WASHINGTON’S EETEEAT THROUGH THE JEESEYS.
NOVEMBEE 17–DECEMBEE 13, 1776.
EARL COENWALLIS took the command in New Jersey. His first object was Fort Lee, which lay on the narrow ridge between the Hudson and Hackensack rivers. Drop after drop of sorrow was fast falling into the cup of Washington. On the seventeenth of November he gave orders to Lee with his division to join him, but the orders were wilfully slighted. In the following weeks they were repeated constantly, mixed with reasoning and entreaty, and were always disobeyed with stolid and impertinent evasions. Congress at last granted the states liberty to enlist men for the war, or for three years; and, after their own delay had destroyed every hope of good results from the experiment, they forwarded to Washington blank commissions which he might fill up.
In the night of the nineteenth two battalions of Hessian grenadiers, two companies of yagers, and the eight battalions of the English reserve, at least five thousand men, marched up the east side of the Hudson, and the next morning, about daybreak, crossed with their artillery to Closter landing, five miles above Fort Lee. Greene had placed on the post neither guard nor watch, being certain in his own mind that the British would not make their attack by that way; so that the nimble seamen were unmolested as they dragged the cannon for near half a mile up the narrow, steep, rocky road, to the top of the palisades. Receiving a report of the near approach of the enemy, Greene sent an express to the commander-in-chief, and, having ordered his troops under arms, took to flight with