As their adjutant remarked to Mrs. Darrah, they had been on a fool's errand and accomplished nothing. "I sincerely wish," wrote Washington to the president of Congress, "that they had made an attack, as the issue, in all probability, from the disposition of our troops and the strong situation of our camp, would have been fortunate and happy. At the same time, I must add, that reason, prudence, and every principle of policy, forbade us from quitting our post to attack them." General Howe, in his dispatches, said, "They were so strongly intrenched that it was impossible to attack them." They had no other intrenchments than two small redoubts, one on each hill near the head-quarters. Three days afterward Washington broke up his encampment at Whitemarsh, and, in the midst of a deep snow, marched to the Schuylkill, crossed it at Swedes' Ford, and established his winter quarters at Valley Forge. Hundreds of the soldiers made that dreary march of nineteen miles with bare feet, and the pathway of the patriot army might have been traced all the way by hundreds of foot-marks in the snow stained with blood. * Let us follow them thither, and in the head-quarters of the chief, which stands near the banks of the Schuylkill, sit down and ponder upon the wondrous love of country which kept that suffering army together during the winter and spring of 1778.
We left Whitemarsh at about two o'clock for the Schuylkill, passing, on our way, over Barren Hill, the scene of a skillful military movement by La Fayette, with a body of Americans, in May, 1778. Barren Hill is a small village lying upon the western slope of a rough eminence, about four miles west of Whitemarsh. From its summit a fine view of the surrounding country may be obtained. There, on the right of the road leading toward the Schuylkill from Chestnut Hill to Conshohocken (Matson's Ford), is the old Lutheran church which La Fayette occupied as quarters during his brief tarry on the hill. According to an inscription upon a tablet in the western gable, its title is "St. Peter's," and the time of erection 1761. By the road-side near the church is a quaint-looking school-house, covered with stucco. The church, the school-house, and two strong stone houses composed this settlement, then in the wilderness, when La Fayette made it his point of observation, and out-maneuvered General Grant. Within the old church-yard, sitting upon a recumbent sand-stone slab, with half-effaced inscription, I made this sketch; and here let us open the record and receive instruction from the chronicler.
As this is the first time in the course of our journey that wc have met La Fayette as commander-in-chief of an expedition, it is a proper
* Gordon says that, while at Washington's table, in 1784, the chief informed him that bloody foot-prints were every where visible in the course of their march. Such was the distress of the soldiers from want of clothing, that Washington, as a last resort, authorized the proper officers to take by force, for the use of the army, such articles of clothing as the people refused to sell. It must be remembered that the people generally, throughout that section of Pennsylvania, were opposed to the patriots, and did every thing in their power to distress them.
La Fayette.—His first Impulses favorable to the Americans.—His Liberality.—Visit to England.
place to consider the circumstances attending his espousal of the cause of freedom, and his connection with the American Continental army. He was a young man, not yet nineteen years old, when our Declaration of Independence went over the seas, and commanded the admiration of thinkers in the Old World. La Fayette was of noble ancestry. He had just married the Countess Anastasia de Noailles, daughter of the Duke De Noailles, a lady of great personal beauty, immense fortune, and brilliant accomplishments. * When the story of America's wrongs, and of her holy struggle for the right, just begun, reached his ears, it inflamed his young heart with the most passionate sympathy, and an ardent desire to aid them with his purse and sword. ** He openly espoused the cause of the patriots, and resolved to hasten to their support. Not all the blandishments of rank and fortune, the endearments of conjugal love, made doubly so by promise of offspring, nor the sad tales of reverses to the American arms at the close of 1776, which every vessel from our shores carried to Europe, could repress his zeal or deter him from the execution of his noble purpose. He had just offered his services to Silas Deane, one of the American commissioners at Paris, *** when the news arrived that the remnant of the American army, reduced to two thousand insurgents, as they were called, had fled toward Philadelphia through the Jerseys, before an army of thirty thousand British regulars. This news frustrated all the plans of Deane for the moment, for it utterly destroyed the little credit which America then had in Europe. Franklin arrived at this juncture, and was greatly pleased with the young marquis and the disinterested zeal which he exhibited, but honestly advised him to abandon his design until better hope for success should appear. But this candid advice was of no avail. The commissioners had not sufficient credit to command the means to fit out a vessel for the purpose of conveying the marquis and his friends, with arms, ammunition, and stores. La Fayette offered to purchase a ship with his own funds. "Hitherto," he said, in the spirit of true heroism, "I have only cherished your cause; now I am going to serve it. The lower it is in the opinion of the people, the greater effect my departure will have; and since you can not get a vessel, I shall purchase and fit out one, to carry your dispatches to Congress and me to America." **** He went over to London, and mingled freely with the leading politicians there. He danced at the house of Lord George Germaine, the minister for the affairs of America, and at the house of Lord Rawdon, who had just returned from New York, paid his personal respects to the king, and met, at the opera, General Clinton, whom he was afterward to meet on the field of battle at Monmouth. (v) While he concealed his intentions of going to America, he openly avowed his sentiments; often defended the Americans; rejoiced at their success at Trenton; and his opposition spirit obtained for him an invitation to breakfast with Lord Shelburne. He refused invitations to visit sea-ports where
* La Fayette himself had an independent revenue of 200,000 livres—about $37,000.