[Note:Of the Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment. Fie retired June 6, 1777. ]
Sir: When I wrote you on the 12th March (to which no answer is yet received) directing a Return of the 6th. Pennsylvania Battalion31 the Inoculation of the Men, who had not had the small pox, and the sending immediately to the Army such as had it, under proper Officers, I hoped to see a considerable part of the Battalion in the Field before this. But the last general return informs me that I was much mistaken.
[Note:As Morris was colonel of the Ninth and Samuel Benezet (see next paragraph) was major of the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment, and the only available text is that of the Varick Transcripts in the Library of Congress, a legitimate query is whether this reading should not be the Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment. (See next note.) ]
Our present situation compels me to order you and Major Benezet to march with all of the Battalion that have got over the small pox, and are equipped. Justice to the Service, calls upon you to do so without loss of time; you will leave behind a sufficient Number of proper Officers to carry on the recruiting business, under the direction of a Captain, of approved Integrity and diligence, with positive orders to exert his utmost Activity in the discharge of this important duty, and to see that the inferior Officers do not spend their time in dissipation, as, I am told, is too generally the Case. I am etc.32
[Note:Practically the same letter was sent to Lieut, Cols. Henry Bicker, of the Sixth; Adam Hubley, of the Tenth; and David Grier, of the Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment. The one to Grier is in the writing of Richard Kidder Meade, and is in the possession of Judge E. A. Armstrong, of Princeton, N.J. ]