moment. This year's campaign, the most
critical one of the war, and especially the part of it which occurred
in the Jerseys, was the ordeal that made his great qualities fully
appreciated by his countrymen, and gained for him from the statesmen
and generals of Europe the appellation of the AMERICAN FABIUS.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE ARMY AT MORRISTOWN.--ATTACK ON PEEKSKILL.

The Howes learned to their mortification that "the mere running
through a province is not subduing it." The British commanders had
been outgeneralled, attacked and defeated. They had nearly been driven
out of the Jerseys, and were now hemmed in and held in check by
Washington and his handful of men castled among the heights of
Morristown. So far from holding possession of the territory they had
so recently overrun, they were fain to ask safe conduct across it for
a convoy to their soldiers captured in battle. It must have been a
severe trial to the pride of Cornwallis when he had to inquire by
letter of Washington whether money and stores could be sent to the
Hessians captured at Trenton and a surgeon and medicines to the
wounded at Princeton; and Washington's reply must have conveyed a
reproof still more mortifying. No molestation, he assured his
lordship, would be offered to the convoy by any part of the regular
army under his command; but _"he could not answer for the militia, who
were resorting to arms in most parts of the State, and were
excessively exasperated at the treatment they had met with from both
Hessian and British troops."_

In fact, the conduct of the enemy had roused the whole country against
them. The proclamations and printed protections of the British
commanders, on the faith of which the inhabitants in general had
stayed at home and forbore to take up arms, had proved of no avail.
The Hessians could not or would not understand them, but plundered
friend and foe alike. The British soldiery often followed their
example, and the plunderings of both were at times attended by those
brutal outrages on the weaker sex which inflame the dullest spirits to
revenge. The whole State was thus roused against its invaders. In
Washington's retreat of more than a hundred miles through the Jerseys,
he had never been joined by more than one hundred of its inhabitants;
now sufferers of both parties rose as one man to avenge their personal
injuries. The late quiet yeomanry armed themselves and scoured the
country in small parties to seize on