OF
PENNSYLVANIA.
A REPLY TO
V,4Lt GEORGE BANCRTOFT ANTD OTH'ERS,.
-1ho, thlt know\s allthig of' literary history or of society, cannot recall a. number of csces,
lwhere slaidler, however base and baseless, has been believed to be true, for no other reason thanl
lbeca.use, it lhas never been contradicted?  Nay, a calunlny mlay leave been buried in obsunrit fl cer intulies  lnd millenaries, and at length some literary truffle clog will hunt it out; and,
if it do lnt concellre some great man, the vulgar will pelt it at his holafl." —HAeE'S VsINDTel'ION OF
NIF, I) U   I[IR.
FEBRUARY, A. D. i867.
THIRD EDITION.
PHILADELPHIA:
HOWARD  CHALLEN, 1308 CHESTNUT STREET.
JOHN  CAMPBELL, 740  SANSOM  STR,EET.




Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1867,
By  WILLIAM   B. REED,
ill the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States in a.nd for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
W. P. ITILDAREIl, PtINT1ER.




INTRODUCTION.
IT WILL be -apparent to every reader of the following
pages that the historical materials they illustrate have not
been recently colleted. Most of them have been in my
possession for many years, but for reasons which I have
frankly stated, were not used. Indeed, but for Mr. Bancroft's late volume, which literally is the straw which
broke the back of my endurance, they would not be
used now.  His book however, renders it necessary
that I should break my silence. To those who think it
would have been better had I not opened the whole subje& of the attacks on Mr. Reed, but confined myself to
Mr. Bancroft's share of them, I suggest that, dealing as I
am with at least one unscrupulous adversary, it would
be hazardous to leave for his use the testimony, such
as it is, of past times, and thus subje2 myself to the
necessity of a rejoinder. Though Mr. Bancroft, with
the exception of a single and unaccredited quotation,
is silent as to the Pamphlets of the last century, he
knows all about them, and had I answered the Donop
fi&ion alone, he would have brought them forward as his
fresh reserve. I had no alternative but to discuss the
whole subjed, and I have endeavoured to exhaust it.
Chestnut Hill, 7anuary, I867.       W. B. REED.








ORE than eighty years after my ancestor was laid
in his honoured grave, I am called on to vindicate his name.  Instead of partisan misrepresentation
(to use a mild word,) being allowed to die with the
passions of a period of revolutionary excitement, it has
been industriously kept alive, until at last, in the second
and almost the third generation, the necessity of corredc
ing and repelling it has arisen. There is, in this country, a
class of men, happily not numerous, who take pleasure in
disparaging the accredited patriots of the first revolution.
They do so either from hereditary or personal animosity,
or on a principle of paradox and contradidion. They
have two words of detraction for each one of praise which
filial pride, or any good motive prompts, and their delight is to rummage in forgotten libels,  For them, the
acrimonious pamphlets of past time, scraps of discreditable and hostile diaries and letters are cherished treasures. They are a fund on which they draw freely.
Sometimes they forge.
Occasionally what may be described as these defamae




tory experiments, have gone so far and assumed a, shape
so precise as to require notice.  This was so in one instance, within the recollection of many of my immediate  fellow  citizens.   I refer to  a series of anonymous publications as to General Reed, in the autumn
of  I 842, under  the  signature  of "Valley  Forge,"
in a Philadelphia newspaper.   Though these libels were
met so promptly and decisively as to force an admission
that the evidence on which they rested was forgery in
its most flagrant form; though the infamy of the whole
affair recoiled so fatally as to destroy the paper in which
the publications appeared; though falsehood was, to the
eye of any historical student, palpable in every line, and
the result of detection proved it to be so; there were
those who read and believed it all, and applauded the
agents of this dark plan of detradtion.  I have no doubt
there are some yet who are willing to believe in what
was marked with the stain of conceded fraud,  and that
the "Valley Forge forgeries" are carefully preserved to
be revived, hereafter, to vilify  anew  the  chara&er of
the dead, and wound the affe&ions of the living.   Two
of these spurious letters were re-printed as genuine in
this city, within the last three years.*
* Evening Bulletin of Otober Izth, I863. The first communication of "Valley Forge" appeared on the I4th of September, the last
on or about the z4th of October, I842. The Journal ceased to exist
some time during the same winter. Its Editor having in vain endeavoured to ascertain the anonymous writer who had decoyed him into
this scheme of infamy, voluntarily surrendered the manuscripts to the




S
It is doing General Reed's contenporary enemies injustice to conned them with assailants of this descriptiono
Yet the association is not mine.;  But for what is known
as the Cadwalader pamphlet, the slanders of a later day
would have perished at their birth, it being the practice
of the authors of the new coinage, whenever their spurious issue was deteaed, to fall back on it; and the argument always has been, that this pamphlet was genuine,
and worthy of notice and reply.  It is the ultimate reliance, and by an ingenious involution of the genuine and
the spurious, the ends of calumny have been attained, and
the charader of a patriot of the Revolution, a man who
filled, with honour, more high public trusts than usually
are conferred on one, is whispered or clamoured away, in
the city of his life and fame.  To all this, it would be
affedation in me to pretend indifferenceo  I have felt it,
and felt it deeply.  With ample materials of vindication at
hand; with a trust for the chara6ter of the dead, which
seemed to press more strongly upon me as I watched from
day to day the course and apparent fruition of these
schemes of detration, it has been hard to be silent.  For a
long while, with a determination not to be dragged, by secret and anonymous assailants, into possible controversy
with the living, I was content to wait till I should be able
to submit to the public a carefully digested mass of prositive evidence, in the form  of- a biographical work,' on
gentlemen whose families had been defamed, and died in May,.84-5 at
Washingtonx




which my ancestor's claim on the gratitude of his coun —
try might rest.  My biography of President Reed was
published in I847, and, so far as I am able to judge, was
kindly welcomed.  In one respet, especially, this approval gratified me, aside from the pleasure of knowing
that my labour had not been in vain to make Pennsylvania proud of one of her sons. It gratified me to find
that my personal friends, and even those who were still
more disinterested, approved of the moderation with
which I discussed points of disputed politics; and of the
absence of anything tending to give pain to a living
being. I am not aware of one written word of my own,
that was not in a kind spirit, and in deference to the
feelings of others, and this, too, with strong temptation
occasionally, to speak out painful truth, let it wound
whom it might.  When, in my biography, I came to the
Cadwalader controversy, I thus referred to it:
"'Judging from  the newspapers and pamphlets, the
year I782, which found Mr. Reed a private citizen, was
more convulsed by party spirit, raging apparently without restraint, than any previous period.  The accredited
newspaper organs of the two parties were filled with
articles of extreme ferocity, directed at the respective
leaders; and towards Mr. Reed especially, as one whose
mere resignation of authority did not satisfy his enemies,
the most intense animosity was manifested.  There was
no stint to anonymous defamation. On the side of the
Co.stitu'ti ona,!ibsts quite as able partisan..s were in the field,




using their pens offensively as well as defensively.
Among them, one who wrote under the name of "Va —
lerius," and whose identity never was clearly ascertained,
attraeted great attention.  The main obje& of his assault, made with great bitterness and eloquence, was Mr.
Dickinson, who in November, 1782, had been eledted
President by a small majority over General Potter, the
Constitutioral candidate.  So efFe6tive did these attacks
become, that Mr. Dickinson found it necessary to answer them, and to make an elaborate defence of his public condudt, in reply to this anonymous assailant. It
would be entirely aside from the aim of these volumes
to revive or minutely to refer to such controversies.
They were in every way discreditable; they may be consigned to the oblivion which has nearly overtaken them,
and may well be left for the congenial research of a class
of men, happily very limited, who take a malignant
pleasure in defaming the memory of our Revolutionary
patriots.  Occasionally, controversies of a graver kind
occurred at this season of diseased excitement.  Of this
description was one of a very painful nature, which, in
the fall of 1782, oMr Reed was involved in, with his former companion-in-arms, General John Cadwaladero
Pamphlets of great acrimony were published on each
side.  These pamphlets are now before me, but it is
most consonant with my feelings to the living and the
dead, that the controversy should be dismissed with this
incidental reference, which its importance at the time




seemed to require, and with the expression of the convi'ion that had the lives of the parties, and especially
of him who made the assault, been prolonged, and opportunities such as we now have, been afforded, of collating testimony, and allowing transient resentments to
subside, the fierceness of the controversy would have
been succeeded by far more amiable feelings. But in
less than three years from its date both parties were in
their graves."*
This seemed to be the best mode of treating a subje&
which, in some of its relations, was of great delicacy.
To omit all reference to it, would have been to give
colour to the idea that I was unprepared, (unwilling I
certainly was,) to discuss it.  To do so in detail, would
be to open anew a controversy long since gone by, to excite unpleasant feelings, and possibly to affe&d my. personal relations to those with whom I have always lived on
terms of friendliness, and to whom  I had no desire to
give pain., To speak of it as a subjed on which, time,
had the lives of the parties been prolonged, might have
shed a conciliatory influence, and yet, as one, as to which.
if forced into controversy, I had no misgiving, seemed
to be the true course.  In pursuing it, I have reason to
believe I had the approval of all fair-minded and considerate readers.  Those only were disappointed, who
* Life of Reed, vol. 2, page 382. Mr. Reed died March 5th, I785
Mr. Cadwalader, ioth February, I786.




9
hoped to see the living discredited by a revival of the
altercations of the dead.
No sooner, however, was the biography of President
Reed given to the public-no sooner were kind words
of approval heard-no sooner did it seem certain that
his public charater and services were, by the simple exposition of truth, about to be appreciated in Pennsylvania, and, throughout the country-no sooner were the
letters of Washington, and Lafayette, and Greene, and
Wayne, and Henry Lee, to  Mr. Reed read, and his
a6tual position, as their most valued and thoroughly
trusted friend, illustrated by evidence,'than it was
thought necessary, in a sort of restless, mischief-making
spirit, to try further experiments on public credulity,
and to burnish up ancient weapons which had nearly
rusted in their sheaths; in other words, to print and circulate the Cadwalader Pamphlet of I783.  Of its merits,
I mean to speak clearly and decisively, so that about it,
now, or hereafter, there shall be no misunderstanding.
A  single word as to its various re-publications, the first
of which was in i848.  I was willing to account for this
by attributing the enterprise to a mercenary motive; the
cupidity of an unscrupulous publisher, who hoped, by
a new edition of an ancient story, to make a few dollars.
But I am constrained to believe, that it, too, was the
fruit of secret and inveterate hostility, to be gratified, at
any cost, and by any means; in short, that the authors
of the forgeries of I842, were again, in another form,




busy at the secret work of malevolence.  In this instance,
they were working on genuine materials.  No one questions that General Cadwalader's pamphlet is genuine, or
that it involved charges by a responsible accuser. That
it did great injustice, and that its allegations were groundless, having their origin in intense political animosity,
and were so interpreted at the time, it will be my effort
to demonstrate.  The mode and number of these republications are  remarkable.  The first, in I848, was
printed in secret, with a preface endorsing and adopting
the forgeries of I842, and, though deposited for sale at
an obscure book store, with pains taken, as the contrivers of the scheme imagined, to secure extensive circulation.  The date of the preface was "Trenton, December,
1846;" in point of fad the pamphlet was printed in 1848,
at Philadelphia.  Why all this indiretion;  this falsifying of dates, had the obje& been a fair one?-and why,
if the aim were the mere corre~&ion of a mistake of history, was it necessary to distribute secretly, thousands
of advertising circulars, all carefully direded and prepaid? Yet, this was done. It seemed as if the desire
to do me and mine injustice, was not to be checked by
considerations of labour or expense. One result, immediately ensued. There was an universal burst of indignation, and the faint whispers of approval, or excuse,
were scarcely audible.  None, I have reason to know,
were more annoyed by it than General Cadwalader's descendants,




II
Still, the authors attained one objed.  They re-produced this almost forgotten pamphlet, and a number of
copies were put in circulation, enough at least, to embalm a painful controversy, for future and mischievous
reference.
It was again printed, with the forged documents, in
i856.  I have reason to believe that a new coinage of
calumny and perhaps forgery, for they have generally
been associated, was suppressed, or withheld in consequence of the catastrophe of the Arctic, in I854, and
the death of my brother, Mr. Henry Reed.  The sorrow, which bowed a whole family to the earth, disarmed,
for a time, these secret and industrious artificers of evil.
The next revival of this ancient scandal was by Mr.
John C. Hamilton, in the second volume of his "History
of the Republic of the United States of America, as
traced in the writings of Alexander Hamilton and his
contemporaries;" a book designed, as it were, to chrystallise around the elder Hamilton, all the great results,
and merits, and successes of the Revolution.  Had the
author of this grotesque work limited himself to the
illustration of the services of his ancestor, there could
have been no temptation to say a word about Mr. Reed,
with whom, Mr. Alexander Hamilton had few, or no
relations of any kind; but, as the theory of the book
is, not merely, that Hamilton did everything, but that
no one else did anything, the author in his wide circuit
of disparagement, gratuitously assailed 6Mr. Reed. This




12
attack was, like every one of the kind, wantonly made, and
in the absence, very well known, at a vast distance on the
other side of the globe, of the only person who could
repel it.  How it was subsequently, on one point, met,
the reader may see in the correspondence in i859, between Mr. Hamilton and me, recently published, in
which he was content to rest, as he does still, under a dire& charge of having fabricated the date, and irnimagined
the contents of a letter, and of having mis-quoted one
document, and mis-direded another, (New York Historical Magazine, December, I86.6.)  Though the main
topic of Mr.' Hamilton's ill-natured comment is the correspondence in 1776, with Charles Lee, like all the other
purveyors of this sort of defamatory rubbish, he fell
back upon the reserve of the Cadwalader pamphlet.
~In 1863, it appeared again,'by subscription,' stealthily
of course, and though got up at great expense, and,
printed in Albany,  no place of publication, or publisher's or printer's name is to be found on its pages,
and no one has been willing to acknowledge an agency
in it.
The "subscription" list for this re-issue must be a
curiosity, but like every thing else, it is studiously concealed.  I ascertained who the three individuals were
who a&ed as a sort of'Committee of Publication,' but
the ambush of the other'subscribers' was perfect. This
re-print is catalogued at the Franklin library of this city:
as'The gift of the Publisher.'  On my inquiring who




I3
this was, the librarian informed me either that he was
not at liberty to say, or that the person did not wish his
name known. This did not at all surprise me.
Last, in the catalogue of these resurre&ionists of calumny, is Mr. George Bancroft, in the ninth volume of
his History of the Revolution.  I had reason to look
for a different treatment of the subje&  at his hands, at
least so far as this, that I imagined, in the apparent
friendliness which existed, he would have given me an
opportunity of criticism and explanation before he adduced evidence and expressed opinions so singularly
hostile.  But Mr. Bancroft is the judge as to his own
condut. There were indications in his eighth volume
of a disposition to disparage the services of Mr. Reed,
but as they were ambiguous, and the book came to me'with the Author's regards,' I did not think it worth
while to notice them.  Not so, this ninth volume.  It
fairly bristles with calumny.  Whenever, and it is quite
frequently, Mr. Reed's name is alluded to, there is a
sneer, or an imputation. He is a'traitor,' (p. 229) a'deserter,' (228) a'coward,' (i72) a'pretender,' (Io6).
In short he, and General Greene-the latter in a milder
form-are throughout, the chief objects of Mr. Bancroft's
vituperative rhetoric. I have sought in vain to account
for this mischievous animosity, and am driven to attribute it to the infection of the poisonous politics of this
our day, which have acidulated tempers and dispositions
quite as sweet as Mr. Bancroft's and Mr. John C. Ham



14
ilton's.  Be all this as it may, opinions thus expressed,
and accusations so barbed, and venomous, I am compelled to notice. I shall consider them fairly. So far
as they come directly within the course of my vindication, they shall be noticed in the text, and when they are
aside from  it, in notes.  No one of these resuscitated.
slanders shall be intentionally omitted, and, if I use language of decision, let it be understood, there is abundant excuse in the grossness of the provocation.
That the reader may have a glimpse of the animus of
Mr. Bancroft, and that attention may not, by and by, be
diverted from the strid line of discussion, I pause here
to refer to the manner in which  Mr. Reed's name is
introduced by him.  It is an illustration of Mr. Bancroft's spirit throughout.  Speaking of the negociation
with Lord [Ho0we, in I776, with the details of which
every student is familiar, Mr. Bancroft says:
i"Reed, who was already thoroughly sick of the contest,
thought'the overture ought not to be rejected,' and through
Robert Morris, he offered'most cheerfully to take such a part
as his situation and abilities would admit." (page 40.)
The "quotation marks" are Mr. Bancroft's, and the
reader will be surprised to learn that there is no such
thing in the letter from which the quotation pretends to
be made.  Mr. Reed neither said nor hinted that Lord
Howe's overture "'ought not to be rejeded," nor did he
offer "to take such a part" as is suggested.  His language in the letter to Mr. Morris, is this:  Mr. Bancroft aCtually mutilating the last sentence.




i5
".If it, (the communication) can be improved in any resped, either to give time, or discover the true powers these
Commissioners have, or in any other way, I shall most cheerfully take such a part as my situation and abilities will admit, and
as may be direded."
As to "'the rejeCtion of the overture" Mr. Bancroft's
perversion is still more flagrant.  Mr. Reed says:
"'The Declaration of Independence is a new and very strong
objeAion to entering into any negociation inconsistent with that
idea. But I fancy there are numbers, and some of them firm in
the interests of America, who would think an overture ought
not to be rejeCted, and, if it could be improved into a negociation
which could secure the two points mentioned above, would think
the blood and treasure well spent."
This is the only reference to the "overture" or its
"'rejeCtion" in this letter or in any other, from first to
last, and certainly is that which Mr. Bancroft alludes to.
Mr. Reed adds, and, with this before him, Mr. Bancroft
undertakes to say  "he was thoroughly  sick  of the
contest."
"I have no idea from any thing I have seen or can learn that
if we should give the General and Admiral a full and fair hearing, the proposition would amount to any thing short of unconditional submission, but it may be worth considering whether
that once known and all prospeAt of securing American liberty in that way being closed, it would not have a happy effe& to
unite us into one chosen band, resolved to be free or perish in
the attempt."
This is the herald, as it were, of a series of defamatory statements, each of which I pledge myself to show
to be unworthy of credit.  Mr. George Bancroft has




chosen to array himself with the persistent defamers of
my ancestor, and has a position before the public as an
ambitious writer of History, which makes it my duty to
break the silence I have so long and so resolutely
maintained. I propose now to reply fully to these conglomerate calumnies, and to submit such a defence of
General Reed as will, I trust, put them to rest at once,
and forever.
I begin of course at the "origo mali," the controversy
of the last Century.
The Cadwalader controversy was in the year 1782-3,
more than six years after the incidents in which it is
supposed to have had its origin, are said to have occurred.
In determining the relative attitude of the parties to
this unfortunate difficulty, I have no professions of
absolute impartiality to make, while I do not distrust
my ability to do justice to Mr. Cadwalader, and to see
defects of character, or temper, or conduct in my ancestor.  With due allowance for strong filial feeling, it
seems to me the subject may, without much effort, be
considered in a very temperate spirit.  I mean to try so
to treat it.
General Cadwalader was a Philadelphian by birth, and
according to the best information I have, a man of
easy fortune. In the patriotic movements at the beginning of the colonial troubles, he took an active part.
He, and his brother Lambert, were members of the
Provincial Convention of 1775, and both held commis



17
sions in the military corps organized by Pennsylvania,
in I776. They were brave, high spirited men. Colonel
Lambert Cadwalader was made prisoner at Fort Washington, and never afterwards entered active service.  In
the campaign of 1776, John Cadwalader commanded a
Pennsylvania regiment, but was not, I believe, in the
field till December of that year, when he was stationed
with a body of about fifteen or eighteen hundred men, at
Bristol.  He remained with the army till after the battle
of Princeton. In January, I777, Washington recommended him  for military promotion.  In February,
Congress appointed him one of the new Brigadier Generals, a post which he declined accepting, as "he conceived the war was near a conclusion."  He never was
regularly in service afterwards.  In the winter of 1777-8
Cadwalader and Reed joined Washington, as volunteers,
and were with him, counselling and aiding in the operations near Philadelphia.  In December, I777, on being
offered a post in the Pennsylvania line, Cadwalader refused to accept it, and in June, or July, I778, fought his
duel with Conway. The two Philadelphia soldiers were
again volunteers with Washington at Monmouth.  In
September, Congress, at the instance of a Committee, of
which Mr. Reed was Chairman, offered Cadwalader a
Cavalry command; this also, he, then residing with his
family in Maryland, declined. Except a short period
of service in the Maryland Legislature, he never, afterwards, was other than a private man. This is, I believe,




a fair summary of General Cadwalader's services. During
the greater part of the War, he resided on his estate in
Maryland, occasionally visiting Philadelphia, to share in
the fierce political broils which so long distra&ed this
community.
Of Mr. Reed's career, from  July 1775, when he
joined Washington on his way to Cambridge, till his
term of office as President of Pennsylvania ended in
I78I, I do not feel it necessary to say a word. The
record of his public services is before the world, and,
this, certainly may be said of it, that there was not a
year or a day, in which, for the public cause, he was not
making some effort or sacrifice, and earning from his
countrymen, and especially his fellow-soldiers, gratitude
in its strongest and most sincere expression.  Though,
like Cadwalader, he declined Continental rank, unlike
him, he thought it a duty to forego speculative objections to a frame of local government, and to take office
and discharge public duty under the Constitution of
Pennsylvania. When appointed Chief Justice in 1777,
he declined office; when eleted to the Presidency in
I778, he accepted it, and Washington "very sincerely"
rejoiced.  Who was right, and who wrong, no one
now doubts.  We know what judgment was formed and
expressed by Mr. Reed's contemporaries who had a deep
interest in the question; as I have said, by Washington, and by Wayne, and Greene, and Henry Lee.  The
student of our history will, we think, agree in the opin



9
ion which has elsewhere been expressed, that it was well
for the general cause, that at the most critical periods of
the war, in i779, I780, and 1781, when the heaviest
burthens rested on the Middle Colonies, a man so full
of energy, and intellectual resources, as Mr. Reed, was
in Executive office in Pennsylvania.   The more this
period of our history is studied, the brighter will his record be,  It was Pennsylvania that nobly sustained the
general cause, and he was the guiding and animating
spirit of her executive councils.  It was a poor return
for all he did and sacrificed, to be at the end, assailed
by those who, while he was toiling and wearing away
a feeble constitution in public service, were living in
seclusion and luxury.
The year I782 found Reed and Cadwalader private
citizens.  The state of local affairs I cannot better describe than I already have in the Memoir which has been
given to the public.  The scene was a very sad one.
On the 7th of September, 1782, there appeared in
the columns of the "Independent Gazetteer," the organ
of the Anti-Constitutional party of Pennsylvania, the
following publication, dated the 3d.:
i. Was not General R —d in December, I776, (then A,-t
G1 I of the continental army), sent by General Washington
to the commanding officer at Bristol, with orders relative to a
general attack, intended to be made on the enemy's post at
Trenton and those below on the 25th, at night?
2. Two or three days before the intended attack did not General R-d say, in conversation with the said commanding officer,




