MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY

VOL. V

JULY 1880

No. 1

THE ROUTE OF THE ALLIES FROM KING'S FERRY TO THE HEAD OF ELK

TH

I-THE CROSSING OF THE HUDSON

HE operations of the allied armies before New York in the months of July and August, 1781, thoroughly alarmed Sir Henry Clinton as to the safety of his position; even the heavy reinforcements received from Europe were not sufficient in his opinion to warrant any offensive movement against his enterprising enemies. Twice the defenses of the upper part of the island were approached almost to the muzzles of his guns. Twice the French and American armies were drawn up in line of battle inviting an engagement, and once their commanders, Washington and Rochambeau, with their staffs and an escort of cavalry rode down the northern front of the British position from its western outpost on the Hudson to its eastern batteries on the Harlem and the Sound. The American troops were no longer the untrained militia of the earlier years. The French contingent were veterans of hard contested fields. Discretion here seemed to Clinton the better part of valor.

Nor was Clinton wrong in his belief that New York was the true objective point of the movements of the allies. Washington himself did not definitely change his plans until the 14th August, when he received certain information that the Count de Grasse would be within a very short space of time at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a powerful army and land force. On this day he records in his diary that "matters having come to a crisis and a decisive plan to be determined on, he was obliged, from the shortness of Count de Grasse's promised stay on the coast, the apparent disinclination of the French naval officers to force the harbor of New York, the feeble compliance of the States with his requisitions for men hitherto and with prospect of no greater exertion in future, to give up the idea of attacking New York; and instead thereof, to remove the French troops and a detachment from the Ameri

can army to the Head of Elk, to be transported to Virginia for the purpose of coöperating with the force from the West Indies against the troops in that State." The next day he despatched a courier to the Marquis de Lafayette with the joyful news and directed him to be in perfect readiness to second his views and prevent, if possible, the retreat of Cornwallis towards the Carolinas.

In these words are found the first practical inception of the Yorktown campaign which was the alternative plan discussed by the allied commanders and from the time of the conference at Weathersfield, the desire of de Rochambeau. Later letters from Lafayette the next day brought information that Lord Cornwallis, with the troops from Hampton Roads, had proceeded up York River and landed at York and Gloucester where they were throwing up earth works.

While hastening the movement to which the happy coincidence of the imprudence of Cornwallis and the expected arrival of the French squadron promised brilliant and signal success, Washington neglected no measure to conceal his changed tactics. While heavy working parties were engaged in repairing roads over which the army was to move, and extensive ovens were built by the French at Chatham for the baking of bread for the troops, the roads leading toward Staten Island were also repaired in order to threaten a movement on New York by the flank, and confirm the opinion of Clinton that the French fleet would shortly be at the entrance of the harbor of New York.

The detachment from the American army, as Washington invariably terms it, was "composed of the Light Infantry under Colonel Scammel, consisting of two light companies from the York and two from the Connecticut line, the remainder of the Jersey line, two regiments of York, Hazen's regiment, and the regiment of Rhode Island, together with Lamb's regiment of artillery, with cannon and other ordnance for the field and siege." Hazen's was the regiment selected to divert the attention of the British commander. This was the regiment of Canadian volunteers. Thrown over directly from Dobbs' Ferry to Sneden's landing opposite, it was ordered with the Jersey troops to march and take post between Springfield and Chatham. This position also covered the French bakery, which was in full operation. The crossing was made on the 18th August. The same day the American Quartermaster-General was sent forward to King's Ferry, which Washington sets down in his own hand as "the only secure passage of the Hudson, to prepare for the rapid transportation of the troops. Marching orders were issued from the camp at Philipsburg on the

morning of the 19th. The light troops moved rapidly in advance, crossed King's Ferry in the night, and pushed forward immediately to Kakeat, where they went into camp. Washington, who went in advance of the army, halted at Haverstraw to look personally to the details of the crossing of the Hudson.

The head of the American column reached King's Ferry at ten o'clock on the morning of the 20th, and by the close of the 21st the entire force, with all their baggage, artillery and stores, were safely carried over, only a few wagons of the Commissary and QuartermasterGeneral's department remaining, which were detained to allow of the crossing of the French, some of whose artillery and part of the infantry arrived on the 21st. During the time occupied in this movement Washington mounted thirty flat boats, to carry about forty men each, upon carriages, as well with a design, as he wrote in his diary, "to deceive the enemy as to be useful in Virginia." On Wednesday, the 22d also, in General Orders, dated Haverstraw, he reminded the army of his explicit orders, issued on the 19th June, at the opening of the campaign, and again particularly charged it upon the detachment under the direction of General Lincoln that, as they were to "consider themselves as Light Troops, who are always supposed to be fit for immediate action, they should free themselves from every incumbrance which might interfere with the activity of the movement." The crossing of the French troops with their cavalry and heavy siege trains was a long and difficult operation. Notwithstanding the large number of ferryboats gathered by the indefatigable efforts of the American Quartermaster, their rear guard was not over until the 26th.

