Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Rufus Putnam, acting as the army’s chief engineer, shook his head and spread one of his hands meaningfully over the map on the table before them.

  “There are simply too many routes on to the island. They control the river. They can reduce any one of our forts given time and inclination. They can land almost anywhere, and worst of all, they can bypass us and trap our men on this island.”

  Washington pushed his chair back with his long legs and stood carefully to avoid entangling his sword with the table. He still smarted from defeat on Long Island, and he already sensed that New York was lost.

  “We have lost the best part of three thousand men in the last week. We will lose more. Till of late I had no doubt in my mind of defending this place, nor should I have yet, if the men would do their duty.” He looked them over, and most of the brigadiers couldn’t meet his eye. The men were melting away, and the militia coming to fill their places were very poor soldiers, anxious already, made fearful by the rumor of a defeat they hadn’t suffered. Greene, the firebrand, met his eye but shook his head.

  “This is not the place, General. And this is not the army.”

  “I agree. I despair of these men doing their duty. If I were called upon to declare on oath whether the militia had been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter. The army we had at Boston was better. We had a winter to train it, and now it has gone home and we must start anew.” He walked up and down the room, pausing twice to look out of the window at Virginia troops, most newly arrived. They looked healthy and willing, and their drill was good, but the Long Island veterans were shy, and had shown it. He could barely hold his temper.

  “Send a letter to the Congress and inform them that I must consider the destruction of this city to deny it as a base of operations and winter quarters to the enemy.”

  His military secretary began writing immediately.

  Within two days, he had his answer.

  “Resolved, that General Washington be acquainted, that the Congress would have especial care taken, in case he should find it necessary to quit New York, that no damage be done to said city by his troops, on their leaving it: The Congress having no doubt of being able to recover the same, though the enemy should, for a time, obtain possession of it.”

  “They have lost command of their senses.”

  “Congress is driven by money, and that, the New Yorkers have in plenty.”

  “Not ours to speculate, gentlemen.” Just two days later, and Washington was looking down the same table. His defenses were no better, and indeed might be thought worse. There were Royal Navy frigates on the rivers, and his desertions had just reached a new high. “I suspect that the gentlemen of Congress have made a serious error here, but it is they that command us.”

  “If Charles Lee were here, I dare say he’d have something to say,” commented one of the aides. He meant to be heard, but kept his voice low. Lee was not known for his patience with their political masters.

  Washington had accepted Lee’s jibes, even approved them. Congress knew nothing of the conduct of war and insisted on tying his hands and appointing generals of little use and withholding rank from the best men. Congress had lost Canada and was now making a fair bid for losing New York. He wondered at himself, because just a year ago he would have bridled at allowing any man authority over his own decisions, but with every day he thought that such authoritarian ways led to the abuses of Great Britain, and he tried to submit meekly to his Congress because they represented a greater will than his own, even when they were wrong. And now they were ordering him to hold miles of coastline with untrained militia and a handful of regulars, against the finest navy in the world and their equally fine army. He could only make his dispositions and bow his head.

  “Send to Congress again,” he said. He began to describe the defenses of the city, and the limited troops he had to defend it.

  “How the event will be, God only knows,” he closed. His secretary dipped his quill one more time and it began to scratch again. “Circumstanced as I am, be assured that nothing in my power will be wanting to effect a favorable and happy issue.”

  No one at the table met his eye, not even General Greene.

  New York City, September 13, 1776

  The Virginia Continentals were drawn up under Captain Lawrence to greet Colonel Weedon and his men as they marched into the flying camp. Lawrence was still parchment white, and he moved very carefully, but it seemed he would survive his wound. George Lake was now a sergeant. He and Bludner were the only noncommissioned officers to survive the fight at the little redoubt. During the Battle of Brooklyn, they had been thrown in twice with the Marylanders and again on the darkened road back to the ferry they had tried to keep the British light infantry off the army’s heels, while their mocking horns sounded foxhunting calls all through the long retreat.

  View Halloo.

  His friend Isaac was dead, left behind in the mud at the little redoubt on Long Island. So many other men were gone, either dead, deserted or sick, that there were no longer any lines between the “true believers” and the “backwoodsmen”. The new line was between the men who had survived Long Island and the new drafts up from Philadelphia. They were still fired with enthusiasm. They also believed everything they had read in the papers there, and insisted that they knew more about Long Island than George did.

  George Lake still held Bludner responsible for the wreck of the company in its first fight, but he kept a tight rein on his resentment. Bludner was an arrogant clod, but he was also a good sergeant with an eye for detail. He had led the survivors out of three traps and an ambush in that wet retreat.

  Colonel Weedon made a joke to Captain Lawrence out on the parade and his horse fidgeted a little. George kept his hands clasped on his musket and stared straight ahead. Parades no longer interested him much. Colonel Weedon had missed Long Island. He was a tavernkeeper from Fredericksburg, a known social climber and an acquaintance of General Washington. That last stood in his favor with some.

