oops as would enable the parts reciprocally to
aid each other, without neglecting objects of great, and almost equal
magnitude which were alike threatened, and were far asunder. To effect
these purposes, the troops of New England and New York were divided
between Ticonderoga and Peekskill, while those from Jersey to North
Carolina inclusive, were directed to assemble at the camp to be formed
in Jersey. The more southern troops remained in that weak quarter of
the union for its protection.

[Sidenote: Camp formed at Middlebrook.]

These arrangements being made, and the recruits collected, the camp at
Morristown was broken up, the detachments called in, and the army
assembled at Middlebrook, just behind a connected ridge of strong and
commanding heights, north of the road leading to Philadelphia, and
about ten miles from Brunswick.

This camp, the approaches to which were naturally difficult, was
rendered still more defensible by intrenchments. The heights in front
commanded a prospect of the course of the Raritan, the road to
Philadelphia, the hills about Brunswick, and a considerable part of
the country between that place and Amboy; so as to afford a full view
of the most interesting movements of the enemy.

The force brought into the field by America required all the aid which
could be derived from strong positions, and unremitting vigilance. On
the 20th of May, the total of the army in Jersey, excluding cavalry
and artillery, amounted to only eight thousand three hundred and
seventy-eight men, of whom upwards of two thousand were sick. The
effective rank and file were only five thousand seven hundred and
thirty-eight.

Had this army been composed of the best disciplined troops, its
inferiority, in point of numbers, must have limited its operations to
defensive war; and have rendered it incompetent to the protection of
any place, whose defence would require a battle in the open field. But
more than half the troops[58] were unacquainted with the first
rudiments of military duty, and had never looked an enemy in the face.
As an additional cause of apprehension, a large proportion of the
soldiers, especially from the middle states, were foreigners, many of
them servants, in whose attachment to the American cause full
confidence could not be placed.

[Footnote 58: The extreme severity of the service, aided
perhaps by the state of the hospitals, had carried to the
grave more than two-thirds of the sol