, the year
1780, when the continental money ceased to pass, and there was no
other fiscal resources during that campaign but what resulted from the
creative genius of Timothy Pickering, at that crisis appointed
successor to General Greene, the second officer of the American army,
who resigned the department because there was no money in the national
coffers to carry it through the campaign, declaring that he could not,
and would not attempt it, without adequate resources, such as he
abounded in during the term of nearly three years antecedently as
quartermaster-general.
In addition to the foregoing, by way of elucidation, it is to be
understood by you, that so early as from the latter part of the year
1776, I was always attached to a commanding general; and, in
consequence, my knowledge of the officers and their merits was more
general than that of almost any other in service. My operations were
upon the extended scale, from the remotest parts of Canada, wherever
the American standard had waved, to the splendid theatre of Yorktown,
when and where I was adjutant-general to the chosen troops of the
northern army.
At the commencement of the revolution, Colonel Burr, then about
eighteen years of age, at the first sound of the trump of war (as if
bred in the camp of the great Frederick, whose maxim was "to hold his
army always in readiness to break a lance with, or throw a dart
against, any assailant"), quit his professional studies, and rushed to
the camp of General Washington, at Cambridge, as a volunteer from
which he went with Colonel Arnold on his daring enterprise against
Quebec, through the wilds of Canada (which vied with Hannibal's march
over the Alps), during which toilsome and hazardous march he attracted
the attention and admiration of his commander so much, that he
(Arnold) sent him alone to meet and hurry down General Montgomery's
army from Montreal to his assistance; and recommended him to that
general, who appointed him an aid-de-camp, in which capacity he acted
during the winter, till the fatal assault on Quebec, in which that
gallant general, his aid McPherson, and Captain Cheeseman, commanding
the forlorn hope, fell.
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