  The Third Virginia had also missed Long Island. They were the regiment to which Captain Lawrence’s company would now be attached. They would have a great deal to learn.

  Down the Hudson River, the British battery on Montresor’s Island opened fire again.

  Montresor’s Island, September 14, 1776

  The artillerymen worked like no team Caesar had ever seen. There were dozens of them on each gun, yet every man had an exact place to stand, a path to follow as he performed his tasks. And every man’s task was different. Some fed the brass guns, taking paper cartridges of powder from stores well to the rear of the gun line and carrying them forward. Others loaded the powder charge down the barrel, or brought the iron balls from another store, or moved the gun to aim it. Each gun fired in its own time, and yet the impression Caesar received was rather like that of watching a perfectly tuned flintlock, or the innards of a watch at work.

  He and most of the other Ethiopians were leaning on their tools well back from the guns. Caesar never tired of watching them fire, but the other men smoked or played cards. Their work had been finished when the gun platform had been dug, leveled and completed, but the engineers had expected the enemy to dig a counterbattery and return the fire, and had wanted them handy to repair any damage.

  Instead, they had had three days of inaction due to what Mr. Murray described as ‘Mr. Washington’s incompetence’. Caesar kept them at their drill, and Mr. Murray, the engineer, had become their honorary officer. He had drilled them several times, marching in front and using his sword to indicate wheels and turns. He knew the drill much better than either Mr. Edgerton or Mr. Robinson had, although as an engineer he had never commanded troops. Caesar was learning about how the army worked. The red-coated officers were often well trained, but some were not. The engineers and artillerymen were all professionals, middle-class men who attended schools and knew the business. Caesar thought they were lucky to have Murray’s interest.

  Virgil was b
ack to scrounging wool and sewing jackets. No one had come to take their arms, and so, unlike all the other work parties digging around New York, Caesar’s men had good muskets and all the accoutrements that went with them.

  Bang.

  The sound of the gunfire no longer made any of them jump. Virgil was making a jacket for a new boy called Isaac Vernon, a very thin runaway from the Jerseys, just across the water. He had swum to them during the night, and said that there was a rumor among the blacks over the water that the British Army was offering freedom. Willy and Romeo and Paget were dealing cards. Tonny and Fowver were working on a captured musket with a lock that wouldn’t make a spark.

  Murray came over to Caesar, who stood up and removed his hat smartly, and bowed his head.

  “Carry on, Caesar.”

  Caesar relaxed a little.

  “We’ll be taking New York in a few days.”

  “So I figure, sir.”

  “Captain Stewart wants to put your company on the provincial rolls, Caesar. That will get you paid, and some money for equipment.”

  Caesar just smiled, suffused with happiness. To be regular soldiers, with pay and standing, would be a fine thing.

  “When the army takes a city, things happen. There is usually some looting. Some men get rich. Others get hanged. Do you take my meaning, Caesar?”

  “No, sir. I can’t say that I do.”

  “You’re going to want cloth for uniforms, and more muskets. You’ll want barracks space. There are a host of things you’ll want. I guarantee that whatever officer you get will be poor. I’m poor myself, so I know. So there’s a chance to pick up some cash, or maybe a few bolts of cloth.”

  Caesar nodded along before Murray was finished.

  “Now I understand you, sir.”

  Bang.

  “Church is being rigged in the rear of the battery, if any of you are of a mind to attend,” said Murray. “I don’t wish to be indelicate, Sergeant Caesar, but as the minister is both Anglican and a gentleman of color, I thought your men might feel comfortable in attending.”

  Caesar was still lost in thought about brown wool and the possibility of better equipment. He knew that in the long run his company had to find a way to be mustered and placed on a regular status, but he hadn’t expected the path to be made smooth so suddenly. He walked back to the lounging work party and squatted down next to Virgil, who took a draw on his pipe and passed it to Caesar.

  “He wan’ us to drill, Caesar?”

  “Mr. Murray says we might get on the rolls as a company.”

  “That’d be fi-ine.” Virgil nodded, a slow smile spreading. “And paid?”

  “If they’re goin’ to make us soldiers, I guess they’d have to pay us.”

  Caesar watched the battery moving a gun, always interested. They used levers to move the wheels on the biggest guns. It was an education just watching them, but that wasn’t where his thoughts were.

  “Ever think where we come from, Virgil?”

  Virgil laughed. “Every day. Every single day. Every time I swing that pick, I think ‘It’s still bettuh than bein a slave.’ Every time I drill, I watch them runaways from Jersey look at me like I’m some big man. I know I ain’t, but I won’t nevuh forget what I was.”

  “Long way from the swamp.” Caesar was still watching the guns. He couldn’t quite meet Virgil’s eye, because he still felt the losses of the swamp. And Peters’s death at Long Island. “An’ we didn’t all make it.”

  Virgil sat up, dusted his jacket. The new Virgil, the soldier, was a fastidious man. “I don’ wan’ to hear none of that talk from you, Caesar. You got us here. Some died. They died free. What I wan’ you to look on is whether we stay free.”

