Upon reaching the abatis, the Marylanders and the other men of the forlorn hope swung hard. Their axes tore into the abatis, cutting a small opening.
Musket balls, followed by grapeshot, tore into the advance guard.
British Lieutenant William Armstrong ordered his men, posted in positions behind the abatis, to open up on the Americans. “[We] fired five or six rounds a man.”
Despite the fusillade of British lead, Armstrong watched in horror as the Americans surged forward. “A large body of the Enemy then entering the opening of the inner Abatis, immediately in its front in which I had posted myself to defend.”
Tearing their clothes and flesh on the sharpened branches, the men of the forlorn hope broke through, as their comrades fell around them. Cutting a narrow path, what was left of the group pushed on to attack the second abatis. The remainder of Steward’s advance guard followed, making their way through the narrow lane cleared by the axes of Gibbon and his men. One Continental recalled maneuvering his body through the small breach made by the forlorn hope: “passing the abatis which was made of apple trees sharpened—the passage being narrow [I] was forced through and by this means had a sharp stick run through the fleshy part of his arm. Captain Shelton staid with [me] a few minutes until it was removed. [I] remembers this, for . . . [the] captain being deaf [I] had to catch him by the arm to let him know it.” Over the din of battle, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Johnson, the British commander of Stony Point, was shouting orders at his men. Fatefully, he had ordered half of his force down toward the inner abatis, including Lieutenant John Ross: “[My commanding officer] desired me to fall in with his Company and to line the [outer or first belt] Abbatis; that I had just got within the Works.” The fighting deteriorated into a hand-to-hand knockdown: “I receiv’d the Push of a Bayonet from a Man who knocked me down the Hill with the Butt end of his firelock.”
Friend and foe became intertwined and were easily mistaken in the darkness.
“[One of my men] had done that by mistake,” thought Ross.
“You damned Scoundrel!” he yelled. Soon afterward, Ross was taken prisoner by the Americans.
With most of his troops still in the front lines, Johnson had taken the bait of Murfree’s North Carolinian diversionary force, which was putting up the “galling fire.” That left his flanks open to the American assault, particularly his right flank, where the abatis didn’t reach into the water. At low tide, enemies could maneuver around the barrier and make their way into the fort.
A three-pound artillery piece soon rained deadly fire at the wave of oncoming Americans led by Steward’s forlorn hope. The cannon was mounted en barbette, on wheels and firing over a low wall as opposed to being in an encasement. The cannon fired sixty-nine deadly rounds into the Patriots. Thomas Pope, a Continental with Gibbon’s forlorn hope, later said, “The Cannon was dischrg’d so neare my hed [head] it beate me back into the ditch, the report was so hard it disstroyed my hearing.” Decades after the event he still had remnants “of the powder in my hand at this time.”
British artillerists later confirmed that Steward’s forlorn hope took the worst of it: “Seventeen out of the twenty, of which his Party consisted knock’d by the first fire from the three-pounder.”
Despite the losses, Steward’s advance guard continued moving ahead, soon flanking the British.
Confusion reigned among the Redcoats. “The rebels are in our rear!” one of Armstrong’s men informed him. Suddenly, “Two Men, who having larges of White paper in their Hats, I sppose’d them to be rebels, came up close to me.” Armstrong immediately ordered the company to “bayonet . . . and fire into our rear.”
A musket ball then grazed the top of the young officer’s skull and “rendered [him] insensible.” Shortly after, the Americans took him prisoner.
In the confusion, Colonel Johnson continued delivering orders: “Face the damn rascals!”
But in the blackness of the night, the British had trouble telling who was who. A young lieutenant in the 17th Regiment recalled that as the Americans challenged him and his commanding officer, he replied, “Damn ye, who are you?!”
One of the Americans then lunged at Johnson, who “narrowly escaped from that party.”
The men surged forward. Most of the Americans’ clothes were “muddy to the neck” or “almost torn to rags.” A hand-to-hand melee broke out as the column hacked through the second abatis and poured into the upper works. Bayonets, swords, and spontoons pierced flesh and bone.
