The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  Time passed, and still there was no British attack. Both General Howe and Admiral Howe genuinely liked Americans and, before leaving England, had been named by the king to act as peace commissioners. So, before both sides locked in combat, the Howe brothers put out peace feelers. Under a flag of truce a British officer landed in Manhattan with a letter for “Mr. Washington.” This envoy was received by an American officer who said, “Sir, we have no person here in our army with that address.” Of course, there was a General Washington. After the proper form of address had been resolved, Washington met with a British lieutenant colonel, who reported that the Howe brothers wanted to settle the unhappy differences with America. Suspicious of this olive branch and unsure of the Howes’ authority, Washington refused to treat with the British high command.

  Now the English attacked. At dawn on August 22, 1776, a vanguard of troops shoved off from Staten Island near the western end of what today is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Under a bright sun and on calm water the redcoats ferried across the Narrows in 88 craft specially built for this amphibious operation. They were in a carefree mood. When their boats grounded on the flat beach of Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn, they jumped out, splashed ashore, ran to nearby apple trees, shinnied up, and threw apples at one another. No American force opposed this invasion. Back and forth across the mile-wide Narrows the landing craft plied, until by noon 15,000 British had been transferred to Long Island. Three days later they were reinforced by 5,000 Hessians.

  Washington hadn’t known whether the first enemy thrust would come at Manhattan or Brooklyn. He realized that to hold New York City, he must hold Brooklyn Heights, but this meant splitting his 19,000 effectives between the two places. Long before the British landed on Long Island, the Americans had thrown up forts and earthworks from Gowanus Bay on the south to Wallabout Bay (later the Brooklyn Navy Yard) on the north. These strongholds were protected on the eastern inland side by thickly wooded hills. Stretching southwest to northeast, the hills were almost impassable except where they were cut by four roads. The enemy now lay on the flat-lands to the south.

  On each of the two days after the British landing Washington left his New York headquarters and ferried across the East River to reconnoiter. Convinced that the big British push was being made against Brooklyn, he rushed over reinforcements until 7,000 Americans faced 20,000 Englishmen and Germans. Unfortunately, two-thirds of Washington’s men on Long Island were militia. Some had been under arms less than two weeks, and none had ever faced an enemy in battle. Discipline was so lax that some wandered miles beyond their fixed posts.

  Worst of all, Washington and his generals neglected one of the four passes cut through the hills. This was the Jamaica Pass, just west of the present intersection of Fulton Street and Broadway in Brooklyn. Only five young militia officers were left to guard it.

  The Battle of Long Island was fought on August 27, 1776. That morning the sun rose “with a red and angry glare.” Later the day turned clear, cool, and pleasant. About 8 A.M. Washington once more arrived from Manhattan, this time to lead his troops in action. Despite his service in the Seven Years’ War and at the siege of Boston, never before had he directed a stand-up battle. It also marked the first time that Americans and British clashed in formal battle array in the open field.

  Superior in numbers, weapons, experience, discipline, and strategy, the British pushed north. Most of the important action took place within the 526 acres now constituting Prospect Park. Perhaps the most dramatic and gallant episode occurred near Third and Eighth streets just west of Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue. There a Maryland battalion tried to hold off the enemy long enough for retreating Americans to scamper into the forts. The price they paid was 684 casualties. Standing on a hilltop and watching this action through field-glasses, Washington groaned, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!”

  By early afternoon most Americans who had not been shot, bayoneted, captured, drowned, or driven panic-stricken from the field were cooped up within forts and redoubts on Brooklyn Heights. They were frightened. They were bloody and tired. They sweated out the danger of a British frontal attack. They nibbled biscuits “hard enough to break the teeth of a rat,” as one private expressed it. But General Howe was not willing to risk a headlong charge on these strongholds. His caution won a battle and helped lose a war. With a little more daring Howe might have captured George Washington and the entire Long Island army and put an end to the revolution then and there.

