On the twenty-first day of June, 1775, Washington left Philadelphia for Boston, and on the third day of July assumed command of the Continental Army of America, with headquarters at Cambridge. At this point one is instinctively prompted to peer into the closed tent of the Commander-in-Chief and observe his modest, but wholly self-reliant attitude toward the grave questions that are to be settled, in determining whether the future destiny of America is to be that of liberty, or abject submission to the Crown. For fully two months the yeomanry of New England had firmly grasped all approaches to the City of Boston. This pressure was now and then resisted by efforts of the garrison to secure supplies from the surrounding country farms; which only induced a tighter hold, and aroused a stubborn purpose to crowd that garrison to surrender, or escape by sea. The islands of the beautiful bay and of the Nantasket roadstead had become miniature fields of daily conflict; and persistent efforts to procure bullocks, flour, and other needed provisions, through the boats of the British fleet, only developed a counter system of boat operations which neutralized the former, and gradually restricted the country excursions of the troops within the city to the range of their guns. And yet the beleaguering force had fluctuated every day, so that but few of the hastily improvised regiments maintained either identity of persons, or permanent numbers. Exchanges were frequent between those on duty and others at their homes. The sudden summons from so many and varied industrial pursuits and callings was like the unorganized rush of men at an alarm of fire, quickened by the conviction that some wide, sweeping, and common danger was to be withstood, or some devouring element to be mastered. The very independence of opinion and sense of oppression which began to assert a claim to absolutely independent nationality, became impatient of all restraint, until military control, however vital to organized success, had become tiresome, offensive, and sharply contested. Offices also, as in more modern times, had been conferred upon those who secured enlistments, and too often without regard to character or signal merit; while the familiarities of former neighborhood friends and acquaintances ill-fitted them to bear rigid control by those who had been, only just before, companions on a common level.