George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[389] every hour made it more imperative, that he should

Chap. Xxxvii} 1775. June.

be superseded; and yet his private virtues and the fear of exciting dissensions in the province, required the measure to be introduced with delicacy and circumspection. The war was to become a continental war; the New England army a continental army; and that change in its relations offered the opportunity of designating a new commander in chief. To this end, the congress of Massachusetts formally invited the general congress ‘to assume the regulation and direction of the army, then collecting from different colonies for the defence of the rights of America.’ At the same time Samuel Adams received a private letter from Joseph Warren, interpreting the words as a request that the continent should ‘take the command of the army by appointing a generalissimo.’ The generalissimo whom Joseph Warren, Warren of Plymouth, Gerry and others desired, was Washington. The bearer of the letter who had been commissioned to explain more fully the wishes of Massachusetts, was then called in. His communication had hardly been finished, when an express arrived with further news from the camp; that Howe, and Clinton, and Burgoyne, had landed in Boston; that British reinforcements were arriving; that other parts of the continent were threatened with war. A letter was also received and read, from the congress of New Hampshire, remotely intimating that ‘the voice of God and nature’ was summoning the colonies to independence.

It was evident that congress would hesitate to adopt an army of New England men under a Massachusetts commander in chief. Virginia was the