After the Battle

After the Battle. .

"I have never Seen Greater bravery Display'd than on this occasion." , , Col. Richard Butler to General Scott

, The Battle of Edgar's Lane was a minor skirmish in the story of the American Revolution, but it provided an important boost to Continental Army morale. Referring to the Baylor Massacre two days earlier, General Scott wrote to General George Washington, "This in Some Measure Compensates For Poor Baylor.", Westchester endured several more years of violence and deprivation as the stalemate between the British forces and the Continental Army continued. But the tide was turning. In 1781, the French Army arrived in Westchester with 4,500 troops under the command of the comte de Rochambeau. They joined with Washington's Army and Rochambeau made his headquarters nearby at the Odell House in Hartsdale. Today, the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route winds through neighboring Dobbs Ferry and follows the route of the troops as they ultimately marched south. On September 22, 1781, the Continental and French Armies joined with the Marquis de Lafayette's troops in Virginia and defeated the British forces under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia., In 1783 the Treaty of Paris ended the war. In November of that year the British evacuated New York and General Washington entered the liberated city to a hero's welcome. The United States had beaten the most powerful army in the world and won its war for liberty., But underlying the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence was a terrible contradiction: the settlers of North America had seized the lands from the Native American Nations and had imported enslaved Africans to work their fields, care for their children, and build their settlements. By the time of the Revolution there were half a million enslaved people throughout the colonies. Many slaves lived and worked on the farms of Westchester. But the free Black community of New York, joined by white abolitionists including Revolutionary War hero General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, fought to end slavery, speaking out against its cruelty and injustice. They finally succeeded on July 4, 1827, when slavery was ended in New York State., The home of Hastings' first mayor, William Few Chrystie, has at times been identified as the original Peter Post tavern. It's more likely that the building, now demolished, simply used some timbers and stones from the original Post building., The Story of Peter Post, Hastings Farmer , According to Bolton's 1848 "History," the Hessian soldiers walked into the ambush because they were tricked by Peter Post, a local tenant farmer whose property included today's Five Corners. Knowing the Continental soldiers were waiting in hiding just up the road from Dobbs Ferry, Post lied when asked if the road ahead was safe. Days after the battle, Crown forces returned and beat Post "within an inch of his life." Post went on to run a tavern with a raucous reputation and bought up most of the land that now forms downtown Hastings. While the accuracy of this story has been questioned, it lives on as local legend., How the Battle Got Its Name , In early accounts of the Revolution, the battle in Hastings was referred to as "the "Mertz Affair" after the defeated Jäger lieutenant. By the 1840s, in eyewitness accounts compiled by Westchester's John McDonald, the scene of the battle was called "Edgar's Lane" after William Edgar, a New York merchant, who bought the land where the fighting occurred from James DeClarke in 1798. The name stuck and actually refers to a stretch of land along Broadway where a trail ran down into the ravines behind today's River Glen Apartments., Siege of Yorktown, Auguste Couder, 1836 , French General Rochambeau gestures while Washington and Lafayette stand in front of a striped officer's tent, as British General Cornwallis surrenders his Army at Yorktown Virginia., The Odell House , The tenant farm in Hartsdale, New York, where the comte de Rochambeau and General George Washington met and planned the march south to Yorktown, Virginia, and victory., [Timeline:] , 1778 , Battle of Edgar's Lane: 1778 , Savannah, Georgia falls to British: December 29, 1778, 1779-80 , Charlestown, South Carolina falls to British: April 2, 1779 , John André captured and Benedict Arnold's treason exposed: September 23, 1780, 1781 , French-American encampment in Westchester: July-August, 1781 , Battle of Yorktown, Virginia: October 19, 1781, 1783 , British evacuation of New York, Washington's triumphant return: November 25, 1783, 1787-89 , Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: May-September, 1787 , Washington sworn in as first president: April 30, 1789