Note 162 — Chapter V

In vol. ii. of the L.I. Hist. Society's "Memoirs," the author, Mr. Field, devotes pages 254-258 to the skirmishing of some Connecticut soldiers on the extreme right on the other side of Gowanus Creek, which appears to him to have been rash and foolhardy, and strangely in contrast with what also appears to him to have been an exhibition of cowardice on their part the day before. The narrative from which the incidents are taken (Martin's) shows no such singular inconsistency in the conduct of these men. This was Colonel Douglas' regiment, and, as Martin himself says, it moved promptly under orders from the ferry to the right to cover Stirling's retreat. "Our officers," he writes, "pressed forward towards a creek, where a large party of Americans and British were engaged." They very properly did not halt to help a company of artillerymen drag their pieces along. The skirmish on the following day was nothing remarkable in its way. It was just such brushes as the men engaged in that Washington, on Graydon's authority, encouraged. The regiment displayed no particular rashness on the 28th, nor any cowardice on the 27th—that is, if Martin is to be credited.