English regiments left in reserve at Princeton were under way betimes
to join Cornwallis at Trenton. One of these under Colonel Mawhood, with
three companies of horse, had already crossed Stony Brook and had climbed
the hill beyond, before they descried Mercer following the road in the
valley below; the other was half a mile behind, north of the stream.
Mawhood quickly turned back and, uniting the two, engaged Mercer. The
Americans were armed with rifles which had no bayonets, and although
nearly equal in number to the enemy they were first slowly then rapidly
driven up the hill to the ridge south of the King’s Highway and east of
the Quaker road. They stood firm before the firing of the English, but
yielded when the enemy charged bayonets. In this encounter Mercer was
severely wounded and left for dead. Many other officers were likewise
wounded as they hung back, striving to rally the flying troops.
Washington, hearing the firing, stopped immediately and, leaving the
rest of his column to follow their line of march, put himself at the
head of the Pennsylvania volunteers and wheeled. Summoning two pieces of
artillery he turned to join the retreating forces of Mercer. The British
reached the crest of the hill in pursuit before they saw Washington’s
column. The sight brought them to a halt, and while they formed their
artillery came up. It seemed to Washington a most critical moment. In an
instant Mercer’s command was fused with his own men, and placing himself
well out before the line he gave the order to advance. There was no
halt until the Commander himself was within thirty yards of the foe; at
that instant both lines volleyed simultaneously. The fire was hasty and
ineffective. Washington, as if by a miracle, was unscathed. As the smoke
blew away, an American brigade came in under Hitchcock, while Hand with
his riflemen attacked the British flank. In a few moments Mawhood gave
up the fight; his troops, after a few brave efforts, broke and retreated
over the hill up the valley of Stony Brook. The bridge was then destroyed.
Meantime the head of the American column had reached the outskirts of
Princeton. There, on the edge of the ravine now known as Springdale, was
posted still a third British force composed of soldiers from the 40th
and 55th Line. The Americans, with Stark at their head, attacked and
drove them back as far as Nassau Hall, into which the fugitives hastily
threw themselves. From the windows scattered remnants of their regiments
could be seen fleeing through fields and byways toward New Brunswick. The
American artillery began to play on the walls of the building; one ball,
it is said, crashed through the roof and tore from its frame the portrait
of George II., hanging in the Prayer Hall; another is still imbedded in
the venerable walls. A Princeton militiaman, with the assistance of his
neighbors, finally burst the door and the little garrison surrendered.
When Donop retreated from Bordentown to Princeton after the battle of
Trenton, he threw up an arrow-head breastwork at the point not far from
where Mercer and Stockton Streets now join; on this still lay a cannon
of the size known as a thirty-two pounder, the carriage of which was
dismantled. It was early morning when Cornwallis became aware that his
expected battle would not be fought at Trenton; the roar of artillery
gave him the terrible assurance that the blow had been struck on his
weakened flank,—that his precious stores at New Brunswick were in
danger. Swiftly he issued the necessary orders and appeared at the west
end of the town on the King’s Highway, just as Washington was leaving
Princeton, his van having been delayed in crossing Stony Brook. The
citizens had loaded the gun in the breastwork and on the approach of the
intruders they fired it. This utterly deceived the English generals, for
they thought themselves facing a well-manned battery. It was some time,
tradition says an hour, before they were undeceived and in that precious
interval Washington collected his army and marched away. His forces were
too weak to risk the venture of seizing New Brunswick, even temporarily;
accordingly he turned northwestward and reached Morristown in safety.
There and at Middlebrook his headquarters practically remained for the
rest of the war. The English were content to secure New Brunswick.
In the battle of Princeton there were engaged somewhat under two
thousand men on each side. The actual fighting lasted less than half an
hour. We lost very few men—so few that the number cannot be accurately
reckoned—possibly thirty; but we lost a brave general, Hugh Mercer, a
colonel, a major, and three captains. The English soldiers fought with
unsurpassed gallantry. They lost two hundred killed and two hundred and
fifty captured, but no officers of distinction. It was not, therefore,
a big fight, but it was none the less a great and decisive battle.
