University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

My father was Cornelius Littlepage, of Satanstoe, in the
county of West Chester, and State of New York; and my
mother was Anneke Mordaunt, of Lilacsbush, a place long
known by that name, which still stands near Kingsbridge,
but on the island of Manhattan, and consequently in one of
the wards of New York, though quite eleven miles from
town. I shall suppose that my readers know the difference
between the Island of Manhattan, and Manhattan Island;
though I have found soi-disant Manhattanese, of mature
years, but of alien birth, who had to be taught it. Lilacsbush,
I repeat therefore, was on the Island of Manhattan,
eleven miles from town, though in the city of New York,
and not on Manhattan Island.

Of my progenitors further back, I do not conceive it necessary
to say much. They were partly of English, and
partly of Low Dutch extraction; as is apt to be the case
with those who come of New York families of any standing
in the colony. I retain tolerably distinct impressions of
both of my grandfathers, and of one of my grandmothers;
my mother's mother having died long before my own parents
were married.

Of my maternal grandfather I know very little, however,
he having died while I was quite young, and before I had
seen much of him. He paid the great debt of nature in
England, whither he had gone on a visit to a relative, a Sir
Something Bulstrode, who had been in the colonies himself,
and who was a great favourite with Herman Mordaunt,
as my mother's parent was universally called in New York.
My father often said, it was perhaps fortunate in one respect,
that his father-in-law died as he did, since he had no
doubt he would have certainly taken sides with the crown,
in the quarrel that so soon after occurred, in which case it
is probable his estates, or those which were my mother's,
and are now mine, would have shared the fate of those of
the de Lanceys, of the Philipses, of some of the Van Cortlandts,
of the Floyds, of the Joneses, and of various others
of the heavy families, who remained loyal, as it was called;
meaning loyalty to a prince, and not loyalty to the land of
their nativity. It is hard to say which were right, in such
a quarrel, if we look at the opinions and prejudices of the
times, though the Littlepages to a man, which means only
my father, and grandfather, and self, took sides with the
country. In the way of self-interest, it ought to be remarked,
however, that the wealthy American who opposed the
crown, showed much the most disinterestedness, inasmuch
as the chances of being subdued were for a long time very
serious, while the certainty of confiscation, not to say of
being hanged, was sufficiently well established, in the event
of failure. But, my paternal grandfather was what was
called a whig, of the high caste. He was made a brigadier
in the militia, in 1776, and was actively employed in the
great campaign of the succeeding year; that in which Burgoyne
was captured, as indeed was my father, who held the
rank of lieutenant-colonel in the New York line. There
was also a major Dirck Van Volkenburgh, or Follock, as
he was usually called, in the same regiment with my father,
who was a sworn friend. This major Follock was an old
bachelor, and he lived quite as much in my father's house
as he did in his own; his proper residence being across the
river, in Rockland. My mother had a friend, as well as
my father, in the person of Miss Mary Wallace; a single
lady, well turned of thirty at the commencement of the revolution.

Miss Wallace was quite at ease in her circumstances,
but she lived altogether at Lilacsbush, never having
any other home, unless it might be at our house in town.

We were very proud of the brigadier, both on account of
his rank and on account of his services. He actually commanded
in one expedition against the Indians during the
revolution, a service in which he had some experience,
having been out on it, on various occasions, previously to
the great struggle for independence. It was in one of these
early expeditions of the latter war that he first distinguished
himself, being then under the orders of a colonel Brom
Follock, who was the father of major Dirck of the same
name, and who was almost as great a friend of my grandfather
as the son was of my own parent. This colonel
Brom loved a carouse, and I have heard it said that, getting
among the High Dutch on the Mohawk, he kept it up for a
week, with little or no intermission, under circumstances
that involved much military negligence. The result was
that a party of Canada Indians made an inroad on his command,
and the old colonel, who was as bold as a lion, and
as drunk as a lord, though why lords are supposed to be
particularly inclined to drink I never could tell, was both
shot down and scalped early one morning as he was returning
from an adjacent tavern to his quarters in the
“garrison,” where he was stationed. My grandfather nobly
revenged his death, scattering to the four winds the invading
party, and receiving the mutilated body of his friend, though
the scalp was irretrievably lost.

