LEE AT PEEKSKILL—STANCH ADHERENCE OF HEATH TO ORDERS—LEE CROSSES THE
HUDSON—WASHINGTON AT TRENTON—LEE AT THE HEELS OF THE ENEMY—HIS
SPECULATIONS ON MILITARY GREATNESS—FORCED MARCH OF CORNWALLIS—WASHINGTON
CROSSES THE DELAWARE—PUTNAM IN COMMAND AT PHILADELPHIA—BAFFLING LETTERS
OF LEE—HOPES TO RECONQUER THE JERSEYS—GATES ON THE MARCH—LEE QUARTERED
AT BASKINGRIDGE—SURPRISED AND CAPTURED—SPECULATIONS ON HIS CONDUCT.
Notwithstanding the repeated and pressing orders and entreaties of the
commander-in-chief, Lee did not reach Peekskill until the 30th of
November. In a letter of that date to Washington, who had complained of
his delay, he simply alleged difficulties, which he would explain _when
both had leisure_. His scheme to entrap Rogers, the renegade, had
failed; the old Indian hunter had been too much on the alert; he
boasted, however, to have rendered more service by his delay, than he
would have done had he moved sooner. His forces were thereby augmented,
so that he expected to enter the Jerseys with four thousand firm and
willing men, who would make _a very important diversion_.
“The day after to-morrow,” added he, “we shall pass the river, when I
should be glad to receive your instructions; but I could wish you would
bind me as little as possible; not from any opinion, I do assure you, of
my own parts, but from a persuasion that detached generals cannot have
too great latitude, unless they are very incompetent indeed.”
Lee had calculated upon meeting no further difficulty in obtaining men
from Heath. He rode to that general’s quarters in the evening, and was
invited by him to alight and take tea. On entering the house, Lee took
Heath aside, and alluding to his former refusal to supply troops as
being inconsistent with the orders of the commander-in-chief, “in point
of _law_,” said he, “you are right, but in point of policy I think you
are wrong. I am going into the Jerseys for the salvation of America; I
wish to take with me a larger force than I now have, and request you to
order two thousand of your men to march with me.”
Heath answered that he could not spare that number. He was then asked to
order one thousand; to which he replied, that the business might be as
well brought to a point at once—that not a single man should march from
the post by _his_ order. “Then,” exclaimed Lee, “I will order them
myself.” “That makes a wide difference,” rejoined Heath. “You are my
senior, but I have received positive written instructions from him who
is superior to us both, and I will not _myself_ break those orders.” In
proof of his words, Heath produced the recent letter received from
Washington, repeating his former orders that no troops should be removed
from that post. Lee glanced over the letter. “The commander-in-chief is
now at a distance, and does not know what is necessary here so well as I
do.” He asked a sight of the return book of the division. It was brought
by Major Huntington, the deputy adjutant-general. Lee ran his eye over
it, and chose two regiments. “You will order them to march early
to-morrow morning to join me,” said he to the major. Heath, ruffling
with the pride of military law, turned to the major with an air of
authority. “Issue such orders at your peril!” exclaimed he: then
addressing Lee, “Sir,” said he, “if you come to this post, and mean to
issue orders here which will break the positive ones I have received, I
pray you do it completely yourself, and through your own deputy
adjutant-general who is present, and not draw me or any of my family in
as partners in the guilt.”
“It is right,” said Lee; “Colonel Scammel, do you issue the order.” It
was done accordingly; but Heath’s punctilious scruples were not yet
satisfied. “I have one more request to make, sir,” said he to Lee, “and
that is, that you will be pleased to give me a certificate that you
_exercise command_ at this post, and order from it these regiments.”
Lee hesitated to comply, but George Clinton, who was present, told him
he could not refuse a request so reasonable. He accordingly wrote, “For
the satisfaction of General Heath, and at his request, I do certify that
I am commanding officer, at this present writing, in this post, and that
I have, in that capacity, ordered Prescott’s and Wyllis’s regiments to
march.”
Heath’s military punctilio was satisfied, and he smoothed his ruffled
plumes. Early the next morning the regiments moved from their
cantonments ready to embark, when Lee again rode up to his door. “Upon
further consideration,” said he, “I have concluded not to take the two
regiments with me—you may order them to return to their former post.”
“This conduct of General Lee,” adds Heath in his memoirs, “appeared not
a little extraordinary, and one is almost at a loss to account for it.
