On the 3d of July, Congress made a requisition upon the Council of Safety for as many of these battalions as could be spared, to be placed under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, and receive Continental pay and rations.
About half of Atlee's battalion were then without firelocks but the necessity for their presence was so great that they were ordered to march on the 5th, and they arrived at Amboy on the 21st. Though inadequately equipped, they, according to the testimony of an observer, “alarmed the enemy not a little.” On the 2d of August, Atlee wrote, from Perth Amboy, that many of the men were without either shirts, breeches, or stockings, in their present state they could not be kept clean, and, if it had not been that they were in the face of the enemy, he would consider the maintenance of strict discipline a cruelty.
On the 11th of August he marched to New York, bearing a letter of introduction to Washington from Gen. Hugh Mercer, but with his troops “in a disgraceful situation with respect to clothing.” They encamped with the rest of the army on Long Island.
Before light, on the fatal morning of the 27th of August, word came that a picket on the lower road leading to the Narrows, had been attacked, and with the first dawn, Stirling's brigade, consisting of the battalions of Smallwood, Haslett, Lutz, Kichline and Atlee, in all about twenty-three hundred men, were sent to repel the enemy. About half after seven o'clock they met the left wing of the British army, consisting of nine regiments of infantry, with artillery, advancing under command of Gen. Grant. Atlee was sent forward to check the enemy at a morass, and he sustained a severe artillery fire until the brigade formed upon a height. He then filed off to the left, and seeing a hill about three hundred yards
