The Bloody Summer...
The harbor is quiet in the early morning. Across the East River, the hills of Long Island sit low in the mist — green, unremarkable, about to become the most important piece of ground in the colonies.
Washington has been in New York for three weeks. He knows what's coming. He picks up his pen.
Manhattan, New York — May Day, 1776
It's a letter to his brother, not a military dispatch — a warning from a man who has done the math; We expect a very bloody summer in New York.
He seals it. Sets it aside. Goes back to work.
Outside, regiments are forming up for the ferry crossing to Brooklyn. The sound of axes and shovels has been a constant since he arrived — men digging and building, hauling timber and cannon through mud and morning fog. Washington has turned New York into a construction site. It looks like it won't be enough.
Brooklyn, New York — Early May
Washington crosses the East River to inspect the ground personally.
Fort Putnam on the high ground.
Fort Greene to the southwest.
Fort Box further south.
Fort Defiance at the water's edge near Red Hook.
Thirty-six cannons distributed across miles of entrenchments connecting everything — the most fortified position the Continental Army has ever built.
He walks the lines, asks questions, makes notes. The position is strong if Howe comes straight at it. But there are roads through the hills to the east — Jamaica Pass — that his maps show and his instincts flag. He doesn't have enough men to cover everything.
What he builds before Howe arrives is all he'll have.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — Early May
John Adams hasn't slept properly in weeks. He's not sure he cares.
On his desk, a letter from Abigail — her third this month. She writes the way she thinks: directly, without apology, always a step ahead of the room he's sitting in. I long to hear that you have declared an independency, she tells him. He has read it four times. He keeps it where he can see it.
Next to it, his own manuscript — Thoughts on Government. Four months ago Thomas Paine had handed the rebellion its soul. Forty-seven pages of common language that made farmers and merchants feel the idea of independence in their bones. Common Sense had lit a fire.
Adams had ridden that momentum and published Thoughts on Government in late April. By May, the pamphlet was circulating among delegates, finding its way into the constitutional debates in Virginia, South Carolina, New Jersey. Men were reading it and going home to write constitutions.
Where Paine gave people the feeling, Adams was giving them the architecture — separation of powers, independent judiciary, representative legislature, executive accountability. Not a far-away dream. A working design that could be implemented... today.
Abigail is right. The colonies are ready. The fever of independence is spreading.
Providence, Rhode Island — May 4
Jonathan Arnold has had enough.
The merchant and physician from Providence has drafted a bill — clean, direct, no room for interpretation — that throws the King overboard. A bold repeal of Rhode Island's oath of allegiance to the Crown, replaced with an oath to the state.
The General Assembly meets in the Old State House on Benefit Street.
The Senate votes unanimously.
In the House, 54 of 60 vote yes.
The six dissenters are from Newport. A port city. Open water on three sides, Royal Navy ships well within range. Their hands aren't tied by cowardice — they're tied by geography. They know exactly what a British broadside looks like from the waterfront.
The rest of the Assembly doesn't have that problem. The bill passes. Court proceedings will now be conducted in the name of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, not the King. The phrase God Save the King is stricken from official use and replaced with God Save the United Colonies.
Rhode Island is the smallest colony in America. It moved faster than all the rest because it could — small enough to act, angry enough not to wait. They are the first to walk through the door North Carolina's Halifax Resolves swung open.
In Philadelphia, Adams hears the news and allows himself exactly one moment of satisfaction before going back to work.
Brooklyn, New York — Mid May
A dispatch arrives from Philadelphia. Commodore Hopkins has been called before a court of inquiry - despite bringing supplies and artillery, Hopkins is finished after his embarrassing loss to the HMS Glasgow.
Washington sets the dispatch down.
He has known since New London what the Navy was worth. The question he couldn't finish on that dock — if it comes down to ships — has its answer now. The Continental Navy's first commander is being shown the door, and the greatest fleet on earth is probably somewhere on the Atlantic getting closer every day. Washington is going to defend New York with earthworks, thirty-six cannons, and tired soldiers who haven't been paid since winter.
He picks up his pen. More fortifications. More men to Brooklyn.
More requests to Congress that will probably go unanswered.
He sends them anyway.
Williamsburg, Virginia — May 15
Patrick Henry is in the room. George Mason is in the room.
Virginia's revolutionary convention has been in session for weeks, and the men around this table have no more patience for caution. They have seen Rhode Island. They have read Adams. They know what Congress is about to do — and they know that when Virginia moves, the other colonies move with her.
This is geography, history, and raw political weight. Virginia is the largest colony in America. Her tobacco built the Atlantic economy. Her lawyers wrote half the arguments that started this fight with the Crown. Her soldiers are in every theater of the war. When Virginia speaks in Philadelphia, the room listens.
And Virginia is about to speak.
Their instructions are short and leave nothing open to interpretation: their Philadelphia delegates are to propose independence on the floor of the Continental Congress.
Force the vote.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — May 15
Adams is on his feet.
The resolution before Congress is the one he has been maneuvering toward for months — a formal recommendation that every colony dissolve its royal government and replace it with one built on the authority of its own people. Not Britain's people. Theirs.
South Carolina's Edward Rutledge is on his feet too. He's the most vocal among the congressional opposition, and he calls the resolution the most senseless measure ever introduced in Congress. But senseless violence has been happening for fourteen months. Adams has been saying this since before Lexington, and he firmly holds his position.
He looks around the room — the hesitators, the moderates, the men still writing letters home hoping for reconciliation with a King who called them traitors and hired Germans to kill them.
He thinks of Abigail's letter on his desk. I long to hear that you have declared an independency... Are these men ready?
The resolution passes. Thirteen colonies just received official instructions: stop pretending you're still British. Build your own governments. The word that hung unspoken in Halifax, that nobody in this room would yet say out loud, has just been handed to every colony in America as a policy directive.
Paine told them why. Adams showed them how. Congress is telling them... do it now.
Brooklyn, New York — May 21
Washington has been writing Congress for weeks. More men. More supplies. More money for soldiers who haven't been paid since winter.
The letters go to Philadelphia. The answers come back slow, incomplete, or not at all.
He will not wait any longer. He rides to Philadelphia to say in person what the letters apparently aren't making clear. Imposing, he walks into the Pennsylvania State House, stands alongside Adams, and makes the case to Congress himself.
A fleet is coming - he can feel it. Congress has to act.
One Direction
In May 1776 the rebellion started moving more and more as a single entity.
Rhode Island jumped first — small, radical, angry, and tired of waiting. Adams pushed the blueprint through Congress. Virginia ordered its Philadelphia delegates to put independence to a vote. And Washington, alone in Brooklyn with the best trap he knew how to build, received the news he'd been dreading.
But all the colonies seemed to be on the same page. The soldiers were gearing up. The politicians were moving forward. The bloody summer Washington predicted may be on the horizon...
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