Chapter XVI: From Germantown to Valley Forge

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS

The story opens in the year 1777, during one of the most critical periods of the Revolution. Hadley Morris, our hero, is in the employ of Jonas Benson, the host of the Three Oaks, a well-known inn on the road between Philadelphia and New York. Like most of his neighbors, Hadley is an ardent sympathizer with the American cause. When, therefore, he is intrusted with a message to be forwarded to the American headquarters, the boy gives up, for the time, his duties at the Three Oaks and sets out for the army. Here he remains until after the fateful Battle of Brandywine. On the return journey he discovers a party of Tories who have concealed themselves in a woods in the neighborhood of his home. By approaching cautiously to the group around the fire, Hadley overhears their plan to attack his uncle for the sake of the gold which he is supposed to have concealed in his house. With the assistance of Colonel Knowles, who, although a British officer, seems to have taken a liking to Hadley, our hero successfully thwarts the Tory raid. No sooner is the uncle rescued, however, than he ungratefully shuts the door upon his nephew. Thereupon Hadley immediately returns to the American army and joins the forces under that dashing officer, “Mad Anthony” Wayne. In the disastrous night engagement at Paoli our hero is left upon the battlefield wounded. In this condition he is found by his old friend, Lafe Holdness, the American scout, who treats the wound so skillfully that our hero is enabled to return home. But not for long. No sooner is he strong enough to ride than he again sets out for the army, which is just then preparing for that terrible winter at Valley Forge.

Hadley slept that night at a friendly farmer’s, some miles to the north of Germantown. A large force of British were quartered about where Washington’s army lay the first day the boy had crossed the river and made his way to the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters with the dispatches so nearly lost by the wounded courier. As far as he could learn, the Americans still rested at Skippack Creek, to which locality they had retired after the enemy entered Philadelphia.

He made a long detour the next morning to avoid the Germantown outposts, but fell in with a foraging party of Continentals before noon, and was near to losing his horse. But he was not so afraid of these marauders now as he had been the night he was halted on the Germantown road and his dispatches seized. So, after an argument with these fellows and the mention of Colonel Cadwalader’s name, he got away, with directions regarding the shortest path to headquarters. He was halted a good many times before he found the Pennsylvania troops; but the pickets saw that he was a recruit and let him through without trouble.

He found John Cadwalader with General Wayne, and was able to obtain speech with him without dismounting from his horse, as the officers were about starting on a tour of inspection through the camp. “And you want to see more fighting, do you, my lad--and your wound not healed yet?” said the colonel. “What good d’ye think a wounded man will be to us?”

“But I’m all right on horseback, and I’ve brought my horse,” Hadley declared.

“I wish we had more such fellows--and as eager to fight, Colonel,” said General Wayne. “He’s but a boy, too!”

“And how about the promise to your mother, Master Morris?” queried the other officer.

“My uncle has cast me off for carrying dispatches, and for being in the Paoli fight, where I got wounded,” the boy said, sadly. “I can do nothing for him now. So I have come to do what I can.”

“Well, well. I will speak to His Excellency about you. There is a certain long-legged Yankee hereabout who, if I mistake not, has been inquiring for you through the camp.”

“Lafe Holdness!” exclaimed Hadley.

“The same. He said he knew you had got away from Philadelphia; but where you had gone was another matter, and one of which he was not cognizant. Now, Master Morris, you will find your friend, Captain Prentice, somewhere to the west of here. Keep near him and then you will be near me. When the propitious moment comes to present you to the Commander-in-Chief, I shall want you in a hurry.”

The officers rode on, and Hadley sought out Captain Prentice. “My faith, Hadley!” was the captain’s exclamation, “but we’re a pretty pair of winged birds.” His own arm was still in a sling, but he had taken active command of his company again.

“You can scarcely call me winged,” said Hadley, “for the ball went through my leg.” He climbed down from Molly and allowed a soldier to take her away. He could scarcely walk, having been so many hours in the saddle; but Captain Prentice made him welcome and saw to it that he had a bed for a few hours, where he slept away much of his weariness.

At this time Washington’s forces lay about twenty miles from Philadelphia and fourteen from Germantown. For some days the Continentals had been resting after the arduous campaign which had followed the landing of the British troops. The officers were planning some important move; but the army was kept in ignorance of its nature until the night of the 3d of October. Then the columns were put into motion quickly and took the road to Germantown. It was to be a night march to surprise the enemy, and never did Hadley Morris forget it. He and his friend, Captain Prentice, were both mounted--the latter on a sorry nag which his orderly had picked up somewhere--and there might have been some ill-feeling expressed among the other officers of the infantry over Prentice’s riding had he not been wounded. But those fourteen miles were hard enough for both the captain and Hadley, despite the fact that they were not obliged to tramp through the heavy roads.

