It may be thought strange that Newburgh has been considered of great Revolutionary importance when no battles were fought nearer its vicinity than those of Stony Point and Forts Clinton and Montgomery, but, although the place had an hereditary tendency to toryism, its geographical environment filled it to overflowing with plucky patriots. It is well known that it was the design of the British to get possession of the Hudson, and by cutting off the New England States to weaken the forces of the Continental Army. Appreciating this fact, Washington came up the river in 1776 as far as Constitution Island and, at the suggestion of Putnam, fortified West Point. Newburgh came under the same military direction, so that one leading officer after another made his headquarters in the vicinity. At Vail’s Gate, four miles south of Newburgh, is the Thomas Ellison house built by John Ellison, the headquarters of Generals Knox, Green and Gates, and of Colonels Biddle and Wadsworth. Here too the pretty Lucy Knox gave a dance at which General Washington tarried so late as to incur the displeasure of his wife. The names of Maria Colden, Gitty Wyncoop, and Sally Jensen, the belles of the ball, are scrawled on a window-pane in the dining-room. Following Silver Stream down to Moodna Creek, three or four miles south of Newburgh, we find the Williams house, the residence of General Lafayette, in the cellar of which the Dutch loan lies buried past finding, while opposite are the remains of the forge at which were made parts of the obstructions thrown across the river to prevent British ships from sailing up. [Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF MAJOR-GENERAL KNOX AT VAIL’S GATE.] [Illustration: CLINTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT LITTLE BRITAIN, NEAR NEWBURGH.] Westward at Little Britain, six miles from Newburgh, is Mrs. Fall’s house, the headquarters of George Clinton, and here on the floor is the stain where the spy who swallowed the bullet took the emetic and revealed the proposed treason. The old homestead of the Clinton family was in Little Britain, and hither James Clinton, after the attack on Forts Clinton and Montgomery, returned, his boots filled with blood. One of his great-grandchildren relates that he entered the dining-room where the family were eating breakfast, and requesting his mother and sisters to retire lest they faint from the sight of his wounds, as was the habit of gentlewomen of the last century, told the story of his escape to his father. The statue of his distinguished brother, George,[24] stands in Newburgh’s business centre on the Square which oddly enough bears the name of Colden, the leading family of colonial days. The distinguished Coldens, although not patriots, added a lustre to the town, and the Clintons will not quarrel with their shades.