General Dickinson, with the New Jersey militia, was not with the main body, as we already know, and Tom found that he could not be assigned to them. Through the lieutenant's influence, he was to be retained with the main body, and to assist in serving as a guide for the army, an office which Tom was well fitted to hold, although it was not just in accord with the plans he had formed in his own mind.
Reports came into the camp during the day which clearly indicated that the advance corps was too far away to be properly supported at once in the present condition of the roads. But on Saturday morning Lafayette, with his troops, was ordered to file off by his left towards Englishtown, and in the same day the main body, under General Washington, marched out from Cranberry and encamped within three miles of the place.
This brought the two opposing armies now within eight miles of each other, while General Lee's forces, five thousand strong, without Morgan's dragoons or the New Jersey militia, were three miles nearer the British.
Such was the condition of affairs on that night of Saturday, June 27 (1778), and Tom Coward, as well as many of the men in Washington's army, slept but little, with the knowledge that on the morrow the long delayed battle would doubtless be begun.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] In many of our histories the "Captain Molly" of Monmouth has been confounded with "Dirty Kate" of Fort Clinton. They were, however, two women,—not one. Lossing, in the first edition of his Field Book of the American Revolution, referred to them as if they were identical, but the correction was to have been made for his second edition, and was in type, but through an oversight was omitted.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY