E %3 2l0::0 J'Jl 3 lSi]3 WASBINCTON AND BIS ARMY at ACQUACKANONK: AK INCIDENT OF TO RETREAT OF 'SEVENTY-SIL An Address delivered at Passaic, New Jersey, October 18. 1901, on the occasion of the unveiling of a Monu- ment commemorating the Crossing of the Passaic Eiver at Acquackanonk by Washington and his Army, on November 21-22. 1776. By William Nelson. PATERSON, N.J.: The Paterson History Club. 1901. Class _£li3A Book ;KV-3 Copyright N^. f COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. / (^ 2 1029 JUL 3 1903 WASHINGTON AND BIS ARMY at ACQUACKANONK: AN INCIDENT OF THE RETREAT OF 'SEVENTYSIX. An Address delivered at Passaic, New Jersey, October 18. 1901, on the occasion of the unveiling of a Monu- ment commemorating the Crossing of the Passaic River at Acquackanonk by Washington and his Army, on November 31-22. 1776. By William Nelson. PATERSON, N.J.: The Paterson History Club. igoi. THE. LIBRAHY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Received JUL 3 1903 ^ Ccpyniiht tiitry ■^JUr . 2 - / q ^ 1- CLASS ^<- XXc. No. 1. h -U U !^ COPY B. Copyright, 1902, by William Nelson. ONE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED. The following address is principally extracted and condensed from the author's History of Paterson, Vol. I., pp. 41I-4I5. t IN ^■■- The Retreat of 'Seventy-six — one of the darkest chapters in the annals of the American Revolution— has been described ag-ain and again, in the pages of the historian, the poet, the orator and the novelist. Tom Paine ac- companied the army from the Hudson to the Delaware, and has given us one of the most vivid accounts of the sufferings of the gallant little band of heroes. His summing up sounded as a bugle-call to the American patriots : "These are the times that try men's souls." After the battles of Long Island (August 27, 1776), and White Plains (Oct. 28, 1776), Washington concluded that the British were planning the invasion of New Jersey, and ordered reinforcements to Fort Lee. To pro- tect his retreat, and also to check the approach of the enemy from the South, Gen. Nathanael Greene, commanding at Fort Lee, ordered troops to Acquackanonk. "That is an im- portant pest," he wrote to Gen. Washington on November 9; "I am fortifying it as fast as possible." That very day Gen. Mercer marched through Acquackanonk to reinforce Gen. Greene. It was an historic day for the Httle village, as it marked the appearance here of the first considerable body of soldiery — the first wave of that tide destined to ebb and flow along the River Road during the next seven years — now the Buff and Blue, now the brilliant Red- coats, and now the forbidding Hessians, to say nothing of the nondescript desperadoes ever ready to prey upon friend or foe. Major General the Earl of Stirling crossed the Hudson on Nov. lo, to interpose his tried and true brigade between New Brunswick and Philadelphia, and passed through Acquackan- onk probably on the 14th, with eight regiments of foot. Washington himself arrived at Fort Lee three days later. The British crossed the North river at Clos- ter on the night of the 19th, Gen. Lord Corn- wallis landing six or eight thousand men. Washington had already ordered the remo- val of the stores and munitions of Fort Lee to "Acquackanonk Bridge," and other places fur- ther South. Gen. Greene now abandoned the 5 Fort and much of the stores and ordnance, and marched on to Hackensack, six miles distant. The army crossed the Hackensack river and entered the village that night (Nov. 20), the soldiers, many oif them "ragged, some without a shoe to their feet, and most of them wrapped in their blankets." As Washington had been hemmed in be- tween the Hudson and the Hackensack, so now he was between the Hackensack and the Pas- saic, with an overwhelming force opposed to him. The next morning he wrote to^ the lag- gard Gen. Charles Lee: "As this country is almost a dead flatt, we have not an entrenching tool, and not above 3,000 men, and they much broken and dispirited, not only with our ill suc- cess, but the loss of their tents and baggage, I must leave a very fine country open to their ravages." To the President of Congress he wrote from Hackensack the same morning, to the same effect. Then the long-roll was sounded, and the sor- rowful retreat was resumed. On the far side of the Hackensack river the British encamp- ment was stretched out in martial array, with all the insolence of power and the bright pan- oply of war. On this side, the little band of straggling soldiers, in home-made uniforms or in none, tattered and covered with the grime of the march, plodding along the frosty road, often with bare and bleeding feet. It was an anxious march that bitter Novem- ber morning. Would the Americans reach Acquackanonk bridge before the British? Eagerly they hur- ried along the lower road from Hackensack, passing through the present Lodi, and so on to the Passaic where now is Garfield, and along the southern bank of the river. • Is the bridge still there? And is it in the hsjids of our friends? What anxiety was theirs! But presently the glad news comes that all is well at the Bridge. A great wave of relief passes from the head of the column to the rear; fife and drum shrill forth a livelier strain, and the men stop and wave lustily as the Bridge comes in sight. This, the first bridge across the Passaic, had been erected but ten years before, by special act of the Legislature. It was a frail structure. of wood, of course, with spans eighteen or twenty feet long; the abutments of hewn logs, and the piers of timbers or piles partly resting in cribs filled with stone, and partly driven into the bottom of the river. The width was but twelve feet, just enough for one wagon to cross at a time, or for four men to march abreast. Its location was in the rear of where Speer's warehouse now is. Opposite stood the quaint old octagon-shaped Dutch church, with pyramidal roof, and James Leslie's tavern. A sense of relief is manifest in Washington's letter to Gov. Livingston of New Jersey, dated "Acquackanonk Bridge, 21 November, 1776," and written that morning, in which he says: "I have this moment arrived at this place with General Beall's and General Heard's brigades from Maryland and Jersey, and part of Gen- eral Ewing's from Pennsylvania. Three other regiments, left to guard the passes upon Hack- ensack River, and to serve as covering parties, are expected up this evening." These regiments followed, doubtless cross- ing the bridge that same night. Who can paint the dramatic spectacle presented in the peace- 8 ful hamlet at this thrilling invasion of war's alarums, with the great Washington as the leader? A Jersey poet once attempted it (in 1839) in lines that have a martial ring-: "Tramp !