First of Men

by Ferling, John;

Washington had little time to relish his victory. It was something he would muse over in his retirement years, he told a correspondent. New York now occupied his attention, as it had intermittently since January. As early as January Washington had been convinced that his adversary was about to sail for New York. How to respond? Washington still was sufficiently uncertain of his powers to find himself briefly in a quandary. While he generally was responsible for defending the colonies, his immediate charge had been to assume command of the army in Boston. Charles Lee advised him that he possessed the authority “to take any step” necessary in New York, but Washington knew his garrulous subordinate well enough to take his suggestions with a grain of salt. Luckily, John Adams still was enjoying his Christmas recess in Braintree, and the general invited him to headquarters for a pot-luck dinner. How would Congress react, asked Washington after the meal, if he sent General Lee to take command in New York? Adams did not hesitate for a moment. No friend of the resistance could question such action, he responded; besides, “it is high Time that City was secured.” Of course, the two men’s presumptions about an imminent British withdrawal from Boston proved illusory, though General Henry Clinton had departed with a small force for Charleston, South Carolina. Nevertheless, Lee was dispatched to Manhattan, where he spent two hectic months in a futile endeavor to disarm the local Tories and to fortify the two islands that comprised New York.24

  As was his custom Lee seemed to be everywhere at once, blustering at the Loyalists, noisily supervising the construction of defensive works, harshly drilling his new recruits. But for all his activity Lee accomplished little with the Tories. In fact, his severe, unyielding treatment of the Loyalists only aroused the moderate Whig leaders, cautious, conservatives who resented the loss of their local authority and who feared that the small British armada lying in the harbor might retaliate against Lee’s methods by shelling the city. Faced with resistance from every side, Lee ultimately backed off, having arrested and disarmed only a tiny fraction of this unfriendly group, and having resettled none among this potentially partisan corps; whenever the British arrived they would find this faction intact, ready and willing to aid and abet the royal army in its efforts to suppress the rebellion. On the other hand, Lee’s work on the fortification of Manhattan and Long Island proceeded uninterrupted. A savvy professional, his choice of positions for gun emplacements and garrisons was beyond question. But even as he carried out his assignments, Lee sensed that the ramparts would be ineffectual. An island was not a easy site to defend if your assailant possessed total naval superiority. Thus, his plan was less one of saving New York than of making Britain pay dearly for its conquest.25 Yet Lee did not recommend against fighting for the islands, leaving the historian to guess whether his silence arose from a fear of being branded a weakling or whether, given political realities, he simply acknowledged that a struggle for New York was inescapable.

  The defense of New York was but one piece of the puzzle. Although Washington complained that Howe’s designs were “too much behind the Curtain” to fathom, he quickly—and correctly—guessed his adversary’s strategy. Britain’s first goal was to secure New York; not only would that keep communication open with London, but Manhattan and Long Island would offer engaging opportunities for foraging, even for raising large herds of their own livestock. The next step would be for Howe to unite his army with a British army moving south from Canada. The two should meet somewhere along the long, curling route of the Hudson River, a linkage that would effectively isolate New England, knocking it out of the war.26

  Although Washington did not set out from Boston until April 4, about ten days after he ordered the advance units of his army to proceed to New York, he did accompany the bulk of his troops to the south. He sent his wife and her party west to Hartford, thence to New York, reputedly the most comfortable route. Washington and the army took the fastest course, via Providence and the coastal towns of Connecticut. The movement of an army was not a small undertaking. A line of thousands of men seemed to stretch to infinity, and the baggage train appeared to be even longer. Three hundred wagons, each drawn by a team of four horses, were assembled at the Commons in Cambridge, this to transport just the ammunition and stores of the regiment of artillery; nor could these items be loaded haphazardly, for thought had to be given to placing the most essential objects in the forward vehicles. More wagons were required for hospital supplies, although, whereas Washington had carefully directed Colonel Knox’s packaging activities, he told Dr. John Morgan, Director-General of medical services, that he would “refrain from giving . . . particular Directions, leaving a Latitude to your Experience and Knowledge in your Profession.” The commander placed responsibility for the deliverance of each van’s contents upon the shoulders of its teamster, and he appointed an overseer, or “conductor” as he called him, for every thirty wagons.27

