ceremonious occasions. A waggish tale of Domine Schoonmaker of Flatbush
relates his difficulties in a wedding service. Fluent and eloquent in
his mother tongue, he essayed the ceremony in English, with the manner,
gestures, and all the courteous dignity of the old school. His English
failed him at the very close of the service. Conscious of the literalness
of his extemporized translation of the formula, he finished with a bow,
adding with solemnity and modulated emphasis, “I pronounce you two to be
_one beef_.”
English customs gradually came in vogue. More aristocratic usages
superseded the democracy of the Dutch settlers. Slavery existed in
Brooklyn as in New York. Brick and stone buildings arose along Fulton
Street. Twice, in 1745 and 1752, the Colonial legislature of the Province
met in Brooklyn, on account of the prevalence of smallpox in New York.
The rural character of the town is well illustrated by an event in 1759.
A large bear then passed along the farms in South Brooklyn, and being
pursued took to the water near Red Hook, where he was shot from a boat.
The ethics of 1774 approved the aid of lotteries to build an orthodox
church in Brooklyn, which the public were assured should be of no
doubtful laxity, but a church conformable to the discipline of the Church
of England, and under the patronage of Trinity Church, New York.
In the matter of amusements in 1774, New Yorkers came to Brooklyn
for many of their sports. Here horse-races were run. In that year an
ambitious innkeeper on “Tower Hill”—a site along the present Columbia
Heights between Middagh and Cranberry Streets—announced that there would
be a _bull baited_ there every Thursday afternoon.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, Brooklyn numbered between three and
four thousand persons grouped in four neighborhoods. There were then
three ferries to New York. At the old (Fulton) ferry was a famous tavern
which figured often in the times of British occupation. The two principal
villages were then called Brooklyn-church and Brooklyn-ferry.
At the first movements of the Patriot party in New England the people of
Kings County were little stirred. Suffolk County, at the eastern end of
Long Island, more readily responded to the first news from Massachusetts.
After the battle of Lexington, Brooklynites assembled and passed
resolutions and elected delegates to the Provincial Congress.
The modern visitor to the Borough of Brooklyn has difficulty to realize
that what is now densely built up, and covered by grading and asphalt,
marks the battle-ground of one of the greatest engagements of the
Revolution. The houses of Charlestown cover the battle-ground of Bunker
Hill, but that was a struggle over a single redoubt, while Brooklyn is
built upon a line of battle nearly three miles in length. In the Civil
War, Northern people recall the great disaster of the first battle of
Bull Run, fought with modern armies and improved weapons. Yet in that
all-day conflict, with the disastrous rout and pursuit, the Union loss
in killed, wounded and prisoners probably was not as great numerically
as the loss suffered by the American forces in the half-day of fierce
fighting in Brooklyn. The Federal forces at Bull Run suffered in killed,
wounded, and missing 2896, while the patriot losses in this, the first
pitched battle of the Revolution, were estimated at 3300 by the British,
of whom 1097 were prisoners (three being generals); and late American
historians are inclined to accept this estimate as approximately correct.
In the summer of 1776, a formidable fleet assembled in the lower Bay
of New York. These vessels bore from Nova Scotia the armies that had
evacuated Boston, and another fleet of nine war vessels and thirty-five
transports brought in the forces under Clinton that had been repulsed in
the attack on Fort Moultrie at Charleston. At last, on the 12th of August
arrived the Hessian forces in eighty-two transport-ships guarded by six
war vessels. On board were 7800 Hessians and 1000 English guards.
The observer at the Narrows must have daily beheld a naval pageant such
as can no more be seen in modern warfare. From the first distant glimpse
of the line of sails standing in for Sandy Hook, until they finally
manœuvred to their crowded anchorage by Staten Island, the effect was
most picturesque. It was not a fleet of dark, sullen sea-dogs, with only
an inconspicuous hull built to carry a destructive armament. The coloring
of these vessels against the green background of Staten Island in the
olden days of oak and hemp would have delighted a painter. The upper
works outside were sometimes dark blue or canary yellow, surmounted by
waving lines of gilt. Below were black streaks running fore and aft near
the water-line; as the ships slowly lifted in a seaway, they disclosed
a white under-surface that must have made an admirable target for the
opposing gunner. The grand air of the frigates was further enhanced
by elaborate ornamentation with emblematic devices about the carved
figure-head, and heavy gilded scrollwork above the stern-lights, and high
stern-gallery. From the bluffs along the Narrows, the view down upon the
decks would show that all inboard surfaces, even the gun-carriages and
the inner side of portholes, were painted blood-red—so as not to have the
carnage of battle too much _en évidence_.
At one time over four hundred transports, guarded by thirty-seven
men-of-war, had gathered. Lord Howe on the land, and his brother, Admiral
Howe, on the sea were in joint command.
