Volume 4, Chapter 36, The Campaigns in New Jersey
Washington's army was now safe. It was clear that Howe would turn back to capture the force left at Fort Washington.
Yet, despite the urging of Charles Lee, no decision was made to evacuate that isolated and indefensible position.
General Greene, in overall command of both forts at Fort Constitution, renamed Fort Lee in honor of Charles Lee, made his worst blunder of the war by maintaining that Fort Washington could be held.
He was supported in this by the bumbling General Putnam and by Colonel Robert Morgan, commander of Fort Washington.
The dithering Washington left the decision to Green and himself took most of his forces into New Jersey on November 12 to counter an expected British thrust there.
Lee was left behind at North Castle and Heath at Peekskill to guard against any British move north.
When Greene decided to reinforce Fort Washington with almost 1,000 more men, rather than evacuate, Lee lamented, Then we are undone.
A British force of 10,000 began the attack on the fort on November 14, surrounded it and secured its inevitable surrender.
The Americans lost over 150 men in casualties, and more than 2,800 captured, a staggering total loss of nearly 3,000 men.
Three days later, the British crossed the Hudson and took Fort Lee, which Green had to evacuate hastily without securing or destroying its provisions.
At the two forts, the British seized several thousand guns and muskets, large amounts of
ammunition and flour, and hundreds of tents.
Typically, Washington allowed Greene to bear the brunt of criticism for the defeat without
acknowledging his own grave responsibility.
To Lee, the disaster at Fort Washington was the last straw.
The incompetence of Washington could be brooked no longer.
It was clear to him, and to many other Americans as well, that he would do far better as Commander-in-Chief,
and that, at the least, Washington's superior rank must not be allowed to impose fatal blunders
upon Lee.
Washington had encamped at Hackensack, New Jersey, northwest of Fort Lee, and Green's
forces joined him there after almost being cut off and encircled by General Cornwallis
at Fort Lee.
The American forces, totaling 14,000 effectives, were now split into three parts, Washington
and Green in Hackensack with 5,400 men, Heath at Peekskill with 3,200, and Lee at North
Castle with 5,500.
Hackensack, on a flat plain, was not defensible, and Washington, with only 3,000 men, retreated
southwest toward Newark.
This was the beginning of his full-scale retreat across New Jersey. To him and to his discouraged
and broken army, it seemed that destruction was imminent, and he contemplated a retreat
all the way to Virginia and even west beyond the Alleghenies. As he retreated, rapidly
losing militia whose terms of enlistment had expired, Cornwallis followed hard on his heels.
Washington fled toward Pennsylvania to safety on the other side of the Delaware River.
Cornwallis was on the point of catching and destroying the American Army at New Brunswick
in early December, but at the crucial moment, Howe ordered him to halt at the Raritan River
for four days, to wait for him to come up with his army.
Washington was thereby allowed to escape to the Delaware.
At the same time, in a useless and wasteful move, Howe dispatched Clinton with 6,000 men
to seize Rhode Island, where the British were to linger around Newport for several years.
Washington thereby escaped to Trenton on the Delaware.
When he got there, however, he uncertainly and with no clear goal or purpose turned back.
When he learned that Howe had reached Cornwallis and that the two were again pushing forward
He fled across the Delaware on December 6. The British posted their men at Trenton and in the surrounding area and dug in contentedly for the winter.
Meanwhile, Washington was repeatedly and frantically urging Lee to join him in New Jersey, but Lee refused.
He carefully waited to clear Upper Westchester of Tories and to call up more Connecticut and Massachusetts militia to guard against any invasion of New England.
Crossing the Hudson in early December, Lee decided that it would be better to remain in the western hills of New Jersey.
Stationing his army at Morristown on December 8, he quickly realized, as Washington did not, that Howe was not about to fall on Philadelphia that winter.
