Chapter IX: ```"Thou desolate and dying year! (3)

On the 19th of February, Stirling, St. Clair, Lincoln, Mifflin, and Stephen were commissioned as major generals; while Arnold, on account of his conduct at Montreal, where he obeyed the injunction "put money in thy purse," at the expense of honor and honesty, was overlooked. This soured him, and doubtless planted the first noxious seed of treason in his heart. During the spring, eighteen new brigadiers *** were commissioned. Four regiments of horse were enlisted, under Colonels Bland, Baylor, Sheldon, and Moylan. Cadwallader and Reed were both, in turn, offered the general command of the horse, but declined. Timothy Pickering was appointed adjutant general in the place of Joseph Reed, who had resigned. Mifflin remained at the head of the quarter-master's department, which was regulated, and more thoroughly organized by the appointment of subalterns.

Congress attempted to reorganize the commissary department, and claimed the right to make subordinate appointments. So much did this new arrangement interfere with the efficiency of the department, that Joseph Trumbull, Jun., commissary general, resigned. The meddling of Congress with the smaller appointments and the minute affairs of chief officers in the various departments of the army, was very mischievous in effect; for the personal friends of members of that body, often incompetent, were appointed to places requiring talent, energy, and honesty. On the whole, however, the army was upon a better footing in the spring of 1777 than it had ever been.

I visited Princeton and the battle-grounds subsequently to my tarry at Trenton when on my way south. It was a very cold evening in December when I arrived there [[December 12, 1849]]from Philadelphia, the snow about ten inches deep upon the ground. Early the next morning, in company with Colonel Cumming of Princeton, who kindly offered to accompany me, I rode first to the battle-ground and Clark's house, where General Mercer died, and made the sketch on page 236. The air was very keen, and the snow half-kneedeep, circumstances which were quite unfavorable to deliberate sketching in the open fields. I persevered, however, and was successful in delineating such objects as I desired. From Clark's house we crossed the fields to the Quaker meeting-house, and then rode to the bridge at Worth's Mills, where I made the sketch on page 238. Returning to Princeton on the old Trenton road, we met Mr. Worth, an aged man, and present proprietor of

* William Shippen was a graduate of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, in the class of 1754. He completed his medical education at Edinburgh. He delivered the first lectures on anatomy ever pronounced in America, at Philadelphia, in 1764; and on the finishing of the medical school in that city, he was appointed its first professor of anatomy, in 1765. He first addressed ten students; * he lived to address two hundred and fifty at one time. He was appointed director general of the medical department on the 11th of April, 1777. He resigned his professorship in the medical college, in 1806, into the hands of his colleague, Dr. Wistar. Dr. Shippen died at Germantown, July the 11th, 1808, aged seventy-four years.

* James Craik was a native of Scotland. He accompanied Washington in the expedition against the French and Indians in 1754; and in 1755 was with Braddock, and assisted in dressing his wounds. He was director general of the hospital at the, siege of Yorktown, in 1781. After the war, Washington invited him to settle near Mount Vernon, and he was the physician of the patriot chief until his death. He died in Fairfax county, Virginia, February 6, 1814, aged eighty-three years.

* These were Poor, of New Hampshire; Glover, Paterson, and Learned, of Massachusetts; Varnum, of Rhode Island; Jedediah Huntington, of Connecticut; George Clinton, ol New York; Wayne, De Hass, Cadwallader, Hand, and Reed, of Pennsylvania; Weeden, Muhlenburg, Woodford, and Scott, of Virginia; Nash, of North Carolina; and Conway, an Irishman by birth, but a Frenchman by education.

* Dr. Shippen experienced a great deal of persecution when he first commenced his lectures on anatomy, a good deal of feeling against him having been excited by the utterance of horrid tales respecting his dissections. The public mind was filled with ideas such as made the burden of the Ghost's Complaint:

"The body-snatchers! they have come
Don't go to weep upon my grave,
And made a snatch at me;
And think that there I be;
It's very hard them kind of men
They haven't left an atom there
Won't let a body be!
Of my anatomy!"

