Princeton

Princeton in the Revolution: Battlefield, Capital, and Crucible of a Nation

On the cold morning of January 3, 1777, George Washington rode into the smoke and chaos of a desperate fight on the frozen fields south of Princeton, New Jersey, and personally rallied his faltering troops with a cry that witnesses remembered for the rest of their lives. "Parade with us, my brave fellows!" he shouted, pressing his horse forward to within thirty yards of a British volley. An aide covered his eyes, certain the general would fall. When the smoke cleared, Washington was still in the saddle, and the redcoats were running. That single moment — reckless, theatrical, and decisive — captures something essential about Princeton's place in the American Revolution. This small college town, home to barely a few hundred residents at the war's outbreak, became the site of a battle that saved the Revolution, and then, six years later, the temporary capital of the United States, where the war's final chapter was written. No community of its size played a larger role at both the beginning and end of the struggle for independence.

Princeton was, even before the war, a place saturated in the ideas that would fuel the Revolution. The College of New Jersey — as Princeton University was then known — was led from 1768 by John Witherspoon, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who became an influential figure in the development of the nation's character. At the time of its construction in 1756, Nassau Hall, 176 feet long and fifty-four feet wide, was the largest academic building in the American colonies , and for decades it housed the entirety of the college — classrooms, dormitories, library, chapel, and prayer hall.

Witherspoon was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the Declaration of Independence — the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign it. Princeton produced three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Richard Stockton and John Witherspoon for New Jersey, and Joseph Hewes for North Carolina. Stockton, born near Princeton in 1730, was a prominent lawyer and graduate of the College of New Jersey who had been appointed Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1774. In 1776, he was elected to the Continental Congress, where he took a very active role, and shortly after he signed the Declaration of Independence, he was taken prisoner by the British.

Stockton was moved to Provost Prison in New York where he was intentionally starved and subjected to freezing cold weather. After nearly five weeks of abusive treatment, Stockton was released on parole, his health battered. He returned to his estate, Morven, in Princeton, which had been occupied by General Cornwallis during Stockton's imprisonment. All his furniture, household belongings, crops and livestock were taken or destroyed by the British. His library, one of the finest in the colonies, was burned. He died an invalid at Princeton on February 28, 1781.

The British considered the college to be a "seminary of sedition."

The graduates of the College of New Jersey during Witherspoon's tenure included a president of the United States (James Madison), a vice president, twenty-eight U.S. senators, forty-nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives, twelve governors, and three Supreme Court justices. When the British army pressed through New Jersey in late 1776, Witherspoon closed the college, sent the students home, and fled to safety in Pennsylvania. When the redcoats arrived on December 7, they occupied Nassau Hall and ravaged the community. While the British occupied Princeton, they used Nassau Hall as a barracks, a storage facility, and a jail.

About 1,400 British soldiers were stationed in Princeton , and during their occupation, troops used furniture for fuel, ruined the organ in the prayer hall, and looted the library.

To understand what happened at Princeton, one must begin a week earlier and ten miles to the south, on the banks of the Delaware River. By late December 1776, the American cause was in freefall. Washington's army had been chased out of New York, across New Jersey, and over the Delaware into Pennsylvania. Enlistments were expiring. Congress had fled Philadelphia. Thomas Paine had just published The American Crisis, declaring that "these are the times that try men's souls," but words alone could not stop the hemorrhaging of morale and manpower. Washington understood that without a dramatic stroke, the army — and the Revolution itself — might simply dissolve. On the night of December 25–26, he led roughly 2,400 men back across the ice-choked Delaware and struck the Hessian garrison at Trenton, winning a startling victory. These "Ten Crucial Days" — December 25, 1776, to January 3, 1777 — would see an additional American victory at the Battle of Princeton.

After successfully repelling British forces under Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek in Trenton on the evening of January 2, 1777, Washington launched a bold nighttime maneuver, leading approximately 5,000 Continental troops around Cornwallis's position, marching north toward Princeton with the goal of striking the British 4th Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood.

The battle that erupted on the morning of January 3 was, on the peaceful winter fields of Thomas and William Clarke's farms , considered to be the fiercest fight of its size during the American Revolution. Thomas Clarke was a Quaker farmer who had acquired 200 acres in 1772; he lived there with his sisters Sarah and Hannah as well as Susannah, a Black woman enslaved by the Clarke family. The early fighting was devastating. When the Americans spotted British troopers around William Clarke's farm, Washington detached Hugh Mercer's brigade to investigate. Mercer ran headlong into the 17th Foot, firmly stationed behind a fence at the end of Clarke's orchard. In the ensuing volleys, Mercer was wounded and his men routed by a bayonet charge.

Brigadier General Hugh Mercer died from the seven bayonet wounds he received during the battle.

Although famed medic Benjamin Rush tended to Mercer's seven bayonet wounds, he could not save his medical colleague and fellow Patriot. Mercer died in the Thomas Clarke House on the eastern end of the battlefield, nine days after the battle ended in victory for the Patriots.

It was at this desperate moment that Washington arrived on the field. Washington rode his horse between the British and American lines, leading his men to his first field victory over British troops. The fighting extended from Clarke's orchard all the way into the village. About 200 British soldiers took a defensive position inside Nassau Hall, protected by the stone walls. However, the Continental Army opened fire on the building with cannons, and at least two cannonballs hit it before the British surrendered, effectively ending the battle.

One cannonball reportedly flew through a window in the faculty room and "decapitated" a portrait of George II of Great Britain. The cannonball was said to have come from a gun in the artillery company commanded by Alexander Hamilton.

Troop strengths at Princeton were estimated at 4,500 Americans with 35 artillery pieces against approximately 1,200 British with 6 to 9 artillery pieces.