General Orders, 31 March 1780
General Orders
Head-Quarters Morristown friday March 31st 1780.
Parole Magazine— C. Signs Niveous. Novel.
By a Division General Court Martial held by order of Brigadier General Clinton—Lieutent Col. Huntington Prest.
Ensign Spoor of the 3rd New-York regiment was tried for, “Scandalous and ungentlemanlike behaviour towards Captain Pell on the evening of the 29th of January last, with several others and forcibly putting him out of the room of a public house in which he had passed the evening”—and plead “Not guilty.”
The Court after considering the evidences and the Prisoner’s defence are of opinion that the prisoner is guilty of a breach of the 21st article, 14th section of the Articles of War1 and adjudge that he be discharged from the service.2
The General confirms the sentence against Ensign Spoor, because there was a shameful combination of a number against a single Person, who appears to have given no provocation.3
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. For this article of war, see General Orders, 26 March, n.5.
2. In the postscript of his letter to GW dated 29 March, Brig. Gen. James Clinton had questioned the delay in publishing these court-martial proceedings.
3. During a deposition given to a judge in Onondaga County, N.Y., on 8 May 1818, John Spoor, “now a cripple,” stated that he was dismissed from the army “on account of some ungentlemanlike conduct alledged to have been done by him in an affray at a tavern in which several officers were engaged and for which he refused to make an acknowledgement to a Superior officer concerned as he did not feel himself to blame” (DNA: RG 15, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800–1900).
Samuel Tredwell Pell (1755–1786), Spoor’s victim, came from a wealthy New York family. Pell never married; his fiancée, a cousin with strong Loyalist views, rejected him because of his patriotism.