Gallant John Barry • Chapter 8

In the well-nigh three months that John Barry had been at sea in the Lexington, rebellion against the British ministry had metamorphosed into revolution against England's king. To the tall Captain, back from a second successful cruise, it made little difference. His resolution to serve his adopted country had been based upon his lifelong hatred of British intolerance and oppression. Whether the long series of parliamentary acts leveled at the provinces was the work of king's ministers or the king himself seemed to him immaterial. The orators might label it as a war against ministerial persecution, or as against the tyranny of George III. John Barry considered ministry and king synonymous for the brutal system he hated from the bottom of his soul.

Deeper than that, he could sense the need for colonial independence before the American continent lay ground as helplessly under the British rule as did the land of his birth. He knew, likewise, that this new Declaration of Independence, whose ringing language he now had opportunity to read, could only state the principles of liberty. It would require men, guns, powder and hard fighting to make that liberty a reality. Perhaps he may have over-emphasized in his mind the possible fate of the colonies, but, with his background of experience, this should not be wondered at. Those keen brown eyes of his had gazed, in his youthful days, upon a prostrate Ireland, and, by the powers, he never wanted to witness this new land in the same sorry plight.

During his absence much had transpired to change not only the political but the military situation. In the latter developments, he could take no joy. A few weeks before, New York City had fallen into British hands after a brief campaign, p104 which had witnessed sanguine fighting on Long Island followed by panicky retreat from Manhattan. The two Howes, returning in force from Halifax, had atoned for the evacuation of Boston with a stroke that, just then, looked like the beginning of a campaign to sever New England from her sister states to the south. Coming down from the St. Lawrence was another British force, pouring along at the heels of the decimated Continental regiments whose crusade into Canada had collapsed. Between this menace and the victorious Howes, the embattled Americans, from Ticonderoga to Harlem, might yet be exterminated.

Concentration upon New York, however, had benefitted other parts of the newly conceived United States of North America. Sir Peter Parker had been recalled to the main fleet after his first attack on Charlestown had ended in dismal failure. Lord Dunmore had been forced to forgo his efforts to reconquer Virginia when the Roebuck and her consorts were needed by Lord Howe. Even the blockading frigates had vacated the Delaware capes, which explained to Barry why he and his prizes had entered the bay unmolested. It explained also how the Reprisal, from Martinico, the brig Andrew Doria, under Nicholas Biddle, and the sloop Sachem, the two latter from cruises, had slipped in a week or so earlier, with nary a sight of the enemy.

There were more naval men on the streets of Philadelphia in early October than there had been in the fall of 1775, before Hopkins's fleet sailed. Among them were nine captains, including five who had been appointed to some of the new frigates — Barry, Biddle, Alexander, Read, and John Manley. The latter had journeyed clear from Massachusetts to press his rights to seniority through having commanded Washington's fleet in New England before Hopkins and his officers were even thought of. All of them were resplendent in their new dress uniforms — regulation attire prescribed by the Marine Committee a month before.

As the last to arrive in port, Barry probably was the last to be properly tailored. Unfortunately, no painter consigned the tall, distinguished looking Captain to canvas at that time. Barry portraits came later, when he had grown a bit portly and when the uniforms of the Revolution had been replaced by the blue and gold of the American navy. So we have to imagine p105 him in his Continental uniform, which, for a captain, was of dark blue with lapels faced in red, collar standing erect, slash cuffs and flat yellow buttons. Where the coat fell apart was visible a red waistcoat edged with narrow white lace. Undoubtedly it was a striking costume. Certainly it was colorful. And the Captain wore it well.

These gentlemen in uniform had one topic of conversation. That was the pending congressional decision upon seniority. Nightly for some weeks, the Marine Committee had been meeting in secret sessions to wrestle with this question. Theoretically, the captains in Hopkins's fleet, by priority of appointment, should have headed the list, but Hopkins and many of the commanders were in bad odor in the halls of Congress, and brother Stephen, with his wit and Jamaica spirits, was no longer active on the Marine Committee. Since March, beginning with the appointment of John Barry, the committee had commissioned more than a dozen captains who had held no command in the first fleet. Influence and intrigue worked behind the scenes in behalf of some of these, and to have been a Hopkins captain was rapidly becoming a liability. Merit had its place in the committee considerations, but, from the final results, it did not prove a deciding factor in the determining the captain who should top the list.

