Washington's success at Boston had one good effect. It destroyed Tory
influence in that Puritan stronghold. New England was henceforth of a
temper wholly revolutionary; and New England tradition holds that what
its people think today other Americans think tomorrow. But, in the
summer of this year 1776, though no serious foe was visible at any
point in the revolted colonies, a menace haunted every one of them. The
British had gone away by sea; by sea they would return. On land armies
move slowly and visibly; but on the sea a great force may pass out of
sight and then suddenly reappear at an unexpected point. This is
the haunting terror of sea power. Already the British had destroyed
Falmouth, now Portland, Maine, and Norfolk, the principal town in
Virginia. Washington had no illusions of security. He was anxious above
all for the safety of New York, commanding the vital artery of the
Hudson, which must at all costs be defended. Accordingly, in April, he
took his army to New York and established there his own headquarters.
Even before Washington moved to New York, three great British
expeditions were nearing America. One of these we have already seen at
Quebec. Another was bound for Charleston, to land there an army and to
make the place a rallying center for the numerous but harassed Loyalists
of the South. The third and largest of these expeditions was to strike
at New York and, by a show of strength, bring the colonists to reason
and reconciliation. If mildness failed the British intended to capture
New York, sail up the Hudson and cut off New England from the other
colonies.
The squadron destined for Charleston carried an army in command of a
fine soldier, Lord Cornwallis, destined later to be the defeated
leader in the last dramatic scene of the war. In May this fleet reached
Wilmington, North Carolina, and took on board two thousand men under
General Sir Henry Clinton, who had been sent by Howe from Boston in
vain to win the Carolinas and who now assumed military command of the
combined forces. Admiral Sir Peter Parker commanded the fleet, and on
the 4th of June he was off Charleston Harbor. Parker found that in order
to cross the bar he would have to lighten his larger ships. This was
done by the laborious process of removing the guns, which, of course,
he had to replace when the bar was crossed. On the 28th of June, Parker
drew up his ships before Fort Moultrie in the harbor. He had expected
simultaneous aid by land from three thousand soldiers put ashore from
the fleet on a sandbar, but these troops could give him no help against
the fort from which they were cut off by a channel of deep water. A
battle soon proved the British ships unable to withstand the American
fire from Fort Moultrie. Late in the evening Parker drew off, with
two hundred and twenty-five casualties against an American loss of
thirty-seven. The check was greater than that of Bunker Hill, for there
the British took the ground which they attacked. The British sailors
bore witness to the gallantry of the defense: "We never had such a
drubbing in our lives," one of them testified. Only one of Parker's ten
ships was seaworthy after the fight. It took him three weeks to refit,
and not until the 4th of August did his defeated ships reach New York.
A mighty armada of seven hundred ships had meanwhile sailed into the
Bay of New York. This fleet was commanded by Admiral Lord Howe and it
carried an army of thirty thousand men led by his younger brother, Sir
William Howe, who had commanded at Bunker Hill. The General was an able
and well-informed soldier. He had a brilliant record of service in the
Seven Years' War, with Wolfe in Canada, then in France itself, and in
the West Indies. In appearance he was tall, dark, and coarse. His face
showed him to be a free user of wine. This may explain some of his
faults as a general. He trusted too much to subordinates; he was
leisurely and rather indolent, yet capable of brilliant and rapid
action. In America his heart was never in his task. He was member of
Parliament for Nottingham and had publicly condemned the quarrel with
America and told his electors that in it he would take no command. He
had not kept his word, but his convictions remained. It would be to
accuse Howe of treason to say that he did not do his best in America.
Lack of conviction, however, affects action. Howe had no belief that his
country was in the right in the war and this handicapped him as against
the passionate conviction of Washington that all was at stake which made
life worth living.
The General's elder brother, Lord Howe, was another Whig who had no
belief that the war was just. He sat in the House of Lords while his
brother sat in the House of Commons. We rather wonder that the King
should have been content to leave in Whig hands his fortunes in America
both by land and sea. At any rate, here were the Howes more eager
to make peace than to make war and commanded to offer terms of
reconciliation. Lord Howe had an unpleasant face, so dark that he was
called "Black Dick"; he was a silent, awkward man, shy and harsh in
manner. In reality, however, he was kind, liberal in opinion, sober, and
beloved by those who knew him best. His pacific temper towards America
was not due to a dislike of war. He was a fighting sailor. Nearly twenty
years later, on June 1, 1794, when he was in command of a fleet in touch
with the French enemy, the sailors watched him to find any indication
that the expected action would take place. Then the word went round: "We
shall have the fight today; Black Dick has been smiling." They had it,
and Howe won a victory which makes his name famous in the annals of the
sea.
