Charge against General Greene.—Excitement throughout the Country.—Riot in Philadelphia.—Convention at Hartford
rapid rise in prices was unjustly attributed to extortion on the part of public officers, and even General Greene, who acted as quarter-master general, was accused of enriching himself at the public expense, because he received for his salary a percentage on all moneys disbursed, and the depreciation made the nominal amount vast. Individual speculators and monopolizers were the extortioners and the oppressors of the people, and of them Washington said, in a letter to President Reed, "I would to God that some of the more atrocious in each state were hung in gibbets upon a gallows four times as high as the one prepared for Haman." It was remarked, "that while the honest and patriotic were impoverished, rogues and Tories were fast growing rich."
Toward the close of the summer of 1779, the country was greatly agitated by the existing financial embarrassments. Meetings were held in the chief cities on the subject. In Philadelphia, party feelings, growing out of the currency question, became so strong and decided that a riot took place under the very eyes of Congress. A committee had undertaken to regulate the prices of flour, rum, sugar, molasses, coffee, salt, and other articles of general use. Robert Morris and other leading merchants refused to conform to the regulation. Wilson, Clymer, and Mifflin, with their friends, were threatened with banishment to New York, as abettors and defenders of the Tories. They armed themselves, and repaired to October 4,1779 Wilson's house. A mob, with fire-arms and two cannons, approached. Some shots were fired, and one of the defenders of the house was killed. A man and a boy of the mob were also killed. The mob were about to force the door, when Reed, the president of Congress, appeared with some cavalry, and partially restored order, but it was necessary for the citizens to turn out and patrol the streets. It was several days before quiet was restored. In the midst of this general excitement a convention of the five Eastern States October 20, 1799 was held at Hartford, and Congress, unable longer to disguise the fact that its bills of credit were permanently depreciating, approved of, and recommended, a plan elaborated by that convention, to regulate prices on the basis of twenty paper dollars for one of specie. This measure partially quieted the public mind. Before the end of the year the two hundred millions were emitted, and the press was stopped. * At that time the depreciation stood thirty for one, and was constantly increasing. The diversion of labor from agricultural and other industrial pursuits, the destruction of grain by the belligerent forces in various parts of the country, combined with the embarrassed state of the finances of government, which we have briefly considered, threatened famine and general bankruptcy; and during the winter and spring of 1780, when Washington had his quarters at Morristown, the hope of the patriot was suffering an almost total eclipse; it was the gloomiest period of the Revolution. The financial operations which subsequently occurred will be noticed hereafter, such as long drafts on the United States commissioners abroad, and foreign loans.
We have made a wide but necessary digression in turning aside to view the financial affairs of the patriots at the period under consideration. Let us resume our journey and historic annotations.
I left Morristown for Springfield in the early morning train. The air was September 13, 1848 cool and bracing, and I had a pleasant walk of about a mile from the station, at the foot of the Short Hills, to the pretty village lying in the bosom of a fertile plain near the banks of the Rahway River. The trees upon the surrounding hills were beginning to assume the variegated livery of autumn, not from the effects of frosts, but of a long drought, yet on the plain every thing was as green as in June, except the ripening maize. I sought for the "oldest inhabitant," and found him in the person of the venerable Gilbert Edwards, who was a half-grown boy at the time of the battle of Springfield, and sold apples to the American soldiers when they came down from the Short Hills to oppose the invasion of the enemy under Knyphausen, the German general. ** He kindly accompanied me to the place
* Pitkin, Marshall, Ramsay, Gordon, Sparks, Hildreth.
* General, the Baron Knyphausen, was a native of Alsace, then one of the Rhenish provinces. His father was a colonel in the German regiment of Dittforth, in the service of John, Duke of Marlborough. The general was bred a soldier, and served under Frederic the First, father of Frederic the Great of Prussia. The twelve thousand German troops hired by the English government, for service in America, were placed under his command, and the Hessians were led by the Baron de Reidesel. He arrived with his troops, under convoy of Admiral Lord Howe, in June, 1776, and was engaged in the battle of Long Island in August following. He was also in the battle of Brandywine, and commanded an expedition to Springfield, New Jersey. For some months during the absence of Sir Henry Clinton at the south, Knyphausen was in eommand of the city of New York. He was about sixty years of age, possessed of a fine figure, and was remarkably amiable and simple-minded. La Fayette used to tell an anecdote concerning him, on the authority of British officers. The passage to Ameriea was very long, and one night, while playing whist in the cabin, Knyphausen suddenly turned to the captain and said, with an air of much sincerity, "Captain, ain't we hab sailed past America?" He died on the frontiers of Germany toward the close of the last century.
Battle-ground at Springfield.—Invasion by General Knyphausen.—Clinton's Designs.—Plan of the Springfield Battle.
where the principal engagement occurred, which is on the right of the present turnpike leading from Springfield to Elizabethtown, and a few rods westward of the Rahway. Nothing now remains upon the spot to indicate military operations, for no works were thrown up on the occasion.