TRENTON AND ITS BATTLE MONUMENT.
Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, is thirty miles from Philadelphia, a prosperous city with seventy thousand people. The first and most lasting impression many visitors get of it is of the deep rift cut into the clays and gravels of the southern part of the town, to let the Pennsylvania Railroad go through. Here, as everywhere, are displayed the lavish deposits of the "Trenton gravel" as the railway passes under the streets, and even under the Delaware and Raritan Canal, to its depressed station alongside Assunpink Creek of Revolutionary memory, the chief part of the city spreading far to the northward. Trenton is as old as Philadelphia, its reputed founder being Mahlon Stacy, who came up from Burlington Friends' Meeting, while the settlement was named for William Trent, an early Jersey law-maker. The Trenton potteries are its chief industry, established by a colony of Staffordshire potters from England, attracted by its prolific clay deposits; and the conical kilns, which turn out a product worth five or six millions of dollars annually, are scattered at random over the place. Their china ware has been advanced to a high stage of perfection, and displays exquisite decoration. The Trenton cracker factories are also famous. The finest building is the State House, as the Capitol is called, the Delaware River's swift current bubbling over rocks and among grassy islands out in front of the grounds. At Broad and Clinton Streets, the intersection of two of the chief highways, mounted as an ornament upon a drinking-fountain, is the famous "Swamp Angel" cannon, brought from Charleston harbor after the Civil War. This was one of the earliest heavy guns made, plain and rather uncouth-looking, about ten feet long, and rudely constructed in contrast with the elongated and tapering rifled cannon of to-day, and it rests upon a conical pile of brownstone. It was the most noted gun of the Civil War, an eight-inch Parrott rifle, or two-hundred-pounder, and, when fired, carried a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound projectile seven thousand yards from a battery on Morris Island into the city of Charleston, which was then regarded as a prodigious achievement. It is a muzzle-loader, weighing about eight tons, and burst after firing thirty-six rounds at Charleston, in August, 1863, the fracture being plainly seen around the breech.
Trenton's great historical feature is the Revolutionary battlefield, now completely built upon. Washington, having crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, in the early morning of December 26, 1776, marched down to Trenton, and surprised and defeated the Hessians under Rahl, who were encamped north of Assunpink Creek. A fine battle-monument stands in a small park adjoining Warren Street, at the point where Washington's army, coming into town from the north, first engaged the enemy. Here Alexander Hamilton, then Captain of the New York State Company of Artillery, opened fire from his battery on the Hessians, who fled through the town, along Warren, then called King Street. The monument is a fluted Roman-Doric column, rising one hundred and thirty-five feet, surmounted by a statue of Washington, representing him standing, field-glass in hand, surveying the flying Hessians, his right arm pointing down Warren Street. The elevated top of this monument gives a grand view over the surrounding country, the course of the Delaware being traced for miles. The subsequent fortnight's campaign ending in the battle of Princeton revived the drooping spirits of the Americans, and was said by as accomplished a soldier as Frederick the Great to be among "the most brilliant in the annals of military achievements." Trenton is at the head of tidewater on the Delaware, the stream coming down rapids, known as the "Falls." On the Pennsylvania side is Morrisville, called after Robert Morris, who lived there during the Revolution. His estate subsequently became the home of the famous French General Jean Victor Moreau, the victor at Hohenlinden, who was exiled by Napoleon in 1804. He returned to Europe afterwards at the invitation of the Czar Alexander, and devised for him a plan for invading France. They were both at the battle of Dresden in 1813, and were consulting about a certain manœuvre when a cannon ball from Napoleon's Guard broke both Moreau's legs, and he died five days afterwards.
PRINCETON BATTLE AND COLLEGE.
