This is a continuation to my earlier post describing New Jersey's revolutionary war history. The goal of my recounting is to deepen our understanding and so respect for Englewood and New Jersey.

At the outbreak of the war, many American colonists favoring independence believed their fight for independence would be a short one. Poorly versed in British politics, pro-independence colonists misread England's tenacity. England had little stomach for another North American military campaign, so the American thinking went, after the 1754-63 French and Indian War. On the contrary, England was in no mood to let its American colonies slip away, with its barely tapped natural resources, as well as its colonists, who were a captive market for British products. Moreover, it had spent a fortune defending its North American  colonies during the French and Indian war, and expected its grateful American subjects to pay its fair share of this war debt [thus the stamp act and tea tax, which it turns out raised more hell than income].

The events of the summer and fall 1776 quashed the rebels' hopes for a quick war. England responded to the American Declaration of Independence by sending a massive naval and ground force into New York harbor. As any seasoned military officer would have expected, within weeks, George Washington's [who was not then a veteran commander] Continental Army was torn to pieces and routed from New York. The city, its superb port, and the strategic Hudson River all fell into England's, hands, where they remained for much of the war [Staten Island never being given up by the British]. The British were ecstatic, for their plan to split the American colonies in two was starting to tale hold: with New York harbor under English control, the Hudson River could be effectively manipulated as a Berlin wall of sorts, partitioning New England off from the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies.

None of this course of events boded well for New Jersey. Its residents needed look no further than across the Hudson to see well-fortified, enemy territory. Likewise for the British forces, they could plainly see New Jersey, and what they saw, with its expansive cultivated farm and ranch lands, was a ready food-source for its 40,000+ man force. This precious resource of food was not the only cause of misfortune for New Jersey during the revolutionary war. Washington and his command learned many a bitter lesson from their "sharp" encounters with the British in New York. At the early stages of the war, Washington, while not a seasoned officer, did show he could learn from his mistakes. He knew his forces were pitifully weak in comparison to his adversaries', and they would remain outgunned for years. Before the Americans could ever hope to defeat the British, they would first have to learn to survive and, in other words, devise a plan to avoid slaughter.

So, Washington reasoned, the fight for independence would have to become what our parents' generation would call a guerrilla war: a war of attrition. The historian Thomas Fleming judged this decision by Washington a "stroke of strategic genius."

Washington's successful execution of his war of attrition strategy was dependent on New Jersey's natural landscape. Western New Jersey's uneven terrain, dense forests, and broad rivers let Washington's army avoid being drawn into the open. Had the Americans been caught in the open, they may well have sustained a war-ending defeat. But, to Washington's great credit, they never were.

The Americans were always able to stay just ever so slightly out of reach of a large British force. New Jerseyians should feel great pride in knowing that it was their state, with its rugged landscape, that aided Washington's army, letting it carry out a near-continuous assault on the British through small-scale skirmishes. These hit and run battles -- ambushes, really -- seriously demoralized the British. Their effect tended to sequester British troops in cramped, fortified camps. This in turn led to outbreaks of cholera and other maladies at the camps. It also put stress on the troops' mental health: when the British ventured outside of their camps, every stranger -- whether professed loyalist or rebel -- was viewed with nervous suspicion.

Over time, Washington's early-war strategy was successful: the British never could exploit New Jersey as they did New York. New Jersey's farms never functioned as a reliable food-source for British troops. They were instead left no choice but to import food via a trans-Atlantic system of naval shipments. And these were at the mercy of the caprices of nature and looting by French and rebel privateers.

But while Washington's strategy was ultimately a success, it didn't happen overnight. it occurred gradually, and as it slowly achieved its results, the British attitude toward new jersey's inhabitants likewise turned. At the war's outbreak, most New Jersyians were still given privileges of loyal subjects by the British. Over time, these courtesies became rare. IF not stolen outright, crops were burned, and livestock slaughtered. Women were ravished, men hung, or forced into military service. And it was not only the British that made life hard on New Jerseyians. Rebel forces were also vengeful, and just as desperate for food, water, shelter; and rum.

