How the Continental Army Moved

Chapters

• Chapter 1: Origins of the Continental Army
• Chapter 2: How the Continental Army was Maintained
• Chapter 3: Supplying the Continental Army
• Chapter 4: How the Continental Army Armed Itself
• Chapter 5: Camp Duties in the Continental Army
• Chapter 6: Officers vs Privates in the Continental Army
• Chapter 7: Distractions & Passing the Time in the Continental Army
• Chapter 8: Hospitals and Prison Ships in the Continental Army
• Chapter 9: How the Continental Army Moved
• Chapter 10: Continental Army Privates

Sprightly Sally Wister, arrayed in her prettiest clothes, watched Washington’s army as it moved down the Skippack road from Germantown after the retiring red-coats; she enjoyed the “drumming, fifing and rattling of waggons,” and the soldiers no doubt found pleasure in looking at her.¹ In the bright sun and bracing air they made a gallant array; given the best of health and favorable roads they could march well for a number of miles, but much of the time bad roads and poor shoes retarded their progress, while broken sleep, wet clothing, or insufficient covering at night sapped the vitality of the best constitutions and made laggards of them all. In rainy weather the baggage train, the artillery or the cattle, if they by any chance went before the men, cut the road to pieces and made it next to impossible to march in order.

A day’s march in the Canada expedition was frequently as little as ten miles, while in Sullivan’s campaign against the Indians the day’s journey varied from less than ten to about twenty miles, although it at times rose to forty miles in the twenty-four hours.² Major Norris in his diary calls attention to the “most extrordinary march” of his men from Tioga to Easton in Pennsylvania, a distance of 156 miles, in eight days – nineteen miles a day – over a mountainous and rough wilderness, with artillery and baggage.³ Better progress could be made by infantry when unencumbered; the Maryland companies of riflemen marched nearly 550 miles from Frederick Town (now Frederick City) to Cambridge in twenty-two days, or almost twenty-five miles a day.⁴ General Greene’s army in the Southern expedition covered 2,620 miles from April 16, 1780, to April 19, 1781 (Morristown to Camden), or about seven miles a day, including battles and camping.⁵

Men were often ordered at the Retreat or sunset drum-beat to be ready to march at sunrise. At times the brigades paraded at sunrise, grounded arms, breakfasted, and if the weather was favorable, struck tents and marched by eight or ten o’clock; but occasionally the men fell into line at sunrise, were counted off, and marched from four to eight miles before breakfast. In the heat of the summer “the General” was beat frequently as early as two or three o’clock to warn the men that they were to march, and “the Troop” an hour later for them to fall into line.⁶

It was necessary to halt now and then for the artillery and stores to overtake the troops, or for the men to rest, wash their clothes, and clean their arms. When the long line was again in motion, sometimes in single file as happened in Sullivan’s expedition, officers, musicians, rank and file, artillery, pack-horses, cattle and camp-followers, the spectacle was inspiring. As the 2,000 pack-horses in this expedition alone covered six miles,⁷ it is not difficult to understand that the farmer on the lonely frontier might eat his breakfast as the first strains of music came down the road, do his morning work and sit down to dinner as the artillery came in sight, labor in the fields and return to his supper as the rear-guard, in search of stragglers, passed on.

The way through the Indian country was often picturesque and strange, leading over high, barren mountains from which the wide plains, like another world, could be seen below, then down into wooded ravines, dark and damp with vapor.⁸ The men noticed the different trees, the pine, the elm, the hemlock, the walnut, and turned over the soil with their bayonets.⁹ There was much to see as Sullivan marched through the country about the present Bradford, Penn., and Elmira, N.Y., great stretches of ” fine English grass,” spear-grass or clover¹⁰ and broad fields of maize, water-melons and pompions;¹¹ burning villages and smouldering corn-fields were on every hand.

