The Philadelphia Campaign
The Philadelphia Campaign
VOLUME I
Brandywine and the Fall of Philadelphia
THOMAS J. MCGUIRE
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Copyright ©2006 by Thomas J. McGuire
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
FIRST EDITION
Volume I
ISBN: 0-8117-0178-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-0178-5
Volume II
ISBN: 0-8117-0206-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-0206-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGuire, Thomas J.
The Philadelphia Campaign / Thomas J. McGuire.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-0178-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8117-0178-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Philadelphia (Pa.)–History–Revolution, 1775-1783. 2. Pennsylvania–History–Revolution, 1775-1783–Campaigns. 3. Maryland–History–Revolution, 1775-1783–Campaigns. 4. Delaware–History–Revolution, 1775-1783–Campaigns. 5. United States–History–Revolution, 1775-1783–British forces. 6. United States–History–Revolution, 1775-1783–Campaigns. I. Title.
E233.M3 2006
973.3'33–dc22
2006010732
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-4126-2
For Mom
With love and thanks
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
CHAPTER 1 “This unhappy Country, This Country, turned Topsy Turvy.”
NORTHERN NEW JERSEY, WINTER–SPRING 1777
CHAPTER 2 “Where the storm will turn now, no one knows as yet.”
THE MIDDLE ATLANTIC STATES, JULY–AUGUST 1777
CHAPTER 3 “But is this conquering America?”
PHILADELPHIA AND POINTS SOUTH, LATE AUGUST–EARLY SEPTEMBER 1777
CHAPTER 4 “As heavy a Fire from the Musketry as perhaps has been known this war.”
THE BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE, SEPTEMBER 11, 1777
CHAPTER 5 “Now prepare thyself, Pennsylvania, to meet the Lord thy God!”
THE FALL OF PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 12–25, 1777
Endnotes
Glossary of Eighteenth-Century Military Terms
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the following institutions and individuals for their assistance in this work: in the United Kingdom, the British National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) at Kew; Capt. David Horn of the Guards Museum, London; Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Russell of Ballindalloch Castle for use of the Grant Papers; Lord Howick of Howick Hall for use of Lord Cantelupe's diary; Durham University Library; the King's Map Collection at Windsor Castle, especially Martin Clayton; Sir Richard Osborn, Bt., and Sarah Saunders-Davies, for their constant support, encouragement, and friendship; Col. Graeme Hazlewood of the Royal Logistics Corps; Andrew Cormack of the Journal of Army Historical Research, for opening many doors, especially at “the Castle”; Robert Winup, for his help with newspaper research; John Mackenzie of Britishbattles.com.
Back home, thanks are due to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Chester County Historical Society and the Chester County Archives, especially Diane and Laurie Rofini; the Lancaster County Historical Society; the Manuscript Department and Map Department of the Library of Congress, especially Ed Redmond; Col. J. Craig Nannos (Ret., PNG/USA) and Bruce Baky, two great history colleagues; the Clements Library, especially John Dann; the New York Public Library; the Maryland Historical Society; the Historical Society of Delaware, especially Dr. Connie Cooper, for her constant help and endless good humor; Lee Boyle, former historian at the Valley Forge National Historical Park Library; and Joe Seymour of the First City Troop.
The David Library of the American Revolution at Washington's Crossing deserves special mention, not only as an extraordinary depository of primary materials on the Revolution, but also for its excellent staff, especially Kathy Ludwig and Greg Johnson, as well as former directors Dave Ludwig and Dave Fowler, who made working there a joy.
Thanks also to my good friend and mentor, David McCullough, for his enthusiasm, advice, and encouragement; Kyle Weaver, my editor and friend, for providing the opportunity to make this book a reality and a labor of love, and his team of professionals, particularly copyeditor Joyce Bond and production editor Amy Cooper, for their tireless work; and to my wife, Susan, who has kept me going through thick and thin—mostly thick!
“Remember what our Father oft has told us:
The Ways of Heav'n are dark and intricate;
Puzzled in Mazes, and perplex'd with Errors;
Our Understanding traces ’em in vain,
Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless Search;
Nor sees with how much Art the Windings run,
Nor where the Regular Confusion ends.”
—Joseph Addison, Cato, act I, scene I
PROLOGUE
On a warm September morning in a southeastern Pennsylvania schoolroom many years ago, a little girl named Sally Frazer couldn't concentrate on her lessons. The atmosphere was tense, the air thick and still as the sun burned off the early-morning haze, the type of weather that always makes students listless. It had been a terribly hot summer, especially in August, when the thunderstorms were memorable for their violence.
But there was something else, something ominous in the air, for through the open windows of the schoolroom, what at first sounded like occasional rumbles of thunder from a distant storm steadily grew louder and more unsettling, and nine-year-old Sally wondered what it could mean. Her little brother Robert, who had just turned six, and her sister Mary Anne, who was not quite four years old, were in school too, and she worried about them. She also wondered about her daddy and if he was all right.
The day was Thursday, September 11, about nine o'clock in the morning, and Sally's teacher went out of the room for some time, then came back in and said, “There is a battle not far off, children you may go home.” The place was Thornbury Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, the year 1777. The noise was the thunder of cannon from the Battle of Brandywine, less than ten miles away.
