, seeing so many respectable
gentlemen siding with the Tories.

We learned that the Schoharie and Schenectady militia had refused to
march unless some provision was made to protect their families in their
absence; that Congress had therefore established a corps of invalids,
consisting of eight companies, each to have one captain, two
lieutenants, two ensigns, five sergeants, six corporals, two drums, two
fifes, and one hundred men; one company to be stationed in Schoharie,
and to be called the "Associate Exempts"; that three forts for the
protection of the Schoharie Valley were nearly finished, called the
Upper, Lower, and Middle forts.

More sinister still were the rumors from the British armies: Burgoyne
was marching on Albany from the north with the finest train of artillery
ever seen in America; St. Leger was moving from the west; McDonald had
started already, flinging out his Indian scouts as far as Perth and
Broadalbin, and Sir Henry Clinton had gathered a great army at New York
and was preparing to sweep the Hudson Valley from Fishkill to Albany.
And the focus of these three armies and of Butler's, Johnson's, and
McDonald's renegades and Indians was this unhappy county of Tryon, torn
already with internal dissensions; unarmed, unprovisioned, unorganized,
almost ungarrisoned.

I remember, one rainy day towards sunset, coming into a small hamlet
where, in front of the church, some score of farmers and yokels were
gathered, marshalled into a single line. Some were armed with rifles,
some with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore
uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and
drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle.
Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company,
raised his arms in prayer, invoking the "God of Armies" as though he
addressed his supplication before a vast armed host.

Murphy strove to laugh, but failed; Mount muttered vaguely under his
breath; Elerson gnawed his lips and bent his bared head while the old
man finished his prayer to "The God of Armies!" then picked up his
blunderbuss and limped to his place in the scanty file.

And again I remember one fresh, sweet morning late in June, standing
with my riflemen at a toll-gate to see some four hundred Tryon County
militia marching past on their way to Unadilla on the Susquehanna, where
Brant, with half a thousand savages, had consented to a last parley.
Stout