Therefore, he would be better employed in harassing and disrupting the British communication and supply lines from New York to Trenton.
to Trenton. Lee was forming a new and brilliant conception of the proper mode of waging revolutionary
warfare. Washington, interested first and foremost in keeping his army intact, was willing
to abandon New Jersey to the British, with the result that Tories began to sprout and
multiply and Tory militia to emerge and round up rebels. Lee saw that a revolution depends
is, above all, on the support and enthusiasm of the populace. The army is, in a sense,
the superstructure of mass support. He saw that the people's militia was the last line
of local defense and that this militia must remain active if the entire population were
not to succumb to collaboration with the enemy. But the fragmented and untrained militia would
would only fight, especially in the early stages, if supported by Continental troops
nearby.
While Washington was denouncing short-term militia and calling for long-service volunteers,
Lee urged increased emphasis on local militia, which would create zones of resistance that
could deny General Howe the fruits of his recent victories.
Lee, in short, had set out to reconquer the Jerseys, and he wrote Washington that the
militia in this part of the provinces seems sanguine. If they could be assured of an army
remaining amongst them, I believe they would raise a considerable number.
Lee was increasingly acting independently of Washington. Indeed, the New York Council
of Safety tried to persuade Gates, who was leading a column from upstate New York to
Aide Washington to disobey orders and join Lee instead. Gates, less of a military rebel
than Lee, refused the plea. Furthermore, the New York militia under General George Clinton
was getting ready to join Lee's army. Against his better judgment, Lee finally yielded to
Washington's pleas and marched slowly southwestward. On December 13, a chance British raiding party
captured Lee and spirited him to the British lines. Americans everywhere, from the ladies
of Boston to Washington and Greene to Robert Morris, Hancock and the Adamses, lamented
the sudden grievous blow. They had lost their paladin of American liberty, as Lee was widely
called. The British, on the other hand, rejoiced wildly from the red-coated soldiery to General
From the General Howe and the officers to the public houses in England, Lieutenant Colonel William Harcourt, head of the raiding party, rejoiced at the imminent end of the war and received the personal thanks of King George for his exploit.
Never had American morale been lower.
Ill, barely clothed or sheltered, Washington's 5,000 men on the West Bank of the Delaware
could have been crushed by a determined British attack and Philadelphia easily captured.
But the Hows were still primarily concerned with making peace, and they issued a proclamation
of a full and general pardon to all Americans who would take an oath of allegiance to the
Crown.
The conservative New Jersey responded with enthusiasm, 5,000 quickly taking the oath. Citizens fled the exposed capital city of Philadelphia in droves.
The eminent and wealthy Allen Brothers of the old proprietary party of Philadelphia fled to join the British at Trenton, as did Joseph Galloway.
Congress hastily turned over all military direction to Washington, and on December 12, adjourned to Baltimore, amid the jeers of Philadelphia's Tories.
With his brilliant sense of timing, Tom Paine now published his pamphlet, The Crisis.
Paine had joined Greens forces at Fort Lee as a humble volunteer and shared the lot of Washington's soldiers.
The crisis was a stirring call for a redoubling of hope and effort. It opened. These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
A tyranny like hell is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us that
the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
The crisis spread like wildfire through all the towns of America and among the soldiers
in the Continental Army.
Everywhere morale was raised, even in New Jersey, where widespread and indiscriminate
Repine and plunder by British and Hessian troops in the North alienated many Tories.
But the biggest boost to morale was Howe's decision over the objections of his officers
not to cut through Washington's forces and take Philadelphia, but instead to withdraw
his army to winter quarters in New York.
Philadelphia and the Continental Army were now safe.
Parted by this disastrous British decision, Washington began to take on, for a while,
the accoutrements of a guerrilla leader.
With the British tied down, somnolent, passive and withdrawing, why not a swift attack across
the Delaware?
In this aim, Washington was reinforced by Lee's second command, General Sullivan, who arrived
across the Delaware with 2,000 troops, and Gates came from the North with another 500.