He had been a soldier from his youth, had a perfect knowledge of service
in all its branches, but was rather obstinate in his temper, and could
scarcely brook being crossed in any thing in the line of his
profession.”[142]
It was not until the 4th of December, that Lee crossed the Hudson and
began a laggard march, though aware of the imminent peril of Washington
and his army—how different from the celerity of his movements in his
expedition to the South!
In the meantime, Washington, who was at Trenton, had profited by a delay
of the enemy at Brunswick, and removed most of the stores and baggage of
the army across the Delaware; and, being reinforced by fifteen hundred
of the Pennsylvania militia, procured by Mifflin, prepared to face
about, and march back to Princeton with such of his troops as were fit
for service, there to be governed by circumstances, and the movements of
General Lee. Accordingly, on the 5th of December he sent about twelve
hundred men in the advance, to reinforce Lord Stirling, and the next day
set off himself with the residue.
“The general has gone forward to Princeton,” writes Colonel Reed, “where
there are about three thousand men, with which, I fear, he will not be
able to make any stand.”[143]
While on the march, Washington received a letter from Greene, who was at
Princeton, informing him of a report that Lee was “at the heels of the
enemy.” “I should think,” adds Greene, “he had better keep on the flanks
than the rear, unless it were possible to concert an attack at the same
instant of time in front and rear. * * * I think General Lee must be
confined within the lines of some general plan, or else his operations
will be independent of yours. His own troops, General St. Clair’s, and
the militia, must form a respectable army.”
Lee had no idea of conforming to a general plan; he had an independent
plan of his own, and was at that moment at Pompton, indulging
speculations on military greatness, and the lamentable want of it in his
American contemporaries. In a letter from that place to Governor Cooke
of Rhode Island, he imparts his notions on the subject. “Theory joined
to practice, or a heaven-born genius, can alone constitute a general. As
to the latter, God Almighty indulges the modern world very rarely with
the spectacle; and I do not know, from what I have seen, that he has
been more profuse of this ethereal spirit to the Americans, than to
other nations.”
While Lee was thus loitering and speculating, Cornwallis, knowing how
far he was in the rear, and how weak was the situation of Washington’s
army, and being himself strongly reinforced, made a forced march from
Brunswick, and was within two miles of Princeton. Stirling, to avoid
being surrounded, immediately set out with two brigades for Trenton.
Washington, too, receiving intelligence by express of these movements,
hastened back to that place, and caused boats to be collected from all
quarters, and the stores and troops transported across the Delaware. He
himself crossed with the rear-guard on Sunday morning, and took up his
quarters about a mile from the river; causing the boats to be destroyed,
and troops to be posted opposite the fords. He was conscious, however,
as he said, that with his small force he could make no great opposition,
should the enemy bring boats with them. Fortunately they did not come
thus provided.
The rear-guard, says an American account, had barely crossed the river,
when Lord Cornwallis “came marching down with all the pomp of war, in
great expectation of getting boats, and immediately pursuing.” Not one
was to be had there or elsewhere; for Washington had caused the boats,
for an extent of seventy miles up and down the river, to be secured on
the right bank. His lordship was effectually brought to a stand. He made
some moves with two columns, as if he would cross the Delaware above and
below, either to push on to Philadelphia, or to entrap Washington in the
acute angle made by the bend of the river opposite Bordentown. An able
disposition of American troops along the upper part of the river, and of
a number of galleys below, discouraged any attempt of the kind.
Cornwallis, therefore, gave up the pursuit, distributed the German
troops in cantonments along the left bank of the river, and stationed
his main force at Brunswick, trusting to be able before long to cross
the Delaware on the ice.
On the 8th, Washington wrote to the President of Congress: “There is not
a moment’s time to be lost in assembling such a force as can be
collected, as the object of the enemy cannot now be doubted in the
smallest degree. Indeed, I shall be out in my conjecture, for it is only
conjecture, if the late embarkation at New York is not for Delaware
River, to co-operate with the army under General Howe, who, I am
informed from good authority, is with the British troops, and his whole
force upon this route. I have no certain intelligence of General Lee,
although I have sent expresses to him, and lately a Colonel Humpton, to
bring me some accurate accounts of his situation. I last night
despatched another gentleman to him (Major Hoops), desiring he would
hasten his march to the Delaware, on which I would provide boats near a
place called Alexandria, for the transportation of his troops. I cannot
account for the slowness of his march.”
In further letters to Lee, Washington urged the peril of Philadelphia.
“Do come on,” writes he; “your arrival may be fortunate, and, if it can
be effected without delay, it may be the means of preserving a city,
whose loss must prove of the most fatal consequence to the cause of
America.”
