USA > New York > New York City > The story of the city of New York > Part 20
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Such was the situation on Sunday morning, Sep- tember 15th. A little after daybreak Douglas, at Kip's Bay, saw the five frigates make sail and slowly move up abreast of his position. "They were so near," said a soldier, " that I could distinctly read the name of the Phoenix which lay a little quartering." But the militia soon had other objects to look at, for presently from the mouth of Newtown Creek, nearly opposite, emerged a flotilla of eighty-four row galleys filled with grenadiers in scarlet uniforms, looking, as the soldier above quoted aptly said, " like a large clover- field in full bloom." Slowly the boats came on ; as they neared the shore, all at once with a thundering sound the seventy-five guns of the frigates belched a storm of grape-shot on the devoted patriots. "It came like a peal of thunder," says Martin. Sharp- shooters stationed in the frigate's tops picked off every man that showed himself. One soldier thought "his head would go with the sound," " but," he added, "we kept the lines until they were almost levelled
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upon us, when the officers seeing we were exposed to the rake of their guns, gave the order to leave." At the same moment, a little to the left, under cover of the cannon smoke, the flotilla was beached, and the troops threw themselves ashore without opposition. The Americans all along the river front now began a retreat, which soon ended in a panic-stricken flight with the British in hot pursuit. Up the Post Road fled the militia-every man for himself-Parsons, Doug- las, Prescott, and Huntington in vain trying to rally and reform them. At the corner of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street, with grounds extending through to the Kingsbridge Road (which then ran on the present line of Lexington Avenue), stood the handsome mansion of Robert Murray, a wealthy Quaker merchant of New York. Just above, cover- ing the present line of Forty-second and Forty-third streets, a wide lane crossed the island and connected with the Bloomingdale Road. On the south side of this lane, where it joined the Post Road, was a large cornfield. Washington, at the Apthorpe house, on hearing the firing, leaped to saddle, spurred down the Bloomingdale Road and across by the connecting lane toward the Kingsbridge Road. He had just reached this cornfield as the mob of frightened fugi- tives came hurrying on, some taking the fields in their haste, some toiling and panting along the road. Parsons' and Fellows' brigades, which had been or- dered up to check the rout, also came up at this moment. Washington ordered them to form and make a stand along the line of the Post Road. " Take the walls; take the cornfield," he shouted.
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The men ran to the walls, but the vanguard of the enemy just then appearing over the crest of the hill they broke and fled in a panic equal to that of the militia. Washington, Putnam, Parsons, and other officers dashed in among them, endeavoring to rally them, but in vain. The senseless panic that some- times seizes even brave men in battle was upon them, and as the lines of gleaming bayonets appeared they broke and fled.
Washington at the sight is said to have lost the self-control habitual with him. He dashed in among the confused mass swinging his hat and shouting to them to re-form and make a stand against the enemy ; his officers ably seconded him-in vain, however. "The very demons of fear and disorder," said a soldier, "seemed to take full possession of them all and of every thing on that day." Seeing that the field was lost, the Commander-in-Chief ordered the retreat continued to Harlem Heights, while he spurred away to make dispositions for defence there.
Meantime what of the soldiers left in the city ? At the first note of attack Putnam's division had been put in motion toward Harlem, taking the Bloomingdale Road, which, as has been mentioned, ran along the west side of the island; but the col- umn was forced to move slowly; it was hampered with refugee women and children, by stores, cannon, camp impedimenta ; besides, stretching along the country road for two miles, it was very unwieldy, and the sun was intensely hot. To cover its retreat, Silliman with his brigade, and Knox with his artillery took post at Bayard's Hill Fort, which we have de-
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scribed as standing on the bluff north of Canal Street, and as being one of the strongest of the city's de- fences. This was perhaps two hours before the rout began at Murray's cornfield. On leaving the retreat- ing force there, Putnam spurred down to look after the fortunes of his column, first detaching his aide, Major Aaron Burr, with a company of dragoons, to bring off Silliman's and Knox's force at Bayard's Hill-a congenial task for Major Burr, who had al- ready distinguished himself by his gallantry. Soon he dashed up to the redoubt and inquired who com- manded there. General Knox appeared, and Burr delivered his orders, imploring him to retreat at once, as a column of Hessians was then advancing down the Post Road upon the city, and the fort would inevitably be taken. Knox replied that they would be cut off in any event, and that he preferred to de- fend the fort. "But," urged the intrepid aide, "it is not bomb proof ; you have no water ; I would en- gage to take it with a single howitzer." And turn- ing to the men, he told them that if they remained there, one half of them would surely be shot before night, and the rest hung like dogs; "whereas," said he, "if you will put yourselves under my guidance, I can and will lead you in safety to Harlem." The brigade decided to retreat. Burr led it at once to the main column, then put himself at the head of all, and by lanes and by-ways, through thicket and forest, led it past the British advance to Harlem, while Captain Alexander Hamilton's battery served as rear-guard, and gallantly beat back, on more than one occasion, a squadron of the pursuing enemy.