How important Washington felt it to be, is attested by his personal
exposure of himself. How decisive the great military critics have
considered it, is shown by the fact that the campaign of which it was the
finishing stroke is held by them to have been typical of his genius as
a strategist. The two affairs of Trenton and Princeton are in the short
histories of the Revolution generally reckoned together. And naturally
so, since they occurred so near to one another in time and place. But,
strategically and tactically examined, the battle of Trenton made good
Washington’s position behind the Delaware; the battle of Princeton
secured New Jersey and the Middle States.
After the preliminary actions which took place in New England the
remainder of the Revolution falls into three portions—the struggle for
the Hudson, to secure communication between New England and the Middle
States; the struggle for the Delaware, to secure communication between
the Middle States and the South; and thirdly, the effort to regain the
South. After the battle of Princeton, Washington was able to establish a
line from Amboy around by the west and south to Morristown; New England,
the Middle and Southern States were in communication with each other and
free. As a result of the first campaign by a numerous and well-equipped
Anglo-German army the English held nothing but Newport in Rhode Island
and New York City, with posts at King’s Bridge on the north and at New
Brunswick on the south. The proof was finally secured that Washington
with a permanent army such as the Colonies might, unassisted, have
furnished him, would have been a match for any land force the English
could have transported to America.
For the remaining years of the war Princeton was held by the Americans.
Both the Legislature of the State and the Council of Safety held their
meetings within its precincts; for a time Putnam was in command of the
little garrison, for a time Sullivan. Early in 1781 thirteen hundred
mutinous Pennsylvanians of Washington’s army marched away from Morristown
and came in a body to Princeton. They were met by emissaries from Clinton
who strove to entice them from their allegiance. But, though mutinous,
they were not traitors, for they seized the British emissaries and
handed them over to General Wayne to be treated as spies. A committee
of Congress appeared and made such arrangements as pacified them. In
the autumn of the same year the victory of Yorktown was celebrated with
illuminations and general rejoicings. The College was again in session
with forty students and local prosperity was restored. In 1782 there was
held a meeting to support a continuance of the war.
[Illustration: NASSAU HALL.]
The Revolutionary epoch was fitly brought to a close by a meeting of
Congress in Nassau Hall. On June 20, 1783, three hundred Pennsylvania
soldiers who were discontented with the terms of their discharge marched
from Lancaster to Philadelphia and beset the doors of Congress, holding
that assembly imprisoned for three hours under threat of violence if
their wrongs were not redressed. The legislators resolved to adjourn
to Princeton. They were made heartily welcome, the college halls were
put at their disposal, and the houses of the citizens were hospitably
opened for their entertainment. Their sessions were held regularly in the
College library for over four months, until the fourth of November, when
they adjourned to meet at Annapolis three weeks later. Washington was
in Princeton twice during this time: once at commencement in September,
when he made a present of fifty guineas to the trustees—a sum they spent
for the portrait by Peale which now hangs in Nassau Hall, filling, it
is said, the very frame from which that of George II. was shot away
during the battle. The second time he came in October, at the request of
Boudinot, President of Congress, and a trustee of the College, to give
advice concerning such weighty matters as the organization of a standing
army to defend the frontiers, of a militia to maintain internal order,
and of the military school. The Commander-in-Chief was received in solemn
session and congratulated by the President on the success of the war. He
replied in fitting terms. According to tradition he occupied while in
attendance on Congress a room in a house now replaced by the handsome
Pyne dormitory on the corner of Witherspoon and Nassau Streets, but his
residence was the colonial mansion three miles away on the hill above the
town of Rocky Hill which has been preserved as a historical monument and
revolutionary museum by the liberality of Mrs. Josephine Swann. It was
from this place that he issued his famous farewell address to the army.
But the greatest occasion in Princeton’s history was on the thirty-first
of the same month. Congress had assembled in the Prayer Hall to receive
in solemn audience the minister plenipotentiary from the Netherlands.
