r the
Lexington alarm, and came nominally under the command of General
Artemas Ward, of Massachusetts. As a military corps it entirely lacked
cohesion, as the troops from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut were under independent control, and yielded to General
Ward's authority only by patriotic consent. The appointment of
Washington as commander-in-chief of all the American forces relieved
this difficulty, and the adoption by Congress of the Boston troops as
a Continental army, under the orders and in the pay of Congress, gave
that army more of a military character. But the terms of enlistment
were short, and it became necessary to reorganize the entire body by
new enlistments for a year's service from the 1st of January, 1776.
This force thus recruited was the nucleus of the army which Washington
mustered at New York in the present campaign. It consisted of
twenty-seven battalions, or "regiments of foot," as they were styled,
each divided into eight companies, and having a maximum strength of
about six hundred and forty officers and men. With the exception of
the First Regiment, or Pennsylvania Riflemen, all were from the New
England States; and, as already stated, twenty-one of them, after the
evacuation of Boston, marched to New York under the command of
Generals Heath, Spencer, Sullivan, and Greene.

This force, diminished by the regiments sent to Canada, was quite
inadequate for the purposes of the campaign, and on the 1st of June
Congress issued a call for large reinforcements both for the New York
army and that on the Canada border. For the former thirteen thousand
eight hundred troops were voted necessary, and for the latter six
thousand, while in addition it was resolved to establish a "flying
camp" of ten thousand men, who could be sent wherever needed. The
quota Massachusetts was to furnish for New York was two thousand;
Connecticut, five thousand five hundred; New York, three thousand; and
New Jersey, three thousand three hundred. For the flying camp,
Pennsylvania was to recruit six thousand; Delaware, six hundred; and
Maryland, three thousand four hundred. All these men were to be
militia or State troops, but to serve under the orders of Congress and
in its pay until at least the 1st of December following.

The necessity of these calls was impressed upon the country by urgent
letters from the President and members of Congress and the leaders of
the day. "The militia of the United Colonies," wrot