Putnam was now detached to take command of Philadelphia, and put it in a
state of defence, and General Mifflin to have charge of the munitions of
war deposited there. By their advice Congress hastily adjourned on the
12th of December, to meet again on the 20th, at Baltimore.
Washington’s whole force at this time, was about five thousand five
hundred men; one thousand of them Jersey militia, fifteen hundred
militia from Philadelphia, and a battalion of five hundred of the German
yeomanry of Pennsylvania. Gates, however, he was informed, was coming on
with seven regiments detached by Schuyler from the Northern department;
reinforced by these, and the troops under Lee, he hoped to be able to
attempt a stroke upon the enemy’s forces, which lay a good deal
scattered, and to all appearances, in a state of security. “A lucky blow
in this quarter,” writes he, “would be fatal to them, and would most
certainly raise the spirits of the people, which are quite sunk by our
late misfortunes.”[144]
While cheering himself with these hopes, and trusting to speedy aid from
Lee, that wayward commander, though nearly three weeks had elapsed since
he had received Washington’s orders and entreaties to join him with all
possible despatch, was no farther on his march than Morristown, in the
Jerseys; where, with militia recruits, his force was about four thousand
men. In a letter written by him on the 8th of December to a committee of
Congress, he says: “If I was not taught to think the army with General
Washington had been considerably reinforced, I should immediately join
him; but as I am assured he is very strong, I should imagine we can make
a better impression by beating up and harassing their detached parties
in their rear, for which purpose, a good post at Chatham seems the best
calculated. It is a happy distance from Newark, Elizabethtown,
Woodbridge and Boundbrook. We shall, I expect, annoy, distract, and
consequently weaken them in a desultory war.”[145]
On the same day he writes from Chatham, in reply to Washington’s letter
by Major Hoops, just received: “I am extremely shocked to hear that your
force is so inadequate to the necessity of your situation, as I had been
taught to think you had been considerably reinforced. Your last letters
proposing a plan of surprises and forced marches, convinced me that
there was no danger of your being obliged to pass the Delaware; in
consequence of which proposals, I have put myself in a position the most
convenient to co-operate with you by attacking their rear. I cannot
persuade myself that Philadelphia is their object at present. * * * It
will be difficult, I am afraid, to join you; but cannot I do you more
service by attacking their rear?”
This letter, sent by a light-horseman, received an instant reply from
Washington. “Philadelphia, beyond all question, is the object of the
enemy’s movements, and nothing less than our utmost exertions will
prevent General Howe from possessing it. The force I have is weak, and
utterly incompetent to that end. I must, therefore, entreat you to push
on with every possible succor you can bring.”[146]
On the 9th, Lee, who was at Chatham, receives information from Heath,
that three of the regiments detached under Gates from the Northern army,
had arrived from Albany at Peekskill. He instantly writes to him to
forward them, without loss of time, to Morristown: “I am in hopes,” adds
he, “to reconquer (if I may so express myself) the Jerseys. It was
really in the hands of the enemy before my arrival.”
On the 11th, Lee writes to Washington from Morristown, where he says his
troops had been obliged to halt two days for want of shoes. He now
talked of crossing the great Brunswick post-road, and, by a forced
night’s march, making his way to the ferry above Burlington, where boats
should be sent up from Philadelphia to receive him.
“I am much surprised,” writes Washington in reply, “that you should be
in any doubt respecting the route you should take, after the information
you have received upon that head. A large number of boats was procured,
and is still retained at Tinicum, under a strong guard, to facilitate
your passage across the Delaware. I have so frequently mentioned our
situation, and the necessity of your aid, that it is painful for me to
add a word on the subject. * * * Congress have directed Philadelphia to
be defended to the last extremity. The fatal consequences that must
attend its loss, are but too obvious to every one; your arrival may be
the means of saving it.”
In detailing the close of General Lee’s march, so extraordinary for its
tardiness, we shall avail ourselves of the memoir already cited of
General Wilkinson, who was at that time a brigade major, about
twenty-two years of age, and was accompanying General Gates, who had
been detached by Schuyler with seven regiments to reinforce Washington.
Three of these regiments, as we have shown, had descended the Hudson to
Peekskill, and were ordered by Lee to Morristown. Gates had embarked
with the remaining four, and landed with them at Esopus, whence he took
a back route by the Delaware and the Minisink.
