22 REPORT OF THE 



The projectors of Prospect Park pledged to the people of 

 Brooklyn that the historic features of that sacred spot should 

 be properly cared for and the site of the redoubt preserved. 



This has not been done and there is nothing to designate it. 

 On the contrary it has been changed in the development of 

 the park so that it is much less prominent than it originally 

 was. 



In commemoration of this spot a bronze tablet has been 

 placed upon a large boulder near by. The inscription, how- 

 ever, upon this tablet is incorrect, the distance being in- 

 accurately stated. A public house of later prominence is 

 mentioned, but nothing said about the redoubt. 



This bluff is the site where the English and the United 

 States regular organized armies first met, each having its 

 commander-in-chief close at hand. Thousands of" lives were 

 offered up that day on that smoking altar to freedom, while as 

 many more, less fortunate ones, found their way into those 

 living hells — the English prison ships. As there was no en- 

 gagement and no blood spilled at Fort Putnam (now Fort 

 Greene) where the martyrs' tomb stands in Washington Park, 

 is not Battle Pass mound the right spot where finally 

 to place at rest the bones of the martyrs and erect 

 the proposed national monument ? A thousand persons 

 would see it here, where scarcely a score would see 

 it in Washington Park. It is a fulminatory point of 

 woodland and meadow, of lawn and precipice, of water and 

 shrubbery, and needs a central commanding object to complete 

 the picture. The soil stained with the blood of brothers who 

 died in the same cause is the pall that should cover their 

 bones, and it could rear its head in honor of both martyrs and 

 heroes. It is to be hoped that Congress will not longer delay 

 to place over the bones of these heroic martyrs, whose lives 

 were sacrificed in the cause of freedom, each suffering more 

 than a hundred deaths for the liberty we now enjoy, a suitable 

 and noble monument. Commingled indiscriminately in the 

 mortuary pile are the bones of patriots from most of the 

 original States. They have been saved by a patriotic few for 