[Illustration: SECTION OF MAP OF BROOKLYN, 1776.]
The patriot forces had carefully entrenched a line of defensive works,
laid out by General Nathaniel Greene. The good judgment with which these
forts were placed was attested by the deliberate adoption of almost the
same line of redoubts and forts in the subsequent defences of Brooklyn by
the engineers in the campaign of 1814, when Brooklyn was again prepared
to resist British attack.
The fortifications of Brooklyn in 1776 extended in an irregular line
from Fort Defiance at Red Hook opposite Governor’s Island across to Fort
Box on Bergen’s Hill near the corner of Court Street and First Place. At
the junction of Clinton and Atlantic Streets, or a little easterly, was
a steep conical hill called the Ponkiesburgh, and on top, surmounting
a line of spiral trenches, a redoubt, called Corkscrew Fort. Between
Atlantic, Pacific, Nevins, and Bond Streets was a redoubt mounting five
guns called Fort Greene. Thence the line ran zigzag across the present
Fulton Street, to the west of the junction of Flatbush and Fulton
Avenues, along the hill slope to Fort Putnam, on the eminence now called
Fort Greene Park, a commanding height where were mounted five guns. The
number of guns mounted upon the works from Fort Putnam to Fort Defiance
was thirty-five—mainly eighteen-pounders—an armament in part captured
from Ticonderoga.
[Illustration: BROWER’S MILL, GOWANUS.
THE YELLOW MILL IS SEEN IN THE DISTANCE.]
From this fort the line extended northwesterly to a spring at the verge
of the Wallabout, near the corner of Flushing and Portland Avenues. This
interior line of defence was nearly two miles long. Between these forts
were lines of trenches further defended by trees and sharpened stakes,
forming an abatis, in the construction of which the Continental woodsmen
were always proficient. Within this line of defence was Fort Stirling,
which was back near Columbia Heights.
It is difficult after a century of grading and building to conceive
that an extensive morass then covered nearly all the lands south of the
present Hamilton Avenue, save about the small island height at Red Hook.
Gowanus, with several large ponds raised by Brower’s Mill-dam, flooded
and made impassable nearly all the area extending from Fourth Avenue
to Smith Street. This was crossed by a narrow causeway along Freeke’s
Mill-pond. On the higher lands beyond, extending from Greenwood along
Prospect Park towards East New York, were dense woodlands, that were only
practicable for an advancing army by certain passes or narrow wood-roads.
The principal route from the Narrows to Brooklyn was along the site of
Third Avenue by a good road then known as the Shore Road.
The battle of August 27, 1776, was fought almost entirely outside this
line of fortifications. Knowing that the British forces had been moving
towards Brooklyn from the Narrows, General Putnam had posted troops in
detachments in order to check the hostile columns as they should come
through the wood-roads and passes. It was natural to expect the principal
British advance by the Shore Road, as there they would be at all times
within supporting distance of the fleet.
On August 26th the Hessians under de Heister had occupied Flatbush, and
Lord Cornwallis had reached nearly to Flatlands.
In the forenoon of the 27th, Stirling commanded the patriot right,
extending from the shore near the foot of Twenty-third Street up
Greenwood Heights about to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street.
This position was to repel the expected attack by the route of the Shore
Road. Sullivan commanded the centre, which was an irregular congeries of
militia posted along the summits of hills in Prospect Park and across
the Flatbush Road. Colonel Miles with the 1st Pennsylvania regiment
occupied the hills near the Clove Road to the south of Bedford, with some
Connecticut levies continuing the line still further eastward. Instead
of a co-ordinated supporting line of battle, these dispositions were
intended as little more than a body of skirmishers, too widely strung-out
to be opposed to an actual attack.
The beginning of a movement of British troops at daylight on the Shore
Road, and the evident efforts of the fleet to sail up the Bay, which
the light wind and ebb tide prevented, indicated that the hardest
fighting would be by the right under Stirling. The entire patriot force
inside and without the entrenchments was 5500. The British force was
over 16,000 men. While the troops were facing each other along this
position, a strong flanking column under Sir Henry Clinton, with Lord
Howe the commander-in-chief, had stealthily marched from Flatbush to East
New York, during the night, and had followed a sunken road through the
present Cemetery of the Evergreens, called the Jamaica Pass. This was
about five miles to the east of Sullivan’s position. Before daylight,
at about a mile from the Pass, the column halted and sent forward a
force which captured the American patrol and officers, and soon after a
detachment secured the Pass. The light infantry advanced at the first
appearance of day, and occupied the heights of Bushwick, followed by the
guards with the field-pieces under Lord Percy, and the 49th regiment with
four guns and the baggage brought up the rear.
After breakfasting, the flanking column marched along the turnpike to
Bedford, where they arrived at half-past eight o’clock; thence they
advanced along the rear of Miles’s troops, who were unconscious that they
were being surrounded.
