Nevertheless, his feelings ran deep. “As you may have learned,” he wrote to his parents a few days after the battle, “we handed the Lobsters a richly deserved trouncing at Princeton. I was sick at heart when I caught a glimpse of scarlet uniforms in the window of the very room Charles and I once occupied, but we drove out the rascals, and found Nassau Hall in tolerable good shape. Our own gunners creased the masonry of that venerable structure, more’s the pity, but are not to be blamed. They, like the rest of us, had to seek out the enemy wherever he was hiding.
“The general,” Harry added in a diplomatic afterthought, “fought superbly, and inspired in us all a desire to emulate his gallant conduct.”
The ambitious young captain must have known that his mother would show his letter to Mrs. Washington, whom she saw daily, and he would have been dull indeed had he not hoped that Aunt Martha, as he called her, might mention his comments when she next wrote to her husband.
Harry Lee did nothing in the Battle of Princeton to enhance his reputation, but the engagement was a significant milestone in his career as a soldier. Only a few days from his twenty-first birthday, the captain had taken part in his first real battle, had heard the whine of American artillery overhead and had faced enemy cavalry, enemy infantry and enemy guns. The experience was not wasted.
Artillerist-bookseller Knox, himself deeply interested in a comparison of past and present, wrote to his wife, in an undated letter probably dispatched in late January 1777; “I have had several discussions of our campaign with Capt. H. Lee, of Virginia, a learned fellow who displays as much knowledge of the maneuvers of the ancients as he does of Cornwallis’ cavalry screen. I find him fluent also in Latin, and believe that unless our tribulations sap his buoyancy, he will become a valued colleague.”
Few men, if any, shared the foresight of Knox in the first dreary months of 1777. There was little opportunity for any American to shine in that drab period. On the surface, the situation looked bright: Howe, frightened by Washington’s twin victories at Trenton and Princeton, withdrew all but a few outposts to New York Town and, technically at least, left the American Army in possession of the whole state of New Jersey.
But Washington knew, if the enemy did not, that the few regiments of Continentals and shaky militia were too weak to occupy the ground. The corps had not yet been reinforced, and neither munitions were being provided by a harried Continental Congress that, lacking authority over the states, could not fulfill its promises or meet its financial obligations.
Washington’s problems were complicated by the unpleasant fact that many militia enlistments were expiring, and cold, hungry men, out of contact with their families and worried about the prospects of spring planting, were leaving for their homes. A few units replaced them, but militia recruits, as the Continental commander and his generals had learned, were almost useless. One simply could not rely on a soldier until he had smelled gunpowder and, without panicking, faced a long, cold steel line of advancing British bayonets.
While the rest of America rejoiced over the victories at Trenton and Princeton, General Washington privately wallowed in gloom. “If the enemy do not move,” he wrote in March, “it will be a miracle. Nothing but ignorance of our numbers and situation can protect us.”
Harry Lee believed that the Almighty helped those who helped themselves. Unwilling to idle away uncomfortable hours at the American winter quarters in rural Pennsylvania, he obtained permission for his troop to engage in reconnaissance operations during most of January, February, and March. What he sought was not information regarding enemy numbers, but food and arms; the foe was in New York, so he ventured north, and became an expert at raiding small garrison outposts that Howe had established to protect the approaches to New York Town.
Harry’s Virginians were so active that, in mid-February, they stole stores from three different posts in three days, one in Newark, one in Perth Amboy, and one a lonely beach station at Highlands, facing the Atlantic. The alarmed Howe concluded that the Americans were sending out patrols in strength, and increased his garrisons. Not until years later did he discover the truth, that he had been pestered by a single, persistent gadfly.
The supplies Harry brought back to the American camp weren’t spectacular, but he rarely returned emptyhanded, and the senior commanders became increasingly appreciative of his talents. Not surprisingly, a significant change took place in his status and that of his command when, their enlistments expiring, his troops voluntarily re-enlisted — to a man. No other militia unit could boast such a record, and the Fifth Troop deserved a reward, which was immediately forthcoming.
