The two sides skirmished for the remainder of 1779, but Paulus Hook was the last engagement of note in the North, as Washington refused to be drawn into a large-scale battle with General Henry Clinton. The war lapsed as the cold winds of winter began to blow again.
During the winter of 1779–80, the Marylanders and the rest of the army returned to their former camps at Morristown, New Jersey. It was the worst winter the men endured. Even the saltwater inlets and harbors from North Carolina to Canada froze, and sleds, not boats, carried firewood across New York Harbor from Loyalists in New Jersey to British-occupied Manhattan. In the first week of January a heavy blizzard buried the Marylanders, who were living in tents or huts, under five feet of snow. Without proper clothing, shoes, and blankets, the men froze, many losing limbs or even their lives.
Making matters worse, the army was once again nearly out of supplies. George Washington wrote,
The situation of the army with respect to supplies is beyond description alarming. It has been five or six weeks past on half allowance and we have nor more than three days bread at a Third allowance on hand, nor any where within reach. . . . Our magazines are absolutely empty everywhere and our commissaries entirely destitute of money or credit to replenish them. We have never experienced a like extremity at any period of the war. . . . Unless some extraordinary and immediate exertions are made by the States from which we draw our supplies, there is every appearance that the army will infallibly disband in a fortnight.
By early January, food became so scarce that they were “almost perishing.” Washington noted in another letter, “They have borne their distress . . . with as much fortitude as human nature is capable of; but they have been at last brought to such dreadful extremity, that no authority or influence of the officers, no virtue or patience in the men themselves could any longer restrain them from obeying the dictates of their own sufferings. The Soldiery have in several instances plundered the neighbouring Inhabitants even of their necessary subsistence.”
To deal with the situation, Washington called on the residents of New Jersey to supply a set amount of food for the army. If the people didn’t comply, the officers in charge of collecting the food “delicately” let the people know that they would enforce the quotas. To obtain hard cash, the Americans begged for and received some loans from France, which took decades to repay. While this did much to alleviate the situation, hardship remained.
Poor conditions, hyperinflation, lack of pay and food, and the frigid winter caused nearly the entire Pennsylvania Line to mutiny. According to Marylander John Boudy, “The winter of this year was also very severe, and such was the sufferings of the Army for provisions and clothing that some regiments mutinied.” Hoping to take advantage of the situation and turn the Continentals’ coats, Clinton sent emissaries to the mutineers, who ignored them. At first, Mad Anthony Wayne negotiated with them. He discharged half the Continentals and provided the others compensation for back pay and extra clothing. But the whole idea of negotiating with disloyal men didn’t sit well with Wayne. Instead, as Mordecai Gist had done months earlier in Monmouth County, Wayne called on New Jersey troops to quell the mutiny. With Washington’s blessing, he rounded up several of the ringleaders and appointed a firing squad of fellow Pennsylvanians to execute their brother soldiers. Wanting to set an example, he ordered the men to fire at the mutineers from a range of ten feet. As a result, “the handkerchiefs covering the eyes of some of them were set on fire. The fence and even the heads of rye for some distance within the field were covered with the blood and brains.” Astonishingly, one man survived. Wayne then ordered one of the firing squad members to bayonet the dying man, who was writhing in pain on the frozen field. He refused. Mad Anthony promptly pulled out his pistol and threatened to kill the soldier if he didn’t follow orders. The man complied, driving his bayonet through the condemned man. Wayne then paraded the rest of Pennsylvania Line past the remains of the dead soldiers, driving the lesson home.
