reater
responsibility was reserved for Sullivan in Canada, and Greene was
sent to Long Island. Owing to bad weather, it was the 3d or 4th of
May before the latter crossed with troops. He took with him his old
brigade, consisting of Colonel Edward Hand's Pennsylvania Riflemen,
his two favorite Rhode Island regiments under Colonels James Mitchell
Varnum and Daniel Hitchcock, and Colonel Moses Little's regiment from
Massachusetts. These ranked as the First, Ninth, Eleventh, and Twelfth
of the Continental Establishment, and were as well armed and under as
good discipline as any troops in Washington's army. Hand's regiment,
numbering four hundred and seventy officers and men, was already on
Long Island, having come from Boston in advance of the brigades, and
was engaged in scouting and patrol duty at the Narrows and along the
coast. Varnum's, Hitchcock's, and Little's, having an average strength
of three hundred and eighty each, were the only troops around
Brooklyn.[31] The Long Island militia were not as yet in the field,
and the small company of Brooklyn troopers under Captain Waldron and
Lieutenant Boerum, which had patrolled the coast during the early
spring, do not appear on duty again until late in the season.

[Footnote 31: Ward's, we have seen, was the first regiment stationed
on Long Island. It was there from February 24th until about the end of
March. The _N.Y. Packet_ of February 29th, 1776, says: "Saturday last
Col. Ward's regiment arrived here from Connecticut, and embarked in
boats and landed on Nassau [Long] Island." Lee gave orders that a
Pennsylvania battalion, supposed to be on its way to New York, should
encamp from the Wallabout to Gowanus, but no Pennsylvania troops are
included in Stirling's return, and certainly none were on Long Island
until Hand's riflemen came from Boston. It is probable that Colonel
Chas. Webb's Connecticut Continentals relieved Ward, as Captain Hale
writes that it had been there three weeks, sometime before May 20th.
Greene's brigade were the next troops to cross over.]

It now remained for these regiments to go on fortifying the
water-front of this site to keep the ships out of the river, and, in
addition, to secure themselves against an attack by land. What Lee's
plan was in reference to Columbia Heights has already been seen. Here
he proposed to establish a camp with Fort Stirling and the Citadel
among its defences, the former of which had been nearly completed and
the latter