" embodying men according to the said Resolutions ; " and by appointing a Committee "to report an arrangement of the troops to be embodied for the ''defence of this Colony ; and to report such Rules " and Regulations as would be proper to be established "by this Congress, for the government of such " troops." 1

The doings of the Provincial Congress were, of course, entirely in the interest of the Rebellion. *##*■♦*■**

Early in the Summer, as has been stated, the Continental Congress ordered the enlistment of a large armed force, of which three thousand were to be raised and put into the field by the Colony of New York. These troops were to be commanded by such Officers as should be thereunto appointed by the Provincial Congress; they were to be governed by such Rules and Regulations as that Congress should establish for that purpose ; they were to be mustered into the service, to serve no longer than the last day of the succeeding December ; 2 and as there was no enemy before them, and as little probability existed that there would be any one to molest them, during their short term of service, the proffered opportunity to take the field, as Continental Soldiers, appeared to be very inviting -- it seemed, in fact, to promise what would be little else than an organized picnic-party, for the succeeding Summer and Autumn and early Winter months.

There were, of course, plenty of applications from those of the well-born, among the revolutionary faction and from among those who had been instrumental in bringing the Livingstons and the Morrises and others into authority, for each of the offices, in each of the four Regiments into which the levy on New York was arranged ; but there was an evident backwardness, among the masses, from the beginning, in enlisting for "the private station;" there was a greater anxiety, among those who did enlist, concerning their pay and bounty and " under clothes,"' than for the welfare of the Colony ; and, generally, there was very little inclination, any where, among those who had them, to exchange their peaceful occupations and their domestic comforts and their quiet homes, under such circumstances as then existed, for a distant encampment or a distant military post and the sometimes laborious and not always well-supplied and always irregular lives of soldiers, in garrison as well as in the field.