Washington's Immortals

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Smallwood’s Battalion included not only men: wives, mothers, daughters, mistresses, and other assorted women marched along with the men, looking for safety and work. These camp followers, as they later became known, had a complicated relationship with the military hierarchy. Many of the officers despised having these women and their children along, believing that they distracted the soldiers, slowed their movements, and consumed food that could have fed the men. Others were more pragmatic, noting that the men might not continue to fight if they couldn’t bring along their wives. Washington wrote that he “was obliged to give Provisions to the extra Women in these regiments, or lose by Desertion, perhaps to the enemy, some of the oldest and best Soldiers in the Service.”

  In addition, the camp followers provided valuable services for the Continental Army. Many worked as laundresses, earning rations and small fees for their labor. Others cooked for their husbands or paying customers, often the blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and other workmen who performed necessary tasks for the army. The army also employed many of the women as nurses in the field hospitals. Because this was one of the dirtiest and most dangerous occupations for women, the officers often had to bribe or coerce reluctant women to care for wounded and dying men. However, a few brave women volunteered for an even more perilous job: while working as cooks or laundresses in the British camps, they spied on the Redcoats’ movements and brought back word of their plans to the Americans.

  One woman who was soon traveling with Smallwood’s Battalion as a camp follower was the beautiful Margaret Jane Peale Ramsay, known as Jenny, who was the wife of Nathaniel Ramsay and the sister of painter and ensign James Peale. “Having fondness for reading . . . she was refined in her intellect and she was beautiful in her person. . . . She had many admirers, some of them, afterwards became great note in the revolution.” Mrs. Ramsay traveled in a small carriage with a servant and endured many of the hardships of army life in order to be with her husband. Her brother Charles Willson Peale noted, “She said she would rather be with the army whatever might be her suffering, than be at a distance and so much tormented, for if she was near the army in case of misfortunes she possibly might be aiding to help those most dear to her.” Unlike many of the women accompanying Smallwood’s Battalion, Jenny didn’t perform manual labor. Instead, she acted as a hostess, and her tent or quarters became the center of social life for the officers: Samuel Smith, Jack Steward, Mordecai Gist, Benjamin Ford, and the other officers gathered where she set up camp. She wielded a considerable amount of influence; one fellow camp follower said to Mrs. Ramsay, “You can aid me in my many difficulties, for everybody seems to pay more regard to what you say than I have ever seen before.”

  After arriving in Manhattan, the battalion bivouacked on a hill about a mile outside the heart of the city (today’s lower Manhattan), waiting for further orders, but the downtime soon began to wear on the men. Washington’s hastily assembled army in New York began to diminish in number owing to desertion and sickness. Maryland Sergeant William Sands wrote in a letter to his parents, “We are advised to hold our Selves in Readyness we Expect an Attack hourly we have Lost a great many of our Troops They have deserted from us at Philadelphia and Elisabeth Town and a Great Many Sick in the Ospitals.”7 The enlisted men, like John Hughes and the McMillan brothers, William and Samuel, quickly adapted to the abysmal conditions of camp life in Manhattan.

  7. Sands was killed in battle before his message could be delivered to his family.

  Thousands of people bivouacked in such close proximity to one another, combined with a lack of discipline, produced sanitation problems with horrific results. In August, about 25 percent of the American army was listed as sick and unable to serve. Typhoid fever, dysentery, malaria, and other maladies spread rampantly throughout the filthy camps. The Maryland troops were no exception, and sickness greatly reduced their numbers. In an attempt to check the spread of disease, American officers, including General Nathanael Greene, tried to enforce sanitation rules, but to no avail. Greene, a thirty-four-year-old Rhode Islander and former Quaker, had been a successful businessman prior to the war. He stood about five-foot-ten and was broad-shouldered, although a childhood accident had left him with a stiff right leg and a pronounced limp. He also suffered from asthma. His piercing blue eyes radiated confidence, but beneath the veneer, Greene was very sensitive to criticism. A born leader, he was also a student of military history, which served him well. Joining the Rhode Island militia as a private, he quickly rose to the rank of general thanks to his keen mind and natural battlefield acumen. Over the course of the war, he became Washington’s favorite general. On this occasion Greene’s blossoming military genius was diverted to the practical basics of running an army. Greene noted the men “typically easing themselves in the ditches of the fortifications.”