By the middle of July the two brothers were at New York. The soldier,
having waited at Halifax since the evacuation of Boston, had arrived,
and landed his army on Staten Island, on the day before Congress made
the Declaration of Independence, which, as now we can see, ended finally
any chance of reconciliation. The sailor arrived nine days later. Lord
Howe was wont to regret that he had not arrived a little earlier, since
the concessions which he had to offer might have averted the Declaration
of Independence. In truth, however, he had little to offer. Humor and
imagination are useful gifts in carrying on human affairs, but George
III had neither. He saw no lack of humor in now once more offering full
and free pardon to a repentant Washington and his comrades, though John
Adams was excepted by name¹; in repudiating the right to exist of the
Congress at Philadelphia, and in refusing to recognize the military
rank of the rebel general whom it had named: he was to be addressed in
civilian style as "George Washington Esq." The King and his ministers
had no imagination to call up the picture of high-hearted men fighting
for rights which they held dear. ¹Trevelyan, American Revolution, Part
II, vol. I (New Ed., vol. II), 261.
Lord Howe went so far as to address a letter to "George Washington Esq.
&c. &c.," and Washington agreed to an interview with the officer who
bore it. In imposing uniform and with the stateliest manner, Washington,
who had an instinct for effect, received the envoy. The awed messenger
explained that the symbols "&c. &c." meant everything, including, of
course, military titles; but Washington only said smilingly that they
might mean anything, including, of course, an insult, and refused to
take the letter. He referred to Congress, a body which Howe could not
recognize, the grave question of the address on an envelope and Congress
agreed that the recognition of his rank was necessary. There was nothing
to do but to go on with the fight.
Washington's army held the city of New York, at the southerly point
of Manhattan Island. The Hudson River, separating the island from the
mainland of New Jersey on the west, is at its mouth two miles wide. The
northern and eastern sides of the island are washed by the Harlem River,
flowing out of the Hudson about a dozen miles north of the city, and
broadening into the East River, about a mile wide where it separates New
York from Brooklyn Heights, on Long Island. Encamped on Staten Island,
on the south, General Howe could, with the aid of the fleet, land at any
of half a dozen vulnerable points. Howe had the further advantage of
a much larger force. Washington had in all some twenty thousand men,
numbers of them serving for short terms and therefore for the most part
badly drilled. Howe had twenty-five thousand well-trained soldiers, and
he could, in addition, draw men from the fleet, which would give him in
all double the force of Washington.
In such a situation even the best skill of Washington was likely only
to qualify defeat. He was advised to destroy New York and retire to
positions more tenable. But even if he had so desired, Congress, his
master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans
to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon
planted there would make the city untenable. Accordingly Washington
placed half his force on Long Island to defend Brooklyn Heights and
in doing so made the fundamental error of cutting his army in two and
dividing it by an arm of the sea in presence of overwhelming hostile
naval power.
On the 22d of August Howe ferried fifteen thousand men across the
Narrows to Long Island, in order to attack the position on Brooklyn
Heights from the rear. Before him lay wooded hills across which led
three roads converging at Brooklyn Heights beyond the hills. On the east
a fourth road led round the hills. In the dark of the night of the 26th
of August Howe set his army in motion on all these roads, in order by
daybreak to come to close quarters with the Americans and drive them
back to the Heights. The movement succeeded perfectly. The British made
terrible use of the bayonet. By the evening of the twenty-seventh the
Americans, who fought well against overwhelming odds, had lost nearly
two thousand men in casualties and prisoners, six field pieces, and
twenty-six heavy guns. The two chief commanders, Sullivan and Stirling,
were among the prisoners, and what was left of the army had been driven
back to Brooklyn Heights. Howe's critics said that had he pressed the
attack further he could have made certain the capture of the whole
American force on Long Island.
Criticism of what might have been is easy and usually futile. It might
be said of Washington, too, that he should not have kept an army so far
in front of his lines behind Brooklyn Heights facing a superior enemy,
and with, for a part of it, retreat possible only by a single causeway
across a marsh three miles long. When he realized, on the 28th of
August, what Howe had achieved, he increased the defenders of Brooklyn
Heights to ten thousand men, more than half his army. This was another
cardinal error. British ships were near and but for unfavorable winds
might have sailed up to Brooklyn. Washington hoped and prayed that Howe
would try to carry Brooklyn Heights by assault. Then there would have
been at least slaughter on the scale of Bunker Hill. But Howe had
learned caution. He made no reckless attack, and soon Washington found
that he must move away or face the danger of losing every man on Long
Island.
On the night of the 29th of August there was clear moonlight, with fog
towards daybreak. A British army of twenty-five thousand men was only
some six hundred yards from the American lines. A few miles from the
shore lay at anchor a great British fleet with, it is to be presumed,
its patrols on the alert. Yet, during that night, ten thousand American
troops were marched down to boats on the strand at Brooklyn and, with
all their stores, were carried across a mile of water to New York. There
must have been the splash of oars and the grating of keels, orders given
in tones above a whisper, the complex sounds of moving bodies of men.
It was all done under the eye of Washington. We can picture that tall
figure moving about on the strand at Brooklyn, which he was the last
to leave. Not a sound disturbed the slumbers of the British. An army
in retreat does not easily defend itself. Boats from the British fleet
might have brought panic to the Americans in the darkness and the
British army should at least have known that they were gone. By seven in
the morning the ten thousand American soldiers were for the time safe
in New York, and we may suppose that the two Howes were asking eager
questions and wondering how it had all happened.
Washington had shown that he knew when and how to retire. Long Island
was his first battle and he had lost. Now retreat was his first great
tactical achievement. He could not stay in New York and so sent at once
the chief part of the army, withdrawn from Brooklyn, to the line of the
Harlem River at the north end of the island. He realized that his shore
batteries could not keep the British fleet from sailing up both the
East and the Hudson Rivers and from landing a force on Manhattan Island
almost where it liked. Then the city of New York would be surrounded by
a hostile fleet and a hostile army. The Howes could have performed this
maneuver as soon as they had a favorable wind. There was, we know, great
confusion in New York, and Washington tells us how his heart was torn by
the distress of the inhabitants. The British gave him plenty of time to
make plans, and for a reason. We have seen that Lord Howe was not only
an admiral to make war but also an envoy to make peace. The British
victory on Long Island might, he thought, make Congress more willing to
negotiate. So now he sent to Philadelphia the captured American General
Sullivan, with the request that some members of Congress might confer
privately on the prospects for peace.
Howe probably did not realize that the Americans had the British quality
of becoming more resolute by temporary reverses. By this time, too,
suspicion of every movement on the part of Great Britain had become
a mania. Every one in Congress seems to have thought that Howe was
planning treachery. John Adams, excepted by name from British offers of
pardon, called Sullivan a "decoy duck" and, as he confessed, laughed,
scolded, and grieved at any negotiation. The wish to talk privately with
members of Congress was called an insulting way of avoiding recognition
of that body. In spite of this, even the stalwart Adams and the suave
Franklin were willing to be members of a committee which went to meet
Lord Howe. With great sorrow Howe now realized that he had no power to
grant what Congress insisted upon, the recognition of independence, as a
preliminary to negotiation. There was nothing for it but war.
On the 15th of September the British struck the blow too long delayed
had war been their only interest. New York had to sit nearly helpless
while great men-of-war passed up both the Hudson and the East River with
guns sweeping the shores of Manhattan Island. At the same time General
Howe sent over in boats from Long Island to the landing at Kip's Bay,
near the line of the present Thirty-fourth Street, an army to cut off
the city from the northern part of the island. Washington marched in
person with two New England regiments to dispute the landing and give
him time for evacuation. To his rage panic seized his men and they
turned and fled, leaving him almost alone not a hundred yards from the
enemy. A stray shot at that moment might have influenced greatly modern
history, for, as events were soon to show, Washington was the mainstay
of the American cause. He too had to get away and Howe's force landed
easily enough.
Meanwhile, on the west shore of the island, there was an animated scene.
The roads were crowded with refugees fleeing northward from New York.