When the astounding order of seniority was approved by Congress, on October 10, the captains learned that the ranking officer in the Continental navy was James Nicholson, of Maryland. Nicholson had been appointed in June to the frigate built at Baltimore. Prior to that he had commanded a vessel in Maryland's little coast defense fleet. How he reached the pinnacle of preferment can be laid to the cunning of Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia. Any one of a half-dozen others were far more worthy of the honor, based upon actual performance to that time. But Nicholson had the pull.

John Barry fared well in this ranking. He was seventh on the list. Merit, plus Robert Morris's influence, could place him no higher. Preceding him, after Nicholson, were John Manley, Hector McNeill, Dudley Saltonstall, Nicholas Biddle and Thomas Thompson. With the seniority of Manley, Saltonstall and Biddle, he had no quarrel, but McNeill and Thompson, favored sons of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, respectively, p106 had even less claim to their respective positions than Nicholson. That famous seniority list, as the war rolled on, would stir up a pack of trouble and ill‑feeling, but, in October, 1776, it was accepted; if not with good grace, at least, with an air of resignation.

In establishing his rank, Congress had also confirmed Barry's previous appointment to the Effingham. Of the quartet of frigates building at Philadelphia, she alone was still on the ways. The Randolph and Delaware had been launched in July and the Washington in August. Outfitting the first two had exhausted the resources of the Marine Committee. Both had their guns — twenty‑six 12‑pounders and six 6‑pounders on the Randolph, and twenty-four 9‑pounders on the Delaware — but furnishing them had used up every available heavy cannon in the rebel capital. Halfway through the equipping of the Delaware, the supply of coal gave out. Without fuel for the furnaces, her anchors and other work could not be forged. Prospects for the Washington and Effingham certainly were not bright, when, on October 31, the latter frigate finally slid into the river from Bruce & Co.'s shipyard in Kensington. At least, Barry's command was afloat — a potent fighting craft if ever they found 9 and 12‑pounders to frown from the ports pierced along the •126 foot gundeck.

Perhaps the next step taken by Congress encouraged him to believe outfitting would be expedited. To relieve the overworked Marine Committee in handling all the multitudinous matters pertaining to the vessels in the Delaware, a Navy Board was authorized. Appointed to it in early November were John Nixon and John Wharton, onetime part owners of the Black Prince and Barry's good friends. Later in the month, a third member was named, Francis Hopkinson, man of letters and naval law, and, until his new appointment, a member of Congress from New Jersey. How he and Barry got along will be developed later.⁠a At any rate, the Navy Board of the Middle District had taken over all naval duties in the port by November 18. That it did not function smoothly from the start was no fault of its own. The blame lay entirely with the Brothers Howe.

On Tuesday, November 19, coming like a bolt from the blue, Congress learned that the British had overwhelmed Fort Washington, p107 on the Hudson; that the Continental army had evacuated Fort Lee, on the Jersey side, and was falling back across that state, and Howe was in pursuit. British frigates had reappeared off the Delaware earlier in the month, and Henry Fisher reported, also on November 19, that their number had increased from two to seven. As the enemy from Canada had been dissuaded from its southern campaign by Benedict Arnold's heroic fleet on Lake Champlain, it took no large degree of intelligence to see that the British objective had changed. No longer was the effort to separate the states by way of the Hudson. The Howes were bent upon wintering in Philadelphia.

Calls for militia, for volunteers, for cannon, for hospital supplies, for courage, emanated from Congress and the Council of Safety. Ropemakers, sailmakers, caulkers, carpenters, shipwrights, loopers dropped their tools and flocked to the colors. Work on the frigates stopped. As Washington's letters came in almost daily, Congress noted, by the changing location of headquarters, that the army was in full retreat. The commander-in‑chief pled for reinforcements, urging that the rendezvous be the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware from Bristol north to Trenton. Philadelphia responded with martial ardor. Its city associators paraded in review, on November 28, and began marching off in companies the next day. With them went John Nixon, colonel of one of the battalions. Navy Board matters could wait.

