From George Washington to Samuel Huntington, 31 May 1780
To Samuel Huntington
Head qrs Morris Town May 31st 1780
Sir
Colo. Sherburne I expect will have the honor of presenting this Letter to your Excellency. This Gentleman entered into the Army at the beginning of the War and from that time to this has served his Country as a brave & good Officer. His conduct in attempting to relieve the post at the Cedars in 1776 was distinguished, and will be recollected by Congress.1 In the beginning of 1777 from the opinion I entertained of his merit—I appointed him, under the powers with which I had been honoured, to the command of One of the 16 Additional Regiments in which he has acted to the present time with credit & reputation.2 It has been found necessary among other arrangements to reduce this Regiment and incorporate the Men in others, from its very weak state and from there being no prospect that it would be ever recruited.3 From this circumstance Colo. Sherburne is now without any command in the Army. I have been informed that he has some business to transact with Congress & have thought it but justice to his services & merit to give him this testimonial.4 I have the Honor to be with the highest respect Yr Excellency’s &c.
G.W.
Df, in Robert Hanson Harrison’s writing, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. For Col. Henry Sherburne’s attempted relief of a regiment trapped at the Cedars, a post near Montreal, see GW to John Hancock, 7 June 1776, and n.2 to that document.
2. See Commissions to the Colonels of the Sixteen Additional Continental Regiments, 11 Jan. 1777, and the source note to that document.
3. See General Orders, 2 May.
4. Rhode Island delegate James Mitchell Varnum had written Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene from Scituate, R.I., on 19 May asking him to seek Washington’s support to obtain for Sherburne a congressional appointment as consul in the West Indies (, 5:567; see also Greene to Robert R. Livingston, 29 May, and to James Lovell, 30 May, in , 5:586–87, 589–90; and Philip Schuyler to Livingston, 30 May, in , 15:218–21). Sherburne did not receive an appointment and returned to Rhode Island that fall (see Greene to Hugh Hughes, 17 Oct., in , 6:403).