General Littlepage did not survive the war, though it was
not his good fortune to die on the field, thus identifying his
name with the history of his country. It happens in all
wars, and most especially did it often occur in our own
great national struggle, that more soldiers lay down their
lives in the hospitals than on the field of battle, though the
shedding of blood seems an indispensable requisite to glory
of this nature; an ungrateful posterity taking little heed of
the thousands who pass into another state of being, the
victims of exposure and camp diseases, to sound the praises
of the hundreds who are slain amid the din of battle. Yet,
it may be questioned if it do not require more true courage
to face death, when he approaches in the invisible form of

disease, than to meet him when openly arrayed under the
armed hand. My grandfather's conduct in remaining in
camp, among hundreds of those who had the smallpox, the
loathsome malady of which he died, was occasionally alluded
to, it is true, but never in the manner the death of an officer
of his rank would have been mentioned, had he fallen in
battle. I could see that major Follock had an honourable
pride in the fate of his father, who was slain and scalped by
the enemy in returning from a drunken carouse, while my
worthy parent ever referred to the death of the brigadier as
an event to be deplored, rather than exulted in. For my
own part, I think my grandfather's end was much the most
creditable of the two; but, as such, it will never be viewed
by the historian, or the country. As for historians, it requires
a man to be singularly honest to write against a
prejudice; and it is so much easier to celebrate a deed as it
is imagined than as it actually occurred, that I question if
we know the truth of a tenth part of the exploits about which
we vapour, and in which we fancy we glory. Well! we
are taught to believe that the time will come when all things
are to be seen in their true colours, and when men and deeds
will be known as they actually were, rather than as they
have been recorded in the pages of history.

I was too young myself to take much part in the war of
the revolution, though accident made me an eye-witness of
some of its most important events, and that at the tender
age of fifteen. At twelve—the American intellect ever was
and continues to be singularly precocious — I was sent to
Nassau Hall, Princeton, to be educated, and I remained there
until I finally got a degree, though it was not without several
long and rude interruptions of my studies. Although
so early sent to college, I did not actually graduate until I
was nineteen, the troubled times requiring nearly twice as
long a servitude to make a Bachelor of Arts of me as would
have been necessary in the more haleyon days of peace.
Thus I made a fragment of a campaign when only a sophomore,
and another the first year I was junior. I say the
first year, because I was obliged to pass two years in each
of the two higher classes of the institution, in order to make
up for lost time. A youth cannot very well be campaigning
and studying Euclid in the academic bowers, at the same

moment. Then I was so young, that a year, more or less,
was of no great moment.

My principal service in the war of the revolution was in
1777, or in the campaign in which Burgoyne was met and
captured. That important service was performed by a force
that was composed partly of regular troops, and partly of
militia. My grandfather commanded a brigade of the last,
or what was called a brigade, some six hundred men at
most; while my father led a regular battalion of one hundred
and sixty troops of the New York line, into the German
intrenchments, the memorable and bloody day the last
were stormed. How many he brought out I never heard
him say. The way in which I happened to be present in
these important scenes, is soon told.

Lilacsbush being on the Island of Manhattan, (not Manhattan
Island, be it always remembered), and our family
being whig, we were driven from both our town and country
houses, the moment Sir William Howe took possession of
New York. At first, my mother was content with going
merely to Satanstoe, which was only a short distance from
the enemy's lines; but the political character of the Littlepages
being too well established to render this a safe residence,
my grandmother and mother, always accompanied
by Miss Wallace, went up above the Highlands, where they
established themselves in the village of Fishkill, for the
remainder of the war, on a farm that belonged to Miss
Wallace, in fee. Here it was thought they were safe, being
seventy miles from the capital, and quite within the American
lines. As this removal took place at the close of the
year 1776, and after independence had been declared, it
was understood that our return to our proper homes at all
depended on the result of the war. At that time I was a
sophomore, and at home in the long vacation. It was in
this visit that I made my fragment of a campaign, accompanying
my father through all the closing movements of his
regiment, while Washington and Howe were manœuvring
in Westchester. My father's battalion happening to be
posted in such a manner as to be in the centre of battle at
White Plains, I had an opportunity of seeing some pretty
serious service on that occasion. Nor did I quit the army,
and return to my studies until after the brilliant affairs at

Trenton and Princeton, in both of which our regiment participated.

