The life of an officer : written by himself during a residence in Pennsylvania, with anecdotes of the American war

Front matter

THE

LIFE OF AN OFFICER,

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF,

Chapter I

The Author's Account of his Family, and early Education — American Teachers — School Anecdotes — Author's Character — Academy at Philadelphia — Master and Ushers — Mr Beveridge and his Latin Poems, - - 4

Chapter II

Retrospective Events in the Author's History — Philadelphia — Foot-races — The Paxton Boys threaten the City — Anecdotes of two British Officers — Author's early Amusements — Sailing — Swimming — Skating — Correction of Abbe Raynal — British Coffeehouse — -Anecdotes of its Visitors, 34

Chapter III

The Author mixes in new Society — Is destined for the Law —

Philadelphian Theatricals — -Anecdote Debating Society —

Causes of Youthful Follies— Junius's Letters, 73

Chapter IV

The Author removes to Yorktown — Boarding-House, and Character of the Inmates — General Society — Returns to Philadelphia, and pursues his Legal Studies — Fencing — Anecdote of a Madman — Causes of the War with Britain — State of Parties — Preparation for War, - - - 99

Chapter V

Assembly of Congress — Continental Battalions — Recruiting — The Author charged with a Commission to General Schuyler— Narrative of his Journey, - - - 125

VI

CONTENTS.

Chapter VI

The Author reluctantly leaves Philadelphia — Character of the Army at New York — Erection of Fort Washington and Fort Lee — Connecticut Light House — Arrival of the British Troops at Long Island — Action of 27th of August and subsequent Skirmishes — Retreat of Americans from Long Island, Page 144

Chapter VII

Americans abandon New York, and take Post at Fort Washington — Character of American Officers — Promotions — 'The Post at Fort Washington threatened— Summoned by General Howe — The Americans attacked and retire — Account of the Engagement, - - - - 170

Chapter VIII

The Author taken Prisoner — Conduct of British Officers and Soldiers — The Prisoners — Character of General Howe — Prisoners removed to New York, - - - - 204

Chapter IX

Pardon offered to the Americans upon return to their Allegiance — Letter of General Washington — Sufferings of Prisoners — General Lee taken — British Provost Marshal — Character of Colonel Allen — A partial Exchange of Prisoners — American Officers removed to Long Island, - - - - 234

Chapter X

Situation of the Officers at Long Island — Society and Manners — Hardships of Captivity — The Author's Mother unexpectedly arrives at New York — Narrative of her Excursion — Procures the Author's Liberty on Parole, - - - 257

CHAPTER XL

The Author leaves Long Island for New York and Elizabethtown — Arrives at Philadelphia — Meets the Object of an Early Attachment — Public Feelings, - 287

Chapter XII

Philadelphia Threatened — General Washington marches to meet the Enemy— Battle at Brandywine — British take Possession of

CONTENTS.

Vll

Philadelphia — Subsequent Operations — Character of the Republican Chiefs — Society at Reading— Temper of the Times — The Author Married, - - - - Page 306

Chapter XIII

American Affectation in Titles — Prisoners at Long Island — Supernumerary Officers — Character of General Lee — Military Anecdotes — The Author enrolled in the Militia — Quaker Principles — Character of Dr Franklin — Mrs Macaulay — Milton's Sentiments of Democracy — Party Spirit — The Author appointed Prothonotary of the County of Dauphin, - - 329

Chapter XIV

Constitution of the United States — House of Representatives — Senate — Executive Power — Public Characters and State of Parties — Washington — Jefferson — French Revolution, - 357

Chapter XV

Yellow Fever — Political Differences — Insurrection suppressed by the prudent Measures of the President — Treaty with Great Britain — Travels of the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt — French Settlement at the Asylum — Opposition to the Measures of the President — Washington retires from Office, - 383

Chapter XVI

Mr Adams President — Opposition to his Administration — French Partisans — Imposition of Taxes — Insurrection — Federalists lose their Ground — Death of General Washington, and Election of Mr Jefferson — Character of that Gentleman — Reflections — Death of the Author's Mother — Conclusion - - 403

