Hickey was hanged before an enormous crowd on June 28, a fate that most in the army approved. (“I wish twenty more were served the same,” wrote Joseph Hodgkins.)
That same night Washington learned for the first time that the British had sailed from Halifax bound for New York on June 9, General Howe having departed somewhat earlier on the frigate Greyhound. The information came by express rider from the captain of an American schooner that had been captured by the Greyhound off Cape Ann, then retaken by an armed American sloop.
The next morning, Saturday, June 29, officers with telescopes on the roof of Washington’s headquarters and other vantage points in the city and on Long Island, saw signals flying from the hills of Staten Island. The first of the British fleet had appeared.
In a matter of hours, forty-five ships had dropped anchor inside Sandy Hook in the Lower Bay, ten miles beyond the Narrows. To a Pennsylvania rifleman closer at hand their masts looked like a forest of trimmed pine trees. “I declare that I thought all London was afloat.”
HENRY AND LUCY KNOX were at breakfast at No. 1 Broadway when they saw the fleet. It had become their practice to enjoy breakfast beside a large Palladian window on the second floor with a panoramic view of the harbor. But now suddenly the morning was shattered and Lucy Knox was in a state of abject terror.
“You can scarcely conceive of the distress and anxiety which she then had,” Knox would write to his brother William. “The city in an uproar, the alarm guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts, and everything in the [height] of bustle. I not at liberty to attend her, as my country cries loudest.”
For weeks Knox had been urging Lucy to leave the city, for her own safety and that of their infant daughter. “My God, may I never experience the like feelings again! They were too much, but I found a way to disguise them, for I scolded like a fury at her for not having gone before.”
By sunset the enemy ships at anchor down the bay numbered more than one hundred.
Riders galloped off to Connecticut and New Jersey to spread the news and “hurry on the militia.” Martha Washington said her goodbyes to her husband and departed the city by carriage with all possible speed, as did Lucy Knox, Caty Greene, and their children, along with hundreds more of the city’s inhabitants.
“The great being who watches the hearts of the children of men, knows I value you above every blessing, and for that reason I wish you to be at such a distance from the horrid scenes of war,” Knox wrote to Lucy after she reached Connecticut, and lest anyone forget all that was at stake, he reminded her, “We are fighting for our country, for posterity perhaps. On the success of this campaign the happiness or misery of millions may depend.”
Further details on the makeup of the enemy armada followed quickly. The ships included the Centurion and the Chatham, of 50 guns each, the 40-gun Phoenix, and the 30-gun Greyhound with General Howe on board, in addition to the 64-gun Asia. In their combined firepower these five warships alone far exceeded all the American guns now in place on shore. Nathanael Greene reported to Washington that the total fleet of 120 ships had “10,000 troops received at Halifax, beside some of the Scotch Brigade that have joined the fleet on the passage.” And as Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb of Washington’s staff further noted, an additional 15,000 to 20,000 could be expected “hourly” on still more ships from England under the command of General Howe’s brother, Admiral Richard Lord Howe.
The whole of New York was “in commotion,” wrote Pastor Shewkirk. “On the one hand everyone that could was packing up and getting away; and on the other hand country soldiers from the neighboring places came in from all sides.”
On Long Island, one of Nathanael Greene’s field officers took time to pen a note to his son back home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. “I am of opinion our hands will be full,” wrote Colonel Moses Little, a veteran of Bunker Hill.
IN PHILADELPHIA, the same day as the British landing on Staten Island, July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress, in a momentous decision, voted to “dissolve the connection” with Great Britain. The news reached New York four days later, on July 6, and at once spontaneous celebrations broke out. “The whole choir of our officers…went to a public house to testify our joy at the happy news of Independence. We spent the afternoon merrily,” recorded Isaac Bangs.
A letter from John Hancock to Washington, as well as the complete text of the Declaration, followed two days later:
That our affairs may take a more favorable turn [Hancock wrote], the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the connection between Great Britain and the American colonies, and to declare them free and independent states; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the head of the army in the way you shall think most proper.
Many, like Henry Knox, saw at once that with the enemy massing for battle so close at hand and independence at last declared by Congress, the war had entered an entirely new stage. The lines were drawn now as never before, the stakes far higher. “The eyes of all America are upon us,” Knox wrote. “As we play our part posterity will bless or curse us.”
By renouncing their allegiance to the King, the delegates at Philadelphia had committed treason and embarked on a course from which there could be no turning back.
“We are in the very midst of a revolution,” wrote John Adams, “the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”
In a ringing preamble, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the document declared it “self-evident” that “all men are created equal,” and were endowed with the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And to this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Such courage and high ideals were of little consequence, of course, the Declaration itself being no more than a declaration without military success against the most formidable force on earth. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, an eminent member of Congress who opposed the Declaration, had called it a “skiff made of paper.” And as Nathanael Greene had warned, there were never any certainties about the fate of war.
