Part 12

The word “God” occurs but once in that famous document. Jefferson wrote it with a small “g.” Witherspoon was the solitary clergyman among the signers; neither he nor his neighbor, friend, and supporter, Richard Stockton, of Morven, who was a member of his church, set their hands the less firmly to sign the paper. Finally, Witherspoon was a member of the secret committee of Congress which really found the means of moral and material support for the war down to its close. He was chosen in the dark hours of November, 1776, to confer with Washington on the military crisis; he was a member, with Richard Henry Lee and John Adams, of the committee appointed that same winter to fire the drooping spirits of the rebels when Congress was driven from Philadelphia to Baltimore. He was a member, too, of the boards of war and finance, wrote state papers on the currency, and framed many of the most important bills passed by the Continental Congress. It was not unnatural that when, at the close of the war, Congress was terrified by unpaid and unruly Continentals battering at its doors in Philadelphia, it should seek refuge and council, as it did, in John Witherspoon’s college.

Thus it happened that Nassau Hall became one of the hearthstones on which the fires of patriotism burned brightest. From 1766 to 1776 there were graduated two hundred and thirty young Americans. What their temper and feeling must have been may be judged from the names of those among them who afterwards became eminent in public life. Ephraim Brevard, Pierrepont Edwards, Churchill Houston, John Henry, John Beatty, James Linn, Frederick Frelinghuysen, Gunning Bedford, Hugh Brackinridge, Philip Freneau, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, Aaron Ogden, Brockholst Livingston, and Wm. Richardson Davie. Those ten years produced twelve Princetonians who sat in the Continental Congress, six who sat in the Constitutional Convention, one President of the United States, one Vice-President, twenty-four members of Congress, three Judges of the Supreme Court, one Secretary of State, one Postmaster-General, three Attorneys-General, and two foreign ministers. It may well be supposed that the clergymen who were their comrades in those days of ferment were, like their great teacher, no opponents of political preaching. The influence of such a body of young men, when young men seized and held the reins, was incalculable.

“We have no public news,” writes James Madison from Princeton on July 23, 1770, to his friend, Thomas Martin,

“but the base conduct of the merchants in New York in breaking through their spirited resolutions not to import; a distinct account of which, I suppose, will be in the Virginia _Gazette_ before this arrives. The letter to the merchants in Philadelphia, requesting their concurrence, was lately burned by the students of this place in the college yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns and the bell tolling.... There are about 115 in the College and in the Grammar School, all of them in American cloth.”

“Last week, to show our patriotism,” wrote in 1774 another Princeton student, Charles Beatty,

“we gathered all the steward’s winter store of tea, and having made a fire in the campus we there burnt near a dozen pounds, tolled the bell, and made many spirited resolves. But this was not all. Poor Mr. Hutchinson’s effigy shared the same fate with the tea, having a tea-canister tied about his neck.”

With such a nursery of patriotism at its very hub, the temper of the surrounding community can easily be pictured. The proposition for a provincial congress came from Princeton. John Hart, a farmer from the neighboring township of Hopewell, and Abraham Clark, a farmer’s son from the neighboring county, were associated with graduates from Princeton College and delegates from Princeton town in conducting its deliberations. Both were made delegates to the Continental Congress and both, along with Witherspoon and Stockton, were signers of the Declaration of Independence. Even Francis Hopkinson, the fifth signer for this State, a Philadelphian in reality, though a temporary resident of Bordentown, was, as the friend and co-worker of Freneau and Brackinridge, intimately associated with Princeton influence. When rebellion was finally in full swing, the Committee of Safety for New Jersey held its sessions here, probably in Nassau Hall, possibly in the famous tavern. It is well known that neither the Continental Army nor the people of the United States at large were profoundly impressed by the Declaration of Independence. This was not the case in Princeton, for the correspondent of a Philadelphia paper wrote that on July 9, 1776, “Nassau Hall was grandly illuminated and independency proclaimed under a triple volley of musketry, and universal acclamation for the prosperity of the United States, with the greatest decorum.”

Seven days previous to this demonstration, the Provincial Congress, sitting at Trenton, had adopted a new State constitution; nine days later the first Legislature of the State assembled in Nassau Hall—the College library room—and chose Livingston governor. They continued more or less intermittently in session until the following October after the invasion of the State by British forces. Before the invaders they fled to Trenton, then to Burlington, to Pittstown, and finally to Haddonfield. After the battles of Princeton and Trenton they promptly returned to their first seat and resumed their sessions.

