ly to receive orders soon after to proceed
immediately to Lord Stirling's brigade,[211] now in Spencer's
division, which had already advanced on the road towards White Plains.
He reached Stirling at two o'clock that night, and at dawn the general
pushed on to White Plains, arriving there about nine o'clock on the
morning of the 21st. Washington himself and Heath's division followed
during the day, and the troops set to work throwing up lines at that
important point. By delaying near New Rochelle, Howe had missed his
opportunity. During the night of the 21st, Colonel Haslet, of
Stirling's brigade, surprised and captured some thirty men belonging
to the partisan Rogers' Scouts, and soon after Colonel Hand with his
now veteran riflemen proved himself more than a match for an equal
party of yagers encountered near Mamaroneck. In the first of these
skirmishes, Major Greene, a fine Virginia officer, was mortally
wounded.

[Footnote 211: Stirling, who with Sullivan had recently been exchanged
as prisoner, was now in command of Mifflin's brigade, Mifflin being
absent in Philadelphia.]

Washington concentrated his army at White Plains, completed two lines
of works, with his right on the river Bronx, and awaited the advance
of the British. Howe had moved from New Rochelle to Scarsdale, and on
the morning of the 28th marched against the Americans. A mile or more
from White Plains, on the main road to New York, he fell in with
General Spencer's advance parties under Colonels Silliman,
Douglas,[212] and Chester, who offered resistance and lost some men,
but they were driven back by superior numbers. On the left of the
American position, across the Bronx, rose Chatterton's Hill, which
offered a good site for the better defence of that flank. Colonel
Putnam had just arrived on the hill to throw up works when the enemy
made their appearance below.[213] According to Haslet, the Delawares
were the first troops to report on this hill, where they took post
with one of General Lincoln's Massachusetts militia regiments, under
Colonel Brooks, on their right. They were followed immediately by
McDougall's brigade, consisting of what was lately his own battalion,
which had no field officers, Ritzema's, Smallwood's, and Webb's. The
troops formed along the brow of the hill, and stood waiting for the
enemy. The two-gun battery brought up at the same time was Captain
Alexander Hamilton's.

[Footnote 212: See letters of these officers, _Documents