File:Historic fields and mansions of Middlesex (1874) (14775610451).jpg

Identifier: historicfieldsm00drak (find matches)
Title: Historic fields and mansions of Middlesex
Year: 1874 (1870s)
Authors: Drake, Samuel Adams, 1833-1905
Subjects: Middlesex County (Mass.)--History Middlesex County (Mass.)--Description and travel
Publisher: J.R. Osgood and Company
Contributing Library: Thoreau Society Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods
Digitizing Sponsor: Federally funded with LSTA funds through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners

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dashing cavalier and anexcellent scribe. He served Washington nearly five years, dur-ing which he was in every action in which the main army wasengaged. General Lloyd Tilghman, a descendant, who foughton the Confederate side in the late war, was captured at PortHenry and confined for some time at Fort Warren, in Bostonharbor. He appeared again in Boston at the festival of theSociety of the Cincinnati in 1872 as the representative of hisbrave ancestor. While loitering in the apartments devoted to official business,it may not be uninteresting to refer to the chirography of theleaders of the Continental army, most of whom handled thesword and pen equally well. Washingtons characters werelarge, round, and never appear to have been penned in haste.Knox wrote indifferently when he entered the army, but hishand soon became straggling and difficult to decipher, his mindbeing so much more active than his pen that his MS. is filledwith interlineations. Greene wrote a fair, clear, running-hand;
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HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 301 his language couched in good, terse phrase. Wayne, far frombeing the boor that Andres epic makes him, not only held afluent, but a graphic pen, as witness his despatch : — Stoney Point, 16th July, 1779, —2 oclock, a. m.Dear General,—The fort and garrison, with Colonel Johnston,are ours. Our officers and men behaved like men who are deter-mined to be free. Yours most sincerely, Anty Wayne. Gates wrote a handsome, round hand; so did Schuyler, St.Clair, Sullivan, and Stirling. Lee took rather more care of hishandwriting than of his dress ; his characters are bold andlegible. Lafayette wrote like a Frenchman. Steubens andChastelluxs were rather an improvement on Lafayettes diminu-tive strokes. Whatever may be said of Washingtons Fabian policy, it iscertain the pugnacious element was not wanting in his charac-ter. He wished to carry Boston by assault, but was overruledby his council; he wished to fight at Germantown, with anarmy just beaten ; and again a

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