Head Quarters, Ringwood, June 6, 1779
Dear Sir:
I have received your favour of yesterday. You will proceed with your corps with as much expedition as you can without injuring your horses to the vicinity of Suffrans.1 Baron De Kalb is directed to have two companies of light infantry formed to join you there and act with your corps. He is to endeavour to have a junior officer [sent] to you to command it, that the whole may be under your direction. The intention of your command will be to countenance the militia, plague the enemy and cover the country from the depredations of their light parties, as much as possible. The enemy have now a body at Kings ferry and appear to be establishing a post at Stoney point to which quarter your attention is principally to be directed.
I leave you at perfect liberty to dispose of yourself as you think most proper for answering the purposes I have mentioned consistent with the security of your corps. Your utmost vigilance and attention will be necessary, as you will be entirely detached and unsupported, and will act in a very disaffected country, the inhabitants [of which] will give the enemy every kind of intelligence, to enable them to take advantage of your situation. You will take every measure in your power to acquire information of their situations, movement and designs and give me the earliest advice of every occurrence.
I am, etc.
1 Sufferns Tavern (spelled also Suffran), in Orange County, N.Y., near the mouth of Smith’s Clove, and kept by John Suffern.
2 The draft is in the writing of Alexander Hamilton. The words in brackets, which are omitted and missing from mutilation, are supplied as the probable readings. The postscript is in the writing of Richard Kidder Meade.