Washington's Army at Morristown in Winter-Quarters
WHEN Cornwallis was assured of Washington's escape and heard his cannon at Princeton, he was alarmed for the safety of his stores at New Brunswick, and immediately began a rapid pursuit. Had the republican troops been fresh, no doubt the British stores on the Raritan would have been a part of Washington's spoils of victory; but they were worn down with the fatigues of two days' hard service; lack of sleep and food; a night march of ten miles in bitter cold, many of the men barefooted and thinly clad, and the excitement of a battle. They could do very little more without rest and refreshment; and when Washington found his enemy close upon him, he pursued the fugitive British regiments only as far as the Millstone River at Kingston (about three miles), where he crossed that stream, broke down the bridge behind him, and rested at Somerset Court-House that night.
Cornwallis had pursued so swiftly, that he reached Princeton just as Washington left it. There he was confronted by a thirty-two pound cannon, whose vigorous discharges by the skillful American artillerists, made the British leader believe the republicans were about to make a stand and give battle. He halted, and wasted so much time in reconnoitering that Washington was allowed to escape. Believing his foe was pressing on toward New Brunswick, Cornwallis continued the pursuit, crossing the Millstone at Kingston after reconstructing the bridge. There Washington had turned toward the hill country around Morristown, by way of a narrow road by Rocky Hill; but Cornwallis, suspecting he was on the march toward New Brunswick, hastened forward over the rough highway, and arrived there at sunset, where he found his stores all safe, and not a republican soldier near. Washington marched to Morristown, where he put his army into winter-quarters.
The American commander had now achieved a mighty victory. Viewed in all its varied aspects, Frederick the Great of Prussia declared the exploits of the Patriot and his handful of followers, between Christmas and Twelfth Day, the most brilliant of any recorded in the annals of military achievements. At the very moment when his army appeared to be on the verge of dissolution, Washington struck a blow so powerful that it paralyzed the enemy. It broke up the British and Hessian cantonments upon the Delaware, and made Cornwallis anxious to secure quarters nearer New York, under the protection of General Howe. It caused Howe to recall a brigade from Rhode Island to strengthen his force at New York; and it was not long before the British were driven to near the sea-shores of New Jersey, and held posts only at New Brunswick, Amboy, and Paulus Hook (now Jersey City), for Washington, with his army encamped in huts at Morristown, was not idle. He had established cantonments from Princeton on the right, under the command of General Putnam, to the Hudson Highlands on the left, under General Health. He was in the midst of hills, a fertile country teeming with abundance, and generally patriotic inhabitants. His little expeditions sent out to harass the enemy were conducted with so much spirit, that the British were kept in continual dread. The people were thereby encouraged; their martial spirit seemed to revive, and early in the spring of 1777, the thinned battalions of the army began to fill up.
The Continental Congress, which had fled to Baltimore, satisfied that immediate danger was past, returned to Philadelphia early in March, and resumed their sessions there. And the people of New Jersey, of whom not more than a hundred had joined Washington in his retreat from the Hudson to the Delaware, and who, to the number of almost three thousand, had subscribed to a declaration of fidelity to the king, seeing the changed aspect of affairs, and having suffered dreadfully from the unbridled passions of the British and Hessian soldiers exercised on friend and foe alike, now became active partisans of the republican cause. A feeling of revenge gave strength to their purpose and arms. Their action was doubtless accelerated by a proclamation of Washington issued late in January, who, in the exercise of the discretion given him by Congress, demanded, in the name of the associated States, that all who had taken British protection, and professed fidelity to the crown, should take an oath of allegiance to the United States of America, or withdraw within the British lines.
The Legislature of New Jersey, regarding the proclamation as a violation of State supremacy,--a doctrine that was the bane of our national life down to the Civil War--censured the commander-in-chief. A few members of Congress, possessing less sagacity and political wisdom than Washington, joined in the censure, and seemed ready to deprive him of all power. When a proposition was made to give him authority to name his generals, John Adams said: "In private life, I am willing to respect and look up to him; in this House, I feel myself to be the superior of General Washington." By a bare majority, the Congress, after failing to furnish reinforcements for Washington's army, expressed their earnest desire that he could "not only curb and confine the enemy within their present quarters, but, by divine blessing, totally subdue them before they could be reinforced." This seemed like insulting irony, when we consider that Washington then had less than three thousand effective men at his command in New Jersey.