CHAPTER VI
A MIDNIGHT SURPRISE
We have certainly read enough about General Washington to know that he often planned to steal a march on the British. Don't you remember how surprised General Howe was one morning to find that Washington had gone to Dorchester Heights, with a big force of men, horses, and carts, and how he threw up breastworks, mounted cannon, and forced the British general after a few days to quit the good city of Boston? Haven't we also read how the "ragged Continentals" left their bloody footprints in the snow, as they marched to Trenton all that bitter cold night in December, 1777, and gave the Hessians a Christmas greeting they little expected?
In January, 1779, England sent orders to General Clinton "to bring Mr. Washington to a general and decisive action at the opening of the campaign," and also "to harry the frontiers and coasts north and south."
General Clinton wrote back that he had found "Mr. Washington" a hard nut to crack, but he would do his level best, he said, "to strike at Washington while he was in motion."
The main American force was still in winter quarters in northern New Jersey, near New York. Various brigades were stationed up and down the Hudson as far as West Point. As at the beginning of the war, so now in 1779, the line of the Hudson from Albany to New York was the key to the general situation. Its protection, as Washington had written, was of "infinite consequence to our cause."
The first real move in the game was made in May, when a large British force marched up, captured, and strongly fortified the two forts at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point, only thirteen miles below West Point. The enemy thus secured the control of King's Ferry, where troops and supplies for the patriot army were ferried across the Hudson.
Our spies now sent word to Washington that the British were ready to move on some secret service. The patriot army was at once marched up, and went into camp within easy reach of West Point, to wait for the next move in the game. Once more these far-famed Hudson Highlands were to become the storm center of the struggle.
For some reason, Clinton did not push farther up the Hudson. On the contrary, he began to make raids into various parts of the country, from Martha's Vineyard to the James River. These raids were marked by cruelties unknown in the earlier years of the war. The hated Tryon, once the royal governor of New York, led twenty-six hundred men into Connecticut. His brutal soldiers killed unarmed and helpless men and women, and sacked and burned houses and churches.