Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge Read online

  Philadelphia-born Jacob Mordecai, a fifteen-year-old German Jewish boy, also witnessed the parade. “Lord Cornwallis marched into the city of Philadelphia at the head of the British & Hessian Grenadiers, the flower of the British Army,” he distinctly remembered. “They entered in front of the Old Barracks on Second Street. He led the van accompanied by an American citizen whose name I shall not mention, but whom I saw riding on Cornwallis's left hand.” Mordecai remarked that “Lord Cornwallis was of the ordinary height, square built, one of his eyes was habitually closed, vulgarly termed cock-eyed,” and that “the finest & most handsome man (officer) in the British Army was Sir William Erskine, upwards of 6 feet high.” He described Joseph Galloway as “of the ordinary size, rather dark complexioned, a busy, restless politician.”37 Young Jacob also noted, “The Honourable Lieutenant Colonel Monckton commanded the British Grenadiers.”

  For Mordecai and others, the day was unforgettable. “The troops conducted themselves with great order, & many citizens of all parties lined the pavement, it being a beautiful day,” he recalled vividly nearly sixty years later. They were “remarkably neat & looked like a body of Invincibles, more especially the Hessian troops with their brass caps & brass hilted swords, for each of this corps carried side arms.”38

  The blue-clad von Linsing and von Lengerke grenadier battalions, their tall, glittering miter-caps festively adorned with leaves and topped by multicolored pom-poms, came marching behind the Royal Artillery. Leading them was stony-faced Col. Count Karl Emil von Donop, splendid on horseback in a lace-encrusted blue coat, a pendulous silver sash streaked with red zigzags and a black cocked hat edged with scalloped silver lace. The Hessian battalion flags, four feet square of heavy, double-layered brocaded silk, drooped from their staffs, snapping occasionally in the breeze. Nailed to a staff topped by a large, filigree spear point, each standard was intricately painted and heavily embroidered with metallic thread. Centered on the banners was the Hessian coat of arms, a crowned, rampant lion wielding a sword, strikingly rendered in red-and-white stripes on an oval cartouche of medium-blue silk wreathed in laurel. The lion stood under a scroll bearing the motto Nescit Pericula, “no fear of danger.” Four wavy “blazes” of contrasting colors, some of them quite garish, flared out from the cartouche, widening as they flickered toward the corners of the flag. Each blaze was embroidered with the script letters “FL,” the monogram of Prince Friedrich, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel.39

  Hessians had been in town before, but not like this. All 900 Hessians captured at Trenton, including the band that played for Congress, had passed through the previous December on this very street, but they trudged through at that time, sullen and apprehensive, with angry crowds heckling them. To complete their disgrace, which had weighed heavily on Colonel von Donop ever since, the battalion flags of the three defeated regiments were presented to Congress as war trophies.

  Even earlier, “in the fall of 1776 a party of Hessian Grenadiers of a regiment of General DeHeister, with coats of blue & faced with buff, under clothes of yellow, gaiters of black reaching to their knee-bands, caps of brass, sugar loaf form, with the Landgraff's of Hesse Cassel's lion in front, long mustaches stiff with black ball paste…were the first of the dreaded invincibles its people had ever seen,” Jacob Mordecai distinctly remembered. The prisoners were brought to the Sign of The Golden Swan, a popular German tavern run by the Kreider family on Third Street between Race and Arch, where young Mordecai worked. “They were six in number, mostly good-looking soldiers,” captured while foraging in New Jersey. “I was told to lodge & feed them well & send for Stuffle, Hans, Fritz & Yuckle,” Jacob said, fondly remembering the kindness of his boss, Mike Kreider. “All came. Tabac, beer & brandy-wine flowed freely. They were at home surrounded by Landsmen, Kinder & Weiber [“countrymen, children and wives,” i.e., fellow Germans] looking on.” Told by their commanders that the Americans were savages who would kill and devour them if captured, “They walked the town, asked ‘where lived the rebel men who eat Hessians?’ The story was discovered, the fear that was to make desperate [men] fight or be taken & cooked with sour crout was all a lie.”40 Now they arrived in town triumphant, though hardly joyful.

