From George Washington to Brigadier General John Stark, 18 July 1778
To Brigadier General John Stark
Head quarters Haverstraw [N.Y.] July 18th 1778
Dear Sir
I this day received your Letter of the 14th Instant, & am sorry to find you so circumstanced as to render a Reinforcment necessary which I can badly spare in the present critical & interesting State of things; I have however, order’d Colo. Butler with the 4th Pensylvania Regiment & a part of Morgan’s Riffle Corps to March to the Village Wawarsink in Ulster County, from whence they may be call’d either to Albany or farther to the Westward as the Exigency of affairs will point out1—These, with the troops which Genl Gates informs me, are to March to your assistance,2 will I expect prove sufficient to repell every attack which may be made upon you, & I hope in a little time to be in a Situation that I can give you every necessary support. I am Dr sir your very Hble Servt
Go: Washington
LS (photocopy), DLC:GW, series 9.
1. Letters of this date from GW’s aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman to Lt. Col. William Butler and Capt. Thomas Posey (1750–1818) ordered these units to rendezvous at Smith’s Clove and then march to Wawarsing, N.Y., where they would await instructions from Gov. George Clinton (both, DLC:GW). Posey was commissioned as a captain in the 7th Virginia Regiment in March 1776, and when Col. Daniel Morgan’s Rifle Regiment was organized in the summer of 1777, he became a captain in that regiment. Posey’s promotion to major, dated from 30 April 1778, evidently took place during the mid-September reorganization of the Virginia line, when Posey became major of the new 7th (formerly 11th) Virginia Regiment. Posey was promoted to lieutenant colonel in September 1781 and served to March 1783. When the postwar army was expanded in 1793, Posey was commissioned as a brigadier general, a post he resigned in February 1794. His subsequent career included service in the Kentucky state legislature, as U.S. senator from Louisiana, and as governor of the Indiana Territory.
2. Gates was probably referring to the militia that his letter to Stark of 13 July had directed Stark to call out (see Gates to GW, 13 July, n.3).