Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Washington undertook to meet this in direct manner by personal appeal to Lee, who proved compliant. The proposed task, said Lee, more properly could be discharged by a “young, volunteering General” than by the second in command of the entire Army. Pleased and relieved by this, Washington proceeded to draft Lafayette’s orders, but almost before the enthusiastic Frenchman could start Lee withdrew his consent and argued that if the detachment was to be large his “ceding it would have an odd appearance.” Washington had to work out a new arrangement. The best he could advise was an awkward compromise whereby Lafayette was to have the honor of making the first move and of executing it fully if, when Lee came forward, the Marquis was engaged. After that, and earlier if Lafayette was not committed to action, Lee would have the usual authority of senior Major General.

  While Washington negotiated this strange bargain on the twenty-fifth, he continued to receive intelligence which confirmed that the British were moving toward Monmouth Court House, an advance that threatened soon to put the enemy beyond reach. Washington concluded that he should shorten the gap between his Army and the Redcoats at the same time that he drew closer to his advance force. With the heavy baggage left behind, he moved his Army on the night of June 25/26 from Kingston to Cranbury, the nearest safe vantage ground in rear of the British columns.

  At Cranbury he found new perplexities: the shift of his troops, the movements of the enemy and the exhaustion of men and horses in paralyzing heat had produced a temporary collapse of intelligence; the columns had outrun the Commissary wagons; Washington’s own orders, certain officers’ ignorance of the country and the general zeal to harass the enemy had scattered the Continentals and the militia so widely that with the possible exception of Lafayette’s, none of these small forces could strike a blow or give weight to the attack any other troops delivered. The situation was almost out of hand. Unless Washington could act quickly and decisively, the supreme opportunity of assailing the enemy in motion would be gone.

  Lafayette must move to Englishtown. He could be provisioned more readily there. Besides, if Lee decided to attack, Englishtown would be on the flank of the route the British were most apt to follow when they left Monmouth Court House. On the basis of this reasoning Washington directed Lafayette to move as soon as possible. Lafayette could not withhold the observation: “I do not believe General Lee intends to make any attack tomorrow, for then I would have been directed to fall immediately upon them without making eleven miles entirely out of the way. I am here as near as I will be at Englishtown.”

  It was now or never for an offensive against an enemy in motion. The American commander proceeded accordingly: He closed his column. Lee was directed to proceed to Englishtown and take command of the enlarged advance force of five thousand men, even though this meant that Lafayette temporarily might have no troops under him. The main Army must move up in support of Lee to Penelopen, three miles from English-town. Later in the day dispatches from the front indicated that the enemy still was at Monmouth Court House and might be on the point of moving ten or twelve miles northeast, to the heights of Middletown. Lee was told to confer with his subordinate general officers, secure his camp and make ready to attack the rear of the enemy the moment the British left Monmouth Court House. A strange answer came back: From his knowledge of the senior officers in the opposing Army, said Lee, he thought it highly probable they would turn about and strike, and if he had not been acquainted with them personally, he would have expected this of them as officers.

  About five o’clock on the morning of June 28, a dispatch informed Washington the enemy were in motion. As this was dated 4:30 A.M., Washington had the speediest possible notice of a movement he had anticipated. With good fortune, he could hope for prompt pursuit. Troops left behind when Lee had marched off must be put in motion at once. Col. Richard K. Meade, the officer then on duty, must go to Lee, tell him to have his men leave their packs in camp, take the road, follow the enemy, and “bring on” an attack.

  Washington soon afterward permitted first John Laurens and then James McHenry, a new member of his staff, to reconnoiter in the direction of Monmouth Court House, while he started the column towards that village. Washington could assume his troops well apportioned. Lee had about 5000 men and 12 cannon; Gen. Philemon Dickinson’s estimated 1000 Jersey militia were close to the advanced column; Morgan was on the eastern flank of the enemy with 600 marksmen; the supporting force under Washington himself numbered about 7800. The left wing was led by Stirling, as usual; Greene was put in command of the right.

