CHAPTER XXV.MINOR OPERATIONS OF 1779 CONTINUED.—STONY POINT TAKEN.—NEW ENGLAND RELIEVED.
In Fennimore Cooper’s interesting romance, “The Spy,” he furnishes graphic delineations of the true character of those minor operations about New York which were parts of General Clinton’s military recreation, while he had too small a force to meet Washington’s compact army in actual battle. Night forays and short excursions, under the cover of small vessels-of-war and assured of safe retreat, were of frequent occurrence. Mounted bands, officially known as the Queen’s Rangers, had very large discretion in their movements and methods. They galloped to and fro, at will, sometimes securing plunder, and sometimes barely escaping with less than they started with. As a general rule, some “spy” was on the watch, and their ventures were simply mis-adventures. The American “cow-boys” were just as real characters, although less organized; and each party carried on a small war of its own, for the plunder realized. Clinton’s lucky capture of Stony Point encouraged him to undertake other enterprises which weakened the resources of the people, without enhanced prestige to the British troops. On the first of July, Tarleton went out for twenty-four hours, and on his return, made report. He had “surprised Sheldon’s cavalry, near Salem; captured Sheldon’s colors [accidentally left in a barn], burned the Presbyterian church, and received little loss.”He says: “I proposed terms to the militia, that if they would not fire from the houses, I would not burn them.” But the militia that gathered in his rear made the expedition unprofitable. In less than eight hours Washington learned of the excursion.
On the third day of July, General Tryon, under convoy of the fleet of Sir George Collier, which had escorted General Clinton to Stony Point, sailed with twenty-six hundred men for New Haven, Conn. On Sunday, July fourth, when the people were observing the Sabbath and looking forward with enthusiasm to the following morning and the observance of “Independence Day,” Tryon published the following letter to the people of Connecticut: “The ungenerous and wanton insurrections against the sovereignty of Great Britain into which this colony has been deluded by the artifices of designing men, for private purposes, might well justify in you every fear which conscious guilt could form respecting the intentions of the present movement. The existence of a single habitation on your defenceless coast, ought to be a constant reproof to your ingratitude.”
The landing of the various divisions at East Haven, Savin Rock, and other points; and the vigorous defence upon the New Haven Green, by Capt. James Hillhouse, in command of the students of Yale College, are matters of familiar history. Fairfield, Green Farms, Huntington, Long Island, Greenfield and Norwalk shared in this raid; but it only embittered the struggle, and on the thirteenth the expedition returned to New York. When Tryon’s expedition started, Washington was opposite Staten Island; being on a tour of personal inspection of all posts along the Hudson and the New Jersey approaches from the sea. On the seventh of July, when advised that Tryon had sailed, he sent an express to Governor Trumbull, and ordered General Glover, then at Providence, tocoöperate with the militia in case the enemy should make any descent upon the Connecticut coast.
Meanwhile, and as the result of his tour of inspection, he planned a counter movement to these demonstrations of the New York garrison. During the six weeks’ occupation of Stony Point by the British Grenadiers of the Seventieth Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Webster, heavy guns had been mounted; breastworks and batteries had been built in advance of the fort, and two rows of abatis crossed the slope leading to the water. Washington, perfectly familiar with the post and the additions to its defences, prepared a minute plan for its capture. General Wayne, it will be remembered, had been posted near Dunderburg Mountain, in the distribution of officers made on the twenty-third of the month. Wayne entered into the plan with avidity. The detail of troops made by Washington and the instructions given have interest, as every possible effort was made to avoid failure or premature disclosure of the design. Colonel Febiger’s Regiment, followed by Colonel Webb’s (Lieutenant-Colonel Meigs commanding) and a detachment from West Point under Major Hull, formed the right. Colonel Butler’s Regiment, and two companies of North Carolina troops under Major Murphy, formed the left. Colonel Lee’s Light Horse, three hundred strong, which had been manœuvered during the day so as not to lead vagrants or spies to suspect their destination, formed the covering party, and took a position on the opposite side of a swamp near the post. The troops left Sandy Beach at midnight and marched by single files, over mountains, through morasses, and deep defiles. At eight o’clock of the sixteenth, the command was within a mile and a half of the fort. Wayne made reconnoissance in person, and at half-past eleven at night the advance was ordered. In order to prevent any deserter from giving warning to the garrison,the purpose of the expedition was not announced until the order to attack could be given personally, by each officer, to his individual command.
The following order was at the same time communicated to the men: “If any soldier presume to take his musket from his shoulder; attempt to fire; or begin the battle till ordered by his proper officer, he shall be instantly put to death by the officer next him.” (This implied, of course, death by the sword.) The advance was to be “with fixed bayonets, and unloaded muskets.” Each officer and soldier had been ordered to place a white paper or cloth upon his cap, to distinguish him from an enemy; and the watchword, to be shouted aloud whenever one detachment reached its point of attack, as an encouragement to the others and a terror to the garrison, was, “The fort is ours!” Pioneer parties, carefully selected, wrenched away the abatis. The detachments moved instantly, as if impelled by some invisible, resistless force. The two assaulting columns met in the centre of the works almost at the same moment. Wayne fell, seriously but not mortally wounded, while passing the abatis. The entire American loss was fifteen killed, and eighty-three wounded. The British loss was one officer and nineteen men killed; six officers and sixty-eight men wounded; twenty-five officers and four hundred and forty-seven men taken prisoners; two officers and fifty-six men missing. The night was dark, and the difficulties of crossing the morass below the fort, at nearly full tide, and clambering up rugged cliffs thick with briars and underbrush, cannot be described. A modern visitor will find it difficult enough to make the same trip, by daylight. The stores, valued at $158,640, were divided by Washington’s order among the troops, in proportion to the pay of officers and men. The courteous treatment extended by him to the prisoners received very graciousrecognition from the British authorities. The faithfulness, skill, and daring, and the good judgment with which Wayne comprehended and carried out, in almost literal detail, the plans of Washington, were greatly to his honor, and evoked most appreciative commendation from his superior officer.
