Note 169 — Chapter V
Reading edition
All our principal accounts follow Graydon, who states that the order to attack the enemy was given "regimentally." Colonel Hand, in his letter describing the night's incidents (Reed's Life of Reed), makes no allusion to such an order, but on the contrary states that he and the other colonels of the covering party were told that they were to retreat. An order to attack would have been a poor disguise for a retreat, for every man must have felt its utter rashness and at once suspected some other move.