CHAPTER XXVIII.BATTLE OF SPRINGFIELD.—ROCHAMBEAU.—ARNOLD.—GATES.
Sir Henry Clinton returned from Charleston to New York on the seventeenth day of June, 1780. He must have contrasted his report made to the British War Office, of the “conquest of South Carolina,” with that made by General Knyphausen to himself, of the recent experience of British operations in New Jersey. But Clinton was ever a man of action, prompt and energetic. He felt deeply the long protracted embarrassment of his position, while holding such a vast and responsible command without sufficient resources for pressing exigencies. He knew, and Washington, with a soldier’s instinct, knew that Clinton knew, that there was no safety for New York, and no possibility of effective operations out from New York, so long as a strong, faithful American army held the fastnesses of New Jersey, and a vigorous espionage of the Hudson River region was maintained. The sweep of Washington’s arm was largely shaping the future destiny of America from very humble headquarters; but no less firmly and decisively.
Battle of Springfield Operations from Staten Island
Clinton did not remain idle, nor undecided, a single day. Troops were embarked upon transports immediately; and all suitable demonstrations were made as if an organized movement against West Point were designed. Washington placed his entire army in motion and advanced one division eleven miles, toward Pompton, on the twenty-second,en routefor the Hudson, to be prepared for whatever might be the scheme of his adversary. His confidential agents in New York were always quick to report details of British movements. Washington invariably exacted “minute” details; and from these he interpreted the general plans of the enemy. In this instance, the embarking of field batteries instead of heavy guns, which could always be procured from ships, satisfied him that his own headquarters and the destruction of his army were Clinton’s real objectives.
He was prepared for Clinton’s choice of the alternate movements. Although one division had been advanced in the direction of the Hudson River, Generals Greene, Maxwell, and Stark, with Harry Lee’s cavalry, and a strong force of militia, had been left in position near Springfield. Few battles of the American Revolution have received less attention, as among the decisive battles of the war, than that of Springfield, N.J. And yet few were more strikingly illustrative of the strategic wisdom with which Washington had planned the successful prosecution of the war, as early as 1776.
On the morning of the twenty-third, at five o’clock, the British army, having crossed from Staten Island in two columns, began its advance. (See maps, “Battle of Springfield,” and, “Operations in New Jersey.”) Its force consisted of five thousand infantry, nearly all of their cavalry, and eighteen pieces of artillery. General Clinton, with the right wing, advanced along the Springfield road with vigor, but deliberately, as if this were his principal line of attack. Upon approaching the first bridge near the Matthews House, he was obliged to halt until his guns could gain a suitable position, since Colonel Angel’s Rhode Island regiment, with one gun, commanded the bridge over the Rahway, and occupied an orchard which gave good cover. At first, the British guns wereaimed too high and did little execution. By fording the stream, which was not more than twelve yards wide, Angel’s position was turned, so that he was crowded back to the second bridge, over a branch of the Rahway, where Colonel Shreve resisted with equal obstinacy and bravery. By reference to the map it will be seen that General Greene, as well as Dickinson’s militia on a slight ridge in the rear of Shreve, was admirably posted for reserve support. Angel lost one-fourth of his men and was ordered to fall back, with Colonel Shreve, to the high ground occupied by Generals Maxwell and Stark, near a mill. Colonel Dayton’s Regiment was also distinguished for its gallant conduct. Washington Irving refers very pleasantly to the part taken in the action by Chaplain Caldwell, whose church had been burned on the twenty-fifth of January and whose wife had been killed on the sixth of June, as follows: “None showed more ardor in the fight than Caldwell the chaplain, who distributed Watts’s psalm and hymn books among the soldiers when they were in want of wadding, with the shout: ‘Put Watts into them, boys!’”
The other British column had for its special objective the seizure of the pass leading to Chatham and Morristown. Major Lee’s cavalry, and a picket under Captain Walker, had been posted at Little’s bridge, on the Vauxhall road, and Colonel Ogden’s Regiment covered them. General Greene found that he could not afford to hold so extensive a front, and concentrated his force at other positions eminently strong and capable of vigorous defence. The remainder of Maxwell’s and Stark’s brigades also took high ground, by the mill, with the militia force of Dickinson, on the flanks.
