A return of the whole army under his immediate command, made on the 3d of June, exhibited in the column, of present, fit for duty, only three thousand seven hundred and sixty, rank and file.

So reduced was that force on which America relied for independence.

"You but too well know," said General Washington in a letter to a friend, giving an account of this incursion, "and will regret with me the cause which justifies this insulting manoeuvre on the part of the enemy.

It deeply affects the honour of the states, a vindication of which could not be attempted in our present circumstances, without most intimately hazarding their security; at least so far as it may depend on the preservation of the army.

Their character, their interest, their all that is dear, call upon them in the most pressing manner, to place the army immediately on a respectable footing." The long continuance of Knyphausen at Elizabethtown, strengthened a suspicion that Sir Henry Clinton was about to return from South Carolina, and intended, without disembarking his troops, to proceed up the Hudson to West Point; and that the movement into Jersey was a feint designed to cover the real object.
The letters of the Commander-in-chief, addressed about this period, to those who might be supposed to possess influence in the government of the Union, or in those of the states, exhibit his conjectures respecting the designs of his adversary, as well as his apprehensions from the condition of his own army.