Washington himself had urgently prayed that such a step be taken, and taken at once. It would not change, it would only acknowledge, existing facts; and it might a little simplify the anxious business he was about. He had an army which was always making and to be made, because the struggle had been calculated upon a short scale and the colonies which were contributing their half-drilled contingents to it were enlisting their men for only three months at a time. Sometimes the men would consent to re-enlist, sometimes they would not. They did as they pleased, of course, and would time and again take themselves off by whole companies at once when their three months’ term was up. Sir William Howe would come back, of course, with a force increased, perhaps irresistible: would come, Washington foresaw, not to Boston, where he could be cooped up and kept at bay, but to New York, to get control of the broad gateway of the Hudson, whose long valley had its head close to the waters of Lake George and Lake Champlain, and constituted an infinitely important strategic line drawn straight through the heart of the country, between New England, which was no doubt hopelessly rebellious, and the middle colonies, in which the crown could count its friends by the thousand. The Americans must meet him, apparently, with levies as raw and as hastily equipped as those out of which an army of siege had been improvised at Boston, each constituent part of which would fall to pieces and have to be put together again every three months. [Illustration: SIGNATURE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON] [Illustration: JEFFERSON’S ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE] The worst of it was, that the country back of New York had not been, could not be, purged of active loyalists as the country round about Boston had been by the local “committees” of one sort or another and by the very active and masterful young men who had banded themselves together as “Sons of Liberty,” seeing much rich adventure, and for the present little responsibility, ahead of them in those days of government by resolution. Washington transferred his headquarters to New York early in April and set about his almost hopeless task with characteristic energy and fertility of resource; but there were spies without number all about him, and every country-side was full of enemies who waited for General Howe’s coming to give him trouble. The formal Declaration of Independence which the Congress adopted in July hardened the face and stiffened the resolution of every man who had definitely thrown in his lot with the popular cause, as Washington had foreseen that it would, just because it made resistance avowed rebellion, and left no way of retreat or compromise. But it also deeply grieved and alienated many a man of judgment and good feeling, and made party differences within the colonies just so much the more bitter and irreconcilable. [Illustration: REAR VIEW OF INDEPENDENCE HALL]