  While Washington pushed his column forward he heard that Lee had shown irritation over conflicting intelligence reports but was continuing towards the rear of the enemy—a state of affairs that seemed to make it worthwhile to send new assurance that the main Army was in support. To bring that support into action at the proper time would call for the utmost energy, because men already were falling out from heat exhaustion. This was disturbing, but the reports from the vicinity of Monmouth Court House were encouraging: The enemy was moving off at “a quick pace”; Lee was about to attack the rearguard, and he had hopes of cutting it off.

  About noon the sound of a cannon shot came from the vicinity of Monmouth Court House, then another and another and another to a total of four or five. No answering artillery fire was audible. The close and scorching air brought not a single echo of a small-arms volley. Washington sent Colonel Meade forward again to ascertain what was afoot, and when Maj. John Clark offered to convey to Lee any message the Commander-in-Chief wished to forward, the General bade the Major tell Lee to “annoy the enemy as much as in his power, but at the same time proceed with caution and take care the enemy don’t draw him into a scrape.”

  No further sound of conflict rolled back. Nothing important happened until Alexander Hamilton drew rein and reported. Lee was about to engage, said the Colonel; would it not be well to turn Greene’s troops to the southward, where they could cover the right flank of the Army in event the British defeated and pursued Lee? While Washington considered this, Knox returned from the direction of Monmouth Court House as hot in mood as in body. There was confusion among Lee’s troops, said the Chief of Artillery; precautions should be taken against a possible reverse.

  Be it so! When Greene’s leading regiment came to Tennent’s Church, let all the troops of the right wing file off to the south. They then would be on a road that followed for some distance the general direction of the main route from Englishtown. A couple of miles west of Monmouth the two converged at a point where, if need be, the Army could form line quickly. The left wing, meantime, need not deviate.

  A stranger in civilian clothes now joined the group of officers. In a moment or two the General heard that the countryman had come from the vicinity of Monmouth Court House and had said Lee’s troops were falling back. The tale could not be true. Washington rode on, but he had gone no farther than fifty yards when he had to pull in his horse once more. A few men were approaching from the east and soon were around him. One of them declared that the whole force in front was retreating. Again Washington could not believe the rumor. He had heard no firing except the cannon shot about noon; Lee had sent no word of any withdrawal; had the advance force encountered trouble, so experienced a soldier would have sent warning to a fellow-commander operating over unfamiliar ground.

  Washington touched his horse and pushed anxiously on to a wooded ridge below which, to the east, a rebellious brook had spread the net of a long morass. In a few minutes he stopped, aghast: the yellow road in front of him, merciless furnace, was crowded with armed men. They were moving towards him in retreat, staggering, exhausted. The General was appalled. This was Long Island, Kips Bay, Germantown reenacted by veterans; it was defeat; it soon would be madness and chaos, because Washington had no plan or place to rally the men before the enemy was upon them.

  Here was Israel Shreve, Colonel of the Second New Jersey. What, asked the General, was the meaning of the retreat? Shreve answered that he did not kn
ow; he was retiring by order. Washington turned away to seek better information and, in a few minutes saw Lee and some of his staff ahead of a withdrawing detachment. The Commander-in-Chief anxiously rode to meet him. In much astonishment, Washington asked sharply, What is the meaning of all this? Lee answered, in embarrassment, that contradictory intelligence had caused confusion, that he did not choose to meet the British when he was in that condition, that Gen. Charles Scott had abandoned a favorable position, and that the situation was no worse than that which arose when orders were not being executed properly. Besides, the attack had been made contrary to his opinion. Washington retorted hotly that whatever Lee’s opinions, he expected his orders to be obeyed. If Lee had not believed in the operation, he should not have undertaken it. Washington hurried off and left Lee to expostulate that he was ready as a soldier to obey orders but was averse to general engagements and had opposed them in council.

