“The desolation and misery, which ministerial vengeance had planned, in contempt of every principle of humanity, and so lately brought on the town of Falmouth, I know not how sufficiently to commiserate; nor can my compassion for the general suffering be conceived beyond the true measure of my feelings.” General Greene wrote, “O, could the Congress behold the distress and wretched condition of the poor inhabitants, driven from the seaport towns, it must, it would, kindle a blaze of indignation against the commissioned pirates and licensed robbers. People begin heartily to wish a declaration of independence.” Though a hundred years have passed away since these deeds of wanton and demoniac cruelty, the remembrance of them does now, and will forever excite the emotion of every human heart against the perpetrators of such crimes. The families of every town on the coast were in terror. Mothers and maidens, pale and trembling, feared every morning that, before night, they might hear the bombardment of those dreadful guns. And these were the crimes which the government of Great Britain was committing, that it might compel the Americans to submit to any tax which Great Britain might impose upon them. There was no mystery about this war. “Submit yourselves to us to be taxed as we please,” said England. “If you do not we will, with our invincible armies, sweep your whole country with fire and blood.” At Portsmouth, which was daily menaced, there was a fortification of some strength. Washington sent General Sullivan there to assist the inhabitants in their defence. Washington wrote: “I expect every hour to hear that Newport has shared the same fate of unhappy Falmouth.”[104] Gage was recalled by the British government. The battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of their troops, in Boston, mortified the English.[105] A committee of Congress visited Cambridge to confer with Washington. The British in Boston could be bombarded, but not without danger of laying the city in ashes. After several conferences, reaching through four days, it was decided that an attack upon Boston would be inexpedient. Congress had, however, voted to raise a new army, of a little over twenty-two thousand men, for one year. Mr. Reed, Washington’s highly valued and beloved secretary, found that his private concerns demanded his return to Philadelphia.