The Women of The American Revolution, Vol. 1. Ellet Elizabeth Fries
wife: the only male attendant being a boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age. If the enemy were to make a sudden advance, they would be entirely cut off from the ordinary avenues of escape; and precautions were taken to avoid this risk. The wagon was ready, to be driven by the boy we have spoken of, and the plan was matured, if they failed to get over the river at Dunk's or Cooper's Ferry, to cross lower down, near Salem, and push on to the westward settlements. The wives and children of American patriot-soldiers thought themselves safer on the perilous edge of an Indian wilderness, than in the neighborhood of the soldiers who, commanded by noblemen – by "men of honor and cavaliers," for such, according to all heraldry, were the Howes and Cornwallises, the Percies and Rawdons of that day – were sent by a gracious monarch to lay waste this land. The English campaigning of our Revolution – and no part of it more so than this – is the darkest among the dark stains that disfigure the history of the eighteenth century; and if ever there be a ground for hereditary animosity, we have it in the fresh record of the outrages which the military arm of Great Britain committed on this soil. The transplanted sentimentalism which nowadays calls George III. a wise and great monarch, is absolute treason to America. There was in the one Colony of New Jersey, and in a single year, blood enough shed, and misery enough produced, to outweigh all the spurious merits which his admirers can pretend to claim. And let such for ever be the judgment of American history.
It is worth a moment's meditation to pause and think of the sharp contrasts in our heroine's life. The short interval of less than six years had changed her not merely to womanhood, but to womanhood with extraordinary trials. Her youth was passed in scenes of peaceful prosperity, with no greater anxiety than for a distant lover, and with all the comforts which independence and social position could supply. She had crossed the ocean a bride, content to follow the fortunes of her young husband, though she little dreamed what they were to be. She had become a mother; and, while watching by the cradle of her infants, had seen her household broken up by war in its worst form – the internecine conflict of brothers in arms against each other – her husband called away to scenes of bloody peril, and forced, herself, to seek uncertain refuge in a wilderness. She too, let it be remembered, was a native-born Englishwoman, with all the loyal sentiments that beat by instinct in an Englishwoman's heart – reverence for the throne, the monarch, and for all the complex institutions which hedge that mysterious oracular thing called the British Constitution. "God save the king," was neither then, nor is it now, a formal prayer on the lips of a British maiden. Coming to America, all this was changed. Loyalty was a badge of crime. The king's friends were her husband's, and her new country's worst enemies. That which, in the parks of London, or at the Horse-Guards, she had admired as the holiday pageantry of war, had become the fearful apparatus of savage hostility. She, an Englishwoman, was a fugitive from the brutality of English soldiers. Her destiny, her fortunes, and more than all, her thoughts, and hopes, and wishes, were changed; and happy was it for her husband that they were changed completely and thoroughly, and that her faith to household loyalty was exclusive.
Hers it was, renouncing all other allegiance —
"In war or peace, in sickness, or in health,
In trouble and in danger, and distress, '
Through time and through eternity, to love."
"I have received," she writes, in June, 1777, to her husband, "both my friend's letters. They have contributed to raise my spirits, which, though low enough, are better than when you parted with me. The reflection how much I pain you by my want of resolution and the double distress I occasion you, when I ought to make your duty as light as possible, would tend to depress my spirits, did I not consider that the best and only amends is, to endeavor to resume my cheerfulness, and regain my usual spirits. I wish you to know, my dearest friend, that I have done this as much as possible, and beg you to free your mind from every care on this head."
But to return to the narrative – interrupted, naturally, by thoughts like these. The reverses which the British army met at Trenton and Princeton, with the details of which every one is presumed to be familiar, saved that part of New Jersey where Mrs. Reed and her family resided, from further danger; and on the retreat of the enemy, and the consequent relief of Philadelphia from further alarm, she returned to her home. She returned there with pride as well as contentment; for her husband, inexperienced soldier as he was, had earned military fame of no slight eminence. He had been in nearly every action, and always distinguished. Washington had, on all occasions, and at last in an especial manner, peculiarly honored him. The patriots of Philadelphia hailed him back among them; and the wife's smile of welcome was not less bright because she looked with pride upon her husband.
Brief, however, was the new period of repose. The English generals, deeply mortified at their discomfiture in New Jersey, resolved on a new and more elaborate attempt on Philadelphia; and in July, 1777, set sail with the most complete equipment they had yet been able to prepare, for the capes of the Chesapeake. On the landing of the British army at the head of Elk, and during the military movements that followed, Mrs. Reed was at Norristown, and there remained, her husband having again joined the army, till after the battle of Brandywine, when she and her children were removed first to Burlington, and thence to Flemington. Mr. Reed's hurried letters show the imminent danger that even women and children ran in those days of confusion. "It is quite uncertain," he writes on 14th September, 1777, "which way the progress of the British army may point. Upon their usual plan of movement, they will cross, or endeavor to cross, the Schuylkill, somewhere near my house; in which case I shall be very dangerously situated. If you could possibly spare Cato, with your light wagon, to be with me to assist in getting off if there should be necessity, I shall be very glad. I have but few things beside the women and children; but yet, upon a push, one wagon and two horses would be too little." Mrs. Reed's letters show her agonized condition, alarmed as she was, at the continual and peculiar risk her husband was running. A little later (in February, 1778), Mrs. Reed says, in writing to a dear female friend: "This season which used to be so long and tedious, has, to me, been swift, and no sooner come than nearly gone. Not from the pleasures it has brought, but the fears of what is to come; and, indeed, on many accounts, winter has become the only season of peace and safety. Returning spring will, I fear, bring a return of bloodshed and destruction to our country. That it must do so to this part of it, seems unavoidable; and how much of the distress we may feel before we are able to move from it, I am unable to say. I sometimes fear a great deal. It has already become too dangerous for Mr. Reed to be at home more than one day at a time, and that seldom and uncertain. Indeed, I am easiest when he is from home, as his being here brings danger with it. There are so many disaffected to the cause of their country, that they lie in wait for those who are active; but I trust that the same kind presiding Power which has preserved him from the hands of his enemies, will still do it."
Nor were her fears unreasonable. The neighborhood of Philadelphia, after it fell into the hands of the enemy, was infested by gangs of armed loyalists, who threatened the safety of every patriot whom they encountered. Tempted by the hard money which the British promised them, they dared any danger, and were willing to commit any enormity. It was these very ruffians, and their wily abettors, for whom afterwards so much false sympathy was invoked. Mr. Reed and his family, though much exposed, happily escaped these dangers.
During the military operations of the Autumn of 1777, Mr. Reed was again attached as a volunteer to Washington's staff, and during the winter that followed – the worst that America's soldiers saw – he was at, or in the immediate neighborhood, of Valley Forge, as one of a committee of Congress, of which body he had some time before been chosen a member. Mrs. Reed with her mother and her little family took refuge at Flemington, in the upper part of New Jersey. She remained there till after the evacuation of Philadelphia and the battle of Monmouth, in June, 1778.
While thus separated from her husband, and residing at Flemington, new domestic misfortune fell on her, in the death of one of her children by smallpox. How like an affectionate heart-stricken mother is the following passage, from a letter written at that time. Though it has no peculiar beauty of style, there is a touching genuineness which every reader – at least those who know a mother's heart under such affliction – will appreciate.
"Surely," says she, "my affliction has had its aggravation, and I cannot help reflecting on my neglect of my dear lost child. For thoughtful and attentive to my own situation, I did not take the necessary