XXIII.

CHAP. their beds and fled in the night to meet at Lancas ter. But Howe moved always compactly and with 1777. caution, never sending a detached party beyond supporting distance.

When, on the nineteenth, Washington's army passed through the Schuylkill at Parker's ford, Wayne, who was left with a large body of troops to fall upon any detached party of Howe's army, or to destroy its baggage, wrote chidingly to Washington: "There never was, there never will be, a finer opportunity of giving the enemy a fatal blow; Howe knows nothing of my situation; I have taken every precaution to prevent any intelligence getting to him, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on his front, flanks, and rear." On the night following the twentieth, Wayne had called up his men to make a junction with Maxwell, when MajorGeneral Grey of the British army, with three regiments, broke in upon them by surprise, and, using the bayonet only, killed, wounded, or took at least three hundred. Darkness and Wayne's presence of mind saved his cannon and the rest of his troops.

The loss was heavy to bear, and opened the way to Philadelphia. John Adams blamed Washington without stint for having crossed to the eastern side of the Schuylkill: "It is a very injudicious manoeuvre. If he had sent one brigade of his regular troops to have headed the militia, he might have cut to pieces Howe's army in attempting to cross any of the fords. Howe will not attempt it. He will wait for his fleet in Delaware river. O Heaven, grant us one great soul! One

leading mind would extricate the best cause from CHAP. that ruin which seems to await it."

XXIII.

While John Adams was writing, Howe moved 1777, down the valley, and encamped along the Schuylkill from Valley Forge to French creek. There were many fords on the rapid river, which in those days flowed at its will. On the twenty-second a small party of Howe's army forced the passage at Gordon's ford. The following night and morning the main body of the British army crossed at Fatland ford near Valley Forge, and encamped with its left to the Schuylkill. Congress disguised its impotence by voting Washington power to change officers under brigadiers, and by inviting him to support his army upon the country around him. He was too weak to risk a battle; nor could he by swift marches hang on his enemy's rear, for more than a thousand of his men were barefoot. Rejoined by Wayne, and strengthened by a thousand Marylanders under Smallwood, he sent a peremptory order to Putnam, who was wildly planning attacks on Staten Island, Paulus-hook, New York, and Long Island, to forward a detachment of twenty-five hundred men "with the least possible delay," and to draw his remaining forces together, so that with aid from the militia of New York and Connecticut "the passes in the Highlands might be perfectly secure." Knowing the very great relative superiority of the northern army in numbers, he requested Gates to return the corps of Morgan, being resolved, if he could but be properly seconded, to force the army of Howe to retreat or capitulate before winter.

XXIII.

СНАР. On the twenty-fifth, that army encamped at Germantown; and the next morning, Cornwallis, with 1777. the grenadiers, took possession of Philadelphia.

The course of the campaign decided the result at the north. Howe was to have taken Philadel phia in time to aid Burgoyne; to oppose Burgoyne, Washington bared himself of his best troops, and with an inferior force detained Howe thirty days, on a march of fifty-four miles, till it was too late for him to fulfil his instructions.

CHAP.
XXIV.

Aug.

On the nineteenth of August Gates assumed the command of the northern army, which lay nine miles above Albany, near the mouths of the Mo- 1777. hawk. Repelling groundless complaints of ill treatment of those captured at Bennington, he taunted Burgoyne in rhetorical and exaggerated phrases with the murders and scalpings by the Indians in his employ. On the return of the battalions with Arnold and the arrival of the corps of Morgan, his continental troops, apart from continual accessions of militia, outnumbered the British and German regulars whom he was to meet. Artillery and small arms were received from France by an arrival at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and New York freely brought out its resources.

The war of America was a war of ideas more Sept. than of material power. On the ninth of September, Jay, the first chief justice of the new commonwealth of New York, opened its supreme court

CHAP. in Kingston, and charged the grand jury in these
XXIV. words: "Free, mild, and equal government begins
1777. to rise. Divine Providence has made the tyranny
Sept.

of princes instrumental in breaking the chains of
their subjects. Whoever compares our present with
our former constitution will admit that all the
calamities incident to this war will be amply com-
pensated by the many blessings flowing from this
glorious revolution, which in its rise and progress
is distinguished by so many marks of the divine
favor and interposition that no doubt can remain
of its being finally accomplished. Thirteen colonies
immediately become one people, and unanimously
determine to be free. The people of this state
have chosen their constitution under the guidance
of reason and experience. The highest respect has
been paid to those great and equal rights of hu-
man nature which should forever remain inviolate
in every society. You will know no power but
such as you create, no laws but such as acquire
all their obligation from your consent.
The rights
of conscience and private judgment are by nature
subject to no control but that of the Deity, and
in that free situation they are now left. Happy
would it be for all mankind, if the opinion pre-
vailed that the gospel of Christ would not fall,
though unsupported by the arm of flesh."

While Jay affirmed these principles of public justice and wisdom, Gates, after twenty days of inactivity, moved his army up the Hudson to Stillwater. On the twelfth they advanced and encamped on a spur of hills jutting out nearly to the Hudson, known as Behmus's heights. They counted nine