Major Lewis Morris, Jr., wrote to his father on September 28th: “Monday morning an advanced party, Colonel Knowlton’s regiment, was attacked on a height a little to the southwest of Day’s Tavern.”
Morningside Heights would have been considerably more than “a little” to the southwest of Day’s Tavern. The detachment sent out before daylight under Knowlton by General Washington was not his regiment but a small body, probably a single company, and was sent to make a diversion upon the enemy’s rear. It is probable that they followed the river’s edge as far south as Ninety-fourth Street, much below Claremont and Morningside Heights. The actual battle did not begin until late in the day. The resolution of Congress passed October 17, 1776, was “Resolved, That General Lee be directed to repair to the camp on the Heights of Harlem with leave,” etc.
Washington had no camp on Morningside Heights. His camp was on the high ground between the Point of Rocks and the Harlem River.
Finally “nowhere on Manhattan Island, to my knowledge, beyond the limit of the city, have there been found the remains of so many English and Hessian soldiers, as shown by buttons, cross-belt buckles, bayonets, and portions of other arms, as have been excavated, from time to time, in the neighborhood of Trinity Cemetery. There could have been no fight at this point unless it was at the battle of Harlem, while the neighborhood about Columbia University, where it is claimed the battle was fought, has been particularly free from all such evidence.”[40] Claremont is now a public restaurant.[41] The adding of the huge inclosed piazzas has produced an effect that is nondescript.
Hamilton Grange
Alexander Hamilton, although born in another colony, was identified with the city from boyhood and married into a New York family.[42] The genuine New Yorker seems always to have had a certain regard for the memory of Hamilton, ascribable perhaps to his untimely taking off, to a sentiment of having been, as it were, robbed of the services of a great man, and to the strong light thrown upon the contrast between his traits and those of his distinguished and brilliant antagonist.
He had faults, but they were very human ones, while those of his adversary tended toward the incarnation of selfishness. His career is probably more familiar to the people than that of any of the other characters connected with the State of New York during the Revolutionary era. The site of the house (named after the estate of his grandfather in Ayreshire, Scotland) was chosen by him in order to be in proximity to the house of his friend, Gouverneur Morris, at Morrisania. The situation at that time, like that of the Jumel house, commanded an extensive view of the Hudson and Harlem rivers and Long Island Sound. It was then about eight miles from town, so that it was his habit to drive in every day. It was not to this house that he was brought after the disastrous event of July 11, 1804. His friend William Bayard had received an intimation of the proposed encounter, and was waiting when the boat containing him reached the New York shore. Hamilton was carried to his house and died there the next day. His wife and children were with him. One daughter, overcome by two such dreadful events in the family within a short period, lost her reason.[43] The whole city was affected. Business was suspended. Indignation was universal. Burr’s followers walked in the funeral procession. Talleyrand said of Hamilton: “Je considére Napoleon, Fox, et Hamilton comme lest trois plus grande hommes de notre époque, et si je devais me prononcer entre les trois, je donnerais sans hesiter la première place a Hamilton.”