Colonel Theodorick Bland had arrived at headquarters with the bulk of his Virginia Light Dragoon regiment, and everywhere he heard praise for Captain Lee. He reacted accordingly, and in a brief ceremony redesignated the small unit as the First Troop. Harry was given a small blue pennant, decorated with white stars, as his insignia, and his standard-bearer carried it for the rest of the war, long after the captain had attained a much higher rank and greatly expanded command.
Colonel Bland wanted his new First Troop to rejoin the regiment. But several senior officers, among them fellow-Virginian Colonel Daniel Morgan and General Benjamin Lincoln persuaded the commander-in-chief that he was too valuable to be wasted on ordinary cavalry duty. At the personal order of General Washington, the new First Troop remained on detached service.
Washington, who never allowed himself to be moved by personal considerations, was undoubtedly thinking in broader terms. The war was entering a new and critical phase, and it was urgently necessary that he learn the enemy’s intentions as soon as possible. Word had reached Washington that Lieutenant General John Burgoyne, reputedly one of the most able of British field commanders, had begun a march south from Canada with a strong corps. Apparently he intended to make his way into the United States by way of the New York state chain of lakes that Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had won for the Americans early in the war.
This left Sir William Howe with an option, and either choice spelled bad news for the defenders. He might march north from New York Town to link forces with Burgoyne, cut off the fertile Mohawk Valley, the American “breadbasket,” and isolate all of New England. Or, knowing that the manpower-shy Washington could not let Burgoyne advance unopposed, Howe might elect to make a thrust against the weakened main body of defenders and try to take Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress and the most important city in the United States.
The British held a forward position at New Brunswick, and a makeshift American division faced them at nearby Bound Brook. The intervening ground was perhaps the most sensitive area in North America at the moment, and Harry was sent on patrol there, under General Lincoln’s command, early in April. Each day he and his men rode into no-man’s-land, searching for any movements that might hint whether the British were intending to pull out or advance toward Philadelphia. Tempers were frayed at the command post of Lincoln, a plodding bulldog of a man, but Harry was always cheerful. Then, as later, he thrived on tensions that left other men limp.
It was a personality trait he recognized, but refused to take credit for it. Many years later, his eldest son, who was called Henry, Jr., but was actually the fourth in a direct line of descent to bear the name, wrote that his father was painfully modest on the subject, refusing to take credit for what he considered inherited characteristics.
Two weeks later he displayed another and less admirable trait, inordinate vanity. He received orders from Colonel Bland, instructing him to take up a new position on the eastern flank of the main body, at Chatham, and to proceed there by way of Morristown. Harry was dismayed. Morristown was General Washington’s headquarters, and his troop, after many months in the field, no longer made a smart showing. Many were wearing ordinary footgear instead of their polished boots, which had worn out. Others had lost or damaged their plumed hats.
Harry promptly wrote a letter to Colonel Bland. “Could the articles mentioned (boots and helmets) b
e allowed my Troop, their appearance into Morristown would secure me from the imputation of carelessness as their captain; and I have vanity enough to hope would assist me in procuring some little credit to the colonel and the Regiment.”
General Lincoln, holding a line with untrained militia, was unhappy for different reasons when he heard of the transfer. He desperately needed experienced cavalrymen who could serve him in battle as well as on scouting missions. He directed Harry to remain, and promised to write Colonel Bland.
Events conspired to keep him so busy he had no time for letter-writing. That night Lord Cornwallis forded the Raritan River near the village of Millstone Creek on a raiding expedition. Lincoln hastily withdrew to safer ground, but his raw troops failed to act quickly enough, and sixty militiamen lost their lives. Lincoln suffered the personal humiliation of having his own personal headquarters looted, and lost his official papers and personal luggage. His aide-de-camp, who tried singlehanded to stave off the bayonet-wielding Redcoats, was killed.
