Part 11

The beginning of a movement of British troops at daylight on the Shore Road, and the evident efforts of the fleet to sail up the Bay, which the light wind and ebb tide prevented, indicated that the hardest fighting would be by the right under Stirling. The entire patriot force inside and without the entrenchments was 5500. The British force was over 16,000 men. While the troops were facing each other along this position, a strong flanking column under Sir Henry Clinton, with Lord Howe the commander-in-chief, had stealthily marched from Flatbush to East New York, during the night, and had followed a sunken road through the present Cemetery of the Evergreens, called the Jamaica Pass. This was about five miles to the east of Sullivan’s position. Before daylight, at about a mile from the Pass, the column halted and sent forward a force which captured the American patrol and officers, and soon after a detachment secured the Pass. The light infantry advanced at the first appearance of day, and occupied the heights of Bushwick, followed by the guards with the field-pieces under Lord Percy, and the 49th regiment with four guns and the baggage brought up the rear.

After breakfasting, the flanking column marched along the turnpike to Bedford, where they arrived at half-past eight o’clock; thence they advanced along the rear of Miles’s troops, who were unconscious that they were being surrounded.

Fearfully outnumbered as they were, the Americans were now attacked in front by the Hessians advancing from Flatbush under General de Heister, and in the rear by this flanking column. The result was disastrous. Sullivan’s command was cut to pieces and himself captured. Terrible slaughter occurred in the woods and the slopes towards Fourth Avenue. The only escape not closed by the British was across the mill-dam and marshes of Gowanus.

Meanwhile Cornwallis was detached to attack Stirling’s line, which had still held its position on the western side of Prospect Heights. Desperate indeed was the plight of this devoted remnant of the army, outnumbered on all sides. General Grant, the British commander in front, had pressed forward (after having repeatedly been driven back) and finally surrounded and captured Atlee’s riflemen. Stirling gallantly determined to attack Cornwallis, and drive him back and so get an opportunity to cross by Brower’s Mill-dam to the defences of Fort Box. Here was the heroism of the day. Taking command of Smallwood’s gallant Maryland regiment and forming in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, Stirling led these brave young Marylanders three times in a charge on Cornwallis’s lines. Closing their ranks as they were cut down by grape and canister, the Maryland onset drove the British back behind the stone Cortelyou house. Once they forced the gunners from their guns, but at last, overwhelmed by numbers, the survivors fell back, leaving 256 killed out of 400. It was the sight of this brilliant charge and the spirited but frightfully unequal contest that caused Washington to wring his hands in anguish and say: “Good God! what brave fellows I must lose this day!”

While these Marylanders gallantly sacrificed their lives to hold Cornwallis in check, a large portion of Stirling’s command crossed the Gowanus Creek and brought the tattered colors of Smallwood’s regiment and over twenty prisoners within the lines. The battle was over at noon. The bodies of the gallant Maryland heroes—the flower of the army—were afterward buried on a small knoll or island. Third Avenue runs across it, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, but its site is far below the present street level.

In estimating the service of these Marylanders, it is to be recalled that they were young, never before under fire, and were led without their own colonel, who was detached the day before for a court-martial in New York. When the charges were made, the troops had already been several hours fighting, and had to re-form under fire, after it was plain that the battle was lost. The attacks were up an ascent, against superior numbers, strong artillery, and an overwhelming body of seasoned veterans. Even the assault and death of Montgomery at Quebec were not more gallant. Unlike that hopeless attack, the Marylanders accomplished their purpose by their sacrifice, and stopped the advance of Cornwallis. The brilliancy, dash, and steady persistence of this charge have not been properly recognized.

After the repulse of the patriot army, the battle ceased. The prudence of Lord Howe would not permit the English army to move upon the entrenchments. Bunker Hill with its terrible memories was too recent.

The next day, the 28th, Washington reinforced the Brooklyn troops, increasing their number to 9000. Among them were Colonel Glover’s battalion of fishermen and sailors from Salem and Marblehead. On that day heavy rain prevented an attack. In the afternoon the British began regular siege approaches towards Fort Putnam by a trench starting from the present Clinton Avenue near the corner of De Kalb Avenue.

