USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress. Vol. II > Part 37
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The British officers, meanwhile, were on the alert, and troops were for-
1 " Knowlton fell," said Aaron Burr, "about One Hundred and Fifty-third Street. and Eleventh Avenue." Battle of Harlem Heights, by Chancellor Erastus C. Benedict.
2 "The enemy (Americans) possessed great advantage front the circumstance of engaging within a half-mile of their entrenched camp whence they could be supplied with fresh troops as often as occasion required." Stedman's History of the American War ; Jay, 80, 81. This accords with the well-known fact that the greater portion of Washington's troops were encamped on the morning of September 16, in the vicinity of the Morris House.
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BATTLE OF HARLEM HEIGHTS.
warded on the trail of Leslie, whose disappearance in the early morning with his light infantry had caused no little solicitude. At the sound of guns on Harlem Heights, Howe sent other reinforcements of Highlanders and Hessians on the double quick to their relief. An Englishman wrote : " At eleven we were instantly trotted about three miles (without a halt to draw breath) to support a battalion of light infantry which had impru- dently advanced so far without support as to be in great danger of being cut off." One thousand of the reinforcing troops encountered Greene's two brigades, a sharp fight ensuing not far from his encampment ; 1 others proceeded further north on the low shore before mounting the heights, and joined their comrades in the buckwheat field just as the sun crossed the meridian. Through " more succors from each party " the battle was here maintained for nearly two hours with an obstinacy rarely equaled in the history of modern warfare. The enemy finally " broke and ran," and were driven and chased (the Americans mocking their bugles) "above a mile and a half" wrote Reed, " nearly two miles " wrote Knox, taking shelter in an orchard finally near the Eight mile stone, when Washington prudently sent Tilghman to order the victorious soldiers back to the lines. Thomas Jones, known as " the fighting Quaker of Lafayette's army," said, " we drove the British up the road and down Break Neck Hill, which was the reason they called it Break Neck Hill." 2
This battle, the most brilliant and important in historical results of any fought during the Revolutionary War, was evidently a part of the British plan to drive the Americans from the island before they should have time to construct defenses. The blunder of Leslie in beginning the battle too soon, and in the wrong place, occasioned the succession of British failures which furnished the Americans food for self-confidence until peace was proclaimed. Washington's army on Harlem Heights numbered, on the 16th, scarcely eight thousand, and yet four thousand nine hundred were engaged - according to a careful estimate from re-
1 Greene to Governor Cooke of Rhode Island, Sept. 17, 1776 ; Jay, 55 ; Smallwood to the Maryland Convention, Oct. 12, 1776; Beatty to his father, William Beatty of Maryland, Sept. 18, 1776 ; Shaw's Journal, 20 ; Nash Journal, 33, 34 ; Samuel Chase to General Gates, Sept. 21, 1776 ; Nicholas Fish to John Mckesson, Secretary of the Convention, Sept. 19, 1776 ; John Gooch to Thomas Fayerweather, Sept. 23, 1776.
2 Humphrey Jones, son of Thomas Jones, to Chancellor Erastus C. Benedict, Feb. 8, 1878. This letter is an important link in the chain of evidence which locates the battle of Harlem Heights. The distances named in the contemporaneous correspondence are also notably significant. Silliman wrote : "The fire continued very heavy from the musketry and from field-pieces about two hours, in which time our people drove the regulars back from post to post about a mile and a half." Had the battle occurred south of Manhattanville, and the enemy been driven a mile and a half, the Americans would have been in the immedi- ate vicinity of the Apthorpe Mansion !
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
ports of officers in each detachment. The British were superior in numbers, not less than five or six thousand of their choicest troops, with seven field-pieces, being in the action - while eight or ten thousand men were in arms ready to push on.1 It was an irregular battle from the very character of the picturesque, undulating, wooded heights, with their rough, rocky, and almost inaccessible sides, -natural buttresses, support- ing plains, ridges, heavily shaded ravines, and small hills upon hills. Large bodies could move considerable distances without being seen. The British plunged in wherever there was an opening. The combatants were in scouts and squads, in battalions and in brigades. They fought in the woods, from behind trees, bushes, rocks, and fences, and they fought on the plain and in the road. The battle raged from about One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street nearly to Manhattanville. The enemy, according to Baurmeister, lost seventy killed and two hundred wounded. The Ameri- cans, twenty-five killed and fifty-four wounded. Henshaw, in a letter to his wife, places the American loss at one hundred ; others have claimed that only fifteen lives were lost. Knowlton was deeply mourned. He was an officer who would have been an honor to any country. His last words were, "Have we driven the enemy ?"2 Leitch, one of Virginia's worthiest sons, survived his wounds until October 1.
