AMERICAN SOLDIERS WERE DESERTING as if leaving a sinking ship, thirty or forty at a time, many defecting to the enemy. Disobedience and theft were epidemic. It was far from an army of heroes only. “A spirit of desertion, cowardice, plunder, and shrinking from duty when attended with fatigue or danger, prevailed but too generally,” wrote Joseph Reed, who had become so demoralized that even he was on the verge of quitting.
An experience on the battlefield on September 16 had had a searing effect. In the heat of the fight, Reed had seen a soldier running from the enemy. Ordered to stop and go back, the soldier, a Connecticut private named Ebenezer Leffingwell, had raised his musket, taken aim from a distance of only a few yards, and pulled the trigger. But the lock only snapped. When Reed grabbed the gun of another soldier and pulled the trigger, it too snapped. Reed drew his sword and, striking twice, wounded Leffingwell on the head, severed a thumb, and forced him to surrender. “I should have shot him, could I have got my gun off,” Reed said at Leffingwell’s court-martial on September 19.
Leffingwell, who confessed he had been running away, was found guilty of cowardice and of “presenting his firelock at his superior officer.” He was sentenced to be executed before the assembled troops the following day. But at Reed’s urging, Washington pardoned Leffingwell at the last moment, after Leffingwell had kneeled to be shot. The next such offender would “suffer death without mercy,” warned Washington.
“To attempt to introduce discipline and subordination into a new army must always be a work of much difficulty,” Reed wrote to his wife, “but where the principles of democracy so universally prevail, where so great an equality and so thorough a leveling spirit predominates, either no discipline can be established, or he who attempts it must become odious and detestable, a position which no one will choose.”
Washington was no less a commanding presence than ever, and except for his raging outburst at Kips Bay, he seemed imperturbable, entirely in control. In truth, he was as discouraged as he had ever been in his life, and miserably unhappy. It was all he could do to keep up appearances.
“Unless some speedy, and effectual measures are adopted by Congress, our cause will be lost,” he told John Hancock in a long, foreboding letter dated September 25.
Like Greene, like Knox and Reed, Washington knew the problem with the army was not so much the men in the ranks as those who led them. The war was to be no “work of a day,” he warned, and must be carried on “systematically.” Good officers were mandatory, and the only means to obtain good officers was to establish the army on a permanent footing. There must be an end to short-term enlistments. Officers must be better paid, better trained. Soldiers must be offered a good bounty, adequate clothing and blankets, plus the promise of free land.
Inflamed by passions, stirred by patriotism, men will “fly hastily and cheerfully to arms,” Washington continued, but to expect “the bulk of an army” to serve on selflessly, come what may, once the first emotions subsided, would be “to look for what never did, and, I fear, never will, happen.” Even among officers, those who acted with true “disinterestedness” were “no more than a drop in the ocean,” wrote this most disinterested and selfless of officers.
To place any dependence on militia is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life—unaccustomed to the din of arms—totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves when opposed to troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge, and superior in arms, makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadows.
He wrote of the “lust after plunder” among the men, of regimental surgeons taking bribes to certify sickness or infirmities that would qualify for discharges. He understood the fear there was in Congress and among the people of a standing army, but he thought the evils imagined were remote. On the other hand, were there to be no standing army, the cause of independence faced ruin.
He wanted rules and regulations adopted, punishments made more severe. As it was, for the most “atrocious offenses,” the maximum was thirty-nine lashes, and these, he had found, were seldom layed on as they should be, but more as “sport.” It was punishment of a kind that, for a bottle of rum, many “hardened fellows” were quite willing to undergo.
But as Washington had no way of knowing, Congress had already acted on most of what he wanted, due largely to the efforts of John Adams as head of the Board of War and in floor debate. Every soldier who enlisted for the “duration” of the war was to receive $20 and one hundred acres of land. New Articles of War, drawn up by Adams and based largely on the British Articles of War, went far to ensure justice for the individual soldier, provided stiffer punishments for major offenses (up to one hundred lashes), and increased the number of crimes for which the penalty was death. Adams also proposed for the first time the creation of a military academy, as Knox had urged, but nothing came of the motion.
Writing to Lund Washington on September 30, Washington was even more candid about his miseries. “Such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings.” He was “wearied to death” with problems. One regiment had fewer than fifty men left, another, all of fourteen fit for duty. “In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.” And the enemy, all the while, was “within stone’s throw.”
Then, as he had before, and as though such a giant shift of mind was perfectly natural, he turned to the subject of Mount Vernon. He was concerned about the fireplaces:
That in the parlor must, I should think, stand as it does; not so much on account of the wainscotting, which I think must be altered (on account of the door leading into the new building), as on account of the chimney piece and the manner of its fronting into the room. The chimney in the room above ought, if it could be so contrived, to be an angle chimney as the others are: but I would not have this attempted at the expense of pulling down the partition. The chimney in the new room should be exactly in the middle of it—the doors and everything else to be exactly answerable and uniform. In short, I would have the whole executed in a masterly manner.
