On October 19 and 20, as the British remained where they were, it was reasonable to assume that they planned to proceed up the shore of Connecticut or that they purposed to continue north in an effort to turn Washington’s left. If the British strategy was to confine the American Army between the sound and North River, then Howe’s advance probably would be to White Plains. At White Plains the Redcoats would have three advantages: they would command the upper road to Connecticut; they would have the Croton River to cover their rear; and from White Plains they could proceed with fair ease five miles west and reach the Hudson at Tarrytown. Washington went to White Plains on the twenty-first to examine the ground and resolved to anticipate a British movement to that position and take measures to withdraw provisions and other stores from exposed towns in southern Connecticut.
Several skirmishes occurred, but no action of importance was staged. Washington moved Headquarters to Valentine’s Hill. While at Valentine’s, Washington heard that Benedict Arnold had met the British fleet on Lake Champlain and had lost practically all the little vessels built with much toil; but from the reports received then and later Washington saw that in stubborn, stand-up fight, Arnold’s defeat was a victory of courage over the impulse to run away. It had been Washington’s hope that if October and November passed without a British advance down the New York lakes, nothing need be feared from that quarter until the spring of 1777; now he could give little time to reflection on dangers upstate because he needed every minute to concentrate his troops for the attacks he expected. It was October 23 when he opened Headquarters at White Plains in a position which was of some strength but was by no means as formidable as well-drawn lines would be in the higher hills north of the village. He took the less secure position because he wished to hold White Plains until the supplies there could be removed.
While the Quartermaster’s men were doing their best to transport these stores, Washington began to show some confusion of thought on strategy. Sound though his maneuvers had appeared to be, he now questioned their adequacy. Would it not be better to set up two armies, one to be stationed east of Hudson and the other to operate in New Jersey, where it could maneuver freely to combat any advance from New York in the direction of Philadelphia? Washington directed the subject to the consideration of Congress; but he had to defer more detailed personal review of it because he learned that the enemy was in movement towards White Plains. Then he virtually severed land communication with Fort Washington and called his troops from their posts on the Bronx. Lee, as the most experienced of Washington’s lieutenants, was entrusted with the rear of the column that came up Bronx River to the position at White Plains.
During the forenoon of the twenty-seventh the Americans heard the sound of heavy cannonade from the direction of Fort Washington. When a messenger reached Headquarters, the Commander-in-Chief learned that two frigates had come up North River and anchored at contemptuously short range to halt movement between Fort Washington and Fort Lee. A British land force simultaneously had presented itself in front of the southern outworks of Fort Washington and begun demonstrations. The whole undertaking was a quick failure. One of the frigates was mauled remorselessly; the British infantry did not attempt assault.
By dawn of the twenty-eighth, Washington had decided he must fortify and hold Chatterton’s Hill if he was to retain even briefly his position at White Plains. Colonel Reed was directed to take a force to the eminence, dispose the men and have them entrench. Spencer and Maj. Gen. James Wadsworth were sent out with five or six hundred mixed militia and Continentals to delay the British and collect such information as they could. While the Army waited, Reed went about his task of securing the hill. Spencer’s and Wadsworth’s troops presently came back to the lines with reports that the British were moving up the East Chester Road. Soon the enemy could be seen. In a short time, the British artillery opened with vigor on widespread targets. The American troops broke and were rallied with difficulty. The enemy increased his bombardment. Troops began to move from the British left and form for a crossing of Bronx River. Ere long, smoke was rising from an eminence almost directly south of Chatterton’s Hill: The enemy had climbed the ridges and was firing across. The crackle of small arms was almost continuous. Then came silence on the extreme right and a humiliating message to Washington: Hessians and British had stormed Chatterton’s Hill; the militia had run away again. The hill was lost, and so was the day. The right of the American lines at White Plains no longer was tenable.
Capture of Chatterton’s Hill did not expose immediately the whole of the Continental lines to British fire. The ground so abounded in natural defences that the American right could be drawn in and the remainder of the front held. Howe himself contributed to this by failing to press the advance. Washington shifted some of his troops to better positions on high ground October 28 and 29 and, all the while, removed as many supplies from White Plains as the wagons could carry. Howe kept his men under cover but by October 31 it was apparent that he was working on four or five batteries that could sweep most of the American positions. Washington accordingly withdrew that night to North Castle, a more rugged country where assault by the Redcoats would be expensive.
So far as rock and grade gave his Army protection, Washington felt he would be secure in the hills north of White Plains as soon as he could add to nature’s bulwarks. Open field combat was impossible at the time. Washington scarcely knew where to look for new soldiers or how to keep the veterans. He appealed to the militia to remain with the Army beyond the expiration of their term of service, but he might as well have asked them to scale high heaven. In the attempted enforcement of discipline, he threatened, he exhorted, he admonished. General Orders of November 3 read in part: “The General is sorry to find that there are some soldiers so lost to all sense of honor and honesty as to leave the Army when there is the greatest necessity for their services: He calls upon the officers of every rank to exert themselves in putting a stop to it, and absolutely forbids any officer, under the rank of a Brigadier General, discharging any officer or soldier or giving any permission to leave the camp on any pretence whatsoever.”
