It would have been more creditable to the authorial reputation of that venerable writer of history, had he read what General Washington instructed his Secretary to write to the President of the Congress, on the seventeenth of October, the day after the Council had advised him of the inexpediency of holding the Heights of Harlem, with the main body of the Army, on the subject of the " change of our disposition, to counter- *' act the operations of the enemy, declining an attack on our front." Had he read that very simple statement, he would have ascertained that the Commander in chief was not aware, on the seventeenth of October, that any portion of the Army, at that time, had been "taken from "hence," in the sense of a "retirement of the Army;" that the "change " of the disposition " of the Army had not, then, been made; that that proposed "change of our disposition" was frankly stated to have been "determined" on, in the Council of General Officers, on the preceding day; and that " General Lee, who arrived on Monday, had strongly "urged the absolute necessity of the measure," not yet executed.

1 Vide page 234, ante.

2 Memoirs of General Heath, 71.

* General Orders, '■ Head-quarters, Harlem Heights, October 17, "1776."

4 Memoirs of General Heath, 74.

5 The action which occurred on the eighteenth of October, the day after that of which we write, was maintained by the Regiments commanded, respectively, by Colonels Shepard, Read, Baldwin, and Glover, all of them belonging to the Brigade commanded by Cnluuel Gtovor, in the absence uf General James Clinton.-- ( Vide payee 241-246, post.)