The Crisis of the Revolution

              54
Accordingly, on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-eighth, both
prisoners were taken by boat to Stony Point—the King's Ferry landing. They
were in separate boats, and Major Tallmadge commanded the party.
The sight of the place where he had crossed as a free man, only the
previous Friday, must have caused Andre the most painful reflections, intensified
by the conversation while in the boat, which Tallmadge records. On the way
down Andre had pointed out the precise spot where he was to have landed, at the
head of a body of picked troops, if all had gone well with the conspiracy.1 In the
ensuing conversation he pressed Tallmadge for an opinion as to his fate. The
latter at first avoided a direct reply, but finally referred to the fate of Nathan
Hale, who had been his classmate at Yale College. " But you surely do not
consider his case and mine alike?" "Yes, precisely similar, and similar will be
your fate," prophetically replied Tallmadge—and the solemn warning had its
natural effect on the spirits of his companion, though he seems not to have fully
believed it, for Tallmadge has left on record: "I never discovered any fear
respecting his future destiny before I reached Tappan."
Crossing the road from Grassy Point, near what is now the Stony Point
post-office,2 the dragoon escort,8 with Smith in the van and Andre in the rear,
passed by Smith's house4 to the next corner. Thence by the right-hand road,
through or near what is now Garnerville, then a southwest course around l,ong
Clove mountain to a point called the Clove, but originally known as Kakiat, and
now as Hempstead,6 at the house (or tavern) of John Coe.6    It stands opposite
* This was Rev. John Hason, D. D., the first pastor of the Presbyterian church in Cedar Street, New York,
afterward known as the Scotch Church, and now situated far uptown.
He was born in Scotland in 1734, and died in New York in 1792, but the New Jersey records show that he was
appointed to the army from that State.   He was a trustee of Princeton College, and many years chaplain of
tne St. Andrew's Society of New York.
He was appointed chaplain to the Third (Gansevoort's) New York Continentals, November 21, 1776, and later
was made chaplain to the posts along the Hudson.   West Point seems to have been his residence in 1780.
He was adverse to having his portrait taken, and the only one known to exist, from which that on page 53
is made, was made by Kosciuszko while the Doctor was at a public dinner.   (It will be seen he holds
a glass in one hand.)   It has never before been published, and I am indebted to Mr. John Mason Knox, of
New York, for its use.
Smith speaks of the Doctor as "that truly good old man," and adds that he himself was visited that day by
many inquisitive people, and that Major Tallmadge displayed uncommon kindness in his treatment of him.
1 Some historians have queried as to what Andre1 did during the time he was at Smith's—between breakfast and
• dinner, or dinner and the time of his leaving—and have believed the. absurd story that Arnold took
him to West Point; but the whole business may be dismissed by remembering that he could not possibly
have had time to go there, and return to Smith's, by sunset. The other inherent impossibilities need not
detain us.
2 Dykman.
3 A large escort had been sent from Tappan.
* One authority says Tallmadge allowed Smith to stop there for a while. It may here be noted, as a singular
instance of tie way in which families were divided by the Revolution, that Tallmadge and Smith were
second cousins—the Major being grandson of Rev. John Smith, Joshua Hett's uncle, whose daughter
Susanna married Rev. Benjamin Tallmadge, of Brookhaven, Long Island.
B The station on the New Jersey and New York railroad is Summit Park', about three-fourths of a mile west.
6 John Coe was a lieutenant in the Haverstraw militia. He was a member of the New York Provincial Congress
in 1775, and Judge of Orange County 1775-78, and a member of the New York Assembly from 1778 to 1780.
In 1776-77 he was Deputy Chairman of the Orange County Committee of Safety.