseases, together with the casualties of the service, had cost more than five thousand lives within two months, and the constant change of commanders, ordered by Congress, hastened the Canadian campaign to a crisis. Scattered all the way from Albany to Montreal there could have been found companies of the regiments which Congress had started for Canada, and which Washington and the country could so poorly spare at such an eventful and threatening period. General Sullivan had been succeeded by General Gates, but with no better results. Sullivan had under-estimated the British forces, and when apprised of the facts, of which the American Commander-in-Chief had not been advised in time, he wrote: “I now only think of a glorious death, or a victory obtained against superior numbers.” The following letter of Washington addressed to Congress, enclosing letters intimating the desire of General Sullivan to have larger command, indicates Washington’s judgment of the situation, and is in harmony with his habitual discernment of men and the times throughout the war. He says: “He (Sullivan) is active, spirited, and zealously attached to our cause. He has his wants and his foibles. The latter are manifested in his little tincture of vanity which now and then leads him into embarrassments. His wants are common to us all. He wants experience, to move on a large scale; for the limited and contracted knowledge which any of us have in military matters, stands in very little stead, and is quickly overbalanced by sound judgment and some acquaintance with men and books, especially when accompanied by an enterprising genius, which I must do General Sullivan the justice to say, I think he possesses. Congress will therefore determine upon the propriety of continuing him in Canada, or sending another, as they shall see fit.”