A few days after Washington's victory at Trenton, Cornwallis, in January, 1777, advanced across Jersey to crush the Americans, but he was repulsed at the ford of Assunpink Creek in Trenton. Then Washington resorted to a ruse. Leaving his camp-fires brightly burning near the creek at night to deceive the enemy, he quietly withdrew, and made a forced march ten miles northeast to Princeton, and fell upon three British regiments there, who were hastening to join Cornwallis, defeating them, and storming Nassau Hall, in which some of the fugitives had taken refuge. Trenton is in Mercer County, named in honor of General Hugh Mercer, who fell in this battle, at the head of the Philadelphia troops. Princeton is a town of about thirty-five hundred inhabitants, a quiet place of elegant residences, in a level and luxuriant country. It is the seat of the College of New Jersey, originally founded at Elizabeth, near New York, in 1746, and transferred here in 1757. It is best known as Nassau Hall, or Princeton University, being liberally endowed, and having notable buildings surrounding its spacious campus, and is a Presbyterian foundation, which has about eleven hundred students. The original Nassau Hall erected in 1757, but burnt many years ago, was so named by the Synod "to express the honor we retain in this remote part of the globe to the immortal memory of the glorious King William the Third, who was a branch of the illustrious House of Nassau." Dr. John Witherspoon, the celebrated Scotch Presbyterian divine, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was for thirty years its President, and among the early graduates were two other signers, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. The final conflict of the battle of Princeton raged around this venerated building, and Washington presented fifty guineas to the College to repair the damage done by his bombardment. In the adjacent Presbyterian Theological Seminary have been educated many able clergymen. In Princeton Cemetery are the remains of the wonderful preacher and metaphysician, Jonathan Edwards, who became President of the College in 1758, dying shortly afterwards. A panegyrist, describing his merits as a great Church leader, compressed all in this remarkable sentence: "These three—Augustine, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards." His son-in-law and predecessor as President was Rev. Aaron Burr; and near his humble monument is another, marking the grave of his grandson, who was an infant when the great preacher died, and whose career was in such startling contrast—the notorious Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States.
MARSHALL'S WALK.
The Delaware River above Trenton is for miles a stream of alternating pools and rapids, with canals on either side, passing frequent villages and displaying pleasant scenery as it breaks through the successive ridges in its approach to the mountains. Alongside the river, in Solebury, Bucks County, in the early part of the eighteenth century, was the humble home of the pioneer and hunter, Edward Marshall, who made the fateful "walk" of 1737, the injustice of which so greatly provoked the Indians, and was a chief cause of the most savage Indian War of Colonial times. All the country west of the Delaware, as far up as the mouth of the Lackawaxen River, was obtained from the Indians by the deception of this "walk." The Indians in those early times measured their distances by "days' journeys," and in various treaties with the white men transferred tracts of land by the measurement of "days' walks." William Penn had bought the land as far up as Makefield and Wrightstown in Bucks County, and after his death his descendants, Thomas and Richard Penn, became anxious to enlarge the purchase, and this "walk" was the result. After a good deal of preliminary negotiation, several sachems of the Lenni Lenapes were brought to Philadelphia, and on August 25, 1737, made a treaty ceding additional lands beginning "on a line drawn from a certain spruce tree on the river Delaware by a west-northwest course to Neshaminy Creek; from thence back into the woods as far as a man can go in a day and a half, and bounded in the west by Neshaminy or the most westerly branch thereof, so far as the said branch doth extend, and from thence by a line to the utmost extent of the day and a half's walk, and from thence to the aforesaid river Delaware; and so down the courses of the river to the first-mentioned spruce tree." The Indians thought this "walk" might cover the land as far north as the Lehigh, but there was deliberate deception practiced. An erroneous map was exhibited indicating a line extending about as far north as Bethlehem on the Lehigh, and this deceived the Indians. The white officials had previously been quietly going over the ground far north of the Lehigh, blazing routes by marking trees, all of which was carefully concealed, and Marshall and others had been employed on these "trial walks." A reward of five hundred acres of land was promised the walkers.