Fearfully outnumbered as they were, the Americans were now attacked in
front by the Hessians advancing from Flatbush under General de Heister,
and in the rear by this flanking column. The result was disastrous.
Sullivan’s command was cut to pieces and himself captured. Terrible
slaughter occurred in the woods and the slopes towards Fourth Avenue. The
only escape not closed by the British was across the mill-dam and marshes
of Gowanus.
Meanwhile Cornwallis was detached to attack Stirling’s line, which
had still held its position on the western side of Prospect Heights.
Desperate indeed was the plight of this devoted remnant of the army,
outnumbered on all sides. General Grant, the British commander in front,
had pressed forward (after having repeatedly been driven back) and
finally surrounded and captured Atlee’s riflemen. Stirling gallantly
determined to attack Cornwallis, and drive him back and so get an
opportunity to cross by Brower’s Mill-dam to the defences of Fort Box.
Here was the heroism of the day. Taking command of Smallwood’s gallant
Maryland regiment and forming in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Tenth
Street, Stirling led these brave young Marylanders three times in a
charge on Cornwallis’s lines. Closing their ranks as they were cut down
by grape and canister, the Maryland onset drove the British back behind
the stone Cortelyou house. Once they forced the gunners from their guns,
but at last, overwhelmed by numbers, the survivors fell back, leaving
256 killed out of 400. It was the sight of this brilliant charge and the
spirited but frightfully unequal contest that caused Washington to wring
his hands in anguish and say: “Good God! what brave fellows I must lose
this day!”
While these Marylanders gallantly sacrificed their lives to hold
Cornwallis in check, a large portion of Stirling’s command crossed the
Gowanus Creek and brought the tattered colors of Smallwood’s regiment
and over twenty prisoners within the lines. The battle was over at noon.
The bodies of the gallant Maryland heroes—the flower of the army—were
afterward buried on a small knoll or island. Third Avenue runs across it,
between Seventh and Eighth Streets, but its site is far below the present
street level.
In estimating the service of these Marylanders, it is to be recalled
that they were young, never before under fire, and were led without
their own colonel, who was detached the day before for a court-martial
in New York. When the charges were made, the troops had already been
several hours fighting, and had to re-form under fire, after it was
plain that the battle was lost. The attacks were up an ascent, against
superior numbers, strong artillery, and an overwhelming body of seasoned
veterans. Even the assault and death of Montgomery at Quebec were not
more gallant. Unlike that hopeless attack, the Marylanders accomplished
their purpose by their sacrifice, and stopped the advance of Cornwallis.
The brilliancy, dash, and steady persistence of this charge have not been
properly recognized.
After the repulse of the patriot army, the battle ceased. The prudence
of Lord Howe would not permit the English army to move upon the
entrenchments. Bunker Hill with its terrible memories was too recent.
The next day, the 28th, Washington reinforced the Brooklyn troops,
increasing their number to 9000. Among them were Colonel Glover’s
battalion of fishermen and sailors from Salem and Marblehead. On that
day heavy rain prevented an attack. In the afternoon the British began
regular siege approaches towards Fort Putnam by a trench starting from
the present Clinton Avenue near the corner of De Kalb Avenue.
A council of war decided on evacuation. Even in this extremity Washington
caused an elaborate statement of reasons to be drawn up as the grounds
of his action. That night, aided by the dense fog, the entire body
were rowed over by Colonel Glover’s Marblehead boatmen. The skill and
admirable mastery of detail in this retreat were Washington’s. For many
hours he sat on his horse at the ferry, patiently superintending the
embarkation. At least on one occasion he had to check a rush of impetuous
and alarmed men from crowding into the boats. Finally with the last
crew he embarked. The retreat of the entire force from Long Island was
safely effected. At four o’clock only empty trenches were revealed to the
invaders.
In Prospect Park is a monument to the heroism of this gallant Maryland
regiment. At different streets are memorial tablets to mark the lines of
defence. Perhaps some day a statue of Washington, near the old ferry,
will mark the spot where his prudence and skill saved the American Army.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO MARYLAND’S “400.”]
During the British occupation the noble forests of Brooklyn were
destroyed. One may search in vain for any oaks or elms about the City
that are really ancient.
The mention of the Wallabout and the present site of the Navy Yard recall
some of the most painful memories of our history—the horrors of the
prison-ships. Few indeed are the Revolutionary families that have not
had deep sorrows connected with the ships _Whitby_, _Good Hope_, _Old
Jersey_, _John_, _Falmouth_, and other hulks, where the martyrs ended
their severe captivity. The bodies of the victims—having been removed
from time to time—are now, it is hoped, in their final resting-place on
the westerly front of Fort Greene Park opposite the Plaza. As yet no
monument, not even an inscription, marks the spot where were reverently
laid the bones of 11,500 martyrs to American liberty.