* * * * *

The storm of war broke upon Princeton early in December of the same year, 1776. The British Army, landed from Howe’s fleet in New York Bay, had entirely worsted the American forces. Brooklyn, New York, Fort Washington with Fort Lee had been successively abandoned, and Washington in his memorable retreat across this State reached Princeton on the first of December. Stirling, with one thousand two hundred Continentals, was left as a rear-guard, while the Commander-in-Chief with the rest, one thousand eight hundred, and his stores, pushed on to Trenton, whence he crossed in safety to the right bank of the Delaware. On the seventh, Cornwallis entered Princeton at the head of six thousand Anglo-Hessian veterans, driving Stirling before him. The invaders were quartered in the College and in the church. Both Tusculum and Morven, the estates of the arch-rebels Witherspoon and Stockton, were pillaged, and the new house of Sergeant was burnt. All the neighboring farms were laid under contribution for forage.

Popular disaffection followed in the course of Washington’s retreat. Large numbers of the people and many of the State officials accepted the English offers of amnesty. The patriots were compelled to abandon their homes and flee across the Delaware. Two regiments were left by Cornwallis in Princeton as a garrison. The rest of his troops were established in winter quarters at New Brunswick, Trenton and Bordentown. Washington’s thin and starving line stretched along the Delaware from Coryell’s Ferry to Bristol. Congress fled to Baltimore. Putnam, with no confidence in Washington’s ability even to hold his ground, was making ready for a desperate defence of Philadelphia.

There was as yet no French alliance, no adequate supply of money raised either at home or abroad, no regular or even semi-regular army,—nothing, apparently, but a disorderly little rebellion; for the first promise of constancy in New England and of regular support for a considerable force of volunteers had had as yet no fulfilment. The English felt that the early ardor of radical and noisy rebels would fade like a mist before Howe’s success; Canada was lost; New York as far as the Highlands was in British hands; so also were New Jersey and Long Island, which latter virtually controlled Connecticut. Howe believed the rebellion was broken; Cornwallis had engaged passage to return home.

While the British were lulled into security, Washington and the patriots, though desperate, were undaunted. A well considered and daring plan for a decisive sally from their lines was formed and carried to a successful issue. On Christmas night two thousand four hundred men were ferried over the Delaware nine miles above Trenton; the crossing was most dangerous, owing to the swollen waters and the floating ice; the ensuing march was made in the teeth of a dreadful storm. The affair at Trenton was scarcely a battle, it was rather a surprise; the one thousand two hundred Hessians were taken unawares and only a hundred and sixty-two escaped; nearly a thousand were captured. What made it a great event was its electrical effect in restoring courage to patriots everywhere, together with the inestimable value to Washington’s troops of the captured stores and arms. He did not occupy the place at all, but returned immediately to his encampment on the other shore to refit.

The ensuing week was certainly the most remarkable of the Revolution. The English in New York were thrown into consternation. Cornwallis hastened back to Princeton, where he collected between seven and eight thousand men, the flower of the British army. Washington’s force, on the other hand, was reinforced with a speed and zeal bordering on the miraculous. Three thousand volunteers came in from the neighborhood and from Philadelphia. The term of service for nine hundred of his men would expire on New Year’s day; these were easily induced, in the new turn of affairs, to remain six weeks longer. Washington and John Stark both pledged their private fortunes and Robert Morris raised fifty thousand dollars in Philadelphia. The mourning of the patriots throughout the Middle States was changed into rejoicing.

On the thirtieth of December the American army began to recross the Delaware; the movement was slow and difficult owing to the ice, but was completed the following day. On January 1, 1777, Washington wrote from Trenton that he had about two thousand two hundred men with him, that Mifflin had about one thousand eight hundred men at Bordentown on the right wing and that Cadwalader had about as many more at Crosswicks, some miles to the east. He thought that no more than one thousand eight hundred of those who passed the river with himself were available for fighting, but he intended to “pursue the enemy and break up their quarters.”

Next day Cornwallis, leaving three regiments and a company of cavalry at Princeton, set out by the old “King’s Highway” for Trenton. At Maidenhead, now Lawrenceville, there was a skirmish between his van and the American outposts; thence for over five miles his march was harassed by irregular bodies of his foe, General Hand being stationed in command of a detachment at Shabbakong creek, and General Greene about a mile this side of Trenton. It was four o’clock, and therefore late in the short winter day when the English General reached the outskirts of the city. There stood Washington himself with a few more detachments, ready still further to delay the British march through the town. Withdrawing slowly, the last Continental crossed the bridge over the Assanpink in safety, to fall behind earthworks, which in anticipation of the event had been thrown up and fortified with batteries on the high banks behind.