  Washington had thought for one thing only—to save those fainting and disheartened men who had retreated to strange ground, in that torturing heat, without firing a musket. At the front, where blind confusion prevailed, he met Robert Harrison. The enemy was pressing hard, the Colonel cried, and was within fifteen minutes’ march! This was the first notice Washington had received that the Redcoats were so close, and for a minute or two it stunned him. How would it be possible to defend a position as near the British as the ridge where he stood? Must he order a general retreat? While he was hesitating, Tench Tilghman spoke up: Lt. Col. David Rhea of the Fourth New Jersey had passed a few minutes previously and had remarked that he knew the district where they then were. It was militarily good ground. If the General wanted him, Rhea would be glad to help.

  Washington fairly leaped at the words. Send instantly for Rhea. Washington looked about him for some shelter where he could rally the troops of Lee. Fortune favored. Nearby, on the eastward gradient, was a hedgerow. With terse commands Washington ordered all he met in the field to post themselves behind this barrier. Henry Beekman Livingston on his own initiative brought up his men and put them there—the first movement in a rally of the fugitives. Livingston was laboring firmly at this and Washington was collecting other regiments when Tilghman returned with Rhea, the most useful guide, surely, that ever came to Washington on a field of battle. The ground where they stood, Rhea told the General, was part of a long elevation. In front was a protective swamp. On the left, the Army would find an eminence of some strength; woods in the rear would cover any supports posted there.

  The spirits of Washington rose at the words. Within a few moments he was master of himself and of the situation. Hamilton wrote later: “His coolness and firmness were admirable. He instantly took measures for checking the enemy’s advance, and giving time for the Army, which was very near, to form and make a proper disposition.” Wayne helped tremendously in this by placing his unshaken brigade where it would be able to hold off the approaching enemy, while Washington reassured Ramsey’s and Stewart’s Regiments, ordered Varnum to form behind the hedge, and sent an urgent call for artillery. Greene and Stirling must be left to find the best positions they could on either wing.

  Full effort achieved heart-stirring results. When, presently, smoke and sound told of the arrival of the royal artillery on the east side of the swamp, Col. Eleazer Oswald had four guns ready for a defiant answer. Washington felt sure they would discourage an immediate British attack and hurried off to see how Stirling fared on the left. There the Commander-in-Chief came again upon Lee who apparently did not understand who was directing the action. Washington still was ignorant of what had happened at the front, but his wrath had not cooled and he said tersely that one or the other of them should take charge where they were. If Lee would stay there, he would go back and form the centre. Lee was agreeable. Washington galloped back to the ridge in anticipation of heavier assaults than Oswald’s guns and Wayne’s muskets could repulse for long. The line behind the hedgerow must be strengthened. Not a second could be lost.

  The odds shifted again momentarily, because Stewart’s and Ramsey’s men were beginning to waver and had to be relieved. Elsewhere the rally was taking form. Stirling was trying to get ten cannon in a good position, with Maxwell’s Brigade in support of the wing; Steuben was available to collect fugitives; Greene’s men were filing in on the right; the men behind the hedgerow were more numerous. Washington could reason that he soon would have a better chance of redeeming a desperate hour, but, of course, he had to expect attack here, there, anywhere the enemy might find him weak, and he might have to face a general assault, something his Army never yet had withstood. The outcome would be desperately close: it must not be fatal.

  Now the British cavalry swept thunderously forward within forty paces of some of the Continentals—only to turn away in the face of the American fire. A few minutes more and Stirling’s guns were biting British advancing against the American left, above the head of the morass. On the opposite flank another force had found lodgment, but it was met by such vigorous challenge that the Redcoats had to hug the ground to protect themselves. Washington saw all this and waited with what appeared to be complete self-command. In a short time the British still were using artillery with some vigor but infantry fire had ceased. It was now past five o’clock. The sun, still high, was abating its fury. Thirst, not heat, was the worst torture of the troops. Minutes passed without further attack or demonstration. Did this mean that the enemy had enough? Washington could not be sure, but, a little later, Wayne moved carefully out and succeeded, as he believed, in driving the last of the British back across the swamp. A counter-stroke, Washington thought, now might be delivered. He sent word to Steuben to bring up reenforcements for pursuit of the enemy, and he attempted to throw out Gen. William Woodford on the right and Gen. Enoch Poor on the left, with that officer’s regiments and the North Carolina Brigade.