All in all, Washington had 6,000 effectives by Christmas of 1776.
In this situation, he happily decided on a swift strike across the river.
On late Christmas night, through a driving snow, Washington ferried 2,400 men across
the ice-laden waters of the Delaware.
Most remarkable was the feat of Colonel Henry Knox in transporting across the river eighteen
field cannon, a proportion of cannon to foot soldiers about three times the usual amount
in the eighteenth century.
The cannon were particularly useful on a snowy night for the muskets of that day could not
fire unless completely dry.
In a perfectly executed maneuver, Washington and his men were able to surround the brigade
of Hessians, stationed at Trenton. They took them, sodden with the celebrating of Christmas,
completely by surprise. Washington's troops had read the crisis before embarking on the
raid, and now they fell upon the Hessians crying, this is the time to try men's souls.
In an hour, the overconfident Hessian commander, General Johann Rall, had been killed, and
The Hessians had surrendered. The Hessians suffered 30 casualties and over 900 men had
been taken prisoner. In contrast, the Americans suffered only three casualties. George Washington
had won his first real military victory and it was indeed a brilliant one. It was also
the first battle he conducted in quasi-guerrilla manner. With the confusion engendered in the
The enemy troops, Greene and other officers, urged Washington to press his advantage and
attack the Hessian units stationed to the south in Burlington.
But he lacked the imagination to grasp the dimensions of his own victory, and he cautiously
withdrew back across the Delaware.
He indecisively waited several days to become aggressive once more, and the delay almost
proved fatal.
He plunged back across the icy Delaware on December 31 with 5,000 men and reoccupied
Trenton.
By this time, however, Lord Cornwallis, who had been about to set sail for England, had
rushed back to Jersey and was advancing upon Trenton with 6,000 troops.
Retreating just southward as Cornwallis entered Trenton on January 2, Washington was in grave
of Peril, for the British were too close to allow the Americans to recross the river.
Knox's guns held off the British advance in the Second Battle of Trenton, and Cornwallis,
against the advice of General Sir William Erskine, over-confidently decided to wait
until morning to deliver the coup de grace.
Perhaps at the suggestion of Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair, Washington silently moved
East during the night, taking a neglected old road to slip around Cornwallis's lines
and move north. At Princeton in the morning, Washington encountered a British brigade under
Colonel Charles Mawhood, and after a furious battle sustained by Knox's guns, the Americans
routed the British force. If the American troops had been fresh, they might have sped
Washington went on to capture New Brunswick and isolate Cornwallis in southern New Jersey.
Instead, Washington promptly took his exhausted but happy men northwest to winter quarters in Morristown.
The angry British were obliged to evacuate all of New Jersey except New Brunswick and Perth Amboy on the Raritan River.
Washington's victories at Trenton and Princeton served to bolster and restore American morale.
Morale.
As one young Englishman noted about the Americans, a few days ago they had given up the cause
for lost.
Their late successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty mad again.
This turnabout of morale was eminently justified.
Professor Alden estimates with good reason that Trenton and not the victory at Saratoga
the following year was the true turning point of the revolution.
Early American fortunes were at their lowest ebb on the Jersey retreat in November and
December. By the 1777 campaign, American forces were stronger and the British never as confident
again. As optimism returned, the Continental Congress moved back to Philadelphia. Despite
difficulties in obtaining food, clothing and recruits to replace deserters in short-term
By spring, new continental regiments arrived at Morristown.
Washington used dictatorial powers that had been granted him by Congress to commandeer food from the inhabitants of New Jersey.
But the ravages and depredations of the British and Hessians had transformed the previously lukewarm Jersey populace into ardent patriots.
As a result, the 14,000 British troops stationed at Perth Amboy in New Brunswick were virtually under siege.
Any British foraging parties were subjected to devastating attacks by Washington's forces or by Jersey militia, all aided by the intelligence work of the Jersey citizenry.