The British attacked at once, but were repulsed; undismayed they pressed on again, and again they were driven back across the narrow stream. The spirited conflict continued until nightfall, when the assailants finally gave up and withdrew to bivouac, hoping to renew the fight next morning. In this affair on the Assanpink about a hundred and fifty, mostly British, were killed. Cornwallis dispatched messengers to summon the men he had left at Maidenhead and Princeton, determined if possible to surround, overwhelm and annihilate Washington next day. But the battle on the Assanpink was destined to be the only real fighting in Trenton. Washington had in mind the strategic move which rendered this campaign one of his greatest, if not his very greatest. He determined to outflank his foe by a circuitous march to Princeton over the unguarded road on the south side of the Assanpink.

The night was dark and cold; the camp-fires of both lines burned strong and bright. Behind those of Cornwallis there was a bustle of preparation for the next day’s battle; behind those of Washington there was a stealthy making ready for retreat. The baggage was packed and dispatched to Burlington; a few men were detached to keep the fires well fed and clear; the rest silently stole away about midnight. Their march was long, between sixteen and eighteen miles, and difficult because the frost had turned the mud on the roads into hummocks. But at sunrise on the third of January the head of the column had crossed Stony Brook by the bridge on the Quaker road, and stood about a mile and three-quarters from Princeton, awaiting the result of a council of war. They were masked by the piece of woods which is still standing behind the Quaker meeting-house. It was determined that Washington with the main column should march across the fields, through a kind of depression in the rolling land intervening between the meeting-house and Princeton, in order to reach the town as quickly as possible. Mercer, with three hundred and fifty men and two field-pieces, was to follow the road half a mile farther to its junction with the King’s Highway, and there blow up the upper bridge over Stony Brook, that by which Cornwallis’s reserve, marching to Trenton, must cross the stream. This would likewise detain Cornwallis himself on his return in pursuit.

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There were three actions in the battle of Princeton. Two of the three English regiments left in reserve at Princeton were under way betimes to join Cornwallis at Trenton. One of these under Colonel Mawhood, with three companies of horse, had already crossed Stony Brook and had climbed the hill beyond, before they descried Mercer following the road in the valley below; the other was half a mile behind, north of the stream. Mawhood quickly turned back and, uniting the two, engaged Mercer. The Americans were armed with rifles which had no bayonets, and although nearly equal in number to the enemy they were first slowly then rapidly driven up the hill to the ridge south of the King’s Highway and east of the Quaker road. They stood firm before the firing of the English, but yielded when the enemy charged bayonets. In this encounter Mercer was severely wounded and left for dead. Many other officers were likewise wounded as they hung back, striving to rally the flying troops.

Washington, hearing the firing, stopped immediately and, leaving the rest of his column to follow their line of march, put himself at the head of the Pennsylvania volunteers and wheeled. Summoning two pieces of artillery he turned to join the retreating forces of Mercer. The British reached the crest of the hill in pursuit before they saw Washington’s column. The sight brought them to a halt, and while they formed their artillery came up. It seemed to Washington a most critical moment. In an instant Mercer’s command was fused with his own men, and placing himself well out before the line he gave the order to advance. There was no halt until the Commander himself was within thirty yards of the foe; at that instant both lines volleyed simultaneously. The fire was hasty and ineffective. Washington, as if by a miracle, was unscathed. As the smoke blew away, an American brigade came in under Hitchcock, while Hand with his riflemen attacked the British flank. In a few moments Mawhood gave up the fight; his troops, after a few brave efforts, broke and retreated over the hill up the valley of Stony Brook. The bridge was then destroyed.

Meantime the head of the American column had reached the outskirts of Princeton. There, on the edge of the ravine now known as Springdale, was posted still a third British force composed of soldiers from the 40th and 55th Line. The Americans, with Stark at their head, attacked and drove them back as far as Nassau Hall, into which the fugitives hastily threw themselves. From the windows scattered remnants of their regiments could be seen fleeing through fields and byways toward New Brunswick. The American artillery began to play on the walls of the building; one ball, it is said, crashed through the roof and tore from its frame the portrait of George II., hanging in the Prayer Hall; another is still imbedded in the venerable walls. A Princeton militiaman, with the assistance of his neighbors, finally burst the door and the little garrison surrendered.