At least two of the original members of Smallwood’s Maryland Battalion were wounded in the battle. Lieutenant James Fernandis—who had nearly died in the battle against Cornwallis at Long Island and then almost rotted to death on prison ships in New York Harbor but was released in a prisoner exchange—carried a wounded Maryland officer on his back to safety, even though he himself was injured. The imposing Lieutenant Gassaway Watkins commanded a troop of men in Steward’s advance guard. Also serving under Watkins at Stony Point was John O’Hara, an original member of Smallwood’s Battalion. Pension records later recorded, “John O’Hara received a wound at Stony Point Battle in his right foot which caused him to be disabled through life.”
The fight to take Stony Point relied on the efforts of more than one generation. Perhaps no family suffered more in the assault than the Coffmans. Joseph Coffman, who took part in the action, reported in his pension application that his “Father Joseph Coffman was a Captain in the Revolutionary service and killed in battle at Stony Point. That two of his brothers also were in the service and one of them, Benjamin Coffman, [was] killed by his side in battle at Stony Point.”
The fire was so intense, recalled one Continental attached to the guard, that “[I] escaped receiving any wounds although [my] hat and cloaths were literally riddled.”
On the right flank of the fort, Mad Anthony Wayne’s assault was breaking through. Led by de Fleury, the men waded through ankle-deep water and skirted and hacked away at the edge of the outer abatis, entering the fort’s right flank. The Frenchman’s forlorn hope surged forward, and among this group one man stood literally head and shoulders above the rest. The hulking form of Peter Francisco, “the Giant of the Revolution,” strode near the front of the line, his axe tearing through the side of the abatis by the water. Strapped to his back was a six-foot-long broadsword. A human tank, Francisco, with his friend Ansolem Bailey, fought “in the hottest of the fight and in the thickest of the Slaughter.” During the attack, Francisco, wielding his broadsword, supposedly killed three grenadiers and suffered a nine-inch-long gash to the stomach.
Wayne was also wounded and came within inches of death. After a ball grazed his head, “spear in hand,” he rose up on one knee, with blood streaming down his face, and shouted out, “Forward, my brave fellows, forward!” Lying in a pool of blood, Wayne briefly passed out, then awoke, begging his aides to carry him into the fort.
Fortunately for the Americans, the British gunboat Vulture, which had been assigned to guard the right flank of the fort and the critical beach opening to the abatis, was not there for the beginning of the assault. Owing to strong winds, it had sailed downriver.
In yet another stroke of fate, many of the British guns remained silent on the night of the attack, including a powerful howitzer that could have hurled a forty-eight-pound ball into the Americans assaulting the right side of the fort. The British had stored the ammunition in another area on the night of the assault, and most of their artillery, comprising primarily repurposed ship guns, was positioned for longer-range, daytime targets. As the Continentals closed in, Royal Artillerist John Roberts called out in frustration to one of his comrades that night, “For God’s sake, why isn’t the artillery here made use of, as the Enemy is in the hollow and crossing the water?”
Shortly after Roberts uttered those words, the howitzer fell into American hands. Wayne’s men had quickly captured the battery, which could have devastated th
e assault party. One British officer recalled, “The Enemy were in Possession of the Howitzer Battery and were pushing for the Upper Work, upon which I was bent my Steps that way and fell over a Log of Wood and several People fell over me before I recovered myself, and I have great reason to believe the Enemy entered the upper Work at the Barrier.”
Panic set in as the British manning Stony Point’s forward defenses heard more voices and shouts behind their lines. Corporal Simon Davies of the 17th Regiment of Foot felt a sense of impending doom—they were surrounded. He turned to his commanding officer, Lieutenant William Horndon, who “told us we might continue firing if we choose it, as he should fire the cannon upon which we again directed our fire as before, and we were fired upon from the upper works.”
