“I just heard a report that the farmers were taking the field. If they do as well as they did at Bunker Hill, Burgoyne may not have an altogether pleasant summer.”
“Thar’s too many people in this country who want to be independent of everything, even to fightin’ whenever and how they please. It’s time they did something.”
“Certainly they don’t respond very promptly to Washington’s call for troops.”
“This war has got to be won, if it’s won at all, by armies an’ not by a few men shootin’ from behind a stone wall whenever the Britishers march their way.”
“It can’t be said that Morgan’s Rangers don’t respond when called upon.”
“That’s right. The country will remember us after we’re killed. We’ve got a reputation for fighting 221 already. Two thirds of us ’d rather be at a fight than a feast.”
“You among the number.”
“Not right. I hate war except when I get in a skirmish, an’ then I don’t think about it. I wish the men who bring on war had to do the fightin’.”
Howe, twice foiled in his attempts to outwit Washington, had returned to New York, leaving his antagonist in doubt whether he proposed taking his army up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne or around to Philadelphia by sea. During this period of uncertainty, Morgan’s Rangers marched to Hackensack and back again. They travelled light, each man lugging his provisions, rations of corn meal and a wallet containing dried venison. August 16th they received final orders to march to Peekskill, and there to take boats for Albany to join Gates’ army.
Here at last was something definite, and how the men cheered! Washington was sending his best men to aid Gates because he thought the country needed them at that place. George Washington was a big enough man to forget self and think only of his country. Gates was not, and was to repay his chief for this assistance with treachery.