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Updated: June 29, 2025
To these orders explicit instructions were added not to hazard his party by remaining before Verplanck's after the British should cross Croton river in force. Through some unaccountable negligence in the persons charged with the execution of these orders the battering artillery was not accompanied with suitable ammunition, and the necessary entrenching tools were not brought.
A small but strong work called Fort Fayette was completed at Verplanck's and was garrisoned by a company commanded by Captain Armstrong. The works on Stony Point were unfinished.
On October 5, 1777, Sir Henry Clinton landed three thousand men on Verplanck's Point, apparently for the purpose of attacking Peekskill, but really with intent to deceive General Putnam, who was in command of the town, and for once this Connecticut Yankee was fooled into doing just what the enemy wished, for he drew his troops back to the hills and did not know until too late that the English forces, under cover of a friendly fog, had been ferried across to the west shore for the purpose of attacking Fort Montgomery.
Major Hull, in a letter to Colonel Burr, dated the 29th of May, 1779, says, "The ground you so long defended is now left to the depredations of the enemy, and our friends in distressing circumstances." In the beginning of June, Sir Henry Clinton captured the forts at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point, and threatened West Point. His force in this direction was upwards of six thousand rank and file.
Irving, who was then in Europe, saw Verplanck's strictures just as he had written Rip Van Winkle, and he wrote to a friend at home that he could not help laughing at Verplanck's outburst of filial feeling for his ancestors, adding, in the true Knickerbocker vein, "Remember me heartily to him, and tell him that I mean to grow wiser and better and older every day, and to lay the castigation he has given seriously to heart."
But the difficulty of a perfect cooperation of detachments, incapable of communicating with each other, determined him to postpone the attack on Verplanck's and to make that part of the plan dependent on the success of the first. His whole attention, therefore, was turned to Stony Point and the troops destined for this critical service proceeded on it as against a single object.
The Commander-in-Chief was extremely desirous of driving the British from the forts commanding King's Ferry on the Hudson, at Stony Point, on the western bank of the river, and at Verplanck's Point, directly opposite. This dangerous business was confided to Wayne and his Light Infantry Corps, the plan of operations being carefully prepared by General Washington.
That this detachment might not permit the favorable moment to pass unimproved Wayne had been requested to direct the messenger who should convey the intelligence of his success to Washington to pass through M'Dougal's camp and give him advice of that event. He was also requested to turn the cannon of the fort against Verplanck's and the vessels in the river.
In Clinton Place the Century stayed until it went to its Fifteenth Street house, where it was so long to remain. Gulian Verplanck's presidency lasted for many years. At first it was a happy tenure of office. But the Civil War came, bringing with it grave dissensions.
The composition of this Board has just been changed by the Legislature of the State, in such a manner as unfortunately to introduce party influences, from which, during all the time of Mr. Verplanck's connection with it, it had been kept wholly free. Yet Mr. Verplanck had his party attachments, though he never suffered them to lead him out of the way he had marked for himself.
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