From George Washington to Major General Stirling, 18 May 1780
To Major General Stirling
Head Quarters Morris Town 18th May 1780
My Lord
Colonel Craig of the 3d Penna Regiment has laid before me the Copy of a division Court Martial held by your order upon Joseph English for deserting from that Regiment and inlisting in Colo. Livingstons.1 I observe that your Lordship has disapproved the sentence (which found the prisoner guilty and ordered him to return to his former Regiment) upon a presumption that no Soldiers were inlisted for the War in 1776. By this I imagine your Lordship to have been unacquainted with a circumstance upon which the inlistments of a great number of the pennsylvania troops depends. When the Army was new modelled in Sepr 1776,2 Commissioners were sent from Pennsylvania to Ticonderoga to arrange their Officers upon the new establishment, and to re-engage as many of the Soldiers as possible for the War, which was the term then fixed upon, tho’ it was afterwards unhappily altered.3 English, Colo. Craig informs me, was among those reinlisted, but being left sick at Albany, as appears from old Muster Rolls,4 he inlisted into Livingstons.
From the foregoing state, your Lordship will, I am convinced, clearly see the propriety and necessity of ordering the Man to join Colo. Craig. I am with great Regard Your Lordships Most obt Servt
Go: Washington
LS, in Tench Tilghman’s writing, NHi: Stirling Papers; Df, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. The copy of the court-martial has not been identified.
Joseph English enlisted as a private in the 2d Pennsylvania Battalion in January 1776. He subsequently served as a private in the 3d Pennsylvania Regiment from January to March 1777, when he enlisted for the duration of the war in the 1st Canadian Regiment. English transferred to the 3d Pennsylvania Regiment in May 1780 and served until 1781.
2. GW is referring to a congressional resolution of 16 Sept. 1776 authorizing the raising of eighty-eight battalions “to serve during the present war” (, 5:762–63; see also John Hancock to GW, 24 Sept. 1776, and n.1 to that document).
3. In early October 1776, Congress urged state officials to appoint commissioners to select officers for the new regiments. These officers would then enlist men for the war. A congressional resolution passed on 12 Nov. then allowed enlistments for three years instead of for the duration of the war (see John Hancock to GW, 9 Oct. 1776, and n.1 to that document; see also Hancock to GW, 5 Nov. 1776; and JCC, 6:944–45).
4. Service record summaries show that muster rolls of the 1st Canadian Regiment in late 1777 and the first half of 1778 listed English as sick at an Albany hospital (DNA: RG 93, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War).