General Knyphausen led this column in person. But the Vauxhall bridge was as closely contested as had been that at Springfield. Greene shifted his position, in viewof this second attack and its pronounced objective, to a range of hills in the rear of Byron’s tavern, where the roads were brought so near, that succor might be readily transferred from one to the other. The movement was admirable, scientific, and successful. Tn his report to Washington, he says: “I was thus enabled to reach Colonel Webb’s Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Hunton commanding, and Colonel Jackson’s Regiment, with one piece of artillery, which entirely checked the advance of the enemy upon the American left, and secured that pass.”
The Battle of Springfield had been fought with coolness and unfaltering bravery, and had been won. General Clinton burned Springfield, crossed to Staten Island at midnight, withdrew his bridge of boats, and reached his headquarters in safety. His loss, as reported by contemporary journalists, was placed at about one hundred and fifty men; but comparison of his Reports and Musters, before and after the expedition, make the killed, wounded, and missing twice that number. The American loss was one officer and twelve non-commissioned officers killed, five officers and fifty-six privates wounded, and nine missing; “Captain Davis and the militia not reporting.”
General Clinton’s report says: “I could not think of keeping the field in New Jersey; and wished to land the troops and give a camp of rest to an army of which many corps had had an uninterrupted campaign of fourteen months.”
For five years, New Jersey had been a constant theatre of active war. It was indeed the strategic centre of the war for American Independence. The bravery of her soldiery, whose homes were constantly menaced, was only surpassed by the heroism of her women. These, constantly exposed to every possible desolation that attended the marching and counter-marching of contendingarmies, never flagged, flinched, nor failed, until her delivery was at last complete.
On the night of June 24, 1780, the day after the Battle of Springfield, Washington, upon return to his headquarters, addressed another call to Governors of States for their full quota, under new assignments, and awaited with interest further tidings from the progress of the French allies, then on the sea. This Battle of Springfield had vindicated his confidence in the Continental troops; and, as in all armies, some regiments proved invariably reliable, under whatever conditions they fought.
On the tenth day of July, 1780, the first division of the French army sent by Louis XVI., in aid of American Independence, consisting of six thousand troops, landed at Newport, R.I. All were under the command of Lieutenant-General Rochambeau, accompanied by Major-General Chastellux, a relative of Lafayette, and escorted by seven heavy battleships, under command of Chevalier de Ternay.
Washington immediately submitted a project for the capture of New York; but on the thirteenth of July Admiral Graves readied that city with six ships-of-the-line, which gave to the British such superiority of ships and guns, that the plan was postponed to wait the arrival of the second French division, of equal numbers, which was supposed, at the time, to be already on its way from France. But Sir Henry Clinton was not inactive. The time to strike was before the French could unite with Washington and take their place in the American army. He planned a surprise, and advanced with eight thousand troops as far as Huntington, L.I., for a descent upon Newport; but Washington put his entire army in readiness to advance upon New York. Clinton, having learned that Rochambeau, advised by Washington, had gone into camp in a strong position, and with the rapidly assemblingmilitia would be superior in force, recalled his troops. He converted the expedition into a naval blockade of Newport, if possible thereby to cut off the second division of the French army, upon its arrival within American waters.
The Count de Rochambeau, with a soldier’s exactness, soon caught the fire of Washington’s zeal, and well comprehended the situation of American affairs generally. So intense is his delineation of the condition of things as he observed them, that if penned by Washington himself, nothing could have been added. His letter to the Count de Vergennes, dated on July sixteenth, only six days after his landing in America, reads, in part, as follows: “Upon our arrival here, the country was in consternation; the paper money had fallen to sixty for one.... I spoke to the principal persons of the place, and told them, as I write to General Washington, that this was merely the advance guard of a greater force, and that the king was determined to support them with his whole power. In twenty-four hours their spirits rose, and last night, all the streets, houses, and steeples were illuminated, in the midst of fireworks and great rejoicing.... You see, Sir, how important it is to act with vigor.... Send us troops, ships, and money; but do not depend upon this people, nor upon their means. They have neither money nor credit. Their means of resistance are but momentary, and called forth when they are attacked in their homes. Then they assemble themselves for the moment of immediate danger, and defend themselves. Washington sometimes commands fifteen thousand, and sometimes three thousand men.”
