[Footnote 77: _Greene's Life of Greene_, vol. i.]
On the 20th Washington gave orders to General Sullivan, who had recently returned from Canada, to take the command upon Long Island, until General Greene's state of health should permit him to resume it.[78]
[Footnote 78: _General Orders, August 20, 1776._--... "General Sullivan is to take command upon Long Island till General Greene's state of health will permit him to resume it, and Brigadier Lord Stirling is to take charge of General Sullivan's division till he returns to it again."]
Right here, before entering upon the details of the coming struggle, we may delay a moment to glance at the two armies as they lay in their opposite camps waiting to engage in the serious business before them. What was their composition and organization, what their strength, who their officers and leaders? In the case of the American troops particularly may these questions be asked, because to them and their services the country has long acknowledged its obligations, and so far bound itself to perpetuate their memory. Who were the men who stood with Washington in this first and critical year of our national life--who came to this vicinity to fight on strange ground for a common cause? We are called upon to remember them, not as soldiers simply, but as public-spirited citizens arming to secure themselves in their privileges, or perhaps as ancestors who had a thought for the peace and happiness of present generations.
The original army of the Revolution was that ardent though disjointed body of provincials which gathered around Boston immediately after the Lexington alarm, and came nominally under the command of General Artemas Ward, of Massachusetts. As a military corps it entirely lacked cohesion, as the troops from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut were under independent control, and yielded to General Ward's authority only by patriotic consent. The appointment of Washington as commander-in-chief of all the American forces relieved this difficulty, and the adoption by Congress of the Boston troops as a Continental army, under the orders and in the pay of Congress, gave that army more of a military character. But the terms of enlistment were short, and it became necessary to reorganize the entire body by new enlistments for a year's service from the 1st of January, 1776. This force thus recruited was the nucleus of the army which Washington mustered at New York in the present campaign. It consisted of twenty-seven battalions, or "regiments of foot," as they were styled, each divided into eight companies, and having a maximum strength of about six hundred and forty officers and men. With the exception of the First Regiment, or Pennsylvania Riflemen, all were from the New England States; and, as already stated, twenty-one of them, after the evacuation of Boston, marched to New York under the command of Generals Heath, Spencer, Sullivan, and Greene.