MEMOIRS OF A LIFE,

CHIEFLY PASSED IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Introduction

The dealers in self-biography, ever sedulous to ward oiF the imputation of egotism, seldom fail to find apologies for their undertakings. Some, indeed, endeavour to persuade themselves, that they design their labours merely for their scrutoires ; while others, less self-deceived, admit they have an eye to the public. The Cardinal De Retz is brought out at the request of a lady ; Rousseau, by the desire of showing himself to a misjudging world, in all the verity of nature ; Mannontel writes his life for his children at the instance of their mother ; and Cumberland, so far as his motives can be collected from his introduction, because he lived and was an author. If, from these, we recur to the account given of himself by our own Franklin, we shall find, that, although addressed to his son, it is intended for the world ; and that the acknowledged motives to it are a combination of family curiosity and personal vanity, with the desire of showing the connection between thrifty youth and re-

INTRODUCTION.

spectable age, — a kind of practical comment on the useful truths contained in Poor Richard's Almanac,

Next to the good fortune of having figured in some brilliant, active career ; of having been the companion of a hero, or the depositary of state secrets ; of having seen cities and men ; of having wandered " through antres vast, and deserts idle," or been the subject of " moving accidents by flood and field the avowed inducement of Mr Cumberland is perhaps the most plausible.

Unfortunately for the person who here presumes to appear before the public, he is without one of these claims to attention. He has no pretensions to fame or distinction in any kind, neither as soldier, nor statesman, nor traveller, nor author, He is not wholly without hope, however, that his presumption may be palliated, and that, in his object of giving a representation of the character, spirit, and more minute occurrences of his time, it will be perceived, that there is no form into which his work can be thrown with so much advantage, as into that of personal memoirs. By his own story, if he is not misled by self-love, a kind of menstruum is afforded for the incongruous mass of his materials, serving to harmonize, in some degree, the abrupt transitions and detached details which a delineation of the various incidents of " many coloured life" requires.

As to himself, he is fully conscious that

it matters not To whom related, or by whom begot ;

and, therefore, he would fain buttress his undertaking by the opinion of an eminent poet, as vouched by Mr WalpoJe, viz. " That if any man were to form a book of what he had seen or heard himself, it must, in whatever hands,

INTRODUCTION.

prove a most useful and entertaining one." A most seducing ignis fatuus truly, considering the latitude with which it is laid down !

But, far from wishing to foreclose the reader by an opinion which he must own he considers a very questionable one, or to lure him on to an expectation of what he might vainly seek to find, he announces at his outset, that the pages here set before him hold out no other inducement to his perusal than such as may arise from the fidelity with which he will relate incidents within the scope of ordinary life, and depict some occurrences which came under his notice during the progress of the revolution, and since its consummation. In doing this, he will have occasion to speak as well of others as himself. He may sometimes resort to motives in accounting for men's actions ; and, as these receive their qualities from the mind of the agent, he will, with equal freedom and truth, disclose the complexion of his own, having little, he thinks no inclination that it should pass for better than it is. If the mould in which it has been formed is not the most perfect, so neither, does he trust, is it absolutely the most worthless : if not calculated to produce a cast to the taste of worldly wisdom, one that may advance experimentally the sound philosophy of thrift, and practically mark the routes to private wealth and public greatness, it will yet be found abundantly fruitful in negative instruction on both points.

VILLAGE OF BRISTOL.

Chapter I

The Author's Account of his Family, and early Education — - American Teachers — School Anecdotes— Author'' s Character — Academy at Philadelphia — Master and Ushers — Mr Beveridge and his Latin Poems.

