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Page 8
But the next morning produced a scene as elegant as it was unexpected.
The British were under arms and ready to march to action, when one of
their light-horse from Princeton came furiously down the street, with
an account that General Washington had that morning attacked and
carried the British post at that place, and was proceeding on to seize
the magazine at Brunswick; on which the British, who were then on the
point of making an assault on the evacuated camp of the Americans,
wheeled about, and in a fit of consternation marched for Princeton.
This retreat is one of those extraordinary circumstances, that in
future ages may probably pass for fable. For it will with difficulty
be believed that two armies, on which such important consequences
depended, should be crouded into so small a space as Trenton; and that
the one, on the eve of an engagement, when every ear is supposed to be
open, and every watchfulness employed, should move completely from the
ground, with all its stores, baggage and artillery, unknown and even
unsuspected by the other. And so entirely were the British deceived,
that when they heard the report of the cannon and small arms at
Princeton, they supposed it to be thunder, though in the depth of
winter.
General Washington, the better to cover and disguise his retreat from
Trenton, had ordered a line of fires to be lighted up in front of his
camp. These not only served to give an appearance of going to rest,
and continuing that deception, but they effectually concealed from the
British whatever was acting behind them, for flame can no more be seen
through than a wall, and in his situation, it may with some propriety
be said, they came a pillar of fire to the one army, and a pillar of a
cloud to the other: after this, by a circuitous march of about
eighteen miles, the Americans reached Princeton early in the morning.
The number of prisoners taken were between two and three hundred, with
which General Washington immediately set off. The van of the British
army from Trenton, entered Princeton about an hour after the Americans
had left it, who, continuing their march for the remainder of the day,
arrived in the evening at a convenient situation, wide of the main
road to Brunswick, and about sixteen miles distant from Princeton. But
so wearied and exhausted were they, with the continual and unabated
service and fatigue of two days and a night, from action to action,
without shelter and almost without refreshment, that the bare and
frozen ground, with no other covering than the sky, became to them a
place of comfortable rest. By these two events, and with but little
comparitive force to accomplish them, the Americans closed with
advantages a campaign, which but a few days before threatened the
country with destruction. The British army, apprehensive for the
safety of their magazines at Brunswick, eighteen miles distant,
marched immediately for that place, where they arrived late in the
evening, and from which they made no attempts to move for nearly five
months.
Having thus stated the principal outlines of these two most
interesting actions, I shall now quit them, to put the Abbe right in
his misstated account of the debt and paper money of America, wherein,
speaking of these matters, he says,
"These ideal riches were rejected. The more the multiplication of them
was urged by want, the greater did their appreciation grow. The
Congress was indignant at the affronts given to its money, and
declared all those to be traitors to their country, who should not
receive it as they would have received gold itself.
"Did not this body know, that possessions are no more to be controuled
than feelings are? Did it not perceive, that in the present crisis,
every rational man would be afraid of exposing his fortune? Did it not
see, that in the beginning of a Republic it permitted to itself the
exercise of such acts of despotism as are unknown even in the
countries which are moulded to, and become familiar with servitude and
oppression? Could it pretend that it did not punish a want of
confidence with the pains which would have been scarcely merited by
revolt and treason? Of all this was the Congress well aware. But it
had no choice of means. Its despised and despicable scraps of paper
were actually thirty times below their original value, when more of
them were ordered to be made. On the 13th of September 1779, there was
of this paper money, amongst the public, to the amount of
�.35,544,155. The State owed moreover �.8,305,356, without reckoning
the particular debts of single Provinces."
In the above-recited passages, the Abbe speaks as if the United States
had contracted a debt of upwards of forty million pounds sterling,
besides the debts of individual States. After which, speaking of
foreign trade with America, he says, that "those countries in Europe,
which are truly commercial ones, knowing that North America had been
reduced to contract debts at the epoch even of her greatest
prosperity, wisely thought, that in her present distress, she would be
able to pay but very little, for what might be carried to her."
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