CHAPTER IX.SYSTEMATIC WAR WITH BRITAIN BEGUN.
Within twenty-four hours after General Howe embarked his army, the American Commander-in-Chief developed his matured plan to anticipate any design of General Clinton to occupy New York City. The great number of fugitive royalists who accompanied Howe’s fleet and encumbered even the decks of battleships with their personal effects, and the necessity of consulting the wishes of very influential families among their number, were substantial reasons for the selection of Halifax as the destination of the ships. But of still greater importance was the reorganization of his army, and a new supply of munitions of war, in place of those which had been expended, or abandoned on account of the siege of Boston. Time was also required for the preparation and equipment of any new expedition, whether in support of Carleton in Canada, or to move southward.
Washington did not even enter Boston until he started General Heath with five regiments and part of the artillery for New York. On the twentieth the Commander-in-Chief entered the city.
The British fleet was weatherbound in Nantasket Roads for ten days; but on the twenty-seventh day of March, when it finally went to sea, the entire American army, with the exception of the Boston garrison, was placed under orders to follow the advance division. General Sullivan marched the same day upon which he receivedorders; another division marched April 3d, and on the 4th General Spencer left with the last brigade, Washington leaving the same night.
In order to anticipate any possible delay of the troops in reaching their destination, he had already requested Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, to reënforce the New York garrison with two thousand men from Western Connecticut; and he also instructed the commanding officer in that city to apply to the Provincial Convention, or to the Committee of Safety of New Jersey, to furnish a thousand men for the same purpose. In advising Congress of this additional expense, incurred through his own forethought, but without authority of Congress, he wrote thus discreetly: “Past experience and the lines in Boston and on Boston Neck point out the propriety and suggest the necessity of keeping our enemies from gaining possession and making a lodgment.”
The Continental Army had entered upon its first active campaign; but before Washington left Cambridge he arranged for the assembling of transports at Norwich, Conn., thereby to save the long coastwise march to New York; and digested a careful itinerary of daily marches, by which the different divisions would not crowd one upon another. Quartermaster-General Mifflin was intrusted with the duty of preparing barracks, quarters, and forage for the use of the troops on their arrival, and all the governors of New England were conferred with as to the contingencies of British raids upon exposed sea-coast towns, after removal of the army from Boston. A careful system of keeping the Pay Accounts of officers was also devised, and this, with the examination of an alleged complicity of officers with the purchase of army supplies, added to the preliminary work of getting his army ready for the best of service in garrison or the field. Two companies of artillery,with shot and shell, were detailed to report to General Thomas, who had been ordered by Congress to Canada,viceGeneral Lee ordered southward.
Washington’s journey to New York was via Providence, Norwich, and New London, in order to inspect and hasten the departure of the troops.
A reference to the situation in that city is necessary to an appreciation of the development which ensued immediately upon the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief.
William Tryon, who subsequently invaded Connecticut twice, and left his devastating impress upon Danbury, Ridgefield, New Haven, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Green Farms, was the royal Governor of New York. It is interesting to recall the antecedents of this governor. He had been Governor of North Carolina once, and attempted a part similar to that so foolishly played by Governor Gage at Lexington and Concord. Until this day, the people of North Carolina will cite the “Battle of Alamance,” which was a pretty sharp fight between Tryon’s forces and the yeomanry of the “Old North State,” on the sixteenth day of May, 1771, as the first blood shed in resistance to the usurpations of the royal prerogative. It was the same William Tryon, in person, temperament, and methods, who governed New York City in 1776, and Washington knew him thoroughly. The royalists and patriots of New York City, in the absence of a controlling force of either British or Continental troops, commingled daily. A few British men-of-war really controlled its waters; but the city was practically at rest. There prevailed a general understanding that each party should retain its own views; that the officers of the Crown should keep within the technical line of their official duty, and that the citizens would not interfere. Congress had no troops to spare, and there was quite a general suspension of arming, except to supply the regiments already in the field.
An extraordinary coincidence of the arrival of General Clinton from Halifax, with a small force, and the arrival, on the same day, of General Lee, from Connecticut, with about fifteen hundred volunteers, brought this condition of armed neutrality to an end. Clinton had positive orders to “destroy all towns that refused submission.” When Clinton cast anchor at Sandy Hook and communicated with Governor Tryon, and learned the facts, he judiciously made the official courtesy due to the governor his plausible excuse for entering the harbor at all, “being ordered southward.” Lee, doubtful of Clinton’s real purpose, fortified Brooklyn Heights back of Governor’s Island, and began also to fortify the city, at the south end of the island, still called “The Battery.” Clinton followed his orders, sailed southward, visited Lord Dunmore in Chesapeake Bay, joined Earl Cornwallis at Wilmington, N.C., in May, on the arrival of that officer from Ireland, and took part with him in the operations against Fort Sullivan (afterwards Fort Moultrie) near Charleston, during the succeeding summer.
