Enclosure: Major General Arthur St. Clair and Lieutenant Colonels Edward Carrington and Alexander Hamilton to George Washington [21 March 1780]
Major General Arthur St. Clair and Lieutenant Colonels Edward Carrington and Alexander Hamilton to George Washington1
[Enclosure]
[Amboy, New Jersey, March 21, 1780]
Plan of exchange for the Troops of Convention, in three Divisions to be formed as equally, as the exchanging by Corps will allow, from the Strength of the Rank & file, each of the two first Divisions to have a Major General and a Brigadier General, and the third The Lieutenant General and a Brigadier General exchanged with them. The Regiments to which the Brigadier Generals belong to be exchanged with them, the other Regiments in a distribution of two British, then two German to be taken by lott, except certain broken parts of Corps, which it is proposed to exchange in the first Division. The Estimate for these exchanges is formed according to the Tarif annexed to the proposal which gave rise to a meeting of Commissioners.
Plan proposed for the Exchange of the second Division of the Troops of Convention
Amboy [New Jersey] March 21. 1780
Total Number of Men to be exchanged
Drummers 48
Rank & file 745
D, Reel 184, Item 167, p. 101, Papers of the Continental Congress, National Archives.
1. This document is enclosure No. 3 to St. Clair, Carrington, and H to Washington, second letter of March 26, 1780 ( , II, 296–301).
For background to this document, see Washington to St. Clair, Carrington, and H, March 7, 8, 1780 ( , II, 273–74); “Minutes of the Proceedings at Amboy,” March 10–14, 1780 ( , II, 275–85); H to Washington, March 17, 1780 ( , II, 287–88); “A Proposition,” March 18, 1780 ( , II, 289–91); St. Clair, Carrington, and H to Major General William Phillips and Lieutenant Colonels Cosmo Gordon and Chapel Norton, March 19, 1780 ( , II, 291–92); St. Clair, Carrington, and H to Washington, first letter of March 26, 1780 ( , II, 295–96).
From 1775 to 1777 St. Clair rose from a colonel in the Pennsylvania militia to a major general in the Continental Army. In June, 1777, he was in command of the defenses at Fort Ticonderoga and ordered the evacuation of the post in the face of a British attack on the night of July 5. He was court-martialed in September, 1778, but was fully exonerated.
Carrington, a resident of Virginia, was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the First Continental Artillery on November 30, 1776.