Several writers, Mr. Sparks among them, make the
statement that neither Washington nor Putnam went outside of the
Brooklyn lines. It would be impossible to credit this without absolute
proof of the fact. Washington always reconnoitred the position of the
enemy whenever they were near each other; in the last scenes of the
war at Yorktown he was among the first at the outposts examining the
British works. Undoubtedly he rode out to the Flatbush Pass on the
26th, as stated by the writer of the letter to the _South Carolina
Gazette_ (Document 19), who says: "The evening preceding the action,
General Washington, with a number of general officers, went down to
view the motions of the enemy, who were encamped at Flatbush." A
letter from a survivor of the Revolution, present on Long Island,
published in a newspaper several years since, well authenticated, and
preserved in one of Mr. Onderdonk's scrap-books in the Astor Library,
New York, confirms this statement. The soldier recollects that he saw
Washington and others looking at the enemy with their glasses.]

On this day also, the 26th, additional regiments were sent over. Two
of these were the remainder of Stirling's brigade--Haslet's Delaware
battalion, the largest in the army, as we have seen, and Smallwood's
Marylanders, one of the choicest and best equipped. Either on this or
one of the two previous days, Lieutenant-Colonel Kachlein's incomplete
battalion of Pennsylvania riflemen, with two or three independent
companies from Maryland, crossed; and among the last to go over were
one hundred picked men, the nucleus of the "Rangers," from Durkee's
Connecticut Continentals at Bergen, with Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas
Knowlton at their head.[123] These additions raised the force on Long
Island on the night of the 26th to a total of about seven thousand men
fit for duty.[124]

[Footnote 123: Statement of Colonel Thomas Grosvenor to the late David
P. Hall, Esq., of New York, who knew Grosvenor well, and preserved
many facts in writing in regard to his military career. Knowlton's
captains were Grosvenor and Stephen Brown, of Pomfret, Conn. The
detachment was on duty at the outposts on the night of the 26th. The
soldier whose letter is referred to in the note preceding this was one
of the "Rangers," and he states that their number was about one
hundred. That Smallwood's and Haslet's regiments crossed on the 26th,
we have from Smallwood himself.--_Force_, 5th Series, vol. ii., p.
10