Alexander McDougall, who succeeded Benedict Arnold as commander at West Point, is in somewhat desperate straits, and writes to Shepard for help: "West Point, 20th Jan. 1782, 8 p.m.. Sir, The Subject of the Conversation at my quarters with you on the 16th Instant, being made a Charge in my Arrest, I shall be obliged to you to commit the Ideas of that Conversation to writing, as immediately as you can, and address it to me, lest time or accident may efface them from your memory. I beg you to recollect particularly on whose order & in what [one or two words cut out] Demand was made on Colonel Crane, to countersign the Order to issue ammunition..." After closing, and a few hours thought, a postcript, in a smaller, more cramped (but apparently the same) hand is added: "West Point, January 21st, 82. 12 a.m. Sir, I wish you to recollect, whether or not, I informed you of my receiving a letter, while you were at my quarters that day, from Captain Goodall, in which he reported that thirteen hundred cartridges from Verplank's Point had been plundered" with the cut-out portion below that statement, apparently where a signature might have been. Below that is Col. Shepard's name, in McDougall's hand. A very interesting letter from a rabble-rouser and agitator who was with the Revolutionary cause from the beginning, and was to serve in congress in the 1780's.