Howe: by which they saved themselves with their fleet and army, that winter: for if they had not got the possession of Fort Mifflin by the stratagem of cutting down an old seventy-four gun ship, all their ships of war and large fleet of transports would have had to return to New York for winter quarters; in consequence of the Delaware being more or less in every ordinary winter so filled with large bodies of floating ice, that their ships would be either cut to pieces or driven on the shoals and sand bars in which the Delaware Bay and river every where abound: so that both the General and Admiral would have been in great trouble for the want of provisions and clothing, artillery, and all other articles and munitions of war; in consequence of which, they could not have fortified themselves in the city of Philadelphia, nor saved their fleet of ships in the Delaware Bay. But whether we are fully justified in ascribing their salvation and safety to either the maritime knowledge of the British Admiral or the military skill of the English General, diffidence towards their national characters forbids to decide.

After Lord Howe had subdued the forts on the Delaware, he set his sailors to work to raise some of the chevaux de frise, and remove the large chains and booms out of the channel of the river, when he soon got his shipping up to the city. Sir William and Admiral Howe then commenced building a chain of redoubts and breast works round the whole city, which occupied several miles in length. After this was done, Sir William Howe took a little repose. But shortly afterwards, the calm serenity of the British commander's mind became a little disturbed in consequence of a small voice, from the wilderness in the north; which was as follows: that one of the rebel generals, by the name of Gates, with a few thousand continental troops, and some northern militia, had been for some weeks prowling like hungry wolves, round General Burgoyne's army, and had taken and killed nearly one-third of the same. So that, through the law of sheer necessity, General Burgoyne had to surrender the remains of his army to General Gates: which were now reduced to a little over five thousand men. We notice in this place that neither of the generals were deficient in the rules of military etiquette. When General Gates met General Burgoyne at the head of his surrendered army, in a splendid suit of royal uniform, in order to deliver his sword to the American General, who was robed in a plain blue frock, General Burgoyne, by raising his hat said, "General Gates, the fortune of war has made me your prisoner." To which General Gates returned General Burgoyne a polite yet humble salute; and promptly replied, "I shall always be ready to bear testimony to the world, it has not been through any fault of your excellency: but, sir, as you have already expressed yourself, I, as a soldier with you, must acknowledge it to be in consequence of the overruling providence and justice of the God of nations, in whose all-powerful hand is held the fortune of war." No sooner had Sir William Howe received the intelligence of the surrender of General Burgoyne and the remains of his army of ten thousand royal troops, than he began to forecast in his mind, that the mere possession of Philadelphia was not a suffi

cient bonus to countervail his Royal master for the many heavy drafts he had made upon his exchequer.

After the capture of Burgoyne's army, which threw into the possession of the American government such a number of prisoners, that the continental Congress instructed the commander-in-chief to communicate to Sir William Howe, who commanded the British forces in Philadelphia, and Sir Henry Clinton of New York, that except the American prisoners in their possession, both in their prisons, and on board their prison ships, which the fortune of war had thrown into their hands, were hereafter treated with a little more humanity, the laws of war, which justified retaliation in all such cases, should immediately be put in force on the British prisoners in the possession of the American Republic. This resolute stand of the continental Congress of 1778 had its desired effect; so that after this, the American prisoners were treated with more humanity, until the end of the war.

We shall pass by Howe and the British army in Philadelphia, for a few moments, and return to the adventures of Captain Hewson. When the British landed at the head of Elk River, he had to fly from the vicinity of Philadelphia into the state of New Jersey with his goods and family. Some of the tories, as the King's friends were then all called, gave the enemy a description of Hewson's character, of his being such a zealous advocate of the republican cause; when the British sent a party of the refugees out of Philadelphia, who soon destroyed all his works; and hearing that he was an Englishman, who but recently had emigrated from London in 1773, it so excited the choler of some of the zealous advocates of the arbitrary measures of the British government against the colonies, that an English gentleman of Philadelphia, through the medium of the public papers of the city, offered a reward of one hundred guineas for Captain Hewson, whether dead or alive; which excited the vigilance of the prowling parties of the refugees, in their nightly excursions through the state of New Jersey, in search of plunder, and at the same time to keep a sharp look-out after Mr. Hewson, in order to obtain the reward of a hundred guineas. After this, Captain Hewson removed to a ferry house on Rancocus creek, kept by one William Wallace, about five miles from the city of Burlington. Having removed his family and goods, as he thought, beyond the reach of these nightly prowling refugees, Captain Hewson with three more militia officers of New Jersey, headed a number of Jersey volunteers in a plan of defensive operation, in order, if possible, to prevent Sir William Howe and his officers from being supplied by the tories of the state of New Jersey with fresh provisions, and the other delicacies of the season: and dividing themselves into four companies of fifty men each, they took different routes through the state, for many miles above and below the city; in order to check the Jersey tories in supplying the enemy in Philadelphia, and also to watch the manoeuvres of the plundering parties of refugees who nightly went up and down the Delaware, with their gun boats and armed barges, to receive provisions from the disaffected farmers of Jersey, who with their loaded

ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN HEWSON AND THREE OFFICERS.

23

wagons met them at their different places of appointment on the shore of the river, the refugees with their boats, in order to convey the same to the British army in the city. During the months of February and part of March, 1778, Captain Hewson and his three brother officers made many prisoners of the refugees and seized large quantities of the Jersey tories' produce they were trying to convey to the British army in Philadelphia.

About

About the 20th of March, 1778, a Jersey look-out officer, by the name of Aaron Smallwood, being informed that some barges filled with refugees were seen on the Delaware, between the mouths of Penshawken and Cooper's creek, Lieutenant Smallwood took with him about a dozen men, in order to watch their manœuvres. eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, as he was marching in Indian file a few paces ahead of his men with his sword in his hand, through a piece of thick woods, he met a party of those plundering refugees advancing from the boats through the country, whom he hailed, who comes there: when they instantly answered him by the discharge of about a dozen of muskets, and Lieutenant Smallwood being at the head of his men, received the whole of their destructive fire; when he fell to the ground, and all his men fled unhurt, as they could tell neither the number nor strength of the enemy: and as the life still remained in him, he asked the refugees to be so kind as to lay him out of the road, lest the country wagons might run over him; when one Casady and another refugee who had been brought up in his father's family, after their parents were deceased, took him up and laid him on the edge of the woods by the road-side; and then their whole party retreated to their gun boats; being sensible that their firing would alarm some of the Jersey militia. So they left him weltering in his blood, and fled to their barges. Smallwood's men being re-enforced by some of the Jersey militia, soon returned. But by this time the enemy had all regained their barges: his men having obtained a vehicle with straw, they conveyed him to the house of his brother-in-law, Captain John Hewson, whose wife was the eldest sister of Lieutenant Smallwood.

Upon the examination of his person, it was found that both his thigh bones were broken by musket balls; one in two places: and his body full of wounds from buck shot. He lay about six hours in great agony from the number of his wounds, and exhorted his brother-inlaw not to give up the cause of his country, but to remember he had spilt his blood in the defence of the same, these being his last words; and in a few minutes after, he expired. Lieutenant Smallwood was out at Canada in the early part of the revolutionary war, and with Major General Montgomery, when he fell at the walls of Quebec, on the 31st of December, 1775. After the decease of his brother-inlaw, Captain Hewson was stirred up afresh to keep the refugees out of the Jerseys. So that, he acted in conjunction with his three brother militia officers; who were daily more or less on the scout after them. Shortly after this they obtained information, about the last of March, 1778, that a large body of refugees and sailors had left the city for the Jerseys, by crossing the Delaware at Cooper's ferry, and gone by

