any other place in the colonies before hostilities—though likely still short of a majority. General George Washington and his troops moved in to defend Manhattan and New York Harbor in 1776. Prior to roughly one-third of New York City's population fleeing the expected combat, the Continental Army came upon a grand city of wealth, a bustling center of commerce, shipbuilding and maritime trade. The city had been built for seafaring transit and trade, and Manhattan's only connection to the mainland was the narrow, wooden King's bridge over the Harlem River, nearly 11 miles north of the city and ferries across the North (Hudson's) River. Most of the population of 20,000 was crowded into an area of less than a square mile near the East River wharves and the New York Harbor. The city's traders, stock brokers, and mariners brought with them great wealth. Henry Knox wrote his wife admiring New Yorkers' "magnificent" horse carriages and fine furniture, but condemning their "want of principle," "pride and conceit," "profaneness," and "insufferable" Toryism. Manhattan's free-wheeling ways did create an environment of loose tongues and loose women. A young Presbyterian chaplain "worried what the consequences might be to the American cause of so many of all ranks so habitually taking the name of the Lord in vain." "But alas, swearing abounds, all classes swear," he lamented. The abundance of prostitutes in New York City—an estimated at 500 women plying "their trade" in 1776—was particularly distressing for many of the Continental soldiers of a Puritan bent, George Washington included. From Lieutenant Isaac Bangs of Massachusetts comes one of the most complete accounts of prostitution in revolutionary America; he had a medical degree from Harvard and took it upon himself to tour the brothel district to inspect the health conditions of the neighborhood and investigate the seedy side of the city that so worried General Washington. He was absolutely appalled by the women of the bawdy houses, who, he thought, "nothing could exceed them in impudence and immodesty," but "the more I became acquainted with them, the more they excelled in their brutality." April 22, barely a week after the Continental Army arrived in the city, two soldiers were found dead hidden in a bordello, one corpse "castrated in a barbarous manner," Bangs reported. Soldiers went on a rampage in the brothel district "in furious retaliation." General Washington condemned all such "riotous behavior" and ordered military