  Up at four o’clock the next morning, Washington saw that the British still lay on their arms and that the wind kept enemy warships from closing in to bombard his position. He ordered even more Americans across the East River to reinforce his beleaguered men. The afternoon came and went with still no British attack. Toward evening a cold rain began and developed into a downpour that made it impossible for the Americans to build cooking fires. Their ammunition became wet and useless. In some trenches men stood waist-deep in water. All that night the northeasterly wind blew.

  The second day after the battle Washington was hard at work by 4:30 A.M., writing Congress about the “engagement between a detachment of our men and the enemy” on August 27. This chore done, he sent orders to Manhattan to gather all available boats and assemble them by dark on the west side of the East River. Next, he held a war council with his seven generals in the Brooklyn forts. Beset by a superior land force and in peril of being cut off from escape by the British fleet, the Americans agreed to evacuate.

  Soon after dusk the first boats from Manhattan nosed into the Brooklyn shore at what today is the eastern end of the Brooklyn Bridge. The northeasterly wind still kept enemy warships from closing in for the kill. Now a fog fell like a white pillow on the area. Besides blurring vision, it muffled sound. Speaking in whispers, groping through blackness, and squashing along muddy paths, American soldiers filed down to the evacuation point. A few panicked and tried to rush the boats and crawl over comrades’ heads to get a seat. But most of the shivering miserable men behaved well and stepped in orderly fashion into scows, barges, and rowboats; anything that floated had been brought to the scene. The craft were manned by seafaring New Englanders, who rowed with aching muscles from the east shore to the west and back again, all that fog-shrouded night. The last man to pick his way down slippery steps into a boat was George Washington.

  By seven o’clock on the morning of August 30 the last of his 10,000 men were back on Manhattan. They brought all their food, equipment, and arms, leaving behind only a few heavy and rusted cannon. A British military critic later wrote that “this retreat should hold a high place among military transactions.” Howe’s victory at the Battle of Long Island was indecisive because he let the American army regroup. England had lost its golden opportunity.

  On September 7, 1776, for the first time in history, a submarine made an underwater attack on a warship. A Yale graduate, named David Bushnell, designed this submarine and managed to present his idea to Washington, who gave the thirty-four-year-old inventor all the money and men he needed to construct his strange craft.

  Bushnell’s submarine was made of huge oak timbers, scooped out and fitted together in the shape of a clam. Because of its appearance it was called Bushnell’s Turtle. The oak timbers were bound with iron bands, the seams were calked, and everything was tarred to make the vessel watertight. The Turtle was big enough for one man to stand inside. Seven hundred pounds of lead stored in the bottom kept it upright. Two foot-operated pumps enabled the operator to dive or ascend. The submarine’s forward movement was provided by a hand crank that turned a two-bladed wooden screw propellor.

  Bushnell and Washington planned to use the crude submarine to blow up one of the British warships anchored in New York Harbor. Sergeant Ezra Lee, of Lyme, Connecticut, was chosen to operate the Turtle. One night a whaleboat towed the submarine to the foot of Whitehall Street at the Battery. An egg-shaped magazine, containing 130 pounds of gunpowder, was attached by a screw to the back of the submarine. The Americans h
oped that the magazine could be detached from the Turtle and fastened to the underside of a British man-of-war. A timing device would give Lee 30 minutes in which to escape.

  Bushnell, Washington, and a group of American officers gathered at the Battery at midnight on September 7 to watch Lee depart on his historic mission. The night was so dark that the enemy on nearby Governors Island could not see what was going on. After the sergeant had submerged, he steered his craft by a compass set near decayed phosphorescent wood, called foxwood. This eerie glow was his only light. Busily working his controls, Lee glided through the black and silent water of the harbor out toward Admiral Howe’s flagship, the sixty-four-gun Eagle, anchored off Staten Island.