20
at his quarters, that our affairs looked very desperate, and that
we were only making a sacrifice of ourselves?
3. Did he not also say, that the time of General Howe's
proclamation offering pardon and proteftion to persons who
should come in before the ist of January, I777, was nearly expired; and that Galloway, the Allen's and others had gone over
and availed themselves of the pardon and protecion offered by
the said proclamation?
4. Did not he, General R-d, at the same time say, that he
had a family and ought to take care of them; and that he did
not understand following the wretched remains of a broken
army?
5. Did he not likewise say to the said commanding officer,
that his brother (then a colonel or lieutenant colonel of militia)
was at Burlington with his family, and that he had advised him
to remain there, and if the enemy took possession of the town,
to take a protedhion and swear allegiance? It is well for America that very few general officers have reasoned in this manner;
if they had, General Howe would have made an easy conquest of
the United States. And it is very obvious, that officers of high
rank with such sentiments, can have no just pretensions to patriotism or public virtue; and can by no means be worthy of any
post of honour or place of trust where the liberties and interests
of the people are immediately concerned.
BRUTUS.
Philadelphia, September 3, I782.
This was an anonymous publication, and no one ever
avowed the authorship of it.  General Cadwalader expressly disclaimed it.  The newspapers of the day attribute it to Do&or Benjamin Rush, and, as he subsequently made himself a chief witness in support of the
accusation against Mr. Reed, was bitterly hostile to
him, and was addided to this mode of secret assua!:1;




there is reason for attributing to his busy pen, the initiation of this wretched controversy.  The "'Brutus" of
1782, after involving two gentlemen in angry dispute,
never came from his ambush. So far as he is concerned,
it was a stab in the dark.
Instantly, on its publication, Mr. Reed addressed a
note to General Cadwalader, enquiring if he were the
author, and asserting, without, however, any personal
imputation, the falsehood of the hinted accusation. To
this, on the ioth of September, Cadwalader replied, deny ing that he was " Brutus," but re-asserting the charges
in a form  quite as offensive.  On the IIth, the following card appeared in the journals of the day.
"6~To THE PUBLIC."
Satiated with public business, and the honours which are supposed to attend it; no candidate for office or appointment of any
kind, it was my wish to live a private and peaceable citizen.
But it seems the sacrifice of no small portion of my time and
fortune is not sufficient, without a sacrifice of charader also.
A set of men in this city, uninjured and unprovoked by me, are
weekly pouring forth some abuse under anonymous signatures,
and in a late paper it is insinuated under a number of queries
that in the year 1776 I meditated an abandonment of the cause
of my country, and desertion to the enemy and communicated
such intention to the commanding oficer at Bristol. I do not
hesitate to pronounce it an infamous falsehood, and with sin-r
cerity and upon the honour'of a gentleman, solemnly declare no
such conversation as alluded to in these queries ever passed, of
which, I hope in a few days to exhibit the most satisfadory
proof, the nature of the case admits of
J3os,,P-H REcrn,




22
After a sharp personal correspondence, Mr. Reed redeemed the pledge of submitting his case to the public
judgment, and in November, I782, published a pamphlet with which every historical student is familiar.  It
has been but once re-printed in the long interval ot
eighty-five years, and but for the fear of expanding this
publication too much, I should be glad to re-produce it,
and let an injured man, as it were from the grave, speak
for himself. I am conscious of no little pride in the
earnest eloquence and high literary ability of this defence.
My vindication is really supplementary.  In the early
part of 1783, the Cadwalader pamphlet appeared in reply
to Mr. Reed.  Before considering it, and the evidence
it is supposed to contain, as I shall do fully, and, I hope
conclusively, I desire to give to the world some contemporaneous testimony, of the good and brave men of
those days of trial, as to the merits of the controversy as
presented by the parties themselves.  I have in my
possession many letters of this kind.  It would extend
this publication too much, were I to print them all. I
therefore content myself with two —from a gallant soldier
of the Revolution, him whom Washington most cherished and trusted-the Marcellus of our infant story,
whose friendship for Mr. Reed, from the time they met
within the lines of Cambridge, never abated nor was interrupted. With any fair-minded man, it would conclude all
question as to Mr. Reed's fidelity to the cause of his country  I[ make extrats from the originals in my possession.




23
GENERAL GREENE TO CHARLES PETTIT.
Charleston, Jpril 3, I783.
*8 *' I have seen Governor Reed's publication.  I think it
an excellent performance, and it is much admired.  On almost
every question, I could give the fullest confirmation, so far as my
opinion can have weight. The attempt to traduce him, as having a design to go over to the enemy, is truly wicked.  General
Cadwalader never had such a thought. I am persuaded nothing
but party rage could induce him to countenance such an insinuation. No man in America had so good an opportunity to know
Governor Reed's sentiments and intentions as I had, and I know
at the time they urge suspicions, he was urging the enterprise at
Trenton, as he says. And as to the arguments founded upon
his not taking the oaths, they are as ridiculous as they are wicked.
He was opposed to the Constitution, and in hopes of getting some
alterations in it was the reason why he did not take the oaths to
the state. Was there not a great part of the principal men in the
state in the same predicament? Their objedion was not to the
cause but the Constitution. It was my advice to him and General Cadwalader, both, to take up the Constitution as it was; and
as the people would have more confidence in them, they might
form it as they pleased. A measure of this sort would have reconciled and united all parties, and I am persuaded this was Governor Reed's intention in taking upon him the charge of government. We had frequent conversations together, to this effed.
The abuse and scurrility thrown out against him, betray so much
rancour and malice, that it destroys itself.  He will live beloved
and respected by every good man and friend to his country, in
spite of all they can say to his prejudice.  His good sense and
natural resources will support him, when his enemies shall not
dare to show their heads. * * * *
On the 23rd of April, 1783, Greene wrote dire&ly to
Mr. Reed.
Headquarters, April 23, 1783.
I thank you for the pamphlet you sent me. I had read it before, and have the pleasure to assure you it is much admired.




24
Everybody reads it with pleasure and conviation. I wish I had
been in Philadelphia. I would have given you all the support
my little influence might have had. I am better acquainted with
the history of your condu& than any other person. The insinuation of your intention to desert over to the enemy is infamous,
and I am sure General Cadwalader never entertained such an
idea, nor would have asserted such a thing, but from the influences
of party rage. Indeed, I think Philadelphia has something infatuating in its air.  No charader escapes abuse, and the innocent as well as the guilty are all arraigned as party or spleen directs. Good God! what will this lead to. I would sooner be
an honest plowman than a public officer upon such terms.*
Again in November, I783, months after the Cadwalader publication, when  Mr. Reed visited  England,
Greene, standing faithfully by his ancient friend, wrote
to Lafayette.
Philadelphia, Nov. 9, 1783.
"DEAR MARQUIS:
This will be handed you by my good friend, Governor Reed,
whose merit and adive zeal, you are perfeAly well acquainted
with. Nor, can you be ignorant of the ungenerous measures
which have been taken here to lessen his public estimation.
Every man who has the pleasure of his acquaintance must feel
an honest indignation at the unmerited treatment he has met
with; and a pleasing satisfadion that his abilities will triumph
over party and fa&ion."
To Rochambeau, and D'Estaing, he wrote in the same
strain of earnest affection.   Mr. Reed's infirm  health
* This letter, with the exception of one passage, was published in
rmy Life of Reed, vol. z, page 395. The passage relating to General
Cadwalader was omitted, from the feeling which, throughout, controlled
me, of trying to avoid giving pain.




25
prevented him from visiting the continent and-delivering
these letters; and, for this reason, they have remained in
my possession. The student of our history need not be
told how valuable this voluntary testimony of General
Greene is. It was his fortune to pass through the war
without a reproach.  He shared in the early reverses and
final triumphs of the Revolution.  He had, throughout,
Washington's affectionate confidence.  He was actively
engaged in the military operations on the Delaware, in
I776, and, knowing better than any one else, Mr. Reed's
conduct, at the moment when he was charged with disaffection pronounced the insinuation'infamous.'  Is it,
I pause to ask, this fidelity to Mr. Reed which now attracts Mr. Bancroft's animosity to General Greene —or
is it that he gained his highest laurels on fields of southern victory, and, leaving New England, sought a southern home, and died a southern man?
Greene in another letter to Mr. Reed, in I782, said''The ingratitude you have been treated with by a party
in Philadelphia, and by some of the officers of the army,
serves but to disgust me with public life, and as a lesson
of the inconstancy of human creatures.  The State of
South Carolina has treated me very differently. They
have voted me their thanks unanimously, accompanied
with a vote vesting me with an estate of Io.ooo guineas.
No people, I believe, ever felt a stronger impulse of
gratitude. Commissioners are appointed to make the
purchase. This, with the shattered remains of my little




26
fortune, will lay the foundation for a decent support in
the decline of life. The measure is new in the politics
of America, and it will soon become public. Please let
me know what animadversions are made upon it, particularly by the delegates and people of New England.'
What the contemporaneous public thought of these
controversies may be inferred from the fa&t that, in the
short remnant of Mr. Reed's life, his close and confidential relations with the best and purest men of our country, and especially of Pennsylvania, continued unimpaired;
abroad, with Mr. Adams, and Mr. Jay, and Mr. Laurens,
at home with George Bryan and Jonathan Dickinson
Sergeant and Clement Biddle, and James Hutchinson,
and John Bayard, and Jared Ingersoll, and especially,
with William Bradford, (afterwards Washington's Attorney General,) whom Mr. Reed drew from retirement to
place in high position, and who repaid the kindness by
an affectionate friendship which never intermitted.
After the Cadwalader pamphlet, Mr. Reed was chosen
by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to condu&t, at Trenton,
the Wyoming controversy, as the colleague of Mr. Bradford, Mr. Sergeant, and Mr. Wilson, and on the I6th
of April, 1784, the following minute of the Assembly,
attests the public estimation, in which, to the latest hour
of his life, in spite of all the defamation which party
fury had hurled at him, he was held. One of the sure
re-ations in politics had occured, since I782. The proscriptive'Republicans,' such was the party name then,




27
had been defeated at the polls, and the'Constitutionalists' were again in the ascendant.
" Agreeably to the order of the day the house proceeded to the
election of Delegates to represent the State in the Congress of
the United States for the ensuing year; and the ballots being
taken it appeared that the Honourable Joseph Reed, Cadwalader Morris, William Montgomery, Joseph Gardner and William
Henry, of Lancaster, Esquires, were duly elected.'I have,'
wrote the Speaker of the House,'further to express the earnest
desire of the House, that you repair as soon as possible to Trenton, to meet with Congress, that this State may be represented
in that honourable body."
But, as I have elsewhere said, this honour, the just
reward of public service, came too late. The hand of
death was upon him. In December, I783, his will is
dated, and, there, will be found the almost dying words
with which he repelled these dark accusations.
" My situation in life has made me the objeA of much envy, calumny and reproach; I therefore, on this solemn occasion, declare
that any charge of infidelity to my country, correspondence with
the enemy, injustice to the State, or individuals, which has been
made against me, is false. I served my country with fidelity,
and usefulness, as General Washington's and General Greene's
numerous letters will testify. I served Pennsylvania, in particular, to the very great injury of my family, but with equal integrity, disclaiming all offers and opportunities of serving myself.
If the State will allow for the depreciation of my salary during
my administration, and also ~I93 which I forfeited as a purchaser of a State Island lot, but which was never exa&ed from any
other purchaser who failed in payment, I shall be obliged to it.
I desire that there may be no pompous funeral, but quite plain,




as nearly like those in 1776 as possible) and to be laid by my
wife.  If I am of consequence enough for a funeral sermon, I
desire it may be preached by my old friend and instrumtor Mr.
Duffield, in Arch street, the next Sunday after my funeral. And
now I c-lose this serious business and shall meet death with come
posure, having no other concern than for my children, whost'interests I have too much neglefted for the service of the public;
however I recommend them to the care of Providence and the
kindness of friends."
Mr. Reed died in March, I785.  "I never" wrote
General Richard Butler, "'saw so great a number of people at one funeral in America." All orders, classes and
parties, united in paying him the last honours. The
officers of the army; the Militia of the city; the Assembly and Executive Council, with the President, Mr.
Dickinson, (once a political adversary,) with a large concourse, followed him to the grave.
It is this man, thus honoured to the last hour of his
life, and thus, in death lanrcnted,  whom, I, his grandson,
am called upon to vindicate against a charge of deep dishonour, suggested whilst he was living, and revived by
the busy artificers of slander, eighty years after he died.
This vindication I proceed to make:
The pamphlet of I783 contains two charges, one expressly made, and one, very directly insinuated.
I. That in December, I776, Mr. Reed, in extreme
despondency, thought of making his peace with the enemy by accepting the terms offered by their Commissioners, and, so said to General Cadwalader.




29
2. That, with that view, he entered into a correspondence of a treasonable charafter with Count Donop, the
Hessian Commander of the outposts in New Jersey.
As to the first, it will be observed that the only dired
evidence adduced is that of General Cadwalader himself,
his double brother-in-law, Philemon Dickerson, John
Nixon, and Doctor Benjamin Rush.  All the others,
Jacob Rush, Joseph Ellis, Davenport, Bradford, David
Lenox, and Nichols, merely tell hearsay gossip-what
other people told them.  How little value should be attached to such testimony, will appear from a contradiction, now for the first time in print, I am able to give
one of them-Mr. Bradford.  Bradford's certificate, published by General Cadwalader, is this:
"These are to certify, that, in December 1776, and January
1777, I, the subscriber, was Major of the second battalion ol
Philadelphia Militia, whereof John Bayard was Colonel, and then
lay at Bristol, and part of the time opposite Trenton, on the Pennsylvania side. That while we lay at Bristol, Joseph Reed, Esq.,
joined us; that, during his being there and near Trenton, he often
went out for intelligence, as Colonel Bayard told me, over to
Burlington, in which place the enemy frequently were; that,
being absent frequently all day and all night, I as frequently enquired what could become of General Reed. Colonel Bayard
often answered me, he feared, he had left us and gone over to
the enemy. One time in particular, being absent two days and
two nights, if not three nights, Colonel Bayard came to me with
great concern, and said he was fully persuaded General Reed
was gone to join the enemy and make his peace. I asked how
he could possibly think so of a man who had taken so early a
part and had acted steadily.  He replied, he was persuaded it




30
was so, for he knew the General thought it was all over, and
that we could not stand against the enemy, and at the same time
wept much. I endeavoured all I could to drive such notions
from him, but he was so fully persuaded that he had left us and
gone over to  the enemy, that arguing about the matter was
only loss of time. Colonel Bayard often making mention, that
he knew his sentiments much better than I did. After being
absent two or three nights, General Reed returned, and I never
saw more joy expressed than was by Colonel Bayard; he declaring to me he was glad General Reed was returned, for he was
fully convinced, in his own mind, that he was gone over to the
enemy. *
WILLIAM  BRADFORD.
March I5, I783.
* Mr., or Major Bradford, who gives this certificate, was William
Bradford, the elder. His two sons were Thomas, a printer and publisher, and William, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, in I78o, afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court, and at the time of his death in
1795, Attorney General of the United States in the Washington administration, Mr. Reed's intimate friend, one of the executors of his
will and guardian of his children.  He wrote the laudatory inscription on Mr. Reed's tombstone. In Mr. Bradford's will, now before
me, dated in i788, this passage occurs: "In remembrance of the friendship and patronage I experienced from Joseph Reed, Esquire, in his
lifetime, I give and devise to such of his children, as shall be alive at
the time of my decease, and to their heirs, a tra& of land in Northumberland County, containing Ioo5 acres, granted to me by patent; also,
the sum of ~Iooo, payable in certificates, at the discretion of my executors, and the farther sum of I 50o, payable in one year after my decease." This, and all other of Mr. Bradford's testamentary dispositions,
were rendered nugatory by the adjudication in the well known and reported case of Bradford vs. Boudinot, z Dallas' Reports, 266, z reates,
I70, in which Dotor Rush was the chief witness against the wills.
Mr. Thomas Bradford, who inherited, as heir at law, belonged to a different school of politics, was the intimate friend of Doftor Rush, and
the printer of the Cadwalader pamphlet. He lived to a very advanced
age, dying in 1837.  The brothers were not on friendly terms.




31
Among  Mr. Reed's papers  I find the following
affidavit, which speaks for itself, being that of a man,
whose high charader in public and private life is well
known in this community. A more emphatic and precise denial could hardly be framed. It is dated the 5th of
December, I783-of course after the Cadwalader pamphlet appeared.
"Whereas Mr. William Bradford, Senior, heretofore a Major
in the Second Battalion of Philadelphia Militia, under my command, hath, in a pamphlet published by General Cadwalader, certified that I frequently communicated to him suspicions of the
fidelity of General Reed, in the winter of the year 1776, and
apprehensions of his being gone to the enemy; that he despaired
of the American cause, and that I knew his sentiments on the
subject. I do hereby declare that I never entertained a doubt of
the fidelity of General Reed, or the least suspicion of his intending to join the enemy; and further, that in the most private and
intimate conversations, le never expressed to me a sentiment of
that kind or discovered that despondency which would lead me to
draw such a conclusion.  I well remember my often expressing
my concern and anxiety at his and Colonel Cox's frequent visits
to Burlington, and my apprehensions that they would either be
betrayed by the inhabitants or surprised and taken by the enemy.
I expostulated with him on this head more than once. His answer was to me, that he knew the people and could depend upon
them, and that our situation required constant and daily intelligence.  My frequent mention of the uneasiness I was under on
this occasion, may have been misunderstood by Major Bradford.
The justice due to a much injured character has led me to
give this counter certificate."         JOHN BAYARD.*
* "John Bayard, chairman of the Committee of Inspection, for the
County of Philadelphia, a patriot of singular purity of charafter and




32
Still, there remains what may be called the positive
testimony, and to it, I dire& my attention; and, first, to
that of General Cadwalader himself, which it is best to
give in his own words:
"1I had occasion to speak with you, a few days before the intended attack on the 26th of December, I776, and requested
you to retire with me to a private room at my quarters-the
business related to intelligence-a general conversation, however,
soon took place concerning the state of public affairs, and after running over a number of topics;-in an agony of mind, and despair
strongly expressed in your countenance and tone of voice, you
spoke your apprehensions concerning the event of the contest;
that our affairs looked very desperate, and we were only making
a sacrifice of ourselves i-that the time of General Howe's offering pardon and protection to persons who should come in before
the first of January, 1777, was nearly expired; and that Galloway,
the Allens, and others, had gone over and availed themselves of
the pardon and protection offered by said proclamation; —that
you had a family and ought to take care of them, and that you
did not understand following the wretched remains (or remnants)
of a broken army; that your brother, (then Colonel, or Lieutenant Colonel of the militia-but you say of five months' men,
(which is not material) was then at Burlington with his family,
and that you had advised him to remain there and if the enemy
took possession of the town, to take a protection and swear allegiance, and in so doing he would be perfectly justifiable."
If General Cadwalader be understood to say that in
December, 1776, before the success at Trenton, Mr.
disinterestedness, personally brave, pensive (sic), earnest and devout."
Bancroft, vol. 8, page 38 5.




33
Reed, in confidential intercourse with him, was despondent as to the prospeds of the Americans, it is certainly
not worth while to dispute it. There was despondency,
deep despondency, and the highest in military rank felt
it; and to their families and friends expressed it.
"General Reed," says "Mr. Nixon," on my enquiring
the news, and what he thought of affairs in general, said
that appearances were very gloomy and unfavourable;
that he was fearful or apprehensive the business was
nearly settled, or the game almost up, or words to the
same effed.* That all this, or some of it, may have
been said, is quite probable, for we find that on the I8th
of December, Washington wrote to his brother: "Between you and me, I think our affairs are in a very bad
condition. In a word if every nerve is not strained to
recruit the new army with all possible speed, I think the
game is nearly up."   "Some effe&ual remedy," wrote
Mr. Morris to Congress, on December 23d, "must be
applied to this evil, (the depreciation of the currency)
or the game will be up;" the very words which General
Cadwalader and his friend Mr. Nixon, thought it treasonable for Mr. Reed to utter.
But General Cadwalader, in 1783, meant to say more.
He meant to charge Mr. Reed with more than transient
despondency, when, in 1778, angered at the prosecution
In Mr. Nixon's certificate these disjun&ives are all in italics, indicating an intense uncertainty as to what was really said.
3




34
of his friend, Mr. William Hamilton, who, with Carlisle and Roberts, was tried for high treason, he, for the
first time, talked of treasonable defection.  ""Though
living in the closest intimacy," says Mr. Clymer, "I
never (before) heard you drop the most distant hint of
any defe&ion of Mr. Reed, of which, I myself, had no
suspicion."  He meant to charge much more than despondency, when a year later, he furnished Arnold, on his
trial for official misdemeanour, of which he was convided,
and at the very time a secret traitor, with a weapon of
calumny to be hurled at his prosecutor.  He meant to
charge cowardly disaffe&ion, and it is this charge which
must be met. It cannot be evaded. It ought not to be understated; for, while I do not condescend to ask a stri&er
rule of evidence, in view of the enormity of the imputed
crime, I have a right to infer from the subsequent relations of the accuser and the accused, that the former
did not believe a charge so gross had any foundation.
There is not a trace of General Cadwalader having
breathed this accusation until the Treason trials of I778.
The only attempt to show that he ever whispered it before, is in Colonel Hamilton's letter of the i4th of
March, 1783, in which he says that after an effort of
memory "he thinks" the matter was mentioned to him,
sometime in the campaign of I777, and, with great
caution, he adds: "It is the part of candour to observe
that I am not able to distinguish with certainty whether




the recolletion I have of these words arises from the
strong impression made by your declaration at the time,
or from  having heard them. more than once repeated
within a year past."
The secret thus kept was a perilous one, to both pars'ties.'Mr. Reed avowed his intention to desert to the
enemy at the most critical position of affairs, in terms
so distintd that I was on the point of arresting him, and,
this, I kept secret from all, including the Commander-inChief to whom I was bound to reveal it.  I kept it secret from  motives of expediency and in the exercise of
discretion which I considered advantageous.'  This,
almost in terms, is what General Cadwalader said two, or
three, or seven years after. And this being so, may we
not ask, why was it ever told?  Why was it put in circulation in I778, or in I779, or in I782, gloomy and
critical periods of our story?  Why was it kept back
till party asperities and political bitterness called it forth?
Why was it talked of in coffee houses and clubs, as
General Cadwalader tries to prove it was?  Why was it
blurted out in anger on the trial of a cause when Mr.
Reed was merely discharging a professional duty?  And
why was it, at last, "conveyed" as a weapon of offence
to a man like Arnold, and, brandished in the light of day
by a mercenary, jobbing traitor? Does not it look as if
it might have been an after thought, and that if General Cadwalader, in 1783, believed what he said, it was
through some peculiar mental process which clouds the




