Now there was encouragement. Col. Daniel Hitchcock’s Brigade was coming up. Its veterans could be trusted to deliver hard blows. Washington ordered Hitchcock to the right and placed Hand’s riflemen beyond the right of Hitchcock. Then Washington rode among the militia, whom Cadwalader was striving to put into line. “Parade with us, my brave fellows,” Washington cried, “there is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly!” He did not appeal in vain. In a surprisingly short time they were ready. Washington placed himself at their head and ordered a general advance. Forward the men moved. Even when British bullets began to whine, the line did not break. Steadily the Americans approached the unflinching Redcoats. At thirty yards Washington drew rein, shouted “Halt,” and gave the command to fire. The volley was delivered and answered in an instant; smoke enveloped everything; when it cleared, Washington still was on his horse, unscathed.
The British realized now that they must quit the field. As the red line broke and fell back, officers undertook to rally it and check the advance of the Americans. It could not be done. A few minutes later the enemy was in flight. Washington had for the first time an opportunity of chasing an adversary across an open field, and he could not, would not, restrain himself.
When he returned, he found that his Generals had become alarmed by his absence. His reappearance was occasion for a double rejoicing, first because he was safe and, second, because his men had occupied Princeton with ease. After the troops in front of Washington had been defeated, the King’s men on the hill had hurried to Princeton and joined a regiment left there as a garrison. Together, these soldiers had moved out to the edge of a ravine south of the town, but they offered no more than perfunctory resistance there. Then some of them fled to the college building. When the Americans brought up artillery, those who had taken shelter in the college surrendered. The remainder disappeared in the direction of New Brunswick.
Within two hours, Washington received word that a British column was advancing up the Post Road and was close to the bridge at Worth’s Mill. Experienced men had been at work on the demolition of that crossing, and well-placed artillery were covering them; but if the British were the troops who had occupied Trenton no time should be lost in eluding so strong a force. Washington’s Army was too weary to give battle even if the General had been willing to do so. He had no intention of hazarding a general engagement and hoped he might seize some other British post that was not held by a garrison too large to be challenged. New Brunswick would be the great prize; but perhaps the most that Washington could hope to do with his weary men would be to seize Somerset Court House where 1300 hostile troops were supposed to be stationed. The long roll was beaten; the men fell in; the captured guns were left behind; the column got under way and cleared the town before the van of the British reached Princeton. From Princeton, Washington’s route was to Kingston, where the right fork of the road led to New Brunswick and the left to Somerset Court House. At the crossroads the final decision had to be made on the cherished plan of capturing New Brunswick. It was negative. Washington was regretful but convinced. He set it down, however, that “six or eight hundred fresh troops upon a forced march” could have taken Brunswick, its stores and military chest, and could have “put an end to the war.”
From Kingston the Army staggered on to Somerset Court House, with no other hindrance than the presence across the Millstone River of a body of horse that finally disappeared. Some of the American troops reached the Court House at dusk but the belongings of the British encountered at Princeton had left there under a small escort a bare hour previously. Not one command in Washington’s Army had strength left to organize pursuit. The next day, the fourth, the troops moved to Pluckamin. To the men the village was a paradise, because there, in the language of young Capt. John Clinton’s diary, “we got plenty of beef, pork, &c., which we had been starving for a day or two, not having time to draw and dress victuals.” On January 5 and 6 the march was to Morristown where Washington hoped to get shelter and rest for his men.
It scarcely was possible to exaggerate the effect of the operations at Trenton and Princeton on the self-confidence of the Army, the spirit of New Jersey, the policy of Congress and the faith of all the States in the attainment of independence. A dying cause was revivified; timid men who had been afraid to participate in what the British termed “rebellion” now came cheerfully to camp. Metaphorically, the situation might have been described with accuracy in an entry Capt. Thomas Rodney had made in his diary: “. . . the sun rose as we passed over Stony Brook.”
