[8] See [note No. III]. at the end of the volume.
[9] See [note No. IV]. at the end of the volume.
[10] It is in the following terms:
"Gentlemen,—Your kind congratulations on my appointment and arrival, demand my warmest acknowledgments, and will be ever retained in grateful remembrance. In exchanging the enjoyments of domestic life for the duties of my present honourable but arduous situation, I only emulate the virtue and public spirit of the whole Province of Massachusetts, which, with a firmness and patriotism without example, has sacrificed all the comforts of social and political life, in support of the rights of mankind, and the welfare of our common country. My highest ambition is to be the happy instrument of vindicating these rights, and to see this devoted Province again restored to peace, liberty, and safety.
"GEO: WASHINGTON."
[11] A circumstance attending this transaction, will furnish some idea of the difficulties encountered by those who then conducted the affairs of America. All-important to the general safety as was the speedy replenishment of the magazines of that army which lay encamped in front of the enemy, the committee of Elizabethtown was under the necessity of transmitting this powder secretly, lest the people of the neighbourhood should seize and detain it for their own security.
[12] The General was under the necessity of carrying on a direct correspondence, not only with the several colonial governments, but with the committees of all the important towns and some inferior places.
[13] It is strange that an army should have been formed without such an officer.
[14] The agents of congress had the address to purchase all the powder on the coast of Africa, and that within the British forts, without attracting notice; and to seize the magazine in the island of Bermuda. Great exertions were also made in the interior to obtain saltpetre and sulphur, for the manufacture of that important article.
[15] In this state of things, several officers, supposing that commissions and rank might depend on recruiting men, began, without permission, to recruit soldiers, to serve particularly under the officer enlisting them. Every military principle required that this practice should be arrested; and it was peremptorily forbidden in general orders.