USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester County, New York, from its earliest settlement to the year 1900 > Part 40
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Colonel Glover was made aware of the presence of the enemy by the sudden approach of his advance guard. He immediately threw forward a captain and forty men to meet them, and in the pause which followed ambuscaded his regiments behind stone walls. Ile then personally took command of the forty men and marched them to within fifty yards of the place where the foe had come to a stand- still. Both sides now fired, several rounds being exchanged. Four of the British party were seen to fall, and of the Americans two wore killed and a number wounded. The British were soon re-enforced and charged the Americans, who retreated in good order, leading their pursuers up to where the first ambuscaded regiment (Colonel Read's) lay. The concealed men rose from behind the stone wall and tired with such effect that the advancing column broke and fed without the ceremony of a reply. After a delay of about an hom and a half the enemy again came forward along the roadway, " with what were supposed," says Dawson, " to have been 4,000 men, strengthened with seven pieces of artillery." Colonel Read and his command, still or- empying their original position, not only renewed the attack but bravely " maintained their ground until they had thrown seven well- directed volleys into the closed ranks " of the vastly superior enemy, finally retreating across fields and taking up a new position in sup- port of Colonel Shepard's regiment, which was concealed some dis- tance farther along the road. Hore the previous proceeding was re- peated, seventeen volleys being fired by the Americans before they were dislodged. Next the British came upon the third line of am- Imscade, under the command of Colonel Baldwin; but here the oppo- sition offered by the Americans was not prolonged, the nature of the ground permitting the British artillery to be effectively em- ployed. The three regiments, having well performed the duties which fell to them, then retired across Hutchinson's River and up a slope of ground to where the fourth, commanded by Captain Curtis, was stationed, with the three field-pieces. This ended the fighting, al- though the British canon continued to belch thunderously at the
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disappearing continentals. The brigade, reports Colonel Glover, " after fighting all day, withont vietuals or drink," fell back at dark to a place three miles in the rear, where they bivouacked, and " lay as a piequet all night, the heavens over us and the earth muider us, which was all we had, having left all our baggage at the old en- «amment we left in the morning." Early the next day they joined the American command quartered in the Mile Square in the Town of Yonkers.
This interesting action, or rather series of actions, occurred on Pelham soil. It served a two-fold purpose-first, to engage and re- tard the van of the invading army for an entire day; and second, to give the British general a wholesome object-lesson of the mettle- someness of the American troops and of the well-judged manner in which they had been posted to harass his advance. Dawson, after careful examination of all the known facts, concludes that the num- ber of the enemy actually engaged by Glover and his meu could not have been less than 4,000; while the two regiments of Read and Shepard, which sustained practically the entire attack of this army, could not have exceeded 400 rank and file. The American losses, according to official returns, were six men killed and Colonel Shepard and twelve men wounded. The enemy's forces comprised both Brit- ish regiments and German mercenary chasseurs. The losses to the British regiments (as shown by the returns) were three men killed and two officers and twenty men wounded. As for the mercenaries, no official returns of their losses have been published. Regarding this point we shall permit ourselves to quote at length the observa- tions of Dawson, upon whose facts we have frequently drawn, though usually (and we admit quite deliberately) without reproducing the singularly precise and diligent concatenations of statement and re- lated considerations wherewith he surrounds them.
The reports (he says) of the operations and the casualties of those [mereenary ] troops were made to the several sovereign princes, electors, ete., of whom these troops were, respretively, subjects ; and, except in some few instances, when individual enterprise has unearthed some of them, the text of those reports and much of the official correspondence remain in their original repositories, unopened and seemingly uncared for.
The reports of deserters, and other unofficial reports, made the total losses, both British and German, from eight hundred to a thousand men ; and it is difficult to make one believe that four hundred Americans, familiar from their childhood with the use of firearms, sheltered by ample defenses, from which they could fire deliberately and with their picees rested on the tops of their defenses, could have possibly fired volley after volley into a large body of men, massed in a closely compacted colman and cooped up in a narrow country roadway, without having intheted as extended a damage on those who received their fire as deserter after de- serter, to the number of more than half a dozen, on different days, without any connection with each other, severally and separately declared had been intheted on the enemy's advance on the occasion now under consideration.
