The commander in chief issued general orders from his headquarters at New Windsor, New York: “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.”38 Though it was the first time that the commander in chief had actually spelled his Polish engineer’s name correctly, it was more than a matter of penmanship. The initial ambivalence that he had felt toward Gates’s friend and ally had evolved into trust and respect for the architect of West Point, which
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