The new recruits from all socioeconomic classes and from towns and villages throughout the entire state of Maryland marched up toward Morristown, where scores of new American regiments from around the colonies coalesced. With so many men gathered in one place, the situation was ripe for an epidemic, and smallpox ran rampant among the troops. A devastating disease, smallpox began much like flu, with fever, nausea, and achiness. Symptoms got much worse within a week or two; the patient developed pus-filled sores and began bleeding from all orifices. In many cases, victims suffered from dehydration and secondary infections, and around a third of smallpox patients died of the disease.
At the time of the Revolution, no one had yet developed an effective vaccine for smallpox, so the only option for prevention was inoculation. This process involved incising a sore and then inserting the contaminated knife below the skin on a healthy individual. Sometimes this resulted in a form of smallpox that was less likely to kill the victim, but often the person being inoculated got just as sick as people who caught the disease in other ways. Nevertheless, Washington ordered inoculation for the Continentals and the civilians in the area, which helped prevent the epidemic from becoming worse. One of those inoculated was Marylander John Boudy, who recalled that “the whole Army, or nearly all, was inoculated for the smallpox.”
It’s likely that Dr. Richard Pindell, a Maryland surgeon who joined the 1st Maryland Regiment on January 1, 1777, performed some of those inoculations. The intrepid doctor, who enjoyed a good party and dabbled in gambling, went on to accompany the regiment throughout the rest of the war, recording many of its actions in his letters. The physician wrote that he joined the troops because he was “fired by the love of liberty.” That passionate patriotism led Pindell not only to treat the injured and dying but also to rally the troops and even take command, leading men into the fight for brief periods of time in several key battles. Through the course of his six years of service, he “repeatedly rejected the most flattering and Lucrative offers, during the War, if I would leave the Service and enter into Private Practice, by which I could without Doubt have made an Ample Fortune.” Instead, he remained fully dedicated to the cause, even though he frequently received only half the pay he had been promised and the army confiscated his two horses. Later in life, he suffered financial hardships until the Maryland legislature approved a petition that gave him “full pay of Col. of Dragoons for life.”
Doctor Pindell was hampered in his care of the sick by a lack of knowledge. Most physicians at the time had little formal instruction and trained as apprentices under other physicians. Unaware of germs, bacteria, and viruses, surgeons operated with unsanitary instruments, leading to gangrene and other frequently fatal diseases. If a wound from a musket ball was not too deep, the surgeon attempted to remove the ball and then stop the bleeding, leaving the wound open to drain. If the ball had fractured bones in multiple places, the only real option for treatment was amputation. To perform surgery, available instruments comprised a wicked-looking assortment of probes and ball extractors. Sharp lancets and saws were used to hack off limbs, while tourniquets, when they were available, choked off the bleeding artery. The surgery involved plying the patient with a strong dose of liquor (when it was available) and then offering him a stick to bite. Orderlies held him down while the surgeon sawed through the bone as quickly as possible. Next he tied off the arteries and sewed the wound shut over the remaining stump. Unsurprisingly, only a little over a third of the men who had an amputation survived.
State-of-the-art medicine for the period included a witch’s brew of herbal remedies such as Peruvian or Jesuit’s bark, potassium nitrate, camphor, laudanum (opium), jalap, castor oil, Epsom salts, ipecac, red mercuric oxide, and sulfur in hog’s lard. The colonies imported most of their drugs from England. As the Revolution progressed and embargoes worked their effect, medicines and other supplies became quite scarce, making it more difficult to treat patients. Field hospitals degenerated into scenes of horror. One of the American generals wrote, “Our hospital, or rather house of carnage, beggars all description, and shocks humanity to visit. The cause is obvious; no medicine or regimen on the ground suitable for the sick; no beds or straw to lie on; no covering to keep them warm, other than their own wretched clothing.” Doctor Pindell and the other surgeons worked tirelessly to save as many men as possible, but in such conditions, it’s little wonder that disease and infection killed many of them.
