The lukewarm, and even the loyalists, were the victims of this indiscriminating spirit of rapine and violence.
The effect of such proceedings on a people whose country had never before been the seat of war, and whose non-resistance had been occasioned solely by the expectation of that security which had been promised as the reward of submission to the royal authority, could not fail to equal the most sanguine hopes of the friends of the revolution.

A sense of personal wrongs produced a temper which national considerations had proved too weak to excite; and, when the battles of Trenton and Princeton relieved the inhabitants from fears inspired by the presence of their invaders, the great body of the people flew to arms; and numbers who could not be brought into the field to check the advancing enemy, and prevent the ravages which uniformly afflict a country that becomes the seat of war, were prompt in avenging those ravages.

Small bodies of militia scoured the country, seized on stragglers, behaved unexceptionably well in several slight skirmishes, and were collecting in such numbers as to threaten the weaker British posts with the fate which had befallen Trenton and Princeton.
To guard against that spirit of enterprise which his adversary had displayed to such advantage, General Howe determined to strengthen his posts by contracting them.

The position taken for the purpose of covering the country were abandoned; and the British force in New Jersey was collected at New Brunswick, on the Raritan, and at Amboy, a small town at the mouth of that river.
Feeble as was the American army, this movement was not effected without some loss.

On the evacuation of Elizabeth town, General Maxwell attacked the British rear, and captured about seventy men with a part of their baggage.
The American troops had been so diminished by the extreme severity of the service, that it was with much difficulty the appearance of an army could be maintained.