The Aliens Among Us--Chestnut Neck

Between October 6 and October 15, 1778, two of the more colorful military leaders of the Revolution clashed in a small town along the Mullica River, not far from contemporary Atlantic City.  Captain Patrick Ferguson (later Major, and killed at King's Mountain) led a force of 400 soldiers consisting of the 5th Regiment British Foot and the Third Battalion New Jersey Volunteers, to cut off the privateering activity in the area.  Washington sent General Casimir Pulaski and his Legion to protect the wharf at Chestnut Neck.  Ferguson found a small number of militia at Chestnut Neck, then  a 12 house town and commercial wharf, and easily defeated them with minimal casualties, on October 6.  On October 4, Pulaski left Trenton on October 8, reached Tuckerton (then called Middle of the Shore).  After a week of watching each other, Ferguson surprised one of Pulaski's outposts on October 15 with 250 men, and in essentially a bayonet attack, destroyed the outpost and left.

Pulaski was one of the various foreigners that were commissioned by Congress to serve in the Continental Army, like his Polish compatriot, Tadeusz Kościuszko.  Kosciuszko served as an engineer; Pulaski had been a cavalry officer.  He would be mortally wounded at the Battle of Savannah a year later.  This monument in the area of where he fought at this obscure battle in New Jersey serves as a reminder that the United States has always depended upon "the aliens among us."

  

The End of the Revolutionary War

There seems to be some disagreement over the actual last land battle of the Revolutionary War.  Contrary to what many lay people seem to believe, hostilities did not end at Yorktown in October 1781.  Howard Peckham's invaluable The Toll of Independence notes dozens of engagements in 1782, resulting in 277 American deaths,  124 wounded, with 80 captured; he lists only 5 land engagements for 1783.  Among the final actions, the Battle of Cedar Creek Bridge in Stafford Township, New Jersey, is his last listed for 1782 and among the six final "engagements" of the war.  Here we see a view of the area, with the Cedar Bridge Tavern (now a private residence) glimpsed to the left and the creek at the bend in the road in the center of the picture.

The engagement occurred on December 27, 1782, when local militia under Captains Richard Shreve and Edward Thomas sought out the hated Loyalist, Captain John Bacon.  They and their men stopped at the tavern, were surprised themselves by Bacon and his forces, and when they were gaining the upper hand, Bacon was supported by fresh Loyalists, which facilitated Bacon's escape.  The Patriots lost 1 killed and 1 wounded; 1 Loyalist was killed, 4 wounded, and 7 taken prisoner.  Shreve's militia did manage to kill Bacon on April 3, 1783, Peckham notes, after the peace treaty was signed.  The Stafford Township Historical Society lists this as the "last battle" of the war.

Whether it owns that distinction or not of being "last," the place remains sacred: at least one man on each side of the civil war divide lost his life here.  While the bitterness of the internecine nature of this war is often discussed in the context of the Carolinas, here in "southern" Jersey, the divide was often just as broad and brutal.

Nathan Hale and Revolutionary Iconography

This statue of Nathan Hale stands at the entrance of the Chicago Tribune Building in Chicago, Illinois.  I understand that the last surviving member of the Boston Tea Party is buried in Chicago, and there is a statue honoring George Washington, Haym Solomon and Robert Morris on Wacker Drive.  Chicago was not the scene of any notable Revolutionary War battle, yet these statues serve to knit together the country in its common recollection of the iconographic figures of the war and the era.  This statue is a copy of the one at Yale University.  Interestingly enough, it is reported that there were no contemporary portraits of him, and this was based on description.  Hale was hanged in New York shortly after the Kip's Bay landing by the British.

Ramsour's Mill and the Campaign

This brutal skirmish was fought June 20, 1780, not far from Charlotte, North Carolina, in Lincoln County, between Loyalist and Patriot militiamen. Loyalist Colonel John Moore, not waiting for Cornwallis, precipitated an attack by Patriot Colonel Francis Locke. Though outnumbered two to one, the Patriot militia outflanked the Loyalists. Neighbor fought neighbor, and the retreat of the Loyalist force, much depleted, contributed to the ultimate loss of North Carolina and helped pave the way to Yorktown.