These civilians Howe had no reason to stop, but there marched, too, out
of New York four thousand men, under Israel Putnam, who got safely away
northward. Only leisurely did Howe extend his line across the island so
as to cut off the city. The story, not more trustworthy than many other
legends of war, is that Mrs. Murray, living in a country house near what
now is Murray Hill, invited the General to luncheon, and that to enjoy
this pleasure he ordered a halt for his whole force. Generals sometimes
do foolish things but it is not easy to call up a picture of Howe, in
the midst of a busy movement of troops, receiving the lady's invitation,
accepting it, and ordering the whole army to halt while he lingered over
the luncheon table. There is no doubt that his mind was still divided
between making war and making peace. Probably Putnam had already got
away his men, and there was no purpose in stopping the refugees in that
flight from New York which so aroused the pity of Washington. As it was
Howe took sixty-seven guns. By accident, or, it is said, by design of
the Americans themselves, New York soon took fire and one-third of the
little city was burned.
After the fall of New York there followed a complex campaign. The
resourceful Washington was now, during his first days of active warfare,
pitting himself against one of the most experienced of British generals.
Fleet and army were acting together. The aim of Howe was to get control
of the Hudson and to meet half way the advance from Canada by way of
Lake Champlain which Carleton was leading. On the 12th of October, when
autumn winds were already making the nights cold, Howe moved. He did
not attack Washington who lay in strength at the Harlem. That would
have been to play Washington's game. Instead he put the part of his army
still on Long Island in ships which then sailed through the dangerous
currents of Hell Gate and landed at Throg's Neck, a peninsula on the
sound across from Long Island. Washington parried this movement by so
guarding the narrow neck of the peninsula leading to the mainland that
the cautious Howe shrank from a frontal attack across a marsh. After a
delay of six days, he again embarked his army, landed a few miles
above Throg's Neck in the hope of cutting off Washington from retreat
northward, only to find Washington still north of him at White Plains.
A sharp skirmish followed in which Howe lost over two hundred men and
Washington only one hundred and forty. Washington, masterly in retreat,
then withdrew still farther north among hills difficult of attack.
Howe had a plan which made a direct attack on Washington unnecessary. He
turned southward and occupied the east shore of the Hudson River. On the
16th of November took place the worst disaster which had yet befallen
American arms. Fort Washington, lying just south of the Harlem, was the
only point still held on Manhattan Island by the Americans. In modern
war it has become clear that fortresses supposedly strong may be only
traps for their defenders. Fort Washington stood on the east bank of the
Hudson opposite Fort Lee, on the west bank. These forts could not fulfil
the purpose for which they were intended, of stopping British ships.
Washington saw that the two forts should be abandoned. But the civilians
in Congress, who, it must be remembered, named the generals and had
final authority in directing the war, were reluctant to accept the
loss involved in abandoning the forts and gave orders that every effort
should be made to hold them. Greene, on the whole Washington's best
general, was in command of the two positions and was left to use his own
judgment. On the 15th of November, by a sudden and rapid march across
the island, Howe appeared before Fort Washington and summoned it to
surrender on pain of the rigors of war, which meant putting the garrison
to the sword should he have to take the place by storm. The answer was a
defiance; and on the next day Howe attacked in overwhelming force. There
was severe fighting. The casualties of the British were nearly five
hundred, but they took the huge fort with its three thousand defenders
and a great quantity of munitions of war. Howe's threat was not carried
out. There was no massacre.
Across the river at Fort Lee the helpless Washington watched this great
disaster. He had need still to look out, for Fort Lee was itself doomed.
On the nineteenth Lord Cornwallis with five thousand men crossed the
river five miles above Fort Lee. General Greene barely escaped with
the two thousand men in the fort, leaving behind one hundred and forty
cannon, stores, tools, and even the men's blankets. On the twentieth the
British flag was floating over Fort Lee and Washington's whole force
was in rapid flight across New Jersey, hardly pausing until it had been
ferried over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
Treachery, now linked to military disaster, made Washington's position
terrible. Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, and Richard Montgomery were
three important officers of the regular British army who fought on the
American side. Montgomery had been killed at Quebec; the defects of
Gates were not yet conspicuous; and Lee was next to Washington the most
trusted American general. The names Washington and Lee of the twin forts
on opposite sides of the Hudson show how the two generals stood in the
public mind. While disaster was overtaking Washington, Lee had seven
thousand men at North Castle on the east bank of the Hudson, a few miles
above Fort Washington, blocking Howe's advance farther up the river. On
the day after the fall of Fort Washington, Lee received positive
orders to cross the Hudson at once. Three days later Fort Lee fell, and
Washington repeated the order. Lee did not budge. He was safe where
he was and could cross the river and get away into New Jersey when he
liked. He seems deliberately to have left Washington to face complete
disaster and thus prove his incompetence; then, as the undefeated
general, he could take the chief command. There is no evidence that he
had intrigued with Howe, but he thought that he could be the peacemaker
between Great Britain and America, with untold possibilities of ambition
in that rôle. He wrote of Washington at this time, to his friend Gates,
as weak and "most damnably deficient." Nemesis, however, overtook him.