On the 11th of December, he was detained by a heavy snow storm, in a
sequestered valley near the Wallpeck in New Jersey. Being cut off from
all information respecting the adverse armies, he detached Major
Wilkinson to seek Washington’s camp, with a letter, stating the force
under his command, and inquiring what route he should take. Wilkinson
crossed the hills on horseback to Sussex court-house, took a guide, and
proceeded down the country. Washington, he soon learnt, had passed the
Delaware several days before; the boats, he was told, had been removed
from the ferries, so that he would find some difficulty in getting over,
but Major-general Lee was at Morristown. Finding such obstacles in his
way to the commander-in-chief, he determined to seek the second in
command, and ask orders from him for General Gates. Lee had decamped
from Morristown on the 12th of December, but had marched no further than
Vealtown, barely eight miles distant. There he left General Sullivan
with the troops, while he took up his quarters three miles off, at a
tavern, at Baskingridge. As there was not a British cantonment within
twenty miles, he took but a small guard for his protection, thinking
himself perfectly secure.
About four o’clock in the morning, Wilkinson arrived at his quarters. He
was presented to the general as he lay in bed, and delivered into his
hands the letter of General Gates. Lee, observing it was addressed to
Washington, declined opening it, until apprised by Wilkinson of its
contents, and the motives of his visit. He then broke the seal, and
recommended Wilkinson to take repose. The latter lay down on his
blanket, before a comfortable fire, among the officers of his suite;
“for we were not encumbered in those days,” says he, “with beds or
baggage.”
Lee, naturally indolent, lingered in bed until eight o’clock. He then
came down in his usual slovenly style, half-dressed, in slippers and
blanket coat, his collar open, and his linen apparently of some days’
wear. After some inquiries about the campaign in the North, he gave
Wilkinson a brief account of the operations of the main army, which he
condemned in strong terms, and in his usual sarcastic way. He wasted the
morning in altercation with some of the militia, particularly the
Connecticut light-horse; “several of whom,” says Wilkinson, “appeared in
large, full-buttoned perukes, and were treated very irreverently. One
wanted forage, another his horse shod, another his pay, a fourth
provisions, &c.; to which the general replied, ’Your wants are numerous;
but you have not mentioned the last,—you want to go home, and shall be
indulged; for d— you, you do no good here.’”
Colonel Scammel, the adjutant-general, called from General Sullivan for
orders concerning the morning’s march. After musing a moment or two, Lee
asked him if he had a manuscript map of the country. It was produced,
and spread upon a table. Wilkinson observed Lee trace with his finger
the route from Vealtown to Pluckamin, thence to Somerset court-house,
and on, by Rocky Hill, to Princeton; he then returned to Pluckamin, and
traced the route in the same manner by Boundbrook to Brunswick, and
after a close inspection carelessly said to Scammel, “Tell General
Sullivan to move down towards Pluckamin; that I will soon be with him.”
This, observes Wilkinson, was off his route to Alexandria on the
Delaware, where he had been ordered to cross, and directly on that
towards Brunswick and Princeton. He was convinced, therefore, that Lee
meditated an attack on the British post at the latter place.
From these various delays they did not sit down to breakfast before ten
o’clock. After breakfast Lee sat writing a reply to General Gates, in
which, as usual, he indulged in sarcastic comments on the
commander-in-chief. “The ingenious manœuvre of Fort Washington,” writes
he, “has completely unhinged the goodly fabric we had been building.
There never was so d—d a stroke; _entre nous_, a certain great man is
most damnably deficient. He has thrown me into a situation where I have
my choice of difficulties: if I stay in this province I risk myself and
army; and if I do not stay, the province is lost for ever. * * * * * As
to what relates to yourself, if you think you can be in time to aid the
general, I would have you by all means go; you will at least save your
army,” &c.[147]
While Lee was writing, Wilkinson was looking out of a window down a
lane, about a hundred yards in length, leading from the house to the
main road. Suddenly a party of British dragoons turned a corner of the
avenue at a full charge. “Here, sir, are the British cavalry!” exclaimed
Wilkinson. “Where?” replied Lee, who had just signed his letter. “Around
the house!”—for they had opened file and surrounded it. “Where is the
guard? d— the guard, why don’t they fire?” Then after a momentary
pause—“Do, sir, see what has become of the guard.”
The guards, alas, unwary as their general, and chilled by the air of a
frosty morning, had stacked their arms, and repaired to the south side
of a house on the opposite side of the road to sun themselves, and were
now chased by the dragoons in different directions. In fact, a tory, who
had visited the general the evening before, to complain of the loss of a
horse taken by the army, having found where Lee was to lodge and
breakfast, had ridden eighteen miles in the night to Brunswick and given
the information, and had piloted back Colonel Harcourt with his
dragoons.[148]
The women of the house would fain have concealed Lee in a bed, but he
rejected the proposition with disdain. Wilkinson, according to his own
account, posted himself in a place where only one person could approach
at a time, and there took his stand, a pistol in each hand, resolved to
shoot the first and second assailant, and then appeal to his sword.