The five naval captains remaining in port — all others having sailed on various missions during October — put their heads together, and addressed Congress on November 30. This address is among the missing papers in the records of Congress. Barry identified his part of it later as an offer "to take some heavy Cannon with a Company of Vollenteers to defend the banks of the Delaware and assist all in his power to stop the progress of the Enemy." Congress referred it to the Marine Committee with orders "to pursue such measures as they think proper in consequence thereof."

Because the Randolph and Hornet virtually were ready for sea, the committee felt that Biddle and John Nicholson, the respective commanders, should stay with their ships and seek an opportunity, if worst came to the worst, to get them out past the blockaders. The offers of Charles Alexander, John Barry p108 and Thomas Read were accepted with alacrity, and the crew of the Delaware marched off on December 1. Barry and Read started to make good on their promise to enlist volunteers, neither captain having as yet a single hand enrolled for their frigates. In their enthusiasm, both had overlooked the fact that almost every available man was already in the associators. They managed to cajole some likely fellows from several privateers in the port, but the total of their efforts was a scant sixty men. A spinster, Jane How by name, cooked several days' rations for them. Some heavy cannon, on hastily constructed carriages, were entrusted to their care, and the nondescript lot, with two determined naval captains in joint command, set off on the road to Bristol about December 9.

John Cadwalader, Philadelphia blue-blood and senior colonel of the city militia battalions, commanded the right wing of General Washington's army on December 11. The retreat across Jersey had ended at last on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. The Continental army lay stretched along the west bank of the river, in the shape of a broad V, from Coryell's ferry down to below Bristol. Headquartered in the latter town, Cadwalader's entire force consisted of the Philadelphia militia brigade, supported in the river by a number of the Pennsylvania row‑galleys. His left flank had liaison with the right wing of General Ewing's division opposite Bordentown; his right flank, Colonel John Nixon's battalion, lay astride the mouth of Neshaminy creek at Dunk's ferry.

Over in Jersey, Howe's army, 12,000 strong, was posted at Trenton, Penny Town and almost to Bordentown, "waiting for an opportunity to cross over." No one knew where the passage would be attempted, but the vulnerable point was regarded as between Trenton Falls and Bordentown. Should it be launched thus, the brunt of defending the river would fall upon Ewing's division. Washington, anticipating that division would be unequal to the task of holding off an overwhelming force, had provided a second line of defense along the passes of the Neshaminy. To hold the Neshaminy to the bitter end was the assignment given Cadwalader.

John Barry, Thomas Read and their volunteer artillery company p109 arrived at Bristol that day. The colonel commanding welcomed them with open arms when they reported at headquarters in Bessonett's tavern. They brought one thing he needed most — cannon. But he could not see why it required two experienced naval captains to command so small a battery. Cadwalader knew both men by reputation, and John Nixon, who was in attendance at a council of war, put in a prompt word for Barry. The Captain's talents, suggested Nixon, would better grace the commanding officer's official family. So Read took sole command of the battery, and John Barry was attached to headquarters as an aide-de‑camp.

The first phase of the winter campaign of 1776‑1777 is, probably, the best known in the history of the American Revolution. It needs no detailed retelling here. Every school boy is familiar with the facts; how Howe abandoned the idea of taking Philadelphia until spring, and returned to New York to spend a pleasant winter; how the British army quartered itself in the New Jersey hamlets with Rall's Hessians at Trenton; how Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night with the pick of the Continental army, and marched down the Jersey side to surprise the enemy at dawn, and win a sensational victory.

Much as we regret to admit it, John Barry was not at Trenton. His experiences that day were with Cadwalader's brigade at Bristol. They, too, had expected to cross and come upon the enemy from the rear. Floating ice above Bristol had frustrated an attempt at that point, so they tried it at Dunk's ferry. Cadwalader had been reinforced, but the backbone of his brigade was still the Philadelphia militia. Four companies from a Philadelphia battalion and some Delaware militia made the crossing. Then the tide turned and a vast field of ice shifted in and cut off the Jersey shore. It prevented the landing of any cannon and without cannon Cadwalader felt the effort would be futile. Those who had crossed were withdrawn, and the brigade returned to Bristol in time to hear Washington's victorious guns in their matinal song at Trenton.