-Tramp!— Tramp I-Tramp! 'What flying band with thundering tread Along the bridge disordered led. With rapid and alarming stamp Now hurries o'er the tide? Waking the pattering echoes far and wide? On — on they oome — tumultuous come! With rattling arms and clamoring drum: Till all the wooden arches round Challenge aloud the intruding sound, And clank for clank, and stamp for stamp rebound!' "Thus spake a stranger to the crowd New- gathered on Passaic's banks, Drawn by the din of trampling ranks, Resounding far, and loud." The Passaic river was a barrier between the Americans and the pursuers. Full well the patriots knew that the British would speedily follow. "And if they once may win the bridge" what hope to save the retreating army? But when has a free country failed of heroes ? When Washington called for men to cut down the viaduct crossing the river, that the enemy's ad- vance might be checked, they were promptly forthcoming. It was a perilous task. The work once begun must be finished, and thoroughly, even though the enemy might fire on the destroyers. As in the days of grand old Rome, there was a brave Horatius to leap gladly forth at the call of his country. John H. Post, a native of Acquackanonk, and hence familiar with the river and its ways, and with the construction of the bridge, was the leader in the work. He found many a Spurius Lartius, and many a strong Herminius to stand by him. "And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below," and presently timber after timber was hurled into the river, to be swiftly swept down the stream, until nothing was left of the bridge but a few of the upright piles, and they partly sawed or hewed away. When a detachment of the Sixteenth Drag- oons, under the British Colonel Harcourt, with some companies of Light Infantry, arrived at the Passaic river at this place on the afternoon of November 22d, they were chagrined to find the bridge down, and the Americans, protected lO by the broad river between, impudently "mak- ing some show of opposition." But Washington was still in danger of being overtaken by Ccmwallis, or of being inter- cepted at New Brunswick by a British advance from New York by way of Perth Amboy. So he resolutely pushed on to Newark, where he arrived on the morning of November 23d. It was the 26th before the leisurely Corn- wallis crossed the river, which he was obliged to ford, just below the Dundee dam, and fol- lowed with his pillaging, plundering, destroy- ing hordes, down the Dundee Drive, Lexington avenue. Main avenue and the River road, leav- ing a trail of desolation behind them. "See! in dazzling pomp axivancing, Banners flaunting, horses prancing, Seas of plumes In billows dancing. And far away the frosty bayonets glancing! . . Thiey're gone beyond the hills afar: Convulsive, faint, no longer shrill, Along Passaic's lonely brink Swell ithe last clarion-notes of passing war, That heave, and sink — Heave and sink, And all again is still! Such is the story — gleaned exclusively from original, contemporary sources — of the event II commemorated by this beautiful tablet you have set up on this spot. In these days when there is so strong a ten- dency to exalt success as the highest aim in life, it seems strange to see a tablet in imper- ishable bronze erected in memory of a retreal. In the mad haste for what the world deems success, it is well to pause at times and give thought to what is the true victory, and what leads to it. In the battle of life we often win more from our losses than from our gains. I read a poem a few years ago, the first line of which often rings in my ears : "I sing the sons of the vanquished." In every battle there are the gallant heroes who fall in the ranks or by the wayside, and have no part in the glad plaudits that await the victors. Within a stone's throw of this spot, Washington, in that memorable retreat, passed by a humble cottage, the home of a gal- lant artillery officer, who six weeks later gave up his life for his country, on the battlefield of Princeton. Some day, no doubt, you will erect a monument to the memory of your fel- 12 low-townsman, the only Continental officer from this county who was killed in the Rev- olution. I have said that your tablet is unusual in that it commemorates a retreat. And I have said that defeats are often more profitable than vic- tories. "Men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things." How was it with Washington, as he fled through Acquackanonk, before his threatening foe? From Newark he sped on the morning of November 28th, as the British entered the town from the north. He hurried on to New Brunswick, to Trenton, and across the Dela- ware. Now his army had learned the lesson of the vanquished. Before that long march was end- ed they had gained confidence in themselves. As Tom Paine says : "The sign of fear was not seen in our camp." Above all, they had learned to know their great Chief, and to know Washington was to trust him, to reverence him. The more he is 13 studied the more worthy of our admiration does he seem. So when he planned the night attack on Trenton, his army was ready to follow him, crowded in boats, through the floating ice of the Delaware, amid the fearsome fog, and so achieved that magnificent capture of the Hes- sian garrison at Trenton on the morning after Christmas, 1776. And a week later, still prof- iting by the lessons of their defeats and their weary retreat through the Jerseys, they again sent consternation into the ranks of the British, and a glow of enthusiasm throughout America, by the splendid victory at Princeton. And of these glorious triumphs we may hon- estly claim that not the least of the chain of events leading up to them' was Washington's successful retreat across the Passaic river at Acquackanonk. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011712 279 7 %