CHAPTER XXVII.
THE EVENTFUL YEAR 1780.—NEW JERSEY ONCE MORE INVADED.
The first act of General Washington upon reaching Morristown was to invoice his resources and balance his accounts. He “called the roll” of his army, made record of all supplies, and framed estimates for forthcoming necessities. It was a depressing exhibit. Excluding South Carolina and Georgia troops, which were assigned to their own home department, the entire Muster, including all independent organizations as well as drummers, fifers, teamsters, and all attachés of every kind, and upon the impossible assumption that every man on the original Roll was still living, and in the service, footed up only twenty-seven thousand and ninety-nine men.
The army was in huts. The snow was an even two feet in depth. All defiles were drifted full, and hard-packed, well-nigh impassable. But a few days more of the year remained. On the thirty-first, within a few days, two thousand and fifty enlistments would expire. In ninety days more, March the thirty-first, six thousand four hundred and ninety-six more would expire. By the last of April, when active operations might be anticipated, the total reduction by expiration of term of service would reach eight thousand one hundred and fifty; by the last of September, ten thousand seven hundred and nine; and, during the year, twelve thousand one hundred and fifty.
The total force enlisted “for the war” was but fourteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight men; and from the numbers already given, were to be detailed the necessary number of artificers, armorers, wagoners, quartermasters’ employees, and all those subordinate detachments which reduce the fighting force of an army, as well as all casualties since their first muster. To this is to be added the fact, that the several States furnished their respective quotas at different times, and for different periods, so that there was a constant addition of raw levies. The army, in fact, had no opportunity to be thoroughly drilled and disciplined, in all its parts. Such was the condition of the Army of the United States, when the second campaign in the Southern States began.
Some reader may very naturally inquire why Washington did not attack the British garrison of New York, after Clinton’s departure for Charleston with so many troops. Critics at the time made complaint, and some writers have indorsed their criticisms through ignorance of the facts. An examination of the original Returns of Clinton, still found in the British archives, gives the following result. This estimate was taken at the time when Washington was preparing to make an attempt on New York. The British force of that post and its dependencies was twenty-six thousand seven hundred and fifty-six effectives. There were in Georgia three thousand nine hundred and thirty men; and in Florida, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven effectives. At Penobscot, Me., and at Halifax, subject to call, there was an additional force of three thousand four hundred and sixty, making an aggregated force of nearly thirty-eight thousand men.
When General Clinton sailed with his seven thousand five hundred men, the British force in the Southern Department became thirteen thousand two hundred and sixty-seven; but it left in New York an effective strength of twenty-one thousand and six men. And yet this garrison was not without apprehension of attack. The winter was one of unexampled severity. New York harbor froze until teams could cross upon the ice. The British army was almost in a starving condition. Country supplies of wood were cut off, until vessels at the wharves were chopped up for fuel. The American army was not wholly idle. Lord Stirling, with twenty-five hundred men, crossed to Staten Island on the ice, in spite of the extreme cold, to attack that British supply-post; but a sudden opening in the ice restored British communication with the city, and his expedition failed of valuable results. On the twenty-fifth of January, General Knyphausen sent a small detachment across the ice at Paulus Hook and captured a company at Newark; while Lieutenant-Colonel Buskirk crossed from Staten Island, and at Elizabethtown captured the picket and burned the Town House, as well as the church of the Rev. James Caldwell, Chaplain of Colonel Elias Dayton’s Regiment. On the second of February, Lieutenant-Colonel Norton rode in sleighs, to attack a small American post near White Plains; but, otherwise, the British as well as the American army had enough to do to prevent freezing to death.
During the extreme freeze of January, 1780, the suffering in the American camp is reported as “baffling description. The paths were marked by blood from the feet of barefooted soldiers.” Bancroft and Irving have left nothing to add here. General Greene, Quartermaster-General, reported on the eleventh of January: “Such weather I never did feel. For six or eight days there has been no living abroad. We drive over the tops of fences. We have been alternately out of meat and bread for eight or nine days past, and without either for three or four.” It was a time, also, when the royalist element gained some hope; and Clinton’s Official Return for December reports a force of four thousand and sixty-four Provincials then in British pay. The women of New Jersey came to the rescue of the suffering soldiers of Washington in a manner that exhausts all possible forms of recognition. Clothing and feeding the naked and hungry was their constant employment. Washington says of New Jersey, that “his requisitions were punctually complied with, and in many counties exceeded.”
During this entire period there was one supervision exercised by the American Commander-in-Chief which knew no interruption, whatever the inclemency of the weather. Every pass to his strongly intrenched camp, and every bold promontory, or distinct summit, that observed or commanded approach, was guarded, and watch-fires were instituted for signals of danger, or warning to the militia. The perpetuation of his strongholds in New Jersey saved the Republic.
During this well-nigh desperate condition of his army, and the increasing peril to the Southern Department, he made one more Report of his condition to Congress, and it belongs to this narrative as a signal exhibit of his wisdom and courage, as well as his discernment of the increasing lethargy of sections not in immediate danger from British aggression. It reads as follows: “Certain I am, unless Congress are vested with powers by the separate States competent to the great purposes of the war, or assume them as a matter of right, and they and the States act with more energy than they have done, our cause is lost. We can no longer drudge along in the old way. By ill-timing in the adoption of measures, by delays in the execution of them, or by unwarranted jealousies, we incur enormous expenses and derive no benefit from them. One State will comply with a requisition of Congress; another neglects to do it; a third executes it by halves; and they differ in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working up hill. While such a system as the present one, or rather, the want of one, prevails, we shall be ever unable to apply our strongest resources to any advantage.... I see one head gradually organizing into thirteen. I see one army branching into thirteen, which instead of looking up to Congress as the supreme controlling power of the United States, are considering themselves dependent upon their respective States.”
On the third of April, Washington again wrote in such plain terms of “the mutinous spirit, intense disgust, and absolute desperation of his small, famished, ragged, and depleted command,” that after hot debate, a committee of three was reluctantly sent to advise with him as to measures of relief.