Authors: Mark Puls
In preparing for another attack, however, he was still troubled by the bloodshed he had witnessed a few days before. To his wife he confided, "The attack of Trenton was a most horrid scene to the poor inhabitants. War, my Lucy, is not a humane trade, and the man who follows [it] as such will meet with his proper demerits in another world.“
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Shortly after Knox finished the letter, a British column attacked, the vanguard of 6,000 troops under Cornwallis. At three o'clock, the redcoats pushed back the pickets and outlying troops, and drove them back into Trenton. The American troops retreated across the Assunpink Bridge, seeking refuge behind Knox's artillery guns. The two field guns on the hill afforded a sweeping command of Trenton and provided the men cover as the British rushed forward and began a heavy musket fire. "The enemy advanced within reach of our cannon, who saluted them with great vociferation and some execution," Knox later wrote Lucy. The redcoats were able to bring cannons into place and fire at the fortifications, but in the descending darkness they did little damage.
Knox kept up sporadic cannon fire. "A few shells we now and then chucked into town to prevent their enjoying their new quarters securely," he wrote to his wife.
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Knox realized, however, that the Americans could not hold their position for long. They were pinned with the Assunpink to their front and the Delaware, which was now completely impassable by boats, on their left. If the British overwhelmed their right, they would be trapped and destroyed. Knox and the other generals agreed that the army should evacuate. Washington decided to send the army to the rear of Cornwallis's force. By cutting off his supply lines and communication with the rest of the British forces in New York, the Americans would be able to take back New Jersey.
Washington ordered the army to move out and march to Princeton to attack the British Seventeenth, Fortieth, and Fifty-fifth regiments, believed to consist of 1,200 men. About 400 troops were assigned to keep the campfires burning with rail fences and posts to make it appear that the army was bivouacking for the night. Before dawn, these men were to slip away and join the rest of the army. Men also were left to maintain the mock noise of engineers building fortifications to add to the ruse; they too were to escape in the early-morning darkness. Knox left men to continue to shell Trenton to disrupt the enemy's sleep.
At 1
A.M.
on Friday, January 3, the army moved out. After several warm days, the temperature fell that night and the ground became hard and better suited for travel with heavy guns and carriages. "Our troops marched with great silence and order," Knox reported to Lucy.
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They marched a roundabout route to Princeton, which was twelve miles to the north, in order to avoid detection, traveling east through Sand Town and from thence north along Quaker Road. The march went smoothly with no major delays. The men reached Stony Creek, about two miles short of Princeton, shortly after daybreak, when they encountered 800 British troops marching to Trenton to join Cornwallis. The redcoats believed Washington's main force was still at Trenton and that these troops must only be a small detachment. "You may judge of their surprise when they discovered such large columns marching up," Knox relayed to Lucy. "I believe they were as much astonished as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them.“
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Knox ordered cannons moved into place, and Washington sent 350 troops under General Hugh Mercer to cut off the road to Trenton. The British attacked Mercer, whose men gathered in a patch of woods and were already exhausted by the long march, the incessant cold, and lack of sleep over several days. Mercer's men fired a volley of muskets at the enemy, who returned shots darting around them among the trees. Several men fell wounded, crying out in pain.
Then the redcoats let out a yell and charged with bayonets thrust forward. Mercer's men lost heart and fled, leaving the general unprotected. The British soldiers thrust the blades from their guns into his body and left him mortally wounded. Knox saw several of his comrades brutally attacked with bayonets, savage thrusts goring their bodies. The Pennsylvania militia tried to repulse the British, but they too had little strength left. Washington arrived and rallied the men as the rest of his force approached. Knox's artillery guns fired, signaling the full line of the Continental force to rush into place.
