Stories of New Jersey Part 5

But at last an opportunity came for patriotic Jerseymen to show that they were not behind the other colonists in resisting the attempt of Great Britain to force upon them this taxed tea.

Nearly a year after the tea had been thrown overboard in Boston Harbor, a vessel from England-loaded with tea, and bound to Philadelphia-put into Cohansey Creek, a small stream which runs into Delaware Bay, and anch.o.r.ed at the little town of Greenwich. This vessel, called the "Greyhound," was afraid to go up to Philadelphia, because from that port tea s.h.i.+ps were sent back to England as soon as they arrived, as was also the case in New York. So the captain of the "Greyhound" thought it would be a good plan to land his tea at Greenwich, from which place it could be taken inland to its destination. Here the cargo was unloaded, and stored in the cellar of a house opposite the open market place.

This business of forcing tea upon the American colonists had become a very serious matter to England; for the East India Company had now in their warehouses at London seventeen million pounds of tea, and, if there should be no sale for any of this in the American market, the loss would be very severe. Consequently every possible method was resorted to, in order to have the tea landed on American soil; it being believed, that, if the tea once got into the hands of the dealers, the people would overcome their prejudices to its importation, and begin to use it again.

Therefore the captain of the "Greyhound" thought he was doing a very sharp thing when he sailed up Cohansey Creek and unloaded his tea. That cargo was landed, and in those days an English captain of a tea s.h.i.+p might well be proud of having performed such a feat.

But it is not likely that the captain of the "Greyhound" had ever before sailed into a port of New Jersey, large or small, or had anything to do with Jerseymen; for if he had, he would not have been so well satisfied with the result of the voyage.

The people of Greenwich could not prevent the landing of the tea, for there was no organized force at the place, nor could they order the "Greyhound" to turn round and go back to England; but they would not allow their town to be made use of as a port of entry for this obnoxious merchandise, simply because it was a little town, and could not keep English s.h.i.+ps out of its waters. A meeting of the patriotic citizens was held, and it was resolved that no tea should go out of Greenwich to comfort the bodies and contaminate the principles of people in any part of the Colonies; and they would show their British tyrants that it was just as unsafe to send tea into Cohansey Creek as it was to send it into the harbor of Boston.

Having come to this determination, they went immediately to work. A party of young men, about forty in number, was organized; and in order to disguise themselves, or strike terror into anybody who might be inclined to oppose their undertaking, they were all dressed as Indians. They a.s.sembled in the market place, and then, making a rush to the house in which the tea was stored, they broke open the doors, carried out the tea, split open the boxes in which it was contained, and made a great pile of it in an open s.p.a.ce near by.

When tea is dry and in good condition, it will burn very well, and it was not many minutes before there was a magnificent bonfire near the market place in Greenwich; and in all that town there was not one man who dared to attempt to put it out. Thus the cargo of the "Greyhound" went up in smoke to the sky. It must have been a very hard thing for the good ladies of the town to sit in their houses and sniff the delightful odor, which recalled to their minds the cherished beverage, of which, perhaps, they might never again partake. But they were Jerseywomen, of stout hearts and firm principles, and there is no record that any one of them uttered a word of complaint.

But in every community there is at least one person in whose mind there is a little streak of the Ananias nature, and there was a man of that kind in Greenwich. His name was Stacks, and he was a great lover of tea; moreover, he had a soul disposed to economy and thrift. Consequently it was very hard for him to stand by and see all that tea wasted; and he thought it would be no harm-as he was not a merchant, and did not intend to exercise evil influences upon the people of America by inducing them to buy tea-if he appropriated to himself a little of this most desirable herb, which was to be burned and wasted before his very eyes.

Whenever he had a chance, he slipped a little tea into some part of his clothes where he thought it would not be noticed, and so gradually loaded himself with a considerable stock of the herb. In fact, he stowed away so many handfuls of it, that, when the fire was over, his companions noticed that he had considerably increased in size; and it was not long before his trick was discovered. We do not hear that he was compelled to empty out the tea, but we are told that ever after he went by the name of "Tea Stacks."

This tea bonfire created a great stir, and although the patriotic party approved it, there were a great many Tories in the country who condemned it as a piece of outrageous violence and wanton waste. This latter opinion was so freely expressed, that the English owners of the cargo were encouraged to take legal steps against the men who destroyed the tea. It was easy enough to do this; for the young fellows who had made the bonfire were very proud of what they had done, and, instead of denying their connection with the burning of the tea, were always very ready to boast of it.

Tea Stacks.