A council of war decided on evacuation. Even in this extremity Washington caused an elaborate statement of reasons to be drawn up as the grounds of his action. That night, aided by the dense fog, the entire body were rowed over by Colonel Glover’s Marblehead boatmen. The skill and admirable mastery of detail in this retreat were Washington’s. For many hours he sat on his horse at the ferry, patiently superintending the embarkation. At least on one occasion he had to check a rush of impetuous and alarmed men from crowding into the boats. Finally with the last crew he embarked. The retreat of the entire force from Long Island was safely effected. At four o’clock only empty trenches were revealed to the invaders.

In Prospect Park is a monument to the heroism of this gallant Maryland regiment. At different streets are memorial tablets to mark the lines of defence. Perhaps some day a statue of Washington, near the old ferry, will mark the spot where his prudence and skill saved the American Army.

During the British occupation the noble forests of Brooklyn were destroyed. One may search in vain for any oaks or elms about the City that are really ancient.

The mention of the Wallabout and the present site of the Navy Yard recall some of the most painful memories of our history—the horrors of the prison-ships. Few indeed are the Revolutionary families that have not had deep sorrows connected with the ships _Whitby_, _Good Hope_, _Old Jersey_, _John_, _Falmouth_, and other hulks, where the martyrs ended their severe captivity. The bodies of the victims—having been removed from time to time—are now, it is hoped, in their final resting-place on the westerly front of Fort Greene Park opposite the Plaza. As yet no monument, not even an inscription, marks the spot where were reverently laid the bones of 11,500 martyrs to American liberty.

The Navy Yard, starting in 1824, has become the foremost in the country. Here are gathered trophies of the Nation’s battles on many seas. In a little enclosure near the Commandant’s office, are grouped captured ordnance, with a howitzer that did service under Hull on the _Constitution_. Trophies from the Spanish war have lately been added to this collection. Here are the guns taken from the burnt and shattered _Almirante Oquendo_ and _Vizcaya_, and by them is mounted a submarine contact mine from the defences of Guantanamo, which the _Texas_ broke adrift without exploding the deadly contents. Not far away was built the ill-fated battleship _Maine_. In these docks were outfitted many of the fleet that fought the battle of Santiago. In the Spanish war, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was where most of the yachts and merchant steamers, purchased in emergency, were converted into cruisers. Under Naval Constructor Bowles, the unparalleled record was made in 1898 of thirty-four vessels thus converted and fitted out for service in the auxiliary navy in ninety-three days!

At the southern shore of the enlarged Brooklyn are the forts and batteries defending this part of Long Island. Under the modern defences of Fort Hamilton, still is preserved Fort Lafayette, an island structure of masonry, valueless for war, but ever to be kept for its associations. Built in 1812 to defend the Narrows, its name was changed at the time of Lafayette’s return in 1824. In 1861, it was used to imprison those from Maryland and the border States, whose loyalty the Federal Administration distrusted. When the Judges of Brooklyn issued writs of _habeas corpus_ to bring up these political suspects, and inquire into the justice of their captivity, the remedy was to hurry the prisoners to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, beyond the reach of the process of New York courts.

Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton, he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges, or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment.

The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille.

On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York.

The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the ideal of other municipalities.

The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education. The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular culture in cities.

The regard of Brooklyn for the Church and the influence of the clergy on the life of Brooklyn are proverbial. To recall the names of Brooklyn’s clergy is to mention many leaders of the American pulpit. Not a little of their inspiration has come from the influence and history of Brooklyn itself. In its growth from village to city, and then to borough, it has developed along the lines of equality of social opportunity, and thus unconsciously has been reaping the fruits of the lives and examples of its Dutch founders.

PRINCETON

PLANTING AND TILLING

BY WILLIAM M. SLOANE

Princeton is by no means one of the oldest settlements in the State of New Jersey, and yet it has a history of more than two centuries, the first homestead having been established there in 1682. Although situated midway, or nearly so, between two of the largest Colonial towns, and nearly equidistant from the head of navigation on two important streams, the Raritan and the Delaware, it remained a quiet and unimportant hamlet for over half a century. Most of the travel between New York and Philadelphia went by way of Perth Amboy and Camden; there was little to interrupt the humble labors of the settlers in clearing the forest and tilling the soil.