If all could not be as he wished with the army, if all could not be “exactly answerable and uniform” or “executed in a masterly manner,” concerning the war he was expected to wage and win, then he would at least have it so at his distant, beloved home.
THE CRYSTAL DAYS of late September and early October in New York followed one after another, with lucent skies and stands of maple and sumac just beginning to turn color. The East River had become a spectacle of British ships of every kind lining nearly its entire length. The Hudson, in the sharp light of the season, sparkled like an inland sea. In all, it could not have been a more beautiful setting for the strange, extended intermission in a war that many hoped might be put to rest for the winter, not to resume until spring, and then, preferably, not too early.
On the morning of October 9, any such hopes ended. Three of the British warships, Phoenix, Roebuck, and Tartar, weighed anchor and with the advantage of a flood tide and a brisk southwesterly wind, proceeded up the Hudson to force passage beyond Forts Washington and Constitution, where, at enormous effort, the Americans had tried to block the river from shore to shore with sunken hulks and a submerged chain of spike-studded logs.
The guns of the forts high above the river opened fire. The ships answered with a pounding barrage, and by holding close to the eastern shore, where the river was deepest, they sailed straight, if slowly, through to safe anchorage upriver at the broad Tappan Zee, off Tarrytown.
Washington had observed the whole sorry scene. “To our surprise and mortification, they ran through without the least difficulty, and without receiving any apparent damage from our forts, though they kept up a heavy fire from both sides,” he wrote. Again, no end of time and labor devoted to defense had come to nothing.
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sp; In fact, the British had suffered nine seamen killed and considerable damage to their ships, while showing once more in spectacular fashion that the Hudson was undeniably theirs to employ as they wished.
The day could have led to a decisive change in American strategy. If the purpose of the forts was to deny the British navy use of the river, then all the effort and risk of holding the forts should have been reconsidered at once. Clearly the forts had been shown to be useless.
Yet Washington raised no questions then, and Nathanael Greene declared confidently, at day’s end, that the army was so strongly positioned in the forts that there was “little more to fear this campaign.” Instead of a lesson learned, the day marked the onset of one of the greatest American blunders of the war, and what was to be a painful humiliation for Washington and Greene.
THE BRITISH PLAN, once again, was to outflank the rebels, and again by water. Early on October 12, in an unexpected morning fog, a massive armada got under way on the East River.
With Admiral Lord Howe in command, 150 ships set sail upstream, through the dangerous Hell Gate channel “in very thick fog”—a mariner’s nightmare—and into Long Island Sound, and all without mishap. It was a stunning feat of seamanship. By noon an advance force of 4,000 troops led by Henry Clinton had landed at Throg’s Neck (also known as Frog’s Neck), a marshy point of land on the shoreline of Westchester County, due east of the American lines at Harlem Heights and King’s Bridge.
Throg’s Neck had been Lord Howe’s choice and proved to be a poor one for the army. What appeared to be a peninsula on the map was more an island connected to the mainland only at low tide. When the British tried to advance over a causeway, a small detachment of American riflemen, crouched behind log piles, held them in check, and when more American support moved in, after more British troops had landed, General Howe decided to reembark once sufficient supplies arrived and still more reinforcements were at hand, which consumed another four days. (“Tweedledum business,” an exasperated Henry Clinton called it.) But the reinforcements Howe expected were worth the wait—7,000 newly arrived Hessians under the command of the extremely able General Wilhelm von Knyphausen. And when Howe moved, he moved with astonishing speed, landing this time a short way up the sound, at Pell’s Point, a part of the mainland.
At the first report of the Throg’s Neck landing, Washington knew the Harlem Heights bastion had become a trap. The British were up to “their former scheme of getting to our rear,” he wrote. They had only to strike inland toward King’s Bridge. The army must withdraw as soon as possible. He would concentrate his forces at safer ground eighteen miles to the north at White Plains, the seat of Westchester County.
Through prisoner exchanges, Lord Stirling and General Sullivan had rejoined the army, in what seemed the nick of time. Both were warmly welcomed by Washington and assigned commands.
On October 14, the gaunt, odd-looking figure of General Charles Lee reappeared, dogs and all, and immediately resumed his place as second-in-command. Lee was the subject of much talk, raising spirits in the ranks and in Congress. Always popular in Congress, he had become even more so since the defeat of Clinton’s expedition to South Carolina, where Lee had had overall command of the American forces. While Washington’s ability had become subject to question, as one failure followed another, Lee’s reputation had never been higher. Some in Congress saw him as a potential savior.
For his part, Lee recklessly told General Gates that he thought Washington was only compounding his troubles by tolerating such “absurd interference” by the “cattle” in Congress in his conduct of the war, and that Washington was remiss for not “menacing ’em” with threats of resignation. (Were Washington to resign, of course, it would be Lee who succeeded him.)
Washington well knew the quirks and vanity of his old military friend and was glad to have him back. As a gesture of appreciation, he gave Fort Constitution a new name, Fort Lee.
At a council of war on October 16, it was decided that Fort Washington and its garrison should be, in the words of the brief minutes, “retained as long as possible.” The passage of ships on the Hudson was no longer the issue—the obstructions in the North River had proved insufficient—still, “communication” across the river to New Jersey had to be maintained.