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The credit for this happy escape was accorded Major Burr, and gave him great prestige in the army. Had Howe pushed forward his troops, how- ever, he might easily have cut off the column. At the fine old mansion of the Murrays, within half a mile of the road by which the patriots were escaping, his main army was encamped at the time, and he, with Tryon, Clinton, Cornwallis, and others, was sip- ping Mrs. Murray's rare old Madeira, while his troops prepared and ate the mid-day meal. But perhaps, as was later charged, General Howe had no desire to capture the mass of fugitives.
The army was now out of the city. The battle scene was transferred to Harlem Heights. If one stands upon the high bluff where 119th Street crosses Morningside Park, a few squares north of the Leake and Watts Orphan House,-the site of the proposed grand cathedral,-he can take in the battle-field at a glance. At his feet Harlem Plains, well built over, stretches away to the east. Directly north, across the valley, at about 125th Street, rises a bold pro- montory, known in 1776 as Point of Rocks, and which sweeps away northwest in a series of rocky points and ledges, three quarters of a mile to the Hudson. On these heights Washington's army was massed on its retreat from the city, the head- quarters of the general being fixed at the Morris House, now the Jumel mansion, which one may still see on the rocky height southwest of High Bridge- a fine example in decay of old colonial architecture.
The British were directly opposite on Blooming- dale Heights-where we are supposed to stand,-
ROGER MORRIS' HOUSE (THE JUMEL MANSION).
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with their pickets stretched across the upper part of Central Park to Horn Hook on the east, and across Riverside Park to the Hudson on the west. The low land between, showing here and there a farm, but mostly covered with forest, with the crag on which we stand, was the scene of the battle of Har- lem Heights. It was the object of the British to capture the heights and thus force the Americans off the island. The latter, however, assumed the ag- gressive, and brought on the battle. From Point of Rocks Washington with his field-glass could sweep the Harlem Plains, and easily see what the enemy was doing in that quarter. Not so with the forest and broken land along the Hudson. At daylight, therefore, on the morning of the 16th, he despatched Colonel Thomas Knowlton, one of his bravest of- ficers, with a force of one hundred and twenty picked men, to make a reconnoissance in that direction, and unearth the enemy-if possible capture his advanced guard. This guard comprised two battalions of the light infantry supported by the 42d Highlanders, and was pushed forward nearly to the southern limits of the present Morningside Park. Knowlton led his men down the ravine now marked by Man- hattan Street, to the river bank, and then south under cover of the bluffs and forest until he came upon the enemy, when a sharp skirmish occurred ; but after firing several rounds Knowlton, finding that the British were pushing north in such a way as to outflank him, began a leisurely retreat. Mean- time the enemy had appeared on Harlem Plain, and · Washington hurried to the Point of Rocks to direct
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the movement of troops. Hearing Knowlton's fir- ing to the south he sent Adjutant-General Reed in that direction to see what it meant. Reed soon re- turned and reported that Knowlton was being pur- sued by some three hundred of the enemy, whom he was drawing away from their supports and into the patriot lines. Washington then sent forward rein- forcements, and the British were driven ingloriously back to their main line. It was a small affair, but it restored to the Americans that esprit du corps which had been banished by the retreat of the preceding day.
