298 The Winning of the West 



Washington. 1 He played a good part at Brandy- 

 wine and Monmouth. At the former battle he was 

 wounded by an American sharpshooter, and had an 

 opportunity, of which he forbore taking advantage, 

 to himself shoot an American officer of high rank, 

 who unsuspectingly approached the place where he 

 lay hid; he always insisted that the man he thus 

 spared was no less a person than Washington. 

 While suffering from his wound, Sir William Howe 

 disbanded his rifle corps, distributing it among the 

 light companies of the different regiments; and its 

 commander in consequence became an unattached 

 volunteer in the army. But he was too able to be 

 allowed to remain long unemployed. When the 

 British moved to New York he was given the com- 

 mand of several small independent expeditions, and 

 was successful in each case; once, in particular, he 

 surprised and routed Pulaski's legion, committing 

 great havoc with the bayonet, which was always 

 with him a favorite weapon. His energy and valor 

 attracted much attention; and when a British army 

 was sent against Charleston and the South he went 

 along, as a lieutenant-colonel of a recently raised 

 regular regiment, known as the American Volun- 

 teers. 2 



1 "Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel 

 Patrick Ferguson," by Adam Ferguson, LL.D., Edinburgh, 

 1817, p. ii. The copy was kindly lent me by Mr. Geo. H. 

 Moore of the Lenox Library. 



2 Though called volunteers they were simply a regular 

 regiment raised in America instead of England ; Ferguson's 

 "Memoir," p. 30, etc. always speaks of them as regulars. 

 The British gave an absurd number of titles to their various 



