USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress. Vol. II > Part 42
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THE NEW JERSEY GAZETTE.
two. Sullivan found orders, when he regained his camp, to join Wash- ington, who, parading his army decked with sprays of green through the streets of Philadelphia on the 24th, proceeded to the highlands beyond Wilmington, to meet Howe on his route to Philadelphia. On the 25th, General Francis Nash, brother of Governor Abner Nash of North Caro- lina, with his brave North Carolinians, marched also through the streets of Philadelphia and joined Washington. Meanwhile Sir Henry Clinton, retaliating upon Sullivan, sallied out of New York with three thousand troops and overran a considerable portion of the eastern section of New Jersey, causing much alarm and distress, robbing and insulting the in- habitants and seizing their valuable live stock. With the uprising of the militia he returned to the city with slight loss. The details of these out- rages were published in the American news- papers, frequently mag- nified, but with suffi- cient foundation in truth to alienate any people from the perpetrators. Governor Livingston had already begun to make his pen useful in the cause of America ; and to counteract the effects of Rivington's loyalist paper in New York, he aided Isaac Collins in establishing The New Jersey Gazette at Bur- AWILL DEL lington, which, removing John Jay. from town to town as [From a portrait in the possession of his grandson, Hon John Jay.] policy or prudence dictated, continued throughout the war the leading vehicle of information in this State. Livingston's essays, through their bold reasoning and scoffing ridicule of kingly threats, did more to pre- vent vacillation and fear, and convince the New Jersey patriots that ultimate success on the part of Great Britain was impossible, than any other agency. And while he was presiding over the Council of Safety, sometimes at Trenton, sometimes at Morristown, and anywhere in the mountains or woods between, his bright and gifted daughters wrote his caustic articles for him.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
On the 9th of September, two days before Howe met Washington be- low Philadelphia, while Burgoyne was moving slowly down upon Albany from the North like a terrible cloud, and Sir Henry Clinton was Sept. 9. menacing the Hudson River passage to form a junction with him - shortly to reduce the building where the scene occurred, together with the whole village, to ashes - John Jay, the first chief justice of the new State of New York, opened its supreme court in Kingston, charging the grand jury that the people of New York had chosen their Constitution under the guidance of reason and experience, and that the highest re- spect had been made to those great and equal rights of human nature which should ever remain inviolate in every society. "You will know," he said, " no power but such as you create, no laws but such as acquire all their obligations from your consent. The rights of conscience and private judgment are by nature subject to no control but that of the Deity, and in that free situation they are now left." He stood in his robes, this tall, straight, slight, self-poised young man, a power more for- midable than fleets and armies, as he uttered these lofty ideas, declaring that " Divine Providence had made the tyranny of princes instrumental in breaking the chains of their subjects." On the 10th, George Clinton, the first governor, met the first legislature of the new State at Kingston, and its noble Constitution received the first principles of life.
And just across the borders, in Connecticut, during the same hour of threatened calamity at every point of the compass, the clergymen who comprised the corporation of Yale College elected a new president. There is something almost sublime in the calm, business-like faith of this action, in the midst of the tumults which affected all colleges, and with the picture before their eyes of Nassau Hall, at Princeton, used as barracks above and a stable below, and its fine library, the gift of Gov- ernor Belcher, scattered to the four winds by the enemy. These clerical trustees were established over parishes in different parts of the State. They were the Reverends Eliphalet Williams, Warham Williams, Moses Dickinson, John Trumbull, Moses Mather, Eliezer Goodrich, Samuel Lockwood, Mr. Pitkin, Nathaniel Taylor,1 Mr. Beckwith, and the accom-
1 The Rev. Nathaniel Taylor was pastor of the church in New Milford, in the north- western part of Connecticut, adjoining Dutchess County, New York. He was a trustee of Yale College twenty-six years, a pastor fifty years. He was a famous Hebrew seholar, ranked high in the pulpit, and possessed a fine graceful figure and a magnificent voice. He served as chaplain to a Connecticut regiment of troops, and remitted one year's salary to aid his people in their contributions to the war. His mother was a descendant of Thomas Benedict (see Vol. I. 202) ; his wife was a sister of Governor Boardman, and daughter of the first minister of New Milford. He was the grandfather of the learned theological pro- fessor, Rev. Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor of Yale, who died in 1858, and of Dr. George Taylor of New Milford. Among his great-grandchildren is the wife of President Noah Porter, of Yale ; also the wife of Hon. Thomas E. Stewart, of New York City.