The second or main battle began about ten o'clock, and lasted till two in the afternoon. Knowl- ton's men on meeting the enemy had recoiled, and made an orderly retreat before a superior force. At ten o clock, as Washington sat on his horse awaiting reports from scouts, Knowlton hurried up and begged for reinforcements to capture his pursuers. At the same moment a body of troopers appeared in the plain below, and blew their bugles in the face of the Americans, as if at a fox-funt. Washington accepted the challenge. He ordered Major Leitch with his Virginia Riflemen to join the Connecticut Rangers under Knowlton, and gain the rear of the foe by their right flank, while another detachment engaged them in front. The British, seeing so few enemies before them, pushed down into the valley under the Point of Rocks to engage them. The rattling vol- leys hurried up the British reserve corps in support ; at the same time the riflemen and rangers, by some misunderstanding, struck the right flank of the
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enemy instead of the rear as had been intended. At this the British leaders became alarmed, and ordered up their choicest regiments. Washington responded with detachments of Douglas', Nixon's, Richardson's, and Griffith's regiments, the very troops which had so ingloriously fled the day before, and the battle in the plain became general. Mean- time the column under Knowlton and Leitch had attacked with so much spirit that the enemy gave way and was rolled in on Bloomingdale Heights, hotly pursued by the patriots. In the plain, too, the battle had gone against the British, and they also fell back upon the heights, where the combined force made a stubborn stand.
Just here, between Morningside Drive and Ninth Avenue, a little south of the line of 119th Street, Knowlton and Leitch both fell at the head of their troops. An officer stooped over Knowlton as he fell. "Are you badly hurt ?" he asked. "Yes," replied the dying patriot ; but I value not my life so we win the day." When Morningside Park is laid out, the city would do well to commemorate by a suitable statue the place where these heroes fell. But, though the leaders had fallen, the battle still raged. At last the British were driven from the hill-top as they had been from the valley. About noon, receiving fresh succors, they made a stand in a buckwheat field and held their ground for nearly two hours, but were finally routed and chased for two miles, the Amer- icans mocking their bugles as they pursued.
Thus in victory for the American arms ended the battle of Harlem Heights. It was not a great battle-
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there were in all barely ten thousand men engaged, -but it was an important one, chiefly because it restored to the patriots that confidence in them- selves which had been lost by the inglorious retreat from New York. Washington remained on the heights for three weeks, confronting his foe, and then removed his army to the highlands of the Hudson in the upper part of Westchester County.
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XVI.
NEW YORK IN CAPTIVITY.
MEANTIME the city was in the grasp of the in- vaders. When Howe took possession, September 16th, it bore much the appearance of a dismantled town. Houses and stores were closed, bells removed from churches and public buildings, brass knockers from houses, every thing portable and of value the flying people had taken with them. On Saturday, the 21st, at midnight, a fire broke out in a low grog- gery near Whitehall Street, in the southeastern part of the town, and fanned by a strong south wind, swept like a prairie fire through the city. It ran up Whitehall to Broadway, and up the east side of that thoroughfare to Beaver, where with a change of wind it leaped the street and sped on up the west side, sweeping every thing clean to the North River. Trinity Church, with its rectory and charity school, and the Lutheran Church, were soon blackened heaps of ruins. St. Paul's was saved only by the desperate efforts of citizens, who climbed out upon its flat roof and quenched live embers as they fell. The flames were only checked by the open grounds and stone buildings of King's College. "This fire was so furious and so violently hot that no person could
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TRINITY CHURCH AFTER THE GREAT FIRE.
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go near it," wrote an eye-witness. " If one was in
one street and looked about, the fire broke out al-
ready in another street above, and thus it raged all the night, and till about noon," wrote the Rev. Mr. Shewkirk, pastor of the Fulton Street Moravian
destroyed. The British jumped to the conclusion (some accounts say 1,000) and several churches were Church. Four hundred and ninety-three houses,
that the Americans were burning the town to pre- vent its serving them as winter quarters, and they
. bayoneted several worthy citizens who were putting out the fire, and threw others into the flames, under the impression that they were the incendiaries. The
patriot leaders indignantly repelled the charge.
" By what means it happened, we do not know,"
wrote Washington to Governor Trumbull the day
after the fire, September 23d, and Colonel Reed wrote to his wife the same day: "There was a re- solve in Congress against our injuring it, so that we
neither set it on fire, nor made any preparations for the purpose; though I make no doubt it will be charged to us,"-as it was by Lord Howe in his official despatches. This fire incensed the British, and many outrages were committed on the helpless patriots. Among other things, the library and apparatus of King's College, which had been stored in the City Hall, were stolen, and publicly hawked about the streets, or bartered in liquor saloons for a dram.
