Note 5. (Page [124].)
Captain Cunningham was the British provost marshal, as everybody knows, whose name became a synonym for wanton cruelty in the treatment of war prisoners. He had come to New York before the Revolution, and had kept a riding school there. As soon as the war broke out he took the royal side. It was he who had in charge the summary execution of Nathan Hale. He would often amuse himself by striking his prisoners with his keys and by kicking over the baskets of food or vessels of soup brought for them by charitable women, who, he said, were the worst rebels in New York. He died miserably 287 in England after the war. His career is briefly outlined in Sabine’s “Loyalists.” As to the manner in which Peyton, if caught, would have died, it must be remembered that in the American Revolution the rope served in many a case which, occurring in Europe or in one of our later wars, would have been disposed of with the bullet. Writing of General Charles Lee, John Fiske says: “There is no doubt that Sir William Howe looked upon him as a deserter, and was more than half inclined to hang him without ceremony.” Then, as now, a deserter in time of war was liable to death if caught at any subsequent time, his case being worse than that of a spy, who was liable to death only if caught before getting back to his own lines. There was, by the way, much unceremonious hanging on the “neutral ground.” Not far from the Van Cortlandt mansion there still stood, in Bolton’s time, “a celebrated white oak, in the midst of a pretty glade, called the Cowboy Oak,” from the fact that many of the Tory raiders had been suspended from its branches during the war of Revolution.
Note 6. (Page [127].)
I am not sure whether the saying, “The corpse of an enemy smells sweet,” attributed to Charles IX. of France, in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention of a romancer. It occurs in Dumas’s “La Reine Margot.”
Note 7. (Page [136].)
Mr. Valentine’s unwillingness to lend aid was doubtless due to the frequency of such incidents as one that 288 had occurred to his neighbor, Peter Post, in 1776. Post’s estate occupied the site of the present town of Hastings. He gave information to Colonel Sheldon regarding the movements of some Hessians, and afterwards deceived the Hessians as to the whereabouts of Sheldon’s own cavalry. Thereby, Sheldon’s troop was enabled to surprise the Hessians, and defeat them in a short and bloody conflict. The Hessians’ comrades later caught Post, stripped him, beat him to insensibility, and left him for dead. He recovered of his injuries. His house, a small stone one, became a tavern after the Revolution, and was a celebrated resort of cock-fighters and hard-drinkers. Not far north of Hastings is Dobbs Ferry, which was occupied by both armies alternately, during the Revolution. Further north is Sunnyside, Irving’s house, elaborated from the original Wolfert’s Roost, and beyond that are Tarrytown, where André was stopped and taken in charge, and Sleepy Hollow. Enchanted ground, all this, hallowed by history, legend, and romance.
Note 8. (Page [179].)
The secret passage or passages of Philipse Manor-house have not been neglected by writers of fiction, history, and magazine articles. The passage does not now exist, but there are numerous traces of it. The different writers do not agree in locating it. The author of an interesting story for children, “A Loyal Little Maid,” has it that the passage was reached through an opening in the panelling of the dining-room, this opening 289 concealed by a tall clock. I think Marian Harland says that a closet in one of the parlors or chambers connects with the secret passage. Both these assumptions are wrong. Mr. R. P. Getty has pointed out in the northwestern corner of the cellar what seems to have once been the entrance to the passage. One authority quotes a belief “that from the cellar there was a passage to a well now covered by Woodworth Avenue,” and that this was to afford access to what may have been a storage vault. A man who was born in 1821 says that, when a boy, he saw, near the house, a dry cistern, from the bottom of which was an arched passage towards the Hudson, large enough for a man six feet tall to pass through. Judge Atkins says that the well was opposite the kitchen door, and had, at its western side, about ten feet deep, a chamber in which butter was kept. One writer locates an ice-house where Judge Atkins places this well, and says a subterranean arched way led northward as far as the present Wells Avenue. “The ice-house was formerly, it is said, a powder-magazine.” Many years ago, the coachman of Judge Woodworth used to say he had “gone through an underground passage all the way from the manor-house to the Hudson River.” Judge Atkins has written interesting legends of the manor-house, involving the secret passage and other features.
Note 9. (Page [259].)
“That lonely highway now called Broadway.” A block of houses and another street now lie between that 290 highway and the east front of the manor-house. The building is closely hemmed in by the sordid signs of progress. Ugly houses, in crowded blocks, cover all the great surrounding space that once was thick forest, fair orchards, gardens, fields, and pastoral rivulet. The Neperan or Saw Mill River flows, sluggish and scummy, under streets and houses. A visit to the manor-house, now, would spoil rather than improve one’s impression of what the place looked like in the old days. Yet the house itself remains well preserved, for which all honor to the town of Yonkers. There is in our spacious America so much room for the present and the future, that a little ought to be kept for the past. It is well to be reminded, by a landmark here and there, of our brave youth as a people. A posterity, sure to value these landmarks more than this money-grabbing age does, will reproach us with the destruction we have already wrought. Worse still than the crime of obliterating all human-made relics of the past, is the vandalism of nature herself where nature is exceptionally beautiful. To rob millions of beauty-lovers, yet to live, of the Palisades of the Hudson, would bring upon us the amazement and execration of future centuries. This earth is an entailed estate, that each generation is in honor bound to hand down, undefaced, undiminished, to its successor. In order that a close-clutched wallet or two may wax a little fatter, shall we bring upon ourselves a cry of shame that would ring with increasing bitterness through the ages,—shall we invite the execration merited by such greed as could so outrage our fair earth, such stolid apathy as could 291 stand by and see it done? Shall an alien or two, as hard of soul as the stone in which he traffics, mar the Hudson that Washington patrolled, rob countless eyes, yet unopened, of a joy; countless minds, yet to waken, of an inspiration; countless hearts, yet to beat, of a thrill of pride in the soil of their inheriting? Shall some future reader wonder why Irving, deeming it “an invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some grand and noble object in nature,” should have thanked God he was born on the banks of the Hudson? I write this with the sound of the blowing up of Indian Head still echoing in my ears, and knowing nothing done by Government to protect the next fair Hudson headland from similar destruction.