Eight hundred to a thousand put hors de combat in a running
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musketry fight by four hundred continentals, whose total casualties were but nineteen! That was noble work indeed-it was magnifi- cent, and also it was war. But it becomes our virtuons duty as an honorable historian to decently caution the unwary reader here. Dawson's extreme compassionate feeling for the miserable Tories of Westchester County procures naturally from his magnanimous pen a properly respectful reception of the British forces sent to their relief by a gracious sovereign; and in this partienlar he goes so far in several places as to express impatience at the traductions of Gen- eral lowe as a military commander which so characterize the writ- ings of American partisan critics.1 On the other hand, Dawson no- where discovers any favorable conceit of the mission of the merce- naries, which for aught that can be detected to the contrary he may even regard in the conventional fashion as mere infamous butchery business for pay. If hence occurs to us that while every way in- capable of wronging the British troops by conjectures or suspicions of battlefield losses disadvantageous to their prowess or to the in- tegrity of their official reports, he has no such serupulous concern for the fair fame of the hireling arm of the army, and indeed is quite indifferent how mercilessly the Hessians are peppered in the pages of history. At least we can not otherwise account for his conclu- sion that the loss suffered by the mercenaries, compared with that of their British comrades-in-arms (who equally were " massed in a closely compacted column and cooped np in a narrow country road- way "), was in the ratio of thirty or forty to one. For ourselves, we firmly disbelieve that there was any such slaughter of flessians in the Manor (let it therefore never be called the shambles) of Pelham as Dawson inclines to think.
The gallant behavior of Colonel Glover and his men was made the subject of very complimentary observations in general orders issued by Washington; and General Lee, to whose command they belonged, paid a visit to them in their camp and " publickly returned his thanks for their noble-spirited and soldier-like conduct during the battle."
After the retreat of this obstructing American brigade, General Howe, without encountering any further opposition, moved a por- tion of his army forward to New Rochelle, and by degrees during the next few days brought all his forces up to that point, also re- reiving additional troops from New York City." On the 21st of Oc-
1 Every true American should be most pro- foundly grateful that this incompetent general was placed at the head of the British army. not for his own merits, but because of his con- nection with royalty through his grandmother's frailty, His mother was the issue of George I.
and Sophia Kilmansogge, -Narratire and Crit- ical History of America, vi., 291.
2 An expedition of 8,000 mercenaries, com- manded by Lieutenant-General Knyphausen, was landed on the 22d at Myers's Point (now Davenport's Neck), near New Rochelle. This
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tober he advanced his right and center to a situation about two miles farther north, on the road to White Plains-his left continuing at New Rochelle. Also on the 21st he detached a Loyalist corps known as the Queen's Rangers, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Rogers, to occupy Mamaroneck, which was successfully accomplished, the American post at that place abandoning it apparently without any attempt at defense. Thus as early as the 21st General Howe was encamped with his whole army in a splendid strategie position on the Sound, with a fine road before him leading all the way to White Plains. This road, moreover, was quite unobstructed by the Ameri- cans, who were well content to keep at a respectful distance, on the western side of the Bronx River. And further, at that identical time, the Revolutionary army was stretched in a thin line from the southern part of Westchester County to its destination at White Plains, toilsomely struggling to complete its maneuver before the enemy should be ready to foil it. Yet Howe, with his accustomed leisure, remained in this station for three days, after which he oe- eupied two days in advancing a few miles to Scarsdale, where he spent three days more; and during the period of eight days he never undertook any strategie operation or even struck any incidental blow at the onward moving column of Americans. Here we shall leave him, to return to the animated and interesting progress of events on the American side.
