The captain climbed to his feet right in front of Washington.
“It’s like herding cats,” he said, more in wonder than in anger, and ran off down the road after his men.
Washington watched the wreck of his army huddling on the road, and saw muskets lying everywhere in the muddy fields, with packs and blankets spread among the stubble. The wealth of his new nation had been spent to provide these men with arms, and they were throwing it away.
Just then a company of British light infantry appeared to his front, moving quickly toward him. He and his staff were badly outnumbered, and virtually unarmed except for the pistols in their saddle holsters. To his right, another group of men appeared from the trees, and Washington saw that they were black. For a moment, he hoped that they were some of his own Rhode Island troops, but they had black cockades and white rags on their arms. They began to fire at the wreck of the Tenth Continental Regiment behind him on the road, which flinched and broke again, their colonel racing to the rear on his horse. The British had only two companies here, and a Continental brigade was fleeing from them. It sickened him.
Washington wheeled his horse and cantered back to the routed column. He was humiliated, his whole being suffused with rage at having to run in front of the British.
One of the blacks started to run with him. He was well away to the north, but he was moving quickly, and the other black men started to follow the man. He was fast. His gait was familiar, somehow.
He was going to try to cut Washington and his staff off from the column all by himself.
The man leapt a stone wall and Washington, fifty paces away, leapt it on horseback in the same moment. His staff was just behind him, riding hard and making their jumps as best they could.
The black man stopped, raised his musket, and fired, not at Washington but at someone behind him. There was a shout and they rode on, and the black man was not quite fast enough to catch the mounted party. Washington jumped another fence, his greatcoat flying off behind him, low on his horse’s neck as if he was hunting. He hadn’t buttoned his greatcoat, only wearing it loose on his shoulders. Now it was gone.
He galloped, his face red with anger, his back already cold in the bracing, damp air. To fly from the enemy like this, in the face of his own men, was not to be endured. He rode right through the column and turned his horse to look back. His staff was clear, but someone had been taken; a big horse was wandering and a group of the black men were surrounding a man in a blue coat on the ground. The tall black man waved his greatcoat and laughed.
It became the focus of all the day’s humiliations.
John Julius Stewart slumped a little in his saddle, the cool air biting through his clothes, now damp with sweat. He still wasn’t himself. He had lost a great deal of blood before the surgeon had closed the wound in his leg, and two weeks hadn’t healed everything. He saw spots when he rode too hard.
Jeremy reined in behind him.
“There he is!” he called, pointing at Caesar, the black sergeant. Stewart walked his horse over, too tired to trot.
Caesar was wiping the lock of his musket. His men had a prisoner, a wounded officer. None of Washington’s army had regular uniforms, and rank was often difficult to ascertain, but this one looked senior.
“Was that your Mr. Washington, Caesar?”
“Yes, it was, Captain Stewart.”
“We almost had him.”
Caesar finished wiping his lock, stuffed the linen rag into a leather hunting pouch and stood up. He turned his back and pointed at something rolled tight across his pack.
“That’s his cloak.”
“Who’s your prisoner?”
“Some officer from his staff. He’s not hurt bad, if you want to take him.” Caesar looked up at Stewart and saluted, raising his musket across his body and then up by his face, erect in the air in the correct position for an enlisted man to greet an officer. Stewart wondered wryly why he bothered at all. Caesar met his eye. He was clearly happy, his whole face suffused with warmth. Stewart could see that he had a hunting sword on his hip, a lovely sword not much bigger than a knife with silver fittings and a greendyed ivory grip.
He pointed at the sword. “Was that his?”
Caesar laughed. “Well, sir, he didn’t seem to need it.”
“Rest easy, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Stewart thought that Caesar was like some of the great craftsmen he had known. Men whose brilliance was wholly in the art of what they made, except that Caesar’s art was war. He was slow to salute because cleaning the lock of his musket was so much more important.
Stewart’s company came up quickly, their bayonets gleaming. The shattered rebel column was near, well within musket shot. Stewart raised his hand and closed his fist, and in response his bugler sounded a call.
Skirmish! Skirmish! Skirmish!
Caesar looked down the road and then back up at Stewart, still smiling like a man who has found paradise.
“We’re gon’ to be in a whole lot of trouble when they fin’ we only have a few men.”
Stewart nodded. “The harder we press them, the less likely that will be, Sergeant. If you will be kind enough to keep your lads nipping at their flank, and we stay on the rear of the column, we should move them along briskly enough.”
Beside him, Sergeant McDonald blew his whistle, and the first shots began to be fired by his company. They were tired, but happy. All day they had driven the rebels like cattle, without the loss of a man. File leaders aimed and took their shots, and across the field, a man in a brown woolen shirt fell, coughing out his life as his lungs filled with blood, the shock of the big bullet already taking him away. His mates broke again, pushing to the rear, crying out that there were cavalrymen behind them.
Caesar took his men and ran off to the left. He didn’t have a whistle or a bugle, and he wanted both. He wanted the quick communication with his men that Stewart had. Stewart was better than Mr. Robinson, better even than Captain Honey. Caesar wanted to know everything that Stewart knew.
