CHAPTER V.

WHITE PLAINS. FORT WASHINGTON.

OCTOBER 1-NOVEMBER 16, 1776.

For nearly four weeks Washington and the main body of his army remained on the heights of Harlem. The uneven upland, little more than a half-mile wide and, except at a few points, less than two hundred feet above the sea, falls away precipitously toward the Hudson; along the Harlem river it is bounded for more than two miles by walls of primitive rock or declivities steep as an escarpment. Toward Manhattanville it ended in pathless crags. There existed no highway from the south except the narrow one which, near the One Hundred and Forty-fourth street, yet winds up Breakneck Hill. The approach from that quarter was guarded by three parallel lines, of which the first and weakest ran from about the One Hundred and Forty-eighth street on the east to the One Hundred and Forty-fifth on the west; the second was in the rear, at the distance of two fifths of a mile; the third, one quarter of a mile still farther to the north; so that they could be protected, one from another, by musketry as well as cannon. A little farther than the third parallel, the house which Washington occupied stood on high ground overlooking the plains, the hills above Macgowan's pass, the distant city, and the bay.

North of head-quarters the land undulates for yet a mile, to where Mount Washington, its highest peak, rises two hundred and thirty-eight feet over the Hudson. The steep summit was crowned by a five-sided earthwork, mounting thirtyfour cannon, but without casemates or strong outposts.

Just beyond Fort Washington the heights cleave asunder,

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and the road to Albany, by an easy descent, passes for about a mile through the rocky gorge. Laurel Hill, the highest cliff on the Harlem side, was occupied by a redoubt; the opposite hill, near the Hudson, known afterward as Fort Tryon, was still more difficult of access. Thence both ridges fall abruptly to a valley which crosses the island from Tubby Hook. Beyond this pass the land to King's Bridge on the right is a plain and marsh; on the left a new but less lofty spur springs up and runs to Spyt den Duyvel creek, by which the Harlem joins the Hudson. This part of New York Island was defended by Fort Independence, on the high ridge north of Spyt den Duyvel; a series of redoubts guarded Fordham Heights, on the east bank of the Harlem; an earthwork was laid out above Williams's Bridge; and on the third of October a guard of riflemen had their alarm-post at the pass from Throg's Neck. Greene commanded a body in Jersey, at Fort Lee, on the summit of the palisades, where they were seventy-three feet higher than Fort Washington.

Washington took all care to keep open the line of retreat in his rear; but he would have awaited an attack from the south, for it would not have menaced his communications.

The army eagerly looked forward to the coming of Lee. "His arrival," said Tilghman, the most faithful member of Washington's staff, "will greatly relieve our worthy general, who has too much for any mortal upon his hands." "Pray hasten his departure, he is much wanted," was the message of Jay to a friend in Philadelphia. Yet Lee had not one talent of a commander. He never could conceive anything as a whole or comprehend a plan of action; but, by the habit of his mind, would fasten upon some detail, and always find fault. As an Englishman, he affected to look down upon his present associates as "very bad company;" for he had the national pride of his countrymen, though not their loyalty. His alienation from Britain grew out of petulance at being neglected; and, had a chance of favor been thrown to him, he would have snapped most eagerly at the bait. He esteemed the people into whose service he had entered unworthy of a place among the nations; and if, by fits, he played the part of a zealot in their cause, his mind always came back to his first idea, that

they had only to consider how they could "return to their former state of relation." He used afterward to say that "things never would have gone so far had his advice been taken;" and he reconciled himself to the declaration of independence by the Americans, only that there might be something "to cede" as the price of "accommodation." Awaiting the chief command in case of a vacancy, he looked upon himself as the head of a party, and wearied congress with clamor for a separate command on the Delaware; as they persisted in sending him to the camp of Washington, he secretly mocked at them as "a stable of cattle that stumbled at every step."