Sally and the others hurried home, and near their house on Chester Creek, the Frazer children met their mother on horseback. Mary “Polly” Worrall Frazer was thirty-two years old and the mother of four; her youngest was just over eighteen months. She was also now one month pregnant. Polly knew exactly what the noise meant, and she was coming to make sure that her children were safe. Once they were home, Polly galloped west toward her mother's house in the direction of Chads's Ford and the sound of battle. She knew that her husband Percy was going to be in the thick of it.1
Several miles away to the north, in another classroom, nine-year-old Tommy Cope couldn't concentrate on his schoolwork either, and for the same reason: the noise. He was in school near the Turk's Head Tavern in Goshen Township, learning the sums and letters that would serve him well later in life when he became one of Philadelphia's most prominent merchants and the head of a global shipping company, the Cope Packet Line. He, too, had a younger
brother, seven-year-old Israel, with him at school. “We were within hearing of the battle, even to the small arms,” Cope recalled. “Our teacher was sadly alarmed & the scholars but little at ease.”2 Tommy also may have wondered about his older friend John, who had played marbles with him the year before and had given him a watercolor picture as a present, for John, too, was in the battle.
Both Sally Frazer and Tommy Cope were children in Chester County, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 1777, the day of the Battle of Brandywine. Sally, whose real name was Sarah, lived for sixty-four more years and Thomas for more than seventy-five years after the battle. Neither Sarah nor Thomas played any part in the planning or the fighting, but both were directly affected by it and never forgot it. Their world was forever changed by the American Revolution, and Brandywine was one of the largest battles of that war.
They shared a common experience that remained with them for the rest of their lives, even though they were very different. Sarah lived with her parents in Thornbury Township, about eight miles east of Chads's Ford; Thomas was living with his aunt and uncle in East Bradford Township, about eight miles north of Chads's Ford. Sarah's family was of English and Scottish Presbyterian background and was fully committed to the Revolution; Thomas's family was English Quaker and pacifist. The Frazers owned three slaves; the Copes were appalled by slavery.
Sarah's father, a native of Chester County, was a farmer, ironmaster, businessman, and soldier: Lt. Col. Persifor Frazer of the 5th Pennsylvania Regiment, who at that moment was stationed several hundred yards behind Chads's Ford in the center of the Continental Army's line of defense. Thomas's father, Caleb Cope, was also born in Chester County but had since moved to the city of Lancaster and was a well-to-do craftsman, a plasterer who, along with the Quakers in general, was suspected of being a Loyalist.
Earlier in the war, the Cope family in Lancaster had hosted an artistic and very charming young British officer, Capt. John André of the 7th Royal Fusilier Regiment, who was a prisoner of war captured in Canada in November 1775. This was Tommy's friend John, who had played marbles with him and gave him the watercolor.3 Of André, Cope later wrote, “I have always been accustomed to regard him with the affection of a brother.” The officer had become so close to Tommy's older brother John that when André was exchanged, fourteen-year-old Johnny Cope ran away and tried to follow him to New York. Caleb went after his son, and “John suffered the mortification of being brought back & the bitter anguish of seeing his schemes of future greatness & happiness blighted by what he deemed a cruel interposition of parental authority.”4
Since the beginning of the war, Lancaster, which was then the largest inland city in America, had been filled with militiamen, supplies, suppliers, politicians, and hundreds of British and Hessian prisoners of war. The city also drew prostitutes, thieves, and the usual assortment of less-than-honorable opportunists and profiteers, described at the time as “scoundrels, rogues, caitiffs, and rascals,” words that have softened in meaning over the centuries but were by no means quaint or cute at the time. “It was the hotbed of dissipation,” Thomas Cope recalled in his polished, nineteenth-century phraseology, “rendered more rank & offensive by the prevalence of the war & the pestiferous vices which grew out of it.”5 To get some of his sons away from the influence of the military, Caleb Cope sent young Thomas and Israel to live with Uncle Nathan at the Cope ancestral homestead in East Bradford Township, Chester County, a comfortable Quaker farming community in the Brandywine Valley about halfway between Philadelphia and Lancaster, a place so remote as to be thought safe from the bad influences brought on by the war.
But now a parent's worst nightmare was in the offing: children, sent to a safe place, ending up in a battle zone.
The Philadelphia Campaign is a story about people—soldiers and civilians, husbands and wives, mothers, fathers, and children—all of whom shared a common experience in the American War for Independence. It is a story of battles and politics, valor and cowardice, life and death, told largely by those who experienced it. It is a tale of when war came through America and the nation's future was in question.
Scholarship continues to open new windows into the past, and each window, however small, has a story to tell. Surprises, too, abound as new material comes to light from family letters, forgotten documents, and misplaced diaries. Research for this work uncovered two small watercolors in the diary of a British officer, Lord Cantelupe, which have significance far beyond their size and art quality. They are the only two known images done while the British Army was in the field, and the depiction of A Rebel Battery on the Heights of Brandywine is the only known contemporary image of the Battle of Brandywine rendered by a participant. The two paintings are also the earliest known images of the Chester County landscape, made nearly a century after the county was founded.
