“New York must be secured,” writes he, “but it will never, I am afraid, be secured by due order of the Congress, for obvious reasons. They find themselves awkwardly situated on this head. You must step in to their relief. I am sensible no man can be spared from the lines under present circumstances; but I would propose that you should detach me into Connecticut, and lend your name for collecting a body of volunteers. I am assured that I shall find no difficulty in assembling a sufficient number for the purposes wanted. This body, in conjunction (if there should appear occasion to summon them) with the Jersey regiment under the command of Lord Stirling, now at Elizabethtown, will effect the security of New York, and the expulsion or suppression of that dangerous banditti of tories, who have appeared on Long Island, with the professed intention of acting against the authority of Congress. Not to crush these serpents before their rattles are grown would be ruinous. “This manœuvre, I not only think prudent and right, but absolutely necessary to our salvation; and if it meets, as I ardently hope it will, with your approbation, the sooner it is entered upon the better; the delay of a single day may be fatal.” Washington, while he approved of Lee’s military suggestions, was cautious in exercising the extraordinary powers so recently vested in him, and fearful of transcending them. John Adams was at that time in the vicinity of the camp, and he asked his opinion as to the practicability and expediency of the plan, and whether it “might not be regarded as beyond his line.” Adams, resolute of spirit, thought the enterprise might easily be accomplished by the friends of liberty in New York, in connection with the Connecticut people, “who are very ready,” said he, “upon such occasions.” As to the expediency, he urged the vast importance, in the progress of this war, of the city and province of New York, and the Hudson River, being the _nexus_ of the northern and southern colonies, a kind of key to the whole continent, as it is a passage to Canada, to the Great Lakes, and to all the Indian nations. No effort to secure it ought to be omitted. That it was within the limits of Washington’s command, he considered perfectly clear, he being “vested with full power and authority, to act as he should think for the good and welfare of the service.” If there was a body of people on Long Island, armed to oppose the American system of defence, and furnishing supplies to the British army and navy, they were invading American liberty as much as those besieged in Boston. If, in the city of New York, a body of tories were waiting only for a force to protect them, to declare themselves on the side of the enemy, it was high time that city was secured.[42]