Captain Samuel Cabell and his rifle company returned to Williamsburg after Gwynn’s Island. On July 25, the news of events of July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia reached the Virginia Capital and the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to the troops. The Virginia Line, formed in 1775, was now part of the army of a united country.
Soon afterwards, the 6th and other Virginia Regiments received orders to march north “to join General Washington’s Army in the Jerseys”. The journey was over 400 miles. Brown notes they traveled through Fredericksburg and across Maryland to Lancaster, Pennsylvania before turning eastward, crossing the Delaware River above Trenton and arriving at Perth Amboy. One wonders how they were received along the way. Many no doubt were pleased, perhaps providing food, excited to see the Virginians passing through as evidence of the gathering strength of the army of their new country. Others may have been less welcoming – loyalists, pacifists and those unsure of what the future held or which side to take.
On September 3, 1776, the 6th Virginia Regiment was officially transferred from the Southern Department to General Adam Stephen’s Brigade of Washington’s main army. Colonel Mordecai Buckner remained in command of the regiment. He was a veteran of three years in the French and Indian War where he had also served under the Scottish-born Adam Stephen. In late November, 1776, Samuel’s regiment joined Washington’s army in northern New Jersey.
Washington must have welcomed the new Virginia regiments. His army had suffered a series of losses, beginning with the Battle of Long Island on August 26, 1776, the largest battle of the Revolution, when Washington was defeated decisively. On the night before the battle, a large column of British and Hessian regulars marched miles to circle around the American lines, through the Brooklyn flatlands, past Dutch and Quaker farms under cover of darkness to the village of Flushing. When the sun rose, the British surprise attack in the rear of the Continental left flank caused chaos. By the evening, Washington and his army were trapped against the East River. Only a dire, clandestine escape across the river to Manhattan during the night in boats saved the Continental Army from capture. Eight weeks after the Declaration of Independence, the loss of the army could have meant the end of the war.
A retreat followed, up the length of Manhattan. British soldiers landed at Kips Bay and chased the rebels, taunting them with fox hunt calls on a trumpet. Infuriated Continentals fought back and won at Harlem Heights. But the losses continued at White Plains, Fort Washington and Fort Lee on the west bank of the Hudson on November 20, 1776. The Continental Army was retreating in New Jersey when Captain Samuel Cabell, the Amherst Rifles and the 6th Virginia joined them.
Samuel and his men had joined an army on the back foot. Many more men were needed. The 6th Virginia Regiment provided a small part of the need. Samuel’s pension record lists the strength of his rifle company – himself as commander, three other officers, “2 serjeants (sic), 2 drums and fifes, 30 fit for duty present, 5 sick present, 36 total.” The location noted was “New Ark”. The town had been settled by New England puritans who named it for the New Ark of the Covenant. The historian David Hackett Fischer notes their descendants were staunch Whigs who strongly supported independence. Samuel and his comrades would have found the inhabitants busy moving their families and goods out of town, in overloaded carts. Washington chose to send his wounded to Morristown, and move the main body of the army south towards Brunswick. Samuel’s fellow former student at William & Mary, Lieutenant James Monroe stood by the side of the road as the army left Newark and counted men as they passed by. He was shocked to discover that the army was reduced to 3,000 men. At Brunswick, it became smaller as enlistments expired.
Fortunately for the Continental Army, their opponent, General William Howe, was not inclined to go for the jugular that December. He and his brother Admiral Richard Howe were Whigs and years earlier had been sympathetic to American grievances. This outlook came in spite of their being personal friends of King George III, who called them his “cousins”. (Their mother was reputedly the love child of George I and their grandmother, his mistress.) The King with Lord Germain put the Howe brothers in charge of suppressing the American rebellion on land and sea in 1776. General William Howe, after a string of resounding victories, felt that the Continental Army was on the brink of disappearing. He forecast that the majority of Americans, whom he believed were still loyal to the Crown, would welcome the restoration of the status quo, once the patriot army dispersed. Howe only wanted to be rid of Washington, not to surround and annihilate his army, as recommended by his subordinate, General Henry Clinton (whom he sent off to take Newport, Rhode Island to be rid of his dissenting advice). So Howe did not rush in his pursuit of the Continentals.
By December 1, 1776 the American army had reached Brunswick, crossed the Raritan River, and attempted to burn the bridge after them. That afternoon, at 1:30 PM British light dragoons appeared on the north bank, who were then joined by Hessian Jagers. Fischer writes “American riflemen occupied houses along the river and began to take a toll on the Jagers.” Captain Samuel Cabell and his Amherst rifles may have been some of those firing on the Hessians. Rifle companies of several states could have taken part. The two-hundred-yard or so distance was within their range.
Another captain, Alexander Hamilton, commanded a New York artillery battery. He was about the same age as Samuel and also had left college to enlist. On orders from Washington, Hamilton brought up his guns, unlimbered them on what is now the campus of Rutgers, and began an artillery duel, to prevent the British from crossing. A Lieutenant Anderson later described the “severe cannonading” which killed and wounded several patriots. As the Americans withdrew, Hamilton’s guns maintained counter battery fire, keeping the British from crossing the bridge.
Since General Washington knew that public opinion was critical, he had engaged a non-soldier as one of his aide-de-camps. Thomas Paine was already famous for Common Sense, which he wrote in January 1776 under a pseudonym. It had been hard for the author to keep his name secret after selling 100,000 copies. Washington wanted Paine by his side for his pen to help rally support. Paine travelled with the army as it moved across New Jersey in late autumn while the daylight became shorter and temperatures dropped. His fellow soldiers bestowed the nickname on him, “Common Sense”. The soldiers appreciated him. Captain Alexander Graydon later remembered that “he gave us a handsome puff in one of the Philadelphia papers.” Graydon also observed Paine’s close friendship with Washington, but commented that Paine’s more radical vision of “democratizing the world” was “foreign to the views of the General, and to the others who took the lead.” Paine resolved to write another pamphlet, like Common Sense, but with a different message, Fischer notes. He started work on it when the army reached Newark and “continued writing it at every place we stopt,” scribbling by firelight in makeshift camps along the road while exhausted soldiers slept around him. What inspired Paine was what the soldiers were enduring for “the Cause” despite the setbacks. The same soldiers included Samuel Cabell and the Amherst Rifles of the 6th Virginia.
After the army crossed the Delaware to safety in Pennsylvania, Paine made his way to Philadelphia and finally found a printer that was still in business who was willing publish his pamphlet. He called it The American Crisis. The first issue was published in The Pennsylvania Journal on December 19, 1776. He signed the pamphlet again with the pseudonym, “Common Sense”. Its first section was this paragraph:
These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman…Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Chapter 5 – The Game is Pretty Near Up
References
- Thomas Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, 2004, Pulitzer Prize winner
- Alexander Brown, The Cabells and Their Kin
- Colonel William Cabell, Sr., Commonplace Books, Virginia Museum of Culture and History