1. Pleasant Valley was a settlement in Middletown (now Holmdel) Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. Raritan Bay and a view of Sandy Hook, N.J., and lower New York harbor were no more than four or five miles to the north.

2. Lee’s most recent known letter to GW was dated 3 November.

3. The memorandum appears at the end of this letter where Lee listed eight British ships (Russell and Robust, each 74 guns; Europa, Defiance, and Raisonnable, each 64 guns; Roebuck, 44 guns; and two unidentified frigates) off Sandy Hook. Lee listed two other British ships (Renown, 54 guns, and the frigate Romulus) at New York.

4. For GW’s eagerness to discern British intentions, see his letter to Samuel Huntington, 29 Nov., and n.1 to that document.

A fleet was about to leave New York for Cork, Ireland (see Sabine, Smith’s Historical Memoirs description begins William H. W. Sabine, ed. Historical Memoirs . . . of William Smith, Historian of the Province of New York. 2 vols. New York, 1956–58. description ends [1971], 186). British plans came to the attention of William Smith, royal chief justice of New York, who wrote in his memoirs under 4 Dec.: “Orders are out for the Embarkation of 10 Regiments and 4 Battallions of Hessian Grenadiers. They will make 10,000. It is public to Day, and said that both Lord Cornwallis and the Commander in Chief will go with the Detachment. Dr. Blagden believes they will land on the Continent, but thinks some in Carolina and others on the Eastern Shore of Mariland. The Spirits of the People are prodigiously elevated. Some nevertheless fear a Change of Design from the wavering Spirits of the General [Henry Clinton] and Admiral [Marriot Arbuthnot]. …

“It is now said that the European Fleet to England and Ireland shall not sail till the Army is under Way, and that this will be next Month” (Sabine, Smith’s Historical Memoirs description begins William H. W. Sabine, ed. Historical Memoirs . . . of William Smith, Historian of the Province of New York. 2 vols. New York, 1956–58. description ends [1971], 187). For an overview of the British expedition from New York City to Charleston, S.C., see Anthony Wayne to GW, 26 Dec., source note.

5. The enclosure was an extract from New Jersey governor William Livingston’s letter to Lee written at Mount Holly on 24 Nov.: “The granting of passes (for going into the Enemy’s Lines) in this State by any Person except his Excellency General Washington & the Commander in Chief of this State, being expressly against the Law of New Jersey as well as a Resolution of Congress, (by the last of which the officer who grants them is to forfeit his Commission) I can by no means countenance the practice. How far in extraordinary cases & for the express purpose of gaining importan[t] Intelligence, an officer at an outpost may be excusable for employing a Spy, your own prudence I presume will be able to dictate. But your pass is in reality ⟨a⟩ Licence to trade; and from melancholy experience I have Reason to think that those who will engage in that Business are ⟨g⟩enerally a Pack of Scoundrels, who mean nothing by it but to benefit ⟨th⟩emselves by the Trade which they are permitted to carry on under ⟨P⟩retence of the better introducing themselves to the Enemy, and who ⟨will⟩ be of as much Disservice to you by carrying Intelligence to them, ⟨as⟩ Benefit, by any that they will bring from, them” (DLC:GW; see also Livingston Papers, 3:230–31). For the laws regulating the issuance of passes, see Livingston Papers, 3:117, and JCC, description begins Worthington Chauncey Ford et al., eds. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. 34 vols. Washington, D.C., 1904–37. description ends 13:446–48.

6. GW replied to Lee on 20 December.