While Washington was bringing order to his army and strengthening his position, he was also constantly seeking to confine the operations of the enemy and cut off their supply of provisions. Attacks were carefully guarded against; parties in whale boats were afloat each night to watch the waters; the American pickets grew as keen as night-birds, so accustomed were they to search the darkness.
Sudden assaults, made by parties on both sides, marked the summer, and the fighting on the islands continued. British transports arrived from time to time, filled with additional troops; now and then the King’s batteries opened fire upon an American work which they fancied was being pushed too far; on the sea, the Yankee privateers were increasing in numbers and in power; scarcely a week passed that the city did not receive news of some daring deed of theirs.
Then finally the long expected party of Southern riflemen arrived. These had enlisted at the first echo of the war and they had marched from four to seven hundred miles in their anxiety to face their country’s enemies.
They were bronzed, hardy looking men, dressed in hunting-shirts and coonskin caps. They carried rifles, the length of which caused the boys to open their eyes.
“They look like marksmen,” said Ezra Prentiss. “I have heard that the backwoodsmen in their colony are very expert with the rifle.”
As though to prove this, a party of the Southerners passed in review before the commanders shortly after they reached the camp. While advancing quickly, and at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards, they fired at a target seven inches in diameter. And each bullet found the mark!
Washington at once ordered these riflemen stationed at the outposts. Here they made themselves terrible to the British, and day by day this terror increased. Whatever they fired at they hit; and soon the King’s outposts dreaded to move except under cover. Rumors of the remarkable shooting of these men reached even so far as England; and one of them, who was made prisoner, was taken there. The newspapers described him with great minuteness; and the British public swarmed to see him and the motto “Liberty or Death” which he wore upon the breast of his hunting-shirt in common with his fellows.