Suddenly the British realized that they were facing Washington's main force as well as Knox's artillery guns. The field guns blasted holes in the enemy line. In desperation, the British commander led a bayonet charge through the American line near the road to Trenton and was able to flee south. Continental troops chased them for several miles, rounding up hundreds of prisoners before Washington called off the pursuit and ordered his men to push toward Princeton. By the time they arrived, the remaining 200 British troops had fled east and had barricaded themselves behind the thick stone walls of Nasssau Hall, a building at Princeton University. Knox ordered Captain Alexander Hamilton and the New York artillery to attack the position. Hamilton's men wheeled a four-pounder into position and ignited the touchhole. A booming shot sent a cannonball shrieking into Prayer Hall, where it punctured a portrait of King George III, decapitating him. The British must have viewed this as an ominous sign. A second shot hit the cor-nice of Nassau Hall and ricocheted to kill the horse ridden by Major James Wilkinson. Then Hamilton ordered a charge, which convinced the remaining British soldiers to surrender. In the battle for Princeton, the British had 28 men killed, 58 others were wounded, and 323 soldiers captured along with 2 field guns and hundreds of blankets, shoes, and other provisions. The Americans suffered 23 killed and 20 wounded.
Washington wanted to push farther north to New Brunswick, where the British had left much of their munitions and supplies, but his commanders told him that the men were too exhausted for another extended march and then another battle. "Our men having been without either rest, rum, or provisions for two nights and days, were unequal to the task of marching seventeen miles further," Knox wrote to his wife. "If we could have secured one thousand fresh men at Princeton to have pushed for Brunswick, we should have struck one of the most brilliant strokes in all history." Knox and the other commanders felt the capture of New Brunswick could have ended the war. He was jubilant, nevertheless, over the Princeton victory. "The enemy [was]
within nineteen miles of Philadelphia, they are now sixty miles. We have driven them from almost the whole west Jersey."
The Continental Army had been at Princeton just two hours when word arrived that Cornwallis was moving from Trenton and racing to protect their munitions at New Brunswick. "This they did, as we have since been informed, in a most infernal sweat—running, puffing, and blowing, and swearing at being so outwitted," Henry reported to Lucy.
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Washington needed to find shelter for his troops. Knox told him that during the army's retreat through New Jersey in November, he had reconnoitered the area for a favorable site to build winter quarters. He suggested Morristown, New Jersey, which was flanked by defensible hills and within striking distance of New York City. The Morristown site would also help the American army to protect the roads leading to Philadelphia. Having full confidence in Henry's judgment, the commander in chief immediately ordered the men to march to Pluckemin, New Jersey, and then on to Morristown to lay up for the winter.
The army arrived at Morristown on Monday, January 6, and Knox, still flush with the reversal of fortune over the past two weeks, wrote his wife the next day: "For my part, my Lucy, I look up to heaven and most devoutly thank the Governor of the Universe for producing this turn in our affairs; and the sentiment I hope will so prevail in the hearts of the people as to induce them to be a people chosen of Heaven, not to give way to despair, but at all times and under all circumstances never to despair of the Commonwealth.“
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He spent the next two weeks designing fortifications and barracks while also considering the needs of the artillery corps for the coming summer campaign. He was unhappy with the congressional choice of sites to locate the Continental arsenals, believing the decisions were based on political rather than military considerations. He recommended that Washington use his authority to relocate the magazines to sites more favorable to the army's needs.
On Monday, January 16, Washington gave Knox orders to establish the arsenals where he thought best. Knox was to travel to Hartford and hire contractors, rent buildings, and establish cannon foundries and gunpowder laboratories, keeping careful track of his expenses. Knox also provided Washington with detailed orders to pass on to Colonel Benjamin Flower, a skilled builder in the artillery regiment; Flower was to establish a similar arsenal in Yorktown, Pennsylvania. Unlike an artillery commander in any other army, Knox had to understand not only how to use cannons in battle but the intricacies of casting guns. His orders to Colonel Flower demonstrated his
deep knowledge of the subject and included an itemized inventory for the arsenal, which included the construction of an air furnace and a mill for boring cannon after the barrels were cast. He ordered that Flower offer one-year enlistments to forty carpenters, forty blacksmiths, and twenty wheelwrights. The powder laboratories would employ turners and tin men and twelve harness-makers. Craftsmen were needed to make cannon carriages, wheels, and other parts to transport the guns.