[[[Morven, Stockton's Estate.--Desolated by the British.--Sufferings and Death of the Owner.--Annis Stockton.]]]

{242}the mill, who gave me a narrative of events there, substantially as related. We stopped at Morven, in the suburbs of Princeton. This is the homestead estate of Commodore Stockton, and the residence, during the Revolution, of his paternal grandfather, Richard Stockton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

There, affluence and taste lent its power in dispensing its blessings to the poor, and in creating the joys of social intercourse, before the Revolution; there, suffering and woe held terrible rule after Cornwallis and his army swept over the plains of New Jersey. Like others of the signers of the great Declaration, Mr. Stockton was marked for peculiar vengeance by the enemy. So suddenly did the flying Americans pass by in the autumn of 1776, and so soon were the Hessian vultures and their British companions on the trail, that he had barely time to remove his family to a place of safety before his beautiful mansion was filled with rude soldiery. The house was pillaged; the horses and stock were driven away; the furniture was converted into fuel; the choice old wines in the cellar were drank; the valuable library and all the papers of Mr. Stockton were committed to the flames, and the estate was laid waste. The plate had been hastily buried in the woods, in boxes. A treacherous servant revealed their place of concealment, and two of the boxes were disinterred and rifled of their contents; the other was saved. ** Mr. Stockton and his family took refuge with a friend in Monmouth county. His place of concealment was discovered by a party of refugee Loyalists, who entered the house at night, dragged him from his bed, and, treating him with every indignity which malice could invent, hurried him to Amboy, and from thence to New York, where he was confined in the loathsome provost jail. There he suffered dreadfully; and when, through the interposition of Congress, he was released, his constitution was hopelessly shattered, and he did not live to see the independence of his country achieved. He died at Morven, in Princeton, in February, 1781, blessed to the last with the tender and affectionate attentions of his Annis, whom he called "the best of women." *** Night and day she was at his bed-side, and when his spirit was about to depart, she wrote, impromptu, several verses, of which the following is indicative of her feelings:=

```"Oh, could I take the fate to him assign'd,

````And leave the helpless family their head,

```How pleased, how peaceful to my lot resign'd.

````I'd quit the nurse's station for the bed!"=

Morven is a beautiful spot, and, hallowed by such associations, it is exceedingly attractive to the resident and stranger.

* This sketeh is from the lawn in front, which is shaded by venerable pines and other ornamental trees. The mansion stands upon level grounds, beautifully laid out, having carriage entrances from the street. Every thing was covered with snow when I was there, and dreariness prevailed where summer charms delight the visitor.

** Mrs. Ellett, in an interesting biography of Annis Stockton, the wife of the signor, says that Mrs. Field, her daughter, now residing in Princeton, has several pieces of silver that were in this box. She also relates that when Mrs. Stockton (who was quite a literary lady) heard of the destruction of the library, she remarked that there were two books in it she would like to have saved--the Bible, and Young's Night Thoughts. Tradition says that these two books were the only ones left. Mrs. Field has in her possession the original portraits of her father and mother. Both were pierced with bayonets.--Women of the Revolution, iii., 16.

*** A biographical sketeh of Mr. Stockton may be found among those of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, printed in the Appendix. His portrait is in the frontispiece of this volume.

[[[Nassau Hall.--Governor Belcher's Donation.--Rittenhouse's Planetarium.--Life of its Inventor.]]]

