Life and Times of Washington, Volume 2: Revised, Enlarged, and EnrichedSchroeder, John Frederick
History
Life and Times of Washington, Volume 2: Revised, Enlarged, and Enriched
Schroeder, John Frederick
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Washington, George, 1732-1799
number of disaffected citizens were suffered to remain in the garrison;
these people were ever upon the watch and communicated to Washington
every intelligence he could wish for."
We have copied this passage from Stedman, with a view to show the
contrast between the situation of Washington and Howe and their
respective armies, as exhibited by an enemy to our cause. It is
literally the contrast between virtue and vice. The final result shows
that Providence in permitting the occupation of Philadelphia by the
British army was really promoting the cause of human liberty.
Stedman's statement of the numbers of Washington's army is erroneous,
even if it refers only to effective men, and his schemes for
annihilating Washington's army would probably not have been so easily
executed as he imagined. Still the army was very weak. Marshall says
that although the total of the army exceeded 17,000 men (February,
1778), the present effective rank and file amounted to only 5,012. This
statement alone suggests volumes of misery, sickness, destitution, and
suffering.
We must now call the reader's attention to the northern campaign of 1777
which, remote as it was from Washington's immediate scene of action, was
not conducted without his aid and direction.
1. Footnote: This was Lieut.-Col. Samuel Smith, of the Maryland line.
After serving in this perilous post at Fort Mifflin, he was made
general, and in that rank assisted in the defense of Baltimore in the
War of 1812. See Document [A] at the end of this chapter.
2. Footnote: Donop was a brave officer. He was found on the battlefield
by Captain Mauduit Duplessis, a talented French engineer, who had
assisted Greene in defense of the fort, and who attended the unfortunate
count on his death-bed till he expired, three days after the battle, at
the early age of thirty-seven. "I die," said he, in his last hour,
"a victim of my ambition, and of the avarice of my sovereign." A fine
commentary on the mercenary system of the German princes. The government
of Hesse Cassel quite recently caused the remains of Count Donop to be
removed from Red Bank, to be interred with distinguished honor in his
own country.
3. Footnote: Judge Marshall, the biographer of Washington, on whose
account of this affair ours is founded, was present on the occasion. He
served in the army from the beginning of the war; was appointed first
lieutenant in 1776, and captain in 1777. He resigned his commission in
1778, and, devoting himself to the practice of the law, subsequently
rose to the eminent office of Chief Justice of the United States. He
died at Philadelphia, July 6th, 1836, aged seventy-nine.
CHAPTER XII.
BURGOYNE'S INVASION OF NEW YORK PUNISHED BY SCHUYLER AND GATES. 1777.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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