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BATTLE OF THE BRANDYWINE.
plished Stephen Johnson of Lyme. Rev. Ezra Stiles, one of the purest and best gifted men of his age, who had been pastor of the church in Newport from 1756 until the invasion by the British, was their choice. He was informed of his election by Rev. Chauncey Whittlesey. Stiles said he thought "the diadem of a college president but a crown of thorns in such tumultuous times, especially when he must control from one hun- dred and fifty to one hundred and eighty young gentlemen students, who were a bundle of wildfire, some leaving for the army, and many coming in from other colleges." But he accepted the position, and the instruction of the rising men of the nation went forward among the leafy shades of New Haven, as if Revolution was not stalking abroad in the land.
The crash of arms came between Howe and Washington on the morning of September 11, at the same mo- ment when Burgoyne, supposing that Howe was pushing up the Hudson, announced to his camp that Sept. 11. he had sent the lake fleet to Canada, virtually abandoning his communications, and that his army must fight its way or perish. Upon the banks of a beautiful creek bear- ing the genial name of Brandywine, and flow- ing into the Delaware Mrs. John Jay. River, Washington, Sarah, daughter of Governor William Livingston. [From a portrait in the possession of her grandson, Hon. John Jay.] posted across the direct road of his adversary, awaited his approach ; he had made the best possible arrangement of his forces for resistance or attack, and as he rode up and down his lines there was one prolonged shout of enthusiasm. Knyphausen soon appeared at Chad's Ford and feigned an attack, while Howe and Cornwallis were hastening to cross the river seven miles farther up and obtain the rear of the Ameri- cans. Receiving this information, Washington ordered Sullivan to check their course, while he would give Knyphausen a chance to fight in VOL. II. 12 369
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
earnest. Just as Greene at the river's edge was about to begin the attack, a message from Sullivan came, saying that he had disobeyed orders be- cause the " information upon which those orders were founded must be wrong." By two o'clock in the afternoon it was found, however, that the enemy's columns, having taken a wide circuit of seventeen miles, were in a position where they were likely to complete the overthrow of the Con- tinental Army, and a sharp and complicated battle ensued. In the heat of the engagement on the right, Knyphausen crossed the Brandywine in one body and attacked the American left. It was near nightfall when Washington withdrew, and darkness ended the contest. His officers had displayed great personal courage. Lafayette was wounded, but kept the field till the close of the battle. Washington announced his defeat to Congress without casting blame upon any one ; he stated his loss at about one thousand. The British lost nearly six hundred. Howe had made a vigorous attempt to crush the whole army between his two divisions, in which he signally failed.
Washington conducted his army to Germantown, then recrossed the Schuylkill and, watching the fords and roads, disputed the progress of the British at every step. Howe advanced compactly and with caution, never sending detached parties beyond supporting distance. There were severe skirmishes at various points. Congress took alarm and moved to Lancaster, thence after one day's session to Yorktown, in Pennsylvania. Washington was too weak to risk another battle. Howe managed to cross one of the lower fords and throw himself between Washington and
Philadelphia. The rest was easy. On the morning of the 26th
Sept. 26.
the British army marched into the city with music and banners and gay huzzas. Thus fell the capital, so long the seat of Congress. But the blow was light compared to what it would have been ten months before, when the British were at Trenton. " It will take so large a force to maintain it, that they will wish they had spared themselves the trouble," said Schuyler. When the news was announced to Franklin at Paris, he exclaimed, "No, no, it is not General Howe that has taken Philadelphia, it is Philadelphia that has taken General Howe !"
While yet the crack of the rifle was echoing along the banks of the Delaware, seven days before Howe's triumphal entry into the Quaker City, Burgoyne had begun his great contest with the American army at Sara- toga.1 He found himself, on crossing the Hudson upon a bridge of boats September 13th, in the presence of a foe hidden in the same dense forest
1 This contest, or series of contests, is called variously the battle of Saratoga, Stillwater, and Bemus Heights. I have adopted the simple and better-known name of Saratoga, that the reader may have no confusion of ideas respecting the locality.