Captain Harry Lee and his First Troop were sent against an enemy of unknown size. The little body of cavalry made a gallant charge, and drove forward so vigorously that it scattered a whole battalion of Redcoat infantry. As it happened, Cornwallis was merely probing, not conducting a major operation, and withdrew. Harry knew better than to take credit for the British retreat, but his unit, nevertheless, was the only organization in General Lincoln’s command that behaved creditably that night.
Cornwallis’ push having been successful, he determined to remain active, and the Virginia Dragoons were assigned a permanent place in the defense line. Redcoat units from platoon to battalion strength moved out against the Americans every day, and every day Harry’s First Troop was dispatched to the trouble spot. For all practical purposes he fought fourteen miniature battles in fourteen days, and his men suffered their first casualties, two troopers sustaining serious wounds, while three others survived lesser injuries.
Harry was so busy during this hectic period that he had no time to make out his monthly payroll requisition to Colonel Bland. Meanwhile the flustered General Lincoln, trying to protect himself from the blows that were directed at him first from one quarter, then another, completely forgot that the junior officer on whom he was leaning so heavily had been ordered elsewhere — and that he himself had taken no action in the matter.
At the end of April, Colonel Bland sent Harry another order, repeating the instructions he had given in his first. The colonel’s patience was wearing thin, and he couched his command in blunt language stripped of diplomatic and military finesse. Again General Lincoln demurred, and Harry was caught in the middle.
Well aware that he was laying himself open to court-martial charges on grounds of insubordination if he disobeyed Bland, and of the even more serious charges of desertion if he abandoned Lincoln, Harry sat down at the end of a hard day’s skirmishing and scribbled a letter to Bland, explaining the situation in full.
Lincoln, he said, was intending to attack Cornwallis’ Hessians the following Saturday. Therefore, assuming that all went as planned, he would be able to leave on Sunday. The assault did not take place, Cornwallis having learned of the Americans’ intentions. He kept the initiative, the weary Virginians were sent in to plug holes in the line each day, and it was mid-May before Harry finally left for Morristown.
By then he and his men were too tired to care how they looked. They were unshaven, their uniforms muddy and patched, their cloaks battle-stained. But when they arrived at the commander-in-chief’s headquarters they exhibited a quality that Washington appreciated far more than a smart appearance. They were professional soldiers now, men who had met and repulsed the enemy repeatedly.
They rode with a swagger, they stared the infantrymen who hooted insults at them into sudden, panicky silence and they thought so highly of themselves that they voluntarily staged an impromptu review for General Washington, cantering past him in pairs, as though daring him to criticize their ragged appearance.
Washington responded by granting the First Troop its first official commendation, which he issued to Colonel Bland in his Orders of the Day dated May 17. And that same day the instructions directing Harry to take up his position at the little town of Chatham were countermanded. General Lincoln had finally found an opportunity to send a detailed report to the commander-in-chief, and Washington decided that the First Troop of Virginia Dragoons should remain on detached service.
There was enough to keep Harry and his men fully occupied. With the coming of warmer weather, the British began to gather supplies in larger quantities, and their wagon trains once more bounced over the rutted New Jersey roads. Harry resumed his practice of raiding them, expanding and refining his techniques so successfully that one day he and his First Troop appeared in the role of cowboys as they drove a large herd of British-purchased cattle into Morristown.
It had been simple for him to capture the animals, he explained. He had divided the Troop into two squads, and while the larger had attacked the Redcoat quartermaster escort, the smaller had stolen the cattle. He had brought back enough beef-on-the-hoof to provide virtually everyone in the Army with meat for supper, and those soldiers who hadn’t before heard of Light-Horse Harry Lee knew him now.
On another occasion the First Troop returned with equally interesting booty, forty carts laden with bolts of scarlet cloth obviously intended for use in the making of new uniforms. The quality and weave of the wool were good, and several New England officers familiar with the manufacture of fabrics began to experiment, hoping to find ways to dye the cloth blue. Unfortunately, their efforts failed, so General Nathanael Greene, who was as adept at performing non-combat functions as he was at fighting, decided to make blankets for the corps that was growing larger again, to the pleased surprise of every senior officer.
