New York - The Novel

the Narrows and anchored off Staten Island. It was an impressive sight. The British disembarked, but took no immediate action. Evidently they were waiting for more reinforcements. The city trembled. Two days later, James grimly confessed: “The Staten Island militia has gone over to the British. There are boatloads of Loyalists crossing from Long Island too.”
    His father said nothing. But that evening, when they thought she had retired to her room, she heard her father quietly say: “It’s not too late for you to go to Staten Island too, James. I’d come to vouch for you.”
    “I can’t, Father,” James replied.

    On the eighth of July, James came in looking excited.
    “The Philadelphia Congress has agreed to a Declaration of Independence.”
    “All the colonies agreed?” his father asked.
    “Almost all, though only at the last minute. New York abstained, but they’ll ratify.”
    The next day, to her father’s disgust, a large number then swept down Broadway to Bowling Green, knocked down the bronze statue of King George, tore off his head, and carted the torso away. “We’ll melt it for bullets to shoot at the redcoats,” they declared. That evening, James brought a printed copy of the Declaration to show his father.
    “Jefferson of Virginia wrote most of it, though Ben Franklin made corrections. You must confess, it’s rather fine.”
    His father read it skeptically.
    “‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ Novel idea, that last. Sounds like one of Tom Paine’s effusions to me.”
    “Actually,” James corrected, “it’s adapted from the philosopher Locke. Except he said ‘property’ instead of ‘happiness.’”
    “Well,” said his father, “property sounds a better investment to me.”
    Declaration or not, the Patriot cause hardly looked promising. Although, in the South, the Patriots were still holding on to redcoats, up in Canada, they were getting nowhere. And in New York, on July 12, the British at Staten Island finally made a move. Abigail, her father and James went down to the waterfront to watch.
    Two British ships were making their way across the harbor. The Patriots had a battery ready at the fort on Governor’s Island, a short distance out in the harbor, as well as the usual battery at the old fort, and another at Whitehall Dock, to guard the entrance to the Hudson River. As the British ships moved easily toward the Hudson, all the batteries began to blaze at them.
    “They’re still out of range,” James remarked irritably. “What are those fools doing?” Gradually the ships drew closer. The shore batteries should have been able to pound the ships now, but their aim was hopelessly misdirected. The British ships, which could have annihilated them, didn’t even trouble to return fire. Then there was a loud explosion from one of the shore batteries. “It seems,” said John Master drily, “they’ve managed to blow themselves up.” James said nothing, as the British ships sailed into the Hudson and continued northward.
    It was in the quiet of the evening, as the glow of sunset spread across the harbor, that Abigail and James, who had gone down to the waterfront again, caught sight of the masts approaching from the ocean. As the minutes passed, they saw ship after ship move in from the ocean, and draw toward the Narrows. They remained there, watching, as the red sun sank, and the whole mighty fleet swept in toward the anchorage.
    “Dear God,” James murmured, “there must be a hundred and fifty of them.” And in the twilight, Abigail could see that her brother’s brave face was tense.

    Yet still the British waited. They waited over a month. Admiral Howe, whose fleet this was, seemed as content as his brother to take his time. Washington, meanwhile, lodging up at the commandeered mansion of the Morris family overlooking the Harlem River, supervised the defenses of the city, New Jersey and Long Island with a calm and stately dignity that was to be admired.
    By the time he was done, any ships trying to go up the Hudson would have had to pass between a pair of forts with batteries—Fort Washington up on Harlem Heights and Fort Lee on the opposite New Jersey shore—plus a further string of small forts which had been constructed across the East River on Brooklyn Heights, to protect the city from an attack across Long Island.
    At the start of August, a flotilla arrived bearing Clinton and Cornwallis from the south, with eight more regiments. A few days