While in this “unpleasant situation,” as he terms it, he heard a voice
declare, “If the general does not surrender in five minutes, I will set
fire to the house!” After a short pause the threat was repeated, with a
solemn oath. Within two minutes he heard it proclaimed, “Here is the
general, he has surrendered.”
There was a shout of triumph, but a great hurry to make sure of the
prize before the army should arrive to the rescue. A trumpet sounded the
recall to the dragoons, who were chasing the scattered guards. The
general, bareheaded, and in his slippers and blanket coat, was mounted
on Wilkinson’s horse, which stood at the door, and the troop clattered
off with their prisoner to Brunswick. In three hours the booming of
cannon in that direction told the exultation of the enemy.[149] They
boasted of having taken the American Palladium; for they considered Lee
the most scientific and experienced of the rebel generals.
On the departure of the troops, Wilkinson, finding the coast clear,
ventured from his stronghold, repaired to the stable, mounted the first
horse he could find, and rode full speed in quest of General Sullivan,
whom he found under march toward Pluckamin. He handed him the letter to
Gates, written by Lee the moment before his capture, and still open.
Sullivan having read it, returned it to Wilkinson, and advised him to
rejoin General Gates without delay: for his own part, being now in
command, he changed his route, and pressed forward to join the
commander-in-chief.
The loss of Lee was a severe shock to the Americans; many of whom, as we
have shown, looked to him as the man who was to rescue them from their
critical, and well-nigh desperate situation. With their regrets,
however, were mingled painful doubts, caused by his delay in obeying the
repeated summons of his commander-in-chief, when the latter was in
peril; and by his exposing himself so unguardedly in the very
neighborhood of the enemy. Some at first suspected that he had done so
designedly, and with collusion; but this was soon disproved by the
indignities attending his capture, and his rigorous treatment
subsequently by the British; who affected to consider him a deserter,
from his having formerly served in their army.
Wilkinson, who was at that time conversant with the cabals of the camp,
and apparently in the confidence of some of the leaders, points out what
he considers the true secret of Lee’s conduct. His military reputation,
originally very high, had been enhanced of late, by its being generally
known that he had been opposed to the occupation of Fort Washington;
while the fall of that fortress and other misfortunes of the campaign,
though beyond the control of the commander-in-chief, had quickened the
discontent which, according to Wilkinson, had been generated against him
at Cambridge, and raised a party against him in Congress. “It was
confidently asserted at the time,” adds he, “but is not worthy of
credit, that a motion had been made in that body tending to supersede
him in the command of the army. In this temper of the times, if General
Lee had anticipated General Washington in cutting the cordon of the
enemy between New York and the Delaware, the commander-in-chief would
probably have been superseded. In this case, Lee would have succeeded
him.”
What an unfortunate change would it have been for the country! Lee was
undoubtedly a man of brilliant talents, shrewd sagacity, and much
knowledge and experience in the art of war; but he was wilful and
uncertain in his temper, self-indulgent in his habits, and an egoist in
warfare; boldly dashing for a soldier’s glory rather than warily acting
for a country’s good. He wanted those great moral qualities which, in
addition to military capacity, inspired such universal confidence in the
wisdom, rectitude and patriotism of Washington, enabling him to direct
and control legislative bodies as well as armies; to harmonize the
jarring passions and jealousies of a wide and imperfect confederacy, and
to cope with the varied exigencies of the Revolution.
The very retreat which Washington had just effected through the Jerseys
bore evidence to his generalship. Thomas Paine, who had accompanied the
army “from Fort Lee to the edge of Pennsylvania,” thus speaks in one of
his writings published at the time: “With a handful of men we sustained
an orderly retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off our
ammunition, all our field-pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and
had four rivers to pass. None can say that our retreat was precipitate,
for we were three weeks in performing it, that the country might have
time to come in. Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained
out until dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp; and had not
some of the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms
through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged.”
And this is his testimony to the moral qualities of the
commander-in-chief, as evinced in this time of perils and hardships.
“Voltaire has remarked, that King William never appeared to full
advantage but in difficulties and in action. The same remark may be made
of General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a natural
firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles; but which,
when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among
those kinds of public blessings which we do not immediately see, that
God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind
that can even flourish upon care.”[150]