On the twelfth, he learned that General Lee had entered New Jersey with his division. As early as November twenty-fifth, he had ordered General Schuyler to forward to him all Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops then in the Northern Department.
A glance at the plans and movements of the British army is now of interest. Howe reported his movements as follows: “My first design extended no further than to get, and keep possession of, East New Jersey. Lord Cornwallis had orders not to advance beyond Brunswick; but, on the sixth, I joined his lordship with the Fourth Brigade of British, under General Grant. On the seventh, Cornwallis marched with his corps, except the Guards who were left at Brunswick, to Princeton, which the Americans had quitted the same day. He delayed seventeen hours at Princeton, and was an entire day in marching to Trenton. He arrived there, just as the rear-guard of the enemy had crossed; but they had taken the precaution to destroy, or secure to the south side, all the boats that could possibly have been employed for crossing the river.”
Cornwallis remained at Pennington until the fourteenth, when the British army was placed in winter quarters; “the weather,” says General Howe, “having become too severe to keep the field.”
On the previous day, the thirteenth, General Charles Lee, next in rank to Washington, while leisurely resting at a country house at Baskenridge, three miles from his troops, was taken prisoner by a British scouting detachment. It may be of interest to the reader to be reminded, that this Major-General required from Congress an advance of thirty thousand dollars, to enable him to transfer his English property to America, before he accepted his commission, and was disappointed that he was made second, instead of first, in command. When captured, he was in company with Major Wilkinson, a messenger from his old Virginia friend, General Horatio Gates, who had just been ordered by Washington to accompany certain reënforcements from the northern army, to increase the force of the Commander-in-Chief. This Major Wilkinson escaped capture, but the British scouts used his horse for Lee’s removal. On the table was a letter, not yet folded, which the messenger was to convey to General Gates. It reads as follows (omitting the expletives),—
Baskenridge, December 13, 1776.
My Dear Gates: The ingenious manœuvre of Fort Washington has completely unhinged the goodly fabrick we had been building. There never was so —— a stroke. Entre nous, a certain great man is —— deficient. He has thrown me into a position where I have my choice of difficulties. If I stay in the Province, I risk myself and my army; and if I do not stay, the Province is lost forever.... Our councils have been weak, to the last degree. As to what relates to yourself, if you think you can be in time to aid the general, I would have you, by all means, go. You will at least save your army.
No comment is required, except to state that repeated orders had been received and acknowledged by Lee, to join Washington; but he had determined not to join him, and to act independently with his division, regardless of the orders of his Commander-in-Chief, and of Congress. Two extracts only are admissible. Washington had reprimanded Lee for interfering with the independent command of General Heath, on the Hudson. On the twenty-sixth of November, Lee wrote to Heath: “The Commander-in-Chief is now separated from us. I, of course, command on this side the water; for the future I will, and I must, be obeyed.” On the twenty-third of November, in order to induce New England to trust him, and distrust Washington, he wrote the following letter to James Bowdoin, President of the Massachusetts Council:
Before the unfortunate affair at Fort Washington, it was my opinion, that the two armies, that on the east and that on the west side of the North River, must rest, each, on its own bottom; that the idea, of detaching and reënforcing from one side to the other, on every motion of the enemy, was chimerical; but to harbor such a thought, in our present circumstances, is absolute insanity.... We must therefore depend upon ourselves. Should the enemy alter the present direction of their operation, I would never entertain the thought on being succored from the western army (that across the Hudson, with Washington). Affairs appear in so important a crisis, that I think even the resolves of Congress must be no longer nicely weighed with us. There are times when we must commit treason against the laws of the State, for the salvation of the State. The present crisis demands this brave, virtuous kind of treason. For my part, and I flatter myself my way of thinking is congenial with that of Mr. Bowdoin, I will stake my head and reputation on the measure.
James Bowdoin loved Massachusetts; but no selfish or local considerations, such as were those of Lee, could impair his confidence in the wisdom and patriotism of the American Commander-in-Chief.
The capture of Lee was thus mildly noticed by Washington: “It was by his own folly and imprudence, and without a view to effect any good, that he was taken.”