When Donop retreated from Bordentown to Princeton after the battle of Trenton, he threw up an arrow-head breastwork at the point not far from where Mercer and Stockton Streets now join; on this still lay a cannon of the size known as a thirty-two pounder, the carriage of which was dismantled. It was early morning when Cornwallis became aware that his expected battle would not be fought at Trenton; the roar of artillery gave him the terrible assurance that the blow had been struck on his weakened flank,—that his precious stores at New Brunswick were in danger. Swiftly he issued the necessary orders and appeared at the west end of the town on the King’s Highway, just as Washington was leaving Princeton, his van having been delayed in crossing Stony Brook. The citizens had loaded the gun in the breastwork and on the approach of the intruders they fired it. This utterly deceived the English generals, for they thought themselves facing a well-manned battery. It was some time, tradition says an hour, before they were undeceived and in that precious interval Washington collected his army and marched away. His forces were too weak to risk the venture of seizing New Brunswick, even temporarily; accordingly he turned northwestward and reached Morristown in safety. There and at Middlebrook his headquarters practically remained for the rest of the war. The English were content to secure New Brunswick.

In the battle of Princeton there were engaged somewhat under two thousand men on each side. The actual fighting lasted less than half an hour. We lost very few men—so few that the number cannot be accurately reckoned—possibly thirty; but we lost a brave general, Hugh Mercer, a colonel, a major, and three captains. The English soldiers fought with unsurpassed gallantry. They lost two hundred killed and two hundred and fifty captured, but no officers of distinction. It was not, therefore, a big fight, but it was none the less a great and decisive battle. How important Washington felt it to be, is attested by his personal exposure of himself. How decisive the great military critics have considered it, is shown by the fact that the campaign of which it was the finishing stroke is held by them to have been typical of his genius as a strategist. The two affairs of Trenton and Princeton are in the short histories of the Revolution generally reckoned together. And naturally so, since they occurred so near to one another in time and place. But, strategically and tactically examined, the battle of Trenton made good Washington’s position behind the Delaware; the battle of Princeton secured New Jersey and the Middle States.

After the preliminary actions which took place in New England the remainder of the Revolution falls into three portions—the struggle for the Hudson, to secure communication between New England and the Middle States; the struggle for the Delaware, to secure communication between the Middle States and the South; and thirdly, the effort to regain the South. After the battle of Princeton, Washington was able to establish a line from Amboy around by the west and south to Morristown; New England, the Middle and Southern States were in communication with each other and free. As a result of the first campaign by a numerous and well-equipped Anglo-German army the English held nothing but Newport in Rhode Island and New York City, with posts at King’s Bridge on the north and at New Brunswick on the south. The proof was finally secured that Washington with a permanent army such as the Colonies might, unassisted, have furnished him, would have been a match for any land force the English could have transported to America.

For the remaining years of the war Princeton was held by the Americans. Both the Legislature of the State and the Council of Safety held their meetings within its precincts; for a time Putnam was in command of the little garrison, for a time Sullivan. Early in 1781 thirteen hundred mutinous Pennsylvanians of Washington’s army marched away from Morristown and came in a body to Princeton. They were met by emissaries from Clinton who strove to entice them from their allegiance. But, though mutinous, they were not traitors, for they seized the British emissaries and handed them over to General Wayne to be treated as spies. A committee of Congress appeared and made such arrangements as pacified them. In the autumn of the same year the victory of Yorktown was celebrated with illuminations and general rejoicings. The College was again in session with forty students and local prosperity was restored. In 1782 there was held a meeting to support a continuance of the war.

The Revolutionary epoch was fitly brought to a close by a meeting of Congress in Nassau Hall. On June 20, 1783, three hundred Pennsylvania soldiers who were discontented with the terms of their discharge marched from Lancaster to Philadelphia and beset the doors of Congress, holding that assembly imprisoned for three hours under threat of violence if their wrongs were not redressed. The legislators resolved to adjourn to Princeton. They were made heartily welcome, the college halls were put at their disposal, and the houses of the citizens were hospitably opened for their entertainment. Their sessions were held regularly in the College library for over four months, until the fourth of November, when they adjourned to meet at Annapolis three weeks later. Washington was in Princeton twice during this time: once at commencement in September, when he made a present of fifty guineas to the trustees—a sum they spent for the portrait by Peale which now hangs in Nassau Hall, filling, it is said, the very frame from which that of George II. was shot away during the battle. The second time he came in October, at the request of Boudinot, President of Congress, and a trustee of the College, to give advice concerning such weighty matters as the organization of a standing army to defend the frontiers, of a militia to maintain internal order, and of the military school. The Commander-in-Chief was received in solemn session and congratulated by the President on the success of the war. He replied in fitting terms. According to tradition he occupied while in attendance on Congress a room in a house now replaced by the handsome Pyne dormitory on the corner of Witherspoon and Nassau Streets, but his residence was the colonial mansion three miles away on the hill above the town of Rocky Hill which has been preserved as a historical monument and revolutionary museum by the liberality of Mrs. Josephine Swann. It was from this place that he issued his famous farewell address to the army.