In desperation, Horndon then directed two of his men to disguise themselves as Americans and try to break through enemy lines to look for a means of escape. Davies recalled, “He ordered two Men to turn their Coats [inside out] in order to examine if there was a passage out. But these Men found that the Enemy were also in front.”
As a last resort he sent out an experienced sergeant to determine their options. When the sergeant was killed, the lieutenant “offered if we should stand by him, to turn the Gun around, and defend the Work or he would put himself at our head and lead us toward the shipping.” Without options, Horndon bravely went into the lines by himself and surrendered Davies and the rest of his men to a Continental officer.
In a similar predicament, Lieutenant Roberts, attempting to evade the Americans who had recently captured his artillery, heard the advance party of Wayne’s column yelling out, “Throw down your arms!” He saw that “[t]he enemy had not only turned the flank but got into our rear.”
Hearing the shouts of the Americans in the fort, Roberts waded into the river, and began swimming toward the Vulture, which had by this time returned near the fort. “[I] forded a considerable way, I suppose near a half Mile, with all my clothes on, but hearing the Vulture sloop of war, which I could not see in the darkness of the night, fire a gun, I undressed myself and I swam.” Exhausted and freezing, Roberts was the only British officer to escape from Stony Point.
Yelling, “The fort’s our own!” the remaining men of the forlorn hope and the advance guard breached the fort’s upper defenses on the table of the hill. The right column, led by de Fleury and Wayne, charged through a small opening in the defenses or over the parapets and reached the flag bastion first. Steward and his men were right behind them as the two assault wings converged on the top of the table.
Vincent Vass heard the “blares of Cannon and Small arms” as he charged through. Fighting his way to Stony Point’s upper works, he had “received two wounds, a musket ball Scaled the bone of my hip, a buck shot entered my thigh.” The friend who had volunteered for the forlorn hope alongside him was also injured. Vass recalled, “My messmate Samuel Arnold was wounded in the hip, we went up to Albany Hospital, & through mercy I got well, but my poor messmate died [as] mortification [gangrene] took place.”
A Maryland marine was injured in the attack as well. Initially a member of the Continental Marines that sailed on the sloop Liberty, Peter H. Triplett dropped out of the corps and enlisted with the Marylanders. After he “endured all the privations & hardships of the monumental winter of 1777–8 at Valley Forge,” Triplett “was one of those who was placed on the Forlorn Hope under the Brave & Gallant General Wayne at the Storming of Stoney Point, where he . . . was wounded.”
Another member of the forlorn hope, Thomas Craig, remembered the distinguished gallantry of de Fleury. Craig reported seeing de Fleury enter the fort and capture the flag. Vass also saw that “Colonel Flury [de Fleury] struck the colors with his hands.” However, de Fleury exclaimed that he would not take the five-hundred-dollar bounty for capturing the flag. History records that several other men received the prize money, including a Sergeant Baker from Virginia, who had been wounded four times.
The British were enveloped and fighting for their lives as small pockets of men desperately attempted to re-form and repel the Americans. Vass said he heard the British cry out in the melee: “Quarters, quarters brave Americans! Mercy! Mercy! Dear Americans, quarter, quarter!” One young officer, a Loyalist American, found himself relying on the combat experience of one of his NCOs: “I was far too young for so important a situation . . . I acted, as many older officers no doubt had done before, and since—I obeyed the directions of an experienced sergeant, who also saved my life by shooting a man who had leveled his firelock at me within ten yards”
Within thirty-three minutes, it was over. The two sides lost nearly an equal number of killed and wounded—around one hundred men. The light infantry had captured 472 British and Loyalists. At 2:00 a.m. Wayne wrote to Washington: “Dear General,—The fort and garrison, with Colonel Johnson, are ours. Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free.”
For his daring actions at Stony Point, Marylander Jack Steward received a Congressional Silver Medal, a forerunner of the Medal of Honor—one of only eleven such medals awarded. De Fleury received a Congressional Silver Medal, and Wayne received a gold medal. Stony Point was one of the most decorated battles of the Revolution. As the war progressed, Congress also bestowed this extremely high decoration on one other Marylander, making the elite Marylanders one of the most decorated infantry units of the Revolution.