Marshall and two others, Jennings and Yeates, were selected to do the walking, all young and athletic hunters, experienced in woodcraft and inured to hardships. The walk was fixed for September 19th, under charge of the Sheriff, and before sunrise of that day a large number of people gathered at the starting-point at Wrightstown, a few miles west of the Delaware. An obelisk on a pile of boulders now marks the spot at the corner of the Quaker Burying Ground, bearing an inscription, "To the Memory of the Lenni Lenape Indians, ancient owners of this region, these stones are placed at this spot, the starting-point of the 'Indian walk,' September 19, 1737." The start was made from a chestnut tree, three Indians afoot accompanying the three walkers, while the Sheriff, surveyors and others, carrying provisions, bedding and liquors, were on horseback. Just as the sun rose above the horizon at six o'clock they started. When they had gone about two miles, Jennings gave out. They halted fifteen minutes for dinner at noon, soon afterwards crossed the Lehigh near the site of Bethlehem, turned up that river, and at fifteen minutes past six in the evening, completing the day's journey of twelve hours actual travel, the Sheriff, watch in hand, called to them, as they were mounting a little hill, to "pull up." Marshall, thus notified, clasped his arms about a sapling for support, saying "he was almost gone, and if he had proceeded a few poles farther he must have fallen." Yeates seemed less distressed. The Indians were dissatisfied from the outset, claiming the walk should have been made up the river, and not inland. When the Lehigh was crossed, early in the afternoon, they became sullen, complaining of the rapid gait of the walkers, and several times protesting against their running. Before sunset two Indians left, saying they would go no farther, that the walkers would pass all the good land, and after that it made no difference how far or where they went. The third Indian continued some distance, when he lay down to rest and could go no farther.
The halt for the night was made about a half-mile from the Indian village of Hokendauqua, a name which means "searching for land." This was the village of Lappawinzoe, one of the sachems who had made the treaty. The next morning was rainy, and messengers were sent him to request a detail of Indians to accompany the walkers. He was in ugly humor and declined, but some Indians strolled into camp and took liquor, and Yeates also drank rather freely. The horses were hunted up, and the second day's start made along the Lehigh Valley at eight o'clock, some of the Indians accompanying for a short distance through the rain, but soon leaving, dissatisfied. The route was north-northwest through the woods, Marshall carrying a compass, by which he held his course. In crossing a creek at the base of the mountains, Yeates, who had become very lame and tired, staggered and fell, but Marshall pushed on, followed by two of the party on horseback. At two o'clock the "walk" ended on the north side of the Pocono or Broad Mountain, not far from the present site of Mauch Chunk. The distance "walked" in eighteen hours was about sixty-eight miles, a remarkable performance, considering the condition of the country. The terminus of the "walk" was marked by placing stones in the forks of five trees, and the surveyors then proceeded to complete the work by marking the line of northern limit of the tract across to the Delaware River. This was done, not by taking the shortest route to the river, but by running a line at right angles with the general direction of the "walk;" and after four days' progress, practically parallel to the Delaware, through what was then described as a "barren mountainous region," the surveyors reached the river, in the upper part of Pike County, near the mouth of Shohola Creek, just below the Lackawaxen.
The Indians were loud in their complaints of the greediness shown in this walk, and particularly of the carrying of the surveyors' line so far to the northward, which none of them had anticipated. Marshall was told by one old Indian, subsequently, "No sit down to smoke—no shoot squirrel; but lun, lun, lun, all day long." Lappawinzoe, thoroughly disgusted, said, "Next May we will go to Philadelphia, each one with a buckskin, repay the presents, and take the lands back again." The lands, however, were sold to speculators, so this was not practicable, and when the new owners sought to occupy them, the Indians refused to vacate. This provoked disputes over a half-million acres, a vast domain. The Penns, to defend their position, afterwards repudiated the surveyors, and they never fulfilled their promise to give Marshall five hundred acres. This did not mend matters, however, and the Lenni Lenape Indians' attitude became constantly more threatening, until the scared Proprietary invited the intervention of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois Confederation, or Six Nations. In 1742 two hundred and thirty leading Iroquois were brought to Philadelphia, and the dispute submitted to their arbitration. They sided with the Proprietary, and the Lenni Lenapes reluctantly withdrew to the Wyoming Valley, part going as far west as Ohio. But they thirsted for revenge, and when the French began attacking the frontier settlements, these Indians became willing allies, making many raids and wreaking terrible vengeance upon the innocent frontiersmen throughout Pennsylvania. Marshall, who never got his reward, removed his cabin farther up the Delaware, above the mouth of the Lehigh. The Indians always pursued him, as an arch-conspirator, for a special vengeance. They attacked his cabin, killing his wife and wounding a daughter, he escaping by being absent. They made a second attack, and killed a son. His whole life was embittered by these murders, and he lost no opportunity for retaliation, removing, for greater safety, to an island in the river. They pursued him for forty years, a party of Indians, during the Revolution in 1777, coming all the way from Ohio to kill him, but he eluded them and escaped. His closing years, however, were passed peacefully, and he died at the age of ninety at his island home in the Delaware.