Before the head of the column was half way to Germantown, the night fog began to gather, and before daylight it was so thick that it was almost impossible to clearly distinguish figures moving a rod ahead. Just at daybreak, however, despite the fog which had enveloped the whole territory, sharp firing broke out ahead. The troops were rushed forward, and the British, who at first had supposed the firing to be but a skirmish between outposts, were quickly being driven back by a solid phalanx of Americans.

After the first surprise the enemy formed and stood their ground; but the attack of the Americans was so desperate that they would surely have been overwhelmed in a short time had it not been for two things. Howe, hearing early of the battle, rushed forward reinforcements and came in person to encourage his soldiery. And the other thing which stayed the Americans, beside the smother of fog, was the imposing mansion belonging to Master Chew, which, occupied by the British, was a veritable fort, and withstood every effort of the attacking force.

It was a stone building, and with its doors and lower windows barricaded, and a strong force of the enemy using the upper casements to fire from, it soon became the pivotal point on the battlefield. The British kept up a destructive fire upon the American lines from the house, and, in spite of the fog, the casualties were considerable. Attempts again and again were made to capture it. The American lines could not go past, and it guarded the way to the British front.

And, with the long delay occasioned by the obstinate defence of the Chew house, the elements themselves seemed to be arrayed against the Americans. The fog became so dense that the men could not see each other a few paces apart, and only the spurts of red flame ahead betrayed the whereabouts of the enemy. The Continental troops grew bewildered; aids were unable to find the officers to whom they were sent with messages from the commanders. There were shoutings and reiterated commands in the fog, but the files did not know where their officers stood and became bewildered and unmanageable.

General Washington’s plans were disarranged. The Americans had fought bravely and, without doubt, were on the eve of a decisive victory. But an alarm was created--the tramp of a regiment of American troops brought up from the rear was thought to be the approach of a flanking force--and the men who had fought so tenaciously during the day retreated in disorderly confusion.

Added to the general depression caused by this defeat was the fact that half the Maryland militia was reported to have deserted before the battle. It was the beginning of that awful winter when naught but the extraordinary virtues of George Washington himself kept the semblance of an army together. The American forces were rapidly becoming a disorganized mob, and the fault lay with Congress, which numbered in its group few of the really great and unselfish men who had once met in Philadelphia to approve of and sign the second greatest document in our history.

The period had now arrived when men of the second rank had come to the front in charge of the uncertain affairs of the struggling Colonies. Dr. Franklin was in Paris and John Adams joined him during the winter, for the purpose of watching Silas Deane, who was a bitter foe of Washington, and had sent over the infamous Conway to hamper and embitter the great man’s very existence. Jay, Rutledge, Livingston, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson were employed at home, and Hancock had resigned from the governing house. Samuel Adams was at home in New England for most of that winter; and men much the inferior of these had taken their places--men who lacked foresight and that loftiness of purpose and love of country which had, earlier in the war, kept private jealousies and quarrels in check.

Without an organized quartermaster’s department, the soldiers could not be properly clothed or fed, and the warnings of Washington were utterly disregarded by Congress. The troops began to need clothing soon after Brandywine, and by November they were still in unsheltered camps without sufficient clothing, blankets, or tents. Hadley Morris, suffering with the rank and file, saw them lying out o’ nights at Whitemarsh, half clad and without protection from either the frozen ground or the desperate chill of the night air. Forts Mercer and Mifflin had fallen, and there was little cheer brought to these poor fellows by the news that Burgoyne had actually surrendered to General Gates and that the British army of invasion which had started so confidently from Canada was utterly crushed.

December came, and snow followed frost. The British were snug and warm in the “rebel capital.” Well fed, well clothed, spending the time in idleness and amusement, the invaders were secure of any attack from the starving, half-clothed men who, with Washington at their head, crawled slowly over the Chester hills toward the little hollow on the bank of the Schuylkill. There was gold in plenty at the command of General Howe, and for this gold the farmers about Philadelphia were glad to sell their grain. And who can blame them for preferring the good English gold to the badly-printed, worthless currency issued by the American Congress?

The ten redoubts from Fairmount to Cohocksink were stout and well manned. There was little danger of the Continentals attacking them, for the hills were already whitening with the coverlet of winter. The river was open, supplies and reinforcements were on the way from across the ocean, and the British had nothing to fear. So they gave themselves up to ease and merriment. And fortunate for the cause, then trembling in the balance, that they did so, for had they then conducted the campaign against Washington’s starving troops with vigor, the “rebellion” would never have risen in history to the dignity of a “revolution”!