In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to northern New Jersey.
Here many of the people were Tories. Lee fell into a trap, was captured
in bed at a tavern by a hard-riding party of British cavalry, and
carried off a prisoner, obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and
slippers. Not always does fate appear so just in her strokes.
In December, though the position of Washington was very bad, all was
not lost. The chief aim of Howe was to secure the line of the Hudson and
this he had not achieved. At Stony Point, which lies up the Hudson about
fifty miles from New York, the river narrows and passes through what is
almost a mountain gorge, easily defended. Here Washington had erected
fortifications which made it at least difficult for a British force to
pass up the river. Moreover in the highlands of northern New Jersey,
with headquarters at Morristown, General Sullivan, recently exchanged,
and General Gates now had Lee's army and also the remnants of the force
driven from Canada. But in retreating across New Jersey Washington
had been forsaken by thousands of men, beguiled in part by the Tory
population, discouraged by defeat, and in many cases with the right to
go home, since their term of service had expired. All that remained
of Washington's army after the forces of Sullivan and Gates joined him
across the Delaware in Pennsylvania, was about four thousand men.
Howe was determined to have Philadelphia as well as New York and
could place some reliance on Tory help in Pennsylvania. He had pursued
Washington to the Delaware and would have pushed on across that river
had not his alert foe taken care that all the boats should be on the
wrong shore. As it was, Howe occupied the left bank of the Delaware with
his chief post at Trenton. If he made sure of New Jersey he could go on
to Philadelphia when the river was frozen over or indeed when he liked.
Even the Congress had fled to Baltimore. There were British successes in
other quarters. Early in December Lord Howe took the fleet to Newport.
Soon he controlled the whole of Rhode Island and checked the American
privateers who had made it their base. The brothers issued proclamations
offering protection to all who should within sixty days return to their
British allegiance and many people of high standing in New York and New
Jersey accepted the offer. Howe wrote home to England the glad news of
victory. Philadelphia would probably fall before spring and it looked as
if the war was really over.
In this darkest hour Washington struck a blow which changed the whole
situation. We associate with him the thought of calm deliberation.
Now, however, was he to show his strongest quality as a general to be
audacity. At the Battle of the Marne, in 1914, the French General Foch
sent the despatch: "My center is giving way; my right is retreating; the
situation is excellent: I am attacking." Washington's position seemed
as nearly hopeless and he, too, had need of some striking action. A
campaign marked by his own blundering and by the treachery of a trusted
general had ended in seeming ruin. Pennsylvania at his back and New
Jersey before him across the Delaware were less than half loyal to the
American cause and probably willing to accept peace on almost any terms.
Never was a general in a position where greater risks must be taken for
salvation. As Washington pondered what was going on among the British
across the Delaware, a bold plan outlined itself in his mind. Howe,
he knew, had gone to New York to celebrate a triumphant Christmas. His
absence from the front was certain to involve slackness. It was Germans
who held the line of the Delaware, some thirteen hundred of them under
Colonel Rahl at Trenton, two thousand under Von Donop farther down the
river at Bordentown; and with Germans perhaps more than any other
people Christmas is a season of elaborate festivity. On this their first
Christmas away from home many of the Germans would be likely to be
off their guard either through homesickness or dissipation. They cared
nothing for either side. There had been much plundering in New Jersey
and discipline was relaxed.
Howe had been guilty of the folly of making strong the posts farthest
from the enemy and weak those nearest to him. He had, indeed, ordered
Rahl to throw up redoubts for the defense of Trenton, but this, as
Washington well knew, had not been done for Rahl despised his enemy and
spoke of the American army as already lost. Washington's bold plan
was to recross the Delaware and attack Trenton. There were to be three
crossings. One was to be against Von Donop at Bordentown below Trenton,
the second at Trenton itself. These two attacks were designed to prevent
aid to Trenton. The third force with which Washington himself went was
to cross the river some nine miles above the town.
