General Orders, 20 July 1779
General Orders
Head-Quarters New-Windsor Tuesday July 20th 1779.
Parole Smyrna—C. Signs Susa. Surat.
If the troops wanting Arms have not been supplied they are to be furnished out of those brought from Stony-Point and not a moment’s time is to be lost in doing of it.
If the state of the Magazines will afford it the brigade Commissaries are always to keep by them (ready to issue at a moment’s warning) two days salt provisions & a larger quantity of bread or flour.
The troops are always to have two days cooked provision in hand that they may be ready to move at a moments warning. This want will not be admitted as an excuse and the officers commanding Corps are to consider themselves as responsible to the Commander in Chief for strict obedience to this order.
General Du-Portail will be pleased to appoint Engineers to superintend and direct the new works on the heights east and west of the river and have them forwarded with all possible dispatch agreeable to former orders.1
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene wrote his wife, Catharine, from New Windsor on this date: “The General is well and hearty” ( 4:241–46).
Pvt. Elijah Fisher, then part of the Commander-in-Chief’s Guard, wrote an entry in his diary for this date: “After puting all the baggage aboard the sloop we left New Winsor at four in the afternoon and went by water to West Point and staid aboard that Night twelve miles” ( 12).
1. For the urgency GW placed on the construction of defenses in the vicinity of West Point, see General Orders, 28 July; see also the source note for the general orders of 21 July.