Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/509

  CHAPTER XXVIII — THE AMERICAN FORCES 170. The Recruiting Service (1776) BY CAPTAIN ALEXANDER GRAYDON (1811)

HE object now was to raise my company, and as the streets of the city had been pretty well swept by the preceding and contemporary levies, it was necessary to have recourse to the country. My recruiting party was therefore sent out in various directions ; and each of my officers as well as myself, exerted himself in the business. Among the many unpleasant peculiarities of the American service, it was not the least that the drudgery, which in old military establishments belongs to serjeants and corporals, here devolved on the commissioned officers ; and that the whole business of recruiting, drilling, &c. required their unremitted personal attention. This was more emphatically the case in recruiting ; since the common opinion was, that the men and the officers were never to be separated, and hence, to see the persons who were to command them, and above all, the captain, was deemed of vast importance by those inclining to enlist : for this reason I found it necessary, in common with my brother officers, to put my feelings most cruelly to the rack ; and in an excursion I once made to Frankford, they were tried to the utmost. A number of fellows at the tavern, at which my party rendezvoused, indicated a desire to enlist, but although they drank freely of our liquor, they still held off. I soon perceived that the object was to amuse themselves at our expense, and that if there might be one or two among them really disposed to engage, the others would prevent them. One fellow in particular, who had made the greatest shew of taking the bounty, presuming on the weakness of our party, consisting only of a drummer, corporal, my second lieutenant