1 Br. 47.] BRITISH INVASION OF SOUTH CAROLINA. in December. 495 into South Carolina; the militia returned to | November, and the whole of the Virginia line their homes, and the French re-embarked. The tidings of this reverse, which reached Notwithstanding the recent preparations at Washington late in November, put an end to New York, the ships remained in port, and all prospect of co-operation from the French the enemy held themselves in collected force fleet; a consequent change took place in all his there. Doubts began to be entertained of plans. The militia of New York and Massa- some furtive design nearer at hand, and measchusetts, recently assembled, were disbanded, ures were taken to protect the army against an and arrangements were made for the winter. attack when in winter-quarters. Sir Henry, The army was thrown into two divisions; one however, was regulating his movements by was to be stationed under General Heath in those the French fleet might make after the the Highlands, for the protection of West Point repulse at Savannah. Intelligence at length and the neighboring posts; the other and prin- arrived that it had been dispersed by a violent cipal division was to be hutted near Morris- storm. Count D'Estaing, with a part, had town, where Washington was to have his head-shaped his course for France; the rest had quarters. The cavalry were to be sent to Con- proceeded to the West Indies. necticut. Sir Henry now lost no time in carrying his plans into operation. Leaving the garrison of New York under the command of LieutenantGeneral Knyphausen, he embarked several thousand men, on board of transports, to be convoyed by five ships of the line and several frigates under Admiral Arbuthnot, and set sail on the 26th of December, accompanied by Lord Cornwallis, on an expedition intended for the capture of Charleston and the reduction Understanding that Sir Henry Clinton was making preparations at New York for a large embarkation of troops, and fearing they might be destined against Georgia and Carolina, he resolved to detach the greater part of his Southern troops for the protection of those States; a provident resolution, in which he was confirmed by subsequent instructions from Congress. Accordingly, the North Carolina brigade took up its march for Charleston, in of South Carolina. END OF VOL. III. LIFE OF WASHINGTON. VOLUME FOURTH. CHAPTER I. THE dreary encampment at Valley Forge had become proverbial for its hardships; yet they were scarcely more severe than those suffered by Washington's army during the present winter, while hutted among the heights of Morristown. The winter set in early, and was uncommonly rigorous. The transportation of supplies was obstructed; the magazines were exhausted, and the commissaries had neither money nor credit to enable them to replenish them. For weeks at a time the army was on half allowance; sometimes without meat, sometimes without bread, sometimes without both. There was a scarcity, too, of clothing and blankets, so that the poor soldiers were starving with cold as well as hunger. Washington wrote to President Reed of Pennsylvania, entreating aid and supplies from that State to keep his army from disbanding. "We have never," said he, "experienced a like extremity at any period of the war.' The year 1780 opened upon a famishing camp. "For a fortnight past," writes Washington, on the 8th of January, "the troops, both officers and men, have been almost perishing with want. Yet," adds he, feelingly, "they have borne their sufferings with a patience that merits the approbation, and ought to excite the sympathies, of their countrymen." The severest trials of the Revolution, in fact, were not in the field, where there were shouts to excite and laurels to be won, but in the squalid wretchedness of ill-provided camps, where there was nothing to cheer and every * Life of Reed, 11. 189. thing to be endured. To suffer was the lot of the revolutionary soldier. A rigorous winter had much to do with the actual distresses of the army, but the root of the evil lay in the derangement of the currency. Congress had commenced the war without adequate funds, and without the power of imposing direct taxes. To meet pressing emergencies, it had emitted paper money, which, for a time, passed currently at par; but sank in value as further emissions succeeded, and that, already in circulation, remained unredeemed. The several States added to the evil by emitting paper in their separate capacities: thus the country gradually became flooded with a "continental currency,' 99 as it was called; irredeemable, and of no intrinsic value. The consequence was a general derangement of trade and finance. The continental currency declined to such a degree, that forty dollars in paper were equivalent to only one in specie., Congress attempted to put a stop to this depreciation, by making paper money a legal tender, at its nominal value, in the discharge of debts, however contracted. This opened the door to knavery, and added a new feature to the evil. The commissaries now found it difficult to purchase supplies for the immediate wants of the army, and impossible to provide any stores in advance. They were left destitute of funds, and the public credit was prostrated by the accumulating debts suffered to remain uncancelled. The changes which had taken place in the commissary department added to this confusion. The commissary-general, instead of receiving, as heretofore, a commission on ex 498 THE ARMY AT MORRISTOWN-EXPEDITION AGAINST STATEN ISLAND. The great bay of [1780. penditures, was to have a fixed salary in paper | stockings, shoes, coats, and blankets; while currency; and his deputies were to be com- the women met together to knit and sew for pensated in like manner, without the usual al- the soldiery."