After Yorktown

by Don Glickstein

  Despite being “somewhat addicted to the vaunting style,” a captain said, Wayne “could fight as well as brag.” Greene said his general had “military ardor, which, no doubt, is heated by the fire of the modern hero”—not a wise quality. Still, Greene said, “He is an excellent officer.” Others had a similar assessment. “His excessive courage never destroyed his self-possession, nor obscured the excellent judgment which he possessed,” wrote a contemporary.18

  Wayne’s swearing was notorious. Once, he failed to find a sentry at an expected position. “He damned all our souls to hell,” said a lieutenant. “[I] shall not forget his damns, which he is very apt to bestow upon people.”19

  Privately, Washington was critical of Wayne’s over-the-top personality. After the war, Washington described Wayne as “more active and enterprising than judicious and cautious. No economist it is feared. Open to flattery, vain, easily imposed upon, and liable to be drawn into scrapes. Too indulgent (the effect perhaps of some of the causes just mentioned) to his officers and men. Whether sober or a little addicted to the bottle, I know not.” Nonetheless, Washington fed Wayne a stream of important assignments both during the war and while president a decade later.20

  He was born on New Year’s Day 1745. His grandfather had immigrated to Pennsylvania and eventually owned 1,600 acres about twenty-five miles west of Philadelphia. From an early age, Wayne showed a military aptitude. His uncle, who ran a school Wayne attended, complained to Wayne’s father: “What he may be best qualified for, I know not, but one thing I am certain of, that he will never make a scholar. He may make a soldier; he has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my direction by rehearsals of battles and sieges, etc. . . . Unless Anthony pays more attention to his books, I shall be under the painful necessity of dismissing him from the school.”21

  At eighteen, he became a surveyor, like his future superior, Washington. And, like Washington, he was good at it. Franklin and other Philadelphia speculators hired him in late 1765 to survey land they owned in Nova Scotia and later to be superintendent there. He returned to Pennsylvania the next year.22

  In 1774, with the dispute between Britain and the colonies heating up, his neighbors elected Wayne to chair the county committee of safety. The committee coordinated local militia efforts, which Wayne helped organize. When war broke out, he was named a colonel. He was wounded in the leg in mid-1776 at Trois Rivières, Québec, where he had been sent to support retreating troops from the Canadian invasion debacle. Later that year, he commanded the strategic Fort Ticonderoga.

  Wayne fought at the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, and led troops at what became known as—probably more for rebel propaganda reasons than for what happened—the Paoli Massacre. On the night of September 20, the British supposedly bayoneted rebel troops trying to surrender. Massacre or not, Wayne was surprised and routed, then accused of negligence. A court-martial unanimously acquitted him, concluding that Wayne “did everything that could be expected from an active, brave, and vigilant officer, under the orders he then had.”23

  Two weeks after Paoli, Wayne led a nearly successful assault at Germantown. He spent that winter at Valley Forge, where he was named brigadier general and given command of the Pennsylvania line—Continental army regulars from his home state. His troops continued to fight well at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778.

  Washington’s respect for Wayne’s abilities grew. In June 1779, Washington gave him a special assignment: command of an elite strike force of fifteen hundred men. Unlike the Georgia Legion, it proved its quality: On July 15, Wayne led his corps on a meticulously planned surprise night attack on Stony Point, a British fortification guarding an important ferry crossing on the Hudson River. The attack succeeded.

  “I believe that sanguine god is rather thirsty for human gore,” Wayne wrote a friend. “The horrid depredations of the enemy to the southward indicate an inundation of it.” The British would only capitulate when “the price of much blood” becomes “too great a hazard for Britons to make many purchases.”24

  Wayne became Washington’s troubleshooter. After Benedict Arnold’s treason was discovered in August 1780, and the rebel stronghold at West Point nearly given to the British, Wayne took command of the fort. Back with his Pennsylvania troops in New Jersey in winter 1780–1781, Wayne faced a mutiny by fifteen hundred men with grievances about recruitment bounties, pay, living conditions, and enlistment length. At least two were killed, and others were wounded. Most mutineers, however, were peaceful. A Congressional delegation worked with Wayne on a settlement: total amnesty, discharge of many of the troops who had served at least three years, back pay, and clothing.

