Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small]

Inefficient State of the Army. - Maraud of Delancey. Death of Colonel Greene. Arrival of the Count de Barras. - French Naval Force expected. - Interview of Washington and De Rochambeau at Weathersfield. - Plan of Combined Operations. - Financial Arrangement of Robert Morris. Scheme to attack the Works on New York Island and capture Delancey's Corps. - Encampments of American and French Armies in Westchester County. - Reconnoitering Expeditions.

[ocr errors]

HILE affairs were approaching a crisis

in Virginia, troubles were threatening from the North. There were rumors of invasion from Canada; of war councils and leagues among the savage tribes; of a revival of the territorial feuds between New York and Vermont. Such, however, was the deplorable inefficiency of the military system, that though, according to the resolves of Congress, there were to have been thirty-seven thousand men under arms at the beginning of the year, Washington's whole force on the Hudson in the month of May did not amount to seven thousand men, of whom little more than four thousand were effective.

He still had his head-quarters at New Windsor, just above the Highlands, and within a few miles of West Point. Here he received intelli

BRITISH FORAY AGAINST COL. GREENE. 315

gence that the enemy were in force on the opposite side of the Hudson, marauding the country on the north side of Croton River, and he ordered a hasty advance of Connecticut troops in that direction.

The Croton River flows from east to west across Westchester County, and formed, as it were, the barrier of the American lines. The advanced posts of Washington's army guarded it, and by its aid, protected the upper country from the incursions of those foraging parties and marauders which had desolated the neutral ground below it. The incursions most to be guarded against were those of Colonel Delancey's loyalists, a horde of tories and refugees which had their stronghold in Morrisania, and were the terror of the neighboring country. There was a petty war continually going on between them and the American outposts, often of a ruthless kind. Delancey's horse and Delancey's rangers scoured the country and swept off forage and cattle from its fertile valleys for the British army at New York. Hence they were sometimes stigmatized by the opprobrious appellation of Cow Boys.

The object of their present incursion was to surprise an outpost of the American army sta tioned near a fordable part of the Croton River not far from Pine's Bridge. The post was com manded by Colonel Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, the same who had successfully defended Fort Mercer on the Delaware, when assailed by Count Donop. He was a valuable officer, highly

prized by Washington. The enterprise against his post was something like that against the post of Young's House; both had been checks to the foragers of this harassed region,

Colonel Delancey, who led this foray, was successor to the unfortunate André as adjutant-general of the British army. He conducted it secretly, and in the night, at the head of a hundred horse and two hundred foot. The Croton was forded at daybreak, just as the night-guard had been withdrawn, and the farm-houses were surprised and assailed in which the Americans were quartered. That occupied by Colonel Greene and a brother officer, Major Flagg, was first surrounded. The major started from his bed, and discharged his pistols from a window, but was sho. through the head, and afterwards dispatched by cuts and thrusts of the sabre.

The door of Greene's room was burst open. He defended himself vigorously and effectively with his sword, for he had great strength, but he was overpowered by numbers, cut down, and barbarously mangled. A massacre was going on in other quarters. Besides these two officers, there were between thirty and forty killed and wounded, and several made prisoners.

It

It is said that Colonel Delancey was not present at the carnage, but remained on the south side of the Croton to secure the retreat of his party. may be so; but the present exploit was in the spirit of others by which he had contributed to harry this beautiful region, and made it a "bloody ground." No foes so ruthless had the American

DEATH OF COLONEL GREENE. 317

patriots to encounter as their own tory countrymen in arms.

Before the troops ordered out by Washington arrived at the post, the marauders had made a precipitate retreat. They had attempted to carry off Greene a prisoner, but he died within three quarters of a mile of the house. His captors,

as they passed by the farm-houses, told the inhabitants that, should there be any inquiry after the colonel, they had left him dead at the edge of the woods.1

Greene was but forty-four years of age at the time of his death, and was a model of manly strength and comeliness. A true soldier of the Revolution, he had served at Lexington and Bunker's Hill; followed Arnold through the Kennebec wilderness to Quebec; fought under the walls of that city; distinguished himself by his defense of Fort Mercer on the Delaware, and by his kind treatment of his vanquished and wounded antagonist, Colonel Donop. How different the treatment experienced by him at the hands of his tory countrymen !

The commander-in-chief, we are told, heard with anguish and indignation the tragical fate of this his faithful friend and soldier. On the subsequent day, the corpse of Colonel Greene was brought to head-quarters, and his funeral solemnized with military honors and universal grief.1

At this juncture, Washington's attention was

1 Letter of Paymaster Hughes. See Bolton's Westchester Co., vol. ii. p. 94.

2 Lee's Memoirs of the War, vol. 1. p. 457.

called in another direction. A frigate had arrived at Boston, bringing the Count de Barras, to take command of the French naval force. He was a veteran about sixty years of age, and had commanded D'Estaing's vanguard, when he forced the entrance of Newport harbor. The count brought the cheering intelligence, that an armament of twenty ships of the line, with land forces, was to sail, or had sailed, from France, under the Count de Grasse for the West Indies, and that twelve of these ships were to relieve the squadron at Newport, and might be expected on the coast of the United States in July or Aagust.

The Count de Rochambeau, having received dispatches from the court of France, now requested an interview with Washington. The latter appointed Weathersfield in Connecticut for the purpose; and met the count there on the 22d of May, hoping to settle a definitive plan of the campaign. Both as yet were ignorant of the arrival of Cornwallis in Virginia. The policy of a joint expedition to relieve the Carolinas was discussed. As the French ships in Newport were still blockaded by a superior force, such an expedition would have to be made by land. A march to the Southern States was long and harassing, and always attended with a great waste of life. Such would certainly be the case at present, when it would have to be made in the heat of summer. The difficulties and expenses of land transportation, also, presented a formidable objection.

On the other hand, an effective blow might be struck at New York, the garrison having been

« AnteriorContinuar »