  Leaving behind five regiments under General Ward, Washington and the troops commenced the two-hundred-mile journey on a bitterly cold spring day. The officers traveled by horseback; the men walked. An ambush or any sort of encounter with the British was out of the question, of course, so the strict precautions that might ordinarily have attended such a trek were forsaken; moreover, unlike those European forces which characteristically posted a large rear guard—more as a means of forestalling desertion than as a safeguard against attack—the American army could afford to be less wary. A quartermaster unit moved out well in advance of the main force, spending its days searching for an agreeable site for each night’s camp. The army followed, troops of dragoons, or cavalry, preceding several infantry companies, followed by more cavalry, and so on. Next came the vans bearing items for each night’s bivouac, then transports laden with weaponry and accouterments; the baggage wagons followed, then came the artillery train, and finally a small guard bought up the rear. The force was divided into squads of six men, each furnished with a tent and a heavy iron pot, which the men carried by turns. The soldiers were awakened before dawn, and were on the march again before the new day’s sun had climbed very high, a march that continued—with only brief rest stops—until about four o’clock in the afternoon, early enough for the latrines to be dug and the firewood gathered for that evening’s use, but late enough for the army to have covered seventeen or eighteen miles during the day.28

  General Washington accompanied the army on the first day of the march, sleeping in a tent somewhere south of Braintree. But with all going smoothly he rode on to Providence, where he established his headquarters in the mansion of Rhode Island’s governor, Stephen Hopkins. Three days later he rejoined the army in Norwich, Connecticut, but after a few days he again seemed to grow weary of its sluggish pace and he hurried ahead, reaching New York in mid-April. His army marched into town three days later. It had been a cold, dreary, often wet, transit, and at journey’s end almost everyone seemed plagued by “the itch,” a skin disorder that arose from poor hygiene and from sleeping on the ground; a variety of home remedies were prescribed, ranging from greasing one’s skin with hog lard to painting the dermis with pine tar, but not surprisingly nothing worked. Homesickness set in too. Almost to a man these were New Englanders, and the march took most of them far from their homes for the first time in their lives. In their melancholy state some soldiers lost their appetite, and many eventually experienced the physical symptoms of illness. The high morale of March receded somewhat in April as the realities of soldiering grew clear for these farm boys and village mechanics.29

  Nor were the commander’s spirits raised by what he found upon his arrival. The deployment of defensive installations had not proceeded very far before General Lee was reassigned by Congress, receiving command of the newly created Southern Department. In his absence construction had virtually stopped, leaving Washington with a problem that he had presumed to be solved. Moreover, Washington found New York’s political climate far different from that in New England. John Adams once had remarked that the New England outlook toward popular resistance was ten years ahead of tha
t in the middle colonies, and Washington must now have discovered that he had been quite correct. Compared to Boston this city overflowed with Tories and fence-sitters; besides, so much contact subsisted between city residents and the nearby British fleet that he feared his adversary knew all there was to know of his army’s strength, its movements, its works, its plans. This was a new problem, and one over which he exercised little control.