36
memory and makes an angry man think he remembers
what never occurred. It is not the first time and will
not be the last, when men have chafed themselves into
delusions.
Arnold's language on his trial in January, 1780, was
this:
"Conscious of my own innocence, and the unworthy
methods taken to injure me, I can with boldness say to
my persecutors in general, and to the chief of them in
particular, that in the hour of danger, when the affairs of
America wore a gloomy aspect, when our illustrious
General was retreating through New Jersey with a handful of men, I did not propose to my associates basely to
quit the General and sacrifice the cause of my country
to my personal safety, by going over to the enemy and
making my peace."
Mr. Reed, in his pamphlet of 1782, says: "When Arnold's insinuation dropped, a smile of contempt manifested itself throughout the room." And Mr. Sparks
well remarks:  "The boastfulness and malignity of
these declarations are obvious enough, but their consummate hypocrisy can be understood only by knowing
the fad, that, at the moment they were uttered, Arnold
had been eight months in secret correspondence with
the enemy, and was prepared, if not resolved, when the
first opportunity should offer to desert and betray his
country. No suspicions of such a purpose being entertained, these effusions were regarded as the offspring of




37
vanity, and the natural acerbity  of his temper.  They
now afford a remarkable evidence of the duplicity of his
charader, and of the art with which he concealed the
blackest schemes of wickedness under the guise of pretended virtue and boast of immaculate innocence."*
And now, simply hinting incidentally these general
reasons for incredulity, I proceed to show that it was an
after thought, and that, in  December I776, General
Cadwalader did not think Mr. Reed unfaithful to his
country, a traitor in heart, in his own words, "a base
man who had once raised his foot to take a step" that
ought to have consigned him to the scaffold.  This is
plain language, for, as I have said, I do not desire to
understate anything on the part of the accuser.
Let me recall the reader's attention to the familiar
story of those hours of trial.   There is no precision in
General Cadwalader's dates.  The  perilous conversation, he says, took place "a few days before the intended
attack, on the 26th of December, 1776."  Dodtor Rush,
the other witness, fixes the date of his conversation "a
few days" before the battle of Trenton, though, as he
says, it occurred on a ride to "Headquarters near New*ifre and Tre-asoi of Arnoad, page 14.lI. "I f,' wrote Washington to
Reed on the 2oth of November, 17 So,'if Arnold, by the words in his
letter to his wife,''I am treated with the greatest politeness by General
Washington and the officers of the Army, who bitterly execrate Mr.
Reed and the Council, for their villainous attempt to injure me,''meant to comprehend me in the latter part of the expression, he asserted an absolute falsehood"




town," it must have been before the I Sth, for, then,
"'Headquarters were near the Falls of Trenton."  It
is to be presumed that the pretended date was within
the eight or ten days before the 26th of December, and
so I shall consider it, in the view I desire to present of
Cadwalader's relations to Reed, when, and after this
secret infamy was said to be revealed.
They were at Bristol, with a small body of militia and
a few Continental troops; the enemy in unknown force
in front, on the eastern side of the Delaware; a small
body of Americans under Griffin, at or near Mount
Holly; Washington about ten miles above, meditating
an attack; and Philadelphia, panic-stricken and disaffected below.  Then it was that Washington communicated to Reed and Cadwalader, the details of his proposed
attack. "6For Heaven's sake," said he, writing to Reed,
"ckeep this to yourself, as the discovery may prove fatal
to us." Cadwalader and Reed had concerted a plan to
cross and attack the enemy below. The plans were
considered by them  in confidence.  Nay more, when
the lower one was relinquished, it was agreed that Mr.
Reed should cross the river and confer with Griffin, then
in a6cual contaat with the enemy. This was done; the
companion of the errand, as he has been, of unmerited
calumny, being Colonel John Cox. This critical duty
was performed, and the fad ascertained that no assistance
could be expe&ted in that quarter, and that Griffin was
falling back. Then it was, tha.t further confidence was




39
reposed in  Mr. Reed by his fellow-soldier, Cadwalader.
No one but they knew  Washington's secret.  He had
trusted  themn, and  they, each  other, and  for fear of
accidental disclosure, Mr. Reed went to  Philadelphia to
hurry on reinforcements. He returned, just in time to
take part in the unsuccessful attempt to pass the Delaware at Dunk's Ferry on the night of the 25th, and was
one of the few officers who did cross and with  Colonel
Cowperthwaite  remained  on the other side.*   He returned  to Bristol on the morning  of the 26th, before
news of Washington's success came and, when it was
known, took part in the movement above  Bristol on
the 27th.  And here, I venture to interrupt this line of
thought by an incidental illustration of the failures of General Cadwalader's memory on matters of fa&.  The troops
at Bristol crossed the Delaware on the 27th, it being
supposed that Washington was still on the left bank.
On landing, it was ascertained that he had re-crossed,
* Mr. Bancroft says:'Sending back word that it was impossible to
carry out their share in Washington's plan, Reed deserted the party and
rode to safe quarters within the enemies lines at Burlington, having previously obtained leave for a conference with Donop.' Vol. 9, p. 229.
It would be difficult to compress in few words more gross misrepresentation than there is here.  The impossibility of crossing was patent
to every body after the first experiment.  Mr. Reed did not'desert' in
any sense.  His contemporary enemies never said he did. He was accompanied by another officer of rank whose fidelity never was suspected.
Burlington was not within the enemy's lines, and Mr. Reed returned to
Bristol before any news was received from Trenton.  Of the Donop
fi&tion, I shall speak hereafter. I incidentally annotate this illustration
of Mr, Bancroft's persistent tendency to misstatement.




4-o
and it became a question what should be done by the
force below.
Writing of this, in I783, General Cadwalader, in his
pamphlet, says: that on the receipt of news that Washington had re-crossed, "Colonel Hitchcock proposed
returning to Bristol, I instantly declared my determination
against it, and recommended an attack on Mount Holly,
as, from the information we had of the force there, we
might easily carry it."
There now  lies before me a certified copy from  the
State Department of a letter from General Cadwalader
to Washington, dated on the very day of the occurrence,'Burlington, ten o'clock, 27th,' in which he says:
"As I did not hear from you this morning, and being prepared
to embark, I concluded you was still on this side, and therefore
embarked and landed about I5oo00 men about two miles above
Bristol. After a considerable number were landed, I had information from the paymaster of Colonel Hitchcock's brigade, that
you had crossed over from Trenton.  This defeated the scheme
of joining your army. We were never more embarrassed which
way to proceed.  I thought it most prudent to retreat, but Colonel
Reed was of opinion that we might safely proceed to Burlington,
and recommended it warmly, lest it should have a bad effe6t on
the militia, who were twice disappointed. The landing in open
daylight must have alarmed the enemy, and we might have been
cut off by all their force colleded to this place. We had intelligence immediately afterwards, that the enemy had left the Black
Horse and Mount Holly. Upon this we determined to proceed
to Burlington. Colonel Reed and two other officers went on
from one post to another till they came to Bordentown, where
they found the coast clear.  Colonel Reed and Colonel Cox are




4I
now there, and we shall march at four to-morrow morning for
that place."
Again, there is an illustration of mistaken memory,
when, in reply to the statement in Mr. Reed's address, that he went to Burlington before day but did
not leave Dunk's Ferry'till he saw the last man reembarked,' General Cadwalader in his pamphlet of i783,
said, this could not be, for'there is no circumstance better
ascertained than that many of the men were not brought
back till eiglt o'clock the next morning.'  Writing to
General Washington,  on the very day, (25th) Cadwalader said: "We concluded to withdraw the troops that
had passed, but could not effet it till nearfour o'clock in
the morning. The whole was then ordered to march back
to Bristol." Four o'clock on Christmas morning is certainly long "before day."
Thus closed this chapter of unreserved confidence, for
it is not necessary for vindication to pursue the narrative,
and scrutinizing it from first to last, from the day when
at Washington's request or suggestion, Mr. Reed joined
Cadwalader at Bristol, till they pursued the flying
enemy to Bordentown, it seems to me difficult, from
this unquestioned record of mutual faith and a&ive
co-operation, to resist the conclusion that the whole
phantom, of Mr. Reed's disaffe6ion, was the coinage
of passion, and what General Greene called "party
rage."  "General Cadwalader never could have had
such a thought."




42
Before adducing further proof on this point, for it is
abundant, I pause on a matter of painful interest connedied with these events; painful in this: that General
Reed, thus in his lifetime assailed, went to his grave
without recovering what would have been conclusive on
the question he was forced to discuss.  Time, however,
has in this respect done justice.  Instantly on the publication of the anonymous queries of September, 1782,
Mr. Reed wrote to Washington, saying: "My memory
suggests to me a letter I wrote your excellency from
Bristol containing reasons for an attack on the enemy;
if that letter can be obtained, I am persuaded it contains
sentiments of a very different nature from those of which
I complain, and would be particularly useful." Washington replied that "being in the field perfectly light,"
he had no papers with him, public or private, and could
not therefore furnish the letter, expressing, at the same
time, his disbelief of the charge understood to be
made.  Nor was it ever recovered during Mr. Reed's
lifetime; nor indeed, for fifty years after his death, when
Mr. Sparks found it in the Department of State, and
printed it in the appendix to the fourth volume of the
Works of Washington. There, for the first time I saw it.
REED TO WASHINGTON.
Bristol, De,:emnber 22, 1776.
DEAR SIR:
Pomroy, whom I sent by your order to go to Amboy, and so
thbrough the Jerseys and round by Piinceton to you, returned to




43
Burlington yesterday. He went to South Amboy, but was not
able to get over; upon which he came to Brunswick-passed on
to Princeton, and was prevented from going to Pennington, upon
which he returned to Burlington by way of Cranbury.  His intelligence is, that he saw no troops, baggage wagons, or artillery,
going to New York, except about eight wagons, which he understood had the baggage of some of the light horse, who had been
relieved and were going into quarters. At Cranbury he saw sixteen wagons going down to South Amboy, for the baggage of
about five hundred men, who were to quarter about Cranbury,
being enlisted forces commanded by one Lawrence. At Brunswick, he saw four pieces of cannon; the number of men he
could not learn, but they did not exceed six or eight hundred.
Princeton, he says, was called head-quarters, and there he saw a
very considerable body of troops coming out of the college,
meeting house and other places where they quartered. He understood they were settled in their winter quarters, and had given
over further operations till the spring.  In Burlington County, he
found them scattered through all the farmers' houses, eight, ten,
twelve and fifteen in a house, and rambling over the whole
country.
Colonel Griffin has advanced up the Jersey's with six hundred men as far as Mount Holly, within seven miles of their headquarters at the Black Horse.  He has written over here for two
pieces of artillery and two or three hundred volunteers, as he
expected an attack very soon. The spirits of the militia here
are very high; they are all for supporting him. Colonel Cadwalader and the gentlemen here all agree, that they should be indulged.
VWe can either give him a strong reinforcement, or make a
separate attack; the latter bids fairest for producing the greatest
and best effects.  It is therefore determined to make all possible
preparation to-day; and no event happening to change our measures, the main body here will cross the river to-morrow morning, and attack their post between this and the Black Horse, proceeding from thence, either to the Black Horse or the square,
where about two hundred men are posted, as things shall turn




44-iout with Griffin.  If they should not attack Griffin as he expects,
it is probable both our parties may advance to the Black Horse,
should success attend the intermediate attempt.  If they should
collect their force and march against Griffin, our attack will have
the best effects in preventing their sending troops on that errand,
or breaking up their quarters and coming in upon their rear, which
we must endeavour to do in order to free Griffin.  We are all of
opinion, my dear General, that something must be attempted, to
revive our expiring credit, give our cause some degree of reputation, and prevent a total depreciation of the continental money,
which is coming on very fast; that even a failure cannot be more
fatal than to remain in our present situation; in short, some enterprise must be undertaken in our present circumstances, or we
must give up the cause. In a little time the Continental army
will be dissolved.  The militia must be taken before their spirits
and patience are exhausted; and the scattered, divided state of
the enemy affords us a fair opportunity of trying what our men
will do, when called to an offensive attack. Will it not be possible, my dear General, for your troops, or such part of them as
can act with advantage, to make a diversion, or something more,
at or about Trenton? The greater the alarm, the more likely
that success will attend the attacks. If we could possess ourselves
again of New Jersey, or any considerable part of it, the effects
would be greater than if we had never left it.
Allow me to hope that you will consult your own good judgment and spirit, and not let the goodness of your heart subje&t
you to the influence of opinions from men in every respete your
inferiors. Something must be done before the sixty days expire
which the Commissioners have allowed; for however many affedt
to despise it, it is evident that a very serious attention is paid to
it, and I am confident that unless some more favourable appearance attends our arms and cause before that time, a very great
number of the militia officers here will follow the example of
those of Jersey, and take benefit from it. I will not disguise my
own sentiments, that our cause is desperate and hopeless, if we
do not take the opportunity of the colledion of troops at present,




45
to strike some stroke.  Our affairs are hastening fast to ruin, if
we do not retrieve them by some happy event. Delay with us is
now equal to a total defeat.  Be not deceived, my dear General,
with small, flattering appearances; we must not suffer ourselves
to be lulled into security and inadtion, because the enemy does
not cross the river.  It is but a reprieve, the execution is more
certain, for I am very clear, that they can and will cross the
river, in spite of any opposition we can give them.
Pardon the freedom I have used.  The love of my country, a
wife and four children in the enemy's hands, the respeCt and attachment I have to you, the ruin and poverty that must attend
me, and thousands of others will plead my excuse for so much
freedom.  I am, with the greatest respedt and regard, dear sir,
Your obedient and affectionate humble servant.
JOSEPH REED.*
* Here again I stoop to pick up another of Mr. Bancroft's poisonous
shafts. He says: "The elaborate letter of Reed to Washington, December 22, I776, proves, at most, that Reed was not in the secret.  As
Adjutant General, his place was at Washington's side, if he was eager
for aftion." Mr. Bancroft knows perfealy well that Reed was on detached duty at Bristol by Washington's orders.  But he does not content himself with this mild slander. He goes on to say: "Lord Bacon
says:' Letters are good when it may serve afterwards for a man's justification to produce his own letter.' In I782, Reed wished to produce
this letter for his own justification, &c."  If such was Mr. Reed's design in writing this letter, he would have kept a copy to produce on a
fit occasion and this we know he certainly did not. As I have said in
the text, he never saw this letter during his life. A part of it was printed by Gordon in i788, three years after Mr. Reed's death.  I have
no words with which to chara&erize Mr. Bancroft's treatment of these
subjefts. He seems to revel in defamation of certain individuals, and
if the reader will turn to another of Lord Bacon's Essays, that
on  Truth,' (Jhate/y's edition, page z) he may see what mixture it is
that gives zest to this enjoyment. I never claimed for Mr. Reed any
very large share of merit in what he then did and said and wrote, but,
even that, Mr. Bancroft begrudges.




46
This letter and others to be quoted by and by, tell
the whole story. They are the letters of an anxious and
resolute man; of one who sees the future clearly and
states his views precisely.  They aie the letters of a
suggestive, enterprising man, capable of exertions; whom
the gloom of the probable future did not incapacitate.
The letter of the 22d, was written within the "few days"
of suspense before the affair at Trenton. Yet this letter,
no one of the busy men who, from time to time, have
been disinterring these buried controversies has had the
honesty to re-print.
Thus was Mr. Reed regarded and confided in during
the campaign of 1776 by General Cadwalader himself,
and though, by the certificate of Hamilton, an attempt
is made to show that in 1777 he declared his distrust,
and spoke of the imputed infidelity of the year before;
yet the fad is incontestable that, throughout that year, in
all the operations in the neigbourhood of Philadelphia,
Cadwalader and Reed were afting together on terms of
the most affectionate confidence. It was their common
honour to be recommended in the same letter by Washington, for military promotion. "'I shall take the liberty," he wrote to Congress, "of recommending Colonel
Cadwalader as one of the first of the new appointments.
I have found him a man of ability, a good disciplinarian,
firm in his principles and of intrepid bravery. I also
beg leave to recommend Colonel Reed to the command
of the horse, as a person in my opinion in every way




47
qualified; for he is extremely a6{ive and enterprising,
many signal proofs of which he has given this campaign."*
They served together from Germantown to Monmouth.
If General Cadwalader in I777, did intimate to
Hamilton this more than suspicion of his companion
in arms, it must have been, we are bound to suppose, in no spirit of wanton and gratuitous disparagement, but from some sense of public duty, Hamilton
being  in  close conne&tion  with  the  Commander-inChief. What then, on this theory, can be thought of
the  following  letters  to  Mr. Reed  the  two  from
Washington being re-produced to show  that then, as
ever, he reposed in Mr. Reed the most implicit confidence?  It was more than an appearance of trust.  It
was affeftionate and abiding faith. One of them I now
publish for the first time, for it was recovered after the
appearance of my Memoir in I847.
WASHINGTON TO REED.
Middlebrook, 7une 23, I777.
DEAR SIR:
Your favours of the I2th and I8th inst. are both before me,
and on two accounts have given me (illegible); first, because
I much wished to see you at the head of the Cavalry; and
secondly, by refusing of it, my arrangements have been a good
deal disconcerted. As your reasons for refusing the appointment,
are no doubt satisfatory to yourself, and your determination
fixed, it is unnecessary to enter upon a discussion of the point.
I can only add, I wish it had been otherwise, especially as I flatter myself that my last would convince you that you still held
* Sparks Washington IV. z9z.




48
the same place in my affedion that you ever did. If inclination
or a desire of rendering those aids to the service which your
abilities enable you to do should lead you to the camp, it is unnecessary for me I hope to add that I should be extremely happy in seeing you one of my Family whilst you remain in it.
The late coalition of parties in Pennsylvania is a most fortunate circumstance; that, and the spirited manner in which the
militia of this State turned out upon the late manoeuvre of the
enemy, have in my opinion given a greater shock to the enemy
than any event which has happened in the course of this dispute
because it was altogether unexpected and gave the decisive stroke
to their enterprise on Philadelphia.  The hint you have given
respeding th2 compliment due the Executive powers of Pennsylvania I thank you for, but can assure you I gave General
Mifflin no diredEion respeding the militia, that I did not conceive,
nay that I had not been told by Congress he -was vested with before; for you must know that General Mifflin, at the particular
instance and by a resolve of Congress had been detained from
his duty in this camp near a month to be in readiness to have
out the militia, if occasion should require it, and only got here
the day before I received such intelligence as convinced me that
the enemy were upon the point of moving; in consequence of
which, I requested him to return and without defining his duty
desired he would use his utmost endeavours to carry the designed
operation into effed, conceiving that a previous plan had been
laid down by Congress on the State of Pennsylvania so far as
respedeed the mode of drawing the militia out. The aAion of
them afterwards, circumstances alone could direct.  I did not
pretend to give any order about it.
It gives me pleasure to learn from your letter that the reasons
assigned by me to General Arnold for not attacking the enemy
in their situation between the Raritan and Millstone met with
the approbation of those who were acquainted with them. We
have some among us,and I dare say Generals,who wish,to make
themselves popular at the expense of others or who think the
cause is not to be advanced otherwise than by fighting; the pe



49
culiar circumstances under which it is to be done and the consequences which may follow are objects too trivial for their attention; but as I have one great end in view, I shall, maugre all
the (illegible) of this kind, steadily pursue means which in my
judgment lead to the accomplishment of it, not doubting but that
the candid part of mankind, if they are convinced of my integrity, will make proper allowance for my inexperience and frailties.
I will agree to be loaded with all the obloquy they can bestow
if I commit a wilful error.
If General Howe has not manceuvered much deeper than
most people seem disposed to think him capable of, his army is
absolutely gone, if panic-struck, but as I cannot persuade myself with a belief of the latter, notwithstanding it is the prevailing
opinion of my officers, I cannot say that the move I am about to
make towards Amboy accords altogether with my opinion, not
that I am under any other apprehension than that of being
obliged to lose ground again, which would indeed be no small
misfortune, as the spirits of our troops and the country are greatly
revived (and I presume) the enemy's not a little depressed by
their late retrograde motions.
By some late accounts, I fancy the British Grenadiers got a
pretty severe peppering yesterday, by Morgan's rifle corps; they
fought, it seems, a considerable time within the distance of from
twenty to forty yards and from concurring accounts of several
of the officers more than one hundred of them must have
fallen.* Had there not been some mistake in point of time for
*Mr. Bancroft has no sympathy with Virginia, and sometimes shows
it in an odd way.  Speaking of Morgan, a most gallant soldier, but of
whose freaks at Elizabethtown Point, Mr. Bancroft gives a most remarkable account, he says: "Next to Washington, Morgan was the
best officer whom Virginia sent into the field, though she raises no
statue to the incomparable leader of her light troops." (page I3I.)  To
what soldier of the Revolution has Massachusetts, or New York, or
Pennsylvania raised a statue? There are hideous Penns and awkward
Franklins, and Hancocks, and Otis, and Websters, and Storys, and
Everetts, and Horace Manns, but there is no Monumental stone for
4




50
marching the several brigades that were ordered upon that service, and particularly in delivering an order to General Varnum,
I believe the rear of General Howe's troops might have been a
little rougher handled than they were, or if an Express who
went to General Maxwell the evening before, had reached him in
time to co-operate upon the enemy's flank, for which purpose he
was sent down the day before with a respectable force, very good
consequences might have resulted from it; however it is too late
to remedy those mistakes now, and my paper tells me I can add
no more than to assure you, that I am Dear Sir,
Y'r affed'e.
GO. WASHINGTON.
CADWALADER TO REED.
Head Quarters, 3oth November, I 777.
DEAR SIR:
We were consulting about winter quarters when your letter
came to hand, and I detained your servant in hopes of giving you
their determination, but the General has required the opinion of
the officers in writing, at Io o'clock to-morrow morning. I showed
your letter to the General. Many of the officers are for going
into winter quarters, on the line from Lancaster towards Easton.
If this is attempted, I am sure the troops will march there only
to be disappointed.  By the best information, those towns are
crowded with inhabitants from the city and little shelter can be
found there.
The General officers will set the example of going home, the
field officers will follow their example: captains and subalterns
will expect the same indulgence and the soldiers will apply for
furloughs; and if refused will desert.  By these means the army
the ancient soldiers of the North. It may too admit of a question,
and, that without disparagement, whether Morgan was a,, better officer
than Henry Lee, who was a Virginian.  Morgan was born in
New Jersey.