Such was the plight of the Army when, on the morning of November 5, Washington received news that the British had abandoned their camps and started in the direction of King’s Bridge. Headquarters buzzed with interpretation. Washington thought the move might be a feint and did not believe Howe could be preparing to go into winter quarters. It was more likely, he reasoned, that the British intended to besiege Fort Washington, attempt the subjugation of New Jersey and perhaps send an expedition to one or another of the southern States.
A council on the sixth agreed that if the British retreat were towards New York, Howe might be planning to invade New Jersey and that additional American troops should be moved thither. It was suggested that the regiments for this service be those of States below the Hudson and that men from the eastern States be returned to that region if circumstances permitted. Three thousand soldiers, the council decided, would be an appropriate guard for the New York highlands. This advice looked to the creation of two armies in accordance with the suggestion previously submitted to Congress by Washington, and it reflected the weary confusion of mind to which he was coming in his consideration of strategical plans. Too weak to take the offensive with one army, he was in a fair way of destroying even its defensive power by dividing it in circumstances that would increase his dependence on militia. At the moment, all the General could do to make this dangerous proposal an experimental reality was to apportion troops and make preliminary arrangements for the march and for the crossing of the Hudson.
The British withdrawal from White Plains gave the American commander almost a week in which to struggle with plundering, half-mutiny, widespread desertion and some obstacles of a sort that had not been put in his way when he had striven to replace the Army at the end of 1775. To have called his situation desperate would have been to brighten the picture. The danger of a complete dissolution of the Army was so i
mminent that while Washington did what he could to relieve the misery of his men, he could not afford to admit the justice of some of the soldiers’ complaints. Scores of tents had been lost in the evacuation of New York. Compelled to sleep on the ground, many of the recruits fell sick and went to hospitals which were worse than the camps. Some of the troops had no cooking utensils; others had to man the works all night when they were weary and shivering for lack of clothing. They could not be expected to respond with huzzas to the plea that they reenlist for the duration of the war. To Washington, the attitude of the men could not have seemed unreasonable, but he believed that if vigorous, persuasive officers were authorized to recruit on the terms Congress had allowed, some of the veterans could be induced to continue in service. The obstacle to this was a new one: no officer of a regiment due to leave at the end of the year knew whether he was to remain an officer and whether he had any right to recruit. Under the resolves Congress recklessly had adopted, nothing could be done in this direction until the state commissioners selected the men who were to command the regiments from their States. As of November 6, not a single officer of a state regiment had been chosen in this manner and invested with authority to recruit.
The addition of these man-made perplexities to the leadership of a dispirited and feeble army in the presence of a superior foe imposed on Washington the heaviest load under which he could hope to stagger on. It did not seem possible for patience to endure another frustration or for faith to bear up if disaster came. When, in bafflement and approaching despair, Washington brought his general officers together in council November 6, he asked their advice on recruitment: Could anything be done to preserve the Army? The answer of the council was the old one, perhaps the only one that could be made: As there inevitably would be a gap of some months between the time the Army of 1776 disbanded and the Army of 1777 was ready for the field, each of the nearby States must be called upon to supply a considerable force of militia to serve until March 1, 1777. To this weak and worn expedient was the Commander-in-Chief reduced, he who remembered militiamen’s negligence on Long Island, their panic at Kip’s Bay, their flight from Chatterton’s Hill and their mass desertion when weariness or homesickness overtook them.
After the council Washington addressed his appeal to some of the States for these new drafts of militia. He particularly exhorted Gov. William Livingston of New Jersey to put militia in readiness to take the place of men whose term of service was soon to expire. Washington’s tone in this was calm if urgent, but when he reported to Congress, which had authorized him to call for militia, he scarcely could conceal his desperation: “The propriety of this application [to the States] I trust will appear when it is known that not a single officer is yet commissioned to recruit, and when it is considered how essential it is to keep up some show of force and shadow of an Army.”
“Shadow of an Army”—was that all he was to have in the day when Howe manifestly intended to assail Fort Washington and, if successful there, might move against Philadelphia? Washington had to prepare as best he could for these eventualities, but he was wearier than he knew. His judgment increasingly was clouded; his decisions were made more slowly and with hesitation. In his exhausted state of mind, Washington thought the contemplated transfer of American forces across the Hudson was immediately strategic and perhaps imperative. He would divide the artillery, leave Heath to guard the New York Highlands, name Lee to direct operations north of King’s Bridge, and cross the Hudson with the troops from the States west and south of the river. These men would be few in number, but they could be reenforced, Washington believed, by two brigades of “five-months” troops from the Flying Camp and by Jersey militia. He estimated that from these two sources he could get at least five thousand troops. With these and his Continentals, he hoped he could hold the British until the development of their offensive made possible the reconcentration of all his troops except, perhaps, those left to garrison the passes of the highlands, the bastion that must be held if it was possible for a small army to do so.
