From George Washington to Joseph Reed, 1 August 1780
To Joseph Reed
Peck’s Kill Augt 1st 1780
sir
I beg leave to inform Your Excellency, that the exigency of the service makes it necessary for me to call the German Battallion from Sunbury to join this Army, & that I must embrace the earliest opportunity to transmit an Order for the purpose.1 I have thought it proper to communicate this to Your Excellency, that You may, if You deem it essential, supply it’s place, by incorporating & ordering a number of Your Militia to act in that Quarter. Had the requisition of the Honble the Committee of Congress to the State for Men to fill her Battallions, been even nearly complied with, and which I thought as they did, the public interest required, I should have foregone the advantages which would have been derived from the service of this Corps, and continued it at it’s present station; but this not having been the case, I am compelled to avail myself of it’s aid.2 I have the Honor to be
G.W.
Df, in Robert Hanson Harrison’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW. For evidence that the recipient’s copy of this letter was dated 30 July, see Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council to GW, 7 August.
1. For the draft of this letter, see GW to Ludwig Weltner, this date.
2. For the request for the states to fill their regiments to their full complement of 504 rank and file for the campaign, see GW to the Committee at Headquarters, 25 May, and n.5. For the disappointing results in raising the quota from Pennsylvania, see Francis Johnston to GW, 23 and 28 July.