The restriction of the French fleet to Narragansett Bay so immediately after its arrival, led Washington and Rochambeau to postpone operations against New York; and it is proper to notice the fact that no news wasreceived of the second division of French troops until late in the fall, when it was reported as blockaded in the home port of Brest. A proclamation was made and published by Lafayette, with the sanction of Washington, announcing to the Canadians that the French would aid them to expel the British troops from their country. The object of this proclamation was chiefly to divert the attention of the garrison of New York from a proposed joint attack upon that city, which Washington kept always in view. The expedition was never seriously entertained; but General Clinton, on the thirty-first of August, as anticipated by Washington, forwarded a copy of the paper to Lord Germaine, while at the same time he placed before him, in confidence, a proposition of a different kind, from which he derived a strong expectation of British gain, through the acquisition, by purchase, of the principal Hudson River military post, West Point itself.
Washington had advised General Arnold that he would soon be tendered an active command. But that officer, pleading as excuse continued suffering from his wounds, expressed a preference for the command of a military post. After urgent solicitation of himself and his friends, he was authorized to designate the post of his choice. As the result, on the third of August, he was assigned to the command of “West Point and its dependencies, in which all are included, from Fishkill to King’s Ferry.” At the date of this assignment of Arnold to a post which was rightly regarded by Washington as most vital to ultimate American success, a clandestine correspondence had already passed between Generals Clinton and Arnold, through the medium of Major John André.
The attention of the reader is naturally retrospective, as the name of André reappears in connection with that of Arnold. He had been taken prisoner at St. John’s; was once on parole at Montreal, and familiar with Arnold’shabits and the outrageous abuse of his public trust with which, there, as afterwards at Philadelphia, he had been charged. André also knew of his gambling, his extravagance, his ambition, and his reckless daring, generally. His own personal antecedents during the grand ovation tendered to General Howe, upon that officer’s departure from Philadelphia, in which he had so conspicuously figured as escort to Miss Shippen, afterwards the wife of Arnold, acquire special interest. He was, and long had been, a confidential member of General Clinton’s staff. Neither Clinton nor André could conceive, for a moment, that Arnold and his wife, formerly Miss Shippen, would betray André’s confidence; or, if the proposition to betray West Point failed, that André would be allowed to suffer.
On the twenty-fifth of August, General Clinton wrote to Lord Germaine as follows: “At this new epoch of the war, when a foreign foe has already landed, and an addition to it is expected, I owe it to my country, and I must in justice say, to my own fame, to declare to your lordship that I become every day more sensible of the utter impossibility of prosecuting the war in this country without reënforcements.... We are, by some thousands, too weak to subdue the rebellion.” On the twenty-seventh of September, Lord Germaine wrote in reply: “Next to the destruction of Washington’s army, the gaining over of officers of influence and reputation among the troops would be the speediest way of subduing the rebellion and restoring the tranquillity of America. Your commission authorizes you to avail yourself of such opportunities, and there can be no doubt that the expense will be cheerfully submitted to.” The British archives, then secret, show that Lord Germaine was kept fully advised of the whole scheme. On the thirtieth of August, Arnold solicited an interview with some responsibleparty, in order definitely to settle upon the price of surrendering West Point to Great Britain. André was selected, as mutually agreeable to both Clinton and Arnold. On the eighteenth of September, Arnold wrote, advising that André be sent up to the sloop-of-warVulture, then anchored in Haverstraw Bay, promising to send a person with a flag of truce and boat to meet him. Clinton received the note on the next day. Under the pretence of an expedition to Chesapeake Bay, freely made public, a body of picked troops embarked on frigates. André reached theVultureon the twentieth. On the twenty-first he landed, met Arnold, accompanied him first to the Clove, and then to the house of Josiah Holt Smith. (See map, “Highlands of the Hudson.”) Smith’s antecedents were those of a royalist; but the secret was too valuable to be intrusted to such a man; and subsequent investigations failed to connect him with any knowledge of the conspiracy. The terms of purchase were, in so many words: “Pay, in gold, and a brigadier-general’s commission in the British Army.”
The terms were settled and the bargain was closed. Besides knowledge of the plans of the post and its approaches, André was advised of the signals to be exchanged; the disposition of the guards; and the points of surest attack which would be within the immediate control of disembarking grenadiers and sharp-shooters. TheVulturehad dropped down the river with the tide too far to be promptly reached; so that André crossed the river, and having proper passports attempted to save time by returning to New York by land. While passing through Tarrytown, he was challenged, stopped, examined, and made prisoner. On the second of October, he was executed as a spy. America grieved over his fate, and no one with more of pity than did Washington. His soul still felt sore over the fate ofNathan Hale, and after a solitary hour of anguish in spirit, he suggested to General Clinton a method of escape for André. He offered to exchange him for Benedict Arnold. Clinton could not do this without loss of honor to himself and Great Britain. André had to die. Washington, with tender consideration and profound sympathy, gave to Mrs. Arnold a safe conduct and escort to her former home in Philadelphia, and shared the sentiment of all who knew her best, that the wife was not the confidante of her husband’s treason. Lafayette most tenderly announced his sympathy in her behalf.
