General Orders, 30 June 1779
General Orders
Head-Quarters New-Windsor Wednesday June 30th [1779]
Parole Copenhagen—C. Signs Cæsar Plato.
All those soldiers who are Masons by trade in the line are immediately to be drawn out and sent to the Fort for a special and temporary service—They are to take their orders from Colonel Kosciuszko.1
The Drummers to practise from nine to eleven in the morning & from three to five in the afternoon.
The New Regulation for the order and discipline of the Army being now arrived and distributed, The General hopes and expects that every officer will pay the strictest conformity to them and exert himself within the limits of his command to have them carried into immediate execution.2
The Inspector General will as speedily as possible have an inspection into the two divisions under the command of Major Generals Heath and McDougall3 & will introduce the new formation on the same principles which have been observed in the other divisions.
He will please to begin with the brigades on the east side the river.4
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. For the limited response to this call for masons, see General Orders, 13 July, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko to GW, July 1779.
2. The general orders refer to Major General Steuben’s Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, which had been prepared primarily during the previous winter (see GW to Steuben, 26 Feb., 11 and 27 March; Stirling to GW, 26 Feb.; Steuben to GW, 5, 17, and 31 March; and GW to John Jay, 11 March; see also the postscript to GW to the Board of War, 9 June, and 130–35).
3. Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall’s command centered on the forts at West Point (see GW to McDougall, 19 June).
4. Maj. Gen. William Heath’s division consisted of the brigades under brigadier generals Samuel Holden Parsons, Jedediah Huntington, and John Nixon on the east side of the Hudson River (see General Orders, 23 June).