But such an expedition, necessary though it may have been, gave no satisfaction to men who sought worthy adversaries, and it demoralized those of weaker character. “There is,” said a surgeon who understood the suffering that followed the success of their army, “something so cruel in destroying the habitations of any people (however mean they may be, being their all) that I might say the prospect hurts my feelings.”¹²

The soldiers passed the mangled bodies of two dogs, hung high on poles to appease the evil spirit that terrorized the red man and denied him victory.¹³ The Spirit had not stopped the invaders, who came upon the Indian camp-fires and villages so rapidly that much was left behind in the haste of flight. Near a hut they found a child of three, weak and hungry but playing with a chicken, while a milch cow, left by the not wholly heartless squaw, grazed quietly within sight, ready to furnish nourishment.¹⁴ A feeble old woman, left by the Indians to the mercies of the white men, received from General Clinton a keg of port and some biscuit, although no officer of rank less than a field officer had tasted such luxuries for some days.¹⁵ With this act of kindness must stand barbarities that would be incredible if noticed by a single writer only. Lieutenant Barton, in his Journal under the date August 30, 1779, Says: “At the request of Major Piatt, [I] sent out a small party to look for some of the dead Indians – returned without finding them. Toward morning they found them and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot-legs, one pair for the Major, the other for myself.” After reading of this pleasant enterprise, which reached its successful consummation at a place near Cayuga Creek,¹⁶ it is not impossible to understand Thomas Anburey’s observation that the Americans loved to kill.¹⁷

There was, however, a brighter side to the war. At “Seneca Castle,” in a fertile country, the Indians were supposed to be gathered in force. As soon as the troops approached the woods and fields in the neighborhood, detachments were sent to the right and left and posted just out of sight, so – that at a signal they could converge, hem in the savages, and take the works by storm. Having carefully arranged the details the general set out to inspect the lines before ordering an advance; as he rode he beheld each soldier with as many pompions or melons as his bayonet would hold, and each military shirt bulging with beans and corn. In his wrath he exclaimed: “You damned unmilitary set of rascals! What, are you going to storm a town with ponipions?”

Some two weeks before the above event took place, the diarist, whose account has been followed afforded amusement in a different way. In attempting to catch a doe which had ventured into camp he was knocked down and trod upon by the frightened creature in making her escape.¹⁸ Deer, bears, and wild turkeys were not – uncommon near Tunkhannock, Penn.,¹⁹ but as the men were not allowed to fire in camp nor break ranks when marching, animals had little to fear. Pike, chub, gar and suckers were caught in the streams near where the army encamped.²⁰

The Southern campaigns brought other experiences. Pretty young women gathered at the roadside, says observant William Feltman, their faces almost entirely hidden by linen to protect them from the burning sun; and around them, as if in contrast, a retinue of blacks without a stitch of clothing to cover them.²¹ A sight much more unpleasant, but possibly equally characteristic at the time, was that of a negro’s head stuck on a sapling on one side of the road, and his right hand tied to a sapling on the opposite side. The negro had been hanged and cut in pieces for killing a white man.²²

The same writer – an officer, but probably not more quick to receive impressions in a new country than some of the rank and file – comments on the lack of pines in North Carolina and Virginia, the infrequent meadows, and the flourishing plantations of the Germans and the Quakers. His eye noticed the gray owl, the redbird, flocks of green paroquets and “samalligators”; and his ear detected sweet-singing frogs.²³

If these wonders of nature were observed by the private soldier, he was less inclined to record them in his diary after the weary day’s march and the meagre supper which followed; a tale of hardship and adventure was more suited to his laborious pen. James Melvin, a private in Arnold’s unsuccessful expedition against Quebec in 1775, has described the ascent of the Kennebec into the heart of the Maine forests, and the journey down the Chaudiere to the waters of the St. Lawrence. Death and desertion reduced the force of over 1,000 men to some 700, worn out by marches through “hideous woods,” over mountains, and along the marshy banks of rivers, where the men sank into moss and mud, striving to haul the camp baggage through ravines and intervals. On October 28th they “waded knee-deep among alders &c., the greatest part of the way…One man fainted in the water with fatigue and cold, but was helped along. We had to wade into the water, and chop down trees, fetch the wood out of the water after dark to make a fire to dry ourselves; however, at last we got a fire, and after eating a mouthful of pork, laid ourselves down to sleep round the fire, the water surrounding us close to our heads; if it had rained hard it would have overflown the place we were in.”²⁴ Another member of the expedition has described the events of the next day: “We had to wade waist-high through swamps and rivers, breaking ice before us. Here we wandered round all day, and came at night to the same place which we left in the morning, where we found a small dry spot [and] made a fire; and we were obliged to stand up all night in order to dry ourselves and keep from freezing.”