  Little J. C. wasn't so sure about the Hessians. “Their looks to me were terrific,” he recalled, meaning terrifying: stern, humorless, cold. They all looked alike: dour, pasty faces with jet-black mustaches waxed into sharp points, white-powdered hair tightly rolled into small rows of side curls and, even more strange to see, Prussian-style pigtails two feet long, wound in a taut black ribbon and hanging straight down their backs, bouncing with every step. Their gleaming, brass-shelled drums, each embossed with the Hessian lion and rimmed with gaudy, candy-striped hoops, thumped away, swaying in rhythm to the slow, stiff-legged goose step common in Central and Eastern European armies.

  It was all calculated to intimidate. “Their brass caps—their mustaches—their countenances, by nature morose, and their music, that sounded better English than they themselves could speak—plunder—plunder—plunder—gave a desponding, heart-breaking effect, as I thought, to all,” J. C. said. “To me, it was dreadful beyond expression.”41

  As they approached Market Street, the troops passed Christ Church, where a cameo sculpture of King George II gazed benignly from the wall above the great Palladian east window. Joseph Galloway had been married in this church, as had Anthony Wayne. “The Streets [were] crowded with inhabitants who seem to rejoice on the occasion, tho’ by all accounts many of them were publickly on the other side before our arrival,” Captain-Lieutenant Peebles of the 2nd Grenadier Battalion wrote, noticing the same thin façade of welcome as Downman.42 Some loyalties changed quickly as the winds of war shifted, but few had turned so dramatically as Rev. Jacob Duché, the rector of Christ Church and St. Peters, the city's two Anglican parishes.

  The Church of England congregations in America were terribly divided over the war, as were the clergy, many of whom could not renounce their loyalty to the king as Head of the Church. Duché, described by Jacob Mordecai as “a handsome man of haughty deportment,” was one of the few Anglican ministers who had publicly associated with colonial resistance early on.43 “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me,” he had prayed at the opening of the 1st Continental Congress, quoting Psalm 35. “Fight against them that fight against me.” The parson's fervor had delighted the New Englanders, especially the Adamses, for he sounded more Congregationalist than Anglican. Some of his sermons before Congress were so impassioned that they were published. Duché was among the first to omit prayers for the king and the royal family when independence was declared, crossing out the text in the Christ Church Book of Common Prayer.

  In recognition of his zeal, the minister was appointed the first chaplain of Congress. As the tides of war ebbed and flowed, though, the preacher became timorous and less enthusiastic about the American cause. He decided to resign from Congress in October 1776.

  Now, as the British Army marched into Philadelphia, Duché stayed in the city, hoping for clemency. The gilded crown perched atop the spire of Christ Church was askew, partially melted from a lightning strike a few months earlier and leaning in whichever direction the wind blew strongest. In many ways, it symbolized Duché's predicament.

  Beyond the church, the column crossed the 100-foot-wide intersection at High Street, Market Street's official name, where market sheds ran down the middle for three blocks. Here in the center of town, from the balcony of the old Court House, Rev. George Whitefield had preached to thousands of all faiths more than thirty years earlier as he ignited the Great Awakening across America with “pulpit thunder”; the British evangelist's stentorian voice was said to have been audible across the Delaware. The ideas of the Great Awakening, which included personal freedom and salvation in place of deference to established authority, helped to fuel the American Revolution.

  Here also, on the evening that independence was publicly proclaimed, July 8, 1776, a large bonfire in the middle of the stree
t had consumed most of the king's coat of arms that was torn down from the entrance of Christ Church. The great oak carving, its crowned lions and unicorn brightly painted and richly gilded, was heaved into the fire amid a cheering throng and the pealing of bells. The royal motto Honi soit qui mal y pense—“shame on him who thinks ill of it”—disappeared in the flames. Only one piece of the arms, the rampant lion, survived.

  As the soldiers continued past Market, “A number of our citizens appeared sad and serious,” J. P. Norris remembered. “When I saw them, there was no huzzaing.”44 Advancing south for another block, the column swung right onto Chesnut Street and headed west, passing Christopher Marshall's apothecary shop. From here, the Pennsylvania battalions, including William Allen's former regiment, had received medical kits in 1776. The elderly Marshall, a member of the Pennsylvania Board of War, had moved to Lancaster back in June. Smith's City Tavern, where Congress had sumptuously celebrated the first anniversary of independence to the tunes of Hessian bandsmen a few months earlier, was a block further down at the corner of Second and Walnut. Sarah Logan Fisher, who lived on Second just below Walnut, observed that “the Hessian grenadiers [were] attended by a large band of music but not equal in fineness or solemnity to the other.”45 Once more, the strains of Hessian music echoed through the neighborhood.