When it was understood that the tea burners were to be prosecuted, all the Whigs of the surrounding country determined to stand by them; and they subscribed a large sum of money to engage lawyers to defend their case. The strength of the popular feeling was shown by the fact, that, when the case was brought to court, the grand jury positively refused to bring a bill against these young men, although the judge insisted that they should do so. The matter was thus postponed; and as it was not long before the Colonies broke out into open rebellion, and a period followed when Englishmen no longer brought suits in American courts, there was no further action in regard to the tea burning at Greenwich.

Therefore, unless Mr. Stacks contrived to keep some of the tea which he carried off in his clothes, the good people of the neighborhood, if they drank tea at all, made it of the dried leaves of raspberries, or those of some other bush, which have something of a tea taste, and were thus enabled to have a hot beverage with their evening meal, with but a little strain upon their imaginations, and none at all on their consciences.

In other neighborhoods, however, there were people who, although they were patriots and inclined to support the cause of American liberty, could not see how such a little thing as drinking a cup of tea, if they happened to have it, could interfere with their regard and respect for the great principle of justice and independence.

Of course, it was to be supposed that the Tories, who were opposed to this nonsense about independence, were glad to buy tea and to drink it whenever they got the chance; but it was expected that those who called themselves Whigs and patriots would stand by their party, and discountenance tea drinking. There is a story told of a man who lived in Bridgetown, who was a member of one of the Committees of Safety which were formed for the purpose of promoting the cause of American liberty. It was found out that this man and his family were in the habit of drinking East India tea; and when his fellow-committeemen asked him in regard to this matter, he boldly admitted that they all liked tea, that they drank tea, and that they intended to drink tea.

This was a very serious matter, and the committee saw that it was necessary to take vigorous measures in regard to this peculiar case. At first they tried the force of argument; but all they could say to the man amounted to nothing. He had principles, and what he considered very good principles; but he liked tea, and, having it in the house, he saw no harm in drinking it. So the teapot was on his table every day.

Now, his fellow-committeemen held another meeting, and formally resolved that this unpatriotic patriot should be punished in a way which would make a powerful impression on him, and which would show the whole community how the Committee of Safety intended to stand firm in the position they had taken in resisting unjust legislation. It was resolved, that, so long as he and his family drank tea, the patriots of the neighborhood would have nothing to do with him, they would not deal with him, nor would they a.s.sociate with him or his. This was an early instance in America of what is known now as "boycotting."

It was a very hard thing to be shut out from all dealing and connection with his friends and fellow-citizens, and it was not long before the tea drinker made up his mind that the society and friends.h.i.+p of his neighbors was better even than the highest flavored cup of tea; and so he formally acknowledged his error, begged the pardon of the committee, and promised that thereafter he would act in accordance with their rules and regulations; and his family teapot was put away upon a high top shelf.

But the time came, in a very few years, when the American people attended to their own taxation, and when this teapot, with all the others in the country, could be taken down and freely used without interference with law or conscience.

THE STORY OF A SPY.

When a nation goes to war with another, it is often necessary for the armies on each side to leave behind some of the high and n.o.ble principles which may have governed them at home. Of course, war is b.l.o.o.d.y and cruel, and it almost always happens that the officers and soldiers are obliged to descend also to meanness and duplicity in order to succeed in their campaigns.

One strong reason for this is the necessity for the employment of spies. It is always desirable for the commander of an army to know as far as possible the condition of the enemy's force, and what he is doing or intends to do. Consequently it is a common thing to send spies into the enemy's ranks; and the better those spies can deceive the soldiers of the other side, the more valuable will be their report, if they are fortunate enough to get back into their own camp.

Sometimes a spy will sneak into the enemy's lines, and make his observations in concealment and safety; but the most valuable spies are those which enter an enemy's camp pretending sympathy and friends.h.i.+p. A man who can do this well can find out a great deal.

In every army a spy from the other side is regarded as the worst of enemies, and if captured, his punishment is death. An impartial outsider might object to this severity, when it is considered that the army which punishes the spy may, at the same time, have spies of its own among the enemy. During the Revolution, Major Andre was executed because he came into the American lines as a spy, and at the same time General Was.h.i.+ngton was very glad to get a good spy to send into a British camp.

There was a man named John Honeyman, who acted with great success in this capacity on the patriotic side during the Revolution. Honeyman was a Scotch-Irishman, and was said to be a remarkably fine looking man. He was tall, strong, extremely active, and had a fine military bearing. He had no desire to become a soldier; but he was forced into the British army, and came to this country in 1758, when Abercrombie came over to attack the French in Canada. Young Colonel Wolfe, who was afterwards the famous General Wolfe who fell at Quebec, had command of this army, and on the s.h.i.+p in which he sailed was John Honeyman.