will be dispersed through the different colonies and it will be imp
possible to collect them in time to open an early campaign.  The
country on every side will be left to be plundered and vast num
bers will apply for protection. The inhabitants will be dispirited,
the credit of our money ruined, the recruiting service at an end
and inevitable ruin must follow.  It has been proposed to take
post at Wilmington and the little towns in that neighbourhood
and build huts for those who cannot be provided with quarters. If
we do not do this, the enemy may take possession of this post
with two thousand men or three, which they can easily spare
and by this means secure the lower counties on the eastern
shore. By taking possession of this strong post, and bringing
down the gondolas, we may annoy the navigation, and by being
on the spot in spring, take such measures as may oblige the
enemy to come out and attack us in the field. We have good
information that Cornwallis is returned and that the enemy had
orders to march at two o'clock yesterday morning. The orders
were not given out'till dusk-the officers were driving about in
great confusion and were heard to complain that the orders
came out so late. The weather prevented, or we should certainly have had a brush yesterday.   Greene and the detachment
from New Jersey are all arrived in camp.  We are now in full
force and in perfect readiness for them, and wish nothing more
earnestly than to see them  out.  This weather will probably
delay the matter for a few days, but I have no doubt they intend
us a visit or else this is given out to cover a design of making
a large foraging party to New Jersey, as a great number of boats
have been collected. The last seems very probable. The Marquis, you know, was in Jersey; he commanded the detachment
of riflemen about 15o, and 130 militia, with which he attacked
a Hessian picket, 350 men, and drove them above a mile, and at
dusk remained master of the field, finding a number of dead and
taking fourteen prisoners.'Tis said they lost twenty killed; we
lost but three or four men. The Marquis behaved with great
bravery and extols the riflemen and militia to the skies. The
enemy crossed at Gloucester, covered by their shipping, and took




with them about four hundred head of cattle, chiefly milch cows
and young cattle. Greene intended to attack Cornwallis and had
made his disposition, but prudently declined it. The attempt in
my opinion was dangerous, as 2 or 3000 men could have been
thrown in his rear, or a reinforcement sent over to Gloucester in
the night, without his notice.  Nothing more worth notice.
Cannot you come here to-morrow and advise? You can
think of the matter to night. My compliments to the ladies.
Your most obedient and
Very humble servant,
To GENERAL REED.                      JOHN CADWALADERo
WASHINGTON TO REED,
fWhitemarsh, December 2, x777.
DEAR SIR,
If you can with any convenience, let me see you to day, I
shall be thankful for it. I am about fixing the winter cantonments
of the army, and find so many and such capital objedtions to
each mode proposed, that I am exceedingly embarrassed, not
only by advice given me, but in my own judgment and should
be very glad of your sentiments on the matter without loss of
time. In hopes of seeing you I shall only add, that from Reading to Lancaster, inclusively, is the general sentiment, whilst Wilmington and its vicinity, have powerful advocates. This, however, is mentioned under the rose; for I am convinced in my own
opinion, that if the enemy believed we had this place in contem.
plation they would possess themselves of it immediately. I anm
very sincerly, dear sir
Yours affedionately,
GENERAL REED.                        G. WASHINGTON.
CADWALADER TO REED.
Head Quarters,, December Io, 1777.
DEAR SIR:
If I have in the least degree contributed to promote the general
cause, I shall think my time well spent; as soon as the army is




53
fixed for the winter, I shall return to my family in Maryland;
but tiLink it my duty to render every service in my power at the
opening of the next campaign. I am sorry. I cannot think as
you do with resped& to the accepting an appointment in this
State; I look upon the present powers established as a most
daring, dangerous usurpation; and can never consent to support
or even countenance it. I opposed it as long as those engaged
appeared in earnest, and as long as measures which must certainly have succeeded, were supported.  The same reasons which
induced the gentlemen who have given up the cause to defer
the opposition till the present troubles were over, will have as
much weight when the States are tired out with a long and expensive war as I conceive this government can never be changed
without another revolution.
Your country is much indebted for your services and nothing'
is more reasonable than to repair your loss. I shall most
chearfully take the first opportunity of mentioning it to the
General and if it cannot be done in this line, will write to some
of the members of Congress. The army marches to morrow
very early.
For God's sake endeavour to suppress this dangerous fadion
before it gets too great a length! If it succeeds, America is lost.
I am, Dear Sir, with great respe& and esteem,
your most obedient and humble servant,
GENERAL REED.                     JOHN CADWALADER.
Conclusive as are these letters that General Cadwal=
ader could not have believed in i776 or I777 what he
alleged so positively in I778 and 1783, it would be unjust to Mr. Reed to rest his vindication on them alone.
The accusation of 1783 was a sweeping one, and involved others besides Mr. Reed.  Two gentlemen were
especially assailed —Mr. Bowes Reed, (the General's bro



54
ther) and Colonel John Cox, of New Jersey-the former
directly, the latter indirectly.
"Hle (General Reed) said:" —this is the'Brutus'
charge-"that his brother, then Colonel or Lieutenant
Colonel of the militia was at Burlington with his family;
that he had advised him  to remain there; and if the
enemy took possession of the town, to take a protetion
and swear allegiance and in so doing he would be perfe6ly justified.'"
Mr. Bowes Reed who many years survived his brother promptly met the charge, as it was first presented
by'Brutus,' and to this contradilion it should be remembered Cadwalader's pamphlet makes no reply.
t Bowes Reed, Esquire,, Secretary of the State of New Jersey,
and heretofore a lieutenant colonel in the new levies of said State,
being duly sworn, deposeth and saith' that, in the month of December, I776, this deponent's time being expired in the five
months' service, he returned, in bad health, to Burlington, in
New Jersey, the place of his former residence, which, though
not occupied by the troops of either party, was subjed to the incursions of both; that during that time this deponent's brother,
then Adjutant General of the Continental army, frequently came
over from Bristol, where the Pennsylvania militia then lay, in
order to procure intelligence of the movements and designs of the
enemy, then lying at Bordentown, the Black Horse, and Mount
Holly; that this deponent assisted his brother in said service by
procuring and equipping spies to go within the enemy's lines, and
communicating the advice occasionally received; and this deponent
farther saith: that during the said time or at any other his brother never intimated to this deponent in the most distant manner any advice or encouragement to seek protedtion of the ene



55
my; but on the other hand, that he was too much exposed to the
incursions of the enemy and wished him to remove to a place
of greater safety; and this deponent further saith: that during the
said time, his said brother never expressed to him any apprehensions of the success of the cause, but seemed wholly engaged
in procuring intelligence, and pursuing other methods to annoy
and defeat the designs of the enemy; this deponent farther says:
that his said brother, to his knowledge or belief, was not engaged
in any other measure, than as above mentioned, except, that at
the request of a number of the people of Burlington, who were
greatly distressed by parties from each army, he publicly sent a
message to Count Donop, who then commanded the troops on the
part of the enemy, proposing, mutually, to keep the said parties
out of the town, on which Count Donop sent a messenger with
an answer, as this deponent was then informed, who returned
without delivering it, as his said brother was then gone into
Pennsylvania; that in a few days afterwards the surprise of the
Hessians, at Trenton, took place, and the war was entirely removed from this part of the country; and farther, the deponent
saith not.
Sworn before me, the 23rd day           BowEs REED.
of October, 1782.
SAM. How.
The other individual indire&ly attacked by General
Cadwalader and his friends was Colonel John Cox of
New Jersey.  To his numerous descendants I leave the
duty of doing justice to his memory, should it, in the
waste of reputation which now prevails, be further assailed, merely saying that he was a man of high personal charader, a sterling patriot from first to last, a gallant soldier and a most accomplished gentleman. He
was one of the two who were associated with Greene




when in i778 he accepted the post of Quartermaster
General. In fadt, General Greene made this association
the condition of undertaking so arduous and thankless
a duty.  With Mr. Reed, Colonel Cox was closely connected.  The correspondence in my possession amply
attests this.  In the operations on the Delaware in December 1776, they acted together. Jerseymen by birth
and education, and thoroughly familiar with the neighbourhood where the military operations were, they were
associated in various perilous enterprises. Colonel Cox
accompanied Mr. Reed on his visit to Griffin at Mount
Holly on the night of the 24th of December, and their
families were fugitives together on the edge of the pine
forests.  Mr. Cox  shares some of the  calumnies
which had their origin in these scenes of trial and
peril; for in the last libellous re-issue-the Philadelphia
one of I863-he is spoken of as "'Reed's particeps criminis." During his life, however, no one ventured openly
to attack him.
The instant Mr. Reed was assailed in Oswald's paper,
Colonel Cox came to the rescue of his friend, and, as
early as October 2oth, 1782, made the following statement, which shows the confidential relations of the
parties.
CERTIFICATE FROM THE HON. JOHN COX, ESQUIRE, VICE
PRESIDENT OF NEW JERSEY.
These are to certify, that, in the month of December, 1776,
the subscriber, being then lieutenant colonel of the second bat



57
talion of Philadelphia militia, lying at Bristol, Mr. Joseph Reed,
the then adjutant general of the Continental army, came down
to the militia by the diredion of the commander in chief (as the
subscriber understood) that he quartered in the same house with
the subscriber and was engaged in procuring intelligence from
the enemy, and in the most confidential communications of the
operations of the army; that the subscriber accompanied him in
one to Mount Holly to Colonel Griffin and, as the subscriber
understood, was treated with the most unreserved confidence
both at Bristol and elsewhere with respetd to the movements
and designs of the troops; that his advice and opinion appeared
to be much depended on, particularly with respedt to crossing
over and remaining in New Jersey, which led to the successes at
Princeton and the favorable issue of the campaign; that the subscriber verily believes those communications to have been made
at such times and under such circumstances as must have subjedfed the troops to certain destrution and the commanding
officer to the highest censure, if, on the one hand, the person entrusted had proved unfaithful, or on the other, the commanding
officer had reason to suspect him.  The subscriber also well remembers that the enemy were not far distant from where we landed; that it was proposed by several officers to return to Pennsylvania; that Mr. Reed was of opinion that re-crossing the river would
greatly dispirit the troops and therefore was against it, and offered
to explore the country where the enemy was supposed to be; which,
by the request of General Cadwalader, he accordingly did without any covering party or company, save Colonel Cowperthwaite,
the subscriber, and a guide; that during the continuance of the
militia at Bristol, the subscriber was on terms of the most unreserved intimacy with Mr. Reed, and had frequent confidential
conversations with him on the state of affairs, which then wore
the darkest appearance, in all which the said Mr. Reed never intimated, nor had the subscriber the least reason to suspect he had
any intention of abandoning the cause or arms of his country to
join those of the enemy; that it appeared to the subscriber, that
General Cadwalader during his stay at Bristol depended in a




58
great measure for intelligence on the said Mr. Reed and the subscriber, which their knowledge of the country enabled them to
obtain for him daily; that the subscriber had frequent conversations with the said Mr. Reed during the time of our greatest difficulty and distress, in none of which did it ever appear to be the
intention of Mr. Reed to abandon the cause of his country by
joining the enemy, but, on the contrary, showed every disposition
to oppose and counteract them and the subscriber verily believes
that had any such intention been formed by the said Mr. Reed, he
would have communicated it to the subscriber; that he never
heard from General Cadwalader of his entertaining any doubt of
Mr. Reed's attachment to or perseverance in the cause of
America, or any opinion expressed by him that induced a belief
that said Cadwalader entertained other than a favourable one
touching the said Reed's zeal or activity in the public service.
Trenton, O8ober 2o, I782.                  JOHN COX.
Of this complete denial, General Cadwalader took no
notice, for, while he referred injuriously to a relatively
humble man Mr. Ellis, no word of contradiction or insinuation was levelled at Colonel Cox.  That Mr. Cox
was disposed to resent any disparagement of his integrity
or fidelity to his country, is apparent from the following extract of a letter to Mr. Pettit, (the original now
in my possession,) dated at his country place near Trenton, April I4th, I783.   It has never before been
in print:
"I observe by Bradford's last paper, that Cadwalader's reply
to General Reed's remarks is published. I want much to see it
though I disregard anything that he or any of his toad-eaters can
say with truth touching my character, and great as they may be,




59
should they have asserted what is false, I will make them answer
for their audacity."
I have said, Cadwalader made no direct reference to
Mr. Cox. If, however, as has been lately suggested, Colonel Cox was the officer who accompanied Mr. Reed to
Burlington, there is a remote allusion to him as the companion of a guilty errand. It is however very obscure
and woud'scarcely be worth noticing, but for an apparent confirmation in an entry in what is known as
"Margaret Morris' Journal," which has lately been disinterred, where Colonel Cox's name is introduced. Of
this, I have only to say that the dates disprove the
whole story. Those who think that the character of
brave men can be blasted in history by an old or young
woman repeating what was told by a household female
domestic-black or white-I can hardly hope to convince.
But that this trash has more than once, and lately (1863)
been re-printed; that it is kindred in some respects to
the graver libels I have been considering and that I desire to trample out even the minute varieties of the species, I should not notice it even to this extent. General
Cadwalader's statement having been fairly examined
and, I hope, disposed of, I turn to the extrinsic evidence
he adduced on the single point-for to it I now confine myself-of Mr. Reed's'dangerous despondency' of
December, I776.
The three witnesses are Mr. Philemon Dickinson, Mr.
John Nixon, and Dodor Benjamin Rush.  I have no



6o
ticed Mr. Nixon's statement, and scarcely think it worth
while to refer to Mr. Dickinson's, which is simply that
Mr. Reed addressed to him a remark he regarded as
offensive.
Dr. Rush is the witness in chief. His testimony
dated in March, I783, may be thus stated:
That in friendly and accidental conversation, on a
ride to Headquarters, Mr. Reed spoke with great respe&t of the bravery of the British troops and with great
contempt of the cowardice of the Americans, and more
especially of the New England troops.  He denounced'with an oath' Mr. John Dickinson, the author of the
Farmer's Letters, who, ic was rumoured, for slander was
very busy then, had deserted to the enemy, as having
begun an opposition which we have not strength to finish.
He said that a gentlemen who had submitted to the
enemy had ated properly, and that a man who had a
family did right to take care of them.
Such are the substantive averments, with Dodor
Rush's gloss that the whole conversation indicated a
great despair of the American cause, and the addition,
that he repeated what he heard to his brother Jacob
Rush and to John Adams, who, he gravely says, replied:
"'That the powers of the human mind are combined
together in a variety of ways."
If Dotor Rush is to be regarded as a witness in support of a charge made by another, the obvious comment
on this testimony is that it is utterly destitute of pre



cision, except in the imprecation put into Mr. Reed's
mouth when speaking of Mr. Dickinson; that it was a
distant recolletion, through seven long years of civil war
with all its disturbing elements, and that, as in the case of
General Cadwalader, it was not seriously regarded at the
time, since "it did not diminish the respet" of the witness for Mr. Reed.  To the suggestion of the lapse of
time, it may be replied that it was Dodor Rush's habit,
(as is well known,) to keep a diary or note book in which
he registered all the irritating occurrences of his restless
life in order that his memory even of the remote past
might be kept fresh, and his resentments never allowed
to cool.* This is true, and I and every other inquirer
must await the time when the diary, worthless as it may
be, shall be given to the world, and its supposed revelations can be scrutinized.   If, in December, I776, or at
any time before I 782, Dodor Rush noted a conversation
of this kind with Mr. Reed, let the entry in the diary
be produced and it shall be fairly met.  As Mr. Bancroft quotes this diary, perhaps, he can vouch it.  If he
has it and it contains any disparagement of Mr. Reed,
he surely would have quoted it. I have no idea that he
has it, though he so ostentatiously cites it.  Nor is the
story credible that Rush, on the 23d,'saw' Washington
* In Swift's 7ournal to Stella, September 9, 1710Io, is this passage:
"For an hour and a half we talked treason heartily against the Whigs,
their baseness and ingratitude. And I am come home rolling resentments
in my mind, and forming schemes of revenge, full of which, having
written down some parts, I go to bed."




62
write the watchword'Vidory or Death!'  The 23d was
the day when the Commander-in-Chief wrote his confidential letter to Reed, in which he said:  "For heaven's
sake keep this to yourself as the discovery may prove
fatal to us;" and it is not credible that he would tell a
military secret to a tattler like Do&or Rush, or publish
it by a watchword, or even determine on a countersign
so long in advance.   The whole thing don't sound like
Washington, except perhaps in Mr. Bancroft's ears.*
But if Doftor Rush be "Brutus," and this, on the
evidence, is my belief;  if it was he who  started this
wretched controversy, then, his relation to the whole
affair is widely different.  If Dodor Rush was "Brutus, "
it is very clear that so far as he is concerned, the allegata
and probata strangely conflid; for the "Queries of Brutus" and the certificate of Rush do not refer to the
same fadts or similar fads in any single point of resemblance.  Why, one may ask, this discrepancy, the agents
or authors being the-same?  Was it that, one accusation
* The only other reference in print to this Diary or Note Book is
in a letter from Mr. Adams to Dotor Rush, dated I8th April, 1790,
showing that it runs over many years. He says: "How  many follies
and indiscreet speeches do your minutes in your Note Book bring to my
recolleEtion, which I had forgotten forever! Alas! I fear I am not yet
much more prudent. Your charadter of Mr. Paine is very well, and
very just. To the accusation against me, which you have recorded in
your Note Book of the s7th March last, I plead not guilty. I deny
all attachment to monarchy, and I deny that I have changed my principles since 1776."  (Adams' Works, Vol. IX., page 566.)  It was a
saying of John Randolph of Roanoke, that he "not only never kept a
diary, but he did not like to keep company with any man who did."




63
being made anonymously, another was purposely held
back to be used as a sort of corroboration?  Why
was it, "Brutus" being Rush, that the Queries referred
to what Mr. Reed is reputed to have said to "the commanding officer at Bristol," and not at all to what he said
to the companion of the ride to Newtown? If Dotor
Rush was "Brutus," or indeed if he were only "Brutus's" chief authority, then the question directly presents itself, and shall be frankly considered-Was he
a credible witness?   I think, I can demonstrate he
was not.
The career of Doctor Benjamin Rush, aside from his
professional merits, of which I am utterly unfit to judge
was that of a busy, restless, indirect man, emphatically,
a man of animosities.  There is not a scandal or offensive truth of the Revolution within the sphere of his
action and influence that did not take wing from his
tongue or pen.  He was a fisher in troubled waters and
upon him fell, in later life, a fearful retribution in the
fierce invectives of William Cobbett,-the Rush-Light,
and Peter Porcupine.  The poisoned cup came back
with new venom infused.
In November, 1776, Rush, described by Mr. Bancroft
as one of'the best of the whigs,' co-operated with Mr.
Dickinson, whom he had recently, in private, denounced,
in vehement opposition to the new Constitution of Pennsylvania. On or about the 2Ist December, within a day
or two of the date of his pretended conversation with




64
Mr. Reed, he wrote to Richard Henry Lee from Bristol: "Since the captivity of General Lee a distrust has
crept in among the troops of the abilities of some of
our Generals, high in command.  They expect nothing
now from Heaven-born and book-taught Generals.* I
hope in our next promotions we shall disregard seniority."
There is no mistaking this allusion to Washington.
Still later in the same year, Doctor Rush was with the
army, and, on hearing that his father-in-law (Mr. Stockton) was a prisoner and had been maltreated, he wrote
to a friend in the following strain of ludicrous exaggeration:  "Every particle of my blood is electrified by revenge and if justice cannot be done in any other way, I
declare I will, in defiance of the authority of Congress
and the power of the army, drive the first rascally Tory
I meet with, a hundred miles barefoot through the first
deep snow that falls in our country * * * *'I long to
be satiated with revenge at the Scotch Englishmen-Hyder Ali,' (the Nana Sahib of those days,)'is the standing
toast of my dinner table."t In I777, he was at Princeton
and is said to have recorded in his dreary Note Book
that General Mercer did not die of his wounds, but from
natural causes.  In March I778, for the work of secret
accusation of some body never seemed to intermit,
General Washington wrote to Congress: "Enclosed
* DoEtor Rush either caught the phrase "Heaven-born Generals"
from his friend Charles Lee, or gave it to him. Bancroft Vol. 9, page 207.
t Letter of Rush to R. H. Lee, December 30, 1776.




you have a copy of a letter, which I received a few days
ago from Doctor Rush. As this letter contains charges
of a very heinous nature against the Director General,
Doctor Shippen, for mal-practices and neglect in his
department, I could not but look upon it as meant for
a public accusation and have therefore thought it incumbent on me to lay it before Congress. I have showed it
to Doctor Shippen, that he may be prepared to vindicate
his character if called upon.  He tells me, Doctor Rush
made charges of a private nature before a Committee of
Congress. appointed to hear them, which he could not
support.  If so, Congress will not have further occasion
to trouble themselves in the matter."
But Doctor Rush hunted higher game than Medical
Directors.  In the winter and early spring of i778,
when Congress was squabbling at Yorktown, and Washington and his wretched soldiers were suffering at Valley
Forge, Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, received at Williamsburg an anonymous letter, in which
this passage occurred:
"The Northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a General at their head. The spirit of the
Southern army is no ways inferior to the spirit of the Northern.
A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway, would in a few weeks render them
an irresistible body of men.  The last of the above officers has
accepted the new office of Inspector General of our army, in
order to reform abuses; but the remedy is only a palliative one.
In one of his letters to a friend he says:'A great and good God
hath decreed America to be free, or the General and weak coun5




66
sellors would have ruined her long ago.'  You may rest assured
of each of the fadts related in this letter. The author of it is
one of your Philadelphia friends. A hint of his name, if found
out by the handwriting, must not be mentioned to your most intimate friend. Even the letter must be thrown in the fire. But
some of its contents ought to be made public in order to awaken,
enlighten and alarm our country-I rely upon your prudence."
What is dignified  by  this  anonymous  assailant,
as'prudence,' sympathy with a correspondent willing
to wound  and yet afraid to strike, was no part of
the noble Virginian's nature.  He did not recognise
his  "Philadelphia  friend"  by  C" the  handwriting."
He did not "throw the letter into the fire," but forwarded it at once to Washington, with this comment:
"While you face the armed enemies of our liberty in
the field, and by the favour of God have been kept unhurt, I trust your country will never harbour in her
bosom the miscreant who would ruin her best supporter.
I wish not to flatter; but when arts unworthy honest
men are used to defame and traduce you, I think it not
amiss, but a duty, to assure you of that estimation, in
which the public hold you."  Washington's answer was
prompt and decisive.   "The  anonymous letter with
which you were pleased to favour me was written
by Dodor Rush, so far as I can judge from a similitude
of hands.  This man has been elaborate and studied in
his professions of regard for me; and long since the letter to you."   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *   "This is not




the only insidious attempt that has been made to wound
my reputation.  There have been others equally base,
cruel, and ungenerous."
In I779, Doaor' Rush was an a&ive participant in
the heated, local politics of Pennsylvania, a contributor
to the newspapers, and took part with General Cadwalader in the tumultuous town meetings of that dreary
year, having for their main objed the embarrassment of
Mr. Reed's Executive Administration.  It was the year
of " Fort Wilson," and its bloody incidents. Then, too,
he resumed his congenial work of anonymous scribbling.
On the 24th of O6ober, 1779, he wrote signing it "an old
friend" to Charles Lee-a moody, discontented and disgraced man, who hated Washington and Reed with equal
intensity:  "'Have patience; time and posterity will do
you justice. The summer flies that now din our ears,
must soon retire. Nothing but virtue and real abilities
will finally pass muster, when the public cool a little from
the ferment into which the great and sudden events of the
late Revolution have thrown us. I would rather be one
of your dogs in a future history of the present war, than
possess the first honours that are now current in America,
with the charaders which I know some of our great men
merit.  Poor Pennsylvania has become the most miserable spot on the surface of the globe."  In I78i, Doctor Rush with the fluency which his animosities stimulated wrote to Gates, (also under a cloud and discontent
ted) as to his fears of a monarchy and aristocracy from




