Note 167 — Chapter V

There is an interesting letter of Washington's preserved in the Hughes Memorial, which adds light on this point. Eight years after the event, when Hughes needed some official certificate showing his authority to impress all the craft he could find, the general replied to him as follows:

"My memory is not charged with the particulars of the verbal order which you say was delivered to you through Col. Joseph Trumbull, on the 27th, August, 1776, 'for impressing all the sloops, boats, and water craft from Spyhten Duyvel, in the Hudson, to Hell Gate, in the Sound.' I recollect that it was a day which required the utmost exertion, particularly in the Quarter-Master's department, to accomplish the retreat which was intended, under cover of the succeeding night; and that no delay or ceremony could be admitted in the execution of the plan. I have no doubt, therefore, of your having received orders to the effect, and to the extent which you have mentioned; and you are at liberty to adduce this in testimony thereof. It will, I presume, supply the place of a more formal certificate, and is more consonant with my recollection of the transactions of that day." It appears from this that Washington remembered that the entire day of the 29th was devoted to planning and preparing for the retreat, and this fits the theory advanced in the note on the "Origin of the Retreat." As to the delivery of the orders about boats, it is probable that Trumbull crossed to New York with Mifflin's letter to Heath and gave it to Hughes to forward. At the same time he gave Hughes his instructions verbally. Hughes received them, says his biographer, about noon. He then had eight hours to carry them out, which gave him time to send to Heath and for Heath to comply, while he and his assistants scoured the coast everywhere else for boats, from Hell Gate down. Among other sloops impressed was the Middlesex, Captain Stephen Hogeboom, while on its way to Claverack. "I was prevented from proceeding," says the captain, "by Coll Wardsworth and Commissary Hughes who ordered your memorialist over with the sloop to Long Island ferry where she was used to carry off the Troops and stores after the unfortunate retreat, &c."—N.Y. Hist. MS., vol. i., p. 620.