The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

170 WVASHINGTON'S WRITINGS. [/ET. 49.
TO COUNT DE GRASSE.
Before York, 1 October, 1781.
SIR,
I should have had the honor of acknowledging sooner the note, which your Excellency transmitted by the
Marquis de Lafayette, but an expectation of being able
to accompany my answer with interesting intelligence
induced me to defer it to the present moment. With
regard to the station, which your Excellency has determined for the main fleet, the reasons, which you are
pleased to communicate, prove that it unites all advantages, and inspire the greatest confidence in the
accomplishment of its object.
I have only one proposition to submit on the subject
of naval dispositions, and the objects of it are too es-,sential not to be exposed in their fullest light. I mean
the stationing two or three ships above the enemy's
posts on York River. For the want of this only means
of completing the investment of their works, the British remain masters of the navigation for twenty-five
miles above them, and have, by their armed vessels,
intercepted supplies of the greatest value on their way
to our camp. The loss is redoubled, by diminishing
our means and augmenting those of the enemy at a
most critical time. We are even necessitated, for the
protection of Williamsburg and the magazines in our
rear, to leave a post of seven or eight hundred men in
that quarter; a diminution of our force that in present
circumstances we can but ill support. But, unless this
detachment is made, the enemy might in the greatest
security land above Queen's Creek to cover their left
flank, and by a very short march effect the most destructive purposes; while the circuitous march which
we, from the nature of the country, should be obliged