My recollections of the village of Bristol, in which I was born on the 10th of April, N. S. in the year 1752, cannot be supposed to go farther back than to the year 1756 or 1757' There are few towns, perhaps, in Pennsylvania, which, in the same space of time, have been so little improved, or undergone less alteration. Then, as now, the great road leading from Philadelphia to New York, first skirting the inlet, at the head of which stand the mills, and then turning short to the left along the banks of the Delaware, formed the principal, and, indeed, only street, marked by any thing like a continuity of building. A few places for streets were opened from this main one, on which, here and there, stood an humble, solitary dwelling. At a corner of two of these lanes was a Quaker meeting-house ; and on a still more retired spot stood a small Episcopal church, whose lonely grave yard, with its surrounding woody scenery, might have furnished an appropriate theme for such a muse as Gray's. These, together with an old brick jail, (Bristol having once been the county town of Bucks,) constituted all the public edifices in this my native town. Its scite, though flat, is not unpleasant, particularly along the bank of the Dela-

VILLAGE OF BRISTOL, ware, rising to a commanding height from a fair and gravelly margin. From hence the eye might rove at large both up and down the river, and, after traversing a fine expanse of water in an oblique direction, find an agreeable resting-place in the town of Burlington on the opposite shore.

As in this country there is little temptation to the tracing of a long line of ancestry, I shall content myself with deducing a very brief genealogy. And this not so much, perhaps, from an acquiescence in the revolutionary idea of the insignificance of an illustrious pedigree, as from real inability to produce one. I can go no farther, at least, than to vouch that we had a coat of arms in the family, borne about on the body of an old fashioned chaise, and engraved upon our spoons and a doublehandled caudle-cup. But if, instead of groping amidst the darkness of transatlantic heraldry, we confine ourselves to our own shores, which seems much the most congenial to the noble spirit of independence we are pleased to manifest on other occasions, I am warranted in asserting, that I am descended from ancestors, respectable both as to station and character ; from a stock not ignoble, but honest and generous : And if parental propensities are transmitted to offspring in the human race, but in half the degree that they are among quadrupeds, the value we may be disposed to set on virtuous progenitors is very far from chimerical. Several years' residence on a farm has afforded me opportunity for some observations upon the nature of domestic animals ; and I have found, what I should have been disposed to laugh at, had I not proved it, that, among the ox kind especially, the vices, which seemed mere habits of the female parent, have invariably descended to her offspring.

author's ancestry.

I venture this remark, though not quite in unison with the tone of the subject ; and though liable to be strained into an assumption of worth on my part, to which I may, in fact, be wholly destitute of pretension.

My father was an Irishman, and, as it appears from some imperfect documents in my possession, came to this country in the year 1730. He was born, I think, in Longford, and was brought up under the care of his maternal grandfather in Dublin, or its neighbourhood. Being designed for the pulpit, he had received a suitable education, to which having added many of the accomplishments at that time in fashion, he was distinguished in Philadelphia both as a scholar and a gentleman. It was not long since, that the late Chief Justice Shippen informed me, he was the person always appealed to, in the coffeehouse controversies of the young men of the day, on points of science and literature. During his presidency of the county courts of Bucks, he had made himself, as I have understood, a very tolerable lawyer, insomuch that, at the time of his death, he was, as I have been informed, in nomination for the office of a judge of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. From the copies of letters to his friends in Ireland, soon after his arrival in Philadelphia, he appears not to have taken up very favourable sentiments of its inhabitants. " Most of our trading people here," says he, " are complaisant sharpers ; and that maxim in trade, to think every man a knave, until the contrary evidently appears, would do well to be observed here if any where. In this province we have a toleration for all religions, which some have enlarged so far, as to make a neglect and indifference of all religion, their only religion." These being the opinions of a young man but of about two and twenty years of age, it

SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA.

is not improbable that they were too hastily formed ; but if, unfortunately for the honour of our infant metropolis, they were correct, it is some relief to hear, that mercantile integrity, joined to genuine and unaffected hospitality, was also to be found there, as appears from the foil owing: extract of a letter, dated the 18th of March 1731. " Soon after we arrived here, it happened, and I hope providentially for us, (himself and his father-in-law, Mr Emerson, who made one family,) that we rented a house from one Mr Peter Baynton, adjacent to his own, who is a considerable merchant in this city. As he is a man of singular sobriety, and not well affected to the reigning humour in this town, he has admitted us into his chief confidence, and distinguished us as his principal friends and associates, in so much that he will enter upon no project or design in trade, without admitting us to a share in it : and, from the success of some we have already undertaken, we have not the least room to doubt of his sincerity and kindness. " Such is my father's sketch of Philadelphia manners eighty years ago. From the same letter it appears, that, at the instance of this Mr Baynton, he had contemplated with him a partnership in trade, to be carried on in the town of Burlington, which, he observes, 1 ( though it be now somewhat obscure, it has yet many advantages capable of improvement."

