How to appreciate the conduct of these these brave men on this occasion.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 189. 

It was approximately four o’clock and still dark when a young officer on horseback, Major Alexander Scammell, came riding through the outer defenses looking for General Mifflin.

Scammell was twenty-nine years old and well liked. A Harvard graduate and an attorney in civilian life, he was quick-witted, charming, six feet two inches tall, and had been serving as an aide-de-camp to General Sullivan.

Scammell told Mifflin the boats were ready at the river landing and that Washington was anxiously waiting for the arrival of the last remaining troops. Mifflin said Scammel had to be mistaken. He could not imagine that Washington meant his own vanguard. Scammel insisted he was not mistaken, saying he had ridden from the extreme left where he had ordered all the troops he met to march for the ferry, that they were then on the move, and that he would continue on to give the same orders.

Mifflin then ordered General Edward Hand to form up the regiment and move out as soon as possible.

But Scammell was mistaken. He had misunderstood Washington. The order was a blunder of exactly the kind that could spell disaster.

The troops left the trenches and started for the river “without delay,” until just beyond the Dutch church, within a half mile of the landing, where the column halted.

Washington, astride his horse in the middle of the road, demanded to know what was going on. General Hand was explaining when Mifflin rode up. Faces were hard to see in the dark, but Hand would remember Washington exclaiming, “Good God! General Mifflin, I am afraid you have ruined us!”

Mifflin responded “with some warmth” that he was only obeying Washington’s orders as delivered by Major Scammell.

Washington said it was a “dreadful mistake,” that they had come too soon, that things were in “much confusion at the ferry,” and they must turn at once and go back to their posts.

For the weary troops who had held the lines through the night, counting the hours until they could be relieved and escape with the others, and who waited now in the dark, it was a moment of extreme difficulty, “trying business to young soldiers,” as Alexander Graydon wrote. “Whoever has seen troops in a similar situation, or duly contemplates the human heart in such trials well knows how to appreciate the conduct of these these brave men on this occasion.”

They returned to the lines as ordered, and in the words of General Hand “had the good fortune to recover our stations and keep them for some hours longer, without the enemy perceiving what was going forward."