colonise them in the New Forest in England was a failure, the Newburgh ex- periment was a failure, the settlements at East and West Camps, hereafter to be noticed, were scenes of bewailing and protests against the bad faith of those who had taken them, a band of homeless, penniless exiles, and had spent many thousands of pounds for their transportation and maintenance. For that in- vestment they certainly seemed unwilling to make return. Digitized by Microsoft® ^ s 8 S s is o 5? 9 s £ I Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® The Fisher's Reach 405 The few who remained in Newburgh after the ex- odus of their brethren seem to have been immediately involved in a dispute with their new neighbours, the subject being the possession of the church building. This discussion terminated with the death of the Pala- tine leader, who was crushed by a falling door. Among the peculiar features of Newburgh 's history is the fact that the "rude forefathers" of that hamlet were not generally Dutchmen. To the German settle- ment were soon added English, Irish, and Huguenot pioneers. Though not equal in antiquity to the towns near the mouth of the river, or yet higher up, in the neighbour- hood of Albany, Newburgh enjoys the distinction of being the oldest settlement in Orange County. It was shortly followed by the planting of New Windsor, two miles below, that for some time was Newburgh 's rival in size and importance. What the Orange County metropolis lacks in early history is more than made up by the importance of later events. It is to the story of Washington and the Revolution what Camelot was to the Arthurian legends. Here, during the long, gloomy months that preceded the dawn of American independence, the great chief of the Continental army fought and won his greatest battles — fought the growing and just indignation of that army against a dilatory and ungrateful Congress, fought the spectres of want and care, fought the fool- ish, fond enthusiasm of his own generals when they Digitized by Microsoft® 4o6 The Hudson River clamoured to make 'him king. In the whole great round of national history there is no incident so heroic as Washington's refusal of the crown that was offered him in the old Hasbrouck house at Newburgh. From almost the very beginning of the war, both the British and patriot leaders saw the necessity for controlling the river at Newburgh. It was, after the reduction of Fort Washington and the subsequent eruption of British war- vessels into the waters south of the Highlands, the only available ferry for the Amer- ican troops that were hurried now east, now west, to relieve New England and New Jersey or Pennsylvania in turn, and compensate by their rapidity of move- ment for the pitiful inadequacy of every division of Washington's army. With that communication bro- ken, that army must have been almost hopelessly crippled. The American military force in the Revolution consisted of three distinct grades or classes of sol- diers: the regulars, known as continentals; the levies, drafted either from militia regiments or from the people; and the militia. The continentals were long- term men, always under arms, commanded by the chief of the army — in a word, professional soldiers. The levies were drawn for a short term, but cotild be called upon for service outside of their own State as well as in it. They were an inconvenient, not to say exasperating compromise between civilians and sol- diers, at critical times nearly always reaching the limit Digitized by Microsoft® The Fisher's Reach 407 of their enlistment and going calmly away home, leaving their commander impotent for ofEence or de- fence. This seemed to happen whenever a body of levies had been licked into something resembling sol- dierly shape. As for the militia, its members could only be called upon for three months' consecutive serv- ice outside of the State in which they were enlisted. They were called out and disbanded as the exigencies of war demanded, and were nearly as apt to leave a cannon in a ditch as a plough in a furrow. But they were frequently good, serviceable soldiers in spite of the miserable system under which they served, and they sprang, armed, from the soil whenever a pressing occasion presented itself. It was the militia and the levies that enabled the commanding general to throw reinforcements into the scale of battle when his little army of regulars was hard pressed. They were to the British always an unknown quantity, and set calcula- tions at naught. When Gates needed a larger force of men to oppose to Burgoyne, Clinton sent him the farmer-soldiers of Ulster County — men of mingled Dutch and German blood — to