The 2nd New Jersey Regiment was sent north to relieve Benedict Arnold’s attack on Quebec.
Shreve arrived in Quebec City on May 3 under cannon fire from the British. General John Thomas ordered Shreve to take some of the wounded to Sorel. The American forces were defeated by British troops on June 11 and they abandoned Sorel on June 14. Shreve was back at Fort Ticonderoga June 16, 1776, and remained there until November, when the enlistments for the 2nd New Jersey expired.
On December 19, 1777, Shreve’s Regiment entered winter quarters at Valley Forge and stayed there until ordered to take post in Haddonfield, New Jersey on March 19, 1778. When General Charles Cornwallis led British troops out of Philadelphia, some of his men burned Shreve’s house.
Shreve participated in both the Battle for Monmouth Courthouse and the Sullivan Expedition.
In November 1779, Shreve led the 2nd New Jersey Regiment to the Continental Army’s winter encampment at Morristown, New Jersey. On June 23, 1780, during the Battle of Springfield Shreve’s men waited at a bridge just west of the village of Springfield as Hessians under Lieutenant General Wilhelm Baron von Knyphausen came from the east. Shreve’s men fired cannons, but the regiment was in danger of being surrounded, so General Nathanael Greene ordered him to retreat.
Shreve resigned his commission in the Continental Army in January 1781. Two years later, he joined other New Jersey officers in becoming a founding member of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey.
Shreve and George Washington both died on the same day — December 14, 1799. Shreve died in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.