Shortly after the last British troops surrendered, twenty-four American artillerists who accompanied the assault force turned the captured guns against the Redcoats. Among the British were Lieutenant Colonel James Webster and Major Patrick Ferguson, both of whom played a pivotal role in events during the coming year. The Americans began shelling Verplanck’s Point on the opposite side of the Hudson and relentlessly fired one hundred rounds per hour into the British garrison.
The British controlled the Hudson up to Stony Point and could land troops en masse at will, easily cutting off the fort. Washington didn’t have enough men to hold Stony Point, so the Americans removed its guns and destroyed the fieldworks. They shipped the valuable munitions and supplies upriver to West Point, where Marylanders under Gist, Smallwood, and Howard helped man the defenses.
Before leaving Stony Point, Washington had one last matter to attend to—the deserters who had fought for the British. At 5:00 p.m. on July 18, justice was sure and swift. At a court-martial, headed by General Wayne, the turncoats from Stony Point “were tried, Deserting to the enemy; found guilty; and sentenced (two-thirds of the court agreeing thereto) to suffer Death.” Virginia Continental George Hood recalled, “At daylight the Prisoners were all paraded and among them we found two American deserters: they were pick’d out, and Gen. Wayne soon made an example of them—We cut down the Flagstaff and erected a cross-piece for the Gallows, and hung them in sight of the British prisoners.” All together five Americans who turned sides, including Marylander John Williams, swung from the makeshift gallows at Stony Point that day. After the executions, Hood and the rest of the men “all fell to work to destroy the garrison and bury the dead.”
At least one Delaware soldier who had previously fought alongside the Marylanders before changing to the Loyalist side escaped the gallows: Michael Dougherty. Luckily for him, Dougherty was captured by his friends, the Delaware troops who had been part of Steward’s advance guard. Dougherty said, “It was a great consolation, however . . . that the old Delawares were covered with glory and that as their prisoner, I was sure to meet the kindest attention.” One of his brothers-in-arms bayoneted him during the night of the assault, but Dougherty’s captors carefully dressed his wounds and nursed him back to health. “My wound, once cured, and whitewashed of my sins, my ancient comrades received me with kindness; and light of heart I marched forward with the [Maryland and Delaware] regiment destined to recover the Carolinas.”
A week later, General Sir Henry Clinton reoccupied the fort, rebuilding and strengthening its defenses by enclosing th
e upper works. But the Patriot victory went a long way in 1779, boosting the flagging spirits of Americans in a year when little action occurred. Each victory or defeat affected morale and public opinion in America and in war-weary Britain.
Chapter 25
Interlude
On August 19, 1779, the Marylanders took part in another raid that also helped lift the Patriots’ flagging spirits. And once again, some of them served as part of a forlorn hope charged with destroying an abatis.
This time the target was the British outpost at Paulus Hook, New Jersey. Using the same tactics that had worked so well at Stony Point, Light Horse Harry Lee, with a troop of light infantry that included many Marylanders, mounted a surprise nighttime raid on the garrison, which sat directly across from New York City on a low-lying sandy peninsula, the site of present-day Jersey City. Practically as one, the men of the forlorn hope heaved their axes into the air and then lowered them, biting deep into the logs of the abatis that surrounded the British position. Quickly the men chopped their way through the enclosure, clearing a path to the blockhouses inside before the enemy had time to mount an effective defense.
The raiders, including two companies of Marylanders, streamed inside the opening. In a matter of minutes, they bayoneted fifty Redcoats and captured another 158 as prisoners. Only about fifty Hessians, who were holed up in one of the blockhouses, refused to surrender and continued firing on the Americans. With daylight approaching, the Patriots left the mercenaries where they were and began herding their prisoners back to the American lines. Given that there was a strong British garrison in New York City, the Americans had no intention of retaining the fortifications on Paulus Hook. Victorious, Lee and his men retreated north with their captives.
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