  The mutiny settled, Washington sent Wayne with eight hundred men to Virginia, joining Lafayette in his efforts to harass Cornwallis. Wayne reached Lafayette in early June 1781.

  On July 6, Lafayette ordered Wayne, with five hundred men (later reinforced by another three hundred), to find the whereabouts of the main British army. Cornwallis set a trap, and Wayne blundered into it. Around sunset, Wayne suddenly found his force being enveloped by five thousand British and Hessian soldiers, the bulk of Cornwallis’s army. Instead of immediately retreating, which Wayne believed could turn into a panicked rout, he attacked the main British army, halting its advance. Then, he ordered his men to retreat while Lafayette, viewing the action from a distance, ordered reinforcements to cover Wayne. With darkness setting in, Cornwallis didn’t pursue. At the end of the day, 139 of Wayne’s men were killed, wounded, or missing—seventeen percent of his force. Seventy-five British soldiers were killed or wounded. A Wayne biographer concluded from the mixed contemporary critiques that peers could “hardly decide after the battle whether to admire Wayne for his brave and impetuous character or to condemn him as a foolhardy adventurer.”25

  Two months later, a friendly sentry accidentally shot Wayne in the leg. That wound kept him from fighting at Yorktown.

  In January 1782, Wayne headed to Georgia. Greene’s orders: Coordinate all the Whig military efforts; work closely with the Whig government; encourage Loyalist sympathizers to stay out of the fight; give the Georgians “more effectual support” in both offensive and, if necessary, defensive actions. “Try by every means in your power to soften the malignity and deadly resentments subsisting between the Whigs and Tories, and put a stop as much as possible to that cruel custom of putting people to death after they have surrendered themselves prisoners.” Try as much as possible to stop the militia’s “practice of plunder.”26

  A couple of weeks later, Greene sent a postscript: “Before you left here, I forgot to impress you with an idea of not hazarding too much. . . . Your reputation depends more on avoiding a misfortune than on achieving something very great. Brilliant actions may fade, but a prudent conduct never can.”27

  Wayne crossed the Savannah River from South Carolina into Georgia on January 12, 1782, and rendezvoused with Jackson in New Ebenezer. Other militia would straggle in to join Wayne in coming weeks and months, but Jackson’s legion was a constant. It became Greene’s advance guard, operating a dozen miles ahead of Wayne, “frequently skirmishing with the enemy, and sustaining all the hardships of want, nakedness, and a desolated country.” Jackson would later remember “horrid” conditions—his men often going up to two days without bread, beef, rice, rum, whiskey, or any drink other than “common swamp water.”28

  Wayne complained to Greene about provisions, and he repeatedly pleaded for more men. “For God’s sake, reinforce the soonest possible,” he wrote in early February. Two weeks later, he told Greene his Virginia dragoons “are almost as naked as nature left them.” Jackson had only 130 men, and because they weren’t professionals, the burden of guarding against enemy attacks “falls severe upon a few Continental dragoons unsupported by infantry.” A week after that, he begged Greene, “Pray send me at least 200 picked infantry.”29

  Even with his small force of about five hundred men with occasional reinforcements, Wayne made progress na
rrowing Clarke’s area of control. “A party of Continental horse[men] have showed themselves at different times and places for two or three days past within eight or 10 miles of Savannah,” the royal governor reported on January 23. “Now, all our outposts are broke up and called in.” By the 26th, Wayne had “maneuvered the enemy” from three more outposts. In their retreat, the British “set fire to and consumed all the grain and forage,” forcing Wayne’s men to forage or get supplies from as far away as Augusta and across the border in South Carolina.30

  Wayne also was concerned about his rear. Most Indians in backcountry Georgia felt their best interests were protected by the British, and some tribal groups participated in raids with Tory or British officers. In late January, Wayne sent a militia detachment to intercept a trading party of thirty Indians and Tories, accompanied by ninety-three packhorses loaded with supplies for Savannah. The force captured twenty-six Creek Indians without a fight.31