But from this point on, the citizen-soldiers of Washington’s army were no longer to be fighting only for the defense of their country, or for their rightful liberties as freeborn Englishmen, as they had at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and through the long siege at Boston. It was now a proudly proclaimed, all-out war for an independent America, a new America, and thus a new day of freedom and equality.
At his home in Newport, Nathanael Greene’s mentor, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, wrote in his diary almost in disbelief:
Thus the Congress has tied a Gordian knot, which the Parl [iament] will find they can neither cut, nor untie. The thirteen united colonies now rise into an Independent Republic among the kingdoms, states, and empires on earth…. And have I lived to see such an important and astonishing revolution?
At a stroke the Continental Congress had made the Glorious Cause of America more glorious still, for all the world to know, and also to give every citizen soldier at this critical juncture something still larger and more compelling for which to fight. Washington saw it as a “fresh incentive,” and to his mind it had come not a moment too soon.
On Tuesday, July 9, at six in the evening, on his orders, the several brigades in the city were marched onto the Commons and other parade grounds to hear the Declaration read aloud.
The general hopes this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, [the orders read] as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: And that he is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honors of a free country.
The formal readings concluded, a great mob of cheering, shouting soldiers and townspeople stormed down Broadway to Bowling Green, where, with ropes and
bars, they pulled down the gilded lead statue of George III on his colossal horse. In their fury the crowd hacked off the sovereign’s head, severed the nose, clipped the laurels that wreathed the head, and mounted what remained of the head on a spike outside a tavern.
Much of the lead from the rest of the statue would later be, as reported, melted down for bullets “to assimilate with the brains of our infatuated adversaries.”
NOT SINCE THE SPRING of 1775 had spirits been so high. But the exuberance of the moment, or any thoughts that grand pronouncements and the toppling of symbolic monuments were sufficient to change the course of history, were quickly dashed in dramatic fashion three days later, on July 12. In a surprise move, the British demonstrated for all to see how much the defenders of New York had still to learn, and the larger, ominous truth that without sea power New York was indefensible.
It was a brilliant summer day with a brisk wind out of the southwest, ideal sailing conditions. At approximately three in the afternoon, His Majesty’s ships Phoenix and Rose, in the company of three tenders, cast off their moorings at Staten Island and started up the harbor under full sail, moving swiftly with the favorable wind and a perfect flood tide.
Alarm guns sounded in New York. Soldiers rushed in every direction through streets crowded with panic-stricken people. The cannon at Red Hook and Governor’s Island opened fire, and as the ships swept by lower Manhattan, heading into the mouth of the Hudson, the guns at old Fort George and other shore batteries opened up. Commanding the fire from Fort George was a nineteen-year-old captain of New York artillery, Alexander Hamilton, who had left King’s College to serve in the Cause. The ships returned the fire. Cannonballs slammed into houses and came bounding down streets still swarming with people. Washington would write of the extreme distress he felt at the shrieks and cries of women and children running every which way, and at the spectacle of his own men standing at the water’s edge gawking helplessly, so awestruck—or terrified—were they by the ferocious barrage let loose by the enemy ships.
Private Joseph Martin, the fifteen-year-old Connecticut recruit, would remember enjoying “a complete view of the whole affair.” It was his first experience with the “muttering” of cannon fire, and he “rather thought the sound was musical, or at least grand.”
Every battery along the Hudson fired away until cannon smoke lay thick and heavy over the city, and the air reeked of gunpowder.
The British ships, keeping close to the New Jersey shore, proceeded rapidly up the river and were soon out of sight. By five-thirty they had passed the blasts of cannon from Fort Washington, and by evening they were safely anchored thirty miles above the city in the broadest part of the Hudson, the Tappan Zee at Tarrytown, where their mission was to cut off rebel supplies and rouse local Loyalists.
American gun crews had fired nearly 200 shots—more than 150 from the New York batteries alone—and to no apparent effect. (According to the log of the Rose, the Americans “shot away our starb[oa]rd fore shroud, fore tackle pendant, fore lift, fore topsail clewlines, spritsail and main topsail braces, one 18 pound shot in the head of our foremast, one through the pinnace, several through the sails and some in the hull.”) Knox’s guns had proven more deadly to his own men than to the foe. Six American artillerymen were killed, the only fatalities of the day, when their cannon blew up due to their own inexperience or overconfidence, or possibly, as said, because a great many were drunk.
In his ensuing general orders, Washington could barely conceal his disgust over the inexcusable behavior displayed in the face of the enemy, and the shame he felt over officers who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins. To the proud Washington, he and the army had been made a laughingstock.
