The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn: Including a new and circumstantial account of the battle of Long island and the loss of New York, with a review of events to the close of the yearJohnston, Henry Phelps
History
The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn: Including a new and circumstantial account of the battle of Long island and the loss of New York, with a review of events to the close of the year
Johnston, Henry Phelps
Long Island, Battle of, New York, N.Y., 1776; New York (N.Y.) -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783
Jabez Huntington, who like Trumbull was a type of the patriotic
citizen of the Revolution. Although his business and property, as a
West India merchant, would be greatly endangered if not ruined by the
war, he and his family cheerfully ignored their personal interests in
their devotion to the common cause. The three brothers and their
brother-in-law, Colonel John Chester, served through the present
campaign as they had in the previous one, and two of them, Jedediah
and Ebenezer, fought to the end of the struggle. Parsons, who
subsequently rose to the rank of a Continental major-general, Wyllys
and Webb, were among those who pledged their individual credit to
carry out the successful enterprise against Ticonderoga in 1775. In
his section of the State few men were more influential than Colonel
Silliman, of Fairfield, where, before the war, he had held the office
of king's attorney. After the present campaign, in the course of which
he was more than once engaged with the enemy, he was appointed a State
brigadier, rendered further service during the British forays into
Connecticut, and marched with troops to the Hudson Highlands upon
Burgoyne's approach from Canada. Colonel Douglas, of Northford,
engaged heart and hand in the struggle. Joining Montgomery's command
in 1775, he served in the flotilla on Lake Champlain, and was
subsequently appointed commodore by Congress; but accepting a
colonelcy of Connecticut levies he marched to New York in 1776, after
first advancing the funds to equip his regiment. With Silliman he
enjoyed the confidence and good opinion of the commander-in-chief, and
both were appointed to command regiments to be raised for the
Connecticut Continental Line. Another of those citizen-soldiers who
came from the substantial element in the population was Colonel
Selden. A descendant of the Seldens who were among the first settlers
in the Connecticut Valley, fifty years of age, possessing a large
estate, incapacitated for severe military duty, the father of twelve
children, he nevertheless answered the governor's call for troops, and
joined the army at New York, from which he was destined not to return.
Durkee, Knowlton, Hull, Sherman, Grosvenor, Bradley, afterwards a
Continental colonel, and many others, were men from Connecticut, who
gave the country their best services. The militia regiments from this
State turned out at the governor's call upon the arrival of the enemy.
Of the fourteen he designated to march, twelve reported at New York
before August 27th, each averaging three hundred and fifty men, with
Oliver Wolcott as their brigadier-general,[90] than whom no man in
Connecticut had done more to further the public interests of both the
State and the nation. Signing the Declaration in 1776, he was to be
found in the following year fighting Burgoyne in the field, and
afterwards constantly active in a military or civil capacity until the
success of the cause was assured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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