es to Washington: "I have received your
orders, and shall endeavor to put them in execution, but question
whether I shall be able to carry with me any considerable number; not
so much from a want of zeal in the men as from their wretched
condition, with respect to shoes, stockings, and blankets, which the
present bad weather renders more intolerable. I sent Heath orders to
transport two thousand men across the river, apprise the general, and
wait for further orders; but that great man (as I might have expected)
intrenched himself within the letter of his instructions, and refused
to part with a single file, though I undertook to replace them with a
part of my own."

Scarce had Lee sent this letter when he received one from Washington,
informing him that he had mistaken his views in regard to the troops
required to cross the Hudson; it was his (Lee's) division that he
wanted to have over. The force under Heath must remain to guard the
posts and passes through the Highlands, the importance of which was so
infinitely great that there should not be the least possible risk of
losing them. Lee's reply explained that his idea of detaching troops
from Heath's division was merely for expedition's sake, intending to
replace them from his own. The want of carriages and other causes had
delayed him. From the force of the enemy remaining in Westchester
County, he did not conceive the number of them in the Jerseys to be
near so great as Washington was taught to believe. He had been making
a sweep of the country to clear it of the tories. Part of his army had
now moved on, and he would set out on the following day.

The situation of the little army was daily becoming more perilous. In
a council of war, several of the members urged a move to Morristown,
to form a junction with the troops expected from the Northern army.
Washington, however, still cherished the idea of making a stand at
Brunswick on the Raritan, or, at all events, of disputing the passage
of the Delaware; and in this intrepid resolution he was warmly
seconded by Greene. Breaking up his camp once more, therefore, he
continued his retreat towards New Brunswick; but so close was
Cornwallis upon him that his advance entered one end of Newark just as
the American rear-guard had left the other.

From Brunswick, Washington wrote on the 29th to William Livingston,
governor of the Jerseys, requesting him to have all boats and river
craft, for seventy miles along the Delaware,