After the advance of the British on the 18th from Throgg's Neck to Pell's Neck, and thence to New Rochelle, Washington put forth his utmost exertions toward marching his army as quickly as pos- sible to the north. The enterprise, aside from the extreme funda- mental hazard attending it on account of the expected appearance of llowe at any moment athwart the line of march, was beset with embarrassing physical difficulties. The facilities for the transpor- tation of the cannon and impedimenta of all kinds were distress- ingly limited. There was an extreme scarcity of teams and wagons, and the work of transportation had to be performed mostly by the soldiers. " The baggage and artillery," says Gordon, " were carried or drawn off by hand. When a part was forwarded, the other was fetched on. This was the general way of removing the camp equi- page and other appendages of the army." Everything not absolutely needful was left behind, together with much that could not well be spared. The food supply of the army, for example, was dangerously low-so low that on the 20th Tilghman wrote in the following press-
expedition sailed from England In sixty-five vessels on the 27th of July. but did not reach New York City until the 18th of October. It was possibly due to a desire to have the ad-
vantage of Its co-operation that General Howe so long delayed his movement from New York City to Throgg's Neck, and from the latter place forward.
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ing terms to the State convention: " Upon a Survey of our Stores we find we are not so fully stocked as we could wish. Flour is what is most likely to be wanted. His Excellency therefore calls upon your Convention in the most pressing manner, and begs you will set every Engine at work to send down every Barrel you can procure towards the Army." Yet at the last some eighty or ninety barrels of provisions had to be left af Kingsbridge for lack of means to transport them.
By the 20th all of Washington's troops on Manhattan Island (with the exception of the garrison of Fort Washington) had been trans- ferred to Westchester County, and he now took up his headquarters at Kingsbridge. The most advanced American post on the 20th was apparently that of General Lord Stirling, who, according to a private letter of that date, written from the "Camp of Yonkers" by the noted General Gold Selleck Silli- man to his wife, lay " with a large force of troops and three field-pieces about six or seven miles north- east " of Yonkers, "on the road from New Rochelle to the North River, at the distance of about two or three miles from the seashore." There was at this time no force whatever at White Plains but the militia guard of 300, already no- tired. On the morning of the 20th Washington dispatched Colonel Ru- fus Putnam, an able engineer and GENERAL LORD STIRLING. very trustworthy officer,1 to recon- noiter the country in the vicinity of the enemy. Colonel Putnam proceeded to within two or three miles of White Plains. From his observations of the easy accessi- bility of that place to the enemy, he became profoundly convinced of the immediate necessity of having it occupied by a respectable body of men, so as to secure its large and vitally important magazine of provisions against attack. Returning with all haste to head- quarters, he submitted the facts to the commander-in-chief, who gave him a letter to Lord Stirling, ordering that general to march forih- with to White Plains with all his command. Putnam reached Stirling's camp at two o'clock the following morning (October 21). The brigade was in motion before daybreak, and by nine o'clock it.
'It was under the supervision of Colonel Putnam that the fortifications of Fort Washington were constructed.
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had arrived at White Plains. At that time, it will be remembered, the dilatory General Howe had advanced only slightly above New Rochelle.