Now that he was at Morristown, Washington could hope that, after he had refreshed his men, he could renew his effort to drive the British out of Jersey, but soon he faced discouragements of a familiar sort. By January 7 he had to write the President of Congress:
The severity of the season has made our troops, especially the militia, extremely impatient, and has reduced the number very considerably. Every day more or less leave us. Their complaints and the great fatigues they have undergone induced me to come to this place, as the best calculated of any in this quarter to accommodate and refresh them. The situation is by no means favorable to our views, and as soon as the purposes are answered for which we came, I think to remove, though I confess I do not know how we shall procure covering for our men elsewhere.
An Army that had thrown the winning card in the last hours of a months-long adverse gamble could not be blamed if, by the fire in winter quarters, it spoke boastfully of the manner in which it had worsted a wily opponent at Trenton and Princeton. Nor was it unnatural that British who had driven the Americans on Long Island and herded hundreds of prisoners at Fort Washington should make the utmost of the fact that before the third of January ended, Princeton again was in the keeping of the King’s men.
Later in January soldiers had a new subject of debate: How far should the United States go in reprisal if it were true, as reported, that General Lee would be tried as a British deserter. In the narrower circle of the better informed, the argument was whether Congress was right in twice deciding it would not comply with Lee’s repeated application for the appointment of a committee to confer with him on an undisclosed question of importance. Washington conducted the correspondence on reprisal and confessed he could see no valid reason for denying Lee a conference with members of Congress; but to these and other developments he could give no more of his hurrying minutes than duty and courtesy exacted. Most of the dangers that had threatened his Army continued. Some of them grew worse.
Incredibly, too, an Army that had thought it had endured all the woes of a military existence and all the plagues of politics found itself beset by new miseries and challenged by unfamiliar perplexities. Early in the new year Washington had the task of holding a sufficient number of militia to give the semblance of an army to a force of Continentals that once again was vanishing. Of the one thousand to twelve hundred who had agreed to stay in return for the bounty of ten dollars offered on December 30-31, 1776, only about eight hundred remained on January 19. Although the return of the main Army showed a paper strength of 17,812, Washington’s actual numbers were so few he confessed to Jack Custis his doubts concerning the future: “How we shall be able to rub along till the new Army is raised, I know not.”
Washington was in a position that both humiliated and crippled him. His troops were too few to attack or even to accept battle in open country. The Commander-in-Chief reasoned that the best practicable services by his shadow regiments were to destroy or remove the grain, provender and livestock near the hostile camps and harass constantly the parties sent farther afield to get supplies that could not readily be brought to New Brunswick by ship. Attacks on the British foraging parties had to be made persistently by courageous soldiers under skillful, cool-headed leaders, but these affairs must never be pushed so far that an inferior American force would be compelled to fight. The perseverance of American advance parties compelled the British to employ more and more men in foraging parties. Thereby the ill-fed
horses were worn down progressively.
Washington could not believe the British were ignorant of his numerical weakness and undertook to reduce the adverse odds by prevailing on General Heath to make so heavy a demonstration around King’s Bridge that Howe would send reenforcements to New York and give the troops at Morristown opportunity of striking the Redcoats left at New Brunswick. Washington’s hope rose the day he heard at Headquarters the sound of firing from the direction of King’s Bridge; but Heath did no more than move close to Fort Independence, demand its surrender, waste some gunpowder and march away to the accompaniment of mocking British laughter. This failure deepened the apprehension that Howe was gaining, not losing strength, and, when his preparations were complete, probably would advance overland towards Philadelphia.