  Venereal disease ran rampant. With so many soldiers encamped in New York and Long Island, the bordello district in Manhattan, known as the Holy Ground, mushroomed, pandering to the carnal needs of the men—even the most chaste. “The whores (by information) continue their employ, which is become very, very lucrative,” recalled one observer. “Their unparalleled conduct is sufficient antidote against any desires that a person can have that has one spark of modesty or virtue left in him to blast atum [sic] must certainly be lost before he can associate with those bitchfoxy jades, jills, hags, strums, prostitutes, and these multiplied into one another.” A New York City survey shortly after the war estimated that 20 percent of women of childbearing age were prostitutes. Tarts who entered the Maryland camp in an unauthorized manner could be seized. Then their heads were shaved, and they were drummed out of camp at a slow cadence known as the whore’s march.

  Smallwood’s Battalion wasn’t the only group of Marylanders that marched toward New York; the colony also sent 3,405 militiamen to serve as part of a “Flying Camp.”8 Established directly by the Continental Congress, the Flying Camp carried no heavy equipment so that it could move quickly to wherever it was needed—in this case, New York. Officials in Maryland agreed to provide the troops based on a couple of strict conditions: Flying Camp members from Maryland fought only in the area from their colony to New York (not New England), and their service expired on December 1, 1776. Eventually, many of the enlisted men and officers of the Flying Camp amalgamated into Smallwood’s Battalion. On August 16, Maryland informed Congress, “We shall have near four thousand men with you in a short time [including independent companies and Smallwood’s Battalion]. . . . We are sending all we have that can be armed and equipped, and the people of New York, for whome we have a great affection, can have no more than our all.”

  8. Joining the Flying Camp and Smallwood’s Battalion, a number of independent Maryland companies also made their way toward New York. Several arrived and distinguished themselves; others never completed the journey. The latter category included Captain John Watkins, who left Maryland later than Smallwood and lingered in the City of Brotherly Love. One writer noted, “Capt. Watkins and his men we are sorry to inform you are on very ill terms, the Capt. has beat some of them, he says he had great cause, they say he had none, some of them have said nothing shall induce them to continue in the company under Capt. Watkins.” He added that the captain “is addicted to Drink and his appearance at several Times we have seen him bespeaks it.” The Maryland Council of Safety soon removed the inebriate officer.

  The militiamen of the Flying Camp are largely a footnote in history and weren’t as well trained or equipped as Smallwood’s Battalion, but they produced several outstanding officers including Marylander John Eager Howard. Humble yet a charismatic leader, Howard was appointed captain of the Flying Camp’s 2nd Battalion. The son of a prosperous farmer, the tall, handsome Howard had no military background, yet the Baltimore scion emerged as one of the great natural battlefield commanders of the Revolution. In his private life, he was known for his graciousness, “the amenity of his manners, his hospitality, and his extensive and usef
ul knowledge.” His memory for facts was quite remarkable, leading one person to call him “perhaps the most accurate repository of the history of his own time, in this or any other country.” He was a very disciplined man, and “his habits of life were contemplative, cautious, scrupulously just, and regulated by the stricted method.” He had many close friends, and one biographer noted, “Few men have enjoyed a more enviable lot: his youth distinguished in the field, his age in the council, and every period solaced by the attachment of friends.” He “deserves a statue of gold no less than Roman and Grecian heroes,” one newspaper later wrote. He officially joined the military when he put on his uniform in July 1776 at the age of twenty-four. Like the other officers in the Flying Camp, Howard was responsible for recruiting his own men. Although he was an exceptionally modest man, Howard was extremely popular in Baltimore and needed just one day to find all thirty men for his company.