Such unsoldierly conduct must grieve every good officer, and give the enemy a mean opinion of the army, as nothing shows the brave and good soldier more than in case of alarms, coolly and calmly repairing to his post, and there waiting his orders; whereas a weak curiosity at such a time makes a man look mean and contemptible.
Knox wrote privately that while the loss of his six men had been a great misfortune, he consoled himself with the hope that the day’s action had taught the rest to be less “impetuous” the next time.
But there was a far larger, more ominous lesson in what had happened. Clearly if two enemy warships with their tenders could pass so swiftly and readily up the Hudson suffering no serious damage from the onshore batteries, then so could ten or twenty warships and transports, or for that matter, an entire British fleet, and by landing an army of 10,000 or more upriver, they could cut off any chance Washington and his forces might have for escape from New York.
To compound Washington’s torment, the day’s drama closed in late afternoon with the spectacle of the 64-gun HMS Eagle steadily advancing up the bay with all canvas spread and the flag of St. George flying at the foretop masthead, signifying it was the flagship of Admiral Lord Howe and that therefore the fleet from England and still more troops could not be far behind. In the gathering dusk of New York, the boom of a Royal Navy salute came rolling across the waters.
III
MORALE IN THE BRITISH RANKS had never been higher. After the miseries of the winter in Boston and months of bleak isolation at Halifax, then more wearisome weeks at sea, Staten Island in summer seemed a paradise.
“[We] are in very comfortable cantonments amongst a loyal and liberal people, who produce [supply] us in plenty and in agreeable variety all the necessaries of life, most of which we have been long deprived of,” wrote a British officer. “We are in the most beautiful island that nature could form or art improve,” declared another. “Here,” reported a third, “we experience greater luxury than we have done since the commencement of hostilities…fresh meat…eggs, butter, milk, and vegetables,” and all on “reasonable terms.”
Captain Archibald Robertson hiked to the nearby hills with his painting kit to do watercolor sketches as he had at Boston. The difference here was the greater scale of everything spread before him—the sweep of the surpassing harbor defined by New York and Long Island in the distance, and the far larger British fleet now riding at anchor in the middle foreground.
The red-coated soldiers found themselves well nourished and welcome on American soil in a way they had never been—indeed, openly greeted “with greatest joy.” “We have now a very good supply of salt provisions,” summarized still another officer, “a great quantity of rum, an immense quantity of ammunition of all kinds, and what is best of all, the very people who we suspected would oppose us are coming over to us in great numbers.” Hardly a day passed without distraught Loyalists or American deserters turning up, filled with tales of woe, many of them having crossed at night by boat from Long Island or New York.
Ambrose Serle, a patriotic young Englishman and fluent writer who served as a civilian secretary to Admiral Howe, recorded in his journal how his heart went out to the Loyalists. “It excited one’s sympathy to see their poor meager faces,” he wrote of several who had escaped from Long Island, “and to hear their complaints of being hunted for their lives like game into the woods and swamps, only because they would not renounce their allegiance to their King and affection for their country.”
For deserters there was considerably less sympathy and little or no trust. There was “no believing these poor deluded wretches,” wrote Colonel Charles Stuart, summing up what most British officers felt. General James Grant thought no American could be trusted, Loyalists any more than the rest. “The inhabitants of this island,” Grant concluded from his observations, “hate the rebel army because they have been oppressed by them…. But from the confession and conversation of our most loyal subjects of Staten Island, I am quite confirmed in my opinion that we have not a friend in America.”
This, however, was not the view of the more astute General Howe, who saw immediately in the Loyalists an advantage he had been denied at Boston. “I met with Governor Tryon on board of ship at the Hook, and many gentlemen, fast frie
nds to [the] government attending him, from whom I have had the fullest information on the state of the rebels,” Howe had reported to Lord Germain, on July 7, just days after landing at Staten Island.
News of the Declaration of Independence served only to underscore “the villainy and the madness of these deluded people,” an outraged Ambrose Serle observed. “A more impudent, false, and atrocious proclamation was never fabricated by the hands of man.”
Soldiers in his Majesty’s ranks talked of “the sporting season” about to begin. The lust for the hunt was stronger than ever, their officers happily took note. All rebels were fair game. “The troops hold them very cheap,” wrote Serle, “and long for an opportunity of revenging the cause of their countrymen who fell at Bunker Hill.”
Lord Rawdon, a veteran of Bunker Hill and of the siege of Boston who had taken delight in the hatred his men felt for Yankees, was cheered now by the number of soldiers being court-martialed for rape, this being perfect proof, he wrote, of their improved diet and of what a “spirited” lot they were.
The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation, as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs. A girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most imminent risk of being ravished, and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation, and of consequence we have most entertaining courts-martial every day.
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