The 21st was a day of great and fruitful activity. Supplementing his prompt action of the night before upon the receipt of Colonel Putnam's report, Washington directed General Heath, then at Kingsbridge, to break camp, " if possible, at eight o'clock this moru- ing," and take his division speedily to White Plains. He was him. self in the saddle at an early hour, and rode to White Plains on a tour of inspection. While there he issued a number of important orders, including one to the officer commanding at Mamaroneck, whom he instructed to make the best stand possible if attacked, little thinking, says Dawson, " that at that very time the officer whom he was thus addressing had shown himself to be only a contempli- ble poltroon." The marching order given fleath in the moru- ing was executed by that faithful general as promptly as possible; but the movement of his division, distributed along the southern border of Westchester County, which had to be consolidated, with numerous preliminary details to be attended to, could not be accom- plished so suddenly. Instead of moving at eight o'clock in the morn- ing, lleath did not get started until four in the afternoon. But once on the way, he performed the maneuver with remarkable rapidity, arriving in White Plains at four o'clock in the morning (October 22), only twelve hours after his departure from Kingsbridge. It was practically a forced march, for the immediate purpose of throwing a strong body into White Plains-Stirling's single brigade being manifestly insufficient to hold the place if a serious movement by the enemy should be suddenly made thither; and naturally the men were not eneumbered with baggage, or obliged to draw heavy loads after them, as was the case with the troops that followed. Yet the division made the march in perfect order, taking its light and heavy artillery, and was so arranged that in case of attack disposi- tion for battle could be effected instantly. The withdrawal of Heath's division from Kingsbridge left the whole southern line of Westchester County denuded of defenders, except that a garrison of 600, under Colonel Lasher, was spared for Fort Independence on Tetard's Hill; but even this was only a temporary measure, for, as we shall see, Colonel Lasher's small command was withdrawn from that station a few days later and joined the army at White Plains.
Since the Pelham affair of the 18th, there had been absolutely no encounter between the Americans and British, even at their out- lying posts, both sides having been engrossed with the business of securing position. But on the night of the 21st a well-planned and
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reasonably successful dash was made by an American force-sin- gularly enough from the very extreme of the American position, at White Plains, against the very extreme of the British position, at Mamaroneck. We have seen that during the 21st Mamaroneck was ocenpied by a British detachment, the Queen's Rangers, under Lieu- tenant-Colonel Rogers, while on the morning of that day the Ameri- can General Stirling ocenpied White Plains. The Queen's Rangers was an exceedingly select body of American Loyalists, recruited in New York and Connecticut, and embraced not a few young men of Westchester County Tory families. Later in the war they were com- manded by Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, whose memoir of them, en- titled " Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers," is an in- teresting Revolutionary authority. They were " disciplined not for parade, but for active service. They were never to march in slow time; were directed to fire with precision and steadiness; to wield the bayonet with force and effect ; to disperse and rally with rapidity. In short, in the instructions for the management of the corps, its commander seems to have anticipated the more modern tactics of the French army." The sending of this body to Mamaroneck-the home, by the way, of the distinguished Tory family of de Laneey- was the first enterprise of the British commander apart from his main forward movement since his landing in Westchester County, and undoubtedly was intended as a complimentary recognition of the spirited Tory volunteers. General Washington, upon receiving intelligence of the unopposed capture of Mamaroneck by the Rangers, decided to give them a different impression of the quality of Revo- Intionary troops than they had derived from their entry there. Agreeably to his orders, General Lord Stirling, commanding at White Plains, dispatched Colonel Hastet, with 600 Delaware troops, and Major Green, with 150 Virginians, to attack the Rangers during the night. It was hoped to surprise and capture the whole corps of the enemy, which was only 450 strong; and this would undoubtedly have been done had it not been for the foresight of Colonel Rogers in extending his picket lines beyond expectation, and the blundering of the American guides, who " undertook to alter the first disposi- tion " of the attacking party. A surprise was thus prevented, and a hand to hand fight ensued in the darkness, the Rangers, inspired by the great courage and address of their colonel, defending them- selves excellently. The Americans wore finally forced to retire, sus- taining a loss of three or four killed and about fifteen wounded, but bearing with them thirty-six prisoners and a quantity of captured arms and blankets. The number of the Loyalists killed and wounded is unknown, but according to American reports was large, twenty-
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five dead being counted in one orchard. " All of both sides," says Mr. Edward F. de Lancey in his " History of Mamaroneck," " were buried just over the top of the ridge almost directly north of the Heathcote Hill house, in the angle formed by the present farm lane and the east fence of the field next to the ridge. There their graves lie together, friend and foe, but all Americans. My father told me when he was a boy their green graves were distinctly visible. The late Stephen Hall, a boy of seventeen or eighteen at the time, said that they were buried the morning after the fight, and that he saw nine laid in one large grave." General Howe promptly re-enforced the shattered Rangers with the brigade of General Agnew.