{243}Nassau Hall, the principal edifice of the College of New Jersey, is a spacious building, one hundred and seventy-six feet long, fifty wide, and four stories high, built of stone. It was erected in 1757. The college was commenced by Jonathan Dickinson, in Elizabethtown, and was first incorporated in 1756. Governor Belcher was one of its earliest and most efficient patrons. He made "generous donation of his library of books, * with other valuable ornaments," to the college; and, upon his recommendation, Nassau Hall was so called in memory "of the glorious King William the Third, who was a branch of the illustrious house of Nassau." The Hall stands in the center of spacious grounds, fronting on the principal street in Princeton. The edifice on the left of Nassau Hall, containing the college library and the philosophic hall, was erected after a conflagration in 1802. The library contains about eight thousand volumes, and the libraries of two societies of the institution about four thousand more, making twelve thousand volumes. There is also a mineralogical cabinet, a museum of natural history, and a fine collection of drawings made for the purpose of elucidating lectures on astronomy and architecture. There is also a good collection of philosophical apparatus there, which includes that wonderful piece of scientific mechanism, the planetarium of Doctor David Rittenhouse. ** Through the politeness of Professor MacLean, I was permitted to examine its construction, and view the wonderful precision with which the machinery performed its difficult functions. On the front is inscribed,

"INVENTED

BY DAVID RITTENHOUSE, A.D. 1768;

REPAIRED AND EXTENDED BY HENRY VOIGHT,

1806;

BOTH OF PHILADELPHIA."

Dr. Gordon, writing in 1790, says of this planetarium, "There is not the like in Europe. An elegant and neatly-ornamented frame rises perpendicular near upon eight feet, in the front of which you are presented, in three several apartments, with a view of the celestial system, the motions of the planets around the sun, and the satellites about the planets. The wheels, &c., that produce the movement are behind the wooden perpendicular frame in which the orrery is fixed. By suitable contrivances, you in a short time tell the eclipses of the sun and moon for ages past and ages to come; the like in other cases of astronomy." It is said that it was Lord Cornwallis's intention to carry this planetarium away, and take it to England with him; but the Americans kept him too busily engaged in affairs of greater personal moment, while in Princeton, to permit him to plunder the college of this great treasure. This intention on the part of an enemy was not as reprehensible as the proposition which Silas Deane, the American commissioner, made, who suggested the propriety of presenting it to the French government as a bonus for its good will!

I have mentioned that the first cannon-ball which entered Nassau Hall, when Washington opened a fire upon it, passed through the portrait of George the Second, and destroyed it. The frame was uninjured, and left suspended upon the wall. It is alleged that Wash-

* It consisted of four hundred and seventy-four volumes, many of them very rare and of great value. The Hall being used alternately by the American and British troops during the war, a large portion of the books were purloined or destroyed. The few that remained were destroyed by fire in 1802, when the Hall was burned, leaving nothing but the strong walls, which were not materially injured by the fire.

* David Rittenhouse was born near Germantown, Pennsylvania, on the 8th of April, 1732. His ancestors were from Holland. His early life was spent in agricultural pursuits, and was marked by a love of mathematical studies. Feeble health would not allow him to pursue the labor of a farm, and he became, by self-instruction, a proficient clock and mathematical instrument maker. It was while working at his trade he planned and executed his orrery, a piece of mechanism far superior, for its intended purposes, to any thing before constructed. It was purchased by the College of New Jersey. Another was made by him, after the same model, for the College of Philadelphia. He pursued his trade in that city for several years. His first philosophical publication was an account of his calculations of the transit of Venus, as it was to happen on the 3d of June, 1769. He observed the phenomenon, a spectacle never seen but twice before by an inhabitant of earth, and he was so much affected by its proof of the accuracy of his calculations, that he fainted. He was engaged in government surveys, fixing territorial boundaries, &c., during the Revolution, and became one of the leading practical philosophers of the day. On the death of Franklin in 1791, he was chosen president of the Philosophical Society, which office he held by annual election until his death. He was treasurer of Pennsylvania from 1777 to 1789. In 1792 he was appointed director of the Mint of the United States, but his ill health compelled him to resign the office in 1795. He died on the 26th of June, 1796, aged sixty-four years. His birth-place is yet standing, a mile west of Germantown.

[[[Portraits of Washington and Mercer by Peale.--Character of the College of New Jersey.--White Hall.]]]

{244}ington, in order to make good to the college the damage sustained by the cannonade, made the trustees a present, from his private purse, of two hundred and fifty dollars, which sum they, expended in procuring a full-length portrait of the eommander-in-chief.