Three days later the same writer observed: [We] “travelled all day very briskly, and at night encamped in a miserable situation. Here we killed a dog, and we made a very great feast without bread or salt, we having been four days without any provisions; and we slept that night a little better satisfied. Our distress was so great that dollars were offered for bits of bread as big as the palm of one’s hand.”²⁵ The following day, staggering for want of food, they came upon the cattle sent back by Colonel Arnold, who had gone on in advance of the party.

The camp-fire was the soldier’s best friend on the march; by it he dried his clothes, and cooked his scanty meal; it protected him from the cold in northern countries, and even from prowling wild beasts. By its light he cleaned his gun, or wrote a few words in his diary for the family to read upon his return. While he slept it gave light to those who bridged the stream over which the army would pass at sunrise.²⁶ But if the camp-fire was a protection when the air at night was chilled by bleak winds and wet fog, there was no remedy for a tropical sun at noon. After the battle of Monmouth the army of Washington lay at English-Town for two days, and set out on July 1st for Spotwood; the weather was so warm that nearly a third of the men were unable to continue upon their feet until evening, and many had to be conveyed in wagons.²⁷ In Virginia in 1781 the troops were ordered to cut their coats shorter for their greater ease in marching under the hot sun.²⁸ The heat was somewhat easier to bear than the cold; in the winter those who had for shoes strips of rawhide (which were passed under the soles and bound to the ankles)²⁹ left marks of blood on the snow as they marched.³⁰ Even those who had good shoes, sometimes kept them on for so long a time that the leather had to be cut from their swollen feet.

The companionship of many men tramping together was apt to keep fear from their minds; but in passing through dark and lonely valleys at night the dread of attack added to the gloom; they sometimes marched in single file, each man with his cartridge-box on his knapsack to keep it dry in wading deep streams, and when on a dark Indian trail each man with his hand on the frock of the man before him to guide his steps.³¹ The rain beating ceaselessly upon the leaves overhead, and dripping into the pools below; the wind sighing and the wet branches creaking in the wind; then a flash of lightning that revealed a line of weary, muddy, plodding men – shut out of sight in another instant by the black of night and lost in the rumble and roar of thunder; that was what a writer had seen when he wrote that “fighting happens seldom, but fatigue, hunger, cold & heat are constantly varying [the soldier’s] distress.”³² At such a time panic was ready to break forth at any moment. On one occasion in Virginia, in May, 1781, the lightning struck near a moving column of troops and stampeded the horses. The militia thought the enemy were upon them, threw down their arms in the muddy road where they were, and rushed headlong into the woods.³³ The rear-guard, which was accustomed to follow the army to stop stragglers and deserters, sometimes performed a like duty over the cattle; and to march in the dark behind a thousand animals, along a narrow, muddy road, already cut to pieces by heavy artillery, was a test of patriotism.

A passage in the Journal of Elijah Fisher describes simply and well the hardships which the defensive policy of Washington, with its quick marches and counter-marches, brought upon the private soldier: “About Dark it did begun to storm, the wind being at the N.E., and the Artillery went before and Cut up the roads; and the snow Come about our shows [shoes] and then set in to rain, and with all which made it very teges [tedious]…At twelve at night we Come into a wood and had order to bild ourselves shelters to brake of [off] the storm and make ourselves as Comforteble as we could, but jest as we got a shelter bilt, and got a good fire and Dried some of our Cloths, and begun to have things a little Comfurteble, though but poor at the best, thare Come orders to march and leave all we had taken so much pains for.”³⁴

There were brighter days and pleasant marches, not to be left altogether from the soldier’s calendar. A pretty story has been preserved by an aged pensioner who was once in the Commander-in-chief’s life-guard; it will serve to brighten the picture of the army in motion. The men were marching slowly along one day with Washington at their head. Where the road skirted a pond a number of boys were engaged in throwing or “jerking ” stones to make them skim across the face of the water.

