Sound to Flushing Bay; and thence, as he subsequently did, cross over under cover of his ships to the mainland, and strike for King's Bridge. In the meanwhile, taking advantage of the first "brisk and favorable breeze and flowing tide," Lord Howe's fleet could have moved up the East River, destroying the American transportation, and so left Washington's army hopelessly cut in two. The plan was so obvious and so wholly practicable - Washington had laid himself so open to the fatal blow - that why the thing was not done must always remain a mystery. But probably, after all, the explanation was not far to seek, at New York, as at Bunker Hill and at Charleston, "the dilatoriness and stupidity of the enemy saved us." So much for the land operations of the British. It was the same on the water. On the 28th of June, a little more than a year after Bunker Hill, and just two months before Flatbush, the squadron under Sir Peter Parker was severely repulsed in its attempt on Fort Moultrie. The influence of this experience was manifest in the handling of the British ships at New York in August. The squadron of Sir Peter Parker then made part of Lord Howe's fleet; and Parker was himself in command of the ships which attempted to co-operate with General Howe on the 27th of August, and failed to work into position. While the Americans seem to have felt an inordinate degree of confidence in the efficacy of their land batteries to resist attack, the inertness and even timidity of the British naval commanders throughout the operations was most noticeable and is almost inexplicable. In them there was no indication of the great traditions of the British navy. The commanders of the British fleet hardly made their presence felt. A careful examination of the original records and a judicial weighing of the almost equally divided public feeling — Whig and Tory — of the years 1775 and 1776, cannot but give rise to grave doubts as to whether the cause of independence would then have prevailed except for that element of luck in warfare upon which Frederick the Great in his review of his own career laid such stress. In justice it must also apparently be admitted that the errors of strategy into which Washington fell at New York in the summer of 1776 were more dangerous and less excusable than that committed by Ward in June, 1776, while, on the other hand, the supreme luck which attended the Patriots at Bunker Hill by no means followed them to Long Island. An August northeasterly storm, with its accompanying rain and veil of friendly mist, did, indeed, enable them to elude the grasp of an inert and dilatory enemy, but only after the flower of the Patriot army had been destroyed, and what remained of it so completely demoralized that for years it did not recover a proper morale. That Washington sustained himself and retained the confidence of the army and of Congress in the face of that series of disasters for which he was so largely responsible, is extraordinary, and stands as the highest tribute which could have been paid to his character and essential military qualities. Yet, in spite of what historians have since asserted, his prestige at the time was greatly diminished and his control of the situation imperilled. All eyes turned at the moment to General Charles Lee, just returning from Charleston, surrounded by the halo of the victory which Moultrie had won; and won in Lee's despite. There was for a time no inconsiderable danger that he, the most wretched charlatan of the War of Independence, might supplant Washington in the confidence of the army. He certainly did greatly embarrass his superior and thwart his combinations. But in view of what then occurred and has since taken place, it is curious to reflect how different the whole course of history would have been had the element of pure luck entered a little differently than it did into the events of June, 1775, and August, 1776. It is not easy to imagine a state of affairs during the century now closing in which the United States might have continued far into it to be what the Dominion of Canada now is, and from which the career and memory of Washington would have been obliterated. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. PRESIDENT WITHERSPOON IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ALTHOUGH John Witherspoon did not come to America until the year 1768,- long after he had himself passed the middle line of human life, yet so quickly did he then enter into the spirit of American society, so perfectly did he identify himself with its nobler moods of discontent and aspiration, so powerfully did he contribute by speech and act to the right development of this new nation out of the old cluster of dispersed and dependent communities, that it would be altogether futile to attempt to frame a just account of the great intellectual movements of our Revolution without taking some note of the part played in it by this eloquent, wise, and efficient Scotsman at once teacher, preacher, politician, law-maker, and philosopher, upon the whole not undeserving of the praise which has been bestowed upon him as “one of the great men of the age and of the world." 