Note 122 — Chapter IV

Several writers, Mr. Sparks among them, make the statement that neither Washington nor Putnam went outside of the Brooklyn lines. It would be impossible to credit this without absolute proof of the fact. Washington always reconnoitred the position of the enemy whenever they were near each other; in the last scenes of the war at Yorktown he was among the first at the outposts examining the British works. Undoubtedly he rode out to the Flatbush Pass on the 26th, as stated by the writer of the letter to the South Carolina Gazette (Document 19), who says: "The evening preceding the action, General Washington, with a number of general officers, went down to view the motions of the enemy, who were encamped at Flatbush." A letter from a survivor of the Revolution, present on Long Island, published in a newspaper several years since, well authenticated, and preserved in one of Mr. Onderdonk's scrap-books in the Astor Library, New York, confirms this statement. The soldier recollects that he saw Washington and others looking at the enemy with their glasses.