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GEORGE WASHINGTON.

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greatly esteemed by him. Colonels Haslet and Potter, Captain Neal of the artillery, Captain Fleming, and five other valuable officers, were also among the slain.

On the return of day-light, Lord Cornwallis discovered that the American army had decamped in the night; and immediately conceived the whole plan. Alarmed at the danger which threatened Brunswick, he marched with the utmost expedition for that place, and was close in the rear of the American army before it could leave Princeton.

The situation of General Washington was again perilous in the extreme. His small army was exhausted with fatigue. His troops had been without sleep, all of them one night, and some of them, two. They were without blankets, many of them were bare-footed and otherwise thinly clad, and were eighteen miles from his place of destination. He was closely pursued by a superior enemy who must necessarily come up with him before he could accomplish his designs on Brunswick. Under these circumstances he abandoned the remaining part of his original plan, and took the road leading up the country to Pluckemin, where his troops were permitted to refresh themselves. Lord Cornwallis continued his march to Brunswick, which he reached in the course of that night.

The sufferings of the American soldiers had been so great from the severity of the season, and the very active service in which they had been engaged; their complaints, especially on the part of the militia, were so loud; their numbers were reducing so fast by returning home, and by sickness; that General Washington found it impracticable to continue offensive operations. He retired to Morristown, in order to put his men under cover, and to give them some repose.

The bold, judicious, and unexpected attacks made at Trenton and Princeton, had a much more extensive influence than would be supposed from a mere estimate of the killed and taken. They saved Philadelphia for the winter; recovered the state of Jersey; and, which was of still more importance, revived the drooping spirits of the people, and gave a perceptible impulse to the recruiting service throughout the United States.

The problem, that a nation can be defended against a permanent force, by temporary armies, by occasional calls of the husbandman from his plough to the field, was completely disproved; and, in demonstrating its fallacy, the independence of America had nearly perished in its cra dle. The utmost efforts were now directed to the creation of an army for the ensuing campaign, as the only solid basis on which the hopes of the patriot could rest. During the retreat through the Jerseys, and while the expectation prevailed that no effectual resistance could be made to

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the British armies, some spirited men indeed were animated to greater and more determined exertions; but this state of things produced a very different effect on the great mass, which can alone furnish the solid force of armies. In the middle states especially, the panic of distrust was perceived. Doubts concerning the issue of the contest became extensive; and the recruiting service proceeded so heavily and slowly as to excite the most anxious solicitude for the future.

The affairs of Trenton and Princeton were magnified into great victories; and were believed by the body of the people to evidence the superiority of their army and of their general. The opinion that they were engaged in a hopeless contest, yielded to a confidence that proper exertions would ensure ultimate success.

This change of opinion was accompanied with an essential change of conduct; and, although the regiments required by congress were not completed, they were made much stronger than was believed to be possible before this happy revolution in the aspect of public affairs.

The firmness of congress throughout the gloomy and trying period which intervened between the loss of fort Washington and the battle of Princeton, gives the members of that time a just claim to the admiration of the world, and to the gratitude of their fellow citizens. Undismayed by impending dangers, they did not, for an instant, admit the idea of surrendering the independence they had declared, and purchasing peace by returning to their colonial situation. As the British army advanced through Jersey, and the consequent insecurity of Philadelphia rendered an adjournment from that place a necessary measure of precaution, their exertions seemed to increase with their difficulties. They sought to remove the despondence which was seizing and paralyzing the public mind, by an address to the states, in which every argument was sug. gested which could rouse them to vigorous action. They made the most strenuous efforts to animate the militia, and impel them to the field, by the agency of those whose popular eloquence best fitted them for such a service.

When reassembled at Baltimore, the place to which they had adjourn1776. ed, their resolutions exhibited no evidence of confusion or disDec. 20. may; and the most judicious efforts were made to repair the mischief produced by past errors.

Declaring that, in the present state of things, the very existence of civil liberty depended on the right execution of military powers, to a vigorous direction of which, distant, numerous, and deliberative bodies were unequal, they authorized General Washington to raise sixteen ad

ditional regiments, and conferred upon him, for six months, almost unlimited powers for the conduct of the war.

Towards the close of 1776, while the tide of fortune was running strongest against them, some few members, distrusting their ability to make a successful resistance, proposed to authorize their commissioners at the court of Versailles to transfer to France the same monopoly of their trade which Great Britain had possessed.* This proposition is stated to have been relinquished, because it was believed that concessions of this kind would impair many arguments which had been used in favour of independence, and disunite the people. It was next proposed to offer a monopoly of certain enumerated articles; but the unequal operation of this measure gave to the proposition a speedy negative. Some proposed offering to France an offensive and defensive league; but this also was rejected. The more enlightened members argued that, though the friendship of small states might be purchased, that of France could not. They alleged that, if she would risk a war with Great Britain by openly espousing their cause, she would not be induced to that measure by the prospect of direct advantages, so much as by a desire to lessen the overgrown power of a dangerous rival.* It was therefore urged that the most certain means of influencing France to interfere, was an assurance that the United States were determined to persevere in refusing to resume their former allegiance. Under the in-, fluence of this better opinion, resolutions were again entered into, directing their commissioners in Europe to give explicit assurances of their determination at all events to maintain their independence. Copies of these resolutions were sent to the principal courts of Europe; and agents were appointed to solicit their friendship to the new formed states. These despatches fell into the hands of the British, and were published by them; a circumstance which promoted the views of congress, who were persuaded that an apprehension of their coming to an accommodation with Great Britain constituted a material objection to the interference of foreign courts, in what was represented as merely a domestic quarrel. A resolution adopted in the deepest distress, to listen to no terms of reunion with their parent state, would, it was believed, convince those who wished for the dismemberment of the British empire, that sound policy required their interference so far as to prevent the conquest of the United States.

