Washington was glad to learn that the British were laying in supplies of coal for the winter.

It meant that they intended to stay in Boston, where, more than in any other place, he could make trouble for them.
Washington had more on his mind than the creation of an army and the siege of Boston.

He had also to decide the strategy of the war.

On the long American sea front Boston alone remained in British hands.

New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and other ports farther south were all, for the time, on the side of the Revolution.