A white house with solid vertigris blinds stands comfortably beside the Post road. There is a little old cannon on the lawn, a sad bell-mouthed field piece with its jaw jutted fiercely out to bark at any British man-o’-war that presumes to come back up the Hudson. A green ridge rises behind the house, setting it off like Wedgwood ware, and a gentle brook idles down the slope toward the river.
Set in a jog of the stone wall at the highway is a memorial tablet which has evidently gone unnoticed by the gentlemen who write histories for primary schools—who are supposed to watch the fires on our national shrines, and to toss a bright epithet, an apt name, or a bit of patriotic tinder on the coals. In missing this Dobbs Ferry house they are clearly guilty of neglect of duty. It has a story that goes clear down to the stuff every American believes he is made of. If we borrow a stock phrase from the supply of the school historian and call this house the “Birthplace of Victory” we shall not be far from the fact, nor serving ill a spot which recalls with rich significance the travail in which our nation was born.
In 1780 there were three invading British armies rooted on the Atlantic coast: Clinton had driven Washington off Manhattan island in 1776 and had already held the city for four years; Cornwallis made Yorktown a base for expeditions into Virginia and the Carolinas, and Tarleton held Charleston. For four years the enemy had hoped to effect a junction between his forces in Canada and those in New York, and the Hudson was to be his highway. For four years Washington had hovered like an eagle over the river, wheeling now into Westchester, now swooping upon Jersey. Inadequately equipped, he dared not take the offensive. He had to be content to wait for the time when Clinton might relax his vigilance upon the city, then to strike, brilliantly and savagely, but the sum of these maneuvers was only to harass the enemy, not to unseat him. Twice since Washington’s time has his fortitude been matched in our history: once by Lincoln, and once by Lee. Once, in our own lifetime, it has been equalled by the French nation. It was from France, in 1780, that our relief ultimately came.
After four years of war, with British patrols making frequent raids through Yonkers and over the upper acres of the Philipse estate, with British warships plying up and down the Hudson at will past the silenced batteries of Forts Washington and Lee, with the Cowboys and Skinners of both armies making life wretched throughout the neutral ground in which Dobbs Ferry lay, the village was in ill temper. It lies opposite the northern end of the Palisades, and while the British held New York it was the most southerly ferry safe for American despatch riders from Westchester County to Jersey and the south—a vital link in the chain of communication between the scattered states. So Dobbs Ferry saw plenty of skirmishing. Earthworks were thrown up in the village; the remains of an ancient redoubt may be discovered today after patient search near Broadway and Livingston Avenue, and the Livingston mansion, the most pretentious house in town, asked neither exemption nor privilege and surrounded itself with trenches. No one knew when the enemy might advance in force up the Albany Post Road, and in Dobbs Ferry’s 1780-temper, no one proposed to let him march without a fight.
Word had gone through the states that Lafayette, the gay French lad who came over to fight with Washington, had gone home. “He’s young,” men said. “It was only a lark for him. He’s had enough. ‘Leave of absence’ was it! ‘French leave,’ more likely.” Lafayette was young, but he had not had enough. How a youth of twenty-two petitioned the court of France for an army, a fleet and a generous loan for the states we need not inquire. He got everything he asked and came back to tell General Washington so and to confer upon him Louis Sixteenth’s commission as lieutenant-general of the Armies of France and admiral of His Majesty’s Navy.
In 1918 the United States transport Leviathan, seven days out of New York, made the harbor of Brest and set ten thousand fighting men ashore. In the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island, on July 11, 1780 eleven French warships and thirty-two transports, three months out of Brest, set six thousand fighting men of France upon American soil. Ponder on those figures: six thousand men are the complement of two modern regiments, the half of a bitter day’s casualty list; six thousand men were the Army of France, the Army of Deliverance. After they had thawed a cool reception, they were welcomed as such, and while the Comte de Rochambeau, at their head, was fêted by the dignitaries of Newport, his disciplined troops pitched their tents in the Rhode Island orchards, and as their commander proudly reported to their King, never even robbed the fruit-trees!