Lee, ever arrogating to himself supreme command, whenever detached, placed the Connecticut volunteers whom he accompanied to New York upon a Continental basis of service. In this he deliberately exceeded his authority and came into direct collision with Congress, which had ordered one of the regiments to be disbanded; and offended the New York patriots, whom he characterized as the “accursed Provincial Congress of New York.” His action received the official disapproval of Washington; and the visit of a Committee of Congress accommodated the formal occupation by the Colonial troops to the judgment of all well-disposed citizens. In no respect was the episode of Lee’s temporary command a reflection upon the patriotism of the citizens. He was ordered to the south; and in the attack upon Fort Sullivan and thepreparation of Charleston for defence he gave much good advice, but had to be repressed and controlled all the time by President Rutledge, who was as resolute as Washington himself in the discharge of public duty once confided to his trust. The attitude of South Carolina, at this time, deserves special mention, and it has hardly received sufficient recognition in the development of the United States. Without waiting for the united action of the Colonies this State declared its own independence as a sovereign republic. John Rutledge was elected as President, with Henry Laurens as Vice-President, and William H. Drayton as Chief Justice. An army and navy were authorized; a Privy Council and Assembly were also elected; the issue of six hundred thousand dollars of paper money was authorized, as well as the issue of coin. It was the first republic in the New World to perfect the organization of an independent State.
When Lee was ordered southward, General Thomas had been ordered to Canada; and the first act of Washington, after his arrival at New York, was the enforced depletion of his command by the detail of four battalions as a reënforcement to the army in Canada. These he sent by water to Albany, “to ease the men of fatigue.” He also sent five hundred barrels of provisions to Schuyler’s command on the twenty-second.
The activity of the army about headquarters aroused the royalist element and prompt action became necessary. Washington addressed a letter to the New York Committee of Safety, directing that further correspondence with the enemy must cease, closing as follows: “We must consider ourselves in a state of war, or peace, with Great Britain.” He enforced these views with emphasis.
Late at night, on the twenty-fifth, an order was received from Congress directing him to send six additional battalions to Canada, requesting also an immediate report asto “whether still additional regiments could be spared for that purpose.” General Sullivan accompanied this division; and with him were such men as Stark, Reed, Wayne, and Irvine. In reply to Congress, Washington stated that “by this division of forces there was danger that neither army, that sent to Canada and that kept at New York, would be sufficient, because Great Britain would both attempt to relieve Canada and capture New York, both being of the greatest importance to them, if they have the men.”
On the twenty-eighth day of April the whole army in New York amounted to ten thousand two hundred and thirty-five men, of whom eight thousand three hundred and three were present and fit for duty. Washington’s Orderly Book, of this period, rebukes certain disorderly conduct of the soldiers in these memorable words: “Men are not to carve out remedies for themselves. If they are injured in any respect, there are legal ways to obtain relief, and just complaints will always be attended to and redressed.”
At this time, Rhode Island called for protection of her threatened ports, and two regiments of her militia were taken into Continental Pay. Washington was also advised that Great Britain had contracted with various European States for military contingents; that the sentiment in Canada had changed to antipathy, and that continual disaster attended all operations in that department. On the twenty-fourth he wrote to Schuyler: “We expect a very bloody summer at Canada and New York; as it is there, I presume, that the great efforts of the enemy will be aimed; and I am very sorry to say that we are not, in men and arms, prepared for it.”
General Putnam was placed in command at New York, and General Greene took charge of the defences on Brooklyn Heights and of their completion. On the firstday of June Congress resolved that six thousand additional troops should be employed from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York, to reënforce the army in Canada, and that two thousand Indians should be hired for this same field of service. To this proposition General Schuyler keenly replied: “If this number, two thousand, can be prevented from joining the enemy, it is more than can be expected.”