the way of a village, called Haddonfield. Captain Hewson and his three brother officers mustered all the militia and volunteers they could persuade to accompany them, which were to the number of about two hundred men, and went in pursuit of the enemy. But some of the Jersey tories, by way of condolence to their refugee brethren, gave the plundering party timely notice that a strong body of militia and volunteers were in pursuit of them, when the enemy retreated with all possible precipitation back to the city, where the militia got sight of them on the road between Haddonfield and Cooper's ferry, but could not come up with them before they reached the ferry, where the British kept a train of artillery, with a regiment of infantry, and some light-horse; and seeing the militia in pursuit of the refugees and sailors, they drew themselves up on a rising ground that lies opposite a causeway that leads to the bridge over Cooper's Creek, and there waited the coming up of the militia; but as soon as they saw them, they halted. To retreat back by the way of Haddonfield, they saw would be very dangerous, as the light-horse would be instantly on their rear. So they had no other way left them for their escape, but by suddenly turning to the right, and retreating over Cooper's Creek bridge, which leads to Burlington by the way of the old road. But providentially their escape lay over a long causeway that was guarded on each side, by thick rows of large willow trees; through which the militia pursued their way with all possible speed towards the bridge, under a heavy fire from the musketry and artillery of the British; and not more than from four to five hundred yards distance. But in consequence of the rising ground the enemy occupied, and they giving their small arms and artillery a little too much elevation, this, together with the smoke of their ordnance, and the thick foliage of the willow trees, prevented the enemy from distinctly seeing them, in order to take sure aim at the flying militia; so that their grape shot, and musket balls, did no other execution than cutting the branches, and destroying the foliage of the willow trees, and whistling through the air, passing over the heads of the retreating militia. But when they came to the foot of Cooper's Creek bridge, they discovered that the English had unplanked the same, and only left a few planks, laid lengthwise over the beams of the bridge. However, when Captain Hewson and another of his brother officers, who were at the head of the militia, saw the exposed condition of themselves and their brethren in arms, they hasted to the foot of the bridge with their pistols in their hands, and took a position on each side of the planks, and commanded the troops to walk over the same in Indian file, and the first man that offered to make a rush and throw the rest into disorder, they would shoot him on the spot. So by the resolute and determined stand of the officers were the lives of themselves and about two hundred persons saved in the very jaws of death and destruction, under a special Providence in their case.

The other two officers, who brought up the rear of the troops, had the precaution, as they passed the bridge, to throw off the plank into the tide water, which soon drifted them out of the enemy's reach. But why it was that the British did not leave the eminence on which

CAPTAIN HEWSON AND THREE OFFICERS MADE PRISONERS. 25

they were collected, being about a thousand in number, and pursue the militia over the causeway, can be accounted for on no other principle than their supposing they were nearly all destroyed on the causeway. But when they saw them on the other side of Cooper's Creek, it was too late to pursue them. Taking all the circumstances of the case into view, perhaps there never was a more brilliant escape by the militia and volunteers of Jersey, while the British had possession of Philadelphia. Why this little occurrence has not been made public before, we can only account for in the language of King Solomon: "There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man." Eccles. ix. 14, 15. We think we cannot find any occurrence that more appositely applies to the entire silence of all our historical scribes, who have noticed the various little incidents of the revolutionary war, than the foregoing sententious remarks of the king of Israel.

Shortly after this escape of the Jersey militia at Cooper's Creek bridge, Captain Hewson made up his mind to remove to a greater distance from the enemy. He hired a vessel, having sent a number of packages of French and German goods into Jersey. After the landing of the British army at the head of Elk River, he had them deposited in some of the barns of his republican friends; when he had them all collected and put on board this vessel, with all his household goods, such as the bedding and clothing of his family. Being all in readiness to start up the Delaware the next morning, his three brother militia officers came in the afternoon of the same day to see him off, and keep watch through the fore part of the night, apprehensive the tories in the neighbourhood might, by some means, convey information to the British in the city. They kept watch until past three o'clock in the morning; and concluding all danger for that night was past, they lay down in the bar room of the ferry-house to take an hour's rest, before starting next morning. They had not lain more than half an hour, when they were roused from their slumber, by a loud command given to surround the house, and not let one of the rebels escape. Captain Hewson being in the second story of the ferry-house, seized his sword, pistols, and carabine, and stood at the head of the stairs to oppose them, and defend himself to the last extremity. The other three officers opened the door of the ferry-house and quietly gave themselves up, and then came to the foot of the stairs, and called with a loud voice to Hewson for God's sake, not to make any resistance; for if he fired, and killed, or wounded any of the refugees, they all would be immediately put to death; therefore, in consequence of the foregoing considerations, he gave himself up, when the refugees rushed up the stairs, and went through every room in the house, looking, as they said, for more rebels; and when they could find no more, they took Hewson and his three brother officers on board their gun boats, and proceeded to Philadelphia with all precipitation with their four gun boats towing the vessel Capt. Hewson's