From George Washington to Major General Stirling, 9 December 1779
To Major General Stirling
Morris Town Decr 9th 1779
My Lord
From the unlucky failure of the expedition against Savannah and the apprehension of the Enemy’s pushing their operations in the southern Quarter—Congress have been pleased to direct, by an Act of the 4th Inst. received yesterday, the whole of the Virginia Troops to be immediately put in motion, with a view of sending them to the Southward. I have accordingly given orders for their march to philadelphia as soon as possible, where Congress will direct their farther movements.1 If circumstances would have permitted, I should have written to Your Lordship—sooner upon the subject—and if I had not found that you could not proceed with the Troops, from the circumstance of General Lincoln having been detached to the Southern command. I shall with great pleasure, in the arrangement of our force which this detachment of the Virginians will occasion, provide a command for Your Lordship⟨.⟩ The object of their going is not yet announced to any but Genl Woodford. and I would wish you to consider what I have said with respect to it, as a matter merely for your private satisfaction. I am just setting out to visit the Troops with General Maxwell and those with General Wayne2—and have only time to add—that I am as usual, with very sincere esteem & regard Your Lordships Most Obedt st
G.W.
P.S. I thank you for the paper transmitted by Majr Barber. It is surprising the Enemy have such intelligen⟨ce⟩ with respect to our movements.3
Df, in Robert Hanson Harrison’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. See GW to Samuel Huntington, 29 Nov., and the source note to that document, and to William Woodford, 8 Dec.; see also Benjamin Lincoln to GW, 7 Nov.; Huntington to GW, 10 Nov., and n.1 to that document; and GW to Huntington, 20 and 24 November.
2. GW returned from this inspection at 10:30 A.M. on 11 Dec. (see GW to Huntington, 10–11 Dec.).
3. Stirling’s aide-de-camp Maj. William Barber brought an unidentified newspaper, but it may have been The New-York Gazette: and the Weekly Mercury for 6 Dec., which printed under the heading “NEW-YORK, Decem. 6” (Monday) a paragraph that reads: “Advices from the Country since our last are, That General Washington and Mr. Mead, his Aid de Camp, and his Adjutant General, were near being drowned last Saturday Week, by the overseting of a Whale Boat at a Place called Sandy-Point, on Hudson’s River; that all the Army, but a Garrison of 1200 left at West Point, are marching down the Country in Divisions under their proper Generals, supposed for Morris County; and ’tis conjectured they will hut this Winter either in Morris Town the [Great] Notch below Passaick [Great] Falls, or the Mountain in the Rear of Mr. Kemble’s … Lord Stirling has declined going to the Southward, and ’tis imagined General Wayne will be appointed to that Command, and the Troops destined for South Carolina are, the Virginia and North Carolina Men.” The Royal Gazette (New York) for 4 Dec. contains a less specific account of GW’s near drowning, presumably off Sandy Beach in Orange County, New York. No corroboration for the report has been found outside Loyalist sources.