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Decisive Events in American History

THE

CAMPAIGN OF TRENTON

1776-77

BY

SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE

BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET
1895

COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
_All rights reserved_
THE CAMPAIGN OF TRENTON

PRESS OF
Rockwell and Churchill
BOSTON, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PRELUDE 7

I--NEW YORK THE SEAT OF WAR 11

II--PLANS FOR DEFENCE 19

III--LONG ISLAND TAKEN 26

IV--NEW YORK EVACUATED 33

V--THE SITUATION REVIEWED 43

VI--THE RETREAT THROUGH THE JERSEYS 50

VII--LEE'S MARCH AND CAPTURE 59

VIII--THE OUTLOOK 68

IX--THE MARCH TO TRENTON 79

X--TRENTON 89

XI--THE FLANK MARCH TO PRINCETON 94

XII--AFTER PRINCETON 108

PRELUDE

Seldom, in the annals of war, has a single campaign witnessed such a
remarkable series of reverses as did that which began at Boston in
March, 1776, and ended at Morristown in January, 1777. Only by
successive defeats did our home-made generals and our rustic soldiery
learn their costly lesson that war is not a game of chance, or mere
masses of men an army.

Though costly, this sort of discipline, this education, gradually led to
a closer equality between the combatants, as year after year they faced
and fought each other. When the lesson was well learned our generals
began to win battles, and our soldiers to fight with a confidence
altogether new to them. In vain do we look for any other explanation of
the sudden stiffening up of the backbone of the Revolutionary army, or
of the equally sudden restoration of an apparently dead and buried cause
after even its most devoted followers had given up all as lost. As with
expiring breath that little band of hunted fugitives, miserable remnant
of an army of 30,000 men, turning suddenly upon its victorious pursuers,
dealt it blow after blow, the sun which seemed setting in darkness,
again rose with new splendor upon the fortunes of these infant States.

Certainly the military, political, and moral effects of this brilliant
finish to what had been a losing campaign, in which almost each
succeeding day ushered in some ne