  Captain William Beatty from Frederick County, Maryland, who kept a diary throughout the war, “was apptd. an Ensign in ye flying Camp raised in the state of Md the 3d July.” His father, also named William, served as a colonel in the American forces. The younger Beatty was just eighteen when he received his first commission as an officer, and he rose in rank steadily as the Revolution progressed.

  Marching with Beatty and Howard was twenty-two-year-old Lawrence Everhart. Born of German parents near Frederick, Maryland, Everhart was “tall and brawny with powerful limbs” and “a noble countenance.” He was also described as “having an eye beaming with the luster of genuine courage.”

  The Flying Camp reached New York City shortly after Smallwood’s Battalion arrived. Congress named Brigadier General Rezin Beall as overall commander of the Maryland Flying Camp but designated no overall commander of Maryland forces. The two commanders began arguing between themselves almost immediately, disagreeing about who had the higher rank. The dispute continued to fester as the real battle was about to begin.

  Chapter 8

  The Storm Begins

  “In a few minutes the entire heavens became black as ink, and from horizon to horizon, the whole empyrean was ablaze with lightning,” recalled one observer who experienced the spectacular natural pyrotechnics on the night of August 21. “The lightning fell in massive sheets of fire to earth and seemed to strike incessantly and on every side.” Legend holds that a single lightning bolt killed three American officers and “the tips of their swords and the coins in their pockets had been melted, their bodies as black as if roasted.” The portentous storm seemed to serve as a prelude to the thunder of cannon and chatter of small arms that soon sounded throughout New York.

  The next day after that violent storm, the British invasion of Long Island commenced, led by two frigates that tested American defenses as they sailed up the East River, largely unscathed. Admiral Richard Howe’s secretary, Ambrose Serle, described the intimidating, yet breathtaking scene he encountered on the picturesque day, detailing the armada of “ships and vessels with their sails spread open to dry, the sun shining clear upon them, the green hills and meadows after the rain.”

  The first waves of roughly twenty-two thousand British troops began disembarking at Gravesend Bay on Long Island. Misinformed about the strength of the actual invasion, George Washington erroneously believed that only half that number had landed, that the amphibious landing on Long Island was a feint, and that the main blow would fall on Manhattan.

  As the British and Hessian troops disgorged from their landing boats onto the island, they discovered a land of abundance. “The peach and apple trees are especially numerous [and] the furnishings in the [houses] are excellent. Comfort beauty and cleanliness are readily apparent,” one soldier wrote. Serle watched with amusement as the troops “regaled themselves with fine apples, which hung everywhere in great abundance. . . . It was really diverting to see sailors and apples tumbling from the trees together.” Most of America’s colonists were of middling class and enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of the world. For many of the British, the perceived wealth and plentitude seemed to be proof that the colonists got rich off the Crown.

  Howe’s men made camp as additional reinforcements streamed in. Some fighting broke out, as Major Mordecai Gist noted: “The Enemy being now landed on Long Island and little Skirmishes happened [by the] lines.” Washington rushed additional reinforcements, including Smallwood’s Marylanders, across the East River toward the American defenses in Brooklyn, bringing American strength to about six thousand men.

  Days earlier, before the British landings on Long Island, Nathanael Greene, who was helping oversee the preparations of the defenses, had fallen gravely ill. Washington replaced him with General John Sullivan, whose ability and leadership paled in comparison to Greene’s. Worse, Sullivan didn’t know the American defenses or Brooklyn’s terrain. The vain New England lawyer was marked by an “over desire of being popular.” Prior to the war, the forty-four-year-old Sullivan had handled foreclosures and had served with Washington in the Continental Congress. The abrupt change of command at the top was symptomatic of the chaos that reigned throughout the American camp. Unlike their well-ordered British counterparts, the Americans had “carts and horses driving every way among the army,” wrote one observer. “Men marching out and coming in. . . . Small arms and field pieces continually firing. All in tumult.”

