assembled at Middlebrook (May 28, 1777), just behind a connected ridge
of strong and commanding heights north of the road leading to
Philadelphia, and about ten miles from Brunswick.

This camp, the approaches to which were naturally difficult, Washington
took care to strengthen still further by entrenchments. The heights in
front commanded a prospect of the course of the Raritan, the road to
Philadelphia, the hills about Brunswick, and a considerable part of the
country between that place and Amboy, so as to afford him a full view
of the most interesting movements of the enemy.

The force brought into the field by the United States required all the
aid which could be derived from strong positions and unremitting
vigilance. On the 20th of May (1777) the army in Jersey, excluding
cavalry and artillery, amounted to only 8,378 men, of whom upwards of
2,000 were sick. The effective rank and file were only 5,738.

Had this army been composed of the best disciplined troops, its
inferiority in point of numbers must have limited its operations to
defensive war, and have rendered it incompetent to the protection of
any place whose defense would require a battle in the open field. But
more than half the troops were unacquainted with the first rudiments of
military duty, and had never looked an enemy in the face. As an
additional cause of apprehension, a large proportion of the soldiers,
especially from the middle States, were foreigners, in whose attachment
to the American cause full confidence could not be placed.

Washington, anticipating a movement by land toward Philadelphia, had
taken the precaution to give orders for assembling on the western bank
of the Delaware an army of militia strengthened by a few Continental