Apr 08, 2014 - Sale 2344

Sale 2344 - Lot 22

Price Realized: $ 3,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION.) Alexander, William ("Lord Stirling"). Recruiting instructions for the 2nd Regiment of New Jersey. Contemporary transcript in an unidentified hand of an order from "Stirling, Major Gen'l," with the name of the addressee left blank. 3 pages, 14 1/2 x 9 inches, on one folding sheet; folds, moderate foxing, adhesive remnants on final blank, wear to fore-edge with slight loss of text; later note reading "from Mrs. Lewis Dunham" on final blank. Camp near Morristown, NJ, 23 March 1780
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General Stirling (an American with a disputed claim to British nobility) issued this order in response to New Jersey's call for 400 new troops, "to continue in said service during the present war with Great Britain." Each recruit was required to be "not only able bodied and effective, but well limbed, of proper height for a soldier, not upwards of forty nor under eighteen years of age." British deserters were forbidden. The recruiting officer was authorized to bring along three soldiers and a drummer, but the party was urged to "behave decently and friendly to the people of the country, and as clean & well dressed as their circumstances will admit of."
Stirling sent another copy of this order to General Washington for approval. In his cover letter to Washington (now at the Library of Congress), Stirling notes that he drew up 12 copies of these instructions to Colonel Francis Barber, who was to fill in the blanks and relay them to the various recruiting parties. Some of the recruits gathered through this order were undoubtedly with the 1st and 2nd New Jersey Regiments the following year at the Siege of Yorktown.