Astonishingly, one ringleader, a Marylander, escaped punishment and was later brevetted to the rank of general. “Gentleman Cadet” Henry Carbery, who served alongside Jack Steward in Captain Thomas’s Maryland Independent Company at Long Island, was severely wounded by a bullet in the side of his body. Although most wounds to the body and side would have been fatal, amazingly, he recovered and transferred to the Pennsylvania Line in 1779. Carbery’s troubles began in 1776 when his father, a Loyalist, disowned him for entering Smallwood’s Battalion. According to Otho Holland Williams, Carbery thought the “northern army was going to be disbanded without pay or settlement of their accounts.” With no family or money, and “put out of the army with nothing more to live on than a good military name,” he encouraged scores of other Pennslyvania soldiers to march on Congress in Lancaster, Pennslyvania. When Wayne arrived to smash the mutiny, Carbery fled and escaped the fate of the ringleaders.29
29. After the war the Gentlemen Cadet resurfaced in Baltimore and attempted to obtain a pardon. Congress appointed a special committee and issued a warrant for his arrest. He appeared in court, but the matter of states’ rights versus the authority of Congress to issue an arrest order surfaced. Carbery emerged unscathed and would bravely serve in Maryland in several conflicts. He became its first adjutant general (commanding the militia and fulfilling other duties) and later the sixth mayor of Washington, D.C. He died with “a musket ball in his side that was never extracted.”
Despite Wayne’s and Washington’s efforts, two hundred men from the Jersey Line mutinied shortly after the Pennsylvanians. Without hesitating, Washington assembled the ringleaders and executed most of them. The contagion was contained. Wayne snidely noted, “A liberal dose of niter [gun powder] had done the trick.” No more large-scale mutinies within the Continental ranks occurred in 1780, but the root causes that inspired the mutiny lingered.
At this time, a small but significant group of Americans set about declaring their own independence from Britain. Many of the luminaries on both sides of the Revolution, including Washington; Benjamin Franklin; John Hancock; Israel Putnam; Henry Lee; Horatio Gates; Nathanael Greene; Henry Clinton; John Graves Simcoe; Charles, Earl Cornwallis; and Marylanders Gist, Williams, Steward, and Nathaniel Ramsay, were Freemasons, members of a fraternal organization that traced its origins to the Middle Ages. Lafayette was also a member, and his Masonic beliefs were part of the reason he decided to join the Revolution. The key principles of Freemasonry are self-improvement and guidance by example. All Masons who entered the lodge were considered equals, a principle the Masons called “being upon the level.” One Mason described the organization’s philosophy this way: “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Prior to the Revolution, the local Masonic lodges in the colonies fell under the authority of the lodges in Great Britain. However, as the Revolution progressed, the brothers from America and Britain found that they needed to part ways.
Taking advantage of the seasonal lull in the war, Gist and Williams spearheaded efforts to set up an independent Grand Lodge and name a grand master for America. Even before the war, Gist had been one of the most powerful Masons in the colonies, having risen to the rank of “Worshipful Master.” At a meeting in February, the American Masons established a committee to explore the idea of independence from the British lodge, and they unanimously elected Gist as president of the committee and Williams as its secretary. Gist penned a letter to the Masonic leaders in the colonies, in which he noted, “Unhappily, the distinctions of interest, the political view, and national disputes subsisting between Great Britain and These United States have involved us, not only in the general calamities that disturb the tranquility which used to prevail in this once happy country, but in a peculiar manner affects our society, by separating us from the Grand Mother Lodge in Europe, by disturbing our connection with each other, impeding the progress and preventing the perfection of masonry in America.�
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Using religious-sounding language, he begged them to “save us from the impending dangers of schisms and apostasy,” by “pursuing the most necessary measures for establishing one Grand Lodge in America, to preside over and govern all other Lodges.”
Gist succeeded in this effort, and urged Washington to become the first Grand Master of the United States Freemasons. Washington declined the position, and a single leader to unite the various lodges and orders was never chosen. Nevertheless, Washington remained active with the group throughout the Revolution, even taking time to celebrate the festival of Saint John the Evangelist (a holiday celebrated by the Masons that takes place two days after Christmas) with his Masonic brothers at Morristown. After the war ended, Gist wrote in a personal letter to Washington, “When we contemplate the distresses of war, the instances of humanity displayed by the craft afford some relief to the feeling mind; and it gives us the most pleasing sensation to recollect that, amidst the difficulties attendant on your late military stations, you still associated with and patronized the ancient fraternity.”