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THE FALL OF PHILADELPHIA.
where he struck his own tents, whose drum-beat he could hear, but whose numbers and position he did not know. Gates had moved north on the 12th to a hill in Saratoga, where fortifications had been con- structed under Kosciuzko, the famous Polish nobleman, then only twenty- one, and from a watch-tower in the top of a high tree was kept informed of every movement of the British. Burgoyne's had been a slow-toiling army through the wilderness, undoing the tangles day by day which Schuyler had prepared for them, and a cloud of red savages had preceded and hung on their trail, driving farmers and their families, faint and sick with terror, flying before their glistening tomahawks. The most shocking atrocities were of daily occurrence. Mrs. Schuyler (Catharine Van Rens- selear) was returning from a visit in Albany to her summer home in Saratoga, and when within two miles of the mansion met a crowd of fugitives who told her that Burgoyne had crossed the Hudson, and also recounted the thrilling story of the murder of Jenny MacCrea, which had occurred near that very spot, and warned her of the danger of pro- ceeding farther. She was alone in her carriage, and her only escort was a servant on horseback. "I must go for my daughters," she said ; " besides, the general's wife ought never to know fear." And she drove on. She remained in her beautiful home only long enough to take a few valuables, as the servants informed her that Indians were already lurking in the shrubbery that adorned the grounds, and with her family escaped to Albany. Burgoyne's scarlet host boldly advanced two miles on the 19th, with all the glittering pomp and circumstance of war, accompanied by the wives and children of officers, as if the expedition were a Sept. 19. vast pleasure-party - calashes for the ladies, horses, cannon, bag-
gage, and stores in endless array ; suddenly they were confronted by a bulwark of breastworks, artillery, and an eager foe. The Hudson was behind them, communication with Canada gone, and they had no alterna- tive but to fight. At one o'clock the action commenced, Burgoyne leading the central division, General Riedesel the right, near the river, and Gen- eral Frazer the left, making a circuit to assail the American right upon the heights ; three hours later the combat was general and desperate; at five o'clock Burgoyne's army was in mortal peril ; at sunset Riedesel with one regiment and two cannon struggled through a thicket and up a hill, and made a vigorous charge which stayed the fatal blow ; with dark- ness the battle ended. The British bivouacked on the field, and huddled their dead into the ground promiscuously. They had lost five hundred. The Americans retired within their lines for the night. Their loss was less than four hundred. The glory of the day was due to the several regiments fighting with most obstinate courage in unison against regi-
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ments. There was no manœuvring. Just praise was awarded to Morgan with his famous Virginia riflemen, and to Scammel of New England. But no men did more efficient service on this memorable occasion than the sons of New York, led by Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt and other gallant officers, who, in disputing the pathway to their own broad acres, were contending for a continent. They resented the removal of Schulyer from the chief command, and declared that an able general might have utterly routed Burgoyne. And Arnold came up afterwards and urged an attack upon the enemy while they were disconnected and without intrench- ments. Gates refused, waiting for more troops, and a quarrel ensued.
The next day Burgoyne received a message from Sir Henry Clinton in cipher, informing him that he should commence attacking the strong places along the Hudson September 22, on his route to Albany; and Burgoyne, catching at the phantom of hope, replied that he could main- tain his position until October 12. This communication was placed in a hollow silver bullet, which the bearer was ordered to deliver into Clinton's own hands ; he crept along the wooded country by night, concealing him- self by day, until he reached Fort Montgomery, where, in response to his inquiries for General Clinton, he was conducted into the presence of Governor George Clinton ! Seeing his mistake, he swallowed the bullet. An emetic was promptly administered, the dispatch discovered, and its bearer hanged as a spy. But Burgoyne, knowing the extraordinary diffi- culties of communication, had taken the precaution to send several mes- sengers by different routes, one of which reached his destination after a succession of perils and hardships.
Days passed away wearily to the inactive Britons, encamped so near the Americans that every joyful gun or shout was distinctly heard, but the tidings of Sir Henry Clinton's nearness for co-operation never came. Their camp was harassed on every side. The alarm was constant. Offi- cers and men slept in their clothes. Horses grew thin and weak. The rations of the soldiers were clipped. Eight hundred sick and wounded were in the hospital. Finally Burgoyne saw that he had provisions for but a few days longer, and on the evening of October 5 summoned his generals to a final council relative to the policy of attacking the Ameri- cans.