Spurred by the story of the victory up the river, which reached him by courier in the afternoon of December 26, Cadwalader passed his entire force across the Delaware to Burlington the next day, to learn, some hours later, that Washington p110 had returned to the west bank. Nothing daunted, the doughty colonel pushed up the river to Bordentown. His advance guard entered the town in the early afternoon of December 28 and found the enemy gone. All reports indicated the retreat had been hasty and was being retarded by a heavy baggage train. "I hope to fall on their rear," he wrote his commander-in‑chief, and announced his next destination as Crosswicks, five miles east of Bordentown. Washington called off the pursuit at that point, and the Philadelphia brigade remained at Crosswicks until the year closed.

And now we approach the second phase of this epochal campaign. Washington was again in Trenton, the entire army having recrossed the Delaware. The enemy, fully recovered from the shock of that Christmas night surprise party, was massing under Lord Cornwallis for a grand attack. Should the Continental army again place the Delaware between itself and the infuriated British? The great commander-in‑chief decided against further retreat.

Orders were dispatched to Cadwalader to bring his men in from Crosswicks. They moved out in the evening of January 1, marching up the White Horse road in orderly fashion. John Barry rode with the staff and was with Cadwalader the next morning when the latter reported to George Washington. It was the Captain's first meeting with the eminent Virginian who commanded the Continental army. Of it he makes no mention; nor does Washington. It was not likely, in the tension of that day, that a naval officer on Cadwalader's staff should make an impression upon the commander-in‑chief. Later, it would be a different story.

For the present, there were immediate orders to be carried to the various units comprising the newly arrived brigade. Probably it fell to Barry's lot to instruct Thomas Read's naval gunners to take up a position covering the narrow stone-arched bridge spanning Assunpink creek. In doing so, he could envision the position of the American army. It lay not in Trenton, but to the east of it, stretched along the far bank of the creek from the Delaware to Phillips' Ford, a good two miles above the little town. His own post with Cadwalader he found to be an open field a full mile away from the bridge where he had posted Read's battery. Thus, in the fighting of that day, p111 January 2, when the British pushed into Trenton and tried to storm the bridge, he again had no active part. Some British field pieces sent an occasional ball toward Cadwalader's men, but that was all. Read's naval guns, on the other hand, were in the thick of it.

That second encounter at Trenton — the British effort to force Assunpink creek — was largely an artillery duel with plenty of noise, but slight loss of life. It ended when darkness fell. Lord Cornwallis, planning to deliver the coup-de‑grâce in the morning, hurried up reinforcements for the grand attack. Camp fires blazed where British and Hessians settled down to wait out the cold night. Other camp fires gleamed across the creek, where shadowy figures could be seen patrolling the bridge-head, and the thud and clump of shovel and axe gave evidence that the rebel army was digging in for a last ditch stand. At least, so the British thought.

Washington's famous flanking march around the enemy in the dead of night, while 400 men tended the fires on Assunpink creek, and made much noisy to‑do over felling a few trees and digging some shallow trenches, is one of the high spots of his military genius. And up the Sand Town road, shortly after midnight, as part of this brilliant maneuvre, went Cadwalader's brigade. To the staff fell the lot of carrying orders to the various units and seeing that each moved off in silence and with dispatch. Would we could describe Barry's activities that night. In referring to them later, he made a single, unsatisfactory comment:

"What services I rendered is best Known to his Excellency & the Officers who then served under him."

Unfortunately, neither Washington nor any of his officers ever supplied a written account of those services. Hence, we can only picture Barry as one of the toiling army, which, through the bitter night, struggled along a lane that at times narrowed to a cow‑path, stumbling over stumps, sloshing through ice‑crackling bogs, to reach Stony Brook, two miles from Princeton, at daybreak on January 3. In advance was Hugh Mercer's brigade and right behind came Cadwalader's men.

The story of that day has often been told; how two British regiments bound for Trenton caught a glimpse of the advancing rebels and deployed to their left to gain cover of an orchard p112 and repel the American advance; how Mercer's brigade, making for that same orchard, gained the objective first, but could not withstand the cold steel of the charging British; how Hugh Mercer and Colonel John Haslet, of the Delaware line, and half-dozen other brilliant Continental officers died in that fifteen minutes of ferocious, hand-to‑hand fighting; and how Washington, advancing with Cadwalader, risked his life repeatedly in rallying what was left of Mercer's brigade.