  The parade continued up Chesnut and across Third, one of the most fashionable streets in the city, where the Chews, the Willings, and the Powells had their elegant town houses. Reverend Duché also lived down the street at the corner of Third and Pine in a splendid house modeled on a wing of Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's residence near London. The king's men marched past James Pemberton's town house, where his stepson Robert Morton lived, and Carpenters’ Hall, where the First Continental Congress had met in 1774. Joseph Galloway had proposed his “Plan of Union” at that Congress in hopes of reconciliation with Great Britain, only to have it vetoed and stricken from the record through the combined efforts of Samuel Adams and Charles Thomson, the Scots-Irish schoolmaster and classics scholar who became secretary of Congress. “This Charles Thompson is the Sam. Adams of Phyladelphia—the Life of the Cause of Liberty, they say,” John Adams wrote shortly before the first Congress convened in 1774; Galloway called Thomson “one of the most violent Sons of Liberty (so called) in America.”46 The William Penn Charter School, or Quaker Academy, where Thomson had once taught Latin and where William Allen Jr. was educated, stood next to Carpenters’ Hall on the Fourth Street side.

  On the next block, fifteen-year-old Debby Norris watched the parade from the upstairs of her family's mansion near Fifth and Chesnut. A retired British officer, Capt. Henry Gurney of the Royal Artillery, who lived across the street, told her mother that they would not be harmed. “He advised that we should all be well-dressed, and that we should keep our houses closed,” Debby said. Peering over the garden wall, she “saw them pass to the State-house; they looked well, clean, and well clad, and the contrast between them and our own poor barefooted and ragged troops,” who had marched by a month earlier, “was very great.” She added, “It caused a feeling of despair—it was a solemn and impressive day—but I saw no exaltation in the enemy.”47

  Captain Montrésor remarked that the army took possession of the city “amidst the acclamation of some thousands of the inhabitants mostly women and children.”48 Captain von Münchhausen wrote, “The inhabitants, who are said to still number 10,000 (normally 40,000) came to meet us and showed in various ways their pleasure at our arrival.”49 Of Cornwallis's reception that day, Joseph Galloway asserted that “no Roman General ever received from the citizens of Rome greater acclamations than the noble General did on this occasion from the loyal citizens of Philadelphia.”50

  The march halted at the State House, where Galloway had presided as speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly for more than a decade before the war. He and Benjamin Franklin had been best friends and political cronies in those years, so close that Franklin entrusted his voluminous personal papers to Galloway for safekeeping while he was in London; the war destroyed their friendship. Here, also, Andrew Allen had served as Attorney General before the war and had attended the 2nd Continental Congress as a Pennsylvania delegate, but left shortly before independence was declared. His father, Judge William Allen, had not only served here as chief justice for two decades, he had purchased the land in 1730 and overseen the building's construction. As mayor in 1735, William Allen Sr. had inaugurated the State House with a great banquet in the upstairs Long Room.

  Now, the British Army took possession of the building where American independence had been declared and turned it into the Captains’ Main Guardhouse. Behind the troops, “Baggage wagons, Hessian women, & horses, cows, goats & asses brought up the rear,” Sarah Logan Fisher noted.51

  “Thus was the rich and flourishing city of Philadelphia, the capital late of the most rising colony, and attended with the most singular circumstances that history can give any example of, and the seat of that general congress of delegates, who dispensed laws and government to the continent of North America, reduced without opposition, and consequently without damage,” the Annual Register concluded, and added, “This circumstance was more fortunate than had been expected.”52 A British officer wrote to a friend, “I have the Satisfaction to inform you that the City of Philadelphia is in His Majesty's Possession; Lord Cornwallis with the British & Hessian Grenadiers having in usual form Enter'd it on the 26th Instant and Hoisted the Royal Standard.”53

  A month and a day had passed since the British Army landed at Elk Ferry. “I gave You Hopes for September,” Gen. James Grant wrote to Gen. Edward Harvey, commander in chief of the British Army, in London, “but did not pretend to prophesy or form an opinion about future operations, not just seeing my way clearly, through Woods, as difficult country & bad Roads, with weak Horses & without Maps, Friends, or even Guides who could be depended upon, but I always lookt for success.” Proud of the army's performance, the Scottish general exclaimed, “Nothing is impossible to British Troops so much accustomed to fire as our have been, for as Erskine once told you at a Dinner in London which you'l recollect, ‘You may say what You please Gentlemen but nothing will make a Soldier but Service & a damned deal of it too,’ which Lord Cornwallis says You made Erskine repeat, having heard perfectly well at first what He said.”