  The city itself presented still another problem. During the siege of Boston Washington’s troops had been stationed in rural areas and in rustic villages; now they were in a city, with its fleshpots and gin joints and a thousand other forms of merriment for bored and apprehensive young men. “It should be the pride of a Soldier, to conduct himself in such a manner, as to obtain the Applause, and not the reproach of a people,” the general lectured, but his speech did not halt an avalanche of discipline problems. In addition, after being relatively well supplied in Boston, his men faced a sudden dearth of many items, the result of rampant thievery as well as of a simple breakdown in the delivery system that had accompanied the recent march. Nor had the chronic shortage of arms and the periodic deficiency of payroll funds been eliminated. Yet, these were minor problems. His greatest challenge was to find a means of defending this indefensible city. Soon he had time only for work. “I give into no kind of amusements . . . but are confined from Morn’ ’till Eve” to Headquarters, he told the Congress in plaintive missive in April, his unruffled calm of the previous month now sorely tested.30

  After he dug his way from beneath these initial difficulties, Washington’s mood shifted to one of assuredness. He did not despair at the obstacles to defending Manhattan and Long Island. Indeed, all along he seemed to have believed that he possessed the means to rebuff the invaders. It was a naive supposition, growing in part from his overly charitable expectation of untested troops, from his ingenuous anticipation that his shore batteries could immobilize the British navy, and from his reliance on General Lee’s skill in properly locating the gun emplacements. As late as July he predicted that the redcoats “will meet a repulse,” for his troops had “an agreeable Spirit and willingness for Action.” He was so confident that he even detached ten regiments for the Canadian theater.31

  Washington’s plan for defending New York was based on a very optimistic reading of General Lee’s report. Washington concluded that British troops might land at four possible sites: on the southwestern point of Long Island, in Gravesend or Brooklyn; somewhere along the eastern side of Manhattan; on the southern tip of Manhattan; or at the northern end of Manhattan, the King’s Bridge area. He ruled out a landing on the west side. Although Lee had concluded that it was vain to believe that British men-of-war could be prevented from navigating the Hudson River, Washington believed that by the artful deployment of chevaux de frise (booby traps made of wire nets and spikes) and sunken ships in the stream, the enemy would find the Hudson impassable; but even if the Royal Navy could use the river, Washington doubted that Howe would order an assault up the steep, high bluffs that looked down on the Hudson. Washington believed he could defend each of the possible landfalls. The geography of western Long Island was similar to that of Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights, providing him with a distinct advantage; moreover, even though Britain would have total naval superiority, he concluded that the colonists’ shore batteries on both Long Island and Manhattan could command the East River, the estuary that sluiced between the islands, thus affording his army both a lane of supply to Brooklyn and a route of retreat off Long Island. Moreover, he believed his well-entrenched army militated against a British landing on either the eastern or the northern sides of Manhattan. Washington radiated a cocksureness, even suggesting that the only thing that could defeat his army was a shortage of entrenching tools, the spades and picks necessary to construct ramparts and parapets.32

  After five weeks of toiling with these matters, Washington left Israel Putnam in charge and hurried to Philadelphia for consultations with Congress. The legislators had requested the meeting, but he was no less eager to see them and to press for additional troops and supplies. While there he also hoped to induce Joseph Reed to return to the army. A year earlier when Reed had accompanied the general from Philadelphia, he was uncertain whether he would serve as an aide; ultimately he remained at headquarters for four months, laboring as he seldom had before, living what he called a “jog trot life.” Despite their hectic, busy schedules, Washington and Reed grew quite close. Displaying complete trust in Reed, Washington brought him into the most confidential meetings, and, late at night when the day’s work at last was completed, the two men frequently relaxed and talked, the general at ease, informal, sipping a glass of wine and indulging his penchant for nuts, and revealing to Reed a side that he permitted few other men to see. Reed probably grew closer to Washington than did any other person during this war, nearer and more intimate perhaps than anyone other than George William Fairfax. A strong bond evolved between the two men, a relationship that must have mirrored Washington’s earlier affiliations with Lord Fairfax and General Braddock, only this time the commander played the role of the older man of power and Reed took on the part of the surrogate son. But in the fall Reed took an indefinite leave from the army, hurrying home in the hope of saving his foundering legal practice, virtually his only source of income.33