By the middle of May, forty-three new Continental regiments had gathered near Morristown; on paper, Washington had around eighty-seven hundred troops, arranged in five divisions consisting of two brigades each. William Smallwood, now promoted to brigadier general, took command of the 1st brigade, which included the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th Maryland Regiments. The 2nd Brigade consisted of the 2nd Maryland Regiment, under Gist, along with the 4th and 6th Maryland, as well as their brother regiment under arms, the Delaware Blues. Like the Marylanders, the Delaware Regiment had a core of solid veteran officers, including Robert Kirkwood and Enoch Anderson. Born in 1746, Kirkwood graduated from Newark Academy (now the University of Delaware) and worked on his family’s farm before becoming a first lieutenant in the Delaware Regiment at the age of twenty-nine. Later promoted to captain and brevetted to major at the end of the war, “Captain Bob” led the Delaware Blues and fought alongside the Marylanders in some of the war’s most important battles. A man of steel, Kirkwood marched thousands of miles and took part in thirty-three battles for his country. His unit was often used for reconnaissance missions or as an indefatigable rear guard.
The 2nd Brigade was commanded by a Frenchman, Brigadier General Philippe-Hubert, Preudhomme de Borre, a taciturn officer with an abusive leadership style. Born in 1717, Chevalier de Borre had served with the cavalry in the French royal army fighting in Bavaria, Bohemia, and Flanders during the Seven Years’ War. After being slashed by a sword four times in the head and once on the wrist, he never regained full use of his hand. In February 1777 he arrived in America with a ship packed with gunpowder, weapons, and fabric for uniforms. The Marylanders snapped up the supplies, but passed on de Borre’s abrasive leadership and had little respect for him. The Marylanders, now welded together through several very difficult campaigns, had formed close bonds, and did not appreciate being led by someone other than their own, especially a foreigner.
Throughout the winter of 1777 and into the spring, even before most of the reinforcements arrived, Washington’s army and the militia conducted what Europeans called a petite guerre (little war) against Howe’s men, who occupied outposts throughout New Jersey. They fought numerous skirmishes and small battles all across the state. On several occasions, Washington called on the Marylanders for particularly dangerous operations. The Americans hit the routes of British foraging parties and even engaged in battles that involved several hundred troops. Twenty-one-year-old Marylander Private Joseph Nourse described one such attack on Quibbletown (now Piscataway, New Jersey). He wrote, “The whole of us, about 400, marched into the Enemies lines and attacked . . . but we were so disadvantageously posted that we could not stand our ground. We fought for ½ an Hour and then retreated.” Although the Americans didn’t accomplish any larger strategic goals with this attack and others like it, they were slowly grinding away at the British army while avoiding heavy casualties on their own side.
Washington was waging a war of attrition. The Americans inflicted casualties, interrupted the British source of supply in New Jersey, and forced the enemy to lose ground there. Howe’s plans to reclaim New Jersey were unraveling because he could not protect the Loyalist population or those who were undecided between the Crown and the Patriot cause. He simply didn’t have enough troops to maintain a series of outposts that allowed him to remain in control. This problem continued to plague the British throughout the war. Utilizing the strength and flexibility of the British navy, the Redcoats could occupy just about any American city on the East Coast, but seizing and holding ground that t
hey had captured remained elusive because there weren’t enough troops or Loyalists trained, equipped, and trusted by the British.
The petite guerre and the losses at Trenton took a toll on the British army throughout 1777. Thousands of British and Hessian troops were killed, wounded, or captured, or died of disease. The army’s numbers fell from thirty-one thousand in August 1776 to a little over fourteen thousand by 1777. Howe was never able to replace the casualties, even with additional reinforcements coming from England. This drove and hampered British strategy throughout the war.