* Ramsay.

+ Secret Journals of Congress, vol. ii. p. 38, and post

CHAPTER VII.

American army inoculated.-General Heath moves to Kingsbridge.-Returns to Peekskill.-Skirmishes.-State of the army.-Destruction of stores at Peekskill.At Danbury.-Expedition to Sagg Harbour,-Camp formed at Middlebrook.Sir William Howe moves out to Somerset Court House.-Returns to Amboy.Attempts to cut off the retreat of the American army to Middlebrook.-Lord Cornwallis skirmishes with Lord Stirling.-General Prescot surprised and taken.—The British army embarks.

THE effect of the proclamation published by Lord and General Howe 1777. on taking possession of New Jersey, was, in a great degree, January. counteracted by the conduct of the invading army. Fortunately for the United States, the hope that security was attainable by submission, was soon dissipated. Whatever may have been the exertions of their General to restrain his soldiers, they still considered and treated the inhabitants rather as conquered rebels than returning friends. Indulging in every species of licentiousness, the plunder and destruction of property were among the least offensive of the injuries they inflicted. The persons, not only of the men, but of that sex through which indignities least to be forgiven, and longest to be remembered, are received, were exposed to the most irritating outrage. Nor were these excesses confined to those who had been active in the American cause. lukewarm, and even the loyalists, were the victims of this indiscriminating spirit of rapine and violence.

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The effect of such proceedings on a people whose country had never before been the seat of war, and whose non-resistance had been occasioned solely by the expectation of that security which had been promised as the reward of submission to the royal authority, could not fail to equal the most sanguine hopes of the friends of the revolution. sense of personal wrongs produced a temper which national considerations had proved too weak to excite; and, when the battles of Trenton and Princeton relieved the inhabitants from fears inspired by the presence of their invaders, the great body of the people flew to arms; and numbers who could not be brought into the field to check the advancing enemy, and prevent the ravages which uniformly afflict a country that becomes the seat of war, were prompt in avenging those ravages. Small bodies of militia scoured the country, seized on stragglers, behaved unexceptionably well in several slight skirmishes, and were collecting in such numbers as to threaten the weaker British posts with the fate which had befallen Trenton and Princeton.

To guard against that spirit of enterprise which his adversary had displayed to such advantage, General Howe determined to strengthen his posts by contracting them. The positions taken for the purpose of covering the country were abandoned; and the British force in New Jersey was collected at New Brunswick, on the Raritan, and at Amboy, a small town at the mouth of that river.

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Feeble as was the American army, this movement was not effected without some loss. On the evacuation of Elizabethtown, General Maxwell attacked the British rear, and captured about seventy men with a part of their baggage.

The American troops had been so diminished by the extreme severity of the service, that it was with much difficulty the appearance of an army could be maintained. Fresh militia and volunteers arrived in camp, whose numbers were exaggerated by report. These additions to his small remaining regular force enabled the General to take different positions near the lines of the enemy, to harass him perpetually, restrain his foraging parties, and produce considerable distress in his camp. While, with little more than an imaginary army, General Washington thus harassed and confined his adversary, he came to the hazardous resolution of freeing himself and his troops from the fear of a calamity which he found it impossible to elude, and which had proved more fatal in his camp than the sword of the enemy.

Jan. 12.

Inoculation having been rarely practised in the western world, the American youth remained liable to the small pox. Notwithstanding the efforts to guard against this disease, it had found its way into both the northern and middle army, and had impaired the strength of both to an alarming degree. To avoid the return of the same evil, the General determined to inoculate all the soldiers in the American service. With the utmost secrecy, preparations were made to give the infection in camp; and the hospital physicians in Philadelphia were ordered to carry all the southern troops, as they should arrive, through the disease. Similar orders were also given to the physicians at other places; and thus an army exempt from the fear of a calamity which had, at all times, endangered the most important operations, was prepared for the ensuing campaign. This example was followed through the country; and this alarming disease was no longer the terror of America.

As the main body of the British army was cantoned in Jersey, and a strong detachment occupied Rhode Island, General Washington believed that New York could not be perfectly secure. His intelligence strengthened this opinion; and, as an army, respectable in point of numbers, had been assembled about Peekskill, he ordered General Heath to approach

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