It was painted by Charles Wilson Peale, and occupies the identical frame in which hung the king's portrait. The annexed sketch is an outline of this interesting picture. In the back-ground is seen Nassau Hall, and in the middle and fore-ground a sketch of the battle of Princeton, in which the death of Mercer is represented.

The portrait of Mercer there given was painted from his brother, who sat for it, and who greatly resembled him. It was considered a good likeness by those who knew the general. The portrait given below I copied from Peale's picture, in which I have preserved the languid expression of a wounded man, as given him by the artist. On the left is seen a portion of the skirt of Washington's coat, and his chapeau. Many pleasing memories crowd upon the mind of the visitor to this aneient seat of learning, where so large a number of the active young men of the Revolution who lived in the Middle States were educated.

Under the guidance of the learned and patriotic Dr. Witherspoon, who in the pulpit, academic hall, or legislative forum, was the champion of good, it was the nursery of patriots. He was a lineal descendant of John Knox, the great English reformer, and, like that bold ancestor, he never shrunk from the post of danger, if called to it by duty. Like _Yale_ under Daggett, and _Harvard_ under Langdon, the _College of New Jersey_, under Witherspoon, made its influence felt in the council and the field during the war for independence.

Of the meetings of Congress at Princeton in 1783, and the Farewell Address of General Washington to the armies [[November 2, 1783]] of the United States, written at Rocky Hill, a a few miles distant, I shall hereafter write. Let us now return to Trenton.

As I hoped and anticipated, the storm that came down so furiously, on my return from M'Conkey's Ferry, subsided during the night, and the morning sun came forth, only half hidden by broken clouds. Accompanied by Mr. Smythe, my companion on the previous day when I visited the ferry, I went out early to view and sketch localities of interest about Trenton, all of which are given in preceding pages, except "White Hall," a large stone building, standing on the south side of Front Street. This was used for barracks by the Hessians during their occupancy of Trenton in 1776.

[[[The Floral Arch in Honor of Washington.--His Triumphal Journey.--His Reception by the Ladies at Trenton.]]]

{245}I called upon Stacey G. Potts, Esq., who kindly permitted me to copy a picture in his possession, painted by G. W. Flagg, and illustrating the interesting scene of the capture of Emily Gieger, an incident of one of Greene's Southern campaigns. The picture and narrative will be found in another part of this work. Mr. Potts informed me that the floral arch erected in honor of Washington, while on his way from Mount Vernon to New York city to take the oath of office as President of the United States, was erected upon the bridge over the Assanpink, close by the "Stacey Mill," seen in the picture on page 233. The arch was preserved on the premises of the Misses Barnes, near the Episcopal church in Warren Street, until 1824, when it was placed in front of the State House to grace the reception of La Fayette. Remains of the arch, when I visited Trenton, were in the possession of Dr. Francis Ewing of that city, and supported the branches of a venerable rose-bush in his garden. With a notice of the events connected with that arch we will close the historic volume and bid adieu to Trenton.

The journey of Washington from Mount Vernon to New York was like a triumphal march. He had hardly left his porter's lodge, when he was met by a company of gentlemen from Alexandria, who escorted him to that town. Every where the people gathered to see him as he passed along the road, and every town sent out its first citizens to meet him on his approach. Entertainments were given in his honor, and public addresses were received by him and answers returned. Militia companies escorted him from place to place, and his approach to the principal cities was announced by the firing of cannon and the ringing of bells. At Trenton, his reception was of a peculiar nature, full of pure sentiment and the most loyal patriotism. There, a little more than twelve years before, one of his most brilliant military feats was achieved, and it was a fitting place for an unusual display of respect and reverence. The ladies took the matter in hand, and upon Trenton Bridge they caused to be erected an areh, which they adorned with laurel leaves and flowers from the forests and their hot-houses, and the first spring contributions from their gardens. Upon the crown of the arch, in large letters, formed of leaves and flowers, were the words "December 26th, 1776 and on the sweep beneath was the sentence, also formed of flowers, "The Defender of the Mothers will be the Protector of the Daughters." Beneath this arch the president elect was obliged to pass on entering Trenton. There he was met by a troop of females. On one side a row of little girls, dressed in white, and each bearing a basket of flowers, were arranged; on the other side stood a row of young ladies similarly arrayed, and behind them were the married ladies. The moment Washington and his suite approached the arch, the little girls began to strew flowers in the road, and the whole company of the fair sang the following ode, written for the occasion by Governor Howell: * =

````"Welcome, mighty chief, once more