Yet the roll-call of Princeton’s pioneers reveals names which are now synonymous with patriotism and famous wherever American history is studied: Stockton, Paterson, Boudinot, Randolph, and others almost as renowned. Their instinctive Americanism is first recorded in a successful protest to the provincial authorities against the quartering of British troops in their humble homes during the French and Indian War.

October 22, 1746, the College of New Jersey was chartered by Governor Hamilton, an act notable in American history because the first of its kind performed without authorization from England or the consent even of the provincial legislature. The institution was opened under President Dickinson in May, 1747, at Elizabethtown. After his death, which occurred in October of the same year, the few students were transferred to Newark and put under the care of the Rev. Aaron Burr, one of the twelve trustees. On the fourteenth of the following September, Jonathan Belcher, just appointed governor, granted a new charter fuller and more formal than the first. His interest in the college was from the outset very great, and his opinion, already formed, that Princeton was the most desirable spot for its permanent site ultimately prevailed, the citizens of the hamlet proving more active and liberal than those of New Brunswick, already a good-sized town, to which likewise terms were proposed “for fixing the college in that place.”

Thereafter the little settlement grew rapidly and soon became a considerable village. In 1756 the new buildings were virtually completed and the college was transferred to its future home. Notable men from throughout the State and from the cities of New York and Philadelphia became interested in the new seat of learning. More noteworthy still were those who taught and those who studied in it. Within a decade after the completion of Nassau Hall the names of Burr, Edwards, Witherspoon, of Livingston, Rush and Ellsworth, of James Manning, Luther Martin and Nathaniel Niles became Princeton names. The stream of influential patronage once started continued to flow until long after the Revolution. It included men from New England on the one hand, and from the South on the other, with, of course, a powerful element from the Middle States.

Princeton College is the child of Yale. But the parting was not entirely amicable. Theological controversy grew very fierce, even for the Connecticut Valley, in the days of Whitefield’s preaching. The conservatives or Old Lights held the reins and were not kindly disposed toward the innovators or New Lights. The trouble culminated in the expulsion from Yale of David Brainerd because, defying the Faculty’s express command, he attended New Light meetings and would not profess penitence for his fault. This occurred in 1739; thereafter an even stronger feeling of discontent smouldered among the liberal Calvinists until finally the way was clear for founding a new training-school for the ministry and the learned professions on broad and generous lines. Brainerd became a most successful and famous missionary. He was betrothed to the daughter of Jonathan Edwards and died at her father’s house, a victim of his own laborious and devoted life. This was less than a year after the College of New Jersey had been founded by a body of liberal-minded men of all orthodox denominations, under the influence of a few leaders who sympathized with both Brainerd and the Edwards theology. The first charter was granted by an Episcopalian governor to four Presbyterian clergymen, and one of the original trustees was a Quaker. Governor Belcher, who enlarged the charter and made the College “his adopted daughter,” was a man of the most catholic feeling. Fourteen of the trustees under the permanent constitution were Presbyterian clergymen, an arrangement corresponding to the similar one whereby the majority of the governing body of Yale was composed of Congregational ministers. This wise guardianship has kept the two universities true to their traditions, and the flourishing condition of both is the strongest proof anywhere afforded that temporal affairs do not necessarily suffer when committed to the charge of spiritual advisers. Considerable sums of money were raised in England by the personal solicitation of Tennent and Davies, two clergymen sent out for the purpose by the Trustees. The ten laymen of the first Princeton board represented various orthodox denominations, including Episcopalians and Quakers. There is not a syllable in the charter concerning creeds, confessions, or religious tests. It is very significant of the vast improvement in public morality that a college founded under such auspices a hundred and fifty years ago was partly endowed and supported by lotteries authorized and drawn both in Connecticut and New Jersey.

From the day when the College was installed in its grand new home, history-making went on apace in Princeton. Nassau Hall was a majestic building for those days; distinguished foreign visitors to America all noted its dimensions and architecture in their written accounts of travel. Indeed, even now, with the tasteless alterations of chimneys, roofs and towers made necessary by fire and carried through with ruthless economy, it may be considered one of the great monumental college buildings in America. It is, however, far more than this; we assert without fear of contradiction that it has no peer as the most historic university pile in the world. This contention rests on the fact that it saw the discomfiture of the British at the ebb-tide of the American rebellion, harbored the Government of the United States in its critical moments and cradled the Constitution-makers of the greatest existing republic. No other university hall has been by turns fortress and barrack, legislative chamber and political nursery in the birththroes of any land comparable to our land.

