Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit
up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage
and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they
produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind
soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.
But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of
sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which
might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the
same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would
have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of
man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory
has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with
curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.
As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the
edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances,
which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of.
Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a
narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our
force was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe
could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the
garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our
ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been
removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the
Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it
must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that
these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in
use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the
particular object which such forts are raised to defend.
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