Cumulative bad luck camped down simultaneously on the American cause. Scurvy among the French troops prevented their moving to attack New York. Clinton made a demonstration against them at Newport until Washington frightened him back indoors. Rochambeau found difficulty in conveying his ideas of strategy to American headquarters in Jersey, and it took all of Lafayette’s tact to keep the forces in contented alliance. At last, when the summer was nearly gone, Washington arranged a council of war at Hartford.
The operations of the allied armies planned at that conference hinged upon the co-operation of a second French land force and the French fleet. The land force was even then bottled up in Brest by British warships, the French admiral was in the West Indies and showed no signs of coming north. To make matters worse, there was brewing over on the Hudson a plot which Washington later called “one of the severest strokes that could have been meditated against us.” It was so well known among the British that it now seems incredible that no hint of warning had filtered through the Neutral Ground to American headquarters. London gossip predicted openly throughout the summer a coup which would shortly bring this upstart rebellion to its knees.
One morning in late September four farmer boys from Westchester undertook to watch the Albany post-road north of Tarrytown, and to see that no Tory patrols drove stolen cattle southward. They halted a well-dressed civilian and searched him. In his stockings they found a plan of the fortifications at West Point, an inventory of ammunition, full directions for attacking and taking the forts, and a résumé of General Washington’s most recent statement of the condition and prospects of the American cause. It was suspicious enough to find these papers on an unknown civilian, but when he proved to be Major John André, adjutant-general of the British Army, and when inspection showed that the last two documents were in the handwriting of Benedict Arnold, an American major-general in command at West Point, the matter smelled rankly of treason.
Washington was returning from Hartford to headquarters when he was diverted to West Point. An unexplainable bit of stupidity had allowed Arnold to learn of André’s capture, and when Washington arrived at Arnold’s headquarters opposite West Point he found the traitor’s young wife in a state of collapse and Arnold himself fled to the British frigate “Vulture,” which was already dropping downstream out of range.
From the upper windows of the Livingston house, in Dobbs Ferry, you may look northwest over the roofs of the town where André and Arnold had secretly met and plotted to betray the United States. Across the river you may see the faint outlines of the village of Tappan, where André was held prisoner, and where George Washington shared his breakfast with the convicted spy. At the foot of the hill in Dobbs Ferry you may see the landing where a group of British dignitaries came to plead with General Green for André’s life. If you had been in Tappan the next morning you might have seen André walk to the gibbet, adjust the noose firmly about his own neck, and heard him say: “It will be but a momentary pang.” With a record that included secret service during the siege of Charleston, André was undoubtedly a spy, but if you had watched dry-eyed as this man met death you would have been lonesome, for there were plenty of honest tears from the American officers who stood by and saw him hang.
With the plot exploded, Arnold a turncoat, André dead, the cause at least was safe. “Whom can we trust now?” asked Washington, and proceeded to find out. In spite of a wide-spread feeling of contempt for Arnold, his desertion made an impression upon the faint-hearts in both armies. In an effort to stiffen the morale of his men, and somewhat stung by the vengefulness of Arnold’s threat in a letter presented at the Dobbs Ferry conference that he would make reprisals if André was killed, Washington conceived the idea of kidnapping Arnold in New York. The sergeant-major detailed for this bold stroke had the worst possible luck, missed Arnold by a half-hour, and landed on board a transport filled with a corps of deserters, bound for Virginia, and commanded by the traitor himself.
By June of 1781 the French army was ready for action. They marched across Connecticut, and pitched their tents upon the Westchester hills. That lively, attractive young aide-de-camp who danced with the girls of Westchester was a chap named Berthier, destined to become field marshal under Napoleon and Prince of Wagram; the tall, gallant Saxon aide was the Count de Fersen, later commander of the Swiss body-guard of Louis XVI. Custine commanded the Saintonge regiment—Custine who had served under Frederick the Great; on the ridge east of the Nepperhan were the Viomênil brothers—Count and Baron, soldiers both; over on the hill above White Plains was the charming Lauzun—he was guillotined a few years later. “Gentleman rankers out on a spree,” and leading as gay an army of crimson- and white- and pink- and yellow- and blue- and green-clad troops as Europe could put in the field. What shortcomings they found with the entertainment their American allies offered, what irritation they felt at being served beef, potatoes, lamb and chicken on one plate, they forgot in the real comradeship that sprang up. New days were coming. New York, the stronghold, was to be beaten down by these keen French, and these dogged Americans, and Henry Clinton might well beware.