“Halt!” came the command. Then Washington said: “Now, boys, I will show you how to jerk a stone.” He performed the feat successfully, smiled quietly, and ordered his men to march forward. That is the story, to be credited or not as one wills.³⁵

When the soldiers endured every species of privation in camp and on the march, it is not strange that they treated the property of people near them somewhat cavalierly. As the Continentals came in sight, patriotic farmers drove their cattle into the hills and put their hens out of reach. To have their fellow-countrymen quartered upon them was distressing from the desolation that marked their sojourn.³⁶ Permission to take property was seldom granted to private soldiers, and Washington made every effort to appease the country-side. In an order against plundering, issued November 3, 1776, an exception was made in favor of straw, and, in time of great dampness, of grain in the sheaf, to keep the men from the ground at night.³⁷ The custom of allowing scouting parties in time of great fatigue to take what they needed by plunder was greatly abused.

The Chevalier de la Luzerne relates that in the winter of 1779-80 the soldiers grew desperate under half-rations and took to marauding and pillage. This was stopped by Washington, but as famine set in, he ordered foraging expeditions – house-to-house visitations – for clothing, blankets, shoes, and every kind of food that could be spared by non-combatants. Under these trials of war the soldiery and the inhabitants seemed to the French writer very submissive.³⁸ Needless cruelty the general abhorred,³⁹ and he strove constantly to suppress the baser element, which was as terrible a scourge as the enemy.⁴⁰

Petty plunder was looked upon by the soldiers as “ragging” is today by college boys, a form of stealing that should be known by a more gentle name. A soldier, for example, threw a stone at some geese in a pond, killed one, and stowed it away carefully in the roomy confines of his drum. When the irate farmer overtook the company the drum-head had been replaced and his search for the goose was unsuccessful. On another occasion the branches of a Quaker’s orchard furnished some thirty or forty fowls, which were sent on ahead before daybreak, and later in the morning were cooked with onions, potatoes, and carrots.⁴¹ When cattle grazed on the hill-side above the camp, and the kettle was empty, “a condition and not a theory” confronted the cook; in such a case a colonel was known not to disdain a quarter of beef left quietly at night beneath the flap of his tent. Or if a soldier (when meat was scarce) wished to visit a friend whom he had not seen for many years, and he was excused from roll-call by the captain, he might by chance find his “friend” in the act of cutting up a steer; it would be such a pleasure to return with meat for the company.⁴²

Days of privation justified theft in the eyes of many of the rank and file. Upon one occasion, in 1779, the troops marched by the body of a soldier, hung for inexcusable treatment of the people. A comrade slapped the dead man on the thigh and said: “Well, Jack, you are the best off of any of us – it won’t come to your turn to be hanged again this ten years.”⁴³

In the north sympathizers with the King suffered less at the hands of passing soldiers than in the south; and yet it was not uncommon for a plain-spoken Tory – a “ministerial tool” – to get a coat of tar and feathers, especially during the months when companies from the central colonies were on their way to join the army about Boston.⁴⁴ The British regulars in Boston as early as March, 1775, had inflicted like punishment on a country fellow who (as was said) had been making preparation for rebellion by buying a gun from a red-coat.⁴⁵

Tories were not always subjected to tar and feathers; in May, 1776, at a drinking ” frolic,” as it was called, a Tory forgot his caution and drank to the King’s success; he was immediately dragged off to the guard, who knocked the end out of a hogshead and forced him to dance Yankee Dudle in it untill next day.”⁴⁶

In the south there was no neutral ground possible for the country people. When the King’s troops were in possession of the land, the Tories drove the rebel sympathizers into the mountains, killing husbands on their doorsteps and shooting children before their helpless mothers. When Lincoln or Gates or Greene came down from the north the tide of blood swept back upon the Tories.

