Many years after, when Washington visited his grave, he exclaimed, “So there lies the brave De Kalb,—the generous stranger who came from a distant land to fight our battles and to water with his blood the tree of our liberty. Would to God he had lived to share its fruits!”
PHILIPPE CHARLES JEAN BAPTISTE TRONSON DU COUDRAY.
Philippe Charles Jean Baptiste Tronson du Coudray, born in Rheims, France, on the 8th of September, 1738, was educated to the vocation of a mining engineer, and ranked as one of the best in his native country, when in 1776, he offered his services to Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin. These commissioners entered into an arrangement with Du Coudray by which, on condition of his furnishing certain military supplies, he was to enter the American service, with the rank and pay of major-general, and the command of the artillery. After several days’ debate on the subject, Congress did not see fit to ratify this agreement in full, Washington also expressing a doubt as to whether so important a command as that of the artillery should be vested in any but an American, or one attached by ties of interest to the United States. He was accorded his promised rank, however, being appointed major-general on the 11th of August, 1777, and placed in superintendence of the works being constructed on the Delaware. His service was of short duration, for on the 16th of September in the same year, while hastening, after the battle of Brandywine, to offer himself as a volunteer, he accidentally lost his life. While crossing the Schuylkill in a ferry-boat, his horse became unmanageable, plunged with him into the river, and he was drowned before any assistance could be rendered. The next day Congress passed a resolution directing his burial at the expense of the United States and with the honors of war.
ROBERT HOWE.
Robert Howe, born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, in 1732, was of English descent. He married young, took his wife to England, and lived for two years with some relatives. Returning to this country, he was appointed in 1766 commander at Fort Johnson in North Carolina. At the beginning of the Revolution, he was a member of the Committee of Safety for his native county, and with General Woodford was in command of Norfolk when that place was attacked and destroyed by Lord Dunmore, on the 1st of January, 1776. Prosecuting the war with vigor, Howe drove Dunmore out of Virginia. The Assemblies of North Carolina and Virginia recognized his services by a vote of thanks; Congress appointed him brigadier-general in the Continental army on the 1st of March, 1776; and on the 5th of May following, General Clinton excepted him when offering pardon in the king’s name to all Carolinians who would lay down their arms and return to their allegiance. The next year he was ordered to join the Southern army; and on the 20th of October, 1777, he was raised to the rank of major-general, and intrusted with an expedition against St. Augustine. After some successes, the destruction of one fourth of his army by an epidemic compelled him to abandon this project, and he was afterward assigned to duty in Georgia. Being defeated here, he joined Washington on the Hudson, and remained in active service at the North until the close of the war. In 1785, he was appointed a commissioner to treat with the Western Indians, and upon returning to his native State, was received with public honors and shortly after elected to the Legislature. Before the time arrived for him to take his seat, he died of fever on the 12th of November, 1785.
ALEXANDER McDOUGAL.
Alexander McDougal, born on the island of Islay, Scotland, in 1731, was brought to New York while still a child, by his father. At first Alexander followed the sea, took part in the French and Indian War as commander of two privateers,—the “Barrington” and the “Tiger,”—and then settling in New York City, became one of her successful merchants. Keenly alive to the aggressive steps taken by the home Government in her dealings with her American dependencies, he drew upon himself censure and imprisonment in 1769, by writing an address entitled, “A Son of Liberty to the Betrayed Inhabitants of the Colony,” in which he rebuked the Assembly for entering upon the favorable consideration of a bill of supplies for troops quartered in the city to overawe the inhabitants, and for rejecting a proposition authorizing the vote by ballot. An incarceration of twenty-three weeks in what is now the registrar’s office, made him the first martyr in the American struggle for independence. When set at liberty, he entered into correspondence with the master-spirits all over the country, presided over the celebrated “meeting in the fields” in 1774, was appointed colonel of the first Revolutionary regiment raised in New York, and was created brigadier-general in the Continental army on the 9th of August, 1776, and immediately went into active service. After the battle of Germantown and upon the recommendation of Washington, he was promoted to be major-general on the 20th of October, 1777. From the beginning of 1778 to the close of 1780, he was in command at various posts along the Hudson, but was summoned in the latter year to represent New York in Congress, and in 1781 was appointed minister of marine. In 1783, when the army went into winter-quarters at Newburg, he was chosen as head of the committee sent to Congress to represent their grievances. At the close of the war he was elected to the Senate of New York, and filled that position until his death on the 8th of June, 1786.