Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  In northern New York and in Canada, Washington had “more trouble and concern,” than in front of Howe. Among the difficulties was that of placating Sullivan. Before Sullivan arrived July 21, Washington learned that the Generals of the Northern Department had decided on a withdrawal to Ticonderoga. This had seemed to some of the field officers so dangerous a move that twenty-one of them had joined in a formal protest. Washington himself had never been on the northern lakes but some of the Generals and senior colonels in New York were familiar with that country. Their description and the argument advanced in the protest almost convinced Washington that a mistake had been made in the abandonment of Crown Point in favor of Ticonderoga. Washington stated this to Gates. A sense of danger made Washington less careful than otherwise he would have been in addressing even so close a comrade as Gates, and Gates and Schuyler, forgetting their own rivalries, made common cause in denouncing what they took to be the judgment of a council of war in New York on their strategy. Before he could restore understanding, Washington had to withdraw somewhat from his criticism of the decision to quit Crown Point.

  The number of British sail off Staten Island was rising ominously. Almost daily the lookout reported ships in the offing. August 1 brought approximately forty vessels, which Washington took to be the transports of part of the expected Hessian force. Regularly he would receive from the lookout on Long Island a report of arriving and departing vessels and of boats that passed from ship to shore, but the American commander could not learn anything specific about the men those dark hulls hid. He could go to sleep at night knowing that every ship of the British fleet was in its place, but he had to admonish himself that the next morning he might find all of them riding near the shore of Long Island, in line off the Grand Battery, or preparing to ascend East or North River to land troops in his rear.

  Washington had finished a letter to Congress on August 7 when he was informed that two men who had deserted from the fleet had told an almost incredible tale: Their ship was among those that had arrived August 1, but they did not belong to Hessian reenforcement. They were part of the army of Sir Henry Clinton; they had been sent to South Carolina and, having been repulsed there, had joined General Howe in order to share in the capture of New York and the occupation of New Jersey. Clinton! He had been left out of all calculations regarding New York after he had gone south. Now he was back. Washington had to admit that this had not been anticipated.

  Washington had not asked and Congress on its own initiative had done nothing for an increase in the number of Continental regiments in the Army directly under his command. Besides, it was now too late to recruit on a large scale for a campaign that might develop within a week. If help was forthcoming at all, it must be from the Flying Camp being set up in New Jersey and from the militia. These two sources were in reality one, because the ten thousand men proposed as a Flying Camp were to be militia from the Middle Colonies; and all of the additional fifteen thousand Congress had asked of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were of the same category. Both forces were to be employed to December 1 unless sooner discharged. The principal difference among these contingents would lie in the possibility that some of the more populous and patriotic States would forward their quotas with less than the normal delay. Washington resolved that he would do his utmost to speed the militia of the nearest Colonies, but there could be no certainty regarding the number of militiamen who would be available, the time they would arrive or the spirit in which they would fight. While Washington sought reenforcement wherever it could be mustered, he had at his disposal no more than ten thousand effectives in a total of 17,225, with whom he had to oppose an army of thirty thousand experienced veterans on a front of approximately fifteen miles.

  These perplexities were presented when Washington’s staff scarcely was able to cope with day-by-day problems. Transfer of Gates to the Canadian command had been so recent that the new Adjutant General, Reed, could not be expected in an acute crisis to discharge all the duties of that office. Besides this untrained administrative officer, Washington had two new aides and an assistant secretary, Alexander Contee Hanson, who was unfamiliar with the office. As Moylan had left Headquarters to undertake his new labors as Quartermaster General, the Commander-in-Chief was dismally burdened. Occasionally he would seek to have others transact business that came to his desk, but he was loath to call for more assistance in his office. It was July 25 when he brought himself to explain his circumstances and ask of Congress “an increase of my Aid de Camps”—a request the Delegates answered in the singular. Besides more secretaries, Washington needed additional senior officers, needed them desperately, and had written Congress on the subject. He had one Major General only, Israel Putnam, though three were the minimum to discharge essential duty. Three Brigadiers were desired in New York, also, and an equal number, or more, were required elsewhere. Congress was quick to respond with the promotion of Heath, Spencer, Sullivan and Greene to the rank of Major General, and of six colonels to brigade command.

  Ninety-six ships or more came into the lower harbor on August 12 and 13. Approximately twenty others dropped anchor on the fourteenth. These, surely, must be bringing the Hessians and must be the last of the tremendous fleet. If they were, then the onslaught would come in a few days. On the fourteenth, there was much stir of small boats and indications both of landing and embarking troops, but Washington’s last reports of the day were that the newly arrived Hessians were being put ashore on Staten Island. A heavy rain that day disrupted movement, broke a long drought and ushered in a brief, blusterous period of sickness and uncertainty. “The badness of the weather,” Washington told his men, “has undoubtedly prevented an attack,” and he admonished them to keep their canteens filled and have two days’ dressed rations on hand.