Following close upon the fire came one of the sad- dest and most tragical incidents in the city's history -the execution of Captain Nathan Hale as a spy. This young officer, barely twenty-one, a graduate of
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NEW YORK IN CAPTIVITY.
Yale, and betrothed to a beautiful girl, had volun- teered to penetrate the British lines around New York, and gain intelligence of Howe's numbers and position. He went to Fairfield, Connecticut, and, making use of Captain Brewster's whale-boat service, crossed the Sound to Huntington, on the Long Island shore, whence, disguised as a schoolmaster, he easily succeeded in entering the British lines. He succeeded, too, in collecting the information desired, and re- turned to Huntington Bay, where it had been ar- ranged that a whale-boat should meet him and return with him to the Connecticut shore. A boat was in waiting near the shore, and Captain Hale approached it confidently, only to find that it was a yawl from a British frigate lying near. There was no escape; he submitted to his captors, and was sent to New York as a "a prisoner taken within the lines "-that is, as a spy. There was short shrift for a rebel and a spy in the first year of the war. Howe called a court-martial next day at his head- quarters in the fine old Beekman mansion to try him. The prisoner waived a trial, however, and boldly avowed himself a spy in the service of Gen- eral Washington ; and the board at once condemned him to be hung the next day, which was Sunday. Until that time the prisoner was given in charge of the brutal Provost-Marshal Cunningham, and prob- ably confined in the new Gaol, of which we shall say more presently. He asked for pen and paper that he
might write a last letter to his mother, but this was denied; for a Bible, but the request was refused. An English officer, however, is said to have inter-
«
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
posed, and to have furnished him with the articles desired.
Hale's conduct in the hour of death illustrates in a striking way the spirit of the times. The scene of execution was the Rutgers orchard, a site now cov- ered by the blocks of huge buildings on East Broad- way, a little above Franklin Square. As he stood upon a cart under the apple boughs a British officer, one of a group standing near, said, tauntingly : " This is a fine death for a soldier." "Sir," replied Hale, " there is no death which would not be ren- dered noble in such a glorious cause." His last words form one of the noblest sentiments of hu- manity, a heritage of the race. André, in a similar situation four years later, uttered the sentiments of a soldier, but Hale's last words breathed only the loftiest patriotism. "I only regret," said he, " that I have but one life to lose for my country."
For seven years, or until the return of peace, in 1783, New York remained a captured city ; martial law prevailed ; the city was made a depot for stores, a rendezvous for troops, the hospital of the British army, and the prison-house of those Americans un- fortunate enough to be taken in arms. When the battles attending the capture of the city were over, it is safe to assume that Sir William Howe had, at least, 5,000 prisoners to provide for. To contain so large a number the ordinary prisons were, of course, inadequate, and other places were sought. The Brick Church, the Middle Dutch, the North Dutch, and the French churches, all fine, handsome struc- tures, were despoiled of their fittings, and appro-
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NEW YORK IN CAPTIVITY.
priated to this use. Besides these, King's College, the Sugar House, the new Gaol, the Bridewell, and the old City Hall, were filled with prisoners, and to this array were added, later, the prison ships of the East River.
The sufferings of the poor prisoners through the brutality of Captain Cunningham, Howe's provost- marshal, were terrible, and, more than the musket and the sword, depleted the ranks of the patriots.
BARRITT
OLD SUGAR-HOUSE PRISON.
They who entered the British prisons, like Dante's pilgrims to the Inferno, left hope behind.
In Liberty Street, south of the Middle Dutch Church, stood until forty years back, a dark stone building five stories high, with small, deep windows rising tier above tier like portholes in a hulk. Each floor of this building was divided into two bare, dungeon-like apartments, on the walls of which later visitors were fond of tracing the carved names and
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dates that had been cut by the knives of the prison- ers nearly a century before. This was the old sugar house of the Livingstons. A strong gaol-like door opened on to Liberty Street, and another on the southeast gave entrance to a dismal cellar. While · occupied by the prisoners two English or Hessian sentinels were constantly on guard, lest some des- perate captive should attempt to escape. "In the suffocating heat of summer," said William Dunlap, " I saw every narrow aperture of those stone walls filled with human heads, face above face, seeking a portion of the external air." "Seats, there were none," says another narrator, "and their beds were but straw intermixed with vermin. For many weeks the dead cart visited the prison every morning, into which eight to twelve corpses were flung, and piled up like sticks of wood, and dumped into ditches in the outskirts of the city."
