On the twenty-ninth day of June, the British fleet began to arrive. Abigail and her father watched from the fort. A hundred ships, carrying nine thousand redcoats, sailed up through 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.