The success of this day turned the current of affairs. Henceforward the Americans believed in themselves. With their first opportunity, they had fought the enemy upon equal footing; and had virtually de- feated the entire plan of the British commanders with regard to north- ward and eastward conquest. Faces brightened with joy, sinking hearts leaped tumultuously with hope, and men worked in the trenches with a vigor that spread like a contagion. At evening the armies occupied the same relative positions as before the battle, the British upon Blooming- dale (or, as more generally called, Vanderwater's) Heights, and the Amer- icans upon Harlem Heights, their pickets almost within speaking distance
1 These facts are well authenticated, and were there no other evidence, are sufficient to pre- clude the possibility of the battle having been fought upon Vanderwater's Heights, since Washington in his weak and dispirited condition would never have been so indiscreet as to have sent half his available forces across (what would have proved a death-trap for every man in case of defeat and retreat) the Manhattanville hollow way, and attempted to maintain a contest within the British lines under such overwhelming disadvantage.
2 Colonel Thomas Knowlton was born in West Boxford, Massachusetts, November 30, 1740. He was the third son of William Knowlton, who purchased four hundred acres of land in Ashford, Connecticut, whither the family removed during the boyhood of Thomas. He enlisted in the army at fifteen, during the French War, and was present at the capture of Ticonderoga and at the reduction of Havana. He was the companion of Putnam through many dangers and achievements, and specially distinguished himself by his gallantry at the battle of Bunker Hill. Leitch was buried by his side.
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FIRST AMERICAN VICTORY OF THE REVOLUTION.
(" three hundred yards ") of each other across the Manhattanville valley.1 And thus they remained for upwards of three weeks.
Howe was deeply mortified. His general orders next morning rebuked Leslie for imprudence.2 The " affair" was mentioned as one "of out- posts " and no detailed account of it was given. It was none the less a battle however, and so esteemed at the time by all concerned. And it was not only the first victory of the Americans in a well-contested action with the flower of the British soldiery, coloring all the future of Amer- ica, but it added materially to the caution which clogged Howe's subse- quent movements. He regarded Harlem Heights henceforward as invul- nerable. He wrote to the ministry, "the enemy is too strongly posted to be attacked in front, and innumerable difficulties are in the way of turn- ing him upon either side." He took ample time for consideration, and then made elaborate arrangements to throw himself in the rear of Wash- ington by way of Westchester.3
1 Graydon's statement, that "our most advanced picket towards New York at the 'Point of Rocks' was only separated from that of the enemy by a valley a few hundred yards over," is in harmony with what Harris writes : "After landing in York Island, we drove the Amer- icans into their works beyond the eighth mile-stone from New York, and took post opposite to them, placed our picquets," etc. Thus from the evening of the 15th, Vanderwater's Heights was practically British ground.
2 From MS. Order-Book of British Foot-Guards, Sept. 17, 1776. "The commander-in-chief disapproves the conduct of the light company in pursuing the Rebels without proper discre- tion and without support." From Donop's Report, "General Leslie had made a great blunder in sending these brave fellows so far in advance, in the woods without support." From Baurmeister's Report, "The English Light Infantry advanced too quickly on the retreat of the enemy, and at Bruckland Hill fell into an ambuscade of four thousand men, and if the Grenadiers, and especially the Hessian yagers, had not arrived in time to help them not one of these brave light troops would have escaped."