This contemplated removal, however, did not take place. He continued in business in Philadelphia, and in the war, probably, with Spain, which broke out in the year 1741, was concerned with several of the principal merchants in that city in building and fitting out the Tartar privateer. This vessel, supposed to be

SERIOUS ACCIDENT.

the finest, as she was the largest, that had at that time been built on the Delaware, had a singular fate. On her passage to the sea, at a fine season of the year, she was lost in the bay. To make the most of a gentle breeze that was blowing, she was under full sail, when, either from a deficiency of ballast, a disproportion in her rigging, or some other fault in her construction, she was almost instantaneously overturned by a flaw from the shore. The greater part of the owners, who had formed a party to see her out of the capes, were on board, and among them my father. So mild was the day, and so little cause was there for apprehension, that he was amusing himself on deck with one of Moliere's plays, when the disaster occurred. Finding himself precipitated among the waves, he immediately seized on a chest that had floated from the vessel, and placing himself on the middle of it, its extremities served to support a sailor on each side of him. In this situation, they were driven at the mercy of the waves for a considerable time, without any prospect of relief. They were sometimes about to quit their hold, and at once resign themselves to a fate which appeared inevitable. This was peculiarly the case with one of the sailors, whom my father exerted himself to the utmost to encourage, since, if he had abandoned the chest, it would have lost its equilibrium, and in the weak, exhausted state in which they were, they must all have perished. At length, a vessel hove in sight, and appeared to be making towards them : It proved to be so, and they were taken up while yet enough of vital power remained, to render the means used for their restoration efficacious. The captain, if I am not mistaken, and the greater part of the Tartar's crew, were drowned, as were most of the owners that

FAMILY HIST011Y.

were on board. Although I have heard my father relate the circumstances of this misfortune, and have since heard it spoken of in the family, my recollection of the particulars is very imperfect.

My mother, the second wife of my father, was the eldest of four daughters ; she was born in the island of Barbadoes, and when about seven years of age, was brought to Philadelphia by her parents, who then came to reside in that city. Her father was a German, born, if I mistake not, in Frankfort on the Maine. He had been engaged in trade while in Barbadoes, and brought with him into Pennsylvania a pretty good property. Her mother was from Scotland, having first drawn breath in the city of Glasgow; but by what means a pair of so little national affinity as these my grand parents on the mother's side were brought together, I never learned. From their conversation, however, I remember they had resided sometime in London previously to their settling in Barbadoes. Notwithstanding the apparent want of associating principles in some respects, they yet agreed very well. While the tongue of my grandfather faithfully retained the character of its original dialect, that of his spouse, though in a less degree, bore testimony also to the country of her extraction ; and while he, a determined Episcopalian, had his pew in Christ's Church, she, a strict Presbyterian, was a constant attendant at Buttonwood meeting-house. No feuds, however, were engendered by this want of religious conformity ; and if my grandfather sometimes consented to hear a sermon at the meeting-house, it might be considered as a concession on his part for a sermon of Archbishop Tillotson, which was regularly read aloud by one of the family on Sunday evening. Though a loud

FAMILY HISTORY.

talker, and somewhat rough and boisterous in his manner, the old gentleman was at bottom highly liberal, benevolent, and good natured. The good lady, on the other hand, was rather austere ; and the management of her family strongly tinctured with the primitive discipline of her church. Her countenance on Sunday always assumed an unusual degree of severity, and while under her tutorage, I might truly say, in the meaning of the poet, it shone no Sabbath day to me. Then, instead of rest, my labours were augmented ; then chapters were to be read, and long catechisms to be conned or repeated. The best things may be overdone, and the imposition of hard and unreasonable tasks is more apt to create disgust, than conciliation to instruction. So at least it was with me. I deemed my tutoress unfeeling and tyrannical, while, by her, I was considered as reprobate and incorrigible.