With the onset of summer, the skirmishing continued as Washington began moving his troops from place to place in an effort to counter anticipated moves by Howe. The two armies danced around each other, often retracing their steps in an effort to gain a superior position from which to fight. William Beatty recalled some of the remarkable sights he witnessed while marching through New Jersey, such as the Great Falls of the Passaic River located in Paterson and a deformed child “whose head was larger than half a Bushell [four gallons]” but whose body was about the size of a seven-year-old’s, with useless hands and feet and “skin as white as milk.” The child had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and “could quote almost any scriptural quotations asked of him.”
Washington frequently assigned the Marylanders to serve as a blocking force while the rest of the army withdrew from a particular location. An elite unit, the Immortals20 were to occupy an exposed position and engage the advancing British forces, hoping to slow the enemy’s march long enough for the rest of the Patriots to reposition themselves.
20. The term “Immortals” is used to describe the men of the regiment, an elite unit that made many sacrifices throughout the war, not just the men who who sacrified themselves at Brooklyn.
Because they often occupied forward positions away from the bulk of the army, a lack of uniforms and supplies continued to plague the Marylanders. One officer reported that the soldiers were “mostly Barefoot though they have Done more marching than any other division in the Army.” He worried that the problems would “multiply Desertions among us Daily,” but this fear never became a reality: only a handful of the men deserted. And when they did desert, General de Borre dealt ruthlessly and swiftly with them and anyone who assisted them. Deserters who were recaptured were typically shot, and Loyalists found aiding them were given a quick court-martial and executed. Lieutenant Beatty remembered, “The court passed sentence of Death on him which Genl DeBore ordered to be put in Execution by Hanging the poor fellow [Tory] on the limb of a sycamore close on the side of the road.”
After Washington’s retreat from New York, Howe had left some troops behind on Staten Island. These men regularly foraged for food in the surrounding area, capturing livestock and causing consternation among the local residents. Based on some faulty intelligence, Washington believed that this force consisted primarily of inexperienced American Loyalists. A strike at Staten Island seemed to offer an easy opportunity for victory as well as the chance to earn the goodwill of the inhabitants by slowing and perhaps halting the British raids along the Jersey coast. The island also held a fort that controlled the Narrows, the southern waterway into New York Harbor and toward Manhattan.
Washington ordered Brigadier General John Sullivan to lead a raid on Staten Island in late August 1777. The New Hampshire native and former foreclosure lawyer had been captured in the Battle of Brooklyn but returned to duty in September 1776 in a prisoner exchange, and he played important roles in the battles at Trenton and Princeton. For the assault on Staten Island, his force would include “only those who were most active & best able to Endure a march” from the brigades led by Smallwood and de Borre. About a thousand men in all, his force consisted primarily of Marylanders and men from the Delaware Regiment. To throw off any enemy spies, Sullivan headed south out of camp before turning east. Smallwood’s men led the way as the men crossed by boat to Staten Island.
The raid began as planned. Caught unaware, the surprised Loyalist troops took off running, allowing the raiders who intended to stop plundering to become plunderers themselves. They rounded up a number of prisoners and collected a considerable amount of arms and equipment. Before too long, Smallwood’s men ran into a surprise of their own—the British 52nd Regiment of Foot. Equally stunned by the appearance of the Patriots, the British troops fled back into their fortifications on the island. Enoch Anderson from the Delaware Regiment recalled, “My line of march brought me near to a large brick house. Here I found some of the British. But a few only of them turned out—got round a haystack—fired one gun and then run.”
The sight of enemy regulars running for cover convinced Sullivan’s force that they had won the day. Abandoning any pretense of discipline, they ransacked the homes of the officers, grabbing whatever food and supplies they could find. One officer from de Borre’s brigade later testified, “Our people [were] in a scattered, disorderly and dangerous situation; I made use of every effort to curb the licentiousness and stop the greedy grasp of our Soldiers, but found they had such a propensity to plunder that my exertions were ineffectual.” Anderson said that, finding a house full of “lawful plunder,” he sent his men inside to grab what they could while he remained outside and beat a drum to let them know when to come out.