Intensifying the effects of a drawn-out war of attrition was New Jersey's status as "neutral ground" throughout the long war. Unlike New York City, New Jersey was never under full control of any armed force. As a result, any unsubstantiated report of daytime bartering with the enemy could unleash a night time retribution. A long-held grudge, or envy of neighbor's productive wheat field, could spur a claim of treason. Nicholas Collin's eyewitness account paints a dark picture: "Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred, and abominable selfishness…Parents and children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband were enemies of one another."

Moreover, Massachusetts and Virginia's pro-independence radicalism did not exist in New Jersey. Its population was far from a single pro-independence group; certainly not the pacifist Quakers. The cumulative effect resulted in a fearful twilight zone of an often emotionally fragile military and civilian society.

The more dispassionate among us today might respond to this ordeal by saying, "yes, early New Jerseyians did suffer through what can accurately be called America's first civil war, but was it worth my owing them some debt of honor? Wasn't it just a human-caused disaster of no lasting purpose?" My response to such a statement is two-fold. The first is that we, the people of modern New Jersey have been so fortunate for so long a time, that our natural ability to grasp that at pivotal points in history, our individual fortunes, and indeed, our lives, must be placed at disposal to a larger, common purpose.

Of course, only a fool would relish going into battle. But revolutionary war New Jerseyians did this repeatedly. In fact, New Jersey by far saw more fighting than any of the other thirteen rebellious colonies. New Jersey was the main theater of the our long war for independence. In this sense, it can justly be called the crucible of American democracy.

And this claim brings me to my second response. Whatever one's political position was during the American Revolution, everyone—Briton, American, Hessian, Frenchman—added in some way to a renaissance of democratic government. At the time of the revolution, only one other place on earth—the Swiss Confederation—was governed by self-rule. The very idea itself seemed somewhat implausible to the framers of the constitution. And while the ideals set down in the American constitution are still far from being put into practice, its ideas serve as a noble goal, worthy of great sacrifice by centuries of Americans.

To end this post, I would like to relate one event from New Jersey's revolutionary war history close to home. In  Fall 1776, after the surrender of Fort Washington and New York City to the British, Washington and his army retreated to the Bergen County area of New Jersey. Washington had real concerns that the British would next cross the Hudson river and attack the American Ft. Lee. His concerns proved right. On 20 November 1776 English and German mercenary forces, under the command of Lord Charles Cornwallis, landed at the base of the Palisade escarpment. Historical records show the troops disembarked at Huyler's Landing, near the present day town of Closter.

Fortunately for the rebels, Washington, while at his camp near the village of Hackensack, received news of the British landing. He ordered an immediate evacuation of Fort Lee (he knew after the rapid fall of Fort Washington that Fort Lee could not be held). Orders were dispatched to Fort Lee troops to march northward along the King's Highway -- what is now Grand Avenue -- and rendezvous with Washington in Englewood.

Washington joined the Fort Lee troops, and began a march along what is our present day Liberty Road. A route that started in Englewood and eventually ended in Trenton, and the fateful American victory against the British (Germans mercenaries actually) on December 26, 1776. As was -- unbelievably -- often the case for the Americans during that time, luck was on their side. Washington's rendezvous with his troops in Englewood went peacefully, but it could of easily turned violent. Early that night, Cornwallis, upon crossing the Hudson, perhaps out of fear of a trap, doubted that Huyler's Landing was the best site from which to make an ascent up the Palisade escarpment. So Cornwallis consumed several hours looking for a more favorable site, before convincing himself the site was the best he could hope for. Had Cornwallis not spent hours scouting for an alternative landing, the British may well have reached Englewood before Washington's forces had retreated. Englewood may well have been one of the bloodiest of many military disasters for the Americans in 1776.