As early as the fifteenth of February Congress had appointed Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, as Commissioners to visit Canada and learn both the exact condition of the army and the temper of the people. Rev. John Carroll, afterwards Archbishop of Maryland, accompanied them, and reported that “negligence, mismanagement, and a combination of unlucky incidents had produced a disorder that it was too late to remedy.” Ill-health compelled the immediate return of Franklin, but the other Commissioners remained until the evacuation of Canada. The scourge of small-pox, to which General Thomas became a victim, and other diseases, together with the casualties of the service, had cost more than five thousand lives within two months, and the constant change of commanders, ordered by Congress, hastened the Canadian campaign to a crisis. Scattered all the way from Albany to Montreal there could have been found companies of the regiments which Congress had started for Canada, and which Washington and the country could so poorly spare at such an eventful and threatening period. General Sullivan had been succeeded by General Gates, but with no better results. Sullivan had under-estimated the British forces, and when apprised of the facts, of which the American Commander-in-Chief had not been advised in time, he wrote: “I now only think of a glorious death, or a victory obtained against superior numbers.” The following letter of Washingtonaddressed to Congress, enclosing letters intimating the desire of General Sullivan to have larger command, indicates Washington’s judgment of the situation, and is in harmony with his habitual discernment of men and the times throughout the war. He says: “He (Sullivan) is active, spirited, and zealously attached to our cause. He has his wants and his foibles. The latter are manifested in his little tincture of vanity which now and then leads him into embarrassments. His wants are common to us all. He wants experience, to move on a large scale; for the limited and contracted knowledge which any of us have in military matters, stands in very little stead, and is quickly overbalanced by sound judgment and some acquaintance with men and books, especially when accompanied by an enterprising genius, which I must do General Sullivan the justice to say, I think he possesses. Congress will therefore determine upon the propriety of continuing him in Canada, or sending another, as they shall see fit.”
Already the St. Lawrence river was open to navigation. On the first of June, General Riedesel arrived with troops from Brunswick, and General Burgoyne with troops from Ireland, swelling the command of General Carleton to an aggregate of nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-four effective men; and British preparations were at once made to take the offensive, and expel the American force from Canada. Before the last of June the “invasion of Canada” came to an end, and the remnants of the army, which had numbered more than ten thousand men, returned, worn out, dispirited, and beaten.
Washington had been stripped of troops and good officers at a most critical period, against his remonstrance; and Congress accounted for the disaster by this brief record: “Undertaken too late in the fall; enlistmentstoo short; the haste which forced immature expeditions for fear there would be no men to undertake them, and the small-pox.”
Gradually the principal officers and many of the returning troops joined the army at New York. The occupation of New York, the fortification and defence of Brooklyn Heights, the tardy withdrawal of the army to Harlem Heights, with a constant and stubborn resistance to the advancing British army and its menacing ships-of-war, have always been treated as of questionable policy by writers who have not weighed each of those incidents as did Washington, by their effect upon the Continental army, as a whole, and in the light of a distinctly framed plan for the conduct of the war. This plan was harmonious and persistently maintained from his assumption of command until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in 1781.
Operations in Massachusetts, and elsewhere, south as well as north, from the first, proved that the heat of patriotic resistance must be maintained and developed by action; that, as at Bunker Hill and before Boston, passive armies lose confidence, while active duty, even under high pressure, nerves to bolder courage and more pronounced vigor.
The correspondence of Washington and his Reports, as well as letters to confidential friends which have been carefully considered in forming an estimate of his career as a Soldier, evolve propositions that bear upon the operations about New York. The prime factor in the Colonial resistance was, to fix the belief irrevocably in the popular mind, in the very heart of the Colonists, that America could, and would, resist Great Britain, with confidence in success. The inevitable first step was to challenge her mastery of the only base from which she could conduct a successful war. To have declined thisassertion of Colonial right, or to have wavered as to its enforcement, would have been a practical admission of weakness and the loss of all prestige thus far attained.
It was well known to Washington that the British Government was so related to Continental rivals that about forty thousand troops would be the extreme limit of her contributions to subdue America. It will appear from official tables, appended to this narrative, that, during the entire war, the British force of every kind, throughout America, exceeded this number slightly in only one year; and that Washington’s plans, from time to time submitted to Congress, were based upon requisitions fully competent to meet the largest possible force which could be placed in the field by Great Britain.
It was further evident that resistance of the first attempt of the British to land, and the reduction of their numbers and supplies, by constant, persistent, and confident battle, would not only dispirit that army, but equally arouse the spirit of the American army, assure its discipline, and stimulate both Congress and the people to furnish adequate men and means to prosecute the war to success. Prolonged face to face hostilities in and about New York, therefore, indicated not only Washington’s faith in success, but prolonged the restriction of British operations to a very limited field.
The Declaration of American Independence, on the Fourth Day of July, 1776, was an emphatic act that enlarged his faith and inspired resistance, upon the plans so carefully matured before that event. And, even if there be taken into account the peculiar circumstances which facilitated the eventual retreat from Brooklyn Heights, it is no less true that the Battle of Long Island, the resistance at Pell’s Point, Harlem Heights, White Plains, and about Fort Washington, were characterized by a persistency of purpose and a stubbornness of hand-to-handfighting, which kept his main army practically intact, and enabled him to terminate the campaign of 1776 with a master stroke that astounded the world, and challenged the admiration of the best soldiers of that period.