1 CHAPTER II. American army inoculated....General Heath moves down to King's bridge, but returns to Peck's-Kill without effecting any thing....Skirmishes....State of the army....Destruction of stores at Peck's-Kill....At Danbury....Expedition of colonel Meiggs to Sagg harbour....Sir William Howe moves out to Somerset court-house in great force ....Returns to Amboy....Endeavours to cut off the retreat of the American army to Middlebrook, but is disappointed....Lord Cornwallis skirmishes near the Scotch Plains with lord Stirling.... The British army embark. 1777. THE effect at first produced, by the proclama tion published by lord and general Howe on taking possession of New Jersey, has been already noticed. The gloomy aspects then worn by the affairs of America, added to the hope of impunity for past offences held forth by this proclamation, produced a general disposition among the people of that state, to avail themselves of the promise it contained. Vast numbers acknowledged the royal authority, and nearly the whole of Jersey wore the appearance of a province once more within the pale of the British empire. Had the conduct of the British army been such as to cherish the expectation, that security to their persons and property was attainable by submission, it is not easy to say what limits could have been set to the anti-American spirit which had been so extensively manifested. Fortunately it was not. Whatever might be the wish, and the CHAP. II. exertions of the general to restrain them, they 1777. still considered and treated the inhabitants as conquered rebels, rather than as returning friends. No species of licentiousness was unpractised. The plunder and destruction of property was among the least offensive of the injuries sustained. The persons, not only of the men, but of that sex through which injuries 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. The lukewarm, and even the loyalists themselves, not less than the friends of independence, were the victims of this indiscriminating spirit of rapine. The effect of such proceedings among a people, whose country had never before been the seat of war; who were strangers to the ravages of a hostile army; who felt no original attachment to their invaders; but whose nonresistance had been occasioned solely by the hope of that security to their persons and property, 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. A sense of personal wrongs produced a temper, which national considerations had been found too weak to excite; and when the battles of Trenton and Princeton CHAP. II. gave a turn to the operations of the armies, 1777. and released the inhabitants from the fears created by the presence of their invaders, the great body of the people flew to arms; and those who could not be brought into the field to check the advance of the enemy, and thereby prevent those ravages which uniformly afflict a country that becomes the seat of war, were prompt in avenging those ravages. Small bodies of the militia scoured the country in every direction; seized on stragglers who had separated themselves from their corps; in several small skirmishes behaved unexceptionably well, and were collecting in such numbers as to threaten the weaker posts of the enemy with the fate which their troops at Trenton and Princeton had already experienced. The cautious temper of the British general, readily suggested to him, the necessity of guarding against that spirit of enterprise which his adversary had disclosed; and of which there was now reason to apprehend he might be furnished with the means of giving additional proofs. Sir William Howe, therefore, determined, as the season was unfavourable for active operations, not to expose himself to further loss by extending his cantonments, but to strengthen by contracting his posts. The dif ferent positions which had been heretofore taken, for the purpose of covering the country, all except two, were abandoned, and the whole British force in the Jerseys was collected at New Brunswick on the Raritan, and at Amboy, a small town at the mouth of that river. These two posts were judiciously selected for the double purpose of again penetrating into the heart of the country, if he should renew the project of marching by land to Philadelphia, and, in the mean time, of keeping up a safe communication with New York. Although the strength of the American army did not admit of any important blow before general Howe had thus concentrated his force, that movement was not effected entirely without loss. General Maxwell, with a corps of Jersey militia, had been ordered to the neighbourhood of Elizabeth town, and on their evacuating that place, had made a successful attack on their rear, in which about seventy prisoners and a part of their baggage were taken. Almost the whole state of Jersey was now restored to the union. The British general who had lately spread his troops over a very large part of it, and who, in a great measure, overawed those counties his arms had not reached, was now reduced to the possession of two neighbouring towns, and the communication between them; and could only consider himself as master of the ground he occupied. CHAP. II. 1777. CHAP. II. The American force had been so diminished 1777. by the extreme severity of the service, by the expiration of their engagements, and by the impatience of the militia to return to their homes, that it was with much difficulty, and by great individual efforts, the appearance of an army was kept up. The militia and volunteers came in from Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Their numbers were reported to be much greater than they were in reality; and though continually changing, yet, added to the small remaining regular force, they enabled the general, who disposed of them to the greatest advantage, to take different positions near the lines of the enemy, which perpetually harassed them with threatened attacks, restrained their foraging parties, in a great measure covered the country, kept up the spirits of the people at large, and produced no inconsiderable distress in the British camp, by rendering it extremely difficult to obtain supplies of provisions or fuel. While the enemy was thus surrounded, harassed, and confined, by little more than an imaginary army, the parts of which disappeared at the approach of any serious force, but returned to their former positions when that force retreated, and always attacked small parties with great vigour, and often with success; general Washington came to the hazardous, but judicious resolution, of freeing himself and |