Christmas Day, 1776, was dismally cold. There was a driving storm of
sleet and the broad swollen stream of the Delaware, dotted with dark
masses of floating ice, offered a chill prospect. To take an army with
its guns across that threatening flood was indeed perilous. Gates and
other generals declared that the scheme was too difficult to be carried
out. Only one of the three forces crossed the river. Washington, with
iron will, was not to be turned from his purpose. He had skilled boatmen
from New England. The crossing took no less than ten hours and a great
part of it was done in wintry darkness. When the army landed on the New
Jersey shore it had a march of nine miles in sleet and rain in order
to reach Trenton by daybreak. It is said that some of the men marched
barefoot leaving tracks of blood in the snow. The arms of some were lost
and those of others were wet and useless but Washington told them that
they must depend the more on the bayonet. He attacked Trenton in broad
daylight. There was a sharp fight. Rahl, the commander, and some seventy
men, were killed and a thousand men surrendered.
Even now Washington's position was dangerous. Von Donop, with two
thousand men, lay only a few miles down the river. Had he marched at
once on Trenton, as he should have done, the worn out little force of
Washington might have met with disaster. What Von Donop did when the
alarm reached him was to retreat as fast as he could to Princeton, a
dozen miles to the rear towards New York, leaving behind his sick and
all his heavy equipment. Meanwhile Washington, knowing his danger, had
turned back across the Delaware with a prisoner for every two of his
men. When, however, he saw what Von Donop had done he returned on the
twenty-ninth to Trenton, sent out scouting parties, and roused the
country so that in every bit of forest along the road to Princeton there
were men, dead shots, to make difficult a British advance to retake
Trenton.
The reverse had brought consternation at New York. Lord Cornwallis was
about to embark for England, the bearer of news of overwhelming victory.
Now, instead, he was sent to drive back Washington. It was no easy task
for Cornwallis to reach Trenton, for Washington's scouting parties and a
force of six hundred men under Greene were on the road to harass him. On
the evening of the 2d of January, however, he reoccupied Trenton.
This time Washington had not recrossed the Delaware but had retreated
southward and was now entrenched on the southern bank of the little
river Assanpink, which flows into the Delaware. Reinforcements were
following Cornwallis. That night he sharply cannonaded Washington's
position and was as sharply answered. He intended to attack in force
in the morning. To the skill and resource of Washington he paid the
compliment of saying that at last he had run down the "Old Fox."
Then followed a maneuver which, years after, Cornwallis, a generous
foe, told Washington was one of the most surprising and brilliant in
the history of war. There was another "old fox" in Europe, Frederick the
Great, of Prussia, who knew war if ever man knew it, and he, too, from
this movement ranked Washington among the great generals. The maneuver
was simple enough. Instead of taking the obvious course of again
retreating across the Delaware Washington decided to advance, to get
in behind Cornwallis, to try to cut his communications, to threaten the
British base of supply and then, if a superior force came up, to retreat
into the highlands of New Jersey. There he could keep an unbroken
line as far east as the Hudson, menace the British in New Jersey, and
probably force them to withdraw to the safety of New York.
All through the night of January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires burned
brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of voices and of
the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up entrenchments. The fires
died down towards morning and the British awoke to find the enemy camp
deserted. Washington had carried his whole army by a roundabout route to
the Princeton road and now stood between Cornwallis and his base. There
was some sharp fighting that day near Princeton. Washington had to
defeat and get past the reinforcements coming to Cornwallis. He reached
Princeton and then slipped away northward and made his headquarters at
Morristown. He had achieved his purpose. The British with Washington
entrenched on their flank were not safe in New Jersey. The only thing
to do was to withdraw to New York. By his brilliant advance Washington
recovered the whole of New Jersey with the exception of some minor
positions near the sea. He had changed the face of the war. In London
there was momentary rejoicing over Howe's recent victories, but it was
soon followed by distressing news of defeat. Through all the colonies
ran inspiring tidings. There had been doubts whether, after all,
Washington was the heaven-sent leader. Now both America and Europe
learned to recognize his skill. He had won a reputation, though not yet
had he saved a cause.