Washington moved his headquarters into the Livingston house at Dobbs Ferry. There on July 6, 1781 Rochambeau met and joined him and for the first time the armies were formally allied. The two commanders sat late over the plans for the effort which was presently to make Henry Clinton shout to Cornwallis and Tarleton for help. In the back of Washington’s mind was a shrewd manoeuvre, and he kept it in the back of his mind, for if a plan was to be good enough to fool the enemy, it should be good enough to deceive his own men. Clinton was to be thoroughly scared by a demonstration by the combined armies against New York. If he called for reinforcements from the south, good; if they came, better yet. For it was not Clinton in New York whom Washington wanted, nor Tarleton in Charleston, but Cornwallis at Yorktown, the link between the two. And Washington knew that this was to be his last gamble with fate.
On July 18 Rochambeau accompanied him on a reconnoissance of the enemy’s positions north of New York. What they saw led them to throw a protective cordon of troops across the peninsula of Westchester, from the Sound to the Hudson, to keep the British patrols from leaking out. Ten days later Washington heard that three British regiments from South Carolina had been sent to Clinton’s relief. Back of his calm eyes his brain was humming with excitement. He wrote letters about his plans for attacking New York and then saw to it that those letters fell into the enemy’s hands. When the British approached the American lines they found them preparing for battle. Washington allowed his engineers to survey camp sites and build brick ovens within sight of the enemy’s scouts. And then, on August 3, a travel-worn messenger arrived with a letter from Lafayette.
“DeGrasse is sailing with the French fleet from Santo Domingo for Chesapeake Bay” was its message. The moment had come.
To the Livingston house he summoned Robert Morris, who had never failed before, and who must not fail now; and with him Richard Peters, the acting Secretary of State. Washington demanded men. Turning to Peters, he asked: “What can you do?”
“With money, everything. Without it, nothing,” replied the Secretary of State, and looked questioningly toward Morris. The banker produced a loan of $30,000. To Washington it was as good at that moment as a million, for it meant pay and food for his men, a promise of more men, and supplies for a forced march. And the forced march was imminent. Rochambeau came down from his headquarters up over the hill and the two laid their plans. On the eleventh 3000 Hessians from Cornwallis’ forces arrived to defend New York. On August 25 all but 3000 men of the entire American army and the whole French force crossed the Hudson and were half-way to Philadelphia before Sir Henry Clinton knew that he had been tricked.
Two months later Cornwallis surrendered to the Allied armies, and there was no more British army between New York and Charleston. The plan which first saw daylight in the Livingston House at Dobbs Ferry ended the Revolution.
It was poetic justice, therefore, that in this house eighteen months later should occur the formal evacuation of the United States by the British. On the afternoon of May 6, 1783, two barges landed at the Ferry. In one was George Washington, Commander-in-Chief; in the other Governor Clinton of New York State. Presently a sloop-of-war appeared, and from it landed General Sir Guy Carleton, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Forces. The three men met in the front room of the Livingston House, and at a sturdy round walnut table which stands in the house today General Sir Guy Carleton signed on the dotted line, renouncing a claim upon America which was first staked out by Sir Walter Raleigh. Good Queen Bess would have sworn like a lady at the spectacle; Guy Carleton, instead, marched out between four companies of American infantry at present-arms, saluted the flag, invited General Washington and Governor Clinton to dine aboard his sloop, and after an exceedingly good dinner fired a seventeen-gun salute for the guest who throughout the war had been scornfully referred to by Parliament as “Geo. Washington, Esqre.”