There were present, besides the members, Washington, Morris, the
superintendent of finance, Luzerne, the French envoy, and many other
men of eminence. The company had just assembled when news came that
the Treaty of Peace had been signed at Versailles. Many brilliant and
beautiful women were present, and their unchecked delight doubled the
enthusiasm of all. The reception was the most splendid public function
thus far held by the now independent republic. On the twenty-fifth of
November the British evacuated New York. Washington left Princeton to
attend the ceremony, and afterward journeyed by Annapolis to his home at
Mt. Vernon. He believed that, his military career being concluded, he was
to spend the rest of his days as a private gentleman.
Providence had ordained otherwise. He had carried the difficult, strange
and desultory War of the Revolution to a successful end; he had, by
wise counsel and firmness, averted the dangers of a civil war which
seemed imminent, so far as he could judge from the temper of those about
his headquarters at Newburgh. Once more he was to enter the arena of
embittered strife, but in a conflict political and not military. Three
of the five great actions in which he was personally present during
the Revolution were fought on Jersey soil; his next leadership was
displayed in a contest waged in Philadelphia, but largely by Jerseymen
or Princetonians. Princeton’s place in American history can not be
understood without consideration of the Constitutional Convention, where
the passions of localism, separatism and sectional prejudice broke
forth afresh. The assembly contained many wise and far-seeing men.
Of its fifty-five members, thirty-two were men of academic training.
There were one each from London, Oxford, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and
five had been connected with the checkered fortunes of William and
Mary. The University of Pennsylvania sent one, Columbia two, Harvard
three, Yale four and Princeton nine. The most serious dissension, as is
well known, was concerning the relative importance of large and small
States in legislation. The Virginia, or large-States plan, was for two
houses, basing representation in both on population. It was essentially
the work of James Madison, a pupil of Witherspoon. The Jersey, or
small-State, plan was for one house, wherein each State should have
equal representation. It was the cherished idea of Paterson, another
Princetonian. Over these two schemes the battle waged fiercely until it
seemed that even Washington, the presiding officer, could not command
peace or force a compromise, and that the convention was on the verge
of dissolution. Connecticut had ever been accustomed to two houses—one
representing the people, one the towns. It was the compromise suggested
on this analogy by Sherman and Ellsworth, and urged by them, with the
assistance of Davie from Georgia, which finally prevailed. Ellsworth and
Davie were both Princetonians. Madison joined hands with Washington in
the successful struggle for the acceptance of the new Constitution in
Virginia—both Ellsworth and Paterson, their end attained, became the most
ardent Federalists.
The history of Princeton during this century has of course not been
so dramatic as it was in the last, but the town and neighborhood have
secured the permanent influence foreshadowed by its Revolutionary
record. They shared in the control of State and nation, they gave their
sons freely to the service of the country in each of the three wars
since fought. But of course the story of Princeton is, in the main, the
story of the University. Reopening its doors under Witherspoon with
about forty students, its graduating class as early as 1806 numbered
fifty-four, and thence to the outbreak of the Civil War it enjoyed
almost unbroken prosperity under four presidents, Samuel Stanhope Smith,
Ashbel Green, James Carnahan and John Maclean. The first care of its
friends was to provide for thorough training in science, so that it has
the honor of having had the first American professor of chemistry. For
a time it likewise had a professor of theology; but the founding of the
Theological Seminary in 1812 and its permanent location in Princeton
the following year committed that branch of learning to an institution
which has since become one of the most important in the country. From
time to time new buildings were added to both College and Seminary as
necessity required. How stern the college discipline was is shown by the
fact that at intervals, fortunately rare, students were sent to their
homes in numbers scarcely credible in this quieter age; on one occasion
a hundred and twenty-five out of something over two hundred. In 1824
Lafayette graciously accepted the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the
authorities while passing from New York to Washington. In 1832 Joseph
Henry was made professor of natural philosophy, a chair he held with the
highest distinction, for it was in his Princeton laboratory that he made
his epochal discoveries in electricity, stepping-stones to the revolution
of the world by its use; in 1848 he was made director of the Smithsonian
Institute. In 1846 was organized a Law School; its three professors were
men of the highest distinction, but the project was premature. In 1855
flames destroyed all but the walls of Nassau Hall, whereupon it was
speedily remodelled as it still stands; the variation, slight as it was
from the original, appears to have been in the interest of economy rather
than beauty.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT JAMES McCOSH.]