Before entering upon a relation of the route of the Allies in their southward march, a brief description of King's Ferry, the terminus of the famous old revolutionary road, may prove of interest. The colonial records of the State of New York make no mention of this river crossing. The communication between the two sides of the Hudson was slight until the strategic necessity of war made of the old road, as similar necessity has made of the thousand arteries of European travel, a military highway. It assumed its first prominence in history when Washington, after the check of the British at White Plains and North Castle, and the withdrawal of Sir William Howe and his baffled army to New York city, moved his army in the late autumn of 1776 across the Hudson, and began the policy of offensive defense which earned for him the name of the American Fabius. It lies at the foot of the western slope of the eminence known as Stony Point. Well does

this historic hill deserve its name. Heavy boulders of granite rock lie gaunt and rough upon the hills, scatterings of the glaciers which split the Hudson highlands and the palisades below, cleanly as with a chisel, in nature's grand impulsion, from the Polar platform to the sea. Nowhere on the Atlantic slope are such massive boulders to be found as here. They equal in size the deposits of the Alpine glaciers on the Savoy shore of the lake of Geneva, near the celebrated chestnut grove, and are more remarkable in their distance from the elevations from which they were detached and hurled.

In the struggle to obtain control of the North River, the northern division line of the colonies, the importance of Stony Point was early recognized by the commanders of the contending armies. In his solicitude for the safety of the Highlands, Washington undertook its defense, notwithstanding his limited resources in men and material, but the prosecution of the unfinished work was interrupted by the formidable movement, led by Sir Henry Clinton in person, and was abandoned to his superior force on the last day of May, 1779. Fort Lafayette, on Verplanck's Point, the terminus of the ferry on the east side of the Hudson, was surrendered a few days later, and Clinton at once strengthened the two posts, a movement which Washington considered one of the best of the enemy. King's Ferry he pronounced, in a letter to his friend, Fitzhugh of Maryland, written from New Windsor, at this period, "as the best, indeed for us the only passage of the river below the Highlands." Washington, anticipating an immediate attempt to force the passage of the Highlands, at once broke up his encampment at Middlebrook, and shifted his headquarters to New Windsor. Sir Henry Clinton showed no disposition, however, to try conclusions in the fastnesses above, and shortly withdrew his main body to New York city, leaving, however, a strong garrison in the works. The gallant surprise and capture of the post by Mad Anthony Wayne with his light infantry on the night of the 15th July was fully commemorated on its recent centennial anniversary. Too weak to garrison the post, Washington contented himself with razing the works and removing the guns. Sir Henry Clinton in turn sent up a strong force, which took possession of the fort, and followed with his whole army, in the hope of drawing Washington to a general engagement on disadvantageous ground, but Washington was not to be drawn into action, except at times and on ground of his own choosing. The British repaired the works, but soon abandoned them; Sir Henry Clinton advising Lord George Germaine on the 21st August that he had not troops enough without hazard and difficulty to main

tain them during the winter," and on the 1st November Washington is found writing to Pendleton that Stony Point," which has been a bone of contention the whole campaign, and the principal business of it on the part of the enemy, is now wholly evacuated by them." In the spring of 1780 the posts were re-established by Washington to control the water communication against temporary interruption, and during the summer held by militia, who were ordered to withdraw on the first appearance of the enemy in force, and to remove the cannon. No further attempts were however made by the British commanders, and the post remained in undisputed possession of the Americans till the close of the war.

Verplanck's Point opposite is about eight miles below Peekskill, whose rocky passes form the impregnable eastern gateway of the Hudson Highlands. The point itself is the extremity of a peninsula of land which gently slopes from the higher ground behind to the water's edge. This has always been the eastern terminus of King's Ferry.

The curious enquirer, however, would find it difficult to ascertain the exact location of the western landing from any printed authority, and as difficult from any tradition of the neighborhood. Dr. Lossing, the very best authority on all questions of revolutionary topography, does not precisely designate it. There are known to have been three different landing places on the western shore of the Hudson. The one at which Dr. Lossing crossed while engaged in researches for his Field Book, the vade mecum of historic enquirers, was the middle one of the three, and the second in age; it is at the foot of a steep hill about a quarter of a mile by the river shore from Stony Point; there are remains of the masonry of a narrow causeway; the third and last is still further to the northward about a quarter of a mile to the north of Stony Point at the mouth of a small creek, which flows into the Hudson, but the old King's Ferry was at the very foot of the Stony Point eminence. Here, not far distant from it, jutting into the stream, and to the northward, under the protection of its sheltering flank, lies a miniature cove with a hard graveled shore, which is known by the name of Teneyck's Beach; the Teneycks having had an imprescriptible right to this ferriage from colonial time immemorial. The stone foundations and heavy bulwarks of the old dock still mark the landing, but the place is better known in the neighborhood from the enormous willow tree which grows at the water's edge and deserves to be mentioned among the most famous American trees. It is a wonderful specimen of the Pollard variety and perfect in dome-like form. Its branches hang almost to the ground. Its sufficient, abundant and close foliage is imper