Brigadier General Jacob Bayley to George Washington, 27 May 1781
From Brigadier General Jacob Bayley
Newbury [Vt.] 27th May 1781
Sr
Your Excelency will be Tried to Read So many Letters from me at once1 however I cannot but Inform what I hear and is Probable to be True last eavening Come in a Deserter from Canada Deserted from a Party on Hazens Rout2 the Day before 10 o Clock he Says the on the Twelvith of May orders were Rec’d at St Johns from the Commander at Quebeck that the Immigrant Regt3 Sr John Johnsons Regt the three Cores of Rangers and a Detachment from the other Regts together with three Nations of Indians were to assemble at St Johns the 10th June where Every Provitions were made for them,4 150 Battaux five gun Boats &c. that Spies and Small Partys were out for Mischief, a Flag is now at Canada from Vermont I am afraid to agree to a Neutrality (Ira Allen Commands it) if so the Enemy will be at Albany, or try for it.5
if Six or Eight men were from the grants it would be well for they Decive the Innocent.6 I am Your Excelencys Most Obedient Humble Sert
Jacob Bayley
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. See Bayley to GW, 24 May, and Bayley et al. to GW, same date.
2. For this road, see Bayley to GW, 14 May, and n.5 to that document.
3. The 1st Battalion of the Royal Highland Emigrants became the 84th Regiment of Foot in December 1778.
4. For more on this intelligence about enemy forces assembling in Canada to launch an attack on the western frontier, see Elias Dayton to GW, 20 April; GW to Daniel Brodhead and to George Rogers Clark, both 25 April; and Clark to GW, 21 May.
Two prisoners, William Empie and Randal Hewit, interrogated on 14 June, provided information on the number of enemy troops in Quebec. Empie indicated the presence of British rangers at St. Jean, Quebec. Hewit provided intelligence about troops at Montreal: “two Dutch Regts Sir John Johnson’s Regt was Nine Miles above the City at Lachine.” Regarding troops at St. Jean, Hewit noted: “The 34th Regt lay there Col. St Leger commands there & Rogers Corps is there also” (DLC:GW; see also James Clinton to GW, 15–18 June, n.11, and Bayley to GW, 24 May, n.2).
5. The Vermont legislature on 26 April had appointed Ira Allen, Ethan Allen’s younger brother, as one of two “agents to proceed to the province of Canada, and to treat with commissioners to be appointed on the part of the British in Canada, to agree on and settle a cartel for the exchange of prisoners” (, 2:107). Allen’s negotiations regarding a prisoner cartel during May at Île aux Noix, Quebec, also involved sensitive and disputed issues related to Vermont jurisdiction and statehood (see , 2:109–19; see also , 1:212–50).
Loyalist captain Justus Sherwood, who negotiated with Allen, described their verbal exchanges in a journal. In the entry for 16 May, Sherwood wrote: “Allen says, Gen’l Washington is and has ever been against the independency of Vermont, as it is repugnant to his darling object of engrossing to Virginia all the immense country west of that State, that for the same reason Maryland was in favour of Vermont and refus’d to sign the confederacy, till Virginia would renounce her claim and consent to have those unsettled lands equally divided among the Southern States.” Sherwood added that GW had been “exceedingly anxious to learn the business of the British flag [of truce]” that carried Allen “to Vermont and examin’d every man on oath that came to his camp from that State for some time after, but did not finally appear satisfied with the accounts he obtain’d” (, 1:231–32).