There appears to have been great backwardness in enlisting, however -- those who were expected to step into the ranks and to do the fatigue duty and the fighting, while the more favored ones of the Rebellion had occupied all the offices, in advance, and were predestinated to enjoy all that was comfortable and to issue all the orders and to be implicitly obeyed, were slow in their responses ; only those who were extremely poor, and whose actual necessities obliged them, or those whose morals were questionable, and who enlisted either to retire from adverse observation or to secure a wider field for their unholy practices, appearing to have been willing to support "the Liber- " ties of America," in the field, even where there was no enemy and where none was really expected. 8 Indeed, so discouraging were the reports from those who had been entrusted with the Warrants for recruiting, that, on the fifteenth of February, the Provincial Congress, on the recommendation of a Committee who had been appuinted to consider the subject, determined to apportion a specified quota of Officers and Privates to each of the Counties in the Colony, in order that the organization of the required Battalions might be effected in the shortest possible period. 9 Three days subsequently, [February 18, 1776,] another Committee who had been appointed to apportion the different quota of Officers and Privates to be raised in the several Counties, made a Report, which was adopted, two Companies, as we have already stated, being apportioned to Westchester-county; 10 and, on the afternoon of the same day, a Circular Letter was sent by the Provincial Congress to each of the County-committees throughout the Colony, informing it of the arrangement and urging its attention to the matter of the enlistments. As that Circular Letter is peculiarly interesting, in its details of the terms of enlistment into the Continental Army of 1776, a place may properly be found for it, in these pages.