General Orders, 24 July 1779
General Orders
Head-Quarters Moores-House [West Point] Saturday July 24th 1779.
Parole Havannah—C. Signs Dresden. Brinn—
General Heath will please to give names to the redoubts he is establishing on the heights east of the river, and General McDougall to those on the West Side & on the Island that the whole may be readily distinguished and known.1
Any soldier who presumes to fire his musket without leave from the commanding officer of his regiment (who is not to give it but in cases of necessity and then to acquaint the guards of it) is to receive fifteen lashes on the spot and pay one sixth of a dollar for the cartridge to the Quarter Master of the regiment, who will lay out all money arising in this way for the use of the sick.
The guard nearest to the spot where the gun is fired is to send a file of men to apprehend the offender.
Varick transcript, DLC:GW; copy (extract), MHi: Heath Papers.
1. The names given to these redoubts can be found in a report of 20 Aug. from West Point that is signed by Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall and brigadier generals Henry Knox and Duportail (DLC:GW). This report is enclosed in a letter of the same date from the same three officers to GW (DLC:GW). For the locations of Sherburne’s redoubt, Webb’s redoubt, Wyllys’s redoubt (described in the report as “Wyllis’s advanced lines”), and Rocky Hill redoubts number 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the west side of the Hudson River; redoubts number 5, 6, and 7 on Constitution Island; and the North and South redoubts on the east side of the Hudson River, see Map 2 in this volume; see also GW to McDougall, 19 June, n.2. An undated document, presumably composed earlier that summer and docketed “Names of the Works at West Point and its Vicinity,” indicates six redoubts on the west side of the river, three redoubts on the east side, and nine other defensive installations “Begining at the Nothermost Work” (DLC:GW, ser. 4, at the end of 1779).