The building was designed to be complete in itself; it contained lodgings for a hundred and forty-seven students, with a refectory, library and chapel. The class which entered under Dickinson, the first president, had six members, of whom five became clergymen. His untimely death a year after his election made his administration the shortest but one in the College history. During the ten years of Burr’s tenure of office (1747-1757) the total number of students was a hundred and fourteen; half of them entered the ministry. The short presidency of Jonathan Edwards lasted but a few months. It gave the glory of his name, that of America’s greatest metaphysician, to the College, the sacred memories of his residence to the venerable mansion now occupied by the Dean, and the hallowed custody of his mortal remains to the Princeton graveyard, a spot to which thousands have made their pilgrimage for the sake of his great renown. In this enclosure he lies beside his son-in-law, the Rev. Aaron Burr, who was his predecessor. At his feet are the ashes of the brilliant and erratic grandson, the Aaron Burr so well known to students of American history. President Davies, who followed Edwards, held his office for only two years, and was succeeded by Finley who presided for five. Under the latter the number of students present at one time rose to one hundred and twenty. All told, a hundred and thirty sat under his instruction, and of these less than half, fifty-nine, became clergymen.

This tendency to send fewer and fewer men into the ministry is highly significant. It reached its climax under the next president—the great Scotchman whose name is among the most honored in the history of his adopted country—John Witherspoon. His incumbency was coincident with the Revolutionary epoch, lasting from 1768 to 1794. In those twenty-six years four hundred and sixty-nine young men graduated from the College; of these, only a hundred and fourteen, less than a quarter, became clergymen, an average of between four and five a year. This phenomenon was due to the fact that Witherspoon, though lecturing on Divinity like his predecessors, was vastly more interested in political than in religious philosophy. So notorious was this fact that many a pious youth bent on entering the ministry passed the very doors of liberal Princeton to seek the intense atmosphere of Yale orthodoxy, while many a boy patriot from New England came hither to seek the distinction of being taught by Dr. Witherspoon.

The first eight years of Witherspoon’s presidency embraced the period of political ferment in the Colonies which ushered in the War of the Revolution. From the very beginning of his residence in America, the new president espoused the Colonial cause in every conflict with Great Britain; he was soon accounted “as high a son of liberty as any man in America.” Not content with enlarging and improving the College course, he collected funds throughout the Colonies from Boston to Charleston, and even laid Jamaica under contribution to fill the depleted College chest. From the pulpit of the old First Church his voice rang out in denunciation of the English administration, until in his native land he was branded as a rebel and a traitor. The spread of the Reformation was more largely due to the fact that Luther was a professor in the University of Wittenberg than to any other single cause; the adherence to the Revolution of the powerful Scotch and Scotch-Irish element in the Colonies was chiefly if not entirely secured by the teachings of John Witherspoon from his professor’s chair in Nassau Hall. To him and John Dickinson, author of the _Farmer’s Letters_, belongs the credit of having convinced the sober middle classes of the great middle Colonies that the breach with England was not merely inevitable, but just and to their interest.

But Witherspoon was more than a teacher, he was a practical statesman. His country-seat was a farm on the southern slope of Rocky Hill, about a mile due north of Nassau Hall. Its solid stone walls still bear the classic name which he gave it, of Tusculum. In his hours of retirement at that beloved home he seems to have brooded more on the rights of man than on human depravity, more on law than on theology, more on Providence in His present dealings with men than on the remoter meanings of God’s Word. In the convention which framed the constitution of New Jersey, he amazed the other delegates by his technical knowledge of administration and led in their constructive labors; he assisted in the overthrow of William Franklin, the royal governor; was elected to the Continental Congress, and in the critical hour spurred on the lagging members who hesitated to take the fatal step of authorizing their president and secretary to sign and issue the Declaration of Independence. With solemn emphasis he declared:

“For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on the issue of this contest; and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner, than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.”