  As planned, the submarine came up under the keel of the Eagle. Protruding from the top of the submarine and operated from inside was a drill. Lee tried to force this screw into first one spot and then another on the Eagle but was thwarted by iron plates reinforcing her copper sheathing. He worked hard and long until dawn began creeping over the harbor. Lee realized that he had to make a getaway, but to his dismay he discovered that his compass wasn’t working. Time after time he had to surface to get a visual fix on the Battery.

  The Turtle was spotted by red-coated British soldiers and blue-clad Hessian mercenaries standing on the parapets of Governors Island. Puzzled by the craft’s odd shape, some of them climbed into a barge and pushed off to investigate. Having failed to blow up the flagship, Lee now decided to try to destroy the barge. He disengaged the magazine holding the gunpowder. It floated free of the Turtle. The men in the barge hastily rowed back toward Governors Island.

  The tide was flowing shoreward. The dangerous egg-shaped magazine swirled into the East River, where it exploded thunderously but did no harm. Water, wood, and iron flew high into the air. Lee painfully cranked his way back to the Battery, where Washington and the others were waiting for him. There the weary sergeant climbed out of the Turtle to receive congratulations for his daring. Although he had not managed to accomplish his mission, he had thrown a scare into the enemy. One British officer wrote that “the ingenuity of these people is singular in their secret modes of mischief.”

  In the Battle of Long Island the Americans had suffered some 1,500 casualties, while the British had lost only about 400 men. King George was so pleased that he conferred the Order of the Bath on General Howe. The Tories thought that the war was almost over. Howe felt that the Americans now might be willing to talk peace, and he arranged a conference with their representatives. Congress chose John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Benjamin Franklin to learn the British intentions. On September 11 they met in a stone mansion in the southwestern corner of Staten Island, across from Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

  With every courtesy, Howe received the American delegates in a large room, decorated with a moss carpet and green sprigs. Including dinner—consisting of excellent claret; cold ham, tongue, and mutton; and delicious bread—the meeting lasted three hours. Howe did most of the talking, saying that he had a brotherly feeling for Americans. Despite his every appeal, the committee reported to Congress that Howe seemed to have no authority except to grant pardons if America gave in. If it did so, there was no certainty that its grievances would be redressed. The war went on.

  Now a scorched-earth policy was discussed by Congress, Washington, his generals, and other influential men. Should New York be burned to the ground? It was of no use to the Americans because the British controlled the city’s waterways. Most inhabitants had fled, and two-thirds of all local property was owned by loyalists. By destroying the city, the Americans would deprive the British officers of a headquarters and the loyalists of housing. Washington couldn’t make up his mind, but when Congress finally decided against razing New York, he concurred.

  Washington now disposed his troops for the Battle of New York City. He left 5,000 men in the city itself near the Battery. He posted 5 brigades along the East River, chiefly near Kip’s Bay, at East 34th Street and at Turtle Bay, at East 45th Street. Then he withdrew the bulk of his army to the high ground between 125th Street and the northern tip of Manhattan. For his new headquarters Washington chose the vacant house of Colonel Roger Morris, a Tory refugee in England. This house, later called the Jumel Mansion, still stands at Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street. Washington now had his troops strung out the 13-mile length of Manhattan. The two ends were fairly strong, but the center consisted of green militia.

  Howe struck at the center. Having kept his men idle since August 27, he launched an attack the hot Sunday of September 15. About 11 A.M. British warships, which had sailed up the East River, opened fire with 80 guns against American entrenchments near East Thirty-fourth Street. For 2 hours this heavy bombardment pinned the Americans in their lines. Then, as the last shell slammed to earth and the smoke drifted away, the first wave of British and Germans crossed the East River in 84 flatboats. The clustered redcoats looked to one observer like “a clover field in full bloom.” The invaders jumped ashore at Kip’s Bay. Washington’s raw recruits, stunned by artillery fire and frightened by glinting sunlight on bayonets, broke and ran without firing a shot. The British captured 20 American officers and about 300 men.