  Grant was lavish in his praise of the whole operation. “Lord Cornwallis took possession of Phelidelphia the 26th with the British & Hessian Granadiers—after a March of above 100 Miles from the Head of Elk—without provisions, Tents, Baggages, or a possibility of communicating with the Fleet.” He enthusiastically told Harvey, “I do not think there ever was a handsomer, a more spirited or a more successful Move made by an Army—The Officers & Men carried on the service with chearfullness & good Humor Tho’ they had nothing to drink for many Days but Water.” To a man with Grant's taste for high living, some sacrifices were above and beyond the call of duty. “Some of your Friends in the Guards were upon very short allowance,” he informed the general, “a Bowl of Grog at times as acceptable here as a Bottle of Champaign would be at Allmacks or New Market.”54

  The same day that the British took possession of Philadelphia, Congress was attempting to reconvene in Lancaster, sixty miles away to the west. That city had also been in a fit of panic and near hysteria ever since Howe's army had landed a month before, especially as wild rumors flooded in after Brandywine. “I understand the Inhabitants of your Town are exceedingly dispirited, and making preparations for a flight,” Lt. Col. Adam Hubley of the 10th Pennsylvania Regiment wrote to his brother John and other local officials in mid-September. “For God's Sake—stop such proceedings,” he told them, annoyed by the needless panic. “I can assure you, that they are not more expos'd at this time than they were since the beginning of the Contest.”55

  A system of express riders had been established by Lancaster's merchants to keep them informed twice a day of the movements of both armies so as to prevent unnecessar
y evacuations, but with the reports came daily accounts of plundering and bloodshed. “Cast thy Eyes down into Chester County,” Christopher Marshall had written from Lancaster to a friend on September 20. “See the numbers there engaged in Mutual Distruction of our friends and Country Men, by a Banditti Sent by a monster, head'd by a villain, guided and directed by Rascalls and Trators to their Country.” Letters from Hubley and Col. Thomas Hartley, commander of the 2nd Pennsylvania Brigade in Wayne's Division, mentioned the depredations caused by Howe's troops in general terms, as did refugees from the affected areas, all amplified by the rumor mill and the usual talebearers. “My heart recoils at the thought of Such numbers of fine Plantations pillaged, laid waste and ruined,” the elderly apothecary lamented. “Barns, Barracks & Mills filled with Grain and Hay wantonly destroyed and burnt, Dwelling houses with all their Furniture following the same fate, Roads deluged with Blood, Gardens and Orchards laid waste & Cutt down, Humankind in Horrors, Women Weeping for Husbands and Sons Slain, their selves and daughters at the Mercy of Worse than brutes, being by them denyed their own bread & Sustenance, and all this is the dire Effect of Tyrannous Ambition that reigns in the King, Lords, & Commons, &c.”

  Like many of his contemporaries, Marshall viewed the disruption of Penn's “Peaceable Kingdom” in biblical terms. “Here my good friend at present, I Cease to remind thee any further of so Unpleasing a theme, yet the friends of Zion do mourn, because ‘her beauty is departed,’” he wrote, quoting the 1st Book of Jeremiah's Lamentations. “‘Her Princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without Strength before the pursuer.’” Thinking on Philadelphia's situation—the profiteering, the double-dealing, and “sunshine patriotism” of so many that he witnessed through his activities on the Pennsylvania Board of War since the conflict began—Marshall continued, “‘Jerusalem hath grievously sinned: therefore she is removed, her filthiness is in her Skirts, she remembred not her last end, therefore she came down Wonderfully; She had no Comforter: For the multitude of her transgressions, her Children are gone into Captivity before the enemy.’”56