Philadelphia, 26 June, 1776.
I have written so seldom to you, that I am really grieved at the
recollection. I wrote you a few lines June 2, and a few more June 16.
These are all that I have written to you since this month began. It has
been the busiest month that ever I saw. I have found time to inclose
all the newspapers, which I hope you will receive in due time.
Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt a heart of stone. The
small-pox is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and
Indians, together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from
Quebec. This the cause of our disgraces at the Cedars. I don't mean that
this was all. There has been want approaching to famine, as well as
pestilence. And these discouragements have so disheartened our officers
that none of them seem to act with prudence and firmness. But these
reverses of fortune don't discourage me. It was natural to expect them,
and we ought to be prepared in our minds for greater changes and more
melancholy scenes still. It is an animating cause, and brave spirits are
not subdued with difficulties.
Amidst all our gloomy prospects in Canada, we receive some pleasure from
Boston. I congratulate you on your victory over your enemies in the
harbor. This has long lain near my heart, and it gives me great pleasure
to think that what was so much wished is accomplished. I hope our people
will now make the lower harbor impregnable, and never again suffer the
flag of a tyrant to fly within any part of it.
The Congress have been pleased to give me more business than I am
qualified for, and more than, I fear, I can go through, with safety to
my health. They have established a board of war and ordnance and made me
President of it, an honor to which I never aspired, a trust to which I
feel myself vastly unequal. But I am determined to do as well as I can,
and make industry supply, in some degree, the place of abilities and
experience. The Board sits every morning and every evening. This with
constant attendance in Congress will so entirely engross my time, that I
fear I shall not be able to write you so often as I have. But I will
steal time to write to you.
The small-pox! the small-pox! what shall we do with it? I could almost
wish that an inoculating hospital was opened in every town in New
England. It is some small consolation that the scoundrel savages have
taken a large dose of it. They plundered the baggage and stripped off
the clothes of our men who had the small-pox out full upon them at the
Cedars.