He ran, his nostrils flared, breathing easy, his shot pouch riding high on his hip, his boots comfortable and easy. He looked back over his shoulder and slowed his pace to stay with his men, none of whom was as fast or as easy in their gait as he. Virgil was laboring, and Jim looked done in, and there were other faces already gone. Not lost, or shot, just fallen by the wayside because the pace was too fast. But the best were still with him, about a platoon, all armed, and he circled a little woodlot with a stone wall, coming back to the wall when it ran out parallel to the road, and throwing his band behind it. Most of them lay down, panting, even though there was a whole army of rebel stragglers just a pistol shot away.
For all the training the Ethiopians had done, it wasn’t for this kind of fight, and he had to run along, crouched behind the wall, and tell every man what he wanted. It took time, and energy, and he couldn’t just raise his fist and start them firing. In a few minutes, though, the first shots rapped out, and the column began to flinch away from the wall.
Virgil was breathing like a bellows, and he took so long aiming his shot that Caesar thought he was hurt. Finally he fired, and Caesar pushed his own musket across the wall. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger. In the press of enemies, he couldn’t tell if his shot hit or not.
“I’m dry, Caesar,” said Virgil. “You have any mo’ powduh?”
Caesar nodded and reached into his pouch. He ran his hand across the bottom and realized that he was out as well, although he continued to feel around for a moment. He didn’t carry a proper cartridge box, with the paper cartridges lined up in a wooden block. There was always the possibility of one more, but not this time.
Further along the wall, Jim stared down his musket with feral concentration and it barked. Once, Jim would have flinched his head just a moment before the snap of the lock, but that habit had gone. Caesar saw his hand go back to the box on his hip and come back empty.
Men who had missed fi
re, or simply loaded more slowly, fired a few more rounds, but then they were out, and the column was moving by them, either unaware of their presence or uncaring. Many of the fleeing men were unarmed.
Caesar saw Jeremy riding up behind the little woodlot and waved both arms. Jeremy rode up to him directly.
“Can you ride back and tell Mr. Stewart we’re out of cartridges?”
Jeremy stood in his stirrups to look at the road and then back down at Caesar.
“I’ll tell him, Julius, but I think you’d be as well to gather your boys up and bring them back. I think we’re about dry on powder ourselves.”
Caesar wasn’t clear on Jeremy’s role. Sometimes he seemed more like an officer, at others like Stewart’s slave. It was too complicated to discuss right there, but the advice sounded good.
“Where is Mr. Stewart, then?”
“Just the other side of this wood, pressing their rearguard. But as I say, they won’t be pressing very hard.” Jeremy smiled. “I must say, Julius Caesar, I am jealous of that exploit with Mr. Washington. Please do send me a card the next time you plan something like that.” He tipped his hat.
Jeremy always called Caesar “Julius” and he liked it. He slapped the rump of Jeremy’s horse.
“I’ll be most pleased to invite you, suh. Sir.”
Jeremy leaned down and spoke quietly. “Get back with us soon. I think we’re going into the city. We might be the first.”
Caesar nodded, ran back from the wall, and yelled.
“Fall in!”
The army ran to McGowan’s Pass. Harlem Heights was barely held, the best position on the island. They didn’t stand on the road and they wouldn’t hold the line of trenches north of the road. He would have cried, if he dared.
New York was lost. His army had run without firing a shot. For a moment, when the black tried to run him down, he had thought the same dark thoughts that he had had all those years ago in the Pennsylvania country, when Braddock had lost an army, and he had lost his first military career. He was beaten. His army would not stand again for months after a panic like this, and he could not find anyone to blame except himself.
But this was a different war. He was no longer a young colonel with a life before him. In a way, he was now Braddock, and he owed it to his men, and to his nation, such as it was, to try and keep the army together. He would not cry, or shout, or vent his rage on the fools who had run. He would have to wait, retreat, and rebuild, and he watched the faces of the men around him on his staff to see if they still trusted him. As for himself, he no longer trusted his army. He rode back to the rear, sullen, angry, and outwardly his usual icy calm.
Despite his worst fears from midday, the camp had not been lost, nor the magazines. There were solid battalions in front of the camp, formed and ready to meet an enemy. He rode along their ranks, the wind cutting through his coat. He missed his greatcoat.
No one cheered, but no one jeered him, either. He ordered his staff to rally any troops who came near the camp and went to his marquee, set on a rise with a view of the parade and the fields over which the enemy would come if this was the end. He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that the British were ready for the magnitude of today’s victory, and would settle for the occupation of New York. He had several thoughts for limited counterattacks, more to hold the army together and raise its prestige than for any strategic reason. Manhattan Island, and with it, New York, was lost.
“You want something warm, sir?” asked Billy.
Washington realized that he was standing in front of the map on his camp desk, unmoving, his limbs chilled to the bone.
Billy held out a mug, steam whirling up from the top. “I have some hot flip, sir.”
The mug was porcelain, from his traveling service, hot to the touch, and Washington cradled it like the touch of life, warming his hands for the first time since before dawn. He thought, I am not a young man.