6gi
those whorn he describes as'"the Sachems of the Potomac and the Hudson" meaning Washington whom he
hated, and, probably, the Livingstons and Schuylerso
And so it continued to the bitter end, for we find that Doc-,or Rush's antipathy to Washington if not to his friends
long survived the exasperations of war. "Doctor Rush
tells me," says Mr. Jefferson in his'Ana' of twenty
years later, (the Ist of February i8oo,) exactly forty
days after Washington died amidst the tears of a whole
people with the exception of a few who felt as did Doctor Rush-"he (Rush,) tells me that he had it from Asa
Green, that when the Clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the Government, it was
observed in their consultation that he had never on any
occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief
in the Christian religion, and they thought they should
so pen their address as to force him at length to declare
publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so.
However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for
them. He answered every article of their address, except that, which he passed over without notice."
It was this writer of anonymous defamation, this vehement partisan, he, who could stand on Washington's
fresh grave, and scoff at the great inhabitant below; it
was he who was Mr. Reed's chief assailant in 1782 and
1783, who, in all probability, initiated the controversy
and who certainly volunteered to be a chief witness.
Hence, the reader will see the relevancy to the questions




9
I have been  considering, of this analysis of Doctor
Rush's chara6er.  As a witness for anything in which his
passions were involved, I have a right to describe
him  as utterly unworthy of belief.  That he was especially hostile to  Mr. Reed has already been stated,
and will not be disputed. The mysterious diary, if it
ever sees the day, will, I doubt not, be a new revelation
of this hatred, which did not abate so long as its objeCt
was among living men.   I have recently seen an ancient newspaper which throws some light on the special
ground of this antipathy, affeding not only Dostor Rush,
but his brother and co-witness, Mr. Jacob Rush.  It is
the Freemans' Journal of Wednesday, March 9, I785,
four days after Mr. Reed's death.   It contains a statement by Mr. Sergeant, who had been Attorney General
of Pennsylvania in the early part of Mr. Reed's Administration, as to the circumstances under which Mr. Jacob
Rush had become an unsuccessful applicant for office to
President Reed.  Mrr Sergeant thus describes the experiment and its results:
-,Mr. Rush desired me barely to mention his name, as Attorney General; not wishing to make a point of it or to urge it; but
merely to signify his willingness to accept, in case of an appointment."  *  *      *   *   *  " I was determined to acquit
myself of my promise, and waited on the President (Mr. Reed)
to let him know that I was in hopes they had provided themselves with an Attorney General; and that, if so, I had drawn
my last indictment, He was polite enough to ask me if I had




7o
thought of a proper person.  Hitherto I had mentioned no one.
I named Mr. Rush.  The President roared out in a peal of
laughter, and for some time would not believe me in earnest. I
told him what had passed, hinted that I did not apprehend the
matter to be new to him, and intimated that the government
might acquire some new friends by the measure.  He said that
he had no objedion to the obliging Dodor Rush and his brother;
though they very little deserved any favour at his hands from
their treatment of the friends of the Constitution, but his objection was that Mr. Rush was not equal to the task. The
lawyers on the other side, (I forget the expression but I believe
it was the Tory lawyers,) will run him down and make him contemptible and us ridiculous. Besides, he has not patience for the
drudgery of the office; and the first difficult business he meets
with he will fly in a passion and fling a resignation in our faces.
He will not hold the office two months,  Recolied sir, the man
who recommends another to office, ought to be answerable for
him. Will you vouch for Mr. Rush? Will you be answerable
for his abilities; for his steadiness?' I really thought that by
this time I had sufficiently done my errand; so far as to intimate
that Mr. Rush was willing to accept the office of Attorney Generalo  I went no further.   Ve agreed to drop the subject to say
nothing of it to any one —and this is the first time that I have
ever fully explained it.  It was no very agreeable answer to give to
Mr. Rush, and he never asked an explanation.  It was perhaps
best as it was."  *  *  *  *  *  "Mr. Reed, I know had no
desire of hearing more on the subjed, and I am sure I had none;
for I must confess that I felt foolish enough in doing the errand,
which made the President's laughing at me the more sensibly felt,'"
These, then, are the disappointed and exasperated men
who became Mr. Reed's accusers in I782o  Sustained as
his vindication is by the concurrent testimony of Washington, and Greene, and Bayard, and Cox, honoured as




7'
he was to the end of his life, by his fellow-citizens,
his fellow-soldiers, and the Legislature of his State, I
have a right on this or any other point of controversy
to assume that he cannot be condemned on the uncorroborated testimony of two of his most embittered
political opponents, There are, I repeat, no other witnesses on this point against him. This chapter of calumny is closed.
Having, I hope, candidly collated the testimony on
the point of the alleged conversation of December, 1776,
and shown how utterly untrustworthy it is, I proceed to
consider the other specific accusation-the correspondence with Count Donop.
This, also, I should prefer giving in General Cadwalader's language, but it is not easy to do so, for it is so
vaguely stated and floats so indistinftly through his
pages that it eludes the attempt to embody it in words.
It is rather insinuated than asserted.  In substance, however, it is far more grave than the one I have been
considering-as  much  more so as an overt ad  of
treason is than a whisper of timidity in the ear of
a friend.  It was this, and I shall not understate it:"that in December, 1776, when Count Donop, the commander of the Hessian advanced guard, was at or near
Bordentown, Mr. Reed sent an application for protection, for himself, his property, and'an intimate friend,'and
that this matter of proteftion,. (thus rather hinted than
clearly stated) was the subjec of correspondence and nego



72
tiation afterwards, continuing until the reverse at Trenton,
and Donop's retreat. This, I think, is a fair statement
of it. It would be doing General Cadwalader injustice,
to say that this accusation originated with him.  It certainly did not, but being made by others, it was introduced
into his pamphlet as a make-weight, cumulative evidence
of Mr. Reed's imputed criminality.  I think I have it
in my power to show its exad parentage, and that it, too,
had its source in personal and political animosity. To
make the matter intelligible, and to show it had attra&ed
Mr. Reed's attention before General Cadwalader assumed the paternity of it, I will here quote his account
of the transaction as given in the original pamphlet.
He says: c"As intelligence was of the utmost importance both to General Washington and to ourselves, in
conjunction with Colonel Cox of New Jersey, every exertion in our power was made to procure it: This we
were enabled to effect through the medium of some persons of Burlington with whom our residence had formed
an interest.  In the course of this business it was necessary to pass frequently to that place.  On one of these
occasions the inhabitants applied to me for relief from
the incursions of our troops, especially the galleymen,
who distressed them without affording an advantage to
us.  As the Hessian patrols came daily to town, I observed it would be difficult and hardly reasonable to restrain our troops, unless the enemy would submit to the
like restrictions.  It was then suggested that such a pro



73
position should be made to Count Donop, who commanded the British and Hessian troops; and I wrote a
few unsealed lines to that effect, which an inhabitant of
Burlington undertook to deliver. The whole transaction was of a public nature, and in the presence of several
gentlemen who had accompanied me from Bristol.  The
bearer of my letter found Count Donop on his march
to the Black Horse, and brought back an open letter
mentioning that circumstance, and that as soon as his
situation would admit, he would appoint a place of conference on the proposition.  Having thus far complied
with the desire of the inhabitants of Burlington, who
chiefly are of a peaceable quiet chara6ter, and from their
inoffensive condu6t, as well as the services we were daily
receiving from some of them, entitled to this office of
kindness, I returned to Bristol.  But that I may close
this transaction, without interrupting my narrative of
events, I shall here observe, that I was informed a flag
came into Burlington a few days after, with an open
letter from Count Donop, appointing a place of conference, which was sent over to Bristol and delivered to
General Cadwalader in my absence. The tide of American fortune soon after turned; Count Donop retreated
to Brunswick and I never saw or heard from him afterwards."
From this, as well as a reference in Margaret Morris'
Diary, I incline to the belief that in it as in the other
calumny Colonel Cox was implicated, and that he was
I0




74
"the intimate friend" so darkly alluded to in this part of
the Cadwalader pamphlet.  He had, and I believe Mr.
Reed had not, extensive property in New Jersey within the
enemy's lines, and was closely associated in these errands
of peril.  These being the counter allegations, one of a
deep plot of secret treason and correspondence with the
enemy; the other, of an open negotiation for the protection of helpless non-combatants; let us see what are the
proofs adduced.  The evidence on what I may call the
side of the accusation, it will be observed is purely hearsay. No human being of his own knowledge can say a
word.  It is traced indiredily to one individual, Mr.
Robert Lenox, a commissary in the British service, who
gives no testimony, but who is reported to have communicated the story to his brother, Mr. David Lenox,
who in turn furnished it to General Cadwalader. The
certificate is dated March, I783, four months after the
Provisional Treaty had been signed, and when, one
would think, there was no insuperable difficulty in procuring the dire&t evidence from New York, where then
and for many years afterwards Mr. Robert Lenox lived.
Perhaps however at a time when the wounds and passions
of war were fresh, it was perilous to call as a witness against
a patriot soldier "a Deputy Commissary of Prisoners
under the British king." it was better to rely on the
second-hand testimony of Mr., or as he was better
known even within my recolleCion, Major Lenox,
who held some military rank in the American service.




75
lThe testimony was thus hearsay without excuse or neces.
sity.  Mr. Robert Lenox never testified dire&ly, and 1
am glad to note this, because he was a gentlemen of
high charader and unquestioned integrity.  That Mr.
David Lenox was a man of violent passions and, like
Dodor Rush and most of those who came forward to
testify against Mr. Reed, a bitter partisan of what was
known as the Anti-Constitutional party, is well known
in this community. I infer that he, too, had a personal grievance, from an entry that I find in the minutes
of the Executive Council for 1779.
PRESIDENT REED TO CHIEF JUSTICE MCKEAN.
Council Chamber, August Io, 1779.
SIR:
We have been just informed that David Lenox has grossly
insulted Robert Smith, Esq., one of the agents of the forfeited
estates, in the execution of his office.  We request you to take
the most vigorous measures on this occasion, as not only the
honour, but the interest of the State is deeply concerned.  It
being our full intention to vindicate not only the officers of the
Government, but support them with our utmost weight and influence.  We are also informed that one Captain Nichols, or
Nicholson, a Continental officer had a share in the affray.  If
it should prove so, we trust some other notice will be taken of
his condud, besides that of the ordinary course of justice.
I am sir, with due respe&t,
Your obedient humble servant,
JOSEPH REED,
President. *
* Pennsylvania Archives, 1778-9, page 637, 328. This "Nichols"
w-as probably the Francis Nichols of the Cadwalader pamphlet.




,6
Six months after this, it seems Mr. David Lenox
"obtained permission for an interview with his brother
at Elizabethtown," and there "was alarmed" by the information of Mr. Reed's application to Count Donop
four years before.  He returned to Philadelphia and
used this story as a weapon of offence against Mr. Reed,
then President.  "I thought it my duty" says he in his
certificate, "to mention it publicly to prevent further
power being put in the hands of a man who would make
a bad use of it." In his own language he'propagated' it.
The fruit of this ineffetual gossip was, that in June of
the same year (i780) Mr. Reed with his Council was invested by the Assembly with what were then considered
Didtatorial powers, the authority to declare martial law,
and in the autumn he was eleted for the third time
President of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania.
In May, 178I, Mr. Robert Lenox came into the Delaware with a flag of truce. It was a time of great and
peculiar peril. The embers of the mutiny of the Pennsylvania line were not cool. The enemy was vigilant
and a&ive everywhere.  The affairs of the States, and
especially of Pennsylvania were apparently desperate.
There was not a dollar in the Treasury to pay ordinary
expenses. Emissaries were engaged in schemes of assassination, President Reed being one of the designated
victims.*  Precautionary measures were necessary, and
* Governor Livingston's letter, lI April, 178 1




77
Mr. Robert Lenox  was  refused  permission  to visit
Philadelphia and was kept "for four weeks on board ship
nine miles below the City." Here, again, it seems the
Donop story was repeated, with the same intimation of
an unknown associate of crime. Still, it produced no
effect, and gained no credit. In the interval, Arnold,
who was Mr. Reed's first open accuser, had become a
confessed traitor, and no one seemed willing to use the
weapons he had tried. After a careful search through the
newspapers of the time, which, until our day, have had no
rivals in ferocity, I do not find a trace of this fiction.
It was no doubt to whispers of this form of calumny
Mr. Reed referred in his pamphlet, in the passage which
I have quoted.*
This then is the whole evidence, with the exception
of Mr. Bancroft's Hessian diary presently to be noticed:
the repetition by heated and prejudiced men of what they
supposed had been told them years before, by an avowed
enemy, an officer in the Royal Army. On the other
* It may have been with reference to this specific accusation-the
David Lenox gossip-that Mr. Reed wrote to General Greene in June
178I.  "After all, and after repeated, gross and illiberal attacks of
every kind from weakness to treason, for great pains have been' taken to
prove me in the interests of the enemy, I am still in good health and
spirits, not disgusted with the service of my country though ready to
give place to any man who can serve it better. The body of the people
continue my friends because they believe that I am, as I truly am,
theirs; of this I have given the most unequivocal proof, because I have
consented to watch for three years that others might sleep-to be poor
that they might grow rich." zd Lffe of Reed, page 360.




i'78
hand, putting aside all suggestions of inherent improbability in a charge "so fathered and so husbanded," I beg
the candid reader's attention to the direct testimony on
which the averment rests, that Mr. Reed's written intercourse wvith Count Donop was an innocent and legitimate intercession for the poor people of Burlington.
In the first place, there is the testimony of the person
who carried  Mr. Reed's letter to the Hessian HeadQuarters, which cannot be impaired by General Cadwalader's unsustained assertion that he was a disaffected man.
If he were so, he would not have been disqualified for
the errand.  If he were so, he might naturally enough
seek to make peace for himself, and as naturally seek to
implicate Mr. Reed and his unknown friend.  Mr. Ellis
survived the Revolution and held positions of dignity
under the new government. This is his positive, and
as I have said, to this hour, uncontradicted statement:
AFFIDAVIT BY DANIEL ELLIS, ESQ., FORMERLY HIGH SHERIFF
AND ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE COURT OF COMMON
PLEAS FOR BURLINGTON.
State of New j/ersey, Burlington County, ss.
PERSONALLY came and appeared before me, the subscriber, one
of the Justices of the Peace in the said county, assigned to
keep, &c.  Daniel Ellis, of the City of Burlington, Esq.,
a person to me well known and worthy of good credit, who
being duly sworn on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God,
deposethand saith: That some time in the month of December, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, the Philadelphia militia lying at Bris



79
tol, the gallies in the river, and the Hessians under Count
Donop at Bordentown and the Black Horse; the town of Burlington was much distressed by small parties coming in and committing excesses on the inhabkants; that Joseph Reed, Esq., then
Adjutant General of the Continental Army, being occasionally
in town was applied to by some of the inhabitants, as this deponent understood, to procure them some relief, and particularly to
restrain the galley men and militia from coming into the town;
that in order to effe&l this it was necessary that the enemy's parties should be equally restrained, and the said Mr. Reed agreed
to write a letter to the Count Donop to that effect; that this
deponent went to the office of James Kinsey, Esq., where the
said General Reed was with Colonel Shee of Philadelphia; that
several of the inhabitants were also present; that the said Joseph
Reed asked this deponent if his son would carry a letter to Count
Donop for the above purpose; to which this deponent replied,
that if it was for the relief of the town he would go himself;
upon which a letter was inmediately writ; that this deponent
went the next morning with the letter (which to the best of this
deponent's remembrance was unsealed) and delivered the same
to Count Donop, who soon after returned an answer in writing,
which this deponent understood from the said Count Donop was
to appoint a place for a conference upon the subjecf, which letter
this deponent delivered to the said General Reed, (the said Mr.
Reed and Colonel Shee waiting for his return); that some few
days after an officer came to Burlington with a flag, with a letter
from Count Donop to the said General Reed; that the people
of Burlington being anxious to effeft the business, exerted themselves to get the said letter over the river, (the river being then
full of ice); that upon getting over they found that General Reed
was at Philadelphla, so that the said officer did not see him, nor
did any intercourse pass between them to this deponent's knowledge or belief; that this transaction was of public notoriety, and
as this deponent verily believes, calculated for the sole relief of
the inhabitants of said town, then much distressed by the irregularity of the troops and galley men, who came into the town




80
under various pretences and plundered and ill treated the inhabitants.  And further this deponent saith not.
DANIEL ELLIS.
Sworn before me, the 23d day
of October, I783.
SAM  How.*
I have said that, in adopting and re-producing this
Donop calumny, General Cadwalader deals with it vaguely as if he was not quite sure of the ground he was
treading or of the weapon that had been put in his hands.
The nearest approach to precision is this interrogative
imputation:   "Is it not more than probable that at the
interview you proposed under cover of serving the inhabitants of Burlington you  intended to confer with
Count Donop upon the subje& of your own interest and
personal safety?"   Here, the insinuation is clear enough
and I so accept it; and now shall show by evidence under
General Cadwalader's own hand, not known to Mr. Reed
when he published his pamphlet, that he was perfeftly
well acquainted with the objeCt of the proposed conference, and that the letter which Count Donop wrote came
to General Cadwalader and was answered by him.
* A friend in New Jersey, Mr. James W. Wall, a Senator of the
United States, of whom I made inquiry as to Mr. Ellis, writes to me:
"Daniel Ellis spoken of in the Cadwalader pamphlet, by whom your
grandfather sent the letter to Count Donop with a flag, was not disafe&ed, but, on the contrary, he assisted the cause of the Colonies and was
in consultation with the patriots. He was a man of considerable landed
estate, which, of course would have been confiscated if he had been
what Cadwalader describes; but he was in full enjoyment of it up to
the day of his death, long after the close of the Revolutionary War."




Before doing so, let me refer to another matter incidentally.  When it is sought to disparage my ancestor,
the Diary of Margaret Morris is cited as authentic even
when she chronicles the babble of her servant girls.  I
desire to refer the reader to it now for another purpose;
as the record of what passed under her own observation,
at a period when her perceptions were quickened by all
sorts of anxieties, and when she bore willing testimony
to the kind offices of those with whom-as her diary
proves-she had no other sympathies.  Recalling the
Donop accusation and Mr. Reed's reply, it should be
remembered that this diary never saw the light'till fifty
years after the accuser and the accused were in their
graves. It will be found completely to sustain Mr. Reed.
On the 25th of December is the entry which is material to the question of the real relations to Count Donop.
It is as follows:
" December 25th.  An officer said to be gone to Bristol, from
the Count de Nope, with a flag, and offers of letting our town
remain a neutral post. General Reed at Philadelphia. An express sent to him, and we hear he is to meet the Count to-morrow at Jno. Antrim's and settle the preliminaries.
December 26th. Very stormy; we fear General Reed will
not meet the Count to-day. A great number of flat-bottom
boats gone up the river; we cannot learn where they are going to.
December 27th. A letter from General Reed to his brother,
informing him that Washington had had an engagement with the
regulars on the 25th, early in the morning, taking them by surprise; killed 50 and took 900 prisoners-the loss on our side not
known-not suffered to be public."
63




82
The letter of Donop, thus by a flag publicly forwarded
to Bristol was, as Mr. Reed in his pamphlet assumed,
put into General Cadwalader's hands and answered by
him.  A  copy of the answer, in  Cadwalader's handwriting, (open to the inspedtion of any one who has a
right to ask for it) is in my possession.  It is in these
words:'Bristol, December 25, 1776.
SIR,
As Colonel Reed is not at this post at present, I opened the
letter addressed to him. There is no other person here so fully
acquainted with the business he proposed mentioning to you at
the interview he requested. I expe& he will return to-morrow
morning to this post, and he will then request you to name
another time and place which may be convenient to you. I did
not receive the flag to-day till half past Io, A. M.
I am Sir, &c., &c.
To COLONEL DONOP."                JOHN CADWALADER.
General Cadwalader in 1783, when he adopted the hearsay accusation of Mr. David Lenox, must have forgotten
his own letter of 1776 to Count Donop, to which no
other construction can be given than that the writer knew
the negotiations to be innocent.
Among  Mr. Reed's manuscripts, I find the rough
draught of an Address after the recovery of this letter.
It shows an intention to make another appeal to the
public, and incidentally refers to the Cadwalader pamphlet as the joint produdion of Doctor Benjamin Rush,




Dr. William  Smith, (Provost of the College and an n..
veterate enemy of Mr. Reed) and General Cadwalader.
This intention was never carried out, and my conviction,
from a careful study of everything within my reach connected with this affair, not to speak again of the honours
and marks of public and private confidence afterwards
conferred, is, that in its day and generation, this attack
on Mr. Reed was completely abortive.  Nor should it
be forgotten that, in the long interval of nearly a century since the Revolution, no historical or biographical
writer, English or American, friend or enemy, with one
exception, ever has alluded to it.  Neither Gordon-certainly no friend-nor Stedman, a loyalist, anxious to
discover flaws in any American's reputation-nor Graydon, nor Ramsay, nor Marshall, nor Adams, nor Sparks,
nor Washington Irving, nor Lord Mahon, nor any one
ever found a trace of evidence in support of this wretched accusation, or if they did, condescended to stoop and
follow it.  Mr. Galloway and the fugitive loyalists, examined in Parliament in 1779, made no allusion to it.
Writing to me on kindred topics, as far back as I 842,
Mr. Sparks said:
" I can say with perfet sincerity and truth, that in my examination of documents and papers relating to the Revolution, I
have seen nothing that could give countenance to charges against
General Reed. There is surely nothing to this ef'ect in Washington's papers, or in those of other general officers which have
come under my inspe&tion. He had a slight difference with the
Commander-in-chief in 1776, but this was of short duration,