  Not many weeks passed before Washington was almost pleading with Reed to return. He even used his influence with Congress to secure a pay raise for the secretaries, hoping that would induce this gifted young man to hurry back to Cambridge. Reed, however, always replied evasively to Washington’s entreaties, explaining that he would return when his affairs were in order, or that he would be there for the summer campaign in 1776, but never mentioning precisely when he planned to leave home. In April Washington called again. The war was shifting to New York, he said; he desperately needed Reed’s political savvy to deal with the merchant-politicians in that city. This time Reed appeared ready to go, even moving his wife from Philadelphia to a safe haven in New Jersey, but at the last minute Pennsylvania’s tempestuous domestic political situation bubbled over, and Reed begged off in order to serve his province. Left with no choice, Washington dropped the Pennsylvanian and named Robert Harrison as his replacement.34

  On the eve of the commander’s visit with Congress, however, another means of securing Reed’s services presented itself. In mid-May Congress promoted General Gates, leaving open his post as adjutant general; Washington decided to sound out the legislators about naming Reed to that position, hoping that, if they would oblige, the young Pennsylvanian would find the higher pay and greater prestige of that post a sufficient inducement to bring him back into the service. Washington reached Philadelphia during the third week of May, and he must have immediately seen Reed at one or another social gathering; but ten days passed before he formally tendered the adjutancy. Reed was as perplexed as he was surprised by the offer, for he had neither command nor military experience. He remained an opportunist, however. A “great revolution has happened in my prospects,” he told his wife. The £700 annual salary “will help to support us till these calamitous times are at an end,” he assured her, adding that his sudden elevation to the rank of colonel “must put me on a respectable basis” if the war ended favorably for the colonists. As Washington expected, Reed accepted the offer.35

  During his stay in Philadelphia, Washington appeared before the entire Congress on two occasions. He also met with two special committees that Congress empaneled after his arrival. The commander frankly told the congressmen that the pending British attack in New York, together with that summer’s campaign in Canada, “will probably decide the Fate of America.” He recommended the strategy that Lee earlier had proposed: make the British pay dearly for every inch of soil they secured. What he required to accomplish that objective, he said, was manpower, a two-to-one superiority if possible. He proposed that Congress fund additional enlistments—the recruits to be enticed by cash or land bounties—and that the legi
slators raise more than thirty thousand militiamen from the colonies for short-term service.36

  Washington’s arguments were artful and persuasive, but Congress already had been moved by news that preceded the commander to Philadelphia. Two days before his arrival word reached Congress that Great Britain had signed treaties with various German principalities to hire mercenaries. The Congress listened to Washington, then it mobilized 6000 militiamen for Canada, and 13,800—whose tour of duty was to extend until December I—were summoned for the coming clash in New York. In addition, Congress authorized Schuyler to hire 2000 Indian allies, and it called up another 10,000 men from the middle colonies, a reserve that was to be mustered and organized into a “flying camp,” a mobile force that could be summoned on short notice. Although Congress failed to approve any manner of bounty that might have facilitated recruiting, it believed it had done all that was necessary. “I am in no doubt [that] our enemies will not be able to support the war another year, said Congressman William Whipple of New Hampshire, expressing the shortsighted but prevalent view.37

  If Washington was happy at Congress’s generally obliging attitude, he must have been equally delighted by another sentiment that he discovered in Philadelphia. Most congressmen now seemed prepared to proclaim America’s independence from Great Britain. Through the winter and early spring months of 1776 many legislators rather timorously had held out the forlorn hope that London was sending emissaries to negotiate a settlement. Gradually, as it became crystal clear that the ministry was unwilling to make concessions, radical strength grew; in April Congress threw open the colonial ports to trade with nations outside the Empire, and the next month the legislators directed each colony to abrogate its charters by instituting governments responsive to its own citizenry. When Washington arrived in Philadelphia, moreover, he learned that the House of Burgesses in Virginia had resolved that his province should be “absolved from all allegiance” to Britain. Just after he left to return to New York, Congress took its most decisive step. On June 11 a committee headed by Thomas Jefferson was created to draft a declaration of independence.38