The only serious check in Princeton’s prosperity was caused by the
Civil War. Though a large proportion of the students had always come
from the Southern States, the rest were enthusiastic in their Northern
sympathies, and the national flag was hoisted by them over Nassau Hall
in April, 1861. The minority tore it down, but it was promptly restored
to its place by a gallant citizen of the town, who in climbing to the
apex of the cupola twisted the shaft of the weather-vane and fixed the
arrow with its head to the north. Thus it remained until conciliation
was complete a few years since (1896), when the pivot was repaired
so that the historic index may point in all directions at the will of
the winds. The withdrawal of the Southern students left the numbers of
the ever-loyal University at a low ebb, and it was not until after the
accession of James McCosh to the presidency that the new clientage which
has so munificently supported him and his successor was secured. It is
also gratifying to note that the sons of the old Princeton Confederates
are returning in ever greater numbers. The presidencies of Dr. McCosh
and Dr. Patton are too near to belong to history. The evidences of the
enormous strides made in material equipment are on every hand: splendid
and beautiful buildings, professors of distinction in great numbers, and
a body of students numbering, along with those of the Seminary, about
fifteen hundred. Near by is the famous Lawrenceville School, itself an
epochal institution in the history of our secondary training. Wherever
men converse of science, literature or art, the names of Princeton’s
sons must be considered; but her chiefest glory thus far has been in her
contributions to political and educational life. Representative of a
definite theory and practice in her sphere, she breeds men in abundance
to uphold her banner in the face of all assaults.
Time, place and the men—these are the factors of history; the first
and the last vanish, the scenes alone remain. If history is to be made
real, if we are to know in the concrete, from the experience of the men
and women who have left the stage, what alone is possible for ourselves
and our race, we do well to see and ponder the places which knew those
who have gone before. Princeton possesses, in Nassau Hall, a focus of
patriotism—a cradle of liberty. In her battle-field, the spot where
culminated one of the greatest campaigns of one of the greatest of
generals; and in her sons one sees the triumph of the moral forces which
combine in true greatness. The lesson to be learned from Princeton’s
historic scenes should be that intellect and not numbers controls the
world; that ideas and not force overmaster bigness; that truth and right,
supported by strong purpose and high principle, prevail in the end.
[Illustration: SEAL OF PRINCETON.]
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
THE CITY PENN FOUNDED AND TO WHICH FRANKLIN GAVE DISTINCTION
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS
Cities are of nature. Their long life flows in ways she has made longer
than the changing rule of which they are part. Nations and boundaries are
of man and his laws. Artificial creations all. Cities and their sites are
of the same forces as form the rivers and ports, the passes and pathways
on which they stand and last as long. Rome outlives its empire, and
Damascus the shock of massacre from Chedorlaomer to Timur. The cities
of Europe are still where they were twenty centuries ago. The civil
structure into which they fit has changed until nothing is left of what
once was. These things are missed in the general. They come to be seen in
the particular.
Philadelphia stands, and necessarily stands on the straight, ruler-like
“Falls line” which passes through every city site from New York to
Montgomery, because this prodigious slip changes river navigation
wherever it crosses a river valley. Where marine navigation stopped
to-day and then, Penn put his city, its site a peninsula about which
two rivers joined, a rich alluvial plain, covered with glacial clay,
with schistose rocks cropping out across it, the palæozoic marble of
the Atlantic coast hard by, and a strip of green serpentine crossing
the country from the highest points in the future limits of the city to
Chester County, its first granary and feeding ground. These things—the
half-sunken Lower Delaware River spreading into Delaware Bay, the term of
navigation at the junction of two rivers, and the abrupt approach to the
sea of a formation elsewhere miles from the ocean—make Philadelphia all
it is in outer look, a flat city built of its own clay, garnished with
its own marble, a seaport knowing the sea only in its rivers.