84
anod it was after this event that Washington offered him the command of the Cavalry; and he often consulted him on military
affairs, particularly in regard to the State of Pennsylvania.  He
was appointed a Brigadier General by Congress, and was chosen
a member of that body from his native state. During a large
part of the winter at Valley Forge he was present in camp, as
one of a Comnittee from Congress for re-organizing the army;
and he afterwards held the office of President of Pennsylvania,
and continued in the public service till near the end of the war.
Are we now to form so low an opinion of the sagacity and wisdom of the leaders of that day as to believe that they would sustain in such responsible stations a man whose patriotism they suspeled, and least of all a man whom they looked upon as an
enemy in disguise? The thing is so incredible in itself that it
requires the strongest positive proof to clothe it with even a
shadow of probability; for we cannot fix so dark a stain upon
the memory of General Reed without seriously implicating the
character of the eminent patriots who gave him their support and
confidence.
In the public offices in London I have examined all the correspondence between the British officers in America, and the
Ministers, during the war.  I have no remembrance of seeing
General Reed's name mentioned in these papers on any occasion."
Mr. Bancroft wrote from  London in I848:
"' In looking through the archives here which have been opened
to me with great liberality I have looked for traces of your grandfather but as yet have found nothing of much importance. If I
do, I shall communicate it to you."
He has, it seems, been more successful since, but he
had to go to the shameful records of Brunswick and
Hesse Cassel, to the diaries and note books of mercenary
strangers, ignorant of the English language-' Ewalds'




and' Bourmeisters' and even Munchauzsens (p.2I ) before
he succeeded in finding what he seems to have craved so
eagerly.  I throw into  a note a chara&eristic comment
on  Hessian  testimony and  Hessian  condu&t from  the
pen of a friend of Mr. Bancroft, one who stands high
on the canon of New  England.*
I have spoken of an exception, I mean in  English.
In  the year I787-two  years after Mr. Reed's death,
there  was  published  in  London  a pamphlet entitled
"' Remarks on the Travels of the Marquis de Chastellux
* "The Baroness de Riedesel was a lady deserving all credit when she
tells what she has seen though she may have put a wrong construEion
upon it. But the case is not exacdly the same as to everything which
she may have heard.  Perhaps she did not understand English perfeftly
well. She was the wife of a person engaged in one of the most nefarious occupations that human mind and muscle can be put too  He and
his, had no quarrel with us and ours, but he had been let out for hire by
the wretch called Ele&tor of Hesse Cassel to come hither and make our
wives and children widows and fatherless.  If he could come on such
a business, it was very fit that his wife should come with him,  Heaven
knows he stood enough in need of every solace of domestic love.  He
failed in what he came for.  He sold his own blood and not ours.  We
caught him and his attendant reptiles and drew their fangs. If women
whose husbands, fathers, sons, he would have butchered, perhaps had butchered, spat on the ground in sign of anger as his wife passed, it was a
very unfeminine, discourteous, indecent adt, though it was evidently an
affront designed for him  rather than for her; and something may perhaps be pardoned to the rage of those against whom injuries so enormous, so wicked, being committed because God's providence and man's
valor dashed the miscreants to the earth in the flush of their abominable
enterprise.  Hired stabbers as long as they were in arms-house thieves
as soon as they were beaten, they had nothing better to claim at the
hands of meekness itself than mere forbearance and humanity."  Nortb
Americ4an Review, Jzuly, I852




86
in North America."   There is some slight reason to believe that the author of this was either General Arnold,
or some mercenary writer whom  he had suborned.  The
slander, there, assumes a form, on which I have no other
comment to make, than that it is the accusation of an
anonymous assailant whose testimony is the loosest hearsay, and, if it has any dire&  application, affe&s a man,!\l-[r. Bowes Reed, who, so far as my knowledge extends,
maintained throughout a long life, extending beyond the
agitations and asperities of Revolutionary times, an unimpeached chara&er.  This writer, whoever he was, says:
"I6 join in the Marquis de Chastellux's observations on MaIr.
Reed. I know in the prosperous situation of the British affairs
in 1777, (sic) and before the unhappy event at Trenton, that
Bowes Reed, a brother of Governor Reed, crossed the Delaware
from Pennsylvania and took wirth the prescribed forms a British protedion from a Hessian officer, I believe Colonel Donop, at the
same time, he requested one for his brother; the Governor, which
Colonel Donop declined giving him unless he should appear in
person. Soon after, Bowes Reed a&ced, himnself, in a civil employment in the State of New Jersey; and the Governor, it is well
known, as the Marquis observes, 66 published and exaggerated the
offers that were made him  by Governor Johnson, an'd attained
his end of playing a leading part in the cou'ntry." pp. 29, 30o*;: I first heard of this form of calumny from my friend, Mr. George H.
Moore, of New York, who was kind enough to send me the extra& I have
quoted, a copy of the pamphlet being in the Astor Library. In this
pamphlet, Washington is thus spoken of (page 37):'6 Mr. Washington
is hard-hearted and versatile. IHe assumed the appearance of lenity and
forbearance-He had the power to crush all rivals and his jealousy
made him employ it..... The American buzzard must be stripped
of his plumage...   Whether -he continue a land, jobber in Virginia




87
If the conjeedure has any foundation that this pamphlet, either dire&ly or indire&ly, emanated from  Arnold,
then it is an impressive truth that, while no contemporary of Mr. Reed, those who died with him, or those
who long survived him, ever was willing to countenance
or repeat this gross charge, his last, as his first open accuser was He, who has the ineffable infamy of being the
one American  traitor, to  whom  every  evil impulse
and habit of our nature seems to have been traced, and
in favour of whom not even a literary paradox has ever
been suggested.  There are no'Historic Doubts' about
Mr. Reed's worst apparent enemy, Benedict Arnold.
I am wrong in speaking of Arnold, as Mr. Reed's
last accuser, for, on this point, Mr. George Bancroft, at
the end of more than half a century, has taken up the
thread of calumny —He finds it in the dark archives
of Hesse Cassel.
Mr. Bancroft ostentatiously adduces, as proof of Mr.
Reed's infidelity, a mutilated extract from what, he describes, as a' Diary' of Count Donop, the Hessian commander of the advanced posts in New Jersey in December, 1776. He  prints it, in the original, in a note to page
229 of his Ninth Volume.  He gives no translation (as
I shall) possibly because he was conscious that, in plain
or the President of Congress is to me indifferent." At page 53 he
speaks of -" the aftive enterprising Arnold, and the Frenchified Washington." My impression is that the pamphlet was written by some
fugitive of the Charles Lee school, or, which is probable, though printed abroad, written in Philadelphia, where the chief disciples lived.




88
English, it amounted to nothing at all. Thete is always
an ominous mystery in a foreign language which Mr.
Bancroft does not hesitate to avail himself of.
Before I notice this subject in detail, let me allude to
the view  taken of such'historical' evidence, by one
Mr. Bancroft will hardly venture to discredit, and whom,
rather ostentatiously, in his Preface he describes as his
"friend" the late Jared Sparks.  I have some doubts as
to the extent of this friendship, but let that pass.
In I864, Mr. Sparks, always alive to such matters,
wrote to me:
"I am told that Mr. Bancroft has procured a copy of Donop's Journal. I should put no confidence in Donop's impressions or inferences unless sustained by the positive testimony
of some written communication from General Reed. This is
not likely to be produced. Donop might imagine motives which
had no foundation in reality."
I will now show that even Donop did not imagine
anything of the kind.
Mr. Bancroft thus introduces the Diary, which is to
prove so much:  "Diary kept in Donop's command,
written by himself or one of his aids.  The narration is
very minute and exact," (page 217) Again he says,
(page 229) "The Donop Diary, which is remarkably
precise, full and accurate, alludes to Colonel Reed as
having actually obtained a protection. This statement
though made incidentally is positive and unqualified."
Then follows the Hessian extract.




89
The reader will be surprised to learn, and to see, for I
shall quote the very words in English, and Mr. Bancroft will not impugn the accuracy of the translation,
that Count Donop, admitting the Diary to be his, made
no such statement; but in fact alludes to the story as
gossip at his Head-Quarters which he did not'listen to,'
and records it in connection with other matters which, we
know, are utterly without foundation in truth.
I cite every word in the Donop Diary relating, directly
or indirectly, to Mr. Reed.*  There are four entries
of the kind.
On the 20th December, the Diary says:
"December 2oth.-Colonel Von Donop to day received by a
flag of truce from the Rebel Colonel Reed, Adjutant General
of Washington, a letter in which he, by authority of General
VWashington, proposed to have on the following day an interview
with Colonel Donop on account of Burlington, as this place in
the present situation was much exposed to both sides.  It was
left to Colonel Donop to determine time and place for such an
interview. He answered immediately that his present situation
did not permit him to leave his post. At the same time the letter of Colonel Reed was communicated, in which he proposed an
interview about Burlington, and the answer given thereto; it was
not to be presumed that the Rebels would try to hold Mount
Holly and declare Burlington a neutral place, because from the
small island near Bristol they could bombard Burlington with six
pounders, while Mount Holly could be taken any time, if it was
our pleasure to do so."
* It is due to Mr. Bancroft to say that, at my request made after the
appearance of the 9th Volume, he sent me his Donop Note Book.
I am thus enabled to give further extraas.




9o
" December 25th.-To day a flag of truce was sent by Colonel
Donop to Burlington offering to Colonel Reed the interview
asked for as to that town, but an answer from Colonel Cadwalader that Reed was not there and was not expedted to return before
the next morning, he therefore would ask him to appoint another
time and place for the interview."
All this is the record of what actually did take place,
with tile addition that it was done "by the authority
of General Washington." I now come to the intermediate
entry which I give, verbatim, and in English, and which
Mr. Bancroft has the assurance to say is "precise,"
"full," "accurate," "positive" and "'unqualified."
6'December 2st. —Colonel Donop reported to General Grant
that, notwithstanding it had been his intention to attack ('pay a
visit to') General Putnam, he had desisted from such an enterprise after meeting Colonel Blork and Lieutenant Colonel Sterling at Mount Holly, and had received trustworthy information
that the enemy had no more magazines this side the Delaware.
It would not therefore be worth while to fatigue the troops who
were already worn out and ragged.  Moreover, it would be impossible for the troops to reach Cooper's Creek otherwise than
by a circuitous route and muddy roads, for the bridges had all been
destroyed. As his line was already extended from Bordentown
to Black Horse, fourteen miles, he did not think it advisable to
extend it further, and the less so because Rhall's Brigade was
almost daily alarmed on both flanks."
So far what he says is pretty near the truth.  Now for
the camp gossip which Donop was unwilling to listen to,
and I beg the reader to observe that the portion in italics,
which shows that it was discredited hearsay, is carefully
suppressed by Mr. Bancroft.




91
6 The reports about the enemy were so confused that he would not
listen any more to them.  Nevertheless, he would report that it was
reported to him that during his stay at iVJount Holly on the Igth inst.
Iooo men, via Haddonjfeld and 70o via Moorestown, had been marching against AMount Holly for the purpose of attacking the two battalions at the Black Horse, (that) General Mi/flin had advanced with
one corps on the route leading to Moorestown to the bridge three miles
from Mount Holly, but had done nothing except to destroy the bridge
entirely; (that) the Colonel Reed having received a protedion, had
come to meet General Mifflin and had declared that he did not intend any longer to serve; whereupon Mifflin is said to have treated
him very harshly and even to have called him a damned rascal."
It is not surprising that Mr. Bancroft shrank from
putting this trash in English, for it is very certain, and
he knows it well, that it is a perfect cluster of false reports. On the I9th, 2oth and 2Ist December, no force
had advanced or was advancing via Haddonfield or from
alny other diredion.  Neither Mifflin, nor Putnam, nor
any one had crossed the river, nor ever did cross the river
till this chapter of adventure was closed.  Count Donop
treated these stories as idle tales which, while he or his aid
noted, he did not listen to or believe.  And yet, the
American'Historian of the Revolution,' picks out the
one vague slander on his own countryman, and prints
it as truth, suppressing the context which describes it as
mere rumour, and a discredited rumour too!  It would
be a departure from  the tone which should chara&erise
historical discussion were I to describe in fitting terms
nmy sense of'this literary enormity.*: There were other rumours floating around Donop's quarters, and
recorded in his Diary, which Mr. Bancroft does not reproduce. For




92
Without  prolonging  this  unpleasant  criticism, it
should be noticed that General Mifflin, who is clumsily
dragged into this scandal by the purveyors of false
intelligence, was never called as a witness in 1782-3, that
he lived long after, and with all his defeds of characexample, in his Ninth Volume page 240, he says: "That day the term
of enlistment of the Eastern regiments came to an end; to these veterans,
the same conditions as Pennsylvania allowed to her undisciplined volunteers were offered if they would remain six weeks longer; and, with
one voice, they instantly gave their word to do so, making no stipulation of their own."  The Diary says: "December 24. Likewise also
the New England men, or so called Yankees, have declared their determination on January I, when their enlistment is at end, to go home.
They have resolved to serve no more outside the limits of their own
country."  Now, which tells the truth, the History or the Diary? Is it
only when a Southern man, for a Pennsylvanian was so regarded then, is
to be maligned, that Mr. Bancroft quotes Hessian slander? True to his
origin, he is reserved as to New England.  There is another suppressed
passage in the'Donop Diary' which is material as showing further
how little value there is in second-hand Hessian gossip.  On the z8th
of December, Donop reports to General Grant: "He has cause to
regret that Colonel Sterling should be taken away from him, inasmuch
as he shall thus lose not only a trusty friend, but also an interpreter of
the English orders, as he himself is not sufficiently versed in that
language, and had mainly to guess at the contents of the orders he received from General Grant, and, as regards the news wbich from time to
time was broszght in by the inhabitazts, he had the same diffcalty."
The' diary' shows Donop to have been an alive and vigilant officer,
who thought it his duty to jot down and communicate all he heard,
credible or incredible.  Were I disposed to make minute criticisms, I
might express a doubt whether, after all, the Colonel Reed of the Diary
of the 21st December, was my ancestor, for according to Mr. Bancroft
there were other Colonel Reeds.  There was (page 246)'the New
England Reed.'




93
ter, and  Revolutionary  history shows they were many,
he never condescended to fling calumny on the dead.*
In dismissing this subjedt, I beg the reader to observe that  I  have not condescended  to  dwell on the
astounding  fad, that, an American writer, who, on one
page, records the brutality of these alien mercenaries,
('plundering ever since they landed in the country') for
so, Mr. Bancroft describes the Germans, officers and men;
on another, should ostentatiously cite a Hessian Colonel,
or a Hessian Colonel's clerk, as a witness against his
own countryman. The Hessian himself, as we have
seen, did not believe the calumny which has been
* Mifflin died in I8oo.  My father, son of General Reed, was his
friend, and the executor of his will. On the trial of Josiah Bright before
Judge Washington in I809, as reported by Lloyd, Mr. Ingersoll, the
elder, in his speech for the defendant said: "0 In the Ninth Volume of
the Journal of Congress, page 267, I observe that six States were against
the claim of jurisdiEion on the part of the Court of Appeal of Congress, and I find the name of Jefferson on the side of the question, for
which I have the honour to contend; I add, last but not least, the names
of Reed and Bryan. The patriot heart will joy at recolleating them;
the former a wonderfully quick penetrating genius; the latter probably
with the greatest fund of information of any man in the United States.
I trust it will not detrat from the weight of Mr. Reed's professional
chara&er that he was a soldier also in the war of the Revolution, and
that the splendid military manceuvre adopted by Washington at Trenton, by which the fruits of a former viftory were secured, and a second
attained at Princeton, was of his suggestion.  This information I received from General Mifflin who was himself a member of the council of war." My professional brethern know well who Mr. Ingersoll
was-one of the leaders of the Ancient Bar-he was President Reed's
intimate and valued friend. Surely his testimony is at least as trustworthy as Mr. Bancroft's Hessian hearsay.




94
raked up from the refuse of his camp.  I hesitate, in
conclusion, to ask the question and yet it is an obvious
one-Does any one for a moment imragine that, had an
officer of Mr. Reed's rank (Washington's Adjutant
General) taken a prote&ion or asked for one, or done
anything of the kind, it would have remained a secret
to this day? A prote&ion was never granted without an
antecedent oath, which was always matter of record.
Having thus, with what success it is not for me to say,
disposed of the detailed evidence by which these calumnies have been propped up, I proudly turn to
that, which after all is most conclusive the well attested record of Mr. Reed's aCive life, on which has
been thrown (a severe test for any public man) the strong,
clear light of his domestic correspondence; the letters to
and from his wife, and brothers, and kinsmen, and personal friends, for, in the biography which I published, I
withheld no letter, however confidential and familiar, from
any other reason than to avoid prolixity, or a fear of giving pain to the living by the revival of transient words
or thoughts of asperity.  That record is the best proof
of my ancestor's public and private virtue-his patriotism in the highest and purest sense.
And to no part of the story of his Revolutionary
service, do I more confidently refer than to that which
tells what he, and those near and dear to him, did and
suffered in those days of especial disaster, trial and vic



95
tory, when it now seems, if posthumous libellers are to
be credited, detradion was busiest with his fame; I mean
the interval from the fall of Fort Washington to the retreat of the enemy to New Brunswick-from November,
1776, to January, I777.  With a brief reference to this,
made more interesting by one or two letters which
have come into my possession since the publication of my book in I847, I conclude this effort at
vindication.
After the fall of Fort Washington and the retreat
of the American army through Eastern New Jersey, it
seemed probable, in view of the advanced season and
difficulties of transportation, (and within my recolledion
the winter roads north of Trenton and Princeton were
pra&ically impassable) that the Raritan would be the extreme limit of the British advance, and that the country
between it and the Delaware would be a sort of neutral
or border territory. As late as the 3rd of December,
the enemy had not crossed the Raritan.  Mr. Reed had
been previously despatched to the fugitive Legislature of
New Jersey to show the necessity of reinforcements.'The
critical situation of our affairs' wrote Washington to Governor Livingston, on the 23d of November, 1776 land
the movements of the enemy make some further and'immediate exertions absolutely necessary. In order that you
may have the fullest representation and form a perfeCt
idea of what is now necessary, I have desired Colonel




96
Reed to wait on you and must refer you to him  for
particulars.' This duty, he had faithfully performed, and
from  Burlington, where his family then was and where
Governor Livingston and his Assembly had been in session, Mr. Reed wrote his letter to Congress of the 28th
of November, 1776, resigning his office of Adjutant Genera!.* It is in these words:
To THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Burlington, New Jersey, November 28, 1776.
SIR,
Near three months ago, I laid before the committee of the
honourable Congress, appointed to form and regulate the new
army, my intentions of relinquishing the office of Adjutant General at the close of the campaign.  The reasons then assigned,
and which I should intrude upon your time to repeat, appeared to
me so weighty that I conceived it a duty to the public and myself to represent them in the earliest and fullest manner.
As the season will not admit of further military operations
(unless the enemy should attempt an incursion into this province
to harass and distress us, in which case I shall most cheerfully
devote myself to any further service) I beg leave to enclose the
commission with the highest sense and warmest acknowledgments
of the favour done me.
I am Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant,
Jos. REED.
This letter, though dated on the 28th probably was not
sent till the 3oth. It had scarcely gone when a message
was received from the Commander-in-Chief, that "invited
by the broken state of our troops, the enemy had changed
* Governor Livingston's Letter, 27th Nov. 1776. Force, p. 870.




97
their plan and were rapidly advancing on the Delaware."
On the first of December, Washington wrote to this
effet  to Governor Livingston, and it was probably by
the bearer of that letter the message was sent to the
Adjutant General.  Mr. Reed did not hesitate, but instantly wrote-and it arrived in season-the following to
Congress:
To THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Burlington, New yersey, December 2, I776.
SIR,
When I did myself the honour of addressing you on the 3oth
ult.) I had not the least idea that the enemy would at this season
attempt a progress thro' the country.  It seems but too probable
that I was mistaken.  I therefore beg leave to retract the resignation I then made, and, as soon as I have disposed of Mrs. Reed
and my children, will attend my office in the army until a successor is appointed or operations shall cease beyond all doubt.
Flattering myself that an uninterrupted attention for six months
and my condu6t during that time will incline you to the most
favourable construdion of this measure which proceeded from
our unacquaintance of the state of things,
I am with great resped,
Your most obedient and very humble servant.
Jos. REED.*
~ Commenting on this, Mr. Bancroft says with more than ordinary
venom: "(Reed) shrunk from his duty and seeking definitively to quit
the army, sent back his commission to the President of Congress. But
the prospe& of unsparing censure, and a cold rebuke from Washington,
who had seen proof of his disingenuousness, drove him, at the end of four
days, to retradt his resignation," p. I98. From all the evidence accessible to me and the statement of General Reed himself, I affirm this statement of a' rebuke' from Washington, to be utterly groundless. If Mr.
7




98
The resignation of course was not accepted.  The intentions of' the enemy were rapidly developed, and on
the 8th of December, Mr. Reed, having returned to
Headquarters, wrote to the President of Congress:
SIR,
We set out this morning for Princeton.  In our way we met
a messenger with the enclosed. The General ordered me back
upon some necessary business.  He has gone forward to Princeton where there are about three thousand men with which I fear
we will not be able to make a stand. The Jersey militia are so few
that no dependence can be placed on them. The militia of Pennsylvania, except from the city, have not appeared and they are
very confused, the time not having admitted of any arrangement.
In short, sir, from all circumstances I am inclined to think no opposition will be given'till we cross the Delaware. Our whole
force if colleced will not exceed six thousand, and they are diminishing every moment by desertion.
I can get no other paper than this-you will please to excuse
it as well as the hurry of my letter.
I am, with much respeCt and regard, your most obedient humble servant.                                     Jos. REED.
Bancroft has any written or oral testimony as to it, let him produce it.
If he has not, then his rhetorical assumption of such a fa&, it seems to
me, comes very close to the edge of wanton misrepresentation. The
message which Mr. Reed describes had no rebuke in it, hot or cold.
Washington's letter of the 3oth does not allude to the subje&. Slow
to believe that Mr. Bancroft would invent this'cold rebuke,' but, at
the same time, confident that no such thing existed, I wrote an enquiry to my friend, the venerable Peter Force of Washington, whose answer
is this:' In reply to your questions in regard to the resignation of General Reed, in I776, I might have answered it off hand, but I preferred to
take time and make an examination.  Beside the letters you referred to,
I have found no letter or memorandum of General Washington, or
any one else, on the subje& of General Reed's resignation, in December, I776.  Ms. letter, 31 December, I866.