Many families in Georgia and elsewhere on this account lived in the mountains and subsisted by hunting.⁴⁷ Efforts were made, however, to protect the royalists, and General Greene in his orders prohibited the soldiery from insulting any of the inhabitants “with the odious epithets of ‘Tory’ or any other indecent language, it being ungenerous, unmanly and unsoldierlike.”⁴⁸ In truth, the poor Tories found little comfort from either army; a New York fugitive declared that the British spoke of the enemy as rebels, but the Tories they called “damned traitors and scoundrels.” In many towns they were forced to drill with their neighbors, and when drafted, were expected to pay well for substitutes;⁴⁹ in Massachusetts the selectmen or overseers of the poor were empowered to bind out their children with those of the town paupers.⁵⁰

The Tory while an exile in England suffered in spirit if he escaped physical pain; he heard his native land referred to in pompous terms as our plantations, and, as Franklin so delightfully drew the picture, he saw every Englishman “jostle himself into the throne with the King ” that he might talk of our subjects in the colonies.⁵¹ His friends in the rebel army were said to possess “every bad quality the depraved heart can be cursed with.” Before he could analyze his thoughts he found himself rejoicing that news of a rebel victory diminished the conceit of the insufferable “Islanders” about him; and it may be said that the Tory in a foreign land never entirely forgot that his friends and his kinsmen were fighting for the soil that he loved. Curwen has shown us these feelings in the story of his own exile,⁵² and Governor Hutchinson wished to return to lie at last in the soil of his native land.⁵³

The practice of plundering Tories was not so much to be regretted as that of robbing the friends of Congress under the specious pretence that they were secretly loyal to the crown. This habit annoyed Washington frequently, and he complained in January, 1777, to the governor of New Jersey, that the militia officers had been known to lead their men in these infamous expeditions.⁵⁴ But robbery was a misfortune less serious than the treatment received by real Tories. The Council of Bennington in January, 1778, gave out the following order: “Let the overseer of the tories detach ten of them, with proper officers to take the charge, and march them in two distinct files from this place through the Green Mountains, for breaking a path through the snow. Let each man be provided with three days’ provisions; let them march and tread the snow in said road of suitable width for a sleigh and span of horses; order them to return, marching in the same manner, with all convenient speed. Let them march at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning.”⁵⁵

After the battle of Bennington the Tories were the sport of the soldiery; they were tied together in pairs, and attached by the traces to horses which were in some cases driven by negroes.⁵⁶ The same spirit is evident in the remark of a soldier, made after the battle: “One Tory, with his left eye shot out, was led by me, mounted on a horse who had also lost his left eye. It seems to me cruel now – it did not then.”⁵⁷ If the thought and action of the time appear unworthy of men fighting for liberty, it is well to stand for a moment as they did, with the contemptuous red-coat and his prison-ship toward the rising sun, and the treacherous redskin with his scalping-knife toward the western sun: that was no time for over-refinement.

The British army, while marching through an enemy’s country, found the Indian allies unmanageable; they demanded permission to pillage and torture as their reward for service. Perhaps with this in mind General Fraser told his prisoners that if they attempted to escape they would receive no quarter, but would be at the mercy of Indians, to be hunted down and scalped. Probably Fraser hardly expected to be forced to allow so barbarous a punishment, but Burgoyne himself found the greatest difficulty in holding the savage allies to humane methods of warfare and regard for prisoners. Thacher has described the art of scalping. “With a knife,” he writes, “they make a circular cut from the forehead, quite round, just above the ears; then taking hold of the skin with their teeth, they tear off the whole hairy scalp in an instant, with wonderful dexterity.”⁵⁸ This operation, very serious and painful, was not necessarily fatal, and a number of soldiers survived the scalping-knife as they did battles and lived into the next century. After the fight at Freeman’s Farm the Indians are said to have spent the next morning in scalping the dead and wounded; a German officer makes the statement, and when taken with other evidence it does not seem improbable. Scalps were worth about eight dollars each, the price varying somewhat, according to agreement.⁵⁹ General Carleton has been accused of paying for scalps, and American prisoners of more or less veracity, as well as Indians, testified to this as a fact.⁶⁰ While it can scarcely be credited as consistent with Carleton’s known character or as probable treatment of white people by their own race, one should not forget that the colonists
had for a century and more set a dangerous example.

