Battle of Springfield: The Last Invasion
New Jersey
You are near the site of one of the most important and least remembered battles of the American Revolution. On June twenty-third, seventeen eighty, a British and Hessian force of roughly five to six thousand men, commanded by Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, advanced from Staten Island through what is now Union County with the intent of capturing the Hobart Gap through the Watchung Mountains and marching on General Washington's headquarters at Morristown.
It was the last significant British attempt to invade New Jersey and bring the war in the north to a decisive conclusion. American forces under General Nathanael Greene made their stand in the small village of Springfield, and what followed was a fierce, chaotic battle that the British ultimately could not win.
The battle is remembered today through a story that has passed into local legend. The Reverend James Caldwell, chaplain of a Continental regiment, arrived at the Presbyterian Church during the heat of the fighting to find that American musketmen had run short of the wadding needed to seat their musket balls. Caldwell ran inside and emerged with armloads of Watts Hymnals, the standard hymn books of American Protestant congregations. He threw them to the soldiers with a shout that historians have rendered as: Give them Watts, boys.
The cry carries a particular bitterness. Caldwell had a personal score to settle. Just sixteen days earlier, during an earlier British raid on the village of Connecticut Farms, his wife Hannah had been shot and killed through the window of the parsonage where she had taken shelter with their children. Her death, almost certainly the act of a British soldier, had outraged New Jersey and stiffened patriot resolve across the region.
After the battle, the British burned Springfield to the ground. Only four houses survived. Then they withdrew to Staten Island and never seriously threatened New Jersey again. The Watchung Mountains, and the road they guarded, remained in American hands for the rest of the war.
