George Washington’s two most-remembered wartime mounts, Nelson and Blueskin, have been the subject of considerable popular retelling, much of it post-dating the events by decades. The manuscript record is thinner than the later accounts but clear on the essentials. Both horses came to Washington as gifts from friends. Both carried him through much of the Revolution. Both survived the war and were retired from active service. Beyond those shared outlines their stories diverge—in origin, in the uses to which Washington put them, and in the manner of their departures.
The Horse Washington Lost in the Summer of 1778
On August 11, 1778, Brig. Gen. Thomas Nelson Jr. wrote to Washington from Virginia, offering the gift of a horse. The opening sentence of the letter establishes the occasion:
Will you pardon a liberty I am about to take with you. I have been inform’d that you have had the misfortune to lose your favorite Horse & that you are not mounted at present as you ought to be.
That was followed, in the same letter, by the offer itself.[1]
Which horse Washington had lost, and under what circumstances, is not stated in the correspondence. The timing points plausibly toward the Battle of Monmouth, fought on June 28, 1778—the longest single day of combat in the war and, by a wide margin, the hottest. Temperatures climbed past 100 degrees, and many soldiers on both sides collapsed from heatstroke.[2] It was recorded that Washington’s own horse died in the heat during the fighting.[3] Washington, writing to Henry Laurens three days later, described the battlefield conditions—a “deep sandy Country almost entirely destitute of Water”—but made no reference to his mount[4].
Alexander Hamilton also lost a mount at Monmouth. Writing to Elias Boudinot on July 5, 1778, Hamilton reported that John Laurens “had a slight contusion also—and his horse killed,” while he himself “had his horse wounded in the first part of the action with a musket ball.”[5]
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