NEW JERSEY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A Bibliography of Historical Fiction ORAL S. COAD NEW JERSEY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION New Brunswick Historical Club care of Special Collections Department :41exander Library, Rutgers University New Brunswick, N. 1. 08903 New Jersey in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION A Bibliography of Historical Fiction, from 1784 BY ORAL S. COAD Second Edition SLIGHTLY REVISED AND EXTENDED TO 1975 Edited by Donald A. Sinclair Published for the Bicentennial by the NEW BRUNSWICK HISTORICAL CLUB New Brunswick, N. J., 198o Printed in Letterpress by JKG PRINTING, INC. Edison, N. J. 1980 About the Compiler DR. COAD'S DEATH, on August 26, 1976, several months after he had turned over to the editor his completed manuscript, makes this a posthumous work. While it is regrettable that he cannot enjoy the publication in its finished form, this revised edition of his New Jersey in the Revolution serves as a kind of capstone for a distinguished scholarly career. Oral Sumner Coad was born in Iowa on December 27, 1887, grad- uated from Knox College (19o9) and received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, in 1911 and 1917 respectively. After teaching for twelve years at Ohio Wesleyan University and Columbia, in 1923 he joined the English faculty of the New Jersey College for Women, now Douglass College of Rutgers University. He continued there until his retirement in 1958, an exemplary teacher and (from 1927) head of the English Department. He was the author of William Dunlap: a Study of His Life and Works and of His Place in Contemporary Culture (1917, reprinted 1962) and a number of journal articles. With Edwin Mims he co- authored The American Stage (1929), part of the Yale University Press "Pageant of America" series. Over a period of time the Rutgers University Library Journal published a number of Dr. Coad's articles, among them the following: "Whitman vs. Parton" (194o) ; "The First Century of the New Brunswick Stage" ( 1941-43) ; "James McHenry: a Minor American Poet" (11945); "A Pleasant Land to See" (1962-63) ; "The Masonic Hall Opera House [New Brunswick]" (1965) ; "Songs America Used to Sing" (1968) ; "Some Traveler's-Eye Views of the Jerseyman." Retirement frequently marks the end of a productive career. For Oral Coad, at the age of seventy, it was another beginning. He turned to new research, largely on New Jersey historical topics, from which developed a succession of articles and two separate publications: New Jersey in the Revolution (1964) and New Jersey in Travelers' Ac- counts ... a Descriptive Bibliography (1972)• Several of his articles appeared in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, now called Nqv Jersey History: "The Barnegat Pirates in Fact and Fiction" (1963) ; "Pine Barrens and Robber Barons" (1964) ; "William Dunlap: New Jersey Artist" (1965) ; and "Jersey Gothic" (1966) . Oral Coad had many personal virtues which—in deference to one of them, namely modesty—we have no intention of itemizing. More acceptable to him perhaps would be the spirit in which this publica- tion is offered by the New Brunswick Historical Club—as a tribute to a worthy friend. [6] Introduction to the 1964 Edition JUST WHY so little first-rate fiction should have been written about the Revolutionary War is not easy to explain. Color and adventure, drama and vital significance were certainly there in abundance, but major authors have been less inspired by the war for establishing the Union than by the war for preserving it. And on any level of achieve- ment the fiction of the Civil War is probably more voluminous than that of the Revolution. This generalization does not apply, however, to the state of New Jersey. As a literary theme the War for Independence is far more con- spicuous than any other phase of Jersey's history for the obvious reason that the immediacy and intensity of that long cycle of events were brought home to the people of the state with a menacing force never experienced before or after. In some sense this was "our" war, not only because certain crucial battles—turning points of the struggle —were fought here, but because violent strife, public and private, erupted in one section or other of the state from the beginning to the end of the conflict. It has been said that "nearly ioo battles, large and small, were staged on New Jersey soil," and in addition numberless were the bitter neighborhood feuds and outbursts of destruction that punctuated the seven years of hostility. New Jersey has rightly been called "the Cockpit of the Revolution." It is all the more regrettable, therefore, that so few books of con- spicuous literary value have commemorated these stirring times, but, as already indicated, New Jersey does not differ markedly from the rest of the thirteen original colonies in that respect. A merit that does become apparent as one considers the bibliography here offered is the thoroughness with which the authors, taken collectively, have covered the ground. To no one's surprise, the most famous occurrences—the Crossing of the Delaware, the Battle of Trenton, and the Battle of Monmouth—reappear again and again. In fact it seems that no author omits these three immortal New Jersey events if he can possibly find *Floyd W. Parsons, ed., New jersey: Life, Industries and Resources of a Great State (Newark, 1928), p. 9. 