Gist also applied for and received a warrant allowing him to establish a Masonic lodge among the members of the Maryland Line while they were in the field. They formed Army Lodge No. 27 with Gist as Worshipful Master and Williams as Senior Warden. The Masons believe that Smallwood, John Eager Howard, and even Johann de Kalb affiliated with this lodge during the time that the Marylanders were campaigning in the South. Following the war, Gist continued his involvement with the fraternal organization, becoming grand master of Ancient York Masons in South Carolina.
Eager to strike a blow against its rival, France had begun shipping men, money, and supplies to aid the Patriots and threaten British holdings in the Caribbean back in the fall of 1778. To counter this threat, the British built up their forces in the West Indies, shifting men away from the colonies on the mainland. In a largely forgotten chapter of the America Revolution, the British also went to war with Spain, France’s new ally, which had declared war on Britain without recognizing the United States. In declaring war on Britain, Spain saw an opportunity to win back its recently lost territories of Florida (which at the time extended west along the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River), the Bahamas, and Gibraltar. Britain also saw an opportunity and targeted Spain’s holdings in Central America, focusing on the gold-laden Mosquito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. The narrow neck of land also was the principal overland access from the Atlantic to Pacific—a potentially lucrative prize. After some initial success, the campaign went sour for the British, with the net result of bleeding away more troops from North America. In addition, thousands of Crown soldiers who could have been sent to America went elsewhere, as the war morphed into a global conflict. Once again, lack of troops hampered British operations and had a profound effect on the American Revolution.
Despite a lack of reinforcements, General Clinton, at the behest of London, grudgingly implemented a new war strategy with his reduced forces. He planned to focus on the southern states, where much of the population included Loyalists and slaves. The British hoped an invasion in the South would force the Americans to deploy troops there to prevent a slave revolt as well as to guard the frontier from possible attack by the Indians, many of whom sided with the British. With the Patriot forces divided, Clinton believed he could easily conquer Georgia and move on to South Carolina.
Back in November 1778, Clinton had boldly put the plan into action and ordered three thousand of his men currently in New York to board ships bound for Savannah, Georgia. By December 29, 1778, the city had fallen to the British. But the fight for Savannah was far from over. The Americans laid siege, and in September 1779 they were joined by Count Jean-Baptiste d’Estaing’s French fleet, which, after the debacle in Rhode Island in 1778, first sailed to Boston to refit and then moved off the coast of Georgia to participate in the attack on Savannah. However, the British dug in and, after a fierce battle, forced the French and the Patriots to withdraw with heavy losses.
Encouraged by the victory, Clinton moved more men from New York to the South. Eight thousand troops set sail in December and despite delays caused by hurricanes, landed with Charles, Earl Cornwallis thirty miles from Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1780. Benjamin Lincoln, the Massachusetts major general in charge of the Patriots’ southern forces, ordered his men to take cover behind the fortifications in Charleston.
The focus of the war was moving south.
1780
Chapter 26
The March South
Concerned about the southern army’s ability to withstand this coming British onslaught, George Washington decided to send some of his best troops to Charleston to reinforce Major General Benjamin Lincoln’s forces while the bulk of the army would remain to the north to protect West Point and the gateway to the northern colonies. Once again, Washington called on his Immortals. They joined with the intrepid Delaware Regiment, in total twenty-one hundred men, to form the Maryland Division. The division consisted of two brigades, one led by William Smallwood and one led by Mordecai Gist. Many men were pessimistic about the prospects of survival and dubbed the entire unit a forlorn hope.
They left Morristown on April 16, 1780, becoming part of a campaign that kept them in the South for several years. Hundreds of the men did not live to return home. Captain Bob Kirkwood kept a daily journal of their odyssey and every day recorded the miles the Immortals marched. The majority within the Maryland and Delaware regiments traversed a breathtaking 4,656 miles—often barefoot—between the spring of 1780 and the spring of 1782. The state did not compensate them until 1783—and then paid only if they were lucky enough to have survived and to have jumped through the right administrative and judicial hoops. Wages ceased for most men in August 1780. Officers advanced some of the men money, but after the war men had to swear under oath and convince a Maryland judge that they were owed back pay.