On the battle area site are various graves of the participants.  These were not British regulars or foreign soldiers.  They were all "Americans" living together on American soil.  Ramsour's Mill provides a window into our character, as we remain locked in a civil war today.  How much is ideology and how much simple assertion of power? American political life, like Ramsour's Mill, is zero sum: you are on one side or another, in a fight to the death.  Compromise is a lost (and apparently undesirable) art.  Rhetoric has replaced bullets, but the intent of personal destruction remains.

The Battle of Minisink

Today, July 22, is the anniversary of the conclusion of Battle of Minisink where in 1779 a combined force of 60 Indians and 27 Tories, led by Joseph Brant, prevailed over and killed some 48 American militiamen out of a force of 149.

Here is the memorial to the slain, on the plateau on a hill in Barryville, New York, to the northwest of Port Jervis along the upper Delaware River.  Brant first attacked Fort Decker, in present day Port Jervis.   A force of milita led by Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tusten and Colonel John Hathorn, sought to engage Brant.  Brant managed to separate about 50 of the militia from the main body, who formed a square on the hill where the battlefield park is.  The outnumbered militia gave way; Brant's men killed Tusten and 17 of wounded for whom he was caring at "hospital rock," marked on the site.

The battle was a particularly brutal element of the parallel plotline of the Revolution, involving the war between American colonists seeking to expand their landholdings, and Native Americans seeking to preserve their way of life on land they had occupied.

On this hot July day, I happened to visit this battlefield and realized it coincided with the day of the actual events on this soil.  The battlefield is remarkably legible and preserved.  The geography of the area along the Upper Delaware River also gives a keen sense of what must have seemed isolated territory at the time.  

Aurora and Hancock's Bridge

The slaughter of innocent people in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater this past week is profoundly horrific; words are inadequate to try to understand it.  We grieve with the families and friends of those killed.

During the Revolution, there were several notorious massacres, acts of wholesale slaughter.  One in particular occurred in Salem County in southern New Jersey at Hancock's Bridge.  The notorious Colonel John Graves Simcoe of the Queen's Rangers and Colonel Charles Mawhood (who led the British at the Battle of Princeton) faced off against New Jersey militiamen at Quinton's Bridge (also Quintin's Bridge) at Alloway Creek on March 18, 1778 with four times the men, and would have destroyed the force there, but for reinforcements.  Failing to dislodge them, Mawhood sent Simcoe to Hancock's Bridge upstream to the north, where they surprised about 20-30 men at Judge William Hancock's house, and (in the American version) massacred them on March 19.  Simcoe, in his Military Journal, reported that "[s]ome very unfortunate circumstances happened here.  Among the killed was a friend of the Government, then a prisoner with the rebels, old Hancock, the owner of the house, and his brother."

The house still stands as a reminder and a memorial.

Stony Point and Wayne's Revenge

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Stony Point.  On July 16, 1779, American forces under General "Mad Anthony" Wayne avenged Wayne's loss at Paoli (Pennsylvania) by surprising and defeating the British force at Stony Point, New York. Faced with British General Henry Clinton's approach, two days after the victory Wayne abandoned the Point and rejoined Washington.  The picture is of the flagstaff battery.

Like Washington's surprise and defeat of the Hessians at Trenton, this Patriot victory had little strategic value but was of significance for its boost to morale at this point in the war.  the


Washington reiterated this rationale in the post-battle report to Congress (July 20, 1779): “The necessity of doing something to satisfy the expectations of the people, and reconcile them to the defensive plan we are obliged to pursue, and to the apparent inactivity which our situation imposes upon us; the value of the acquisition in itself, with respect to the men, artillery, and stores, which composed the garrison; the effect it would have upon the successive operations of the campaign, and the check it would give to the immediate depredations of the enemy at the present season . . . ” 


Here is another example of military action as public relations exercise.  We may find a metaphor for our current political climate, where procedure is more important than substance, light more important than heat, motion mistaken for movement, and spin the ultimate victory.