171 an excuse for squeezing them in. But it is gratifying to discover that a large array of minor episodes in almost every portion. of the state, which most textbooks of American history find no room for, are also incorporated. To cite a few examples: the depredations of New York Cowboys in North Jersey, the aggression of Dutch Tories in the Hack- ensack Valley, the Battle of Teaneck Ridge, the smuggling of goods by unpatriotic Jerseymen to the Tories on Staten Island, Washing- ton's holding operation in the Watchung Mountains, the ruthless ac- tivities of the Pine Robbers, the flocking of outlaws to "Refugee- Town" on Sandy Hook, the mutiny of the New Jersey Line, the British attack on Tams River and the salt works, the tea-burning at Greenwich, the raid at Chestnut Neck, the cattle raids in. South Jer- sey, the Battle of the Kegs on the Delaware, the frequently hostile treatment of the patriot army by the civilians—these and many other often disregarded aspects of the war give this body of literature a cer- tain appeal and value. Equally inclusive is the roster of historical figures the writers as- semble, from gentle Tempe Wick to fighting Molly Pitcher, from swashbuckling Adam Huyler to tragic Joshua Huddy, from "Bloody John" Bacon to genial Henry Knox, from inexplicable Charles Lee to incomparable George Washington. Inevitably it is Washington who dominates this body of fiction, and of course he is presented in a variety of lights. Usually he is a noble, aloof, almost supernatural presence hovering over the scene, a presence so godlike that some authors cannot make free to call him by his name; to them he is never anything less remote than "the General." Other novelists show him beset on occasion by an indecision that arouses the troops to restless- ness and impatient questioning. Gratifyingly often an attempt is made to humanize him, but nearly always he is depicted as a high-minded, generous-hearted man who towers over other men by his sheer moral greatness. As for the common soldier of the state, he is by no means always glorified. At times, to be sure, he is impossibly brave and gallant, al- most akin to the Three Musketeers; but in other delineations he is dirty, crude, immoral, even cowardly. At first more a mob than an [81 army, the troops are seen to respond to discipline until they become an effective fighting force. In fact one of the more realistic portrayers of the Continental Army makes the welcome assertion that the sturdy core of a few thousand regulars who clung to Washington in his worst times consisted almost entirely of Pennsylvania and Jersey men. The composite picture conjured up by the reading of multiplied dozens of novels touching on the Revolution in New Jersey—and veri- fied by the historical record—is of an amateurish, almost impromptu war marked by terrible inadequacy of equipment, military training, and psychological preparation. It was a confused war of seemingly aimless advances and retreats, of frightful suffering and long days of despair, a war in which the patriot cause for years teetered on a razor's edge, but in which that cause ultimately triumphed for the reason that the human spirit at its best is unbreakable—and that spirit was in Washington and Mercer and Knox and Lafayette and thousands of common soldiers, many of whom claimed New Jersey as their home. Within the moderate literary dimensions our authors represent, the books on the ensuing list vary markedly in quality. Many of them were written for juvenile readers on the defensible theory that his- torical knowledge and patriotism can best be instilled in the young by the medium of the adventure story. In some instances the adventure plot is mainly a scant framework on which to drape history; in others the historical events are a shadowy setting whose chief function is to motivate a full tale of fictitious derring-do. But in nearly all cases the teen-age characters, male or female, tend to follow a stereotyped pat- tern of immeasurable patriotism and resourcefulness (often vitally helpful to Washington), and in their bright lexicons there is no such word as fear. Commonplace though most of this teen-age fiction is, some of the writers have the virtue of combining information with readableness.