Summary

Toward the close of the Year 1775, the outlook in America was most favorable. Washington had overcome innumerable difficulties to embody a new Provincial army in the very face of the enemy, and had maintained an unbroken land blockade around the British in Boston. The enemy's only access to the beleaguered town was by sea, and already the tiny schooners His Excellency had commissioned in September and October, had taken an ordnance brig and several supply transports. While this little fleet was not expected to close the sea lanes, its captures had had a disturbing effect upon the morale of what the embattled Americans were prone to call "the ministerial army."

The ambitious plans for the subjugation of Canada seemed close to con­summation. Commanded by a sickly Schuyler, and spear-headed by a spirited Montgomery, the invaders had subdued a stubborn garrison in St. John's, marched unopposed into Montreal, and were now before the walls of Quebec, joined with the force under Arnold which had made its fatiguing way through the Maine and Canadian wildernesses. That Quebec would fall was confidently expected and predicted throughout the Colonies; unaware, until days later, that the fondest hopes of the Canadian campaign had been blasted in the disastrous assault which closed out the old year.

Broader steps to create a navy, to import powder and arms, to encourage the home manufacture of gunpowder, to increase the army, and to take into the continental establishment the battalions and regiments raised for their own defensein the Southern Colonies, had been taken in its stride by the Continental Congress in the closing months of the year. Not content with the fleet of expediency, outfitting in the Delaware, a broader program, to build thirteen frigates, had been inaugurated in December.

From New Hampshire to South Carolina every colony had sent forth cargos of home products to be sold in the French, Spanish, Dutch and Danish West Indies, and the proceeds applied to the importation of gunpowder. Along a wintry coast the cruisers of the "ministerial navy" were seeking, with varied success, to intercept such vessels, inward or outward bound. With the exception of the ports of Newport and New York, yet lying under the menace of man of war guns, the custom of supplying provisions to British ships had been suspended, breaking a practice that had existed for half a century or more. And in all of the Colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, the business of protecting their seaports with fortifications of various design was being pushed with renewed vigor in the face of rumors of prodigious invading forces on the way from England.