  There was some good news along with the bad. Militiamen arrived in such numbers that by the nineteenth they had raised Washington’s total strength to twenty-three thousand. Another gratifying item was an attack August 16 of fire-rafts on the Phoenix and the Rose. This failed after threatening for a time to set the larger ship aflame; but the daring move so alarmed the British commander that he abandoned his station and rejoined the fleet. For the moment the Hudson again was open to the Americans, but they had woes enough. The long, dry weather had polluted the water supply; the chill days of rain were attended by much sickness. In some regiments all the field officers were incapacitated. Foremost among the victims was the man in command of what might be the battleground—Nathanael Greene on Long Island. His had been the duty of watching the enemy’s movements and of guarding an estimated one hundred thousand pastured cattle and an even larger number of sheep. This livestock could not be removed to the mainland though it would supply food for months to an adversary whose landing could not be prevented. Greene had developed more in Washington’s fourteen months of command than had almost any other officer. He was the man who probably could get the utmost in wholehearted defence from the troops allotted him; and now he had to report himself confined to bed with a raging fever. Greene’s early discharge of military duty was impossible; someone had to be assigned in his stead—and who?

  Washington’s choice fell on Sullivan. That officer had little or no acquaintance with the island, but in Washington’s opinion he was the best available man for a most difficult assignment. He appreciated the importance of Long Island and believed that it had to be held if New York City was to remain in American hands. To Long Island, Sullivan went on August 20, under orders that made plain the assignment was temporary. Gen. Lord Stirling was to command Sullivan’s Division during the service of that officer at Greene’s post.

  The day after Sullivan was named, several ships of the British fleet, crowded with soldiers, dropped down from the anchorage to The Narrows. Whether these vessels were bound on some special mission or were making the first move in an operation all the warships were to share, Washington could not ascertain before darkness. The next morning more of the four hundred t
ransports and thirty-seven men-of-war off Staten Island had gone to The Narrows. Then came ominous intelligence: British troops were disembarking on the shore of Gravesend Bay, Long Island; Sir Henry Clinton’s Grenadiers and the Light Infantry formed the van; the force already ashore numbered about eight thousand. Detachments had pushed on to Flatbush, a village about three miles from the outer American positions. Six battalions were promptly hurried across East River. The men went off in fine fighting mood, though some of them were without prescribed provisions.

  Morning reports on the 23rd were, in effect, “No change.” The enemy had extended his front but had delivered no attack during the night. Washington thought this increased the probability that Long Island was to be the sole immediate objective of the British, but he did not feel he should leave Manhattan Island until flood tide passed without indication of attack there. Then, as he could discern no preparations aboard the British fleet for a new landing, he had five more battalions made ready and crossed to Long Island. Either his observations there or pleas of Putnam convinced him it would be well to send that General to the island to supervise the defence. Putnam went accordingly—and to his immense satisfaction. Washington observed, studied the ground and the disposition of the forces and then returned to New York. There late in the day, he received from Sullivan a dispatch that told of an affair in which the British had been worsted. Washington doubted whether the attack of the Redcoats was on the scale the Major General thought, but as the repulsed advance might be the first move of a larger effort, Washington decided to send four more regiments and post them where they could be used by Sullivan or ferried back to New York.

  On the morning of the twenty-fourth it still seemed to the anxious Commander-in-Chief that his powerful adversary would not be content to strike one blow only. Washington was deepened, too, in his conviction that with his inferior forces he could do no more than hold his works and the approaches to them. Offensive operations were precluded unless Governor Trumbull of Connecticut could organize a force of perhaps one thousand men to cross the sound and harass the British who otherwise would be free to ravage nearly the whole of Long Island. Washington asked the Governor to do this, though with little faith in the accomplishment of it. Then, once again, Washington went to Long Island, rode along the front and saw enough to draw from him a firm and reproachful letter to Putnam. The soldiers, Washington wrote, were wasting their shots; riflemen should be placed in a wood near a strategically important fortification at Red Hook; traps and ambuscades must be prepared; a line must be drawn and held.

  Nine Connecticut militia regiments, approximately three thousand men, reported on the twenty-sixth. Otherwise, there was no great change in the situation. If new intelligence reports contained anything positive it was to the effect that British attacks at two points were not in preparation. “We are led to think,” Washington now wrote Congress, “[the British] mean to land the main force of their army on Long Island, and to make their grand push there.” More American troops were rowed across to strengthen Putnam. The essential of American strategy was holding Brooklyn Heights, which commanded East River and New York. To secure Brooklyn, a line of parapets and a string of forts had been constructed near the western tip of Long Island from the salt marshes overlooking Wallabout Bay to those of Gowanus Creek, which were believed to be impassable. About a mile and a half from this man-made line was the nearest point of the natural defences of Brooklyn—a long row of hills almost parallel to the fortifications.

  Putnam decided to guard in person the main defensive line of Brooklyn and to deputize Sullivan to the management of the battle on the “outwork” of the hills. Sullivan followed traditional seniority: he put Stirling in command of the right. Direct command of the centre and supervision of the left were under himself. His left element was Col. Samuel Miles’s Pennsylvania Regiment of Stirling’s Brigade, which had its exposed flank in the air. Miles was under orders to patrol in the direction of the road that led around the eastern end of the ridge to Jamaica; but as he had no mounted troops, he did not attempt to place vedettes far in advance or to maintain them anywhere outside his lines at night.

