Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

with the entertainment and tarried there near two hours or more; gov. Tryon seasoning the repast, at times, by joking Mrs. Murray about her American friends, for she was known to be a steady advocate for the liberties of the country. Meanwhile, the Hessians and the British, except a strong corps which marched down the road to take possession of the city, remained upon their arms inactive. . . . A good body of troops with two field pieces, in about 20 minutes or less, could have taken such a position as would have necessarily cut off Putnam's retreat.'

85

With nightfall, pursuers and pursued were exhausted with running and the day ended with the Americans sheltered in the lines Washington had prepared for them on Harlem Heights. But their misery was not over, for as Colonel Humphrey tells:

"That night our soldiers, excessively fatigued by the sultry march of the day, their clothes wet by a severe shower of rain that succeeded towards the evening, their blood chilled by the cold wind that produced a sudden change in the temperature of the air, and their hearts sunk within them by the loss of baggage, artillery, and works in which they had been taught to put great confidence, lay upon their arms, covered only by the clouds of an uncomfortable sky.'

36

The next morning the British were up and at the chase again, and so contemptuous of the Americans that when they drove in a patrol they inflicted on the fugitives the ultimate shame of the whole appalling rout. A cry of ironic bugles followed at the heels of the patriots, sounding the fox-hunt call, the "View, halloo!" that means: "Fox in sight and on the run."

Joseph Reed wrote to his wife, "I never felt such a sensation before-it seemed to crown our disgrace."

37

Washington had followed too many slinking fox not to know that fox-chase signal. It must have been the final torment. In any case, it woke him again to resolution.

He would save that rabble in spite of itself, and make it repay that foreign insolence.

T

XXXIV

A MONTH IN HARLEM

HE peculiar cruelty of those derisive bugles was that they satirized the wrong men.

For it is the business of a patrol to fall back as soon as it develops the lines it is feeling out. Furthermore that patrol was under the command of Colonel Thomas Knowlton, as brave a man as ever was, and it had not retreated without giving proof of fearlessness.

A full half-hour its hundred and twenty remained holding off four hundred of the enemy, until its commander saw that it was about to be flanked and ordered it to return. It had already lost ten of its number, and was literally almost decimated.

It was in the pursuit of this tactically correct retreat that some British officer laughingly told the buglers to give them the "View halloo!" He may have been one of the officers that died in the British retreat across that same fox-hunt field.

Washington had prepared a stronghold on Harlem Heights for his army before it moved out of New York just a day too late, with the loss of what was left of its good name, along with 17 officers, 350 men, few of them killed or wounded; also many of its heavy cannon and most of its "Tents, Baggage and Camp-equipage.” 1

The Harlem Heights have since been known as Washington Heights from their distinguished tenant of a month. They lie north of the sudden valley that cuts through the high wall of the Hudson, a little to the north of the point on

Riverside Drive called Claremont, where Grant's Tomb now stands.

This valley, known then as the Hollow Way, slants now as then from the present 125th street and Eighth avenue to the river at 130th street. The Americans were camped along its northern edge and on back to Washington's headquarters at 161st street. The position was so strong, having the Hudson on its right, lowlands on its left and the Hollow Way in its front, that the British could not have attacked it without great loss, held as it was by about 9,000 men under Washington, with Heath and about 5,000 at Kingsbridge.

The British established themselves a mile and a half to the south of the Hollow Way, at about 98th street, with pickets thrown forward to 105th street, where the Jones house then stood.

Having no cavalry, Washington entrusted his advance patrol work and scouting to Colonel Knowlton, a six-footer, an Indian fighter, and one of the first to join on after the battle of Lexington. He had opposed the seizure of Bunker Hill as unmilitary, but he went along and came back famous. He was the man that Washington had planned to send in to the attack on Staten Island as soon as the British landed there.

Following the battle of Long Island, Knowlton had organized his "Rangers" from select sharpshooters and picked officers. One of his captains was the schoolmaster, Nathan Hale, who had reluctantly consented to risk his life as a spy, had vanished after a conference with Washington, and was now somewhere within the British lines.

He was eccentric enough to have grown weary of taking the country's pay for a year without having "rendered any material service," and he felt that "every kind of service, necessary to the public good, becomes honorable by being necessary."

2

[graphic]

On the morning after the Kip's Bay panic, Knowlton was out with his Rangers before the dawn to find out just where the British were. He dropped down the Hollow Way, climbed the opposite hill, and scouted along the plateau to what would now be 104th street and Riverside Drive, before he struck Howe's picket line and, after a half-hour's exchange of sharpshooting, turned homeward to give in his information. He was followed to the rim of the Hollow Way by the British, who stopped there and taunted him with the fox-hunt calls.

Washington arrived in time to be greeted by the insulting tantara. It stung him, yet how dared he rebuke it? He had lost all faith in the quality of his men. But AdjutantGeneral Reed, who had been out with Knowlton, wrote, "I came off to the General & after some little Hesitation prevailed on him to let a Party go up." He wanted merely to reinforce Knowlton, but Washington decided to try a foxy little trick of his own. He gave Reed Knowlton's men and Major Leitch and the third Virginia regiment of the tavernkeeper, Weedon, freshly come from the Fredericksburg region.

Washington told Reed to try to steal round to the rear of the British, while he sent Lieutenant-Colonel Crary with a body of troops down to the right of the Hollow Way in pretence of formal attack. He hoped to lure the British off the opposite hilltop.

The ruse succeeded, and the British descended while Reed's men filed off unseen. They were led astray, however, by a misguided officer, and began to climb the rocks of the present-day Morningside Park. They had hoped to come in behind their prey, but unfortunately struck it on the flank. A hot skirmish ensued and Leitch fell mortally wounded with "two balls in his Belly and one in his hip."

A moment later, Knowlton, as he breasted the ledge, was

also mortally wounded. Reed brought him off on his own horse, "& when gasping in the Agonies of Death all his Inquiry was if we had drove the enemy."

4

Though Washington had not intended a real action, and merely hoped to bag the British advance party, he was so amazed to see his men really holding their ground that he kept throwing in reinforcements under Putnam, Greene, and Clinton, until he had eighteen hundred men at work.

He could hardly believe his eyes. His men were actually fighting!—and in the open! They were driving the British back!

On the other side Highlanders and Hessian reinforcements came up and there was a long dispute in a field of buckwheat probably on a site partly included in the present grounds of Columbia University, which has moved a long way since it was the King's College where Washington established his stepson, Jacky Custis.

More amazement for Washington. His troops stood fast for two hours. It was the British that broke and retreated from the buckwheat field into an orchard, only to be driven through it and back to their original lines.

In modern language, the rebels had driven the British from 130th street to 105th street-a mile and a quarter-in an action lasting from II A.M. to 3 P.M.

This was startling enough to bring up Howe and Cornwallis and more Hessians with such overpowering numbers that Washington sent an aide to call his men in. Yet, as Reed wrote to his wife:

"The pursuit of a flying Enemy was so new a Scene that it was with Difficulty our Men could be brought to retreat— which they did in very good Order-We buried the Dead & brought off the wounded on both sides as far as our troops had pursued. . . . You can hardly conceive the Change it made in our Army." "

« ZurückWeiter »