Military men are not as sure-footed as sailors on board a s.h.i.+p, which may be rolling and tossing on rough waters; and one day, as Colonel Wolfe was coming into the cabin, he tripped and fell when he was halfway down the companion way, and would probably have broken his neck, if it had not been that Honeyman happened to be at the bottom of the steps, and caught the colonel in his arms, thus saving him from injury.

It is very satisfactory for a full-grown man, especially one whose profession exposes him to accidents of various kinds, to be able to take into his service another man who is tall enough and strong enough to pick him up and carry him if it is necessary, and who is also quick-witted enough to know when he should interpose himself in case of danger.

Honeyman's conduct on this occasion made an impression on Colonel Wolfe; and when afterwards he was made general, he took the tall soldier into his bodyguard, and made him understand that, in times when danger might be apprehended, he was to be as near him as his duties would permit.

When the great attack was made upon Quebec, Honeyman was one of the men who helped row the boat which carried Wolfe over the river; and during this pa.s.sage a cannon ball from the enemy struck an officer sitting very near Honeyman, and took off his head. Had this happened to Honeyman, it would have been a bad thing for New Jersey.

When they reached the opposite side, Honeyman climbed the Heights of Abraham side by side with his brave commander; and when, in the battle which followed, Wolfe was killed, it was Honeyman who bore him off the field. Thus the first and the last service which this strong man rendered to his military chief were very much the same.

About a year after this the war ended, and Honeyman received an honorable discharge. He carried with him the good will and commendation of his officers, but he also took something which he valued more than these. While he was with General Wolfe, that officer had given him letters expressing his good opinion of him, and these afterwards proved of great service.

Honeyman went southward, and lived for some years in the American Colonies. He finally settled in Philadelphia, where he married. When the Revolution broke out, his sympathies were entirely with the American side, but he did not immediately enlist in the American army. When Was.h.i.+ngton came to Philadelphia, Honeyman was very anxious to see him and consult with him. It was difficult for a man in the ordinary walks of life to obtain an interview with the commander in chief; but Honeyman sent in the letters which General Wolfe had given him, and, after having read these, Was.h.i.+ngton was very ready to see the man of whom that general had such a high opinion. Was.h.i.+ngton soon discovered that Honeyman was a man of peculiar ability, and he had several interviews with him, although it is not known what was said at these times.

Before very long, Honeyman took his family to Griggstown, in Somerset County, New Jersey, and there he hired a house and settled. From this place he went to Fort Lee, when Was.h.i.+ngton came into New Jersey with his army, and had an interview with the general; and here, it is said, he made a regular contract with the commander in chief to become a spy on the American side.

There were a good many Tories in the State, and, as Honeyman had once been a British soldier, it was easy enough for him to make believe that he was a Tory, and so make friends with the Redcoats when he should have an opportunity.

The plan concocted between Was.h.i.+ngton and Honeyman was very carefully worked out in all its details. Honeyman was to let it be known that he was a Tory, and as soon as he thought it proper he was to leave his family and join the British. It was considered that the best thing he could do would be to engage in business as a butcher, and then, when he went over to the British, he could go about the country in search of cattle, and thus get a good idea of what was going on.

He was to stay with the enemy until he discovered something important, and then he was to arrange matters so that he should, apparently without knowing it, wander near the American lines, where he would be captured. It is said that Was.h.i.+ngton arranged, that, as soon as he should hear that Honeyman had gone over to the enemy, he would offer a reward for his arrest; but this reward would be paid only in case the supposed traitor should be carried alive and unhurt to him. All this planning was necessary, because there was so much communication between the Tories and Whigs at that time, that, if it had been known on the American side that Honeyman had gone over as a spy, the fact would soon have been communicated to the British.

Honeyman went over to the enemy, and started business as a butcher for the army, and, after having gone a good deal about the country looking for cattle, he came to New Brunswick with the British army. n.o.body had suspected that he was not a perfectly honest Tory, and he had been paying great attention to the condition of the British army, and to finding out everything which might be of use if reported to Was.h.i.+ngton. Among other things, he discovered that the British forces then occupying Trenton were not under a strict state of discipline. It was winter; the weather was cold; apparently there was not much for them to do; and discipline was in a rather lax state. Honeyman well understood the habits of the Redcoats, and he knew that during the holidays the soldiers would live in even a more free and easy manner than they were living then.

