In general, Washington handled his maiden victory with aplomb. When he informed Hancock of the British evacuation, he had the tact to congratulate not himself but Hancock and “the honorable Congress.”²⁹ Instead of condoning the plunder that accompanies victory, Washington threatened to punish offenders severely. He set an orderly tone and deferred to civilian authorities, demanding that suspected Tories still in Boston be guarded by his men until the Massachusetts legislature ruled on their future. “If any officer or soldier shall presume to strike, imprison, or otherwise ill-treat any of the inhabitants, they may depend on being punished with the utmost severity,” he announced.³⁰ In a beautiful symbolic act, he returned a horse given to him after learning that it had been swiped from a departed Tory who had been “an avow[e]d enemy to the American cause.”³¹ Once again, by opposing vindictive actions, Washington shaped the tone and character of the American army.

Only in private letters did Washington allow himself to crow a little. As he told brother Jack, “No man perhaps since the first institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult circumstances than I have done . . . I have been here months together with what will scarce be believed: not thirty rounds of musket cartridges a man.” With so little ammunition, he had defeated “two and twenty regiments, the flower of the British army, when our strength have been little, if any, superior to theirs and at last have beat them in a shameful and precipitate manner out of a place the strongest by nature on this continent . . . strengthened and fortified in the best manner and at an enormous expense.”³² The modest boasting masked the fact that Washington would have preferred a bloody and decisive encounter to the self-protective British decision to sail away and fight another day.

For his feat, Washington was lionized as never before and exalted into a historic personage, collecting heaps of honors. By bestowing upon him an honorary degree, Harvard supplied the long-standing defect in his education. In a tribute drafted by John Jay, Hancock assured Washington that history would record that “under your direction an undisciplined band of husbandmen in the course of a few months became soldiers.”³³ Showing steady progress in egalitarian sentiments, Washington conceded that his men had started out as a “band of undisciplined husbandmen,” but that it was “to their bravery and attention to their duty that I am indebted for that success which procured for me the only reward I wish to receive, the affection and esteem of my countrymen.”³⁴ This was a notable step forward for a man who had so recently wrinkled his nose at the filthy, money-grubbing New England troops. The Massachusetts politician Josiah Quincy assured Washington that his name would be “handed down to posterity with the illustrious character of being the savior of your country.”³⁵ Such effusive praise reflected the patriots’ need for a certified hero as a rallying point as much as Washington’s skill in expelling the British. Canonizing Washington was a way to unite a country that still existed only in embryonic form. Curtailing any show of vanity, Washington reacted with studied modesty and stole a line from Joseph Addison’s Cato, telling Quincy, “To obtain the applause of deserving men is a heartfelt satisfaction; to merit them is my highest wish.”³⁶

As a way of celebrating Boston’s liberation, Congress struck its first medal, showing Washington and his generals atop Dorchester Heights. It also commissioned a portrait by Charles Willson Peale in which Washington displays none of the swagger of a triumphant general. The look in his eyes is sad, anxious, even slightly unfocused, as if his thoughts had already turned to his upcoming troubles in New York. His shoulders appear narrow, and his body widens down to a small but visible paunch. It was way too soon for a full-fledged cry of triumph, Peale seemed to suggest, and events would prove him absolutely right.

EVEN BEFORE THE BRITISH SAILED for Nova Scotia, Washington had guessed correctly that they would end up in New York, whose numerous waterways would play to the strength of the world’s mightiest navy. With the redcoats gone, he apprised Congress, he would “immediately repair to New York with the remainder of the army.”³⁷ He knew that if the British controlled the Hudson River, they would effectively control the all-important corridor between Canada and New York City, bisecting the northern and southern colonies. New York was also a stronghold of fervent Tories, noted Washington, filled with disaffected people “who only wait a favorable opportunity and support to declare themselves openly.”³⁸ Hoping to head off this prospect, he started the journey southward on April 4, accompanied by his new personal guard, moving as rapidly as the many ceremonial dinners allowed. He didn’t yield to the euphoria that infected many compatriots and grimly prepared for the impending campaign, knowing that the patriots hadn’t yet experienced the full brunt of British power. The Crown needed to crush this uprising conclusively and establish colonial supremacy, lest it endanger the structure of its entire empire. It couldn’t afford to be humiliated by a ragged band of upstarts.

Having preceded Washington to New York, General Lee reacted with perplexity to the task of defending a city crisscrossed by waterways. Sleepless with worry and incapacitated by gout—he was carried into the city on a stretcher—Lee began to defend New York from naval assault by installing artillery at Governors Island in the upper bay, Red Hook in Brooklyn, and Paulus Hook (later Jersey City) on the Hudson’s western shore. The same qualities that made New York a majestic seaport turned it into a military nightmare for defenders. There was hardly a spit of land that couldn’t be surrounded and thoroughly shelled by British ships. “What to do with the city, I own, puzzles me,” a stumped Lee wrote to Washington. “It is so encircled with deep, navigable water that whoever commands the sea must command the town.”³⁹ In hindsight, the city was certainly doomed, but Washington considered it “a post of infinite importance” that would be politically demoralizing to surrender without a fight .⁴⁰

By the time Washington arrived on April 13, Lee had been posted to Charleston, South Carolina, leaving Israel Putnam in command. A mood of foreboding gripped the city, causing many inhabitants to flee. Washington set to work at his headquarters on lower Broadway, right beside the Battery. A despised symbol of royalty, an equestrian statue of George III, stood outside his door on Bowling Green. When Martha arrived four days later, she and her husband occupied a mansion north of the city that had been vacated by Abraham Mortier, the former deputy paymaster general of British forces in America. With its wide verandas and splendid views of the Hudson River, the house stood in bucolic Lispenard’s Meadows, at what is now the intersection of Varick and Charlton streets.

Because British troops had been accused of abusing Boston’s citizens when they were billeted there, Washington took pains to prevent such misbehavior by soldiers lodged in Manhattan houses. He comprehended the war’s political dimension and swore that soldiers would have to answer for “any wood being cut upon the floors or any water or filth thrown out of the windows.”⁴¹ To win the allegiance of local farmers, he warned his men against trampling crops in their fields. More difficult to supervise were men frequenting the Holy Ground, the notorious red-light district near the Hudson River where up to five hundred prostitutes congregated nightly on land owned by Trinity Church. Venereal disease raced through several regiments, threatening to thin their ranks before the enemy arrived. As William Tudor of Boston wrote home, “Every brutal gratification can be so easily indulged in this place that the army will be debauched here in a month more than in twelve at Cambridge.”⁴²