Had they known what had occurred the day before at Germantown,
they would have been less despondent. Washington, passing sud- Oct. 4. denly from the defensive and retreating to the audacious, had swooped down upon Howe's encampment in this pretty suburb of Phila- delphia. It was then a small village of one street two miles long. Washington had planned a simultaneous attack upon the wings, front, and
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BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN.
rear, to be swiftly and vigorously made, from which the troops might expeditiously retreat if unsuccessful. He marched from his post on the Skippack road twenty miles from Philadelphia in the evening of the 3d, and the attack was made at dawn. It startled all the British legions in the vicinity ; Howe sprang from his bed and rode to the scene just in time to see one of his battalions running away. Cornwallis, in Phila- delphia, was wakened by the cannon, and his grenadiers ran the whole distance, although not reaching the ground until the action terminated. Washington dashed into the thickest of the fight. He thought for a time that victory was in his grasp. Greene was three quarters of an hour too late to perform his part of the programme, and then conducted his men carelessly, by which the divisions became mixed and caused serious confusion. Washington, at half past eight, gave the order to retreat, sending it to every division, and care was taken to remove every piece of artillery. He had lost in killed, wounded, and missing about one thou- sand. Among the officers killed was the accomplished General Nash. The enemy, according to Howe's report, lost five hundred in killed and wounded. General Agnew and Colonel Bird were both killed. This attack of Washington so soon after the defeat at Brandywine was a par- tial success, inasmuch as it convinced the world that defeat was not con- quest. The British fleet soon attacked the Delaware forts, and several severe engagements occurred. At Redbank the Hessians were repulsed, and their commander, Count Donop, taken prisoner, mortally wounded, dying in the fort tenderly cared for by Duplessis de Maudit, a French officer of engineers who had joined the Americans.
While Burgoyne was making his preparations for the fatal battle of October 7, Sir Henry Clinton, four thousand strong, disembarked at Stony Point on the Hudson. He had first landed at Verplanck's Oct. 6. Point to deceive Putnam at Peekskill, who quickly rallied a force to op- pose his advance up the eastern bank of the river. Having thus diverted attention, Clinton crossed quietly in a fog, and from Stony Point, on the west bank, marched over Dunderberg Mountain, a distance of twelve miles, to attack forts Montgomery and Clinton, which were not defensible in the rear, they having been simply constructed to guard the river. Governor Clinton, with the first intimation that the British were on the move, had prorogued the new legislature, sitting at Kingston, and hurried to the points of danger, ordering militia to his aid, the regular troops having been drawn off to Saratoga and elsewhere in the great emergency, leaving the garrisons feeble. His brother, General James Clinton, commanded one of the fortresses and himself the other. They were surprised simul- taneously by the descent of the British from the mountain in two
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
columns, and a desperate battle ensued. The New-Yorkers went out to meet the British and Tories in the open field, and after protracted resist- ance gave way only at the point of the bayonet, spiking their cannon be- fore retiring. The British then vigorously attacked both forts on all sides, which were defended with spirit. At five o'clock in the afternoon a summons to surrender as prisoners-of-war was rejected by the Americans with scorn. The attack was renewed, and the works finally forced at. nightfall by overpowering numbers. The Americans fought their way out, and many of them escaped. Governor Clinton leaped a precipice in the darkness and reached the water's edge, where he found his brother James about to enter a skiff, which would hold but one man with safety, and who insisted upon the governor's taking it instead of himself. The governor indignantly refused unless his brother could go also, which was impossible; and to end the dispute James fairly pushed the governor into the skiff and shoved it off, springing upon a loose horse near by and dash- ing through a squad of British troops, by whom he was wounded in the thigh with a bayonet, but reached next day his home in Orange County. The British loss was about one hundred and forty. Of the Americans, three hundred were killed and captured, nearly all of whom were New- Yorkers ; and, as at Oriskany, their blood was not spilled for naught. Sir Henry Clinton received a check which delayed the execution of his plans, and thereby prevented his aiding the Northern British army, not- withstanding that, after clearing away the chain stretched across the Hud- son at Anthony's Nose, he sailed into Newburgh Bay, sending a message gayly to Burgoyne, "Here we are ! Nothing between us and Albany." The message, however, was intercepted.
