Let us move along still farther. The New England farmers for all the rest of the summer, autumn and following winter formed themselves into a most vulgar and absurd army and surrounded Boston, shutting in the British. The minds of those farmers were full almost to fanaticism of the principle of equality and the rights of man, "the levelling principles" as they were then called which now form the foundation of our American life. The officers among them were merely leaders and persuaders. It was not an uncommon sight to see a colonel shaving one of his own men. The men served a few weeks and then went home to get in the hay or see how their wives were getting on, and others came from the farms to take their places. In this way the army was kept up. Those who went home were very apt to take their powder and musket with them to shoot squirrels on the farm. A year later at New York our army was the same guerilla force and I shall let Captain Graydon describe it: "The appearance of things was not much calculated to excite sanguine expectations in the mind of a sober observer. Great numbers of people were indeed to be seen and those who are not accustomed to the sight of bodies under arms are always prone to exaggerate them. But the propensity to swell the mass, has not an equal tendency to convert it into soldiery; and the irregularity, want of discipline, bad arms, and defective equipment in all respects, of this multitudinous assemblage, gave no favorable impression of its prowess. The materials of which the eastern battalions were composed, were apparently the same as those of which I had seen so unpromising a specimen at Lake George. I speak particularly of the officers who were in no single respect distinguishable from the men, other than in the colored cockades, which for this very purpose had been prescribed in general orders; a different color being assigned to the officers of each grade. So far from aiming at a deportment which might raise them above their privates and thence prompt them to due respect and obedience to their commands, the object was, by humility, to preserve the existing blessing of equality, an illustrious instance of which was given by Colonel Putnam, the chief engineer of the army, and no less a personage than the nephew of the major-general of that name. 'What,' says a person meeting him one day with a piece of meat in his hand, 'carrying home your rations yourself, colonel! 'Yes,' says he, 'and I do it to set the officers a good example.'" (Graydon's Memoirs, edition of 1846, p. 147.)