General Clinton promptly organized a force, and proceeded up the river to recapture the post; but Washington, having dismantled it, decided that its further retention was not of sufficient value to spare a garrison for its permanent defence, and left it for occupation by the British at their leisure.
Another excursion from New York by Tarleton, into Westchester County, about the middle of August, was reciprocated under Washington’s orders, with decidedéclatand success. On the nineteenth of August, Col. Henry Lee crossed the Hackensack; moved down the Hudson River, and at half-past two o’clock in the morning, at low tide, captured Paulus Hook, where Jersey City now stands, nearly opposite Clinton’s New York headquarters. Not a shot was fired by the storming party. Only the bayonet was used. The Americans lost twenty, and the British lost fifteen, besides one hundred and fifty taken prisoners.
For many months Washington had been watching for an opportunity of sufficient relief from British activity, to punish the Indians who perpetrated their outrages in the Wyoming Valley; and as early as the sixth of March, he tendered to General Gates the command of an expedition for that purpose. In this assignment he enclosed an order for him to assume General Sullivan’s command at Providence, in case he declined the expedition. General Gates, then at Boston, thus replied: “Last night, I had the honor of your Excellency’s letter. The man who undertakes the Indian service should enjoy youth andstrength, which I do not possess. It therefore grieves me that your Excellency should offer me a command to which I am entirely unequal. In obedience to your command I have forwarded your letter to General Sullivan; and that he may not be one moment delayed, I have desired him to leave the command with General Greene until I arrive in Providence.”
General Sullivan marched from Eastern Pennsylvania, reaching Wyoming Valley on the thirty-first of July, and Tioga Point, N.Y., on the eighth of August, with a force of five thousand men. Gen. James Clinton joined him from the northern army. The brigades of Generals Poor, Hand, and Maxwell, Parr’s Rifle Corps, and Proctor’s Artillery, all familiar to the reader, formed the invading force. On the twenty-ninth day of August, the Battle of Chemung was fought, near the present city of Elmira, and the towns of the Six Nations were laid waste, including orchards, gardens, houses, clothing, and provisions, indiscriminately. There was nothing in this punishment of the Six Nations which commended the American cause to their favor; but they did not regard the details of these ravages as a part of Washington’s instructions. When the War for Independence closed, and their alliance with the United States became a fixed fact, Washington represented their ideal of the great soldier—“He had made the power of Britain to yield to his arms.” Governor Blackstone, Chief of the Senecas, Cornplanter, and Halftown, the famous trio who made the treaty with Washington, were ever known as “the friends of Washington.” A silver medal presented to Governor Blackstone, which bore the simple inscription “Second Presidency of George Washington,” was long esteemed as a most precious relic. Handsome Lake, known as the “Peace Prophet,”—brother of Tecumseh,—made as a tribute to Washington one of the most impressive utterancesof his mission among the Six Nations. Even as late as the Eleventh United States Census, 1890, Washington’s name, alone of all the American Presidents, was not found among the children’s names of the Six Nations; so greatly was he held in reverence. They also engrafted into their religion the myth that “he occupies a mansion at the gate of Paradise, where he becomes visible to all who enter its portals and ascend to the Great Spirit, and both recognizes and returns the salute of all who enter.”
This devotion of his Indian admirers is hardly less valuable than the tributes of Frederick the Great and other European soldiers and statesmen to the qualities of Washington as a Soldier; and it permanently redeems the name of Washington from any responsibility for the excessive desolation with which the Six Nations were visited in the expedition of 1779.
On the twenty-fifth of August, while Sullivan was upon this Indian expedition, Admiral Arbuthnot arrived with reënforcements of three thousand men, and relieved Sir George Collier in naval command. On the twenty-first of September, Sir Andrew Hammond arrived with an additional force of fifteen hundred men, from Cork, Ireland. At this juncture, Count d’Estaing, having captured St. Vincent and Granada in the West Indies, suddenly made his appearance off the coast of Georgia. Spain had joined France in war against Great Britain; so that the whole line of British posts, from Halifax to St. Augustine, was exposed to such naval attacks as would divert the attention of Great Britain from the designs of her allied enemies against her West India possessions.
Washington, upon the arrival of these British reënforcements, strengthened West Point with additional works; but Clinton, even with his large naval force, did not venture an attack upon that post, as had been his intention when making requisition for more troops.
On the twenty-fifth of October, 1779, General Clinton abandoned Newport, R.I.; then Verplanck Point; then Stony Point: and for the first time since Washington landed in New York, in 1776, the whole of New England and the entire stretch of the Hudson River, was unvexed by British steel or British keel.