* lowance of rations and forage. No competent As the winter advanced the cold increased agents could be procured on such terms; and in severity. It was the most intense ever rethe derangement produced throughout the de-membered in the country. partment compelled Colonel Wadsworth, the New York was frozen over. able and upright commissary-general, to resign. come to the city by water. In the present emergency Washington was scanty; and there was such reluctantly compelled, by the distresses of the that old transports were broken up, and uninarmy, to call upon the counties of the State for habited wooden houses pulled down for fuel. supplies of grain and cattle, proportioned to The safety of the city was endangered. The their respective abilities. These supplies were ships-of-war, immovably ice-bound in its harto be brought into the camp within a certain bor, no longer gave it protection. The insular time; the grain to be measured and the cattle security of the place was at an end. An army estimated by any two of the magistrates of the with its heaviest artillery and baggage might county in conjunction with the commissary, cross the Hudson on the ice. The veteran and certificates to be given by the latter, speci- Knyphausen began to apprehend an invasion, fying the quantity of each and the terms of and took measures accordingly; the seamen payment. of the ships and transports were landed and formed into companies, and the inhabitants of the city were embodied, officered, and subjected to garrison duty. ence. Wherever a compliance with this call was refused, the articles required were to be impressed it was a painful alternative, yet nothing else could save the army from dissolution or starving. Washington charged his officers to act with as much tenderness as possible, graduating the exaction according to the stock of each individual, so that no family should be deprived of what was necessary to its subsist"While your measures are adapted to the emergency," writes he to Colonel Matthias Ogden, "and you consult what you owe to the service, I am persuaded you will not forget that, as we are compelled by necessity to take the property of citizens for the support of an army on which their safety depends, we should be careful to manifest that we have a reverence for their rights, and wish not to do any thing which that necessity, and even their own good, do not absolutely require." To the honor of the magistrates and the people of Jersey, Washington testifies that his requisitions were punctually complied with, and in many counties exceeded. Too much praise, indeed, cannot be given to the people of this State for the patience with which most of them bore these exactions, and the patriotism with which many of them administered to the wants of their countrymen in arins. Exhausted as the State was by repeated drainings, yet, at one time, when deep snows cut off all distant supplies, Washington's army was wholly subsisted by it. "Provisions came in with hearty good will from the farmers in Mendham, Chatham, Hanover, and other rural places, together with Washington was aware of the opportunity which offered itself for a signal coup de main, but was not in a condition to profit by it. His troops, hutted among the heights of Morristown, were half fed, half clothed, and inferior in number to the garrison of New York. He was destitute of funds necessary to fit them for the enterprise, and the quartermaster could not furnish means of transportation. Still, in the frozen condition of the bay and rivers, some minor blow might be attempted, sufficient to rouse and cheer the spirits of the people. With this view, having ascertained that the ice formed a bridge across the strait between the Jersey shore and Staten Island, he projected a descent upon the latter by Lord Stirling with twenty-five hundred men, to surprise and capture a British force of ten or twelve hundred. His lordship crossed on the night of the 14th of January, from De Hart's Point to the island. His approach was discovered; the troops took refuge in the works, which were too strongly situated to be attacked; a channel * From manuscript notes by the Rev. Joseph F. Tuttle. This worthy clergyman gives many anecdotes illustrative of the active patriotism of the Jersey women. Anna Kitchel, wife of a farmer of Whippany, is repeatedly his theme of well-merited eulogium. Her potato bin, meal bag, and granary, writes he, had always some comfort for house, a huge kettle filled with meat and vegetables was the patriot soldiers. When unable to billet them in her hung over the fire, that they might not go away hungry. ÆT. 48.] CALDWELL, THE PREACHER PATRIOT-FORAY INTO WESTCHESTER COUNTY. 