A bounty on scalps of hostile Indians was the prize toward which a frontier “centinel” looked to augment his income. As an instance among many the vote of the New Hampshire House of Representatives May 7, 1746, may be given. The tariff was fixed at seventy pounds for the scalp of each male Indian over twelve who was at war with the province, and of thirty-seven pounds and ten shillings for scalps of women and of children under twelve years of age.⁶¹ Had the Indians joined the American army they would have scalped the British regulars who took their chances of death in any form; but they threw in their lot with the royal cause, and so fell upon old men, helpless women and children more often than they did upon the Continentals. These were the unfortunate conditions of the struggle.

There is little to relieve these pictures of barbarity, and yet the following sprightly narrative by Ethan Allen is not without its humorous aspect. He says: “The officer I capitulated with, then directed me and my party to advance towards him, which was done; I handed him my sword, and in half a minute after, a savage, part of whose head was shaved, being almost naked and painted, with feathers intermixed with the hair of the other side of his head, came running to me with an incredible swiftness;…malice, death, murder, and the wrath of devils and damned spirits are the emblems of his countenance; and in less than twelve feet of me presented his firelock; at the instant of his present, I twitched the officer, to whom I gave my sword, between me and the savage; but he flew round with great fury, trying to single me out to shoot me without killing the officer; but by this time I was nearly as nimble as he, keeping the officer in such a position that his danger was my defence; but in less than half a minute I was attacked by just such another imp of hell: Then I made the officer fly around with incredible velocity for a few seconds of time, when I perceived a Canadian who had lost one eye, as appeared afterwards, taking my part against the savages, and in an instant an Irishman came to my assistance with a fixed bayonet, and drove away the fiends, swearing by Jesus he would kill them.”⁶²

