A thousand yards to the northwest, Washington had raced seven miles from his new headquarters toward the sound of the guns. He now sat his horse on a farm lane edged with stone walls near the post road, conferring with Generals Putnam and Parsons about how to keep the British from pushing north. Hundreds of panting men, with muskets and without, rushed away from the East River. “Take the walls!” Washington shouted at them. “Take the corn field!” Some tried to form a hasty defensive line, but “in a most confused and disordered manner,” Parsons acknowledged. Many more scattered inland, glancing
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