Although my progenitors, on neither side, appear to have possessed the talent of amassing wealth, there is a circumstance common to both, which seems unequivocally to indicate liberality and sincerity of heart. And yet it is a circumstance which, probably, would have escaped me, had it not been noticed by my uncle, by marriage, the late Judge Biddle. Your family, said he one day to me, has had an honour which has happened to few, that of inducing two persons, wholly unconnected with you, to attach themselves to you ; to make your interests their own ; and, without contract or pecuniary tie, to remain with you till their deaths. One of these was a Scotchman, of the name of Thomas Gordon, who came into my grandfather's service in Philadelphia, in the capacity of a clerk, continued with him after he had declined business, and remained among

FAMILY HISTOKY.

us long after his death, until the time of his own decease, which happened at Reading, in the year 1777* He was born in Aberdeen, and had been bred to business in a counting-house at Rotterdam. He never was married. In his latter days he became a perfect clock in regularity ; was a truly honest man, and, what will be thought still better by many, he was a genuine Whig of seventy -six, though too old or infirm to carry arms in the revolutionary contest. The other was a maiden lady of the society of Friends, who, upon occasion of my mother being in want of a female domestic, offered to assist her for a short time, came into the family soon after I was born, and never left it until taken from us by death, at an advanced age, in the year 1794. Her name was Ann Burgess ; she was a woman of good understanding, and reputably connected.

With the exception of the family of Dr Denormandie, our own, and perhaps one or two more, the principal inhabitants of Bristol were Quakers. Among these the names of Buckley, Williams, Large, Meritt, Hutchinson, and Church, are familiar to me. The last, bred to the trade of a cooper, but who had put his son in the business, and employed himself more in the management of a small farm and nursery of fruit trees, was a sincere and steady friend to our family. He was married to the sister of Ann Burgess, just mentioned, and was a very worthy man, possessing a good natural understanding, with a strong addiction to philosophical speculations. His attachment to my father went beyond friendship : it reached to admiration and veneration. He thought him, as he has often told me, one of the best and wisest men that ever lived. I never knew him do a foolish thing, said he, but once. Upon my asking

AMERICAN QUAKERS.

him what that was ; it was, said he, on occasion of some worthless fellow reporting that he had seen one or more Indians in the swamp beyond the church, assembling a body of the militia, of which he was colonel, and marching out with drums beating and colours flying, against the supposed enemy, But this instance is equivocal. Whether my father gave credit to the report or not, others might, and no doubt did believe it. It was also incumbent on him to be alert ; to inculcate that duty upon his men, and to inure them to alarms ; and although more silence, and less parade, might have been more truly military, yet something of the " pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, 5 ' is allowable to militia, particularly to a body which had certainly never encountered an enemy. Besides, to the calm incredulity of friend Church upon this occasion, we might perhaps safely add, a little both of the spirit of party and of quake rism. The people of his society, from principle averse to war, were charged with being too friendly to the Indians ; with being too ready to palliate their enormities, and, consequently, indisposed to listen to the alarming accounts which the panic, produced by Braddock's defeat, had spread throughout the country. By this event every obstacle to their incursions being removed, in the minds of the timid they were to be looked for every where. From the consternation that prevailed, I can still recollect, that the horrors of a discomfiture by such a foe, were among my most early and lively impressions. To the terrors of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife, the imagination adds the savage yells, the gloomy woods, and dismal swamps, which are their usual accompaniments; and, hence, minds that have been deeply impressed by the fatal fields of Brad-

SCHOOL AT BRISTOL.

dock and St Clair, are well prepared for the sombre interest imparted by Tacitus' s affecting description of that of Varus, visited after an interval of six years, by Germanicus : — Occulta saltuum, mcestos locos, visuque ac memoria defbrmes. Medio campi albentia ossa, ut fugerunt, ut restiterunt disjecta vel aggerata. " Those deep and dreary recesses, hideous both to sight and memory ; with the whitening bones, scattered or heaped together, as either they belonged to those who fell in flight, or met their fate resisting."