  General Washington inspected the defenses on Long Island. Concerned about Sullivan’s ability to lead, Washington placed Israel Putnam, nicknamed Old Put, in charge of Sullivan on August 24, just days after calling in Sullivan to replace Greene. A veteran who served in Rogers’ Rangers, a French and Indian War reconnaissance and early special-operations force whose tactics inspired many generations of warriors, Putnam was fifty-eight years old; his age led many of the troops to refer to him as “Granny.” In the Battle of Bunker Hill on the outskirts of Boston on June 17, 1775, General Putnam had led the forces in the field and became famous for saying, “Don’t fire, boys, until you can see the whites of their eyes.” While the British captured the hill and expanded the territory under their control, the cost was high: 226 killed and 828 wounded. The Americans, by contrast, had around 140 killed and 310 wounded and were able to retreat and regroup after the battle, leaving themselves in a much better position. Clinton wrote, “A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America.” Putnam’s exploits throughout the war became the source of many legends. His appearance in Long Island was highly popular with the men but did nothing to curb the chaos in camp. Washington instructed Putnam to stop the “irregularities” and informed him, “The distinction between a well regulated army and a mob is the good order and discipline of the first, and the licentious and disorderly behavior of the latter.”

  As a forward defense, Washington instructed Old Put to position three thousand troops, including elements of Smallwood’s Battalion, atop a wooded ridge of hills that cut through Brooklyn, known then as the Heights of Gowanus. Eighty feet high at points, the forested spur offered a natural defensive position to the Americans. One nineteenth-century historian wrote that they were “a continuous barrier, a huge natural abatis, impassible to artillery, where with proportionate numbers a successful defense could be sustained.” On Washington’s orders, Putnam sent his best men—led by General Sullivan and General Stirling (William Alexander)—forward on the wooded ridge; there they could meet the enemy in the trees, where they hoped to use the ground to their advantage. Another six thousand men remained in the fortifications at Brooklyn Heights. The Americans designed a collapsible defense: the Marylanders and other forward troops were to hold the British off as long as possible, inflict maximum casualties, and then fall back toward the forts on Brooklyn Heights. The American generals irrationally expected the green troops to somehow hold the six-mile forested ridgeline for an extended period of time and “at all hazards prevent the enemy’s passing the wood.” But the heavy foliage also limited the line of sight to a hundre
d feet and hampered communication among Patriot units. Putnam assigned the bulk of the Marylanders along the Gowanus Road, a key artery that hugged the shoreline of Brooklyn’s Gravesend Bay. Sullivan had command of about one thousand troops and controlled the center of the Gowanus Heights near Flatbush. Eight hundred Pennsylvanians held the Bedford Road on the Americans’ far left flank. The roads cut through three passes that the Patriots felt were defensible. A fourth pass, known as the Jamaica Pass, lay three miles north of the American left flank on the Bedford Road. It remained unguarded until the last minute, when five young militiamen on horseback were ordered to patrol Jamaica Pass. It was the blind spot in the American defenses. It was also exactly where General William Howe’s main force was headed.

  Chapter 9

  The Battle of Brooklyn

  Early on the morning of August 27, 1776, two British scouts drew closer to the Red Lion Inn in Brooklyn, near the present-day intersection of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-Fifth Street. Something off to the side of the road caught their eye. Despite the darkness of the night, they could discern twisting vines and the unmistakable bulbous green bulges of ripe watermelons. The fruit was uncommon in Britain and highly prized. A savvy innkeeper had planted the melon patch to woo the many tourists who came to see the area’s attraction—a striking, otherworldly-looking indentation in a nearby rock that many claimed was the devil’s hoofprint. The sharp-eyed observers were quick to attack the field in hopes of enjoying the harvest.