  Gallantly, if not gladly, these troops went forward—only to halt because, in Henry Dearborn’s words, the men were “beat out with heat and fatigue.” The flanking columns remained at the point of farthest advance; the fire died away; Washington’s men had unchallenged control of the field where they had been rallied. “We remained looking at each other,” said John Laurens later, “with the defile between us, till dark. . . .” The next morning, the troops awakened to find the enemy gone. Only the debris of the field, the badly wounded and the unburied dead, 217 of them, were left on the ridge and on the edges of the morass. Evidence of this severe British loss and fear that the enemy were beyond pursuit gave thoughtful American officers a feeling of mingled pride and humiliation. Washington desired, of course, to press the enemy, but on June 29 heat and the weariness of the men forbade, and on the thirtieth—another exceedingly hot day—intelligence made it clear that the British could not be overtaken.

  The last day of June was not destined to be merely hot and quiet. Without any hint of what was coming, Washington received from Lee a letter that began with this flourish:

  From the knowledge I have of your Excellency’s character, I must conclude that nothing but misinformation of some very stupid, or misrepresentation of some very wicked person, could have occasioned your making use of such very singular expressions as you did on my coming up to the ground where you had taken post: they implied that I was guilty either of disobedience of orders, of want of conduct, or want of courage.

  Lee wished to know “on which of these three articles you ground your charge, that I may prepare for my justification, which I have the confidence I can do, to the Army, to the Congress, to America, and to the world in general.” With this he warmed to his subject. No one absent from the scene could be the “least judges of the merits or demerits” of Lee’s maneuvers to which—he asserted it without blush—”the success of the day was entirely owing.” Lee had, he affirmed, the right “to demand some reparation for the injury committed,” and unless he could obtain it, he would retire, “when this campaign is closed, (which I believe will close the war) from a service, at the head of which is pl
aced a man capable of offering such injuries. . . .”

  The assertion that success was due entirely to Lee’s “maneuvers” was discounted that same day by a letter in which Wayne and Scott described events of the forenoon of June 28. The two Brigadiers declared, in effect, that the advance of Lee’s column had caught the enemy in motion, and that, after the British rearguard turned to attack the van, American troops thrown forward in support had repulsed the Redcoats. Wayne and Scott then had taken what they described as a position ideally formed for defense, but they found the troops on their right melting away, and when Wayne sent to Lee to have these withdrawing regiments halted and returned to their post, Lee sent back “no answer than that he would see General Wayne himself.” This, said Wayne and Scott, “he never did.” The two brigades had been left without support and had been compelled to pull back. Wayne and Scott concluded with these words: “We also beg leave to mention that no plan of attack was ever communicated to us, or notice of a retreat, until it had taken place in our rear, as we supposed by General Lee’s order.”

  Washington did not intend to argue that point or any other now, but he could not ignore Lee’s reference to “singular expressions,” to “injuries” and to “justification.” This answer was dispatched:

  SIR: I received your letter (dated through mistake the 1st of July) expressed as I conceive, in terms highly improper. I am not conscious of having made use of any very singular expression at the time of my meeting you, as you intimate. What I recollect to have said was dictated by duty and warranted by the occasion. As soon as circumstances will permit, you shall have an opportunity, either of justifying yourself to the Army, to Congress, to America and to the world in general; or of convincing them that you were guilty of a breach of orders and of misbehavior before the enemy on the 28th. instant in not attacking them as you had been directed and in making an unnecessary, disorderly and shameful retreat. I am, etc.