  Washington observed and doubtless approved the principal dispositions. Everything he saw and heard of the enemy indicated that the blow was about to fall. Additional troops had been brought ashore by the British; the hostile camps, where visible, were astir. If an attack of magnitude was in the making, it had to be upgrade through the woods, Washington reasoned, and it could be hampered by the parties that had been posted along the routes over the hills. On the assumption that his soldiers behaved well, Washington could hope his main strategical objective would be achieved to the extent that by holding the approaches to his position at Brooklyn, he could withdraw safely and in good order to that line after taking stiff toll of the enemy.

  About 1 A.M. the alarm was sounded at the front; General Putnam was notified; he aroused Stirling and sent that officer and Gen. Samuel H. Parsons to the right front. Sullivan went out in general command. Counting four hundred already in front on three roads—Gowanus, Flatbush and Bedford—there now were approximately 3500 American troops on the high wooded ground along slightly less than three miles. On the right, this reenforcement seemed adequate. Eight o’clock of a clear, cool and pleasant day found the opposing forces briskly skirmishing. It probably was about this time that Washington reached the scene from New York. He had directed the movement to the island of reenforcements, and he had watched with anxiety the effort of five British war vessels to enter East River so that they might bombard the rear of American positions in Brooklyn and sever communications with New York. Mercifully, the wind had shifted against the British and favored the Americans.

  On the island, the American commander faced the first pitched battle he ever had directed. At the moment, there was little that he could do. Stirling seemed to be holding his own on the right. On the centre and left, though the Hessians persisted in their fire, they gave no indication that they intended to advance within the next hour or so. Every experienced soldier reasoned the British would not be demonstrating so widely unless they planned a heavy blow. Even so, orderly withdrawal to the fortified line of Brooklyn should be entirely possible.

  At nine o’clock the sound of a cannon shot was audible, followed immediately by another—signal guns, undoubtedly: British troops in large number were on the Bedford Road, in rear of Sullivan’s men who were facing the Hessians around Flatbush. In an amazingly short time the Redcoats were pushing forward. Soon the British would cut off Stirling’s line of retreat to the fortifications. Unseen and unopposed, the enemy had gone around the eastern end of the hills and then had turned to the left and south. A surprise had been executed as complete as that which had overwhelmed Braddock. The British quickly covered their left and pressed furiously onward. At the signal, the Hessians pushed up the wooded ridge. The troops in front of Stirling abandoned their teasing tactics and opened in earnest. Everywhere the command seemed to be the same—to force the American volley and then close with the bayonet before the Continentals could reload.

  Outwitted and outnumbered, the troops saw no alternative to destruction except immediate retreat. By early afternoon, most of the Continentals who had escaped the bayonets of the British had reached the Brooklyn defences, where Washington himself shared the work of rallying them. “Remember what you are contending for,” he cried to some of them but he did not have at hand the leaders the men knew best. Stirling was missing. Sullivan had failed to fight his way out. Several promising officers were known to have been killed. Casualties obviously ran into the hundreds and might rise higher because the British were drawing nearer, as if they were preparing to assault the American line. Some officers, at least, became conscious of the weakness of the defences in front of Brooklyn. Troops were put to work to complete several fortifications, particularly those that were designed to cover the approaches on the Jamaica Road; but in the haste and excitement of the afternoon hard tasks were slighted and dangerous du
ty was dodged. The one immediate relief was the discovery that the British men-of-war had been able to do no more than send a few shots in the direction of the fort at Red Hook and then, in the face of an ebbtide, anchor out of range. The royal regiments in front of Brooklyn might or might not be held off; there was no danger the defences would be bombarded from the rear that evening.

  MAP / 10

  THE LONG ISLAND APPROACHES TO

  THE BROOKLYN DEFENSES

  After the action the British drew back, out of cannon range, and halted as if they had other plans afoot than those of an assault. It was a respite; it must not be an informal truce. American officers still had sufficient fight left to order riflemen into a wood near the British front. From that cover the marksmen opened a steady fire after 4 P.M. This irritated the British and cramped their movement without provoking either a farther withdrawal or an attempt to clear the Americans from among the trees. Were the British and Hessians being rested for a night attack? Such trained and experienced regulars were able to execute that difficult maneuver, even over unfamiliar ground, but now Washington began to suspect that, instead of attacking forthwith, Howe might prefer to undertake regular approaches.

  Darkness fell and dragging minutes crept to a midnight that threatened never to come. There was no attack. Silence continued. Washington had some sleep but by four o’clock on the twenty-eighth he was astir. The British were still in the position they held the previous evening. Washington did what he could to see that the men found their regiments, got food, put their arms in order and, if wounded, had the attention of a surgeon. Out in East River, the wind still favored the Continentals; communication between Long Island and New York could be maintained.