The Story of the Thirteen Colonies

by H. A. Guerber

LXVIII. CHRISTMAS EVE.

While retreating before Cornwallis, Washington kept sending stern orders to Lee to hasten and join him, so that their combined forces could be used against the British. But Lee did not obey, and came on very slowly. Indeed, he said freely that he did not consider Washington a good general, and often boasted that if he were only at the head of the army the war would soon be over.

Lee was in a little inn in New Jersey, writing a letter to General Gates expressing his opinion of Washington, when he was suddenly surrounded by the British and made a prisoner. Without giving him time to change his dressing-gown and slippers, or get into his uniform, the British bore him off in triumph, thinking they had taken the most clever of all the American generals. But Lee was really no loss, and his army, having fortunately gone on ahead, joined Washington sooner without a general than it would have done had Lee been there.

Many of the Americans now fancied, like the British, that since Lee was a prisoner their mainstay was gone. Besides, the British began to threaten to illtreat Lee, and as the Americans held no British generals as prisoners, they could not offer an exchange. Knowing this, a Rhode Island officer named Barton made a bold plan.

He had heard that the British General Prescott was quartered on the seashore not very far from Newport. Taking a party of forty brave seamen and soldiers, he rowed with muffled oars right through the British fleet, one dark night. Then a sentinel was noiselessly killed, and the small force surrounded the house where Prescott lay asleep. A moment later the Americans burst into his bedroom, bore him off half clothed to their boats, and, rowing away in safety, sent word to the British that Prescott should receive just the same treatment that they gave Lee. Nine months later an exchange was made, and Lee and Prescott went back to their posts (1778).

In the meantime Washington still avoided a battle, and retreated to the Delaware. There, having cleverly secured every boat within a hundred miles, he took his army over the river. When the British came up, not a single boat was to be had; so they camped near the stream, thinking it would soon freeze hard enough to allow them to cross on the ice and seize Philadelphia.

This was a time of great trial for the Americans, and Washington was the only man who did not despair. Still, the British had set a price upon his head, and were loudly boasting that they would soon hang him. Speaking of this, Washington once told his friend Joseph Reed: "My neck does not feel as though it were made for a halter." Then he added that if things came to the worst they would have to retreat into Virginia, or even over the Alleghanies, but that they must never give up the struggle they had begun.

Congress, fearing the British would carry out their plan and seize Philadelphia, now hastily withdrew to Baltimore. But before leaving, Samuel Adams wrote: "Let America exert her own strength, and He who cannot be indifferent to her righteous cause will even work miracles, if necessary, to establish her feet upon a rock."