Working with eighteenth-century documents is a labor of love and a great challenge because of the orthography—grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Formal English writing of the period did have well-established rules of grammar and spelling, as is evident by documents written by university-trained clerks, but much of the common writing is archaic, with random spellings, sometimes written phonetically in dialect or accent; poor grammar; and abysmal punctuation, with dashes often serving as commas, colons, or periods. I have retained as much of the original form of the writings as possible to retain the flavor of the period, making changes only where needed to clarify meaning and adding or removing punctuation when necessary to avoid confusion. I have kept bracketed interpolations to a minimum, as they tend to be distracting; scholars are encouraged to seek the original sources listed in the notes.
As Sally Frazer and Tommy Cope learned that morning, the world beyond the schoolroom can be a stormy place.
CHAPTER 1
“This unhappy Country, This Country, turned Topsy Turvy.”
NORTHERN NEW JERSEY, WINTER–SPRING 1777
The revelation from the British secretary of state was disturbing and most distressing, part of a growing trend: “I cannot guess by Sir Wm. Howe's letter when he will begin his operations, or where he proposes carrying them on,” Lord George Germain confessed to Undersecretary William Knox in late June 1777. “I incline to hope that his preparations are in greater forwardness,” he continued, in a letter filled with misgivings. Two weeks earlier, Germain had told the undersecretary “he hoped that Balfour”—Maj. Nisbet Balfour, one of General Howe's aides—“will have convinced Sir Wm. Howe that he distresses us by not communicating his ideas more frequently and more explicitly.”
The American Revolution—“this unnatural rebellion,” as the Tories called it—was dragging into its third summer, and the Tory minister in London most responsible for directing the war effort of His Majesty's government had no idea what the commander in chief of His Majesty's forces in America planned to do next to end it.
Lack of communication, lack of coordination, and reliance on wildly inaccurate information all played a part. “I hope the New York Gazette gives us in general true accounts,” the secretary of state said of a Tory newspaper so filled with distortions and blatant propaganda that even he recognized its limitations. “I am sorry to see such falsehoods inserted with regard to the expected reinforcements. I wonder those who inspect the paper do not prevent such notorious blunders, as it must bring discredit upon the rest of the intelligence.” With lame optimism, Germain concluded, “I shall be glad of an opportunity of applauding the General's conduct this campaign.”1
The Philadelphia Campaign officially began in June 1777, six months after the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Those battles, small as they were in military terms, had had a massive impact politically and psychologically on both sides. For the Americans, the two victories brought life back into the fight for independence after four months of defeat and near collapse. “Am happy in acquainting you that we have return'd from Trenton after defeating the Brass Caps,” Capt. Thomas Forrest of the Philadelphia Artillery crowed, referring to the distinctive meta
l headgear of the captured Hessian grenadiers. “We have taken, exclusive of what were not able to march off, 946, with a Compleat band of Musick.”2
For the Crown Forces, the defeats were demoralizing and divisive, with much finger-pointing and acrimony behind the scenes between British officers, who privately blamed the Hessians for incompetence, and Hessian commanders, who were embarrassed by the Trenton disaster and privately blamed the British for a badly run campaign. Gen. James Grant, the British commander in New Jersey at the time of Trenton, admitted that “the misbehaviour of the Hessian Brigade revived the drooping spirits of the Rebells and has rekindled the half extinguished Flame of Rebellion.”3 Of the British defeat at Princeton, a senior Hessian field commander, Col. Count Karl von Donop, wrote, “Mr. Washington, who always had certain warnings of our least movements…surprised the Princeton garrison, and we would have had une Affaire Trentownienne if this place had not been advantageously situated on a height.”4
The one thing on which the British and German officers could agree was blaming the now-deceased commander of the Trenton outpost, Col. Johann Rall, for failure to follow orders. Sir George Osborn, captain of the Grenadier Company of the Brigade of Guards, who was also “Muster-master-General and Inspector of the Foreign Troops, and a lieutenant-colonel in the army,” told his fellow members of the House of Commons some time later “that he lived in a degree of friendship with Col. Donop, and very frequently after the misfortune at Trenton, Donop acquainted Sir George, that if Col. Rall had executed the orders Sir George delivered to him from Sir W. Howe, to erect redoubts at the post of Trenton, his opinion was, it would have been impossible to have forced [defeated] Col. Rall's brigade before he (Donop) could have come to his assistance.”5
“It is the Damnd Hessians that has caused this,” Nicholas Cresswell, an English civilian visiting America, wrote venomously in mid-January. “Curse the scoundrel that first thought of sending them here.” Trapped in Virginia by the war and surrounded by enemies, Cresswell had to hold his tongue in public, for “Poor General Howe is ridiculed in all companies and all my countrymen abused. I am obliged to hear this daily and dare not speak a word in their favour.” He noted with bitter sarcasm, “Now the scale is turned and Washington's name is extolled to the clouds. Alexander, Pompey and Hannibal were but pigmy generals, in comparison with the magnanimous Washington.”6
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