Not only did he make himself well acquainted with the condition of the army, but he carefully studied the town of Trenton and its neighborhood, and, going about in every direction after cows and oxen, he learned the roads so well that he could make a very good map of them. Everything that could be of service to the American cause was jotted down in Honeyman's retentive memory; and when he had found out everything that he could find out, he thought it was fully time that he should acquaint Was.h.i.+ngton with the state of affairs in the enemy's lines.

He knew that there were American pickets on the Jersey side, some distance away; and he started out in this direction as a greasy butcher, with a rope in one hand and a long whip in the other, looking for all the world like John Honeyman the Tory cattleman, who, if he knew what was good for him, would better keep out of sight of the soldiers of the American army. He walked a long distance down the river, and, though he may have seen cattle, he paid no attention to them. His present object was not to capture anything and take it away, but to be captured and taken away. After a time he saw at a distance what he had been looking for. Behind some bushes, but still quite plain to the eye of this practiced soldier, were two cavalrymen dismounted, and Honeyman knew that they were Americans. He continued to walk towards them until he came close to the spot where the two soldiers were standing.

The moment their eyes fell upon him, they recognized him, and shouted to him to halt; but Honeyman was too good an actor to do that. If he wished to carry on the business in hand, he must keep up his character as a Tory, and so he took to his long legs and ran like a deer. But the men jumped on their horses and were after him in a moment; and as horses' legs are a good deal better than human legs, no matter how long they may be, the flying butcher was soon overtaken. But even then he did not surrender, but so laid about him with his whip that he kept the two men at bay. Of course, if they had not known him, they would have shot him down; but as Was.h.i.+ngton had issued a proclamation concerning him, and had especially insisted that he should be brought in alive, they did not wish to injure him. But the unequal fight did not continue long, and Honeyman was soon captured. The soldiers bound his arms, and, mounting him behind one of them, so carried him across the river to Was.h.i.+ngton's camp.

When Honeyman was brought into the presence of the commander in chief, he pretended to be very much frightened; and he would have been excusable if he had been really frightened, for in that little performance of his he had run a great many risks. After asking a few questions of this pretended traitor Was.h.i.+ngton told the guards to withdraw, and he had a private conference which lasted over half an hour; and in that time it is probable that these two men did a great deal of talking. The information given was most valuable, and such as could have been furnished only by a man of extraordinary powers of observation.

When he had kept Honeyman as long as was necessary, Was.h.i.+ngton called the guards, and told them to take the prisoner to a log cabin which was used as a military jail, and there to watch him carefully during the night, and in the morning he would be tried by court-martial. Honeyman was taken to the prison, which had but one window and one door, and supper was given to him. He was locked in, and two sentinels went on guard outside the walls of the log house.

In the middle of the night these men saw a fire burning not far from headquarters, and, fearing that it might prove dangerous to allow it to burn, they thought it their duty to run and put it out. This they did, and returned to the log house, where everything looked the same as they had left it. But in the morning, when they opened the door, there was no prisoner inside.

It is said that the whole plan of this escape, probably by means of the window, was arranged by Was.h.i.+ngton himself, but of this we are not certain. We know, however, that Was.h.i.+ngton looked upon Honeyman as one of the most valuable men in the employ of the army, and that he would take every means to prevent him from coming to harm on account of this service.

It was in consequence of the information that Honeyman, at the cost of such great risk and danger, had brought to Was.h.i.+ngton, that three days afterwards the Americans crossed the Delaware, attacked Trenton, routed the British, and thus gained one of the greatest and most important victories of the Revolution. If it had been John Honeyman, instead of the British officer, who was struck by a cannon ball crossing the St. Lawrence, it is likely that Was.h.i.+ngton would not have dared to attack the British army in Trenton, which, before his half hour's conversation with his spy, was believed to be entirely too strong to be meddled with by the Continental soldiers on the other side of the river.

But the report which Honeyman had made to Was.h.i.+ngton was not the only service which he did to the American cause. Having left his peace principles at home, as he was bound to do if he wanted to act as a truly serviceable spy, he had more work before him. As soon as he got out of the log house, he ran from the camp, and, although he was fired at by a sentinel, he got safely away. He crossed the river on the ice whenever there was any, and when he came to open water, he jumped in and swam, and so he got safely over into the British lines.

There, wet and s.h.i.+vering, he demanded to be taken to the commander; and to him he told the dreadful story of how he had been captured by the American soldiers while he was looking for beef cattle, and how he had been taken to headquarters, questioned, and afterwards shut up in prison, to be shot in the morning, and how he had quietly escaped and come back to his friends. Colonel Rahl, who was in command of the British, was delighted to get hold of this Tory butcher who had been taken prisoner by the Continentals, and he put him through a course of examination about the condition of the enemy.