me, faint, perhaps, under the torrid sun of August. But
they were magnificently disciplined and officered, and nothing in
history had rivalled the rawness and stubborn ignorance of the American
troops. Hamilton had not then met Washington, but he knew from common
friends that the Chief was worried and disgusted by what he had seen
when inspecting the Brooklyn troops the day before. Greene, second only
to Washington in ability, who had been in charge of the Brooklyn
contingent, knowing every inch of the ground, was suddenly ill. Putnam
was in command, and the Chief was justified in his doubt of him, for
nothing in the mistakes of the Revolution exceeded his carelessness and
his errors of judgement during the battle of Long Island.

There were still two days of chafing inactivity, except in the matter of
strengthening fortifications, then, beginning with dawn of the 28th,
Hamilton had his baptism of fire in one of the bloodiest battlefields of
the Revolution.

The Americans were outgeneralled and outnumbered. Their attention was
distracted by land and water, while a British detachment, ten thousand
strong, crept over the ridge of hills by night, and through the Bedford
Pass, overpowering the guards before their approach was suspected. At
dawn they poured down upon the American troops, surprising them, not in
one direction, but in flank, in rear, and in front. The green woods
swarmed with redcoats, and the Hessians acted with a brutality
demoralizing to raw troops. Hamilton's little company behaved well, and
he was in the thick of the fight all day. The dead were in heaps, the
beautiful green slopes were red, there was not a hope of victory, but he
exulted that the colonies were fighting at last, and that he was acting;
he had grown very tired of talking.

He was driven from his position finally, and lost his baggage and a
field-piece, but did not take refuge within the redoubts until
nightfall. There, in addition to fatigue, hunger, a bed on the wet
ground, and the atmosphere of hideous depression which pressed low upon
the new revolutionists, he learned that Troup had been taken prisoner.
Then he discovered the depths to which a mercurial nature could descend.
He had been fiercely alive all day; the roar of the battle, the plunging
horses, the quickening stench of the powder, that obsession by the devil
of battles which makes the tenderest kill hot and fast, all had made him
feel something more than himself, much as he