To George Washington from Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, 6 November 1776
From Brigadier General Benedict Arnold
Ticonderoga November 6th 1776
Dear General,
I beg leave to recommend to your particular Notice, the following Gentlemen, who were taken at Quebec, and lately returned on their Parole vizt Major Lamb, and Captain Lockwood of the Artillery Lieutenant Colonel Oswald, and Captain Morgan the two Last went with me from Cambridge; they have all distinguished themselves for their Bravery and Attachment to the Public Cause, and will I make no Doubt be very usefull hereafter, and do Honour to the Commissions they may hold. if it is inconsistent with your engagements, I beg they may be among the First who are exchanged.1
On the 3rd Instant the Enemy began to embark at Crown Point, and several Vessells sailed yesterday Morning, two Vessells only remain there, on board of which the last Troops were embarked, they give out their Intention is to return to Canada, and pay us a Visit in the Spring, I Wish it may not be a Feint to put us off our Guard, and to return the first Fair Wind as the Season is so far advanced, I am rather inclined to think, they are in earnest to return I wish to hear the Enemy with you have taken up their Winter Quarters, I hope this Winter will effect as much for us as a Victory. I am with Sentiments of perfect Esteem and Respect Dear General Your Affectionate & Most Obedient Hble Servant
B. Arnold
Copy, in Alexander Hamilton’s writing, DLC:GW.
1. These officers were exchanged by early 1777 and received commissions in the new arrangement of the army. Samuel Lockwood (1737–1807) of Greenwich, Conn., participated in General Montgomery’s invasion of Canada during the fall of 1775 as a second lieutenant in the 5th Connecticut Regiment, and on 5 Nov. 1775 he was appointed an assistant engineer for the army in Canada with the rank of captain. Although Congress apparently refused to recognize that rank, it voted on 21 Nov. 1776 to pay him as an assistant engineer for one year from the date of his appointment (see , 6:971), and in the new arrangement for 1777, Lockwood became a captain in Col. John Lamb’s 2d Continental Artillery Regiment. Lockwood resigned his commission in February 1779. He subsequently commanded an armed boat on Long Island Sound and assisted in capturing several British vessels at Oyster Bay, N.Y., in November 1779. Eleazer Oswald (c.1750–1795), who had immigrated to America from England in the early 1770s, accompanied Arnold on his expedition to Ticonderoga in May 1775 and served as Arnold’s secretary during the Quebec expedition the following fall and winter. In early 1777 Oswald became lieutenant colonel of Lamb’s artillery regiment, and he distinguished himself in action during the Danbury raid in April 1777 and the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Angered over his failure to obtain promotion, Oswald resigned from the army on 4 Oct. 1778 (see Oswald to GW, that date, DLC:GW; GW to Oswald, 14 Oct. 1778, DLC:GW; and Oswald to GW, 28 Oct. 1778, PHi: Gratz Collection). From 1779 to 1781 Oswald was a partner with William Goddard in publishing the Maryland Journal, and the Baltimore Advertiser in Baltimore, and from 1782 to 1795 in Philadelphia, Oswald published his own highly partisan newspaper, the Independent Gazetter; or the Chronicle of Freedom (, 1:240, 2:919–20). In 1792 Oswald went to France where he served for a time as an artillery colonel in the republican army before returning to the United States.