IMr. Reed was then sent to Philadelphia to urge activity in reinforcements, and with the news of the retreat
of the Americans to the right bank of the Delaware.
From  that time,'till the i2th, he was either with the
Commander-in-Chief, or on such detached special duty
as their confidential relations and Mr. Reed's thorough
acquaintance with the neighbouring region imposed on
him. It must have been during one of these expeditions that he wrote to Washington the following hurried
letter, which I had not seen in 1I847, but which I find in
Mr. Force's Archives; my impression is that it was
written at either Newtown or some point above TrentQau
REED TO WASHINGTON,
December, 12,: 1776.
DEAR SIR,
The gentlemen of the Light Horse who went into the Jerseys
have returned safe. They proceeded into the country'till they
met an intelligent person direftly from Trenton, who informed
them that General Howe was then with the main body of his
army; that the flying army, consisting of the Light Infantry and
grenadiers, under Lord Cornwallis, still lay at Pennytown and there
was no appearance of a movement. That they are certainly
waiting for boats from Brunswick; that he believed they would
attempt a landing in more places than one; that their artillery park
has thirty pieces of cannon-all field pieces. They are collecting horses from all parts of the country. Some movement was
intended yesterday morning but laid aside; but what it was and
why they did not proceed he does not know. I sent off a person to Trenton yesterday morning with directions to return by
Pennytown.  I told him to go to...... and get what intelli.
gence he could from him.  He is not yet returned. I expect




00
him every moment.  I charged him to let......know that,
if he would watch their motions and could inform us of the time
and place of their proposed landing, he should receive a large reward for which I would be answerable,   I cannot but think their
landing will be between this and Trenton, for these reasons:
Ist. That Lord Cornwallis with that part of the army which
he will lead, keeps at Pennytown, within four miles of the river.
2nd, They will by that means avoid the ferry at Shamony,
and the fords which, at this season of the year, must be disagreeable to the troops.
3rd. They will derive much more assistance from the country
which is but too favourable to them.
4th. They know our principal artillery is near Trenton and
the passage through the woods to Bristol must be unfavourable
to them. On the road above they will find all clear and the
distance nearly the same.
The river is not and I believe cannot be sufficiently guarded.
Whe must depend upon intelligence of their motions; to obtain
which no expense must be spared.  xr it were possible to fix
signals answering to their different movements, that would be
most speedy and: effectual. The militia are crossing over in parties. I fear they do not mean to return. I do not know by
whSse orders, but if their Colonels have power to give permissian, in a little time there will be none left, I do not like the
condition of things at and above Coryell's Ferry; the officers are
quite new and seem to have little sense of the necessity of vigilance.  I shall wait a little to see my man return, and then, unless your Excellency think my stay here of service, I will return
to Headquarters.  I enclose you a proclamation which I got
from the other side.  I suppose it is one of the same kind General Dickerson saw.  Mr. Moylan desires me to mention to your
Excellency the propriety of his meeting General Lee to inform




Io1
him of the state of things, and wishes to know your plan by the
return of the Light Horse.
I am in haste, most respeAtfully, Dear Sir,
Your obedient, humble, servant,
Jos. REED.
On the I4th, news was received of Lee's capture, and,
some time in that week, Mr. Reed was sent to Bristol to
assist and  counsel with  General Cadwalader, whose
command consisted  mainly of Pennsylvania, indeed
Philadelphia militia-his and  Mr. Reed's townsmen
and ncighbours. This is a simple and natural explanation of the arrangement.  The distance from  HeadQuarters was very short, nine miles when at Newtown,
and ten if opposite Trenton; if Dodor Rush is to
be credited, the Adjutant General being in constant connedtion with the Commander-in-Chief   That General
Cadwalader, writing in I783, hinted a sinister obje&t in
Mr. Reed's joining him, is very true, but it is one of the
worst specimens of unproved insinuation with which his
pamphlet abounds. Mr. Reed did assist him actively and
faithfully, and I have little doubt, from the evidence accessible to me, that the high spirited soldier of 1776, for
such was General John Cadwalader, never harboured the
thought or suspicion, or to his nearest friend whispered
the insinu1tion which fell from the tongue of the angered
partisan of I778 and'83. While at Bristol, on the 22d
of December, Mr. Reed wrote to Washington what I
may describe as the'Pomroy' letter, (supra, page 43,) to




02
which and to what I have said of it, I specially refer the
reader.  It's first effect was that Reed was sent for to
Head-Quarters and the outlines of the plan of attack on
Trenton communicated to him, and at the same time, it
is said, a letter was written to the same purport to Cadwalader.  Then followed, with General Cadwalader's full
concurrence, the night visit of Mr. Reed and Colonel
Cox to Griffin at Mount Holly-and then, probably
on their return to camp at Bristol, came Washington's
remarkable letter of anxious inquiry and affectionate confidence, addressed to "Joseph Reed, Esq.-or in his absence, John Cadwalader, Esq., only"-in its fading but
still clear characters, now before me, and which, tho' often
printed before, I cannot resist the temptation  to reproduce.  It was to these two friends only-friends of
his, and as he thought, of each other-that he told the
perilous secret of his necessities and his intentions,
and of the very hour, almost the minute, he meant
to execute his plan of adventure.
Camp above Trenton Falls, 23d December,r1776.
DEAR SIR,
The bearer is sent down to know whether your plan was attempted last night, and if not, to inform you that Christmas day,
at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our
attempt on Trenton. For heaven's sake keep this to yourself, as
the discovery of it may prove fatal to us. Our numbers, sorry
I am to say, being less than I had any conception of; but necessity, dire necessity,. will —nay must justify any attempt, Prepare




103
and in concert with Griffin attack as many of their posts as you
possibly can, with a prospedt of success.  The more we attack
at the same instant, the more confusion we shall spread, and the
greater good will result from it.
If I had not been fully convinced before of the enemy's designs,
I have now ample testimony of their intentions to attack Philadelphia as soon as the ice will afford the means of conveyance.
As the Colonels of the Continental regiments might kick up
some dust about command, unless Cadwalader is considered by
them in the light of a Brigadier, which I wish him to be, I desired General Gates, who is unwell and applied for leave to go to
Philadelphia, to endeavour, if his health would permit him, to call
and stay two or three days at Bristol in his way.
I shall not be particular. We could not ripen matters for our
attack before the time mentioned in the first part of this letter.
So much out of sorts, and so much in want of everything are
the troops under Sullivan, &c.  Let me know by a careful express the plan you are to pursue.  The letter herewith sent,
forward on to Philadelphia. I could wish it to be in, in time for
the Southern post's departure, which will be, I believe, by eleven
o'clock to morrow.
I am, dear sir,
Your most obedient servant,
GEO. WASHINGTON.
P. S. I have ordered our men to be provided with three days
provisions, ready cook'd; with which and their blankets, they are
to march; for if we are successful, which Heaven grant, and
other circumstances favour, we may push on,  I shall dire&
every ferry and ford to be well guarded, and not a soul suffered
to pass without an officer going down with the permit.  Do
the same with you.
To JOSEPH REED, ESQo,
or, in his absence, to
JOHN CADWALADER, ESQ., only, at Bristol.*
* I am unable to estimate the logic by which it is assumed that this
letter was so addressed because Washington thought Cadwalader might be




Io4
When  this letter came, it was known  at Bristol that
Griffin had retired and that there was no hope of concert from him. It was then determined that, while Cadwalader matured  a movement in aid of Washington in
the neighbourhood of Burlington, Reed should go to
Philadelphia and persuade  Putnam, who was in command, to  cross at Cooper's Ferry.   This was on  the
night of the 24th, and from Philadelphia, Mr. Reed
wrote to Cadwalader the next morning:
"cGeneral Putnam  has determined to cross the river with as
many men as he can colle&, which he says will be about five
hundred; he is now mustering and endeavouring to get Proaor's
company of artillery to go with them. I wait to know what
success he meets with and the progress he makes-but at all
events I shall be with you this afternoon."*
absent. It would then have been to'John Cadwalader, Esq., or in his
absence to Joseph Reed, Esq.,' and in the text' Cadwalader' would not
have been spoken of in the third person.  It is not at all material.  I
am tempted to add a brief extra& from Washington's earnest letter to
Congress, the next day, to show what troops he relied on, in this the hour
of agony, if not despair.'"By the departure of these regiments (Lee's
and Gates's corps) I shall be left with five from Virginia, Smallwood's
from Marylanid, a small part of Rawlins' and Hand's from Pennsylvania,
part of Ward's from Conneclicut, and the German battalion, amounting
in the whole at this time to from 1400 to I5oo effeftive men. This
handful and such militia as may choose to join me, will then compose
our army."  I find no allusion to the'Mariners from  Marblehead.'
Mr. Bancroft quotes the language of Washington's letter of the 23d,
but takes pains to avoid saying it was addressed to Reed.
* The rest of this letter has never been printed.  The extra&t I find
in the Cadwalader pamphlet.




I05
This was but doubtful encouragement-Five hundred
men, with or without artillery, was all that could be expected, and their movements were uncertain. —Well might
Mr. Reed say what he did, years afterwards in his pamphlet (page I8,) and well might he send, for it was his
duty to tell the exaft truth,'discouraging accounts' to
Washington, though, from the date of the letter from
McKonkey's Ferry (25th, 6 P. M.,) it is probable the
news there referred to, related to Griffin's withdrawal, and
not to Putnam's delay. "At all events," wrote Mr. Reed,'"I shall be with you this afternoon," and he kept his
word, and was at Bristol and the Ferry taking part in
the ice-blocked passage of that winter night, the incidents
of which and of the adventurous advance to Burlington,
have already been described. Whilst the troops below
were ineffectually struggling with the elements, Washington had crossed above and by noon of the next day
(26th) had consummated his vilory at Trenton. The
sound of the firing was heard, but the news of the
precise result did not reach Bristol whither Mr. Reed
had returned,'till some time on the 27th, or at night
of the 26th.  The rest of the narrative of those days
has been elsewhere given, and as the obje&t of what I
now write is merely defensive, I shall not repeat it, the
end being the pursuit of the enemy almost to the banks
of the Hudson; in every step and movement of which
M'r. Reed shared with Cadwalader, under the eye of
Washington.
14




io6
Accident has thrown in my way the following letters,
which have never been  published, and which are not
without interest.
They need but a word of explanatory comment.
It will be recolleded that, in Mr. Reed's pamphlet
of 1782, in reference to his visit to Philadelphia, at midnight of the 24th of December, this passage occurs:
"I lay down for a few hours, and when the morning came, a
number of gentlemen, among whom I particularly recollect Colonel Moylan, Mr. James Mease and Mr. R. Peters, came, and
anxiously enquired into our situation and prospeAs.  They can
tell whether despondency or animation, hope or apprehension,
most prevailed, and whether the language I held was not the very
reverse of despair; the former may remember, that when urged
to stay and partake of a social entertainment provided for the
day, I declared my resolution that no consideration should prevent
my return to the army immediately; and that in a private conversation I pressed him to do the same, lest he should lose a
glorious opportunity to serve his country and distinguish himself.
I was not at liberty to be perfeffly explicit, but the hint was
sufficient to a brave officer."
This'brave officer'-Stephen Moylan of Pennsylvania, was one of Mr. Reed's life-long friends.  The recolle6tions of this friendship, and the allusion in the
passage I have just cited, tempt me to print the follow-r
ing very charafteristic letter.
COLONEL MOYLAN TO ROBERT MORRIS.
Headquarters, AMorristown, Ya7nuary 7, I777.
DEAR SIR,
I thank you, my good friend, for your favour of the first. What
a change in our affairs, since the date of that letter. Are you




0o7
not all too happy? By Heavens, it was the best piece of generalship I ever read or heard of. An enemy, within musket shot
of us, determined, and only waiting for daylight, to make a vigourous attack. We stole a march, got to Princeton, defeated,
and almost totally ruined, three of the best regiments in the
British service; made all their schemes upon Philadelphia, for
this season, abortive; put them into such a consternation, that
if we only had five hundred fresh men, there is very little doubt
but we should have destroyed all their stores and baggage, at
Brunswick, of course, oblige them to leave the Jerseys, (this
they must do) and probably have taken poor Naso.*  What
would our worthy General have given for 500 of the fellows
who were eating beef and pudding at Philadelphia on that day?
But let us not repine-it was glorious. The consequence must
be great.  America will-by G-d-it must be free!
I never mentioned my desire to the General of engaging in
the cavalry.  Your letter, I believe, gave him the first intimation. I put it into his hands to show him your gift of divination,
Pray, how could you suppose, that our next blow must be at
Princeton, but I recollect you did not then know we were attacked at Trenton. How your heart went pitipat, when that
news reached you, and what an agreeable feeling you must all
have had when you heard of their facing right about. But that
feeling is very short of those which we all enjoyed when pursuing the flying enemy.  It is unutterable-inexpressible.  I
know I never felt so much like one of Homer's deities before.
We trod on air —it was a glorious day. Pray send us back those
runaways that left us these some days past. We are really weak,
strengthen our hands, and we will not leave an enemy out of gunshot from their ships. I will not tire you further than telling
you what I have often done, that
I am sincerely, Sir, yours,
To Robert Morris, Esq.             STEPHEN MOYLAN,
* Charles Lee,




IG8
Mr. Bancroft of course has a fling at Colonel Moylan. The reader cannot fail to be struck with the
number and virulence of his minute defamations. It is a
sort of eruptive disease with him. He assails, besides Mr.
Reedpassim, Greene pp. 40, I74, 184-5, 8, 9, 193-4, 5,
426-8, Dickinson pp. 46, 199, Mercer p. I13, Smallwood
p. I23, Lambert Cadwalader p. I90, St. Clair p. 246,
Mifflin pp. 39, 459, Armstrong p. Io6, Sullivan p. 397Moylan and Wayne p. 230, 456, every one, except Greene
from Rhode Island and Sullivan from New Hampshire,
born south of the Hudson.  Wayne's offence to Mr.
Bancroft may be his letter to Gates of the first of
December, 1776, printed in Mr. Force's Archives.
"Whilst I am writing, an express brings advice of Fort
Washington being in the hands of the enemy, and the
whole garrison consisting of 2ooo men killed or prisoners.  My heart bleeds for poor Washington.  Had he
but Southern troops, he would not be necessitated so often
to fly before an enemy who, I fear, has lately had but too
much reason to hold us cheap."  Bancroft, speaking of
General Ewing, says: "He did not even make an attempt
to cross at Trenton." Washington, writing to Congress,
says: "The quantity of ice was so great that, though
General Ewing did every thing in his power to effed it,
he could not get over."*
A fortnight later, Mr. Reed, then probably ahtlng as
W Works of Washington, Vol. 4, page Z47.




Iog
Adjutant General till his successor was named-and at all
events at Headquarters, wrote the following semi-official
letter to Philadelphia, which has this interest, that it shows
how kindly, how generously, and I am quite willing to
say, how justly he thought and wrote of his fellow-soldier:s, of some of those who became so soon his bitter
enemies.
To MR. THOMAS BRADFORD, PRINTER.
~" SIR,
I am direded by his excellency, General Washington, to forward to you the enclosed, with a request that they may be printed in the public papers, with a note that all printers of newspapers
will re-print them in their several papers-and that you would
have 00ooo copies of each struck off and forwarded to him with
all possible expedition. The evils they are calculated to remedy
are of so alarming and increasing a nature that no time is to be
lost.
I shall be much obliged to you to remind your father that there
are two new blankets among his baggage belonging to me. I
shall be obliged to him to secure them for me if they are to be
found.
We have nothing new in this quarter, our parties every day
harrass the enemy; yesterday one of them attacked 6oo of the
enemy near Woodbridge, after a warm firing our troops retreated,
the enemy's number being three times superior. The stormy
weather will, I fear, give the remainder of the Philadelphia
militia a very bad march home. The last moved off yesterday,
having greatly distinguished themselves by their gallant behaviour
in the field, as well as orderly and soldierlike conduet in camp.
All the militia are following their example in annoying the enemy
every opportunity, so that we hope in a little time they will prove
a noble support to their country. General Cadwalader has conducted his command with great honour to himself and the Province, all the field officers supported their characters, their ex



I IO
ample was followed by the inferior officers and men, so that they
have l eturned with the thanks and praises of every general officer
in the army.
The Light Horse, tho' few in number, have rendered as essential service, as in my opinion, the same number of men ever performed to their country in the same time. They thought no
duty beneath them, and went through it with a generous disregard of fatigue and danger, which entitles them to the kindest
notice and attention of their fellow citizens. XWe hope that
some of the artillery officers who have engaged in this temporary
service may be induced to enter into the Continental army as the
specimen they have given shows that they may be exceedingly
useful to their country in a line of service which every day shows
to be more and more important.,It might appear invidious to mention names where all have behaved well-but Colonel Morgan, Colonel Nixon, Colonel Cox,
your old gentleman,* and Major Knox, and Cowperthwaite, certainly ought not to pass unnoticed for their behaviour at Princeton.
Major Meredith would, on many accounts, be a great acquisition
to the army if he could be prevailed on to engage in the service,
he has a military turn and, tho' he was diffident of himself, it
appeared when we came to adtion that there was not the least
foundation for it, but quite the reverse.
I am Sir, with esteem,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
Jos. REED.
Headquarters, Morristown, ranuary 24, 1777.
The next month, after more than a year's dispersal,
Mr. Reed and his family found themselves for a time
at home  in  Philadelphia.   There  are  now  before
me two manuscripts, for which I am indebted to a
kinswoman (alas! now dead) in a distant land, letters
* The William Bradford who made the affidavit of 1782. Ante. p. a8.




from the husband and father, the wife and mother of that
re-united family, which came into my possession more
than seventy years after those who wrote them  sank into
their graves, and which I now reprint as homely testimonials of fidelity and heroism. They are both written to
Mrs. Reed's brother, Mr. De Berdt of London; for in
those times, unlike ours, the refined cruelty of prohibiting correspondence of relatives on different sides of Civil
War was not resorted to.*
MR. REED TO MR. DE BERDTO
Philadelphia, February 20, I777.
DEAR DENNIS,
It is not one of the least misfortunes of these unhappy times
in which our lot is cast, that the intercourse of the nearest relations and dearest friends is almost wholly interrupted.  Except
your letter by Lord Howe, and your packet by Israel Morris,
we have heard nothing from you for almost twelve months. However it is no small consolation to us to learn that your prospects
of business are exceeding good while ours are changed from the
most prosperous to the most adverse.  The war being brought
to our own door, and carried on with the most inhuman ravage,
in which age and sex have indiscriminately suffered, has banished
every idea of law, so that the profession for which it has been
my earliest study to qualify myself is become -entirely useless.
The family, as well for safety as economy, have been obliged to
leave Philadelphia, but, unluckily directing its course into the
Jerseys, which, soon after, the British and Hessian Troops penetrated; your mother-sister — five children, were again obliged
to fly, and are now secluded from all society but among themselves, surrounded with woods and inhabitants of the common
* I recovered these letters through the kind offices of the granddaughter of Mr. de Berdt, Mrs. Esther Reed Merriman-Mrs. Merri
man died near London, in I86z.




Ii2
class of country people.  I thank God they have experienced
little distress but what arises from fatigue or apprehension. A
party of the Hessian Troops came into the town of Burlington
the next day after they left, and afterwards were within three
miles of their retreat. To have been plundered of everything
they could carry away, and the destruction of what they could
not, was the least in such case to be expected-but happily the
American arms at this crisis proved successful; the enemy was
obliged to evacuate this country, and peace and quiet have been
restored, but how long it will last none can tell but He who
knows all things. Your letter by Lord Howe arrived before
there had been any effusion of blood; it was wrote with a spirit
and sentiment that would do you honour among the sensible and
dispassionate, I was then with the army, and after showing it
to the General, I transmitted it to the Congress, but no notice
was taken of it. I then waited impatiently for a public disclosure
of some terms or propositions from Lord Howe and his brother.
If they had been such as would give my country any security
against the unlimited powers of your Parliament to deprive us
of our property at any time and in what proportions they pleased,
I should have applied myself most earnestly to have brought
about an accommodation, and if those in power had wantonly or
wickedly rejected the proposition, I should have retired from
the army to a private and obscure station.  But no such proposition being ever made, tho' general professions of kindness and
justice were profusely given, and being well satisfied in my own
mind, from a conversation I had with the Adjutant General
of the British Army, whom I conducted to and from an interview with General Washington, that the commissioners had no
powers to give liberty, peace and safety to this country, I no
longer hesitated about my duty, but continued with the army the
whole campaign, and have been in every action except two which
has happened during the whole summer. I thank God I have enjoyed uninterrupted health, and met with no accident.  But the
office I hold not being agreeable to me, and my doing what I
deemed my duty, having made me many enemies among the in



II3
tractable and undisciplined part of our army, I resolved to decline
it when the campaign was over. In what line I shall hereafter
move is very uncertain, but the dispute is now advanced to such
a heighth, and the inhumanity with which it has been conducted
by the British Generals has created such an inveteracy between
the two countries as no (illegible) can efface. The British Nation
must receive its impression from its officers and friends.  They
have injured us so highly by their ravages, cruelty and insult that
it is impossible they can ever forgive us, for there is no hatred
so deadly as that of him who has injured another, and is conscious he can neither palliate or redress it. The scenes of cruelty
and desolation, which my own eyes have beheld, are beyond description.  The havoc which avarice, lust and wantonness have
made in this fine growing co-untry, will be remembered for ages
-if its progress should cease to morrow.  The illiberal abuse
of the King and his Ministers I detest-a false ambition and a
mistaken idea of the true interest of the Nation has led them
astray, but History shews us that this is no novelty.  I fear
national pride must also be taken into the account-that pride
which being transplanted to this country shews our descent, and
perhaps is not unjustly termed obstinacy.  In this state of things
where can the man of honour and lover of his country set his
foot? On the one hand an unlimited submission which scarcely
leaves a shadow of liberty-on the other a dreadful opposition
subversive of every species of social and commercial happiness,
and of which no end is yet to be seen-those who prefer temporary ease and safety to essential liberty would find no difficulty
in the choice; but how can a man of honour, and who thinks
himself bound to transmit to his posterity the blessings of freedom unimpaired make the ignominious sacrifice?
Adieu my Dear Dennis.
Most affeEt'y Yours.
MRS. REED TO MR  DE BERDT.
"An opportunity of writing to you, my dear Dennis, is now
become so rare, that I could not think of letting this slip without
8