In this expectation, Washington left the camp above White Plains November 10 and by the evening of the thirteenth reached Greene’s Headquarters at Fort Lee. Nearly all the troops from south or west of the Hudson then were across that river under the immediate command of Stirling—and were in number less than three full regiments would have been. Greene commanded 3500 men. With the inclusion of all the militia except those in Fort Washington, the Army east of the Hudson consisted of 13,123 fit, rank and file, on November 3. Approximately seven thousand of these had been left with Lee; Heath had about four thousand. Washington had reduced his own force to two thousand Virginians and Marylanders. He received information from Greene that was a stunning blow: The Flying Camp did not include anything like as many men as Washington had assumed were there; practically no Jersey militia had rallied to Greene. Instead of the five thousand recruits he had expected Washington had virtually no immediate accession of strength beyond the troops Greene had in Fort Lee.
In the face of this dispersion of force, the military situation was more and more bewildering. On November 11, while Washington had been reconnoitering the highlands, nearly two hundred sail had left New York, in the wake, as it were, of twenty-two that had stood out to sea on the ninth. Whither were these vessels bound? Washington was puzzled, too, by the failure of Howe to cross into Jersey. It was to be assumed that the British commander would undertake to reduce Fort Washington, but did Howe have some other plan, of which the Americans had as yet no information? There might be one more thrust. After that the Redcoats might go into winter quarters, but the direction of the probable offensive was put in deeper doubt now by reports Lee sent November 13 of a British march down North River from Dobbs Ferry in the direction of King’s Bridge.
As Washington, in hesitant mood, read all this and listened to the varying interpretations of the situation by the men about him, he felt that the prudent course for the time being was to leave Heath and Lee where they were and dispose the troops with him on the various roads leading into New Jersey, unless Congress had become anxious for the security of Philadelphia and wished him nearer that city. Never had he been so confused regarding his adversary; never had he been so hesitant—and seldom had he been called upon to decide quickly so close a question as that which had been presented for a week and more by Fort Washington: Should it be held or should it be evacuated? Could its garrison beat off attack that seemed certain, or would the place be taken and the officers and men be made prisoners unless they could get to Fort Lee?
Washington knew little about conditions at Fort Lee. He had lost direct communication with the place about October 22 and had left its defence to Greene. On November 5, the frigate Pearl and two victual ships had gone up North River, had passed the forts and the obstructions and had anchored off Spuyten Duyvil in defiance of the “rebels” and the cannon on the heights. Washington had been shaken when he had heard of this exploit. He wrote Greene: “If we cannot prevent vessels passing up, and the enemy are possessed of the surrounding country what valuable purpose can it answer to attempt to hold a post from which the expected benefit cannot be had . . . ?” The letter to Greene proceeded to urge that all stores and provisions at the forts or in the adjacent districts be removed or destroyed, except for those immediately needed, because experience had shown that the enemy had “drawn great relief” from supplies found in the area of operations.
Greene, in answer, advanced arguments for retaining Fort Washington: It occupied the attention of a considerable British force; it compelled the enemy to keep troops at King’s Bridge to prevent American sorties; it could hold out, according to Col. Robert Magaw, to the end of the year. Greene renewed his assurance that if the situation grew serious, he could remove the garrison of Fort Washington to Fort Lee and then could unite his command with the troops Washington brought over.
Now, November 14, at Fort Lee, on hearing Greene’s verbal report, Washington met with a disappointment: Greene had begun the ree
nforcement of the garrison at Fort Washington and had not removed surplus supplies and equipment from the works on either side of the Hudson. He still had strong conviction that the defences east of the river could be held and had exercised the discretion he thought Washington had given him regarding Fort Washington. Washington had to ask himself whether he should let Greene’s orders stand, increase the garrison and defend the place to the utmost, or attempt, even at the last hour, to follow his own judgment and evacuate the garrison and such artillery and supplies as he could. The weary General could not bring himself to a choice. There was “warfare” in his mind, he confessed later, and hesitation. He did not change Greene’s orders, but, leaving the management of affairs to that officer, he went on to Hackensack to study the dispositions that should be made to resist the expected advance of Howe. Greene, as confident as ever, sent across to Fort Washington reenforcements who increased the defenders of the works to nearly seventeen hundred men.
At Hackensack, November 15, Washington received a brief dispatch from Greene, who enclosed one sent him by Colonel Magaw at Fort Washington. Magaw reported the receipt of a flag of truce from King’s Bridge, with the British Adjutant General in the party. The American officer wrote: “The Adjutant General would hardly give two hours for an alternative between surrendering at discretion, or every man being put to the sword.” Magaw concluded: “We are determined to defend the post or die,” and he appended a copy of his flat rejection of the demand for surrender.
Washington Page 53