Until the Army of 1777 was at his command, Washington would continue to harass the British in Jersey, but he put first in all his planning and correspondence the completion of recruiting for his Army and, in particular, for sixteen new regiments authorized by Congress. Lack of money hampered everything. Recruiting an army in the presence of the enemy never was easy, and now it might be harder than ever. About the date of the departure of some of the New England troops who had accepted the bounty at Trenton the time of a large part of the Pennsylvania militia expired. The cavalry of Morris County, New Jersey, were decamping before January was half spent. Two infantry regiments from that state could not be held beyond February. Whether officers had fresh enthusiasm or the disillusionment of experience, they encountered still other obstacles of many sorts—rival enlistment for state forces, state and local bounties for men who would enter the old regiments, unanticipated shortage of arms, paucity of funds, discontent of men who were not to receive the bounty, fear of sickness that would take men to the notoriously bad Army hospitals, and suspicion that some venal officers were putting on the rolls the names of fictitious recruits, pocketing the bounty and then pretending that these non-existent volunteers had deserted.
After surveying these maddening difficulties Washington had to reconcile himself once again to seeking from nearby States militia who would take the place, numerically, of the departing troops and would remain until the recruits for the Army of 1777 arrived. “My situation with respect to numbers,” said Washington on January 20, “is more distressing than it has ever been yet. . . .” and it was rendered still worse by an extensive renewal of desertion. Unless the people gave notice of the presence of deserters in their neighborhood, “we shall be obliged,” Washington warned Congress, “to detach one half of the Army to bring back the other.”
Part of this loss might be reduced by saving the lives of some of the sick and wounded sent to hospitals and thereby condemned, all too frequently, to death in those wretched charnel houses. The main contribution that Congress could make to the welfare of the Army in the winter of 1776-77 was the promise of a better system. In recognition of many protests against the hardships the patients had been called upon to endure needlessly, the Delegates on January 9 voted to dismiss Dr. John Morgan, Director General of the Hospitals, and Dr. Samuel Stringer, Director of the Northern Department. At Washington’s request, Dr. William Shippen, Jr., and Dr. John Cochran drew up a plan of reorganization which the General forwarded to Congress with the reminder that, while the expense of establishing and operating the proposed hospitals would be “very great,” ultimately the new arrangement would “not only be a saving to the public, but the only possible method of keeping an Army afoot.”
Another device that Washington selected as a means of strengthening his shadowy forces was to publish January 25 a proclamation in which he called on those who had accepted the Howe brothers’ offer of “protection” to surrender it and to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. Otherwise, within thirty days, they must go into the British lines or be “deemed adherents to the King of Great Britain and treated as common enemies of the American States.” Issuance of this proclamation was one of the rare instances in which Washington made use of emergency powers granted him by Congress in December 1776, and it did not fail to raise an immediate question of authority, which two of the New Jersey Delegates, Abraham Clark and Jonathan Sergeant, presented to Congress. This was a fine bone over which to growl. A committee was named at once to examine the proclamation and give its opinion whether the contention of the Jersey-men had meat and marrow. On February 27 it presented a report that probably was drafted by John Adams: “. . . General Washington’s proclamation . . . does not interfere with the laws or civil government of any State; but considering the situation of the Army was prudent and necessary.”
One gain was the strengthening of the staff at Headquarters. Tench Tilghman of Pennsylvania, a former Captain of the Flying Camp, had joined the staff as an unpaid volunteer in August 1776 and had performed usefully many difficult tasks. John Fitzgerald, a Major of the Third Virginia, had become Aide-de-Camp in October. George Baylor, Samuel Webb and William Grayson had left Washington’s “family” at the beginning of 1777 to accept regimental command—a trio of transfers that hampered the work of the office, particularly at a time when the post of Adjutant General was unoccupied, Joseph Reed having resigned. George Johnston joined the staff as aide about January 20, John Walker took a like position in February, and Capt. Alexander Hamilton, already distinguished as an officer of New York Artillery, and Richard K. Meade did so in March. The vacancy in the Adjutant General’s office was continued for almost five months, in part because Washington hoped Congress might prevail on Horatio Gates to resume the duties. Washington wanted Gates’s skilled service at Headquarters, but he felt that the choice should be left to Gates. His own wishes and convenience should not be put above those of the former head of the Northern Department, who might, said Washington, regard the place as in some sense a “degredation.” There the matter stood until circumstance called for Gates’s employment elsewhere. The only other man considered for immediate assignment as Adjutant General was Maj. Appolos Morris, but he was suspected of hesitating in allegiance to America. When Morris was eliminated, Congress was favorable to Col. William Raymond Lee. That officer generously stood aside for Col. Timothy Pickering, who was prevailed upon to accept.
