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A circumstance had given him proof positive that Sir Henry was in New York, and had aroused his military ire," writes Washington Irving. This paragraph refers to one of Clinton's spies, who was captured while gathering information in Putnam's camp at Peekskill. When Clinton heard of it he sent a war-vessel up the Hudson with a flag of truce, claiming the man as one of his officers.

General M'Dougal, whose numbers did not at that time exceed two hundred and fifty men, received timely notice of his approach, and exerted himself for the removal of the stores into the strong country in his rear. Before this could be effected, Colonel Bird appeared; and M'Dougal, after setting fire to the remaining stores and barracks, retired into the strong grounds in the rear of Peekskill.

The state sovereignties, where the real energies of government resided, were incessantly urged to fill their regiments, and to bring their quotas into the field; and congress, at his instance, passed resolutions authorizing him to draw the troops from Peekskill, and to call out the militia of the neighbouring states.

When he was between thirteen and fourteen years old, his father built a large malt-house at Newburg, and the son loaded with his own hands and carted to the site selected all the stone for the building. Collecting wild honey and shooting game in the forests around Peekskill were additional employments which combined pleasure with profit.

Clinton was on his way north with all the troops that could be spared to help Burgoyne, and Putnam, who had the general command of the Highlands, with only fifteen hundred men, could not hope to cope with the superior forces advancing from the south, so he retired along the Post Road through Cortlandtville to Continental Village, the main entrance by land to the Highlands, where the public stores and workshops were located, and from which he was compelled to again fall back as Sir Henry Clinton, having captured the river forts and burned Peekskill, advanced.

The drafts made from Peekskill for both armies had left that post in a situation to require the aid of militia for its security. The requisitions of General Putnam were complied with; but the attack upon them being delayed, the militia, who were anxious to seed their farms, became impatient; many deserted; and General Putnam was induced to discharge the residue.

On the approach of General M'Dougal with a body of continental troops from Peekskill, and on hearing that the militia were assembling under General Dickinson, he returned to New York and Staten Island with the cattle he had collected, having lost in the expedition only eight men killed and twice as many wounded.

John Paulding, one of the three who captured André, received for his distinguished services, as was meet, a fine farm situated in Peekskill that had been confiscated from its royalist owner; thus we see that virtue is rewarded, treason punished and the state plays the generous role without any expense to itself. Mr. Andrew Carnegie himself could not have managed the affair better.

He had to stop at Peekskill and he took us all ashore for a peek that's what he said. And he treated us all to sodas. You get dandy raspberry sodas in Peekskill. After that we started for Poughkeepsie and that was as far as he was going to tow us, because he had to tow a barge down to New York.

He wrote at once to Washington, advising him of his peril, and endeavoured to push on; but his delicate frame would stand no more, and on the 15th he went to bed in Mr. Kennedy's house in Peekskill, with so violent an attack of rheumatism that to his bitter disgust he was obliged to resign himself to weeks of inactivity.