3 The various theories advanced by distinguished writers concerning the site of the battle of Harlem Heights seem to have been the result of peculiar ambiguity in the accounts hastily penned at the time. There were then few landmarks to date from ; in speaking of hills and hollow ways there were several between the Morris House and the Apthorpe Mansion ; thus it would be hopeless to undertake to locate them from words alone. It is only by a critical comparison of the fifty or more narrations of the events of that day by those present, using each individual scrap of information, however insignificant in itself, to amplify or explain some other, that the missing links are all embodied, and the mosaic assumes an intelligible and authentic form. No one engaged can see the whole of a battle. Each writer registered, as far as he went, portions of the truth, as it appeared to his view. All agree as to distances. The sketch illustrates the topography of the region, and will aid the reader in locating the battle-field. Authorities compared include, Hon. John Jay's Commemorative Oration ; Ap- pendix to Jay's Oration, by William Kelby, Assistant Librarian of N. Y. Hist. Soc., em bracing contemporaneous written evidence from thirty-four Americans, eight British, and five Hessian pens ; Johnson's Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn; Ban- croft's History of the United States ; Force ; Sparks ; Irving ; Stedman ; Lossing : Dawson ; Dunlap ; Miss Booth ; Lushington's Life of Lord Harris; Humphrey's Life of Putnam; Heath's Memoirs ; Benedict's Battle of Harlem Heights, and many others.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
The city meanwhile was transformed. Houses of persons disloyal to the king were marked with a broad R ; all rebel property was confiscated to the government and many houses belonging to individuals who had had no part nor share in the Revolution were also marked. This last out- rage was supposed to have been the work of parties without authority, with personal reasons, but no redress could be obtained. Jones says, "the soldiers broke open the City Hall and plundered it of the College Library, its Mathematical and Philosophical apparatus, and a number of valuable pictures which had been removed there by way of safety when the rebels converted the College (Columbia) into a hospital. They also plundered it of all the books belonging to the subscription library, as also of a valuable library which belonged to the corporation, the whole consisting of not less than sixty thousand volumes.1 This was done with impunity, and the books publicly hawked about the town for sale by private soldiers, their trulls and doxeys. I saw an Annual Reg- ister neatly bound and lettered, sold for a dram, Freeman's Reports for a shilling, and Coke's 1st Institutes, or what is usually called Coke upon Littleton, was offered to me for 1s. 6d. I saw in a public house upon Long Island nearly forty books bound and lettered, in which were affixed the arms of Joseph Murray under pawn from one dram to three drams each.2 To do justice even to rebels, let it here be mentioned that though they were in full possession of New York for nearly seven months, and had in it at times above forty thousand soldiers, neither of these libraries were ever meddled with. No orders from the British commanders dis- countenanced these unmilitary and unjustifiable proceedings." Every available shelter was in demand for the accommodation of the garrison. Families were compelled to be hospitable, whether agreeable or otherwise. The widow of Thomas Clarke remained at her pretty country-seat between Twentieth and Twenty-third Streets, near Tenth Avenue, having been advised "to stick to her property." Her distress and alarm may be imagined, as a party of Hessians were quartered in and about her quiet home. The commanding officer, however, was a gentleman as well as a nobleman,3 and proved so agreeable that he became a favorite with the
1 See Vol. I. 532, 647.
2 See Vol. I. 599, 608, 636, 640. Joseph Murray was a lawyer who made a large fortune in New York, and was a prominent and useful citizen. His wife was the first cousin of the Earl of Halifax, and daughter of Governor Cosby of New York.
3 The military services of Germany and Austria are the most aristocratic in Europe in 1876, as they were in 1776. None but nobles could hold commissions under any GermanSover- eign. The officers were all noblemen. As far as birth was concerned the Hessian officers as a whole in Howe's army were superior to the English officers as a whole. A rich Englishman could buy a commission for his son for the express purpose of making the boy a gentleman.
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THE GREAT FIRE OF 1776.
family. He told Mrs. Clarke's daughters that he heard of their dread of his coming to the house, which made him the more anxious "to prove the injustice of their apprehensions." These young ladies were, the wife of the Right Rev. Bishop Moore and her sisters.