499 remaining open through the ice across the bay, I was not in his pulpit." We shall have occasion a boat was despatched to New York for rein- to speak of the fortunes of this pastor and his forcements. family hereafter. The projected surprise having thus proved a complete failure, and his own situation becoming hazardous, Lord Stirling recrossed to the Jersey shore with a number of prisoners whom he had captured. He was pursued by a party of cavalry, which he repulsed, and effected a retreat to Elizabethtown. Some few stragglers fell into the hands of the enemy, and many of his men were severely frostbitten. By way of retort, Knyphausen, on the 25th of January, sent out two detachments to harass the American outposts. One crossed to Paulus Hook, and being joined by part of the garrison of that post, pushed on to Newark, surprised and captured a company stationed there, set fire to the academy, and returned without loss. The other detachment, consisting of one hundred dragoons and between three and four hundred infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Boskirk, crossed from Staten Island to Trembly's Point, surprised the picket-guard at Elizabethtown, and captured two majors, two captains, and forty-two privates. This, likewise, was effected without loss. The disgraceful part of the expedition was the burning of the town house, a church, and a private residence, and the plundering of the inhabitants. The church destroyed was a Presbyterian place of worship, and its pastor, the Rev. James Caldwell, had rendered himself an especial object of hostility to both Briton and tory. He was a zealous patriot; had served as chaplain to those portions of the American army that successively occupied the Jerseys; and now officiated in that capacity in Colonel Elias Dayton's regiment, beside occasionally acting as commissary. His church had at times served as hospital to the American soldier; or shelter to the hastily assembled militia. Its bell was the tocsin of alarm; from its pulpit he had many a time stirred up the patriotism of his countrymen by his ardent, eloquent, and pathetic appeals, laying beside him his pistols before he commenced. His popularity in the army, and among the Jersey people, was unbounded. He was termed by his friends a "rousing gospel preacher," and by the enemy a "frantic priest" and a "rebel fire-band." On the present occasion, his church was set on fire by a virulent tory of the neighborhood, who, as he saw it wrapped in flames, "regretted that the black-coated rebel, Caldwell, Another noted maraud during Knyphausen's military sway, was in the lower part of Westchester County, in a hilly region lying between the British and American lines, which had been the scene of part of the past year's campaign. Being often foraged, its inhabitants had become belligerent in their habits and quick to retaliate on all marauders. In this region, about twenty miles from the British outposts, and not far from White Plains, the Americans had established a post of three hundred men at a stone building commonly known as Young's house, from the name of its owner. It commanded a road which passed from north to south down along the narrow but fertile valley of the Sawmill River, now known by its original Indian name of the Neperan. On this road the garrison of Young's house kept a vigilant eye, to intercept the convoys of cattle and provisions which had been collected or plundered by the enemy, and which passed down this valley toward New York. This post had long been an annoyance to the • enemy, but its distance from the British lines had hitherto saved it from attack. The country now was covered with snow; troops could be rapidly transported on sleighs; and it was determined that Young's house should be surprised, and this rebel nest broken up. On the evening of the 2d of February, an expedition set out for the purpose from King's Bridge, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Norton, and consisting of four flank companies of guards, two companies of Hessians, and a party of Yagers, all in sleighs; beside a body of Yager cavalry, and a number of mounted Westchester refugees, with two three-pounders. The snow, being newly fallen, was deep; the sleighs broke their way through it with difficulty. The troops at length abandoned them and pushed forward on foot. The cannon were left behind for the same reason. It was a weary tramp; the snow in many places was more than two feet deep, and they had to take by-ways and cross-roads to avoid the American patrols. The sun rose while they were yet seven miles from Young's house. To surprise the post was out of the question; still they kept on. Before they could reach the house the country had taken the alarm, and the Westchester yeomanry had armed themselves, and were hastening to aid the garrison. |