  Encounter followed encounter. Jackson repulsed Tories at a sawmill on February 13. More Indians were intercepted on the 19th, and they were sent back with a plea to remain neutral. Not so lucky was a sole Indian the Whigs captured: They tied him to a tree during an interrogation, then shot him to death and hacked his body to pieces. On the 26th, Jackson made a night raid to burn British provisions on the royal governor’s plantation half a mile from Savannah. But a diversionary force of South Carolina Whig militia was ambushed.32

  In March, an encounter with British and Indians cost one Whig dragoon his life. The man, said a Wayne aide, was “scalped in a most barbarous manner, under the eye and inspection of a British officer, cut off his upper lip and nose, and cut his face, most barbarously, for which the [royal] lieutenant governor gave an entertainment to those wretches a little while after.”33

  More skirmishes in April. In the backcountry, on the Oconee River, four hundred Georgia Whigs attacked a party of Loyalists and Indians, killing a dozen while suffering one death. Closer to Savannah, Jackson fought thirty British, killing their commander. On the Alatamaha River, a Whig major and twenty-eight men captured some Indians, and then were attacked themselves. The major died. In May, a dozen Whigs ambushed fifteen Choctaw scouts, killing five and wounding more. The Whigs retreated as the main Indian body of seventy approached. The Indians were “finding every path leading to their nation shut up and bloody,” and resented the British for getting them into the situation, Wayne told Greene.34

  Wayne achieved what was by Georgia standards a major victory on May 20 and 21. Clarke, in Savannah, had asked his Creek and Cherokee allies for reinforcements, and he sent more than three hundred Tory militia to rendezvous with them and escort them back to Savannah. Wayne, with Jackson as his advance guard, seized control of a crucial causeway through a swamp, and around midnight attacked the British, killing their colonel, killing or wounding forty others, and capturing twenty. Five of Wayne’s men were killed and two wounded. “The advantage was gained by the liberal use of the sword and bayonet,” said one account.35

  In June, Wayne felt confident enough to move his army from the well-fortified New Ebenezer to about five miles west of Savannah. There, in the early morning of June 24, one hundred fifty to three hundred Creek Indians with Tory guides attacked. It was a blunder on both sides. The Indians thought they were attacking a small camp of pickets, not the main body, but Wayne had changed the pickets’ location the night before. His army was mostly asleep and surprised. Still, Wayne formed his troops, inspired them with a shout of “Death or victory,” and ordered a bayonet charge. The Creek attack was “most furious,” Wayne later told Greene. The Indians “met our charge with that ferocity for which they’re famous. . . . The bravery of the Indians, fighting hand to hand, gave an opening for the free use of sword and bayonet.” He praised the Creek commander, Emistisiguo (spelled in an infinite number of ways in contemporary accounts). “Such was their determined bravery that after mortally wounding one of their chiefs, and charging at the head of the dragoons over his body, he, with his last breath, drew his trigger and killed my horse under me.” A different account, by a Whig captain, disputes Wayne’s story: The Creek commander, “the largest and bravest of the warriors—six feet three inches—weighing about two hundred twenty pounds . . . after receiving an espontoon [lance] and three bayonets in his body, encouraged his warriors all the while, he retired a few paces, composedly laid himself down, and died without a groan or struggle.”36

  Fourteen Indians were killed and an unknown number wounded, while five Whigs were killed and eight wounded. After sunrise, when it appeared that the enemy would counterattack, Wayne ordered the execution of twelve Creek prisoners, “to free us from encumbrance.” Again, the British saw it differently. The British Indian superintendent reported that the Indians “surprised and routed the rebels and with a very trifling loss, the gallant Emistisiguo excepted.” Moreover, the majority of Creeks were able to reach Savannah, reinforcing Clarke.37

  Overall, however, rebel successes caused Clarke problems. The Whig legislature had acceded to Wayne’s request to pardon Tory and Hessian mercenary deserters who agreed to fight for him. For the Hessians, the legislature promised two hundred acres, a cow, and two breeding hogs—and they publicized the offer in German-language broadsides. The policy’s first major success was the February surrender of Tory militia leader Sir Patrick Houston with a “considerable” number of Hessians. One of Houston’s brothers was a Whig leader (and future Georgia governor), but another remained loyal to the Crown.38