````Welcome to this grateful shore.

````Now no mercenary foe

````Aims again the fatal blow--

`````Aims at thee the fatal blow=

````"Virgins fair and matrons grave,

````Those thy conquering arm did save,

````Build for thee triumphal bowers.

````Strew, ye fair, his way with flowers-"

`````Strew your hero's way with flowers!"=

After passing the arch, the general turned his horse's head toward the choir, and listened to this tribute of sweet voices with much emotion. After receiving the salutations of the citizens, Washington handed to the Reverend J. F. Armstrong a note acknowledging his

* Governor Richard Howell was a native of Delaware. He commanded a New Jersey regiment from 1776 to 1779, when, in consequence of a new arrangement of the army, he resumed the profession of the law. In 1788 he was appointed clerk of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, which office he held until June, 1793, when he was chosen governor of the state. To this office he was elected eight years successively. He died, April 28th, 1802, aged forty-seven years.

[[[Interest of the Scene.--Washington's Note to the Ladies.--Reflections.--Grave of Mr. Armstrong.]]]

{246}obligations to the ladies of Trenton. * The whole scene was one of exceeding interest. A hundred-fold more glorious was that arch, erected by such hands, to greet the presence of such a hero, than the gorgeous triumphal arches under which passed the blood-stained Roman conquerors, with their pageants of misery, and the rich spoils of desolated kingdoms. It was the tribute of the pure in heart to the truly great--=

```"Great, not like Cæsar, stain'd with blood,

````But only great as he was good."=

* The following is a copy of the note: "General Washington can not leave this place without expressing his acknowledgments to the matrons and young ladies who received him in so novel and grateful a manner at the triumphal arch in Trenton, and for the exquisite sensation he experienced in that affecting moment. The astonishing contrast between his former and actual situation at the same spot, the elegant taste with which it was adorned for the present occasion, and the innocent appearance of the white-robed, choir who met him with the congratulatory song, has made such an impression upon his remembrance as, he assures them, will never be effaced. "Trenton, April 21, 1789."

* This note was read to the ladies, who were called together at the house of Judge Smith, and then deposited in the hands of that gentleman's wife. It passed into the hands of Miss Lydia Imlay, his adopted daughter, who preserved it with great care until just before her death, when she gave it to the late Chief-justice Ewing. It was placed in a handsome frame, and is now a precious relic in possession of his family. The grave of Mr. Armstrong is in the old burial-ground of the Presbyterian church at Trenton. Upon his plain monument is the following inscription: "Sacred to the memory of the Rev. James Francis Armstrong, thirty years a pastor of the church at Trenton, in union with the church at Maidenhead. Born in Maryland of pious parents, he received the elements of his classical education under the Rev. John Blair, finished his collegiate studies in the College of New Jersey, under the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, and was licensed to preach the Gospel in the year 1777. An ardent patriot, he served through the War of Independence as chaplain. In 1790 he was chosen a trustee of the College of New Jersey. A warm and constant friend, a devout Christian, a tender husband and parent, steady in his attentions on the judicatories of the Church, throughout life he was distinguished as a fervent and affectionate minister of the Gospel, and resigned his soul to his Creator and Redeemer on the 19th of January, 1816. 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.' Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus."

[[[Departure from Trenton.--Buck's County.--St. Tammany.--Old Villages.--Frankford.]]]

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