Note 1153 — Chapter VIII

Bancroft and those who follow him, taking their cue from Smith (Hist. of New York), say that Loudon “proposed to encamp on Long Island for the defence of the continent.” Parkman (ii. p. 2) points out that this is Smith’s perversion of a statement of Loudon that he should disembark on that island if head winds prevented his entering New York bay, when he returned from Halifax. There seems to have been a current apprehension of a certain ridiculousness in all of Loudon’s movements. It induced John Adams to believe even then that the colonies could get on better without England than with her. Cf. the John Adams and Mercy Warren Letters (Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections), p. 339.