This was a pretty early commencement with the things
of active life, for a boy of fourteen. But, in that war, lads
of my age often carried muskets, for the colonies covered a
great extent of country, and had but few people. They who
read of the war of the American revolution, and view its
campaigns and battles as they would regard the conflicts of
older and more advanced nations, can form no just notions
of the disadvantages with which our people had to contend,
or the great superiority of the enemy in all the usual elements
of military force. Without experienced officers, with
but few and indifferent arms, often in want of ammunition,
the rural and otherwise peaceful population of a thinly peopled
country were brought in conflict with the chosen warriors
of Europe; and this, too, with little or none of that
great sinew of war, money, to sustain them. Nevertheless,
the Americans, unaided by any foreign skill, or succour,
were about as often successful as the reverse. Bunker Hill,
Bennington, Saratoga, Bhemis' Heights, Trenton, Princeton,
Monmouth, were all purely American battles; to say nothing
of divers others that occurred further south; and,
though insignificant as to numbers, compared with the conflicts
of these later times, each is worthy of a place in history,
and one or two are almost without parallels; as is
seen when Bunker Hill be named. It sounds very well in a
despatch, to swell out the list of an enemy's ranks; but,
admitting the number itself not to be overrated, as so often
occurred, of what avail are men without arms or ammunition,
and frequently without any other military organization
than a muster-roll!

I have said I made nearly the whole of the campaign in
which Burgoyne was taken. It happened in this wise. The
service of the previous year had a good deal indisposed me
to study, and when again at home, in the autumn vacation,
my dear mother sent me with clothing and supplies to my
father, who was with the army at the north. I reached the
head-quarters of general Gates a week before the affair of
Bhemis' Heights, and was with my father until the capitulation
was completed. Owing to these circumstances, though
still a boy in years, I was an eye-witness, and in some measure,

an actor in two or three of the most important events
of the whole war. Being well-grown for my years, and of
a somewhat manly appearance considering how young I
really was, I passed very well as a volunteer, being, I have
reason to think, somewhat of a favourite in the regiment.
In the last battle, I had the honour to act as a sort of aide-de-camp
to my grandfather, who sent me with orders and
messages, two or three times, into the midst of the fire. In
this manner I made myself a little known, and all so much
the more, from the circumstance of my being in fact nothing
but a college lad, away from his alma mater, during vacation.

It was but natural that a boy thus situated should attract
some little attention, and I was noticed by officers, who,
under other circumstances, would hardly have felt it necessary
to go out of their way to speak to me. The Littlepages
had stood well, I have reason to think, in the colony, and
their position in the new state was not likely to be at all
lowered by the part they were now playing in the revolution.
I am far from certain that general Littlepage was
considered a corner post in the Temple of Freedom that the
army was endeavouring to rear, but he was quite respectable
as a militia officer, while my father was very generally
admitted to be one of the best lieutenants-colonel in the
whole army.