Lee had "advised that now was the time to make up with Great Britain," and had promised for that end to "use his influence with congress." On that question Pennsylvania was divided. Its convention, composed of new men, and guided mainly by a school-master, the honest but inexperienced James Cannon, formed a constitution, under the complex influence of abstract truths and an angry quarrel with the supporters of the old charter of the colony. The elective franchise was extended to every resident tax-payer, and legislative power concentrated in a single assembly. Moreover, that assembly, in joint ballot with a council whose members were too few to be of much weight in a decision by numbers, was to select the president and vice-president. The president had no higher functions than those of the president of a council-board. This constitution, which satisfied neither the feelings nor the reflective judgment of a numerical majority in the state, was put in action without being previously submitted to the citizens for ratification; and it provided no mode for its amendment but through the vote of two thirds of all persons elected to a board of censors, which was to be chosen for one year only in seven. From every elector, before his vote could be received, an oath or affirmation was required that he would neither directly nor indirectly do anything injurious to the constitution as established by the convention. This requirement, which large part of the inhabitants, especially of the Quakers, could not accept and suffered in consequence virtually disfranchisement, rent the state into imbittered factions. To the proprietary party the new government was hateful as a usurpation; to

Robert Morris, Cadwalader, Rush, Wayne, and many others of "the best of the whigs," the uncontrolled will of a single legislative assembly seemed a form of tyranny; while the want of executive energy took away all hope of calling the resources of the state fully into action.

The constitution of New Jersey would be self-annulled, "if a reconciliation between Great Britain and the colonies should take place;" the president of the body which framed it opposed independence to the last, and still leaned to a reunion with Britain; the highest officers in the public service were taken from those who had stood against the disruption; the assembly had adjourned on the eighth "through mere want of members to do business," leaving unfinished almost everything which they should have done; the open country could not hope for success in resisting an invading army; "the tories, taking new life, in one of the largest counties were circulating for subscription" complaints of the declaration of independence, because it was a bar to a treaty. Lee, alleging the concurrence of "the most active friends to the cause in New Jersey and the other provinces he had passed through," from Princeton proposed that congress should authorize an offer to open a negotiation with Lord Howe on his own terms.

Washington at this time, "bereft of every peaceful moment, losing all comfort and happiness," compelled to watch the effects of the wilfulness of congress in delaying to raise an army, and least of all thinking that any one could covet his office, saw the difficulty of doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command and the inevitable ruin that would follow his retirement. "Such is my situation," said he, privately, "that, if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings." Again he addressed congress: "Give me leave to say your affairs are in a more unpromising way than you seem to apprehend; your army is on the eve of its dissolution. True it is, you have voted a larger one in lieu of it; but the season is late, and there is a material difference between voting battalions and raising men." With this warning in his hands, John Adams, the chairman of the board of war, said: "The British force is so divided, they will do no great

matter more this fall;" and though officially informed that the American army would disband, that all the measures thus far adopted for raising a new one were but fruitless experiments, he asked, and on the tenth of October obtained, leave of absence at the time when there was the most need of energy to devise relief. On the morning of the eleventh, previous to his departure, news came that, two days before, two British ships, of forty-four guns each, with three or four tenders, under an easy southerly breeze, ran through the impediments in the Hudson without the least difficulty and captured or destroyed the four American row-galleys in the river. Yet Congress would not conceive the necessity of further retreat; referring the letter to the board of war, they instantly "desired Washington, if practicable, by every art and at whatever expense, to obstruct effectually the navigation between the forts, as well to prevent the regress of the enemies' frigates lately gone up as to hinder them from receiving succors." Greene encouraged this rash confidence. After the British ships-ofwar had passed up the river he said: "Our army are so strongly fortified, and so much out of the command of the shipping, we have little more to fear this campaign."

Just then Howe, leaving his finished lines above Macgowan's pass to the care of three brigades under Percy, embarked the van of his army on the East river, and landed at Throg's Neck. Washington, who had foreseen this attempt to gain his rear, seasonably occupied the causeway and bridge which led from Throg's Neck by Hand's riflemen, a New York regiment, the regiment of Prescott of Pepperell, and an artillery company; posted guards on all the defensible grounds between the two armies; began the evacuation of New York Island by sending Macdougall's brigade before nightfall* four miles be

The origin of the retirement of the American army from New York has been most industriously misrepresented. "The movement originated with General Lee," writes Stedman, Hist. of the War, i., 211, and he is substantially followed in Reed's Reed, i., 251. So far is this from the truth, the movement was ordered before the idea had entered the mind of Lee, as appears from his letters of 12 and 14 October, and was more than half executed a day or two before his arrival. For evidence of the beginning of the movement, see Smallwood, 12 October 1776, where he acknowledges the receipt of his orders on the very day the British landed, Force, ii., 1014; confirmed by Heath in his journal for the