Ere the week which had opened with the roar of artillery came to an end, New York was in flames. About one o'clock on the morning
of Saturday, the 21st, a fire broke out near Whitehall Slip. A Sept. 21. fresh gale was blowing from the south, and the weather was dry, thus it spread with inconceivable rapidity. It coiled itself round building after building like a serpent greedy of its prey. Houses and churches disap- peared like dissolving views. The panic-stricken and distracted inhabitants were almost as terrible to behold as the roaring conflagration. Blazing fire-brands leaped along in advance of the lurid column, and little fires were breaking out everywhere. People ran along the streets to see, and the fire went over their heads and flanked them.1 Even the red heavens seemed also on fire. The British, maddened by the supposition that it was the work of the Americans, visited the most revolting cruelties upon persons who were trying to save property, killed some with the bayonet, tossed others into the flames, and one who, it is said, was a royalist, they hanged by the heels until he died. The wind veering as the great fire- tempest swept up the east side of Broadway, near Beaver Street, it crossed, and presently Trinity Church was a blackened heap of ruins, together with the parsonage, charity school, and Lutheran Church. A number of citizens went upon the flat roof of St. Paul's Church, and extinguished the flakes of fire as they fell, thus saving the beautiful edifice. All the houses west of Broadway to the North River were consumed, the fire being checked only when it reached the College grounds. The map will show the reader its course and extent. Howe attributed the calamity to a conspiracy. It was generally attributed to incendiaries, and some two
In Germany the youth must possess the aristocratic prefix of " Von " or "De " to aspire to a commission. The Hessian officers in America were polite, courteous, well-bred, and educated, almost without exception. De Lancey's Mount Washington and its Capture ; Mag. Amer. Hist., Vol. I. 76. The property of Mrs. Clarke was called the Chelsea farm. The man- sion and a part of the land came into possession of Bishop Moore by the will of Mrs. Clarke in 1802. It subsequently belonged to Clement C. Moore, the son of the Bishop.
1 " If one was in one street and looked about, the fire broke out already in another street above ; and thus it raged all the night, and till about noon." Diary of Rev. Mr. Shewkirk (pastor of the Moravian Church, Fulton Street), Saturday, Sept. 21. Barber's New York ; David Grim's Account, Val. Man. 1866 ; Bancroft's Hist. U. S; Frank Moore's Diary of the Revolution ; Freeman's Journal, Oct. 5. 1776 ; Dunlap, 11, 78, 79 : Howe to Germain, Sept. 23, 1776 ; Tryon to Germain, Sept. 24, 1776 ; John Sloss Hobart to the New York Conven- tion, Sept. 25, 1776 ; Colonel Hartley to General Gates, Oct. 10, 1776; Rev. Dr. Charles Inglis to Dr. Hind, Oct. 31, 1776.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
1 Fire commenced.
2 Fort George
3 Lower Barracks
4 Upper Barracks
5 City Hall
6 Exchange
7 Poor House
-
8 Debtor's Prison
9 Bridewell
10 Trinity Church
11 St. George's Church
12 St. Paul's Church
13 Garden Street Church
14 Middle Dutch Church
15 North Dutch Church
16 Wall Street Church
V
17 Brick Church
COMMON
PAULUS BOOK FERRY
: 46.47.48.49
27 Friends Meeting
28 Synagogue
29 Theatre
30 Old Slip Market 31 Fly Market 32 Peck Slip Market
33 Oswego Market
34 Bear Market
35 Bayard's Sugar House
boat
36 Seaman's Sugar House
37 Courtlandt's Sugar House
38 Rhinelander's Sugar House
39 Roosevelt's Sugar House
40 Rutger's Brewery
41 Eden's Brewery
42 Fire Ended
43 Statue George III.
18 Old Lutheran Church
19 New Lutheran Church
20 French Church
21 German Reformed Church
48 Rufus King's House
22 Moravian Church
49 Richard Harrison's House
23 Cedar St. Presby'n Church 24 Baptist Church
50 Walter Franklin's and pres- ent Franklin Square
25 Methodist Church
51 Walton House
26 Friends Meeting
52 Hanover Square
Map of Great Fire 1776.
hundred persons were arrested upon suspicion and incarcerated. Every person who was known to have talked inconsiderately was seized. Ex- aminations, however, elicited no proofs of guilt, and one after another was liberated. The origin of the fire was subsequently traced to a midnight carousal in a small public house of low character near White- Slip. It is said that the night being chilly, the half drunken beings brought in some boards or rails, and kindled the ends in a large old- fashioned fire-place ; the fire creeping along the dry timber soon commu- nicated with the floor. The sequel has been told.
As the sun was declining behind the smoking and still burning ruins, towards evening of the same day, Nathan Hale was brought into New York a captive spy, and taken before Lord Howe at the Beekman Man- sion 1 on the height near Fifty-first Street and East River, the elegant
1 See Sketch of Mansion. Vol. I., 569.
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LONG ISLAND FERRY.