On the 21st Washington advanced his headquarters from Kings- bridge a distance of about four miles to Valentine's Hill, a promi- nent ridge in the present City of Yonkers, upon whose brow Saint Joseph's Seminary stands. From this place a number of documents in connection with the movement then in progress are dated, and here occurred an episode of sentimental interest. Valentine's Hill was so called from the family of farmers who had tilled it for abont three-quarters of a century as tenants of the Manor of Philipseburgh. The farmhouse, though having no residential pretensions, was the most substantial dwelling in that immediate locality, and was used by Washington for headquarters purposes while directing opera- tions from the hill, although the Valentine family was not dis- turbed in its occupancy. One of the family at that time was Eliza- beth Valentine. a young child, who died in 1854. It was frequently related by her that one morning Washington, before beginning the business of the day, surrounded by members of his official family in the sitting room of the dwelling-she being present,-read from the Bible the singularly appropriate text (Joshua xxii., 2): "The Lord God of Gods, the Lord God of Gods, He knoweth, and Israel Ile shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord (save us not this day)," and upon this sentiment delivered an impressive prayer.
The following item appears in " Washington's Accounts with the United States," under date of October 22, 1776: " To Exps at Valen- tine's, Mile Square-20 Dolls."
It has been claimed that while in the vicinity of Yonkers, Wash- ington availed himself of the hospitalities of the Manor House of the Philipses, and the southwest room of the second story is said to have been his bedchamber. In our opinion, it is not possible that Washington was entertained at the Manor House either during the period under consideration or subsequently. Amid the consum- ing anxieties and incessant labors incident to the great military
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operation in which he was engaged, he would hardly have turned aside to accept the cold courtesies of a Tory family resident at a point somewhat distant from the line of march. Besides, Washington's appearance as a guest at the Manor House at that time would have been a rather indelicate act. On the 9th of August, only ten weeks before, he had caused the removal of Frederick Philipse, the head of the family, to New Rochelle, and from there had ordered him to a still more remote place of detention. Finally, a letter written by Washington from Valentine's Hill to Mrs. Philipse at this precise juncture is conclusive evidence that he could not have been a visitor under her roof. Mrs. Philipse had written to him in not too amiable terms about seizures of cattle belonging to her family which had been made for the American army. His reply, dated " Headquarters at Mr. Valentine's, 22 Oet., 1776," is couched in strictly ceremonious language. " The misfortunes of war," he says, " and the unhappy circumstances frequently attendant thereon to individuals, are more to be lamented than aroided, but it is the duty of every one to alleviate these as much as possible. Far be it from me to add to the dis- tresses of a lady who I am but too sensible must already have suffered much uneasiness, if not inconvenience, on account of Col. Phillips' absence." He adds that the seizures complained of were made not at his instance, but at that of the State convention; and the only satisfaction he affords her is the observation that as it was not meant by the convention to deprive families of their necessary stock, he " would not withhold " his consent to her retaining such parts of her stock as might be necessary to that purpose. In view of this correspondence, and the connecting circumstances, the idea that Washington could have paid even a passing visit to the Manor House during his progress to White Plains is not to be entertained. Fred- erick Philipse, as our readers know, never returned to his home on the Nepperhan, and the residence was permanently abandoned by his family in 1777, afterward being in the custody of a steward. Again, from the fall of 1776 to the summer of 1781, Washington cer- tainly never spent a night in the lower part of Westchester County. Hence the traditions which associate him with the last hospitalities of the Philipses at the Manor House have not the slightest likely foundation. It is unquestionable, however, that on more than one occasion during the Revolution he was the guest of the patriotic Colonel James Van Cortlandt at the old Van Cortlandt mansion in the " Little Yonkers."
The old Valentine house, from which Washington's Yonkers dis- patches were dated, was torn down many years ago. Headquarters were continued on Valentine's Hill during the 21st and 22d, and on
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