[Illustration: READING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
FROM AN OLD FRENCH PRINT.]
In this inland port, as you float in either river, seafaring masts and
main rigging, black and tarred, silhouette against the tender green of
growing fields. The early houses were brick of the glacier’s leaving,
matching London in color; for both are ground out of the same earth mill.
Its early stone houses were of the narrow contorted gray schists, and
marble quarries had been opened, exhausted and closed to trim the brick
before the Revolution. Later these were varied by the green serpentine, a
hideous, dull color, the red sandstone of the fertile inland plains, and
at last, as railroads made it easy to seek a door-step 1,000 miles away,
the marble of Vermont built the City Hall, the granites of Cape Ann the
Post Office, and Ohio ashlar a growing number of private homes, matching
London once more as a close congener of the Portland stone Penn saw
builded into St. Paul’s. The outer resemblance to London noted by Matthew
Arnold and many an one besides, rests, as such things do, on concrete
fact.
William Penn in 1682 came into no empty Western world. The Dutch and
Swede had been entering these waters for near a century. They were
charted, tracked and known. Uneasy frontier alarms were over. Farms
dotted all the region. For the first time, in _Fox’s Journal_, a
decade before Penn, we catch the accent and atmosphere of the American
settler living lonely and safe. He was as yet neither of these in New
England, New York or the Southern States. The Swedes had left their
work in Swedes’ Church, with its timber, roof and tower recalling North
Europe, as its carved angels do the wood sculpture of the pine forest.
There was a tavern, the Blue Anchor, possibly (not probably) still
standing, waiting for Penn at the little boat harbor, now Dock Street.
A thriving commerce of a ship a week was already busying the river with
its boats. On the crest of the low hill that rose from this boat-haven,
Penn planted the house which now stands in the Park. On this crest ran
Market, and where the land began to dip to the Schuylkill, Broad Street
crossed, the first streets to be run by the prospector and real-estate
speculator, on a plan by whose geometrical extensions both are still
guided, in these days of new boulevards in old cities the oldest and
least changed of any city plan in civilized lands. On this background of
growing farms and frequent vessels, Penn sketched the Commonwealth. He
and his were fortunate in his bringings. He came from Central England,
that central mark and beach line from which so large a portion of the
worthier of the race spring. He drew his settlers in the north of the
kingdom from the line of Fox’s trips, whose Cumberland and Lancashire
converts dotted the region about Philadelphia with names familiar in
his _Journal_, Lancaster, Swarthmore, Merion, and Haverford. All South
England had been stirred by Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Revolution,
the work of the South as the Commonwealth had its leader in the North.
Philadelphia, therefore, drew chiefly from Saxon, and less from Danish or
Celtic England, than had New England. Its leaders came from the thrifty
business classes of London, “city” people, instead of from the gentry
as had Virginia’s. Ten years later, Louis was harrying the Palatinate,
and a German population, skilled in the mechanic arts, came and gave
Philadelphia its manufacturing foundation. Penn was pietistic, his mother
was from Holland, and this gave him continental acquaintance and sympathy
with continental dissent, which later brought the Moravians and gave the
colony relations with Central Europe, an early and prolific press, and
patience with political oppression, a dubious virtue still surviving.
[Illustration: THOMAS PENN.
FROM A PAINTING OWNED BY THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND
COPIED BY M. I. NAYLOR FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF MAJOR DUGALD
STUART.]
[Illustration: SECOND STREET, PHILADELPHIA, SHOWING THE OLD COURTHOUSE ON
THE LEFT.
FROM AN ENGRAVING MADE BY BIRCH & SON.]