General Greene was immediately assigned to command West Point and its dependencies. The garrison was also entirely changed. The works were skilfully modified and strengthened, so that any plans in the possession of Clinton would be useless; and Washington took post, in person, at Brakeness, near Passaic Falls, N.J.
It will be remembered that Baron De Kalb left Morristown on the sixteenth of the previous April with reënforcements for the Southern army. On the sixth of July, he reached Buffalo Ford and Deep River, N.C. On the twenty-fifth, Gates, who had been assigned to command of the Southern Department, joined him. “Away from Washington,” Baron De Kalb experienced deeply the sentiment of unreasonable, but perhaps natural jealousy of foreign officers which pervaded portions of the American army; and General Caswell, in defiance of positive orders to report to Baron De Kalb, marched directly to Camden and reported to General Gates. It had been De Kalb’s purpose, as an experienced soldier, to advance by Charlotte and Salisbury, where supplies could be readily obtained. “General Gates,” says Irving, “on the twenty-seventh, put what he called the ‘Grand Army’ on its march through a barren country which could offer no food but lean cattle, fruit, and unripemaize.” The Battle of Camden, or “Sanders’ Creek,” which followed, was a complete rout. Baron De Kalb fought with the utmost confidence and bravery, but fell upon the field, after having been eleven times wounded. Any support whatever, on the part of Gates, would have secured victory, or a well-balanced action. Gates overestimated his own force; refused to examine his Adjutant-General’s statement, or to consider the advice of his officers, who understood exactly the true condition of the crude material which he styled his “Grand Army,” and fled from the battlefield at full speed. He did not halt until reaching Charlotte, sixty miles away; and by the twentieth reached Hillsborough, one hundred and eighty miles distant, without gathering a sufficient force to form an escort. He said that he was “carried away from the field by a torrent of flying soldiers.” His self-conceit and presumption, like that of Lee, on account of having once served in the British army, and his utter want of every soldierly quality, except the negative sense of pride in having a personal command, were exposed to the American people without delay. He claimed to have made an attempt to rally his troops; but he had no influence whatever. During the Burgoyne campaign, he was never under fire; and Lee’s unheeded warning did indeed secure to his memory the wreath of “Southern willow, in place of that of laurel” which Congress had placed upon his brow, when the laurel had been earned by the brave and patriotic Schuyler. The troops of Delaware and Maryland alone would have saved the battle, if properly supported by Gates. The gallant Delaware Battalion which fought with De Kalb, was almost destroyed. The Maryland troops lost in killed, wounded and prisoners nearly four hundred, out of a total of fourteen hundred; but to their perpetual honor it is to be recorded, that of the number swept away in the final retreat of the whole army,seven hundred non-commissioned officers and privates reported for duty by the twenty-ninth of the month.
On the eighth of October, the Battle of King’s Mountain was fought; and the names of Shelby, Campbell, McDowell, Sevier, and Williams are still associated with descendants from the brave participants in that battle. It partially offset the disaster at Camden, and was an inspiration to Washington in the adjustment of his plans for Greene’s movements. It compelled Cornwallis to delay his second invasion of North Carolina; and Tarleton, in writing, says of this people, that “the counties of Mecklenburg and Rowan were more hostile to England than any others in America.”
Gates endeavored to gather the remnant of his army; and, before his leaving to answer before a Court of Inquiry ordered by Congress, about twenty-three hundred men assembled. On inspection, it was found that but eight hundred in the whole number were properly clothed and equipped.
The Southern campaign became one of petty operations mostly. Neither Cornwallis, Tarleton, Rawdon, nor Balfour made progress in subjugation of the people. Sumner, although wounded at Black’s Plantation on the twentieth of October, gained credit in several lesser expeditions. But universal British failures disappointed the expectations of the British Commander-in-Chief at New York. The loss of Charleston, in the opinion of Washington and the best military critics, was not without its compensations; and the collapse of Gates was an illustration of Washington’s knowledge of men and his foresight as a Soldier.