I well remember to have been much struck with a captain
in my father's regiment, who certainly was a character, in
his way. His origin was Dutch, as was the case with a fair
proportion of the officers; and he bore the name of Andries
Coejemans, though he was universally known by the sobriquet
of the “Chainbearer.” It was fortunate for him it
was so, else would the Yankees in the camp, who seem to
have a mania to pronounce every word as it is spelled, and
having succeeded in this, to change the spelling of the whole
language to accommodate it to certain sounds of their own
inventing, would have given him a most unpronounceable
appellation. Heaven only knows what they would have
called captain Coejemans, but for this lucky nick-name; but
it may be as well to let the uninitiated understand at once,
that, in New York parlance, Coejemans is called Queemans.
The Chainbearer was of a respectable Dutch family, one

that has even given its queer-looking name to a place of
some little note on the Hudson; but, as was very apt to be
the case with the cadets of such houses, in the good old
time of the colony, his education was no great matter. His
means had once been respectable, but, as he always maintained,
he was cheated out of his substance by a Yankee
before he was three-and-twenty, and he had had recourse to
surveying for a living from that time. But Andries had no
head for mathematics, and, after making one or two notable
blunders in the way of his new profession, he quietly sunk
to the station of a Chainbearer, in which capacity he was
known to all the leading men of his craft in the colony. It
is said that every man is suited to some pursuit or other, in
which he might acquire credit, would he only enter on it
and persevere. Thus it proved to be with Andries Coejemans.
As a Chainbearer he had an unrivalled reputation.
Humble as was the occupation, it admitted of excellence in
various particulars, as well as another. In the first place,
it required honesty, a quality in which this class of men
can fail, as well as all the rest of mankind. Neither colony
nor patentee, landlord nor tenant, buyer nor seller, need be
uneasy about being fairly dealt by, so long as Andries
Coejemans held the forward end of the chain; a duty on
which he was invariably placed, by one party or the other.
Then, a practical eye was a great aid to positive measurement;
and, while Andries never swerved to the right or to
the left of his course, having acquired a sort of instinct in
his calling, much time and labour were saved. In addition
to these advantages, the “Chainbearer” had acquired great
skill in all the subordinate matters of his calling. He was
a capital woodsman, generally; had become a good hunter,
and had acquired most of the habits that pursuits like those
in which he was engaged, for so many years previously to
entering the army, would be likely to give a man. In the
course of time, he took patents to survey, employing men
with heads better than his own to act as principals, while
he still carried the chain.

At the commencement of the revolution, Andries, like
most of those who sympathized with the colonies, took up
arms. When the regiment of which my father was the
lieutenant-colonel was raised, they who could bring to its

colours so many men received commissions of a rank proportioned
to their services in this respect. Andries had
presented himself early with a considerable squad of chainbearers,
hunters, trappers, runners, guides, &c., numbering
in the whole something like five-and-twenty hardy, resolute
sharpshooters. Their leader was made a lieutenant in consequence,
and being the oldest of his rank in the corps, he
was shortly after promoted to a captaincy, the station he
was in when I made his acquaintance, and above which he
never rose.

Revolutions, more especially such as are of a popular
character, are not remarkable for bringing forward those
who are highly educated, or otherwise fitted for their new
stations, unless it may be on the score of zeal. It is true,
service generally classes men, bringing out their qualities,
and necessity soon compels the preferment of those who are
the best qualified. Our own great national struggle, however,
probably did less of this than any similar event of
modern times, a respectable mediocrity having accordingly
obtained an elevation that, as a rule, it was enabled to keep
to the close of the war. It is a singular fact that not a
solitary instance is to be found in our military annals of a
young soldier's rising to high command, by the force of his
talents, in all that struggle. This may have been, and in a
measure probably was owing to the opinions of the people,
and to the circumstance that the service itself was one that
demanded greater prudence and circumspection than qualities
of a more dazzling nature; or the qualifications of age
and experience, rather than those of youth and enterprise.
It is probable Andries Coejemans, on the score of original
station, was rather above than below the level of the social
positions of a majority of the subalterns of the different lines
of the more northern colonies, when he first joined the army.
It is true, his education was not equal to his birth; for, in
that day, except in isolated instances and particular families,
the Dutch of New York, even in cases in which money was
not wanting, were anything but scholars. In this particular,
our neighbours the Yankees had greatly the advantage of
us. They sent everybody to school, and, though their
educations were principally those of smatterers, it is an advantage
to be even a smatterer among the very ignorant.

