​What did Peter Muhlenberg look like? The celebrated "fighting parson" has been depicted in stained glass, marble, bronze, and oil. The most frequently-seen image of the general is the oil-on-canvas portrait in the collection of the Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The gallery, however, identifies this portrait as the work of an unknown artist, created on an unknown date “circa 1800-1900.” Judging purely from that date range, there is a good chance that this familiar portrait was not made from life. Muhlenberg died in 1807.

It appears, in fact, to be a copy of another portrait made by the noted founding era portrait artist John Trumbull. Or, possibly, it is the other way around. As with many portraits of Revolutionary War figures, Muhlenberg appears in both paintings in uniform but as an older man. This is a good indicator that whichever one is the original was painted from life. Former officers often sat for portraits later in life but wished to be depicted in uniform. An artist painting an imagined portrait would probably not have paired the older Muhlenberg's face with the younger man's uniform. Muhlenberg was just twenty-nine years old when he was given his colonelcy and took command of the 8th Virginia. He was promoted to general in 1777 and breveted a major general when the army disbanded in 1783. By then he was thirty-seven. The man in the Trumbull portrait and its copy appears to be in his late forties or fifties. Muhlenberg died on his sixty-first birthday in 1807. He wears two stars on his epaulets to indicate he is a major general, a practice begun during the war in 1780.

Directly upstairs from that statue, in the Capitol rotunda, there is another image of Muhlenberg which may be the most reliable depiction of him as a soldier. It is a partially-obscured side image of the general in Trumbull’s grand depiction of The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis. According to the Architect of the Capitol, Trumbull created this giant painting “between 1819 and 1820, basing it upon a small painting … that he had first envisioned in 1785….  In 1787 he made preliminary drawings for the small painting. Although he struggled for a time with the arrangement of the figures, he had settled upon a composition by 1788.”

​“To create portraits from life of the people depicted in this and other paintings," the Capitol architect's website says, "Trumbull traveled extensively. He obtained sittings with numerous individuals in Paris (including French officers at Thomas Jefferson’s house) and in New York. In 1791 he was at Yorktown and sketched the site of the British surrender. He continued to work on the small painting during the following years but did not [immediately] complete it; nevertheless, in January 1817 he showed it and other works in Washington, D.C., and was given a commission to create four monumental history paintings for the Capitol. Surrender of Lord Cornwallis was the second of these large paintings that he completed. He exhibited it in New York City, Boston, and Baltimore before delivering it to the United States Capitol in late 1820. He completed the small painting around 1828; it is now part of the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.”

In the summer of 1777, General Washington sent Daniel Morgan’s rifle battalion north to help fend off the enemy advance down the Hudson valley. One of Morgan’s companies was led by 8th Virginia Capt. James Knox who (along with the enlisted men he took with him) was technically still in the 8th but on detached duty. With Morgan's Rifles gone, the main army was without a light infantry battalion.
 
Washington formed a new one, under the command of Gen. William Maxwell of New Jersey. Col. William Crawford—half brother of 8th Virginia captains John and David Stephenson—seems to have been in active command of this force. Maxwell’s Light Infantry played the central role at the battle of Cooch’s Bridge (September 3) and a key role at the Battle of Brandywine (September 11).