Besides Washington and Lee, the general officers present included Heath, Sullivan, Stirling, and Mifflin. Colonel Knox was also present, but General Greene was not. According to the minutes, there was only one dissenting voice, and it was General George Clinton, not Lee, as he later implied.
The week before, Congress had resolved that, if “practicable,” every effort be made to “obstruct effectually” navigation on the Hudson at Fort Washington, but whether this was known in advance of the council of war, or had any bearing on the decision, is not clear.
All of York Island was finally to be evacuated. The entire American army would march off, except for 1,000 men left to hold Fort Washington.
Officially it was to be called “an alteration of our position,” not a retreat. The commander’s orders for October 17 read, in part, as follows:
As the movements of the enemy make an alteration of our position necessary…tents are to be struck and carefully rolled, the men to take the tent poles in their hands, two men out of a company, with a careful subaltern, to go with the baggage and not leave it on any pretense. No packs (unless of sick men), chairs, tables, benches, or heavy lumber [are] to be put on the wagons. No person, unless unable to walk, is to presume to get upon them. The wagons [are] to move forward before the regiments…Every regiment under marching orders, to see they have their flints and ammunition in good order and complete.
The exodus was soon under way, the army crossing the narrow bridge at King’s Bridge and heading north along the west bank of the little Bronx River. The sick were the greatest burden. With teams and wagons in short supply, the trek was slow and difficult, the men themselves, in many cases, hauling the baggage wagons and cannon.
Private Joseph Martin would remember lugging a cast-iron kettle the size of a milk pail until his arms were nearly dislocated. During a rest, he put it down, and, as he wrote, “one of the others gave it a shove with his foot, and it rolled down against a fence, and that was the last I ever saw of it. When we got through the night’s march, we found our mess was not the only one that was rid of their iron bondage.”
AS THE FIRST of Washington’s army struggled toward White Plains, the British made their swift landing at Pell’s Point. Again an advance force of 4,000 British and Hessian troops went ashore in the early morning and, this time, were unopposed. They moved directly inland a mile or more and might have kept going had it not been for the intrepid John Glover and his men. The date was October 18.
From a hilltop before dawn, Glover had seen through a telescope what looked like upwards of two hundred ships. “Oh! The anxiety of mind I was in then for the fate of the day…. I would have given a thousand worlds to have had General Lee, or some experienced officer present to direct, or at least to approve what I had done,” Glover later wrote.
Acting on his own, he rushed forward with some 750 men who fought tenaciously from behind stone walls, inflicting heavy casualties and stalling the enemy advance for a full day before forced to fall back.
Colonel Loammi Baldwin, the Massachusetts apple grower who, with his small regiment, joined in the fight, later claimed the men stayed as calm as if shooting ducks. He thought the enemy dead numbered at least 200, which was undoubtedly an exaggeration. But even if he was wrong by half, the British lost more men killed at Pell’s Point than in the Battle of Brooklyn. By Glover’s calculations, American casualties numbered 8 dead, 13 wounded.
Such ferocity as the Americans had shown appears to have stunned Howe, leading him to conclude that, with stone walls lining every road and adjacent field, more deadly fire could be waiting at any turn. Had the British kept moving inland with speed, they might have caught Washington’s retreating army head-on.
As it
was, the British advance—along the shore as far as Mamaroneck, then inland toward White Plains—was slow and extremely cautious, seldom more than a few miles a day and against little or no resistance.
Probably Howe saw no more need to hurry now than he had before, and in fact, he did not expect to cut the rebel retreat. Rather, in eighteenth-century military fashion, he hoped to maneuver Washington onto the open field, and then, with his superior, professional force, destroy the Yankee “rabel” in one grand, decisive victory. Even after reaching White Plains, Howe took another few days to be sure all was ready.
AT LAST, on October 28, ten days after landing at Pell’s Point, William Howe sent 13,000 redcoats and Hessians up the main road to White Plains. It was early morning and yet another sparkling fall day. Washington, determined to avoid any test of strength on an open field, was well dug in on high ground in back of the village, his lines reaching more than a mile in length. For a brief time, it looked as though Howe intended to attack head-on, as the Americans hoped he would. British field guns opened fire, and Howe’s army marched in perfect order in two columns straight for where Washington commanded at the center. “The sun shone bright, their arms glittered, and perhaps troops never were shown to more advantage than these now appeared,” wrote General Heath of the oncoming foe.
Suddenly, one column wheeled sharply left in the direction of a higher hill on the American right, on the other side of the Bronx River. Chatterton’s Hill was thickly wooded on its slopes but had open fields above, and it dominated the American lines. “Yonder is the ground we ought to occupy,” Charles Lee had reportedly told Washington, but only at the last hour had troops been rushed to defend Chatterton’s Hill and these were mainly militia.
The British artillery moved to closer range. Cannon roared on both sides. “The air and hills smoked and echoed terribly,” wrote a Pennsylvania soldier. “The fences and walls were knocked down and torn to pieces, and men’s legs, arms, and bodies mingled with cannon and grapeshot all round us.”
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