The next morning broke in mocking splendor. The woods about
Saratoga were clad in their gayest foliage. The air was soft and Oct. 7. balmy. Burgoyne had determined to hazard a battle, and was astir early. At ten o'clock his divisions were in readiness. Seconded by Riedesel, Philips, and Frazer, and with fifteen hundred picked troops, the best in his army, he advanced in three columns, sending skirmishers ahead, and, forming in line about three fourths of a mile from the American works, sat down in double ranks, courting battle. Ten guns were well posted. The grenadiers under Major Ackland were in the forest on the left; Frazer commanded the light infantry to the right, and sent foragers to cut wheat in a field with which to feed their starving horses, while some Canadians, loyalists, and Indians should attempt to get in the American rear, in order to discover the best place for forcing a way through towards Albany. The indications were quickly known in the American camp on Bemis Heights, which formed the segment of
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THE SECOND BATTLE OF SARATOGA.
a circle, the convex towards the enemy, and drums beat the alarm. Swiftly, as a rocket shoots into the sky and suddenly divides into mani- fold parts, a column bristling with fiery determination issued from the works into the open field, commanded by the invincible Morgan, and slightly curving in its swift approach opened to the right and the left in one fierce assault upon Frazer's forces, shouting and blazing with deadly aim; at the same instant General Enoch Poor, with his New Hampshire men, and General Abraham Ten Broeck,1 with three thousand New- Yorkers, faced, unmoved, the cannon and grape-shot with which they were greeted, as, emerging from the woods, they fell furiously upon the British left. The dash and the courage of the Americans amazed and appalled the haughty Britons ; they seemed to multiply into count- less numbers, pouring a deadly fire upon each flank, then closed, and, grappling hand to hand, the mad mass swayed to and fro for half an hour, more than once, five times taking and retaking a single gun. The right wing of the British staggered and recoiled under the blow of Vir- ginia, as Colonel Henry Dearborn, with a body of New-Englanders, descended impetuously from superior ground, and with flaming muskets broke the English line, which wildly fled ; they rallied and reformed, when the whole American force dashed against their center held by the Germans; Frazer, the inspiring genius of the day, hurried to form a sec- ond line in the rear to cover a retreat, but received his death-wound. With his fall the British heart was stunned. The Americans saw their advantage, and pressed forward jubilant with certain victory. Burgoyne's first aid, Sir Francis Clarke, sent to the rescue of the artillery, was mor- tally wounded before he could deliver his message ; thus eight British guns were captured. The grenadiers retreated, leaving Major Ackland bleeding upon the field.
It was but fifty minutes since the action began. The British, dis- mayed and bewildered, had scarcely regained their works, when Benedict Arnold, stinging under the smart of the refusal of Gates to give him a command, put spurs to his horse, outriding Major John Armstrong, who was sent to recall him, and without authority, save that of his own mad will, whirled from end to end of the American line, vociferating orders
1 General Abraham Ten Broeck married Elizabeth, daughter of General Stephen Van Rens- selaer, the fourth Patroon in the direct line from Kiliaen (see Vol. I. 61, 62), and his wife Catharine, the accomplished daughter of Philip Livingston, signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence. General Ten Broeck was the son of Dirck Ten Broeck, many years recorder, and also mayor of Albany. He was born in 1734 ; he was a member of the New York Assembly from 1761 to 1775, also of the Revolutionary congress, and of the convention which organized the State government ; he was afterwards state senator, mayor of Albany from 1779 to 1783, and filled other positions of trust.
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which were obeyed as if by a charm, hurled the whole force against the strongest part of the British redoubt, continuing the assault for a full hour without success ; then flinging himself to the extreme right, swept the Massachusetts brigade with him and streaming over the breastworks overpowered the Germans, killed Breymann, their colonel, and held the point which commanded the entire British position, the next instant falling badly wounded as his horse was killed beneath him. Ordering Matthew Clarkson at the most critical moment to bring up some regi- ments under Learned, the youthful aid had asked, "Where shall I find you, sir ?" " Where you hear the hottest firing," was the quick response. Burgoyne exposed himself fearlessly ; a musket-ball passed through his hat, and another tore his waistcoat. Night at last drew its curtain over the scene and the combatants rested.
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