It was the Philadelphia militia and Hitchcock's New England Continentals, who stopped the British advance until the balance of the army came into action. John Barry may have missed the fighting at Trenton, but he had his share of it at Princeton, for Cadwalader and his staff were in the thick of the engagement, and participated in the rousing "fox hunt," when more than 300 British regulars were bagged in the wild pursuit that closed the bloody action. There was no rest for the wearied and victorious Americans. Cornwallis, furious at being duped, was on his way from Trenton; in fact, his advance guard entered one end of Princeton at noon as the rear of Washington's army moved out of the town to the northward. Before midnight, the Continental troops had reached Somerset Court House in the hilly country north of Princeton, while Cornwallis, fearful of his supplies at New Brunswick, had given over all thought of pursuit and had marched on to his New Brunswick base, evacuating all the conquered territory between there and the Delaware.

By easy stages thereafter, the American army moved on north to Pluckemin, on January 4, and to Morristown, on January 7. Into headquarters in Freeman's tavern, on January 8, was ushered a British officer from New Brunswick under a flag of truce. He delivered a letter from Cornwallis, requesting permission to send a surgeon and medicines to care for the British wounded at Princeton and a convoy of baggage and supplies for the Hessians captured at Trenton and removed to Philadelphia. Knowing the venom of New Jersey patriots against the Hessians, the commander-in‑chief considered the proposal, and finally consented, providing the Hessian supply detachment bore no arms and could be safe-guarded by an American officer against attack or despoliation by roving militia bands.

p113 John Barry would to go back to his frigate. The winter campaign was at an end, in his opinion, and his services with the army were no longer necessary. His request to return was made through Cadwalader, and reached Washington while the answer to Cornwallis was being prepared. Just the man for the task, was the commander-in‑chief's decision, and the Captain was summoned to headquarters. Thus, the first official meeting of which there is record between George Washington and John Barry occurred at Freeman's tavern, in Morristown, on January 8, 1777. The latter's exploits in the Lexington were not unknown to the leader of the Continental army, and, naturally, would recommend him for this special commission.

Barry got his instructions, the letter to Cornwallis and the necessary passport under Washington's signature. To Cornwallis, the American general had written, that he thought it advisable to direct "Captain Barry, the bearer of this, to give a safe conduct to the Hessian baggage as far as Philadelphia, and to the surgeon and medicines of the Princeton." He had no objection, he wrote, to a Hessian sergeant and twelve men attending the baggage, but would not consent to their bearing arms. Perhaps the great leader and the tall naval captain became pretty well acquainted with each other then. Both were men quick to recognize merit in others, and their mutual regard for each other probably had its inception that day in the wintry northern New Jersey hills, when Barry bowed himself out of headquarters and started on his mission.

From Morristown to New Brunswick is •about twenty-five miles, so, under a flag of truce, Barry rode into British headquarters on the morning of January 9, and set off almost immediately with his assorted convoy. It consisted of the surgeon and his medicines in one wagon, and about eight other wagons piled high with the Hessian baggage. As insisted upon by Washington, the mustached German sergeant and his twelve men carried no arms. The wagons, as their drivers quickly informed the Captain, had been impressed into the British service at Mt. Holly, in December, and were unpaid for.

Moving down the Trenton road, the convoy reached Princeton on the morning of January 10, where the surgeon and his medicines were detached. Thereafter, the wagons rumbled northward on a road which brought them to Crosswicks late p114 that night. Old Israel Putnam, commanding a brigade headed for the main army, was quartered there. Barry presented himself, described his mission, and related the story of the impressed wagons. "Old Put" was indignant. He wrote at once to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety. Not an article for the Hessians should be released, he urged, until the wagoners were paid in full by the enemy for their enforced service and their enfeebled horses. Barry continued his southward course at dawn with his convoy, bearing Putnam's letter.

By way of Bordentown, Burlington and the Bristol ferry, the convoy wended its way to arrive at Philadelphia, on January 13. John Barry turned his wagon train and its Hessian guard over to the Board of War, delivered Putnam's letter to the Council of Safety, and formally severed his connections with the army. His military services had covered about a month and one‑half, and he had participated in what was perhaps the most brilliant campaign of the entire war.

p103 VIII.

Trenton and Princeton

Thayer's Note:

p103 VIII. Trenton and Princeton

Thayer's Note:

p103 VIII.

Trenton and Princeton