From Philip Livingston, its Revolutionary occupant, the house passed into the hands of Peter Van Brugh Livingston, a rich, righteous and rigid citizen who was a member of two legislatures, and who acquired most of the real estate in Dobbs Ferry. A small parcel of this real estate he gave to the Episcopal Church. When a local tavern-keeper applied for admission to the church Van Brugh Livingston’s influence and indignant protests almost kept the boniface out of reach of salvation. The house was purchased from Livingston by Stephen Archer, a gentle Quaker. His wife at her death-bed promised him that if he would build a bay window in the house and sit at that window on a Friday night, she would return to him. He built the bay window and every Friday night for twenty years sat peering out, straining his eyes to distinguish her ghostly form from the shadows of the ancient horse-chestnut tree. This is a true story of spiritualism: she never came back. Stephen Archer’s daughter married a Dr. Hasbrouck and the house became his property upon her death. His fourth wife succeeded in outliving him, and in the light of Van Brugh Livingston’s prejudice against tavern-keepers, it is interesting to recall the latest episode in the possession of the ancient dwelling.
Messmore Kendall, a lawyer of New York, was driving down Broadway one morning when he saw a sign in the dooryard of the Hasbrouck house advertising it for sale. He stopped. Inquiry from a woman who answered his knock brought out the information that financial stress had forced the sale of the house to a brewer who proposed to open a road house within its sacred walls. Mr. Kendall went on to the city. He learned from the real-estate brokers that the title was to be transferred to the brewer at 12 o’clock of the following day. At 12 o’clock there was no brewer in sight. At 1 o’clock Mr. Kendall had bought the house. At 5 o’clock of the same afternoon the brewer appeared, but the house had been saved forever.
So, instead of the clash of weapons of a dance orchestra, the Livingston House today hears the call of the birds from the garden. Instead of a coat of scarlet paint, a swinging tavern-sign, and the installation of new “service facilities” the house has undergone a complete restoration to its early beauty.
Where a less knowing eye would have altered for the sake of altering, he has directed changes only as they would preserve the feeling of self-effacing Colonial occupancy. Where the austerity of the period might easily have been made inelastic, he has made you sense the vital nearness of the glorious immortals who were there. Where the old frame of the building settled back after a century of service and gave an informal tilt to the door-frames, instead of replacing them with new he has tailored the old doors a trifle. He has left the old floors, for flooring such as men laid in those days was not to be disciplined for little irregularities. Between the drawing room and the study hangs the original front door, with a lock three hands broad, and the great key that turned on the invader’s last good-bye. Even electricity came into the house in a quiet disguise. If it is candle-light, and you should peer into the low-studded dining-room, with its musket and pewter, and its great fireplace, you will be forgiven if your fancy pictures a Continental cavalryman bolting his supper at the end of the long table. Perfectly sane people have heard Lafayette’s light step on the stair.
Given far less to work with than the Jumel Mansion a few miles away, the restorer of the Livingston house has avoided the error of formalizing the restoration. For years he had been collecting rare furniture for just such an emergency. Out of the storage warehouse and into the drawing room came a pair of sofas and a little table from the shop of Duncan Phyfe; two of Thomas Chippendale’s mirrors; a pair of girandoles of unusual grace; a very early and tinkly American piano; and a dozen other things, each wearing a veil of antiquity over her charms. Like a group of delightful reunited old ladies they fell to chirruping and whispering, agreeing that this was so like home, when one—and it was probably one of the mischievous girandoles, who give back your reflection askew—suggested with a sparkle in her eyes: “Let’s pretend we have always been here!” A whisper of assent fled from one to another. The Dutch clock in the hallway chimed agreement, the Queen Anne sofa on the landing heard and sighed happily, and one of Washington’s own chairs in the study, which had left Mount Vernon a century ago, remarked that he had always regarded Dobbs Ferry as a comfortable asylum.
They will hush their chatter when you come in, and you cannot surprise them at it. But on a June night you may sit outside and watch the moon rise through the tracery of an old wistaria on the south portico. Listen sharply: when a white parrokeet waddles in from the blue shadows of the garden, and a voice is singing, and there is the lightest feather of air moving, it will bring their whisper through the window to you. The illusion is yours; they are at home, among their own.