On the basis of the “law of war,” in New Jersey General Howe announced a new policy: Anyone not in uniform who attacked his troops would be judged an “assassin” and put to death on the spot. Captain Münchausen noted, “It is now ordered that inhabitants who ventured, in mobs or individually, to fire at our passing men, would be hanged at the next tree without trial.” The only result was that more infuriated American civilians took up arms, and more British and Hessian regulars died miserably on country lanes in New Jersey, far from home.64