While the Patriots were running amok and picking the area clean, the disciplined British regulars and their Loyalist allies regrouped behind their fortified walls. The Redcoats suddenly advanced on Sullivan’s troops, who were no longer in any shape to engage with the enemy. Now it was the Patriots’ turn to run. Anderson reported that Colonel Stone galloped past him, yelling, “Run, run, it’s no disgrace!” The Marylanders bolted toward the crossing point, hoping to escape from the island back to New Jersey. “Here was great confusion,” noted Anderson, “no commander—soldiers running at their will, and not boats enough; there being some unhappy error about the boats. I saw a boat coming over and kept my eye on it, and as it came nearer the shore, I came nearer to it. I kept my men in a solid body and I and my company entered the boat. We got safe over.” The rear guard of approximately 150 men, led by Jack Steward, made several bold stands to allow the bulk of the Marylanders to escape. All Smallwood’s men and most of de Borre’s made it across. Captain William Wilmot, a wealthy Baltimore native and friend of Steward, described the action in a letter: “They came down on us with about 1000 of their heroes, and attacked us with about 500 of their new troops and Hessians expecting I believe that they should not receive one fire from us but to their great surprise they received many as we had to spare and had we had as many more they should have been welcome to them, they made two or three attempts to rush on us, but we kept up such a blaze on them, that they were repulsed every time.”
Although he himself never surrendered, Wilmot saw Steward taken captive.
“What grieved me after seeing that it was not the lot of many of us to fall and our ammunition being expended, that such brave men were obliged to surrender themselves Prisoners to a dastardly, new band of murderers, natives of the land [Loyalists], when our ammunition was all spent Major [Steward] took a white handkerchief and stuck it on the point of his Sword, and then or’d the men to retreat whilst he went over to their ground, and surrendered, for he had never gave them an inch before he found that he had nothing left to keep them off with the enemy advancing fast to surround us,” he wrote. “Even in that situation [I] found my self determined never to surrender and could do nothing else was obliged to run and strive to conceal myself which I did effectually, in a barn on some hay that was up in the roof of the Barn.”
Terrified, the boatmen refused to go back to rescue what remained of the rear guard. Some of the troops were able to hide in the woods or swim to safety, but most of those who remained were taken prisoner.
The disastrous raid on Staten Island failed to meet any of its objectives. While only ten Americans were killed, the Patriots suffered the loss of numerous enlisted men
and officers who were taken prisoner, including Steward. In all, the British captured three majors, one captain, three lieutenants, two ensigns, one surgeon, and 127 privates.
Following the ill-fated assault, Gist and Smallwood returned to Maryland for more recruiting—specifically militia. Sullivan and the rest of the officers and men rejoined Washington’s army. The commander in chief wasn’t sure about Howe’s next move, but evidence pointed toward an attack on Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Steward and more than one hundred Marylanders were about to experience the horrors of internment aboard British barges and ships in New York Harbor.
Chapter 17
Brandywine
In a well-ordered column, twelve men abreast, the Marylanders marched to the beat of the fife and drum. Each man wore a green sprig in his hat, an optimistic symbol of victory. Washington also thought the greenery would spruce up the appearance of the army, which lacked common uniforms. The commander in chief gave the army strict orders to stick with the rhythm: “[No] dancing along or totally disregarding the music, as too often has been the case.” He added a further warning that anyone who stepped away from the carefully choreographed parade would receive thirty-nine lashes.
The Marylanders and the rest of George Washington’s army once again were marching through the streets of Philadelphia on August 24, 1777, as part of a public relations maneuver. Despite being the young nation’s capital, Philadelphia was known as a haven for Tories. Washington, who had the instincts of a showman, hoped to sway their allegiance with a show of strength and élan. He led the parade himself on his impressive great white charger. Then came the army. In all, it took more than two hours for the American troops to cross through the center of town. Bolstered by the shouts and claps of Philadelphians who crowded into windows and onto rooftops to watch, the men marched “with a lively smart step.”
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