General Orders, 7 June 1776
General Orders
Head Quarters, New York, June 7th 1776.
Parole Gates.Countersign Mifflin.
The Honorable The Continental Congress, have been pleased to appoint Horatio Gates Esqr. Major General; and Thomas Mifflin Esqr. Brigadier General in the Army of the United Colonies: They are to be obeyed as such.1
The Honorable The Continental Congress have been pleased to appoint Stephen Moylan Esqr. to be Quarter-Master-General, in the room of Thomas Mifflin Esqr. preferr’d; and to be obeyed as such.2
Walter Stewart and Isaac Peirce Esquires are appointed Aid-de-Camps to Major General Gates; All orders written, or verbal, deliver’d by either of them, are to be considered as coming from the Major General, and obeyed as such.3
After Orders. June 7th—76. The Adjutants of each regiment to give in immediately at Head Quarters, a Return of what number of Pikes are fit for service, and what number wanting to complete in each regiment.
Varick transcript, DLC:GW. These were the first orders issued after GW’s return to New York from Philadelphia the previous afternoon.
1. Horatio Gates and Thomas Mifflin were promoted on 16 May (, 4:359).
2. Stephen Moylan was elected quartermaster general on 5 June (ibid., 5:419).
3. Both officers received the rank of major with this appointment. Walter Stewart (c.1756–1796), who had been commissioned a captain in the 3d Pennsylvania Regiment on 5 Jan. 1776, was brevetted a lieutenant colonel by the Continental Congress in November 1776 when he brought intelligence to Congress from Gates (ibid., 6:966–67). In June 1777 Stewart became colonel of a Pennsylvania state regiment which fought later that year at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and in November 1777 the regiment was incorporated in the Continental army as the 13th Pennsylvania Regiment. Named colonel of the 2d Pennsylvania Regiment in July 1778, Stewart subsequently assisted in quelling the mutinies of the Connecticut and Pennsylvania lines, and in 1781 he participated in the Virginia campaign as a regimental commander in Wayne’s brigade. On 11 Feb. 1782 GW appointed Stewart inspector for the northern army (see General Orders, that date). Stewart held that office until sometime in 1783. Isaac Peirce (1749–1821) apparently served Gates as an aide-de-camp until the end of the war.