As 1776 started, the 13 colonies were divided. The mysterious deaths of everyone of consequence in the revolutionary movement further set off even greater anger. People assumed George or one of his cronies in the colonies had done it. This did not kill the fervor of the general revolutionary spirit encompassing especially the northern colonies. By March of 1776, a Boston businessman named James Gardner had reorganized the new revolutionaries and was drafting a letter to the King. Whether Gardner actually intended to declare independence is debated among historians even today. The letter, finalized on May 4th, 1776 was named "A Letter To His Majesty King George III on The Grievances of the American Colonies". Today, it is simply known as the Great Grievance. Although the title sounds respectful and conciliatory, Gardner, with input from his close personal friends Jeremiah Drake of New York and Matthew Bradley of Virginia, eviscerated the king for the way he treated the colonies. Actually, Gardner started his letter, and later wrote to Drake and Bradley, asking them to go up to Boston to help him write the letter, and to bring their allies from their states. Gardner knew that, even as the three were personal friends, even more important to having them as part of the movement unified the sectionalism present, as they were all from different sections of the country. The letter was received in England on June 5th 1776, and the next day, Drake was arrested by British troops in New York City. Gardner assumed that there would be a fight, but Drake's arrest drove him to the edge. Gardner and Bradley were no longer going to even pretend to be civil with the British authorities. Independence was the only way. Any compromise with the British authorities was impossible. A war was starting, and Gardner and Bradley were going to lead it. In order to lead the war, they needed military leaders. They decided the structure would be a central commander in chief, a northern commander, a Mid-Atlantic commander, and a southern commander, and those commanders would largely be able to build their staff. Gardner and Bradley decided that Gardner would pick the commander in chief and the northern commander, and Bradley would pick the central and southern commanders. For the Southern commander, Bradley tapped David Beard of North Carolina. The Mid-Atlantic colonies would be handled by Daniel Sanford of New Jersey. For the commander in chief, Gardner picked Virginian Richard Whittle. Elias Deming of Connecticut would be the northern commander. The first order of business, once armies were mustered, was liberating New York. Drake's arrest was only the first thing that happened in New York. After that, the city was put on what essentially amounted to a lockdown. If New York were liberated, it was possible that Drake may be freed. Luckily, the man tasked with this job, Daniel Sanford, was an aggressive commander, so the battle, and hopefully the subsequent liberation would probably happen sooner rather than later. Sanford got his marching orders in August of 1776 and was on the outskirts of the city by the end of the month defeating smaller bands of British troops throughout central and northern New Jersey. The invasion plan for New York was that Sanford would march north. Deming would send a subordinate south, and the two American armies would converge on the British together. On September 9, 1776, Sanford was met by Thomas Kilton, the northern commander promised, and the siege of New York began. The siege lasted until December when the British finally slunk out of New York, but not before hanging Jeremiah Drake, which would cause even more rage from the Patriots and turn Drake's name into the most famous battle cry of the war. In the North, things were not going as well. The British took the initiative in that area and had pushed Deming west, nearly out of Massachusetts and Connecticut entirely. This lasted throughout the year. The north ached to get Kilton and his troops back, but that would have to wait until 1777. In the South, Beard was struggling less with British troops, and more with Southern loyalists. He was gaining ground, but it was a slog. He defeated the British near Charlottesville, VA in September, but that was really the only major victory of the Americans in the South. As the year 1776 ended, the only theatre where it seemed like the United States could actually defeat the British was the mid-Atlantic, and even then, it was at a heavy cost.