“We lost today. Badly.” Washington sat, still pressing the mug to his breast, inhaling the steam. Billy nodded, more like an accepting parent than a slave. Washington sighed and went on. “I have lost New York. I could blame others, but what use? I am in command, and I have failed. Should I resign?”
Billy busied himself at the back of the tent, putting wood on the fire in the small earthen fireplace that had replaced the tent’s back door.
“They wouldn’t stand, Billy. These men are fighting for their homes and property, their own liberty—and they ran. No one stood his ground. Are we a nation of cowards? Billy, men ran without a shot fired at them. It is one thing when a company breaks because they have seen too many of their comrades shot away. It’s another when they run before they see the enemy.”
He took a deep drink. “Perhaps they don’t trust me. Don’t trust the army. Or the Congress, God save us.” He gazed into the distance, while Billy loooked for another chore to keep him close to his master. He missed a comment about the loss of the city while he seized on Washington’s hat and began to brush it. Then he stopped.
“Where’s your greatcoat, sir?”
“I lost it in the field.” Washington reflected for a moment, and thought, I ran too. He smiled grimly. “One more defeat like this and we might lose the ability to fight. Men will simply walk home and there will be no army.” He shook his head. “I wonder if this job is beyond me. I think I expected it to be more like farming: a set of tasks to perform, men to obey me and a drive to complete the work. A steady pull in harness. Now I wonder if Charles Lee could do better.”
Billy looked up from brushing the hat. “I doubt it, sir,” he said firmly, and Washington looked at him, startled. Billy flushed and put his head down, but Washington laughed, a laugh of pure mirth, his first in twelve hours. “You, too? I thought everyone loved him but me.”
“Not for me to say,” said Billy, trying to hide his own laugh.
Washington slapped him on the shoulder. “Lend me your greatcoat, Billy. I’m going to check the posts.”
Harlem Heights, September 17, 1776
Once New York fell, Caesar realized that he had expected the war to end in the aftermath. The truth was harsher. His men had been among the first into the city, and as Murray had predicted, there had been benefits. But within hours the city was under British martial law, and within days his men were marching north again, following the wreckage of Washington’s army. The generals seemed hesitant to finish Mr. Washington, or so it seemed to Caesar from his very recent knowledge of war. So where the Continentals ran, they marched slowly behind, feeling their way cautiously as if they feared a sudden reversal of fortune. And Caesar knew that the war was not over.
The blacks were not yet an official military organization. They had remained with Mr. Murray through the taking of New York, and then, as the army began to move up Manhattan Island, they attached themselves to Captain Stewart’s company, because they were familiar and welcoming.
Caesar was tired all the time. He felt grimy, and his eyes felt like they were full of sand. His mouth was so dry he might have spent the night drinking. He had been in the field too long.
He moved cautiously through the low brush at the base of a tall ridge. Captain Stewart and all the men in the Second Battalion of light infantry were extending their lines to the right, hoping to move their posts forward as inconspicuously as possible and “render Mr. Washington’s posts even more untenable,” as Mr. Stewart had said. Jim had already been around the hill, alone, making a map on the back of an old tax record. He couldn’t read, and his markings on paper were like no map any white officer had ever seen, but Jim had gained a little fame in the last three days for the accuracy of his scouting. Mr. Washington’s army was here, in the flat ground on the other side of the ridge. Mr. Washington’s army had post on the ridge, and they were finally going to contest them.
He looked back at Jim, just behind him. The rest of his company was moving in two long files, one to each flank. The brush was too dense to move in line. He raised his foot to place it on an old stone
wall, long abandoned in this tangle of undergrowth, and he wondered who would go to the trouble of clearing a field and moving the stones only to abandon it. Something caught his attention and he froze.
There was a man right in front of him, just a long throw away through the brush. He was wearing a smock or a shirt. There was another one, next to him.
Caesar raised his musket to his shoulder in one smooth motion and fired. All along the brush line to his front, smoke blossomed in return. He threw himself down behind the jumble of rocks that had been a wall and started to load, already looking for possibilities. There were a great many men out there. He could hear them shouting orders.
Caesar thought that if he wasn’t lucky, he might die right here. It didn’t bother him much.
“Get to the wall!” Caesar yelled. “Get behind the wall and skirmish!”
He grabbed Jim by the rough material of his trousers and pulled him down.
“Go tell Captain Stewart it’s a whole parcel of men. More’n I can count. Maybe a hundred.”
Jim nodded.
“I’ll jus’ leave you ma’ piece,” he said, and handed Caesar his musket. Then he pushed himself up and ran. There were shots, and he stumbled, but he didn’t fall, and then Caesar had other concerns.
Washington watched the messenger run the last fifty yards. He could hear the firing, and he ached with the effort not to knee his horse down the hill to meet the panting man halfway.
“Knowlton’s…” he panted as he closed. “Colonel Knowlton’s rangers. In that wood, right there, fighting redcoats. Their light infantry, I think.” Washington thought the man might fall at his feet like the runner from Marathon, but instead, the man bent over and then straightened, color flooding his face.
“Colonel asks for support, and says there is three hundred all told, an’ with help he can take the lot. Nothin’ on their right.”
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