Worse than this were the prison ships, which were at first intended for prisoners taken on the high seas, but later accommodated landsmen as well. The most important were the Jersey, Whitby, Good Hope, Prince of Wales, Falmouth, Scorpion, Strombolo, and Hunter. The Jersey, from the great numbers confined in her, and the fearful mortality among them, had a more ominous fame. It was confidently asserted that no less than 10,644 pris- oners perished in her during the war, and were bur- ied on the neighboring shore. These fever-infested old hulks were moored in the East River-most of them in the sheltered little bay known as the Wallabout. When a prisoner was brought on board,
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his name and rank were registered, his weapons and money, if he had any, were taken, and he was ordered below into the hold, where he found a thousand wretched beings racked with disease and emaciated with hunger. He at once joined a " mess " of six persons, and every morning at the ringing of the steward's bell, formed in line, and received his daily ration of biscuit, peas, and beef, or pork. Some- times oat meal, flour, suet, and butter were added to the bill of fare, but the poor prisoners never saw vege- tables. "The peas," we are told, " were damaged, the butter rancid, the biscuit mouldy, and often full of worms, the flour sour, the beef and pork unsa- vory. Not so much the fault of the king, as of his rapacious commissaries, who exchanged good pro- visions for bad, and by curtailing rations and other expedients, heaped up large fortunes at the expense of the prisoners."
Every morning the poor fellows brought up their beds to be aired, washed down the floors, and spent the day on deck. At sunset the guards cried " Down, rebels, down !" the hatches were fastened over them, and in the stifling fever-infected atmosphere the pris- oners lay in rows to sleep. When a man died his fel- lows sewed his body in his blanket, lowered it into a boat, and accompanied by a guard, rowed ashore, and buried it in a shallow trench in the bank or on the shore. Not unfrequently the prisoners escaped, de- spite the vigilance of the sentinels. One night, in 1779, for instance, on the Good Hope, nine sea cap- tains and two pirates overpowered the guard, and got away in one of the ship's boats ; and in the se-
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vere winter of 1780, fifteen prisoners escaped on the ice that bridged the East River.
The officers and more distinguished civilians were confined in the new Gaol in City Hall Park, now the Hall of Records. In this prison were also the head- quarters of Captain Cunningham, the provost-mar- shal of the city, who, by all accounts, was a most cruel and heartless villain. The officers seem to have been treated no better than were the privates. A creditable witness, Mr. John Pintard, clerk of Elias Boudinot, the commissioner appointed by Congress for securing the exchange of prisoners, speaks thus of it:
" An admission into this modern bastile was enough to appal the stoutest heart. On the right hand of the main door was Captain Cunningham's quarters, opposite to which was the guard-room. Within the first barricade was Sergeant O'Keefe's apartment. At the entrance- door two sentinels were posted day and night ; two more at the first and second barricades, which were grated, barred, and chained ; also at the rear door and on the platform of the grated door : and at the foot of the second flight of stairs leading to the rooms and cells in the second and third stories. When a prisoner, escorted by soldiers, was led into the hall the whole guard was pa- raded, and he was delivered over with all formality to Captain Cunningham or his deputy, and questioned as to his name, rank, size, age, etc., all of which were entered in a record book. What with the bristling of arms, un- bolting of bars and locks, clanking of enormous iron chains, and a vestibule as dark as Erebus, the unfortu- nate captive might well shrink under this infernal sight.
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and parade of tyrannical power as he crossed the thresh- old of that door which possibly closed on him for life. The northeast chamber, turning to the left on the second floor, was appropriated to officers and characters of superior rank, and was called Congress Hall. So closely were the prisoners packed that when they laid down at night to rest, when their bones ached on the hard oak planks and they wished to turn, it was altogether by word of command 'right,' 'left,' being so wedged in as to form almost a solid mass of human bodies."
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