From The Journal of America’s Military Past
By David Price
About the Author
In addition to John Haslet’s World, David Price has authored a trilogy about the “Ten Crucial Days” of the American War of Independence—Winning the Ten Crucial Days, The Road to Assunpink Creek, and Rescuing the Revolution—as well as The Battle of Harlem Heights, 1776. The latter is part of the Westholme Small Battle series and was accepted into the permanent collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. David has been awarded the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution Bronze Good Citizenship Medal and Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of his work as an author, speaker, and historical interpreter at Washington Crossing Historic Park (PA) and Princeton Battlefield State Park (NJ). Since 2021, he has authored a dozen scholarly articles for the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal of the American Revolution, three of which have been selected by the editorial board for inclusion in its annual hardcover volume. More information about David and his work can be found at dpauthor.com.
In a letter written shortly after the death of his friend and political ally John Haslet at the battle of Princeton on 3 January, 1777, Caesar Rodney offered these words of tribute to the martyred colonel of the Delaware Continental Regiment: “in Haslet we know we lost a brave, open, honest, sensible man, one who loved his country’s more than his private Interest.” Referencing his fellow Delawarean, as well as General Hugh Mercer who also perished from his wounds at Princeton, Rodney declared: “And so long as the inhabitants of this American world shall continue to be a free people, so long (at least) will the name of Mercer and Haslet be held in honorable remembrance.”
The native of Ireland, who emigrated to the American colonies circa 1757, at about age thirty, was born in the village of Straw, County Londonderry, to Joseph and Ann Dykes Haslet, the oldest of six children. He survived a rigorous, five-year academic curriculum at the prestigious University of Glasgow to earn a theology degree and be ordained as a Presbyterian minister at Ballykelly. Haslet departed for the New World after the death of his first wife, Shirley; and while living along Pennsylvania’s border with Maryland in the home of cousins who previously emigrated from Northern Ireland, he found himself in considerable demand by Presbyterian congregations in that rural area because of a shortage of clergy. The restless cleric volunteered for military service during the French and Indian War, was commissioned a captain in Lt. Col. James Burd’s 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion and served in the campaign led by British Acting Gen. John Forbes that captured the French stronghold at Fort Duquesne. After his military service ended, Capt. Haslet returned to Lancaster County, where he had been residing before his enlistment, and resumed ministering to various Presbyterian parishes. However, his interests soon turned to other surroundings and professions as he sought to establish himself in his new land.
While living in southern Pennsylvania, Haslet explored the nearby territory along the west bank of the Delaware River and Bay, officially known as the Lower Three Counties of Pennsylvania, which would be renamed as Delaware State in 1776. Settling in Mispillion Hundred in Kent County, he initially continued his ministerial pursuits but gradually turned to medicine as his primary occupation. In 1765, Haslet married Jemima Molleston Brinckle, with whom he would have four children: Ann, Jemima, John, and Joseph – to be joined by daughter Polly from his first marriage, who crossed the Atlantic to reunite with her father. The clergyman-physician-planter bought a tract of land known as “Longfield” and subsequently added to his holdings while building a large, comfortable farmhouse for his growing family. Abandoning the ministry to practice medicine and work the land, Haslet grew wheat and corn as commercial crops along with his fellow Kent County landowners. Politics beckoned, however, and he was elected to the Delaware General Assembly from Kent County in 1770, serving several terms and becoming a member of the Kent County Committee of Correspondence in 1774, where he emerged as a radical voice in support of insurrection against British rule.
Active in the militia, Haslet was given the rank of colonel in the Continental Army on 19 January 1776 and placed in command of the Delaware Regiment that had been organized by the Lower Counties Assembly in response to a call by the Continental Congress. These Delawareans comprised the best-drilled and probably the only completely uniformed unit in the army, and as such made quite an impression upon joining George Washington’s army at its Perth Amboy encampment in August 1776. Once in battle, they demonstrated that their fierce self-pride was well deserved. Comprising eight companies from Kent, Sussex, and New Castle Counties, the regiment was regarded as an elite entity, and its men likely viewed their nearly fifty-year-old colonel as something of a father figure.
It is noteworthy that Haslet lived as long as he did, having endured an extended bout with dysentery during the 1776 New York campaign, survived a murderous cannonade on Chatterton’s Hill at the battle of White Plains, overcome exposure to frigid temperatures when he fell into the Delaware River on returning from the first battle of Trenton, and one week later marched with the army some twelve miles from Trenton to Princeton in twenty-degree temperatures on his still-recovering legs. Haslet proved to be one of George Washington’s steadiest, most reliable officers.
His tireless efforts and efficiency made his soldiers some of the best-disciplined and drilled in the Continental Army, and had he lived long enough, it seems clear he would have been promoted to brigadier general. The historian David Hackett Fischer may have employed the ultimate accolade in his Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Washington’s Crossing, when he referred to the colonel as “this unconquerable man.”