1 Born in 1722, in the parish of Yester, fourteen miles east of Edinburgh, a parish of which his father was minister, he was able upon his mother's side to trace his lineage, through an unbroken line of Presbyterian ministers, back to John Knox. That such a man should ever, in any country, come to lend his support to a system of rather bold conduct respecting royal personages in general, was hardly a thing to shock or surprise any single drop of blood in his body. At the age of twenty, he was graduated from the University of Edinburgh, where he had for associates Hugh Blair, James Robertson, and John Erskine. At the age of twenty-two, he became minister of the parish of Beith in the west of Scotland. At the age of thirty-four, he became pastor of the Low Church in Paisley. At the age of forty-six, after having declined calls to Presbyterian congregations in Dundee, Dublin, and Rotterdam, he accepted an invitation to the presidency of the College of New Jersey- an invitation which he had already declined two years before. At the time of his removal to America, therefore, he had achieved distinction as a preacher and an ecclesiastical leader. Even as an author, also, 1 he had become well known, his chief publications, at that time, being An Essay on Justification; A Practical Treatise on Regeneration; A Serious Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage; a prose satire, called Ecclesiastical Characteristics; besides several volumes of sermons, and a collection of miscellaneous writings in three volumes, entitled Essays on Important Subjects1 His advent to the college over which he was to preside was like that of a prince coming to his throne. From the moment of his landing in Philadelphia until that of his arrival in Princeton, his movements were attended by every circumstance that could manifest affection and homage; and on the evening of the day on which he made his entry into what was thenceforward to be his home, "the college edifice was brilliantly illuminated; and not only the whole village, but the adjacent country, and even the province at large, shared in the joy of the occasion." It is pleasant to know that in the six-and-twenty years of public service that then lay before him in America, the person of whom so much was expected, not only did not disappoint, but by far exceeded, the high hopes that had thus been set upon him. For once in this world, as it turned out, a man of extraordinary force, versatility, and charm had found the place exactly suited to give full swing and scope to every element of power within him. He seems to have come at the right moment, to the right spot, in the right way. Being perhaps equally apt for thought and for action, and having quite remarkable gifts as preacher, debater, conversationist, politician, and man of affairs, happily he found himself, in the fulness of his ripened powers, in a station of great dignity and prominence, near the centre of the new national life of America, in the midst of a kindred people just rousing themselves with fierce young energy to the tasks and risks of a stupendous crisis in their history. Thenceforth, whatsoever John Witherspoon had it in him to do, in things sacred or secular, in life academic or practical, in the pulpit, in the provincial convention, in the Continental Congress, for the shaping, in war and 1 The most of these publications, together with his later writings, are to be found in his collected Works, of which two editions have appeared: the one in four volumes, Philadelphia, 1800-1801; the other in nine volumes, Edinburgh, 1804-1805. The latter is the edition used by me. For biographical sketches of Witherspoon, the reader is referred to these editions of his Works; also, to the sermon preached at his funeral by John Rodgers, with a valuable appendix by Samuel Stanhope Smith; to J. Sanderson, The Signers of the Declaration of Independence, V. 99-186; to Sprague, Annals, etc., III. 288-300. The article on Witherspoon, in Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, VI. 584, 585, is worth attention. 2 Sprague, Annals, etc., III. 292. peace, of the thought and character and destiny of this primitive, passionate, indomitable people, he then had the opportunity to do. That opportunity, so precious and so rare in the experience of men, he did not fail to use to the utmost. Even in the exterior personal gifts which make for influence, he was not lacking. It was said of him that, with the exception of Washington, he had more of the quality called presence than, perhaps, any other man of his time in America. He was, moreover, kindly and companionable in private intercourse, and fascinated men by talk sparkling with anecdote, epigram, and repartee. In the due order of things, his earliest appearance before the public was in the pulpit, which, to the very end of his career, continued to be the true seat and organ of his best activity and influence. Having the gift of easily remembering whatever he wrote, and of speaking naturally what he thus remembered, he was able to give to his sermons the double attraction of premeditated and of extemporaneous speech; and both for the matter and the manner of discourse, he soon took rank here as one of the foremost preachers of his time. As a contemporary of his has testified: "President Witherspoon's popularity as a preacher was great. The knowledge that he was to conduct a public service, usually filled the largest churches in our cities and populous towns, and he never failed to command the profound attention of his audience." 1 Notwithstanding the prodigious variety of those public and private engagements which were soon laid upon him, he maintained to the very end the supremacy of his sacred calling, and never, either by dress, or speech, or conduct, permitted his career as a civilian even to seem to involve any lapse or suspension of his character as a clergyman. As the call that had brought him to America was the call to preside over the College of New Jersey, its interests very properly had the first claim upon his attention; and, before he had been long in charge of them, it became evident that, through him, the college was about to enter upon a new and a larger life. He addressed himself, first of all, to that need which is the primary, classic, and perennial need of every college fit to exist at all, the need of money; and the extraordinary success he had therein was due partly to his own extraordinary energy and tact, and partly to the sheer confidence of the public in anything for which he chose to concern himself. He also brought about an enlargement of the curriculum by the introduction of new courses, particularly in Hebrew and in French; and through his own brilliant example 1 Ashbel Green, in Sprague, Annals, etc., III. 299. |