Footnotes

1. Sally Wister’s Journal; in Jenkins’s Historical Collections Relating to Gwynedd, p. 279.
2. Dr. Jabez Campfield’s Diary, pp. 119, 121.
3. James Norris’s Journal; in Buffalo Historical Society Publications, vol. I, p. 249.
4. Daniel McCurtin’s Journal; in T. Balch’s Papers Relating to the Maryland Line (1857), pp. 11, 12.
5. William Seymour’s Journal; in Pennsylvania Magazine, December, 1883, p. 380 (vol. 7).
6. E. Wild’s Journal, passim. Dictionaries differ in their definitions of General and Troop. Colonel Angell in his Diary (p. 106) says : “The Revelle beat as usual; the Genl at 5 oClock when the tents were struck; the Assembly at Six when [the] troops are paraded; the March at Seven when they all moved forward.” Capt. Barnard Elliott’s Diary (Charleston Year Book, 1889, p. 157) records the order “that when the assembly beats, to strike and pack up all the tents, load all the baggage, call in the quarter and the rear guards, and to stand to their arms.” See also p. 236; and p. 245, where the long roll summoned the men to roll-call, and “the troop” meant that the new guard was to parade.
7. Rev. William Rogers’s Journal, p. 77.
8. Jeremiah Fogg’s Journal, p. 10.
9. Dr. Jabez Campfield’s Diary, p. 19.
10. E. Elmer’s Journal ; in New Jersey Historical Society Proceedings, Vol. 2 (1846), p. 48.
11. Thomas Grant’s Journal; in Historical Magazine, vol. 6, pp. 235, 236.
12. Dr. Jabez Campfield’s Diary, p. 121.
13. James Norris’s Journal; in Buffalo Historical Society Publications, vol. I, p. 246.
14. Jeremiah Fogg’s Journal, p. 15.
15. William Barton’s Journal; in New Jersey Historical Society Proceedings, vol. 2 (1846), p. 39.
16. Ibid., p. 311.
17. Anburey’s Travels, vol. I, p. 331.
18. Jeremiah Fogg’s journal, pp. 6, 14.
19. W. Barton’s Journal; in New Jersey Historical Society Proceedings, vol. 2 ( 1846), p. 26. Colonel I. Angell in his Diary (p. 101) relates that two deer went by his quarters in camp in New Jersey, December 12, 1779; the soldiers, not being allowed to fire, gave chase, but were unsuccessful.
20. James Norris’s Journal; in Buffalo Historical Society Publications, vol. I, p. 227.
21. W. Feltman’s Journal, p. 5.
22. Ibid., p. 30.
23. Ibid., p. 37.
24. James Melvin’s Journal, p. 5.
25. Journal attributed to E. Tolman; in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, April, 1886, p. 269.
26. Jeremiah Fogg’s journal, p. 11
27. Thomas Blake’s Journal; in Kidder’s First New Hampshire Regiment, p. 43.
28. E. Wild’s Journal, May 2, 1781; in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, October, 1890, p. 137
29. The Female Review (Dedham, 1797), p. 158.
30. Heath’s Memoirs (1798), p. 96.
31. Nathan Davis’s History; in Historical Magazine, April, 1868, p. 202.
32. Dr. Jabez Campfield’s Diary, p. 119.
33. E. Wild’s journal, May 29, 1781; in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, October, 1890, p. 139.
34. Elijah Fisher’s Journal, p. 7. Thomas Blake’s Journal (Kidder’s First New Hampshire Regiment in the war of the Revolution, p. 37) pictures the greater suffering in time of retreat when he refers thus to Burgoyne’s movements after the second battle of Stillwater: “They burnt most of the buildings as they went, and cut away the bridges; and whenever their wagons or tents or baggage broke down, they knocked the horses on the head and burnt the baggage.”
35. Alexander Milliner, in Hillard’s Last Men of the Revolution, p. 42.
36. W. Thompson’s Deposition; in Publications of the Brookline Historical Publication Society, No. 12.
37. Washington’s Orderly Book, November 3, 1776.
38. J. Durand’s New Materials, p. 217.
39. Washington’s Orderly Book, July 7, 1776.
40. Washington’s Writings (Ford), vol. 4, p. 425.
41. E. Fox’s Revolutionary Adventures (1838), pp. 49, 51.
42. John Shreve’s Personal Narrative; in Magazine of American History, September, 1879, p. 575.
43. E. Hitchcock’s Diary; in Rhode Island Historical Society Publications, January, 1900, p. 223.
44. Aaron Wright’s Revolutionary Journal; in Historical Magazine, July, 1862, p. 209; also William Hendrick’s Journal; in Pennsylvania Archives, 2d series, vol. 15, p. 28.
45. John Rowe’s Diary; in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, March, 1895, p. 90.
46. D. McCurtin’s Journal; in T. Balch’s Papers (1857), p. 40.
47. Luzerne, in J. Durand’s New Materials, p. 252.
48. Colonel Hutchinson’s Orderly Book, p. 7.
49. American Archives V., vol. I, col. 356.
50. Ibid., vol. II, col. 286.
51. Franklin’s Works (Bigelow), vol. 4, p. 3.
52. American Archives V., vol. 3, col. 1269.
53. T. Hutchinson’s Diary and Letters (London, 1886), vol. 2, pp. 257, 335.
54. Washington’s Writings (Ford), vol. 5, p. 201; also his Revolutionary Orders (Whiting), p. 70.
55. Note in Hadden’s journal, p. 128.
56. Memoir of General John Stark, by C. Stark, p. 63.
57. J. D. Butler’s Bennington address, p. 29.
58. James Thacher’s Military Journal, p. 137 .
59. J. Priest’s Stories of the Revolution, p. 19.
60. J. Melvin’s Journal, p. 23; also American Archives V., vol. 2, col. 268,
61. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. 5, p. 410
62. Ethan Allen’s Narrative (Philadelphia, 1779), p. 11.