Haslet’s regiment was one of the most distinguished under Washington’s command. Acclaimed for their bravery and military skill, his men were well-disciplined and well-equipped – unlike many others in the ragtag army of 1776. In his classic study of these Delaware “Blues” (known for the color of their uniforms), Christopher Ward effusively praises the first Delaware regiment and the reconstituted unit that took its place after Haslet’s death: “Forged on the anvil of hardship under the hammer of experience, the Delaware regiment was a weapon which any of the great captains of history would have been glad to launch at his foe.” The Blues helped save Washington’s army by their resolute stand with the Maryland regiment at the battle of Long Island on 27 August 1776, provided protective cover for the rest of the army during its evacuation from Brooklyn Heights two nights later, spearheaded a largely successful nighttime raid on Loyalist troops encamped at Mamaroneck on 22 October, forced the enemy to pay an exorbitant price in casualties at White Plains on 28 October, provided protective cover as the army’s rearguard at New Brunswick on 1 December and during its retreat from Princeton to Trenton, and contributed to the victory over the Hessians at Trenton on 26 December. In the latter engagement, Haslet led the remnants of his once almost-eight-hundred-man unit – originally the largest in the army but now reduced by the hardships of war to about a hundred weary souls – for the last time. With their enlistments almost up, all but five of his men went home after the battle, and the colonel was ordered by Washington to return to Delaware in order to recruit a new regiment. However, he delayed doing so until the army could wrap up its winter campaign.
Haslet’s dedication to the quest for American independence was indeed fanatical, so much so that his passion may at times have exceeded his judgment. For example, when an elderly farmer and Loyalist sympathizer, John Clarke, was abused by a mob in Dover, Delaware, who put Clarke in the pillory and hurled eggs at him, Haslet – according to Thomas Rodney (Caesar’s younger brother) – observed the action from a nearby tavern and refused to intervene, which required Rodney to intercede with the crowd and release Clarke from the pillory. On another occasion, Haslet suggested that the accidental burning of a Delaware Loyalist’s home, “which is made a complaint against the soldiery,” even “tho’ very probably mistaken,” was “something of [a] vigorous exertion necessary in both [Kent and Sussex] counties.”
Then again, Haslet’s devotion to the Patriot enterprise often gave rise to soaring rhetoric that reflected his most lofty aspirations and tender emotions. The soldier-scholar accepted Caesar Rodney’s offer to command the Delaware Regiment in December 1775 with an eloquent evocation of the Revolutionary spirit: “if the Congress desire it, I (who look on their resolves as the political bible of liberty & America), will consider [their] appointment, as the voice of heaven, (of the people it most certainly will be) & strain every nerve to prove the confidence of my friends has not been misplaced.” The colonel wrote Rodney, following the latter’s vote in Congress for American independence, to applaud the action he and the other delegates had taken in Philadelphia to separate from Britain: “I congratulate you, sir, on the important day, which restores to every American his birthright – a day which every freeman will record with gratitude, & the millions of posterity read with rapture.” And in what was probably the last letter he ever wrote, on New Year’s Day 1777, Haslet told Rodney, “If I return it will be to salute you, if not we shall meet in heaven.” Two days later, he received “a bullet through his head” while attempting to rally his fellow rebels at Princeton.
Today, Battle Monument Park – about a mile and a half from the Princeton battlefield where Haslet fell – features a memorial to the colonel, located a few feet from the Princeton Battle Monument that depicts Washington leading his troops to victory on that hallowed ground. The Haslet marker’s presence at this site is fitting for two reasons: first, its proximity to the field where his ultimate act of sacrifice upon the altar of American independence coincided with the climactic victory of the legendary “Ten Crucial Days” campaign in the winter of 1776-77; and second, its proximity to the monument that honors America’s foremost general, who relied so heavily on Haslet and his regiment when the insurgent cause appeared most endangered in the dark days of 1776. The words on the Haslet marker – dedicated by the State of Delaware in 2001 – pay tribute to the fighting clergyman who gave his life for his adopted country as a “patriot of considerable distinction” and “a leading proponent of Independence.” They assert that “the distinguished service” of the Delaware Regiment in 1776 “can be largely attributed to his inspirational leadership.” And the inscription ends with these words: “Noted for his bravery and devotion to the cause of liberty, Colonel John Haslet died a hero to his state and nation.” Although legend has it that the normally reserved Washington openly wept over the loss of this stalwart combatant on the frozen field at Princeton after the guns were silenced, such a public display of emotion would have run counter to the Virginian’s customary self-restraint. Even so, some fables are too befitting a fallen hero’s stature to completely disregard.