There sometimes had been a surplus of militia officers and the applicants for rank as junior officers exceeded vacancies and new positions; but it was difficult to find competent field officers, establish a seniority system, advance able men, and get rid of those who lacked courage or enterprise. Because qualified colonels were few, Congress had difficulty in finding ten whom conscientious Delegates could promote to brigadier in partial fulfillment of Washington’s request that the total number of officers of that rank be raised to thirty. Congress elected five additional Major Generals as well as the ten Brigadiers. Lord Stirling, Thomas Mifflin, Arthur St. Clair and Benjamin Lincoln were made Major Generals; Enoch Poor, John Glover, John Paterson, Anthony Wayne, James M. Varnum, John P. DeHaas, George Weedon, Peter Muhlenberg, John Cadwalader and William Woodford, all of them Colonels, were promoted to brigade command; but these choices disappointed more officers than they gratified. Instead of getting relief, Washington had to spend hours smoothing down Brigadiers Benedict Arnold and Andrew Lewis, who thought they should have been promoted. In the end, Cadwalader declined, John Armstrong and Andrew Lewis resigned. Washington had repeatedly to point out the needs of the troops before he could prevail on Congress to name three additional Brigadiers—Edward Hand, Charles Scott and Ebenezer Learned—to fill vacancies, and even then he felt a continuing lack of generals of that rank. The one solace of this vexatious upstir was the application of Artemas Ward for relief from command in Massachusetts. This permitted Washington to oblige Heath, who wished service in his own state, and made possible a change of command in the highlands.
Accumulation of woes shook even the strong nervous system of Washington, made him irritable, and contributed to an illness that sent him to bed at the end of the first week in March. His staff kept from him all business that did not
call for his personal decision, but, as Hamilton wrote, the General was “much pestered with things that [could] not be avoided.” By the fifteenth, when Washington was able again to carry his full burden, Jersey “three-months’ men,” the militia of Cecil County, Maryland, and the Virginia volunteers began to stir in their quarters. On April 1 their time would expire. The flow of incoming new soldiers had ceased temporarily. Nathanael Greene, who had continued to develop the art of dealing with men, must go to Philadelphia, whither Congress now had returned from Baltimore, and must report on the condition of the Army.
During the time that Greene was in Philadelphia, Washington had bad news. Shortly before Heath left his post on the Hudson, General Wooster withdrew his Connecticut militia from New Rochelle and did not succeed in getting them to return. This provoked from Washington a rebuke and an order to Wooster to advance towards King’s Bridge and do what he could to confine the British to Manhattan Island. Further intelligence from the Hudson led Washington to suspect in mid-March that the British might be planning to move their Canadian forces by sea to join Howe in an overwhelming attack on Philadelphia. It then seemed best to the American commander to concentrate at Peekskill the New England part of the sixteen new regiments. Troops could be moved easily from Peekskill in any direction. While Washington still was exerting himself to get fighting men to that station, he learned on March 25 that a British force had gone ashore there two days previously. Gen. Alexander McDougall was at Peek-skill, but his infantry were so few that he could do no more than burn some of his stores and evacuate the village. This might be the first in a series of British expeditions to seize the forts and passes of the Hudson. Several days passed without any report from McDougall. So long as uncertainty prevailed, Washington continued to plead for help from Governor Trumbull, and he directed most insistently that Heath forward to Peekskill or to Ticonderoga the troops recruited in Massachusetts for the Continental Army.
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