  Washington was three miles to the north when the bombardment began. He vaulted into the saddle and galloped to the scene of action. When he arrived at the present intersection of Lexington Avenue and Forty-second Street, he saw some of his men throwing away coats, hats, knapsacks, and even muskets in a wild scramble for safety. “Take to the cornfield!” Washington roared. “Take to the wall!” But most of the frenzied militia ignored him and kept running. Washington crimsoned with rage. Dashing his hat on the ground, he bellowed, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” Still on horseback, he yanked his sword from its scabbard. The blade flashed as he laid its broad side on the shoulders of the men nearest him—privates, a colonel, and even a brigadier general.

  Whack! Damn ye! Whack! Sixty to seventy Hessians trotted toward Washington, hoping to capture the American commander in chief. He was so blinded by rage that he took no notice of them. But his terrified foot soldiers bolted in every direction, leaving the general and his aides to face the attackers without a single musket. Fortunately, a young officer seized the bridle of Washington’s horse and pulled him away. Sputtering and cursing, he was hustled north toward Harlem and safety.

  The main body of British troops now pushed farther inland, spreading as far north as Murray Hill, rearing between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets, Third Avenue, and Broadway. There they were halted by General Howe. His objective for the day had been to capture Murray Hill. Now he wished to rest his men and wait for reinforcements. The British and German soldiers grounded their arms in meadows stretching south from the present Grand Central Station.

  Murray Hill was named for Robert Murray, whose mansion stood at the corner of what is now Park Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street. According to legend, his wife beguiled General Howe and his staff into dallying in her home so that the Americans might escape. This isn’t quite true. That sweltering day Mrs. Murray did send a servant to invite Howe to stop for refreshments, and he accepted her hospitality. Far from being a femme fatale, however, she was a middle-aged Quaker lady with twelve children. Besides, as we know, Howe had already decided to pause.

  Meantime, American troops left in the toe of Manhattan learned that most roads leading north were held by the British. At first they thought that they would have to cut their way through the enemy to join Washington’s force in Harlem. But Aaron Burr declared that he could lead them to safety without a fight and without detection. The Americans began sneaking up a road on the west side of Manhattan. About the same time a British column started pushing up the Boston Post Road on the east side of the island. Separating the two hostile columns by only about two miles were a tangle of swamps and trees and low hills, constituting the present Central Park. It was a silent and secret race along parallel roads, for neither force knew about the other. Burr won, bringing 5,000 A
merican soldiers into Washington’s camp.

  The western end of the present West 125th Street was then a valley, called the Hollow Way. The American army lay on the hills to the north. Advance posts of the British lay on the hills to the south. Their front lines were less than two miles apart.

  In the early morning on September 16, Washington sent out a reconnoitering party of 150 Connecticut rangers, led by Major Thomas Knowlton. The general stood on a hill at 126th Street to watch them as best he could. Near 112th Street and Riverside Drive, Knowlton’s men ran into British pickets. They clashed. Then, with a skirl of bagpipes, kilted Black Watch warriors advanced to help the pickets. The outnumbered Americans soon broke off the engagement and retreated in orderly fashion two and one-half miles north.

  Superior in force, the cocky British followed, descending into the Hollow Way. When the pursuers came within sight of the main American army, a British bugler blew a call—not the signal to attack, but the call of hunters who have killed a fox. At this insult Americans quivered with rage. Until then Washington had been undecided about what to do. Now he feinted at the advancing British as though to offer open battle, at the same time sending two columns of Americans by detours to fall on the enemy’s rear.

  The outraged Americans did more than feint. Pouring down from the hills, they counterattacked in force. The very militiamen who had fled from Kip’s Bay the day before raced with ferocious yells toward the advancing scarlet lines. The affair developed into a general engagement, which raged for two hours. Then the redcoats faltered, stopped, broke, and retreated. Whooping with joy, the Americans pushed them back to a buckwheat field on the present site of Barnard College. Again the enemy fell back, this time to an orchard farther south. Twice more the British gave ground, retreating to what is now 103d Street. But Washington, realizing that he would be outnumbered in a major conflict, ordered his men to halt before British reserves could be thrown into action.