Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet.
- Thomas Addis Emmet
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![along the wooded banks of the Hudson River. The English were so close in pursuit that Washington, in the rear with a portion of his staff, passed in the neighborhood of Seventieth Street, through the hall of the old Apthorpe house to the woods in the rear, under the guidance of Col. Aaron Burr, as those in pur- suit entered the front gate. From a military standpoint it is clear that these troops must necessarily have made their way in the most expeditious manner to McGowan’s Pass and across the Harlem Flats, to gain protection within their own lines below Fort Washington, and that no halt was likely made unless to hold McGowan’s Pass for a short time to protect the rear and stragglers. And yet a memorial tablet, I am informed, has been placed on one of the build- ings of Columbia University to commemorate the halt of these troops along the brow of a continuous declivity, from fifty to one hundred feet in height, as it was at that time; there to await the attack of a victorious and superior force, after all possibility of retreat as a body was cut off, and with a certainty that these troops were without a commissariat! If it were possible to assign any rational reason or purpose, under the circumstances, why the American troops should hold any portion of this untenable line, it is certain that no body of troops, under the most perfect state of discipline, would have risked the fortune of a battle in this place, without artillery and with a precipice in their rear. There is no evidence that additional troops were landed on Harlem Flats from either the Hudson or the East River, and it would be absurd to suppose that the English deserted an advantageous position in front of the American forces in order to go by McGowan’s Pass to the plain below with the purpose of making an attack by attempting to scale an almost inaccessible height! An attack by the ravine near this point, as claimed, I know from my own knowledge of the locality would have been impossible, unless the troops to make the attack were landed at the ravine from boats. They could not have passed, before the railroad was built, along this shore for any distance on either side of the ravine. When I was a boy this point was a noted place for fishing, as the water was deep, with a steep bank, so that it was difficult for any one to pass except at low tide, and the passage was then further ob- structed by a number of boulders or rocks. I have never seen the diary of Lieut. Sam. Richards of a Connecticut regiment, from which you quote, but the Point of Rocks in front of the con- vent was then held by a Connecticut brigade, under Gen. Parsons, if my memory serves me, and a portion of this brigade we have stated was at Kipp’s Bay, where the English landed. It would then seem that this portion of the army from New York had followed the course which, I claim, the whole army must have followed by retreating within their own lines, to the north of Harlem Commons. The following portion of Lieut. Richards’s diary, as quoted by you, will I think show that the attack on the American line of entrenchments was to the north of the Harlem Flats, and by the ravine near Trinity Cemetery, as stated: “We then marched [from what point?] and took possession of the Heights of Harlem and immediately flung up lines for our defence. ... We were employed the succeeding night in throwing up a slight entrenchment on the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28034776_0587.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