  Caesar turned sharply to look at him.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that there’s plenty of Loyal folk that own slaves. I’m saying that if we win, there’ll be plenty looking to take our guns away, an’ if we lose…”

  Caesar stood up. “I don’t want to hear any of that talk from you, Virgil. Come on. Mr. Murray wanted us for a church parade.”

  “I could use some church,” said Virgil, and started calling for his section to fall in.

  Caesar fell the men in and led them to the river, where they washed some of the sweat off. They had a number of recruits, men who had swum the river to freedom, wearing nothing but shirts and trousers, and he arranged them in the rear ranks so that, at least from a certain angle, the company looked like soldiers with muskets and brown jackets. Then he marched them to the base of the battery, Corporal Fowver berating the new men in his sing-song Yoruba accent to keep the step.

  The minister was a tall man, his altar a table and a drum with a Union Jack spread over it, and he stood quietly as Caesar marched the men up and halted them in front of the table. He tried to remember what they had done in Williamsburg when they had church parades, and the only thing he could remember was to open the ranks, as if God was going to inspect them. When he was done, he thought of saluting the minister, but that seemed wrong, so he took his place on the right of the company and waited.

  The minister was a tall man, thin and elegant in his black suit. Closer up, Caesar could see that he had dirt under his nails and some mud on his breeches and stockings, probably from assembling the little table and putting up the little tent, but he still carried an air of dignity. Caesar still felt he should say something, and so he stood straight and reported.

  “Company of Loyal Ethiopians assembled for church parade, sir!”

  He was aware of movement to his right and turned his head, expecting Mr. Murray, but what he saw was a girl, very young, just backing out of the little canvas tent and then rising with considerable grace from the straw-covered ground. She caught his glance and looked down in amiable confusion, and her pale darkness flushed. Caesar tried to snap his attention back to the minister, but there was something in her glance that kept him pinned a moment longer, and so he saw her look at him again from under lowered lids.

  If the minister gave any sign, he did not show it, but walked along the ranks like a general, greeting every man and complimenting them on the turnout of the company.

  “You are the first armed blacks I’ve seen. It is a pleasure to meet all of you, and a sign of great things. A pleasure, sir.” This to Jim, who was shy, as usual. On and on, through forty men, greeting each individually. He came to Caesar last, as if he had planned it so.

  “An admirer of yours said that I should come here and meet you. I am Marcus White, a minister of the gospel.”

  Remembering Sergeant Peters, Caesar gave a civil bow, his musket inclined away from his body.

  “Your servant, sir. I am Julius Caesar, and temporarily in command of the Company of Ethiopians.” Caesar was still trying to trace the idea of an “admirer”. He must mean Lieutenant Murray.

  “Several officers have spoken to me of this body of men, sir. Perhaps I should say that I was trained by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel?” Seeing Caesar’s confusion, he said, “It would not be correct of me to explain myself more fully this moment, except to say that we men of color do have friends in England, Christian men who abhor slavery, and they have some influence in this army. I hope we will soon speak more fully.” They both bowed.

  “I look forward to it, sir,” he said. Marcus White beamed at him, and moved with imperial dignity to the head of the company, where he turned, and put a hand on the Bible that was the sole ornament of the table. Raising his right hand, he began the service of morning prayer.

  “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive,” he said.

  New York City, September 15, 1776

  The cannonade was short, and by the time he was ahorse and riding to the sound of the fire, the battle was lost.

  Washington began to pass running men well before he came to the flats, and nowhere could he find an officer or even a compan
y making a stand. New York and Connecticut militia flew past him, some disoriented. One man even threatened him with his musket when Washington tried to slow his flight. General Parsons rode up and joined him as he and his staff tried to make them stand. Again and again the knot of officers found themselves alone against an onrushing tide of red and Hessian blue sweeping over the autumn fields, their bayonets gleaming like the white tops on the ocean on a clear day, and always moving closer. Again and again Washington rode to the rear, found a good stone wall or a copse of trees and tried to rally men there. They merely waited until he rode off for more men before they, too, melted away. Washington began to hate them.

  Whole brigades broke as soon as they were formed. Washington watched with horror as Fellows’s brigade failed to fire even once, but simply dropped their packs and their muskets and ran from the Hessian troops in front of them. A few were foolish enough to run at the Hessians, who promptly shot them down. The British didn’t misunderstand so easily, and began to reap a rich harvest of prisoners.

  Again he tried to rally them at the edge of a cemetery, where the walls would have held the Germans for an hour. And his men melted away. Again, in a churchyard, where men he sent into the little stone church simply broke a window, jumped free and ran. On and on, a nightmare of failure and cowardice that stunned him, sapped his resolve and made him question the worth of his cause, that so many young men would refuse their duty.

  At King’s Bridge Road his staff ran into a column in full flight. A captain, his uniform torn and muddy, was beating men into ranks when Washington rode up. One of the men the captain had just prodded into line waited until the captain had passed him and then swung his musket into the officer’s side, knocking him down. The rest fled.