XX. burning down the village. By this time the people CHAP. in the neighboring towns were in motion; and the invading party, though they returned by a different 1777. April route, were compelled to retreat hastily, like the 26. expedition to Concord in 1775. By a quick march, Arnold and Silliman confronted them on Sunday at Ridgefield with four hundred men, while two hundred more hung on their rear under Wooster, then in his sixty-eighth year, who encouraged his troops by his words and his example, and fell at their head, mortally wounded, yet not till he had taken twenty or more prisoners. Arnold, having thrown up a barrier across the road, sustained a sharp action till the British, by their superior numbers, turned his position. His horse being killed under him just as the enemy were within a few yards, a soldier, seeing him alone and entangled, advanced on him with fixed bayonet; Arnold drew a pistol, shot the soldier, and retired unhurt. At the wane of the day the British troops, worn out with hard service, formed themselves into an oblong square, and lay on their arms till morning. At daybreak on Monday they resumed their march, and were assailed from stone walls and hidingplaces. A part of Lamb's battalion of artillery, with three companies of volunteers from New Haven and sixty continentals, were strongly posted at the bridge over the Saugatuck, while Arnold and Silliman held ground about two miles above the bridge. The British escaped this danger only by fording the river a mile above them all, and running at full speed to the high hill of Compo, 27. 28. CHAP. within half a mile of the shipping. XX. 1777 April 28. May 23. suers. For three days and nights they had had little rest, and several of them dropped on the road from fatigue. To protect the embarkation, Erskine put himself at the head of the most able of the detachment and fresh men from the ships to drive back the purHere Lamb was wounded; and here Arnold again braved the enemy's musketry and grapeshot, and again his horse was struck, but its rider escaped as before. The Americans could not stand the charge of Erskine, and before night the English set sail. The number of their killed, wounded, and prisoners is estimated at about two hundred; the Americans lost not half so many. Congress, who at Washington's instance1 had elected Arnold a major-general, voted him “a horse, caparisoned, as a token of their approbation of his gallant conduct;" but they refused to restore him to his former relative rank, so that a sense of wrong still rankled in his breast. Wooster lingered a few days, and died with calmness, gloriously ending a long and honorable life. Congress voted him a monument. The Americans had better success in a like undertaking. Return Meigs of Connecticut, learning through General Parsons that the British were lading transports at Sag Harbor, on the east side of the great bay of Long Island, crossed the sound from Sachem's Head on the twenty-third of May with two hundred continentals in whale-boats. From 1 Arnold was elected major-general, May 2, before congress had heard of his gallant conduct in the pursuit of Tryon. Many days passed before that was brought to their notice. XX. 1777. May 24. the north beach of the island, they carried their CHAP. boats on their backs over the sandy point, embarked again on the bay, and landed after midnight within four miles of Sag Harbor. To that place they advanced before daybreak in silence and order, burned one vessel of six or eight guns, and ten loaded transports, destroyed the stores that lay at the wharf, killed five or six of the British, and with little opposition captured all the rest but four. On their return they reached Guilford with ninety prisoners at two in the afternoon, having traversed by land and water ninety miles in twenty-five hours. Congress voted Meigs a sword, and Washington promoted Sergeant Ginnings for merit in the expedition. During the period of his listless indolence Howe May. received letters from his government dated the third of March, after the news of the disasters in New Jersey had reached England. Germain, whom disappointment made more and more vengeful, expressed his extreme mortification that the brilliancy of Howe's successes had thus been tarnished, adding: "They who insolently refuse to accept the mercy of their sovereign cannot, in the eye of impartial reason, have the least room to expect clemency at the hand of his subjects; I fear you and Lord Howe must adopt such modes of carrying on the war that the rebels may be effectually distressed, so that through a lively experience of losses and sufferings they may be brought as soon as possible to a proper sense of their duty." The secretary longed to hear that Boston was in flames; he communicated the king's opinion, that in con 1777. May. CHAP. junction with the fleet "a warm diversion" should XX. be made "upon the coasts of the Massachusetts bay and New Hampshire," and their ports be occupied or "destroyed." The admiral had not come to America to "distress" and "destroy;" he would not hearken to the hint to burn Boston and the other seaside towns of New England;1 and after a June delay of more than three weeks, the general on the third of June made answer, that "it was not consistent with other operations." 3. Hitherto the letters of Sir William Howe to his superior had been decorous: to the minute and elaborate directions of the secretary, addressed through him to the Indian agent, on the employment of the savages of the south and southwest against the frontiers of the Southern states, he replied with undisguised contempt and sneers. In his talk to the headmen and warriors of the southwest, of which a copy was sent to Germain, he accepted with pleasure the white wing from the Chickasaws and Choctaws as the emblem of love, the painted hatchet from the Creeks as the token of fidelity; but while he was profuse of kind words and presents, he never urged "the red children of the great king" to deeds of blood. From Lord North's office Howe received the kindest attention and assurances of support; but not the love of his country, not respect for his sovereign, not fear of public opinion, not the certainty that a war with France would follow a fruitless campaign, could quicken the sluggish nature of the obstinate commander. He had squan 1 George the Third to Lord North, 28 October, 1777. XX. dered away two of the best months for activity in CHAP. the field; he now deliberately wasted the month 1777. of June. There was no force that could seriously June. oppose his march to Philadelphia; yet he clung to his plan of reaching that city by water, while he continually postponed his embarkation. 28. On the twenty-eighth of May, Washington removed May his quarters from Morristown to the heights of Middlebrook. His army was composed of no more than seven thousand five hundred men in forty-three regiments, distributed into five divisions of two brigades each. Sullivan, his oldest major-general, with about fifteen hundred men was stationed at Princeton, while he retained about six thousand in his wellchosen mountain camp. Of this the front was protected by the Raritan, then too deep to be forded; the left was by nature difficult of access; and the right, where the ground was not good, was protected by two strong redoubts. Here, at a distance of about nine miles from Brunswick, he kept watch of his enemy, who put on the appearance of open- June. ing the campaign. Two more regiments came up from Rhode Island; horses, tents, stores, reënforcements, arrived from England; Lee was put on board the "Centurion" man-of-war for security; and by the twelfth of June, British, Hessians, and Anspachers, to the number of seventeen thousand, with boats and pontoons for crossing the Delaware, were assembled at Brunswick. For its numbers that army had not its equal in the world; the veteran officers, alike German and English, agreed that they had never seen such a body of men. Every soldier was eager for a battle. |