[Illustration: NAVY YARD. IN FOREGROUND 5.5-INCH B.-L. GUN, WITH MOUNT
AND SHIELD, TAKEN FROM SPANISH CRUISER “VIZCAYA” AFTER DESTRUCTION OF
SPANISH FLEET JULY 3, 1898, ALSO SUBMARINE MINE FROM GUANTANAMO.]
The Navy Yard, starting in 1824, has become the foremost in the
country. Here are gathered trophies of the Nation’s battles on many
seas. In a little enclosure near the Commandant’s office, are grouped
captured ordnance, with a howitzer that did service under Hull on the
_Constitution_. Trophies from the Spanish war have lately been added to
this collection. Here are the guns taken from the burnt and shattered
_Almirante Oquendo_ and _Vizcaya_, and by them is mounted a submarine
contact mine from the defences of Guantanamo, which the _Texas_ broke
adrift without exploding the deadly contents. Not far away was built
the ill-fated battleship _Maine_. In these docks were outfitted many
of the fleet that fought the battle of Santiago. In the Spanish war,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard was where most of the yachts and merchant
steamers, purchased in emergency, were converted into cruisers. Under
Naval Constructor Bowles, the unparalleled record was made in 1898 of
thirty-four vessels thus converted and fitted out for service in the
auxiliary navy in ninety-three days!
At the southern shore of the enlarged Brooklyn are the forts and
batteries defending this part of Long Island. Under the modern defences
of Fort Hamilton, still is preserved Fort Lafayette, an island structure
of masonry, valueless for war, but ever to be kept for its associations.
Built in 1812 to defend the Narrows, its name was changed at the time of
Lafayette’s return in 1824. In 1861, it was used to imprison those from
Maryland and the border States, whose loyalty the Federal Administration
distrusted. When the Judges of Brooklyn issued writs of _habeas corpus_
to bring up these political suspects, and inquire into the justice of
their captivity, the remedy was to hurry the prisoners to Fort Warren in
Boston Harbor, beyond the reach of the process of New York courts.
[Illustration: FORT LAFAYETTE, N. Y. NARROWS.]
Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held
prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed
for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton,
he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine
days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges,
or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him
and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment.
[Illustration: BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM.]
The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its
armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at
the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an
impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille.
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]
On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the
Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will
lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York.
The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience
have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government
of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater
city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under
Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the
ideal of other municipalities.
The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides
the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions
distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education.
The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial
arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But
the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform
departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is
destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular
culture in cities.
The regard of Brooklyn for the Church and the influence of the clergy on
the life of Brooklyn are proverbial. To recall the names of Brooklyn’s
clergy is to mention many leaders of the American pulpit. Not a little
of their inspiration has come from the influence and history of Brooklyn
itself. In its growth from village to city, and then to borough, it has
developed along the lines of equality of social opportunity, and thus
unconsciously has been reaping the fruits of the lives and examples of
its Dutch founders.
[Illustration: SEAL OF BROOKLYN.]
[Illustration]
PRINCETON
PLANTING AND TILLING
BY WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Princeton is by no means one of the oldest settlements in the State of
New Jersey, and yet it has a history of more than two centuries, the
first homestead having been established there in 1682. Although situated
midway, or nearly so, between two of the largest Colonial towns, and
nearly equidistant from the head of navigation on two important streams,
the Raritan and the Delaware, it remained a quiet and unimportant
hamlet for over half a century. Most of the travel between New York and
Philadelphia went by way of Perth Amboy and Camden; there was little to
interrupt the humble labors of the settlers in clearing the forest and
tilling the soil.
Yet the roll-call of Princeton’s pioneers reveals names which are now
synonymous with patriotism and famous wherever American history is
studied: Stockton, Paterson, Boudinot, Randolph, and others almost as
renowned. Their instinctive Americanism is first recorded in a successful
protest to the provincial authorities against the quartering of British
troops in their humble homes during the French and Indian War.
October 22, 1746, the College of New Jersey was chartered by Governor
Hamilton, an act notable in American history because the first of its
kind performed without authorization from England or the consent even of
the provincial legislature. The institution was opened under President
Dickinson in May, 1747, at Elizabethtown. After his death, which
occurred in October of the same year, the few students were transferred
to Newark and put under the care of the Rev. Aaron Burr, one of the
twelve trustees. On the fourteenth of the following September, Jonathan
Belcher, just appointed governor, granted a new charter fuller and more
formal than the first. His interest in the college was from the outset
very great, and his opinion, already formed, that Princeton was the
most desirable spot for its permanent site ultimately prevailed, the
citizens of the hamlet proving more active and liberal than those of
New Brunswick, already a good-sized town, to which likewise terms were
proposed “for fixing the college in that place.”
[Illustration: “THE LINE OF HISTORIC CATALPAS.”]