A few odd facts remain to be noted respecting the officers. The first of these, gleaned from General Clinton’s letter-book of 1780, is rather pathetic. It consists of a memorial to the King from the 17th Light Dragoons, setting forth “that they look upon themselves as particularly distinguished, by having been employed in the actual service of their country ever since the rebellion began in America. [Sidenote: 1782.] But its being the only regiment of Dragoons in this service, and their promotion being entirely confined to that line, they cannot but feel sensibly when they see every day promotion made over them of officers of inferior rank.” I cannot discover that the least notice was taken of this petition, hard though the case undoubtedly was; for many of these officers held high staff appointments in New York. Lieutenant-Colonel Birch was a local Brigadier-General, and towards the end of the war was actually in command at New York; but he seems to have gained little by it. On the other hand Captain Oliver Delancey made his fortune, professionally speaking, through his success as Clinton’s Adjutant-General from August 1781. As to the detachments employed in the South enough has already been said. But it is worth while to correct the error into which other writers have fallen, that the men of the Seventeenth were not with Cornwallis in the campaign of North Carolina. The fact is rendered certain by the mention of twenty-five men in the melancholy roll of the capitulation of Yorktown, which twenty-five I take to be the remnant of the small body that was permanently attached to Tarleton’s legion. Moreover, it was not likely that Cornwallis, who was badly in want of light troops, would have left them to do garrison work with Rawdon. The loose expression “legion-cavalry” is so often used to cover the whole of the mounted force under Tarleton’s command, that it is frequently difficult to distinguish the detachment of the Seventeenth from the irregulars. But the men of that detachment were not willing to sink their individuality in the general body of legion dragoons. When their old regimental uniform was worn out they were offered the green uniform of the legion, but they would have none of it. They preferred to patch their own ragged and faded scarlet, and be men of the Seventeenth. Nor can we be surprised at it when we remember how the legion retired and left a handful of the Seventeenth to face the victorious Americans alone at Cowpens. This action gives a fair clue to the real seat of strength in Tarleton’s cavalry. [Sidenote: 1782.]