It is to the story of Washington and the Revolution what Camelot was to the i\rthurian legends. Here, during the long, gloomy months that preceded the dawn of American independence, the great chief of the Continental army fought and won his greatest battles -- fought the growing and just indignation of that army against a dilatory and ungrateful Congress, fought the spectres of want and care, fought the foolish, fond enthusiasm of his own generals when they

4o6 The Hudson River

clamoured to make him king. In the whole great round of national history there is no incident so heroic as Washington's refusal of the crown that was offered him in the old Hasbrouck house at Newburgh. From almost the very beginning of the war, both the British and patriot leaders saw the necessity for controlling the river at Newburgh. It was, after the reduction of Fort Washington and the subsequent eruption of British war-vessels into the waters south of the Highlands, the only available ferry for the American troops that were hurried now east, now west, to relieve New England and New Jersey or Pennsylvania in turn, and compensate by their rapidity of movement for the pitiful inadequacy of every division of Washington's army. With that communication broken, that army must have been almost hopelessly crippled. The American military force in the Revolution consisted of three distinct grades or classes of soldiers: the regulars, known as continentals; the levies, drafted either from militia regiments or from the people; and the militia. The continentals were longterm men, always under arms, commanded by the chief of the army -- in a word, professional soldiers. The levies were drawn for a short term, but could be called upon for service outside of their own State as well as in it. They were an inconvenient, not to say exasperating compromise between civilians and soldiers, at critical times nearly always reaching the limit