On that portion of the American line which was exposed to that assault, on its front, as well as to the movement of the Hessian Brigade commanded by Colonel Rail, who had been ordered to charge on its right flank, simultaneously with the movement on its front,

1 Colonel Haslet to General Ceesar Rodney, " November 12, 1776." Among the creations of John C. Hamilton's very able but very unscrupulous pen was one, based on the story of the bridge which we have already noticed, concerning the Artillery Company of which his father, Alexander Hamilton, was the Captain, and what he assumed to have been the 1 wonderful services of that Company, on the occasion now under notice.

As wo have already stated, {vide page 263, ante,) there are very grave doubts concerning Captain Hamilton's presence, with the Company, on Chatterton's-hill, on the eventful day of the Battle ; and it is of questionable propriety, therefore, to identify him with the shortcomings of his command, so graphically portrajed by Colonel Haslet, in his letter to General Rodney, to which we have referred, in the text-- shortcomings which were certainly such as reflected nothing else than disgrace on both the body of the Company and the Officer who was in command, on that occasion, whomsoever he may have been.

Generals Washington, Howe, CornwalliB, Robertson, and Heath, and Captains Harris and Hall, all of whom witnessed tho action and described it, and Gordon, Stedman, Marshall, and Sparks, all of them standard historians, whose advantages for acquiring accurate information were in nowise neglected, were uniformly and rigidly silent on the subject of the alleged services of Captain Hamilton's Company of Artillery ; while the adverse testimony of Colonel Haslet, which we have stated in the text, supported, in a great measure by that of Captain Hull, the latter concerning the other of the two pieces and those who manned it, on the extreme left of the line, (Campbell's The Revolutionary Senices and Civil Life of General William Hull, 54,) leaves nothing, concerning that Company, on that occasion, to which the admirers of Alexander Hamilton can refer, with any pleasure, the pretensions of his sou, to which we have referred, to the contrary notwithstanding.