The events of the 15th naturally and justly roused the wrath of both Washington and Mercer, and their denunciations become a part of the record of the time. But in recording them it belongs to those who write a century later to explain and qualify. Justice to the men who figured in these scenes requires that the terms of reproach should not be perpetuated as a final stigma upon their character as soldiers of the Revolution. All military experience proves that troops who have once given way in a panic are not therefore or necessarily poor troops; and the experience at Kip's Bay and Powle's Hook was only an illustration in the proof. These men had their revenge. If the records of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were to be thoroughly examined, they would doubtless show that large numbers of Mercer's militia re-entered the service and acquitted themselves well. This is certainly true of many of the routed crowd whom Washington found it impossible to rally on Murray's Hill and in Murray's corn-field. Some of those who ran from the Light Infantry on the 15th assisted in driving the same Light Infantry on the 16th. Prescott's men a few weeks later successfully defended a crossing in Westchester County and thwarted the enemy's designs. Not a few of the militia in Douglas's brigade were the identical men with whom Oliver Wolcott marched up to meet Burgoyne a year later, and who, under Colonels Cook and Latimer, "threw away their lives" in the decisive action of that campaign, suffering a greater loss than any other two regiments on the field. Fellows, also, was there to co-operate in forcing the British surrender. In Parsons' brigade were young officers and soldiers who formed part of the select corps that stormed Stony Point, and among Wadsworth's troops were others who, five years later, charged upon the Yorktown redoubt with the leading American Light Infantry battalion.[191] [Footnote 191: The Major of this battalion (Gimat's) was John Palsgrave Wyllys, of Hartford, who, as Wadsworth's Brigade-Major, was taken prisoner at Kip's Bay. Alexander Hamilton and Brigade-Major Fish, of New York, who were swept along in this retreat, also figured prominently at Yorktown. Two young ensigns in the Connecticut "levies," Stephen Betts and James Morris, were captains of Light Infantry in that affair. Lieutenant Stephen Olney, of Rhode Island, who barely escaped capture on Long Island by Cornwallis's grenadiers, led Gimat's battalion as captain, and was severely wounded while clambering into the redoubt; and there were probably a considerable number of others, officers and men, who were chased by this British general in the present campaign, who finally had the satisfaction of cornering him in Virginia in 1781. Scammell, Huntington, Tilghman, Humphreys, and others, could be named.] * * * * *