Howe was annoyed by the Virginians’ raids — and by those of other companies of horsemen emulating them — so he sent out cavalry of his own to protect his convoys and harass the enemy. Frequent skirmishes erupted on the New Jersey flatlands, perfect terrain for the maneuvering of horse. Casualties were few in these encounters, and neither side deterred the other. But the flurries provided Harry with still more training, under actual combat conditions. He learned more, he said in his Memoirs, from the British officers he fought than he had picked up in all of his previous experience.
The most important of the new traits he acquired was caution. Heretofore he had charged headlong at the enemy, hoping to scatter the opposition, but he was impressed by the techniques of the British commanders, who applied pressure by flanking movements rather than direct horse-to-horse and sword-to-sword confrontations. It was obvious that a leader who rode his men straight into an enemy line was courting death so he experimented with the British tactics, and found ways to improve on them.
One was to begin an operation as a head-on charge, then sweep to a flank after gaining momentum — and before coming within the foe’s pistol range. In that way he was able to utilize the best features of both methods. It is significant that he never again employed the reckless charge in his career, and relied instead on skill, utilizing his instinctive ability to think and act more quickly than his foes.
There was more than work to keep Harry busy now, and he developed something of a social life for the first time since going on active service. Mrs. Washington arrived at Morristown, and not only entertained for other wives who had come there, too, but invited various officers to dine at the general’s table. The majority were generals and colonels, and virtually no juniors were honored other than members of the commander-in-chief’s personal staff. But Martha Washington would not hear of excluding the son of her dearest friend.
So Harry reluctantly found himself dining rather frequently in exalted company. Mrs. Washington, who remembered his vivacity and his tendency to dominate table talk by discussing his favorite authors, was struck by his long, meditative silences. “Henry,” she wrote to his mother, “is much changed. He has acquired a mode
st grace that is most becoming in one of his years.”
Harry had not changed in the least. But, as a professional soldier, he had learned that a captain holds his tongue when surrounded by the gold and silver epaulets of major generals and brigadiers, colonels and lieutenant colonels. When he dined with his peers, he still bored them to distraction by quoting Pope at length, from memory.
Mrs. Bland also joined her husband, and Cousin Harry received frequent invitations to sit at the table of the colonel and his lady. Another newcomer was Mrs. John Fitzgerald, the wife of a dashing lieutenant colonel from Virginia who was serving as one of the commander-in-chief’s personal aides. A pretty and charming young woman, she was only a few years older than Harry; one of her younger sisters had been his companion at several pre-war dances, and was still interested in him, so she made it a point to entertain the captain, too.
“I dine so handsomely,” Harry wrote to his parents, “that I no longer have an appetite for plain Army fare.” Always painfully thin, he gained a little weight.
Meanwhile the skirmishes continued, and no one knew what Howe would do. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne captured Fort Ticonderoga, the gateway to the Mohawk Valley, and there was gloom at the Morristown headquarters. Washington wrote letter after letter to the Congress and the governors of the states, begging for more men, supplies, and ordnance. Enlistments in the Continentals had increased, but not enough, and the new militia units were undependable, as always.
A political storm enlivened life at headquarters, too. Silas Deane, who had been sent to Paris to negotiate an alliance with the government of King Louis XVI, inadvertently touched it off. His talks were progressing, and there was hope that a pact would he concluded. In an attempt to further them, he sent communications to Washington and the Congress, recommending the appointment of a thoroughly qualified French gentlemen, Philippe Charles du Coudray, as chief of artillery. Du Coudray had excellent connections at court, and the awarding of the post to him might make it easier to obtain the much-desired treaty.
Light-Horse Harry: A Biography of Washington’s Great Cavalryman, General Henry Lee (Heroes and Villains from American History) Page 5