Andries had been no student either, and one may easily
imagine what indifferent cultivation will effect on a naturally
thin soil. He could read and write, it is true, but it was
the cyphering under which he broke down, as a surveyor.
I have often heard him say, that “if land could be measured
without figures, he would turn his back on no man in the
calling in all America, unless it might be `His Excellency,'
who, he made no doubt, was not only the best, but the honestest
surveyor mankind had ever enjoyed.”

The circumstance that Washington had practised the art
of a surveyor for a short time in his early youth, was a
source of great exultation with Andries Coejemans. He
felt that it was an honour to be even a subordinate in a pursuit
in which such a man was a principal. I remember,
that long after we were at Saratoga together, captain Coejemans,
while we were before Yorktown, pointed to the commander-in-chief
one day, as the latter rode past our encampment,
and cried out, with emphasis — “T'ere, Mortaunt,
my poy—t'ere goes His Excellency!—It woult be t'e happiest
tay of my life, coult I only carry chain while he
survey't a pit of a farm, in this neighbourpoot.”

Andries was more or less Dutch in his dialect, as he was
more or less interested. In general, he spoke English pretty
well—colony English I mean, not that of the schools; though
he had not a single Yankeeism in his vocabulary. On this
last point, he prided himself greatly, feeling an honest pride,
if he did occasionally use vulgarisms, a vicious pronunciation,
or make a mistake in the meaning of a word, a sin he
was a little apt to commit; and that his faults were all honest
New York mistakes, and no “New Englant gipperish.”
In the course of the various visits I paid to the camp, Andries
and myself became quite intimate, his peculiarities
seizing my fancy; and, doubtless, my obvious admiration
awakening his gratitude. In the course of our many conversations,
he gave me his whole history, commencing with
the emigration of the Coejemans from Holland, and ending
with our actual situation, in the camp at Saratoga. Andries
had been often engaged, and, before the war terminated, I
could boast of having been at his side in no less than six
affairs myself, viz: White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Bhemis'
Heights, Monmouth, and Brandywine; for I had stolen

away from college to be present at the last affair. The
circumstance that our regiment was both with Washington
and Gates was owing to the noble qualities of the former,
who sent off some of his best troops to reinforce his rival,
as things gathered to a head at the north. Then I was present
throughout, at the siege of Yorktown. But, it is not
my intention to enlarge on my own military services.

While at Saratoga, I was much struck with the air, position
and deportment of a gentleman who appeared to command
the respect, and to obtain the ears of all the leaders
in the American camp, while he held no apparent official
station. He wore no uniform, though he was addressed by
the title of general, and had much more of the character of
a real soldier than Gates, who commanded. He must have
been between forty and fifty at that time, and in the full
enjoyment of the vigour of his mind and body. This was
Philip Schuyler, so justly celebrated in our annals for his
wisdom, patriotism, integrity, and public services. His connection
with the great northern campaign is too well known
to require any explanations here. Its success, perhaps, was
more owing to his advice and preparations than to the influence
of any one other mind, and he is beginning already
to take a place in history, in connection with these great
events, that has a singular resemblance to that he occupied
during their actual occurrence: in other words, he is to be
seen in the back-ground of the great national picture, unobtrusive
and modest, but directing and controlling all, by the
power of his intellect, and the influence of his experience
and character. Gates[1] was but a secondary personage, in
the real events of that memorable period. Schuyler was the
presiding spirit, though forced by popular prejudice to retire
from the apparent command of the army. Our written accounts
ascribe the difficulty that worked this injustice to
Schuyler, to a prejudice which existed among the eastern
militia, and which is supposed to have had its origin in the
disasters of St. Clair; or the reverses which attended the
earlier movements of the campaign. My father, who had

known general Schuyler in the war of '56, when he acted
as Bradstreet's right-hand man, attributed the feeling to a
different cause. According to his notion of the alienation,
it was owing to the difference in habits and opinions which
existed between Schuyler, as a New York gentleman, and
the yeomen of New England, who came out in 1777, imbued
with all the distinctive notions of their very peculiar
state of society. There may have been prejudices on both
sides, but it is easy to see which party exhibited most magnanimity
and self-sacrifice. Possibly, the last was inseparable
from the preponderance of numbers, it not being an easy
thing to persuade masses of men that they can be wrong,
and a single individual right. This is the great error of
democracy, which fancies truth is to be proved by counting
noses; while aristocracy commits the antagonist blunder of
believing that excellence is inherited, from male to male,
and that too in the order of primogeniture! It is not easy
to say where one is to look for truth, in this life.

