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Operations in Massachusetts, and elsewhere, south as well as north, from the first, proved that the heat of patriotic resistance must be maintained and developed by action; that, as at Bunker Hill and before Boston, passive armies lose confidence, while active duty, even under high pressure, nerves to bolder courage and more pronounced vigor.

The correspondence of Washington and his Reports, as well as letters to confidential friends which have been carefully considered in forming an estimate of his career as a Soldier, evolve propositions that bear upon the operations about New York. The prime factor in the Colonial resistance was, to fix the belief irrevocably in the popular mind, in the very heart of the Colonists, that America could, and would, resist Great Britain, with confidence in success. The inevitable first step was to challenge her mastery of the only base from which she could conduct a successful war. To have declined this assertion of Colonial right, or to have wavered as to its enforcement, would have been a practical admission of weakness and the loss of all prestige thus far attained.