DEAR SIR--By Express from Col Hand and from Red Hook, and from on board the Sloop at Governor's Island it is very evident there was a General Imbarcation of the Troops last evening from Statten Island--doubtless they'l make a dessent this morning. Youl please to order all the troops fit for duty to be at their Alarm posts near an hour sooner than is common--let their flints arms and ammunition be examined and everything held in readiness to defend the works or go upon a detachment. A few minutes past received an Express from Head Quarters. Youl acquaint the Commanding officers of Col Hitchcock's Regiment and Col Forman's Regiment of this, and direct them to observe the same orders, also the Artillery officers.
[Footnote 76: Original in possession of Chas. J. Little, Esq., Cambridge, Mass.]
Greene had been promoted to the rank of major-general on the 9th, and his old brigade on Long Island given to Brigadier-General John Nixon, of Massachusetts, who was promoted from a colonelcy at the same time. A new arrangement of the army was effected, and Brigadier-General Heard's brigade of five New Jersey regiments was ordered to Long Island to reinforce Greene. His division, now consisting of these two brigades--Nixon's and Heard's--numbered, August 15th, two thousand nine hundred men fit for duty. Parts of two Long Island militia regiments under Colonels Smith and Remsen which joined him about this date, and Colonel Gay's Connecticut levies, who had been on that side since the 1st of August, increased this number to something over thirty-five hundred.
But Greene was not to be a participator in the approaching scenes. The prevailing fever which had prostrated so many officers and men seized him with all but a fatal hold, and he was obliged to relinquish his command. He clung to it, however, to the last moment in hopes of a change for the better. "I am very sorry," he wrote to Washington on the 15th, "that I am under the necessity of acquainting you that I am confined to my bed with a raging fever. The critical situation of affairs makes me the more anxious, but I hope, through the assistance of Providence, to be able to ride before the presence of the enemy may make it absolutely necessary;" and he assured the commander-in-chief that his men appeared to be "in exceeding good spirits," and would no doubt be able to render a very good account of the enemy should they land on Long Island. On the 16th there was no change for the better in his condition, but on the contrary Livingston, his aid, reported that he had "a very bad night of it;" and in a day or two he was removed to New York, to the house of John Inglis now the intersection of Ninth Street and Broadway where with rest and care he slowly passed the crisis of his illness.[77]