There being no traces in my memory of any incidents worthy of remark, during the period of my infancy, I pass on to the era of my removal to Philadelphia, for the sake of my education. This I suppose to have been between my sixth and seventh year. I recollect little or nothing of going to school at Bristol, farther than that there was one, and the master's name Pinkerton, a kind, good humoured Irishman, from whom I might have learned, that as one thing was cruel big, so another might be cruel little. In the city I lived with, and was under the care of, my grandfather. The school he first put me to was that of David James Dove, an Englishman, and much celebrated in his day, as a teacher, and no less as a dealer in the minor kind of satirical poetry* To him w r ere attributed some political effusions in this way, which were thought highly of by his party, and made a good deal of noise. He had also made some figure, it seems, in the old world, being spoken of, as I have heard, though in what way I know not, having never seen the work, in a book, entitled, The Life and Adventures of the Chevalier Taylor. * As the story went,

* This was Taylor the oculist, spoken of in Boswell's Life of

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.

some one reading this performance to Mr Dove on its first appearance, with the mischievous design of amusing himself at his expence, as he knew what the book contained, he (Dove) bore testimony to the truth of the contents, with which, he said, he was perfectly acquainted, exclaiming, as the reader went along, True, true as the gospel ! But when the part was reached, in which he himself is introduced in a situation somewhat ridiculous, he cried out, It was a lie, a most abominable lie, and that there was not a syllable of truth in the story. At any rate, Dove was a humorist, and a person not unlikely to be engaged in ludicrous scenes. It was his practice in his school to substitute disgrace for corporal punishment. His birch was rarely used in canonical method, but was generally stuck into the back part of the collar of the unfortunate culprit, who, with this badge of disgrace towering from his nape like a broom at the mast-head of a vessel for sale, was compelled to take his stand upon the top of the form for such a period of time as his offence was thought to deserve. He had another contrivance for boys who were late in their morning attendance. This was to dispatch a committee of five or six scholars for them, with a bell and lighted lantern, and in this " odd equipage," in broad day-light, the bell all the while tingling, were they escorted through the streets to school. As Dove affected a strict regard to justice in his dispensations of punishment, and always professed a wil-

Johnson, and who, though sprightly, was, according to the Doctor, an instance how far impudence could carry ignorance. He challenged me once to talk Latin with him, says the Doctor. I quoted some of Horace, which he took to be my own speech. He said a few words well enough.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, lingness to have an equal measure of it meted out to himself, in case of his transgressing, the boys took him at his word ; and one morning, when he had overstaid his time, either through laziness, inattention, or design, he found himself waited on in the usual form. He immediately admitted the justice of the procedure, and putting himself behind the lantern and bell, marched with great solemnity to school, to the no small gratification of the boys, and entertainment of the spectators. But this incident took place before I became a scholar. It was once my lot to be attended in this manner, but what had been sport to my tutor, was to me a serious punishment.

The school was, at this time, kept in VidelPs Alley, which opened into Second, a little below Chesnut Street. It counted a number of scholars of both sexes, though chiefly boys ; and the assistant, or writing-master, was John Reiiy, a very expert penman and conveyancer, a man of some note, who, in his gayer moods, affected a pompous and technical phraseology, as he is characterised under the name of Parchment, in a farce written some forty years ago, and which, having at least the merit of novelty and personality, was a very popular drama, though never brought upon the stage. Some years afterwards, Dove removed to Germantown, where he erected a large stone building, in the view of establishing an academy upon a large scale ; but I believe his success was not answerable to his expectations. I know not what my progress was under the auspices of Mr Dove ; but having never, in my early years, been smitten with the love of learning, I have reason to conclude it did not pass mediocrity. I recollect a circumstance, however, which one afternoon took place at my grandfather's, to