BATTERY
3
46 Rutherford House
47 Axtel House
Peeee
6
18
a
7
8.8
44 Kennedy House
45 Verplanck House
COLLEGE
137
FORT WASHINGTON.
home of James Beekman, who had fled with his family into the country to share the fortunes of America. Hale was a young captain of twenty-one, of great beauty of character, a Yale graduate, and, like Andre, already betrothed. He volunteered for the dangerous duty, went from Harlem to Norwalk, Connecticut, and in the garb of a school-teacher, crossed the Sound in a sloop and plunged boldly into the enemy's country. He crossed into New York and returned to Brooklyn, and had reached the shore and was waiting to step aboard the craft for Norwalk, when it is said he was betrayed by a relative, who recognized him in a Hunting- ton tavern. He was tried, according to tradition, in the greenhouse of the Beekman Mansion; he frankly admitted his rank in Washington's army, said he had been a spy, and had been successful in his search for knowledge, and calmly received his sentence to be executed on the fol- lowing morning at dawn. He was denied a clergyman, and a Bible; and the letters penned to his mother, his sister, and his lady-love, through the kindness of an officer in furnishing him with pen and ink, were torn up by the brutal Cunningham. His last words were, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." The story of his heroic death soon became known throughout the army, and inspired his comrades like a victory.
On the same date (September 21) also passed away Lieutenant-Gover- nor Cadwallader Colden, at his country-seat in Flushing, Long Island, at the advanced age of eighty-nine.
The Tuesday following, five hundred prisoners of war sent from Quebec by Carleton, on parole, were landed at Elizabethtown point. It was near midnight, and the bright full moon shone from a cloudless sky. Daniel Morgan was of the number. As he sprang from the bow of the boat he fell to the earth as if to clasp it, exclaiming "O, my country !" He had been offered a commission in the British army if he would go over to that side, and had resented it as an insult. Upon hearing of his return, Washington hastened his exchange, and recommended his promotion.
It was not all quiet at Harlem Heights (henceforth oftener called Mount Washington) although both armies were apparently inactive. There were perpetual skirmishes and alarms. In a well-planned but unsuccessful effort to recapture Randall's Island, Thomas Henley of Charlestown, Massachusetts, one of the most promising of officers, lost his life. The utmost industry prevailed in the matter of fortification. Three lines of intrenchments were thrown across the heights, besides several batteries and redoubts at various points overlooking Harlem and fronting the enemy. Fort Washington was converted into a fortress of great strength, upon the line of One Hundred Eighty-third Street, two hundred and thirty
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.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
feet above the Hudson. It was opposite Fort Lee (Constitution) on the Jersey shore. Two hundred men were employed vigorously loading ves- sels with stone and sinking them at this point to obstruct the passage of British ships into the upper Hudson. For two weeks grain and hay in large quantities lay unmolested upon Harlem Flats. Both armies looked at and coveted it. Finally Washington sent several hundred men with wagons to garner it in; a covering party approached the enemy, who manned their lines, anticipating an attack. The two hostile forces stood and blinked at each other, but neither fired a shot. Meanwhile the business was accomplished ; and both parties retired laughing within their lines.
Lord and General Howe took occasion meanwhile to publish another declaration to the inhabitants of America on the subject of their griev- ances, promising in the king's name a revision of his instructions, and pardons and favors to all who would return to their allegiance. They were disappointed in its effects. The men were fewer upon this side of the water disposed to join the British army than had been represented. At the same time the cunning scheme created no little despondency and discontent in the various districts along the Hudson, and filled the minds of the American leaders with apprehension. Robert R. Livingston wrote from the Convention, "We are constantly engaged in the detection of treasons, yet plots multiply upon us daily, and we have reason every moment to dread an open rebellion." William A. Duer wrote from the same body, "The committee to which I belong make daily fresh dis- coveries of the infernal practices of our enemies to excite insurrections among the people of New York." Washington appealed to Congress on the subject of short enlistments, which was demoralizing in the extreme, and urged the reorganization of the army on a more substantial basis. The strange, whimsical, scoffing Lee at the same moment was abusing Congress for refusing to give him a separate command on the Delaware - he was ordered to Washington's camp instead. He obeyed, tardily, writing to Gates shortly after, "Congress seems to stumble at every step. I do not mean one or two of the cattle but the whole stable. In my opinion General Washington is much to blame in not menacing them with resignation, unless they refrain from unhinging the army by their absurd interference." Lord Stirling, about the same time cheered the camp at Harlem Heights by his presence, an exchange of prisoners having been successfully negotiated.
Notwithstanding the labor expended upon obstructions in the Hudson, Oct. 9. three British ships passed them safely on the morning of the 9th. On the 12th Howe's army was in motion. Men-of-war sailed up
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