endered the greatest service. He would have been
mistaken this day rather for the master of a military school, than for
what he had been--the master of a classical one. For twenty-two hours,
as his biographer tells us, he never dismounted from his horse, but
superintended the collection of the vessels from all points, and at
evening had them ready for their purpose.[167]

[Footnote 165: Memorial of Colonel Hugh Hughes. Leake's Life of
General Lamb.]

[Footnote 166: Heath's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 167: There is an interesting letter of Washington's
preserved in the Hughes Memorial, which adds light on this point.
Eight years after the event, when Hughes needed some official
certificate showing his authority to impress all the craft he could
find, the general replied to him as follows:

"My memory is not charged with the particulars of the verbal order
which you say was delivered to you through Col. Joseph Trumbull, on
the 27th, August, 1776, 'for impressing all the sloops, boats, and
water craft from Spyhten Duyvel, in the Hudson, to Hell Gate, in the
Sound.' I recollect that it was a day which required the utmost
exertion, particularly in the Quarter-Master's department, to
accomplish the retreat which was intended, under cover of the
succeeding night; and that no delay or ceremony could be admitted in
the execution of the plan. I have no doubt, therefore, of your having
received orders to the effect, and to the extent which you have
mentioned; and you are at liberty to adduce this in testimony thereof.
It will, I presume, supply the place of a more formal certificate, and
is more consonant with my recollection of the transactions of that
day." It appears from this that Washington remembered that the _entire
day_ of the 29th was devoted to planning and preparing for the
retreat, and this fits the theory advanced in the note on the "Origin
of the Retreat." As to the delivery of the orders about boats, it is
probable that Trumbull crossed to New York with Mifflin's letter to
Heath and gave it to Hughes to forward. At the same time he gave
Hughes his instructions verbally. Hughes received them, says his
biographer, about noon. He then had eight hours to carry them out,
which gave him time to send to Heath and for Heath to comply, while he
and his assistants scoured the coast everywhere else for boats, from
Hell Gate down. Among other sloops impressed was the Middlesex,
Captain Stephen Hogeboom, while on its way to Claver