ere_, and we were obliged hastily to finish them, and
you may imagine with very little perfection, particularly across the
main road, the most likely for the approach of the enemy's heavy
artillery. _In this place three of my battalions_ were placed, the
traverse of the line in ground so low, that the rising ground
immediately without it, would have put it in the power of a man at 40
yards' distance to _fire under my horse's belly_ whenever he pleased.
You may judge of our situation, subject to almost incessant rains,
without baggage or tents and almost without victuals or drink, and in
some part of the lines the men were standing up to their middles in
water. The enemy were evidently incircling us from water to water with
intent to hem us in upon a small neck of land. In this situation they
had as perfect a command of the island, except the small neck on which
we were posted, as they now have. Thus things stood when the retreat
was proposed. As it was suddenly proposed, _I as suddenly objected to
it_, from an aversion to giving the enemy a single inch of ground; but
_was soon convinced by the unanswerable reasons for it_. They were
these. Invested by an enemy of above double our number from water to
water, scant in almost every necessary of life and without covering
and liable every moment to have the communication between us and the
city cut off by the entrance of the frigates into the East River
between (late) Governor's Island and Long Island; which General
McDougall assured us from his own nautic experience was very feasible.
In such a situation we should have been reduced to the alternative of
desperately attempting to cut our way [through] a vastly superior
enemy with the certain loss of a valuable stock of artillery and
artillery stores, which the continent has been collecting with great
pains; or by famine and fatigue have been made an easy prey to the
enemy. In either case the campaign would have ended in the total ruin
of our army. The resolution therefore to retreat was unanimous, and
tho' formed late in the day was executed the following night with
unexpected success. We however lost some of our heavy cannon on the
forts at a distance from the water, the softness of the ground
occasioned by the rains having rendered it impossible to remove them
in so short a time. Almost everything else valuable was saved; and not
a dozen men lost in the retreat. The consequence of our retreat was
the loss of [late] Govrs Is