To the dismay of Gist and Smallwood, the leadership of the Maryland Division once again lay in the hands of a foreigner, General “Baron” Johann de Kalb. De Kalb, who had commanded the Maryland division for months prior to their march south, was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of his day, described by his aide-de-camp as “a perfect Ariovistus, more than six feet tall.” His endurance was the stuff of legend, and he regularly covered twenty to thirty miles per day on his own two feet, preferring walking to riding. This was all the more remarkable because in April 1780, de Kalb was fifty-nine years old. Well-disciplined and known for his “temperance, sobriety, and prudence,” he regularly awoke before dawn and began working immediately. At nine, he indulged in breakfast, consisting only of dry bread and water, the only thing he ever drank. For lunch, he had soup and a bit of meat; for dinner bread again. At the end of the day, he “arrange[d] his portmanteau as a pillow and wrapping his great horseman’s cloak around him stretch[ed] himself before the fire” to sleep. With his “patience, long-suffering, strength of constitution, endurance of hunger and thirst and a cheerful submission to every inconvenience in lodging,” de Kalb was an excellent officer who endeared himself to his men, leading by example and willingly suffering the hardships of the lowest private.
Despite his Hannibal-like leadership style, like Von Steuben, de Kalb styled himself a “baron” and used an aristocratic prefix (“de”) before his surname. General de Kalb was actually the son of Bavarian peasants. He left home at the age of sixteen and made his way to France, where he served as a lieutenant in an infantry regiment. Somewhere along the way, he changed his name from Hans Kalb to Johann de Kalb, which made him sound like a member of the nobility. He received several promotions, rising to the rank of major general, which conferred upon him the noble title of baron.
In 1767 the French had sent de Kalb to “inquire into the intentions of the inhabitants” in America. He reported back that the colonies were ripe for revolt, but France wasn’t interested in sending soldiers to the as-yet-unbegun revolution at that time. Eager to participate
in the war, de Kalb secretly returned to America with Lafayette and several other members of the French military who were seeking to serve the American cause. They arrived in June 1777. At that time, a stampede of Europeans had come to America in a similar manner, hoping for commissions in the army. Many did not obtain those commissions, but de Kalb eventually received the command of a division after some serious arm-twisting. Congress initially turned down de Kalb’s request to be commissioned a major general, but the feisty Bavarian persisted and even threatened to sue Congress. Eventually he was accorded the same rank as Lafayette. Despite the rocky start with Congress, de Kalb sent the king of France favorable reports, which directly affected French funding for the war. It’s not difficult to surmise that Washington let the baron command some of the Continental Army’s most elite troops to make a favorable impression on the king of France. Now de Kalb was leading the Marylanders on the first leg of their legendary journey, racing the 150 miles to Head of Elk, Maryland, in just three weeks. Along the way, John Eager Howard stopped in Baltimore to sell some property to raise money for his upcoming expenses. He also left some funds behind “as a provision in case of my being taken prisoner.” (Captured officers were expected to pay for their own imprisonment at the hands of the British.) At Head of Elk, the Marylanders boarded ships and sailed to Petersburg, Virginia.
As the Marylanders marched south, Henry Clinton and Charles, Earl Cornwallis’s force, which had sailed from New York, laid siege to Charleston. Although Lincoln held on to the city for two months, he eventually surrendered to the Redcoats. On May 12, 1780, the Crown made prisoners of about six thousand American troops, including all the Continentals from South Carolina and North Carolina, and nearly all those from Virginia. Snared in the Crown’s net were an additional one thousand American sailors and four American warships. It was the largest British POW haul of the war. At the time, it was customary for prisoners to be granted parole, that is, released on their oath that they would not fight again. However, the British denied Lincoln the traditional honors of war in accepting his surrender: the Americans were not allowed to march out with their colors or arms, and instead of granting parole, the British sent the rank and file to rot on prison ships.
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