Battle of Cedar Bridge

The Battle of Cedar Bridge in late December 1782 was one of the final engagements of the Revolutionary War in New Jersey — fought nearly fourteen months after Yorktown while peace negotiations continued in Paris. The target was John Bacon, one of the most feared Loyalist partisan leaders in coastal New Jersey, who had continued raiding Patriot settlements throughout the war with a persistence that earned him a reputation for both courage and cruelty.

Captains Richard Shreve and Edward Thomas assembled about 60 militia and pursued Bacon's band to the Cedar Bridge Tavern on Manahawkin Bay. The ensuing skirmish was sharp and brief. Bacon was killed in the fighting — one of the last significant Loyalist leaders to die in the conflict. Several of his men were also killed or captured.

The battle illustrated the nature of the war in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where the conflict between Patriots and Loyalists had been intensely personal and brutal for eight years. For coastal New Jersey families, the Revolutionary War was not a distant political conflict but an immediate matter of raids, ambushes, and neighbor-against-neighbor violence. With Bacon dead and peace imminent, the partisan warfare that had plagued New Jersey gradually subsided. The formal peace came in September 1783, but for many New Jersey families the real end of the war came with the death of John Bacon at Cedar Bridge.