As for general Schuyler, I have thought my father was
right in ascribing his unpopularity solely to the prejudices
of provinces. The Muse of History is the most ambitious
of the whole sisterhood, and never thinks she has done her
duty unless all she says and records is said and recorded
with an air of profound philosophy; whereas, more than
half of the greatest events which affect human interest, are
to be referred to causes that have little connection with our
boasted intelligence, in any shape. Men feel far more than
they reason, and a little feeling is very apt to upset a great
deal of philosophy.

It has been said that I passed six years at Princeton;
nominally, if not in fact; and that I graduated at nineteen.
This happened the year Cornwallis surrendered, and I actually
served at the siege as the youngest ensign in my
father's battalion. I had also the happiness, for such it was
to me, to be attached to the company of captain Coejemans;
a circumstance which clenched the friendship I had formed
for that singular old man. I say old, for by this time Andries
was every hour of sixty-seven, though as hale, and hearty,
and active, as any officer in the corps. As for hardships,
forty years of training, most of which had been passed in

the woods, placed him quite at our head, in the way of endurance.

I loved my predecessors, grandfather and grandmother
included, not only as a matter of course, but with sincere
filial attachment; and I loved Miss Mary Wallace, or aunt
Mary, as I had been taught to call her, quite as much on
account of her quiet, gentle, affectionate manner, as from
habit; and I loved major Dirck Follock as a sort of hereditary
friend, as a distant relative, and a good and careful
guardian of my own youth and inexperience on a thousand
occasions; and I loved my father's negro man, Jaap, as we
all love faithful slaves, however unnurtured they may be;
but Andries was the man whom I loved without knowing
why. He was illiterate almost to greatness, having the
drollest notions imaginable of this earth and all it contained;
was anything but refined in deportment, though hearty and
frank; had prejudices so crammed into his moral system
that there did not seem to be room for anything else; and
was ever so little addicted, moreover, to that species of
Dutch jollification, which had cost old colonel Van Valkenburgh
his life, and a love for which was a good deal spread
throughout the colony. Nevertheless, I really loved this
man, and when we were all disbanded at the peace, or in
1783, by which time I had myself risen to the rank of captain,
I actually parted from old Andries with tears in my
eyes. My grandfather, general Littlepage, was then dead,
but government giving to most of us a step, by means of
brevet rank, at the final breaking up of the army, my father,
who had been the full colonel of the regiment for the last
year, bore the title of brigadier for the remainder of his
days. It was pretty much all he got for seven years of
dangers and arduous services. But the country was poor,
and we had fought more for principles than for the hope of
rewards. It must be admitted that America ought to be full
of philosophy, inasmuch as so much of her system of rewards,
and even of punishments, is purely theoretical, and
addressed to the imagination, or to the qualities of the mind.
Thus it is, that we contend with all our enemies on very
unequal grounds. The Englishman has his knighthood,
his baronetcies, his peerages, his orders, his higher ranks
in the professions, his batons, and all the other venial in

ducements of our corrupt nature to make him fight, while
the American is goaded on to glory by the abstract considerations
of virtue and patriotism. After all, we flog quite
as often as we are flogged, which is the main interest affected.
While on this subject I will remark that Andries Coejemans
never assumed the empty title of major, which was
so graciously bestowed on him by the congress of 1783,
but left the army a captain in name, without half-pay, or
anything but his military lot, to find a niece whom he was
bringing up, and to pursue his old business of a “Chainbearer.”