The cannon foundry should be equipped to cast sixty guns in various sizes, six-pounders first and then three-pounders and howitzers along with ten twelve-pounders. The arsenal was to produce all kinds of ammunition for the army.
Knox ordered that sixty workmen be employed at the arsenal, each enlisted for the duration of the war and given various ranks with the artillery corps. He also provided Flower with a list of workmen needed to accompany the artillery corps in the field.
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The next day, Washington wrote to Congress: "Upon communicating this resolve to General Knox, who will have the principal direction of these matters, he was of opinion, that Hartford in Connecticut [and Yorktown in Pennsylvania] would be, on many accounts, more convenient for that purpose than Brookfield [and Carlisle], particularly in respect to buildings, which are already erected. . . . I should be glad, that you would, by a new resolve, permit me to direct the works to be carried on at the places last mentioned.“
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For reasons never made clear, John Hancock, president of the Congress, was irritated with the alteration to its plans. Writing on behalf of Congress on Wednesday, January 29, 1777, he told Washington, "As some steps have been taken with respect to the magazines at Brookfield and Carlisle, the Congress judge it best they should be erected there in preference to the other places mentioned by General Knox."
But by then Knox had already arrived at Hartford, which was not as well suited for an arsenal as he had thought. At the point where the Connecticut River ran by the town, it became narrow and shallow, and Knox believed the river would be difficult for transports to navigate. He proceeded twenty miles up the river to Springfield, Massachusetts, where the river widened and deepened. The site would be ideal for sending supplies north to upstate New York, which was the primary purpose of the proposed arsenal. Springfield also possessed several buildings that could be easily converted into laboratories and magazine warehouses, and the site was safely removed from the reach of the British. The materials necessary for casting cannons—copper, tin, and brass—
also were available. Knox rounded up workmen from almost every manufacturing trade in the area and began to negotiate with blacksmiths, wheel-wrights, coppers and tin men, carpenters and smiths, nail-makers and others. He made arrangements for an air furnace to be built and a foundry to be established. This was the beginning of the famous United States Arsenal in Springfield, which later produced many technical advances in weaponry, including the repeating Springfield rifles used to such advantage in the Civil War. The armory did not close until 1968.
Knox then returned to his hometown of Boston for a long-awaited reunion with Lucy and a chance to see his daughter. He spent several days with his family while carrying on business. His brother William was trying to resurrect the bookstore. He had rented the old shop and was ordering volumes and repairing the damage. He peppered Henry with questions on how to proceed.
Spurred by the recent American victories, recruitment in Knox's home state and town proceeded under the direction of Jeremiah Gridley and was "exceeding rapid," he wrote Washington on Saturday, February 1. The state was trying to fill its quota of raising three infantry regiments and one of artillery. But to Knox's dismay, Massachusetts was offering recruits $86.67 to enlist for the duration of the war—more than four times the amount of other states. The state was having difficulty attracting skilled soldiers, who felt there was little need to join the army with the threat removed from Boston. The exorbitant rate threatened to disrupt recruitment throughout America, he wrote. Knox wanted more Massachusetts men in his artillery corps and sent a memorial to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, asking if a second regiment of gunners could be recruited.
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He also told Washington that he had decided to establish the munitions depot and foundry in Springfield and needed $20,000 to cover the costs. "If Congress should still adhere to Brookfield in preference to Springfield, it will delay everything for three or four months. I wrote General Greene from Springfield that it was the best place in all the four New England states for a laboratory, cannon foundry, &c., and I hope your Excellency will order it there.“
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Washington responded in a letter dated February 11, conveying Congress's insistence that the magazines and laboratories be established in Carlisle and Brookfield, but he gave Knox permission to use his judgment. "I will inform Congress of the necessity of this variation from their resolve.“
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Three days later, Washington wrote to John Hancock that he placed "weight, particularly in this instance" in Knox's opinion and had "ventured to order the
works to be begun [in Springfield]." Washington asked that Congress give its approbation to Knox's change in plans.
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