  More desertions followed. “The enemy have filled the swamps round their [defensive] works with Tories, Indians, and armed negroes to prevent [Hessian] desertions. Notwithstanding which, a number of Hessians find the way out,” Wayne told Greene. He later joked that his troops consisted of “British, Hessians, new levies, outliers, Tories, crackers, Ethiopians, and Indian allies to the number of thirteen tribes.” German-American women helped Wayne in his efforts to encourage desertion. “The women are the best recruiting agents for the rebels,” said one Hessian.39

  It wasn’t Whig propaganda. Leslie, in Charlestown, after reading Clarke’s reports, said: “I find the Hessian Regiment has been there too long, they desert fast, and I am afraid little dependence is to be put in them. . . . I am sorry to find some leading people of our militia going over to the enemy and persuading others to follow them.”40

  Clarke’s increasingly untenable situation resolved itself on May 23 when Guy Carleton, who had succeeded Clinton earlier that month, ordered Savannah’s immediate evacuation, pending the arrival of transports. Clarke asked Wayne for a cessation of hostilities. Wayne refused, deferring to the Whig governor, who, in turn, deferred to Congress. Wayne moved his troops to within sight of Savannah, and tried unsuccessfully to lure the British from their fortifications.41

  Savannah Tories were livid at what they saw as capitulation and abandonment. They wrote Leslie about their “astonishment” that Savannah would be evacuated. Nonetheless, British transports began arriving off Savannah around June 20. Clarke moved his heaviest equipment first to the waterfront at the bottom of Savannah’s bluff, then to small boats that ferried the equipment down the river to ships anchored off Tybee Island more than 15 miles east.42

  Loyalist merchants and militia began to negotiate the terms of the evacuation with Wayne. He was generous: Merchants could stay in Savannah another six months to get their affairs in order and sell any property or inventories. He and the Whig government assured the Tories they would be safe. They also promised amnesty to any Tory soldier who agreed to serve in the Whig army for two years or the duration of the war.

  “I think this was an act of justice, tempered [with] mercy,” Wayne said.

  Wayne also coordinated the evacuation’s timing with Clarke, and received assurances that the British would leave the city intact.43

  The day before the last British troops left, Wayne ordered his men to change into clean clothes and warned them of “the most severe and exemplary punishment,” if they or ci
vilians began plundering. Finally, he honored his top commander. “Lieutenant Colonel Jackson, in consideration of his severe and fatiguing service in the advance, is to receive the keys of Savannah, and is allowed to enter at the western gate taking possession thereof.”44

  At noon, July 11, 1782, Jackson’s legion entered Savannah. It had been occupied for three years, six months, thirteen days. Ahead of Jackson, Clarke’s one thousand-man garrison left for New York, while twenty-five hundred Loyalists, four thousand of their slaves, a small number of free African Americans, and two hundred Creek and Choctaw Indians headed for multiple destinations: New York, England, Jamaica, or St. Augustine.45

  “Nothing can surpass the sorrow which many of the inhabitants expressed at our departure, especially those ladies whose sweethearts were under necessity of quitting the town at our evacuation,” a Loyalist soldier wrote in his diary that day. “Some of the ladies were converted and brought over to the ‘faith,’ so as to quit as well and follow us.”46

  Clarke also went to New York, where he was promoted to brigadier general and oversaw the return of British prisoners. He later became the peacetime administrator of Jamaica, and served in Canada, Gibraltar, Cape Town, and, in 1798, India, as commander-in-chief. He returned to England in 1801, a wealthy and honored man.

  With Savannah evacuated, Greene immediately ordered Wayne to join him in South Carolina—but first, Wayne had cleanup work to do. Toward the end of July, he received reports of a five hundred-man Tory and Indian militia force “skulking” nine miles from Savannah. He sent Jackson and the legion to check them on Skidaway Island, but they were forced to retreat on July 25 in the face of superior force and numbers. The Tories burned a plantation, but eventually either left the state or disappeared into the population. In August, British raiders out of St. Augustine sailed as close as twenty miles from Savannah, burning a plantation, capturing thirty-three slaves, and stealing a valuable store of indigo.47