I"4
sitting down to tell you our distresses. How shall I describe our
situation for some months past; your heart, I am sure, has already
felt much for us, but you could not form any adequate idea of the
scenes we have pass'd. Thank God our apprehensions and fears
have not been altogether realized, but these were sufficient; but
one day's escape from an army of foreigners, and, for several
weeks, within a few hours march of them, and since they have
been driven back, we have understood they had planned a visit to
our retreat.  Nothing could be more distressing but the dreadful
reality; but a kind and overruling Providence protected us from
the dangers we feared, and our retreat has been safe and comfortable; anything more we hardly dared to wish.  Since the
happy change in our affairs we look back without regret on our
past distresses, and trust to the same Almighty Power which so
evidently appeared then in our favour to deliver us from the hand
of oppression which lately threatened to strike us to the dust.
You will be surprised, I dare say, at the rapid and uninterupted
progress the enemy made thro' this province, but when I tell you
the horrid blunder our Rulers made, it will easily account for it;
they enlisted their soldiers for a short time, some four, some six
months; the enemy, as might readily be supposed, were informed
of this, and at the time our army was disbanding and did not consist of more than 3000 men, they marched thro' and took possession of the Province-what has happened since, and the happy change in which our arms have proved successful, you will
hear from many quarters. Our prospeits are brighter, our hopes
are raised, our utmost efforts are exerting, and we devoutly trust
in the favour and assistance of the Great Arbiter and Ruler of
Nations, who alone can give success to our arms and peace to
our land.
Our domestic affairs have another change by the addition
of a daughter, which happened just at the time my dear Mr.
Reed was exposed to all the dangers and fatigues of a campaign.
A kind Providence has preserved both our lives and we are now
enjoying a few weeks together in peace and safety, but it is not
without many anxious fears for the future. I cannot foc-gt to




tell you that Mr. Reed has had some very naitrrow  escapes
of his life, once by one of our own men who was running away
and he ordered to return to his duty, the fellow presented his
musket within half a yard of his head, but it happily missed fire,
and another time in an engagement near N. Y. his horse was
shot under him,  But however great and complicated our difficulties and distresses have been, we have not been so fully taken
up by them, but we have truly and affedtionately shared in your
happier prospeds, and are anxious to hear that your hopes and
exped~ations both in love and business are answered,  Adieu,
adieu, my dear Dennis, I know not when I shall have another
opportunity of writing to you; you must embrace every one of
writing to us-I need not tell you that our Dear Mama remembers you with the utmost tenderness, or that I am,
With the sincerest affetion,
Ever Yours,
E. RE ED.
In less than a year after this, Mr. Reed's Administration as President of the Executive Council of Pennsyl
vania, began.  It continued by unanimous re-eledion
fear three years, and to its record of untiring and successful public service, I again appeal.
One word more on two minor matters which the purveyors of slanderous gossip, including Mr. Bancroft,
have made subjed of incidental misrepresentation,-the
allegations that Mr. Reed, when Adjutant General, stimulated local prejudices amongst the Continental troops,
especially at the expense of the New England levies;
and that there was an aEual interruption of friendly relations between General Washington and him, in consequence of a discovery said to have been made as to the




6
Lee  letter.   This fition  is, I believe, due  to  the
imagination of Mr. John C. Hamilton who, conscious
that between his ancestor and Washington there had
been a personal difference, in no sense creditable to the
younger man, conjured up this notion of a quarrel with
Mr. Reed.
The  first imputation is to be found in  a note  to
the Cadwalader pamphlet, and in a letter from Joseph
Trumbull, an aid of Charles Lee, which has been
recently and ostentatiously printed  in the "resurrection" of I863.*  Both of these I refer to, with the passing comment that John Adams, who is quoted, was
Doctor Rush's intimate friend, and that they were members of Congress when Mr. Reed was named as a Brigadier. The gossip is a curious confirmation of a remark
somewhere made by Mr. Jay, in writing to Washington
about Congress, that "there is as much intrigue as at
the Vatican, and  as much  secrecy as in a boarding
School."
The two charges, such as they are, shall be noticed in
order.
I. As to the New  England troops.  It is better on
* This Joseph Trumbull seems to have been possessed with the
spirit of se&ionalism.'It is said" he wrote on I8 November, 1776,
"that Mount Washington has surrendered. We don't yet learn particu D
lars. I am glad a Southern officer commanded. The story is not told
to his advantage here; be it as it may, we should not have heard the
last of it from Reed and some others of his stamp, if a New England
man had commanded."' The two'Southern' officers in command were
Magaw and Lambert Cadwalader, both Pennsylvanians,




117
this as on other questions, to allow Mr. Reed to make
his own defence. In a letter addressed to Congress on
the subject of military promotion, in the spring or summer following the events I have endeavoured to describe,
he used this language:
T"While the camp was stationary and danger at a distance, some crimes could not exist and others could not be
prevented or punished; but when the approach of the
enemy brought in the militia without any tincture of discipline; when the hurry of retreat or action made it difficult to go thro' the forms of trial, all restraints seemed to
be broken down. A spirit of desertion, cowardice, plunder
and shrinking from duty when attended with fatigue or
danger, prevailed but too generally thro' the whole army.
And why should I disguise any part of the truth by concealing that it was more conspicuous in one part of the
army than another? The Orderly Books and concurrent
testimony of the impartial and sensible officers, even
among themselves, will prove it. In this state of things
when military justice was in a great degree suspended,
and the discipline, the safety of the army, depended
upon the private virtue and *exertions of the officers,
rather than the coercion of Government, it cannot
be thought surprising that, in very populous States,
many should have got into offices and commissions, who
would prove unworthy of them in an hour of such severe trial,.and endanger the service and distress this Command. Answerable as I was for the safety of this army,




so far as it depended upon its guards-called by the duty
of my office and orders, ten times repeated, to exert
myself in preventing and punishing the great military
offences I have noted before-I did speak freely, tho'
generally in private, to such officers as failed in their duty
by absence from camp on pretence of sickness, and
brought to trial without favour, every officer or soldier
who was charged with cowardice, fraud, plunder of the
publick stores, or the poor inhabitants. There was not
a person in this wide Continent more anxious than myself to extinguish all distinEions except those which
merit and service create; but it is impossible-it is too
deeply rooted ever to be eradicated.  I thought it not
amiss to avail myself of what could not be remedied, and
endeavoured to draw emulation from that source.  The
ignorant, the timid and the lazy, convinced that I am not
vulnerable should they attempt to enter into particulars,
took occasion to charge me with creating disunion and division. Had my conversation embittered the mind of the
General, or private correspondence those of any members
of Congress-had it been the subje& of open invidious
comparison to officers of other Provinces, or even of private letters to my friends at home, there might be some
colour for the charge, but my soul is above such practices; what I said was to the faulty or their'friends,
openly and above all disguise, proceeding from an honest
tho' perhaps too zealous a hope of amendment on points,




II9
which if not amended, must, sooner or later, end in the
destru&ion of the Army, and finally of the cause itself."*
It is surely not necessary at this time of day to justify,
by evidence, language so clear and explicit.  Washington's  letters  are  full of it;  candid  New   England
historians  admit  the  existence  of  a  levelling  and
unmilitary spirit, and, if specific proof of the disorganization, to use a mild word, of some of the New
England  troops be  needed, I turn to the testimony,of Colonel Joseph Trumbull himself, the witness produced against Mr. Reed, who makes to his father, the
Governor, this revelation:
HONOURED SIR,
Enclosed I send you returns of some of the regiments of Connecticut Militia, under command of Major-General Wooster, such
as I can get; though I have called and called, again and again, for
them, I believe there is but one of them which is really true, that
is Major Brinsmade's, who seems to be the honestest man.  The
fadt is they cannot make their weekly and provision returns agree;
for this reason, they have made a number of brevet officers.
They doubt whether these officers will be allowed extra rations;
to avoid this, they return so many more men as to cover the extra rations for these officers. You'll see by adverting to these
returns that some companies have more officers than privates at
best; but not content with that, and instead of sending home
* "It is impossible for any one to have an idea of the complete
equality which exists between the officers and men who compose the
greater part of our troops. You may form some notion of it when I
tell you that yesterday morning a Captain of Horse, who attends the
General, was seen shaving one of his own men near the house." Le,taer to Mrs. Reed, OAoher I, 1776.




120
the officers who have very few men, and turning those men over
into other companies, they add brevet officers, not only to pick the
pockets of the public here, but also, by and by, these brevet officers
are to be dismissed from the militia rolls at home, and in a few
times more being called forth, there will be no militia left in the
State.*
On this head, I have no more to say.
II. The alienation from Washington.   This is more
plainly stated by Mr. John C. Hamilton than by any
other writer, tho' Mr. Bancroft takes up the strain.
Mr. Hamilton is the only one who enters into imaginary particulars-gives a reason for his assumed fats and
fixes an exad date-the month of November, 1780; as
to which, I merely observe that even a moderately
anxious inquirer after historical truth will need, and has
a right to require, better evidence to establish either
fads, dates, or theories, than  Mr. Hamilton's averments.  No one knows this better than Mr. Bancroft.
If, among the Hamilton papers or elsewhere, there
is a written word  confirmatory of this alienation and
its imputed  cause, the  Lee correspondence,  it can
easily be produced.  Till it is, I have a right to put
it in the category of unscrupulous defamations.   It
is certainly true that after November i780, the private correspondence of Washington  and  Reed, in a
measure, ceased, but any one who will take the trouble,
* 4th December, 1776. Forces' Archives, 5th Series, Vol. page 3,
1o73.




I21
as I have had occasion to do, to examine the Archives
of Pennsylvania while Mr. Reed was President, will see
how constant and unreserved the public correspondence
was, and I think it is clear from  an inspefion of Mr.
Sparks' work, that towards the close of the War, Washington's private correspondence with his friends everywhere very much diminished.  When, in August, I780,
President Reed marched to Trenton with the Pennsylvania Militia, his correspondence with his wife, printed in
my Memoir, indicated a transient uneasiness as to some
slight alienation on the part of General Washington.*
With this exception, I do not find the least trace of the
difference which the busy and malevolent men of this
day have insinuated, and am aware of no cause for anything of the kind. General Sullivan, between whom and
Mr. Reed, there appears not to have been a friendly feeling, had written accusatory letters to Washington in 1779,
but they evidently made no impression, for there were in
them allegations as to the Conway cabal, which Washington knew to be groundless.t  Mr. Reed had nothing whatever to do, diredly or indiredly, with the Conway cabal.
* Life of Reed, Vol. II., page 248. In I78I, writing to Greene,
President Reed said: "Washington complains of us all." (Id. pp. 358.)
Still later in the same year he writes: "The incessant mirepresentations and calumnies with resped to myself, and some unfriendly characters about him have raised prejudices, of what nature I cannot tell, but
this does not hinder my revering his chara&er and doing justice to his
merits and services. May he long and happily enjoy the laurels he has
acquired."  (Id. page 373.)
t Sparks.' "Letters to Washington," Vol. a, page 366, 280o.
i6




I22
His enemies, such as Do6Lor Rush, were deeply implicated in it. Late in November, I780, at least after the:z2d,
Mrs. Washington  was the guest of Mr. Reed.*  In
Odtober, 178I, Mr. Reed wrote to felicitate Washington
on his vi&ory over Cornwallis, and received the following reply:
Mount yernon, 15 November, i781.
DEAR SIR,
I have the honour to thank you most sincerely for your congratulations conveyed in your favour of the 27th ult.  That our
success against the enemy in the State of Virginia has been so
happily effected, and with so little loss-and that it promises
such favourable consequences, (if properly improved,) to the welfare and independence of the United States —is matter of very
pleasing refleCtion.  I beg you to be assured that I am, with perfedt regard and esteem
Dear Sir, your most obedient
Humble servant,
To HON. JOSEPH REED, ESQ.               GEO. WASHINGTON.t
* Voyage de Chaste/l/x, Vol. I., 6 I.
t In writing a formal letter to the Executive Council, Washington
said: c" I most sincerely thank you for your kind wishes for my personal
prosperity, and beg you to be assured that a full establishment of peace,
liberty and independence, to this and the other United States of America, is my most ardent wish." In March, 1782, the following item is
to be found in the Philadelphia newspapers: "Last Friday morning,
His Excellency General Washington left this City, attended by the
Honourable General Potter, Vice President of the State, General Reed,
the late President, a number of gentlemen, officers of the Army, and
also Captain Morris' Troop of City Light Horse." Freeman's Yoarnal,
27 March, 1782. When Washington resigned his commission at Anapolis, he said: "While I repeat my obligations to the Army in general,
I should do injustice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this
place the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the gentlemen




123
During the spring and summer of the next year, I am
aware of no correspondence, Washington being, from time
to time, in Philadelphia.  In  September, 1782, there
were two letters with reference to this Cadwalader controversy, which may here with propriety be inserted,
with no other comment than that they show, on one
side, the consciousness of innocence which frankly and
confidently appeals for justice, and on the other, the
friendly readiness with which the appeal was met. It
will be remembered that in General Cadwalader's reply
to Mr. Reed, not a word of comment is made on
Washington's letter.
REED TO WASHINGTON.
September I, 1782.
DEAR SIR,
After the services, sufferings, and anxieties of the winter of
1776, I little expeded that period would be sele6ted as the season
of my greatest reproach, and that I should stand publicly charged
with not only meditating, but adually expressing intentions of deserting to the enemy. Yet, sir, so it is; not mere newspaper abuse,
or transient report, but adually countenanced and supported by a
person of some rank and appearance in the world.  Having never
asked or received any public favour from Congress, conscious of
my own integrity, and deeply wounded with the cruel suggestion,
I must appeal to your justice and candour, and most earnestly request you would, by the bearer, who goes express for the purpose,
favour me with a few lines expressive of your sense of my conwho have been attached to my person during the War. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should
have been more fortunate."




1I24
du& in the fall and winter of the year i776; and particularly
whether you ever heard, or at any time entertained doubts of my
fidelity, and whether under the communications made to me
of our military operations, an apprehended treachery on my part
would not have made me a very dangerous charater.
I would farther beg you would permit my making use of sundry letters I have received from you, at a time when you appeared
to repose an unreserved confidence in me, and of which, I can
appeal to that God who knows the secrets of all hearts, I was
not (in point of integrity) unworthy.
As I never availed myself of your Excellency's friendship to
seek for honour or profit, or even for the reparation of losses
aaually sustained in the services I have the fullest confidence
that you will most cheerfully comply with this, to me, most interesting request; and should you descend to particulars, you
will be pleased to point them to the period which intervened
between our retreat from Hackensack, and the revival of our
affairs at Princeton.
My memory suggests to me a letter I wrote your Excellency from Bristol, containing reasons for an attack on the enemy;
if that letter can be obtained, I am persuaded it contains sentiments of a very different nature from those of which I complain,
and would be particularly useful.*
I shall make no other use of any communication I now have,
or you may favour me with, than to vindicate my own character
against the malignant imputation of intending a desertion to the
enemy. And am,
With the greatest respect,
Your Excellency's humble servant,
JOSEPH REED.
* This was the "Pomroy" letter, the history of which I have
already given —supra page 43,




I25
WASHINGTON TO REED.
Verplanck's Point, 15 September, I782.
DEAR SIR,
The appeal contained in your letter of the I ith inst. is equally
unexpected and surprising.
Not knowing the particular charges that are alleged against
you, it is impossible for me to make a specific reply, I can therefore only say in general terms that the employments you sustained
in the year I776, and in that period of the year when we experienced our greatest distresses are a proof that you was not suspected by me of infidelity, or want of integrity; for had the least
suspicion of the kind reached my mind, either from observation
or report, I should most assuredly have marked you out as a fit
object of resentment.
While on our retreat through Jersey, I remember your being
sent from Newark, to the Assembly of New Jersey, then sitting,
to rouse and animate them to spirited measures for our support;
and at the same time General Mifflin was sent to Pennsylvania
for the same purpose.  This employment was certainly a mark
of my confidence in you at that time.
Your conduct, so far as it came to my immediate notice,
during the short period we lay on the west bank of the Delaware,
appeared solicitous for the public good.  And your conduct at
Princeton evidenced a spirit and zeal, which to me appeared
laudable and becoming a man well affected to the cause we were
engaged in.
It is rather a disagreeable circumstance, to have private and
confidential letters, hastily written as all mine of that class
are, upon a supposition that they would remain between the parties only, produced as evidence in a matter of public discussion,
but conscious that my public and private sentiments, are at all
times alike, I shall not withhold these letters should vou think
them absolutely necessary to your justification.




i26
If I have in my possession any such letter as you particularly allude to, it is not at present with me-being in the field perfectly
light, I have divested myself of all papers, public and private; but
such of late date as I thought I might have occasion, in my present
situation, to refer to; the others remain at a considerable distance
from meo
I am, Dear Sir,
Your obedient and most humble servant,
G. WASHINGTON.
The Hon. Joseph Reed, Esq.
My work is now  done.  It has gone far beyond the
limits, which, when I began to write, I thought would
circumscribe it;  but it has grown on my hands, and
hoping to make an end of these inveterate slanders,
I have thought it best to deal with them in detail,
and to collate every item of historical evidence, however minute, that I know to exist. I do not hope to
have it said that these questions have been discussed in
a judicial spirit, for I am conscious of strong feelings
which may have affected my judgment.  But I am sure
that nothing has been intentionally overstated or misrepresented, and no evidence held back which was apparently adverse.  If I have been betrayed into asperity
of language, let it be borne in mind how dark are the
accusations made against my ancestor, that crimes are
imputed to him of the deepest hue of guilt, described in
the strongest language, and what stealthy and systematic
industry has been shown by the living purveyors of cal



127
umny, one and all, having for their aim to injure me and
mine. If, in anything I have been compelled to say,
pain has been given to the living, I mean the innocent
living, while it is a matter of great regret, let it be remembered, the re-awakening of these controversies is no
work of mine. For more than twenty years have I submitted in silence to periodical revivals of this poisonous rubbish of the past, and I now reluEantly present
to the public this vindication of the dead, in justice to
my family, and to the Truth of History.




128
POSTSCRIPT.
I have not thought it worth while to notice Mr. Bancroft's minute criticisms on my'Biography of Reed.'
Looking over the twenty years which have rolled by
since the Book was published, I am glad that ill nature
can deted so few mistakes. I am tempted however to
reproduce the opinions of five eminent American public men, of widely different chara&ers and positions,
which at the time gave me-then a young author-great
pleasure.
"For a grandson," wrote Albert Gallatin, "you are
very reserved and temperate in your estimation of your
ancestor's great name.  I can assure you, when I
entered public life in I790, his memory was most
enthusiastically revered by the party to which I was
attached, and I heard various true anecdotes and
several suggestions highly honourable to him. Amongst
the last was the general belief that the decisive march
from Trenton to Princeton was suggested by him. But
the great value of your Biography consists in the number of authentic fads and documents, now for the first
time published, and which throw much light on the general history of the Revolution."




FROM CHANCELLOR KENT.
Summit, Essex Co., l. _.. 9uly 9, I847.
DEAn  SIR.
I hope you will not take amiss this intrusive note from a
stranger.  My domicil is the City of New York, but I am here
in a country cottage with my family for the summer, and I have
just finished the earnest and interesting perusal of your "Life
and Correspondence of Joseph Reed," your paternal grandfather,
and I feel gratified for the pleasure and instruction you have
afforded me by your two volumes.  It is a most interesting and
admirable history of one of the ablest and purest of patriots of the
Revolution.  The portraits of President Reed, of Washington,
of Greene, are admirable, and they were three of the great aetors
in the great scenes of that day.  I want language to express my
sense of the;r illustrious merits.  Your volumes are written with
the greatest dignity and truth.  I purchased them as soon as they
were out and though I took with me Prescott's Peru, I have
passed it by as infinitely less interesting than your Memoir.  I
am a great admirer of contemporary history of these past events
with the perfect authenticity that original correspondence affords.
I am old enough to recollect vividly the historical events from
the battle of Lexington to the present day, and listened when
young to all the news, and rumours, and handbills, and newspapers that were shown and read through the early campaigns
of the American XVar, and I have the recollection and feelings
of a contemporary. I was driven from New Haven College on
the 5th of July, I779, and fled to my father's house at Fairfield.
The next morning, I saw it in flames caused by British incendiaries. I fled to the vicinity of Norwalk where my maternal
grandfather's house was burned, and even the humble school
house in which I was taught my earliest teachings. In 1781, I
left College and was placed in the office of Mr. Benson, the
Attorney General of the State, and there I saw from time to
time, and listened to the great men who visited there-such as
George Clinton, Washington, Hamilton, Lawrence, Schuyler,




Dana, Duane, &c., and imbibed the utmost veneration for such
charafers.  It is no wonder I take such a deep interest in such
works as yours-and so I did in' Gibbs' History of Federalism)
during the life of his grandfather, Oliver Wolcott, and in Judge
Burnet's History of the N. WV. Territory.  I consider yours
and such histories as monuments of the great men of the Revo —
lutionary Age.
Please excuse this perhaps impertinent narrative, and accept
my gratitude for the honour you have done your country, and
the pleasure you have afforded by the discharge of filial duty to
one of the best and most faultless men that took part in the
Revolution.
Believe me to be, with
the highest respect, Y'rs,
JAMEs KENT,
FROM JOHN SERGEANT OF PENNSYLVANIA.
" I have finished the first volume of the'Life and Correspondence,' and will be glad to have the second as soon as may be,
I have found it very interesting, and the interest to increase as I
have gone on.  It appears to me that the work will be likely to
take a strong hold, and I hope will repay you for your labour.
It is a curious history of the details, in their natural proportions,
of an eventful period, and of the aaual workings of men in
times of difficulty and dan ger, without exaggeration or colouringo
The chief figure cannot be said to be brought out,  It brings
out itself without any effort in the narrative for eeffea    I am
myself surprised at its stature and power as exhibited in a simple,
unaffected statement of facts, all authenticated by unquestioned
evidence~"
Mr. Calhoun, wrote to me from  Fort H ill, in South
Carolina, on the 6th of November, I847: 




"I have devoted my first leisure hours to the perusal of your
work, and have just finished it.  I am greatly indebted for the
information and pleasure it afforded.  It gives fuller and more
accurate information of some of the most important occurrences
of the Revolution, and of the character of many of the principal actors in that great drama.   High as my opinion was
of your distinguished ancestor, the perusal of this work has
raised him still higher in my estimation.  His letters are his best
eulogist, and will ever place him in the first rank of the great
men who achieved our Independence, for talent, integrity, devoted patriotism, and important services rendered to the cause and
country."
Lastly, from  Mr. Sparks, to whose kind offices I was
deeply indebted, and whose gentle and tolerant judgment
on all vexed historical questions is so strongly in contrast with the carping asperities of these times, I received
this characteristic note:
Cambridge, September 24, 1847.
"'I obtained a copy of your work as soon as it came out, and
looked it through, and read parts of it carefully. The opinion
which I had formed of the first volume was sustained to the end.
It is a valuable collection of new historical materials, and put together with singular good judgment, conveying clear and accurate impressions of characters and facts.  I know of no work
of this class of more successful execution.  In my opinion, it is
a model of historical biography. The moderation and candour
with which you have touched upon controverted points, or rather
the heats of local and temporary politics, must defeat all the aims
of ill natured criticism, if any are disposed to criticise in this
temper."




And he adds, speaking of the Cadwalader affair:
"I think you are quite wise in letting all those old matters
sleep. Your book will stand on its merits. It needs no props."
I hesitate to add the following which gratified me once,
but which has no value now:
"I must renew to you my thanks for your most valuable
volumes.   They form  the most important contribution to
American Revolutionary History which has been made for many
years. In performing a duty towards the memory of your ancestor, you have not failed to do a good service to your country.
Let me say again how much I am obliged to you for your
volumes, partly as a token of your regard, still more as an
American and a student of our history, happy in everything that
illustrates it so elaborately and so well."
Very truly,
Your obliged,
London, February Ist, I848.       GEORGE BANCROFT.
THE E NT DT