Staten Island Expedition of Alexander

STATEN ISLAND EXPEDITION OF ALEXANDER. 14-15 January 1780. The winter of 1779–1780 was the coldest in New York City's recorded history, with ice making water communications between Manhattan and Staten Island all but impossible by mid-January, and allowing heavy artillery pieces to be pulled across the Hudson River to Paulus Hook by teams of horses. At the same time General Henry Clinton was in South Carolina with a large portion of the British forces stationed in North America. Major General James Pattison commanded at New York in his absence, and feared that Washington would take advantage of the two unique situations to attack. Although the weather was too severe for a major operation, on the night of 14-15 January, General William Alexander (known as Lord Stirling) led three thousand men across the ice from Elizabethtown Point to Staten Island. The defenders spotted the move and took cover in their fortifications. After spending a miserable twenty-four hours in the subzero weather and deep snow, the Americans withdrew with seventeen prisoners and a small quantity of loot. Alexander had six men killed and about five hundred "slightly frozen" (in the words of a contemporary). In a classic example of the bitterness of the between-the-lines raiding during the time the British held New York, New Jersey militia on this raid stripped Loyalists' farms; the British retaliated ten days later by burning the academy at Newark and the courthouse and meeting house at Elizabethtown.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nelson, Paul David. William Alexander, Lord Stirling. University: University of Alabama Press, 1987.

                              revised by Robert K. Wright Jr.