“I send you eleven dollars,” Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins wrote to his wife Sarah on October 6. His monthly pay was $13.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 53.

His council assembled, Washington made the case for an all-out amphibious assault on Boston, by sending troops across the shallow Back Bay in flat-bottomed boats big enough to carry fifty men each. He reminded the generals of what they already knew: that winter was fast approaching and the troops were without barracks and firewood; that men already eager to go home would be extremely difficult to keep on duty once they felt the “severity of a northern winter.” When enlistments expired, the disbanding of one army before another was assembled could mean ruin. Gunpowder was still in short supply, but there was enough at hand to mount an attack. Of course, “the hazard, the loss of men in the attempt and the probable consequences of failure” had also to be considered.

There was discussion of these and other points, including the enemy’s defenses, after which it was agreed unanimously not to attack, not for the “present at least.”

It was a sound decision. The “hazard” was far too great, the chance of disastrous failure all too real. Casualties could have been horrendous. Unless they caught the tide exactly right, the men in the boats could have been horrendous. Unless they caught the tide exactly right, the men in the boats could have been stranded on mudflats a hundred yards or more from dry ground and forced to struggle through knee-deep muck while under withering fire. The slaughter could have been quite as horrible as that of the British at Bunker Hill.

In fact, such a headlong attack on their works was exactly what the British generals were hoping for, certain that if the Americans were to be so foolhardy, it would mean the end of the rebellion.

In restraining Washington, the council had proven its value. For the “present at least,” discretion was truly the better part of valor.

Washington accepted the decision, but work on the flat-bottomed boats continued, and in a long letter to John Hancock, he made the case for a “decisive stroke,” adding, “I cannot say that I have wholly laid it aside.” Many in Congress, he sensed, were as impatient as he with the stalemate. “The state of inactivity, in which this army has lain for some time, by no means corresponds with my wishes, by some decisive stroke, to relieve my country from the heavy expense its subsistence “must create.”

As Washington also reminded Hancock—and thus Congress—his war chest was empty. The fact that the troops had not been paid for weeks did not help morale or alleviate hardships at home. “The paymaster has not a single dollar in hand.”

Money at least was on the way. On September 29, $500,000 in Continental bills from Philadelphia were delivered to the headquarters at Cambridge, and in a few days thousands of troops were at last receiving some pay. “I send you eleven dollars,” Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins wrote to his wife Sarah on October 6. His monthly pay was $13.