First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  To be in place for this operation required a long march beginning about sunset, commencing then so that each column would have time to reach its destination and to relax for a spell during the last hours of darkness. To succeed, the men (about 10 percent of whom lacked shoes) had to traverse unfamiliar roads at night, then attack in an environment dotted with houses and fences behind which the British could hide. The men shoved off with a message from General Washington ringing in their ears: in the Northern Department “every thing wears the most favourable aspect . . . and promises success,” he began; this “surely must animate every man. . . . This army . . . will certainly not suffer itself to be out done by their northern Brethren; they will never endure such disgrace. . . . Covet! my Countrymen, and fellow soldiers! Covet! a share of the glory due to heroic deeds!”42

  Problems soon arose. Poor maps and a heavy fog that crept in during the early morning hours hindered the march, causing most units to arrive late. One who reached Germantown later than expected was Greene, and he had two-thirds of the American army; he did not reach the village until forty-five minutes after the battle had begun. Moreover, the British were not surprised by the arrival of the Americans. Their pickets opened fire before the bayonet charge materialized, then the main contingents rushed forward to the north side of the hamlet to contest the attackers. But despite the initial difficulties the Americans did not break. It was a vicious fight, and in time British units were the first to begin falling back, retreating through buckwheat fields toward the center of town. Visibility, however, was cut to thirty yards by the fog and smoke, and the American pursuers could only grope after their prey. Soon they could not move at all. A small number of redcoat light infantry commandeered the Benjamin Chew house, the residence of Pennsylvania’s chief justice, a bulky, two-story, stone mansion that sat along the thoroughfare upon which Sullivan’s men were traveling; that abode became a castle, a fortress, from which the deadly fire of a few British troops pinned down an entire American division for sixty minutes. Knox tried to no avail to blow down the dwelling with his cannon. It would not collapse. Washington then ordered that it be burned out. That failed too, and it ultimately was taken only by repeated methodical assaults.

  It was during that fray that Greene—whose guide had taken him four miles in the wrong direction—finally arrived and joined the fight. At first it seemed that his appearance would turn the day. The British right sagged. All across the line the adversary was falling back. But two occurrences reversed the tide. British units on the left regrouped and attacked; Sullivan’s men had walked into a bayonet charge, a sudden terrifying moment when, as if in an apparition men in red burst through the fog, screaming, running, light glistening off the cold steel knives attached to their muskets. There were few times in this war when America’s green soldiery stood resolutely in the face of a bayonet attack. This was not one of them. At almost the same moment another disaster struck. Adam Stephen, Washington’s old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Regiment, now a general assigned to Greene’s column, disobeyed orders, igniting an unfortunate incident. Contrary to his directions, he broke away from Greene to assist in the attack on the Chew House; en route his men stumbled into fog-shrouded troops whom he believed to be redcoats. They were not. They were Continentals under Anthony Wayne, scurrying to catch up with Sullivan. The two units fired on each other, then a frenzied, unaccountable panic set in that seemed to unnerve tired, overwrought men in other units. Men in some outfits raced pell-mell for safety, although more often than not these spent, disconcerted soldiers simply drifted away. Exposing himself once again to great danger, Washington rode here and there in a futile attempt to stop this curious retreat, and his example may have bucked up other officers who likewise displayed great valor in slowing the fallback and preventing a complete rout. But the fight was over. Three hours after entering Germantown the American troops departed, facing another twelve-mile march on weary feet and stomachs that had not been fed for eighteen hours or more.43

  With 152 killed (57 at the Chew House alone), the Americans suffered about twice as many fatalities as their adversary. About 100 more Americans than British were wounded (521 to 450), but 400 of Washington’s soldiers were captured, whereas the Continentals took no prisoners. From Washington’s view, however, the most egregious disappointment was the American failure to score the stunning victory that was within its grasp. It is not likely that Germantown ever could have become a second Trenton, but for a few precious minutes another Princeton seemed conceivable. And such a victory, coupled with events in the northern theater, might have ended the conflict by breaking the British will to continue. Yet victory had eluded them, although this time Washington hardly was to blame, save perhaps for his not ordering that the Chew House be bypassed altogether. His repeated assaults on that inconsequential bastion only squandered time and men, and permitted a few stalwart redcoats to become an unnecessary impediment; besides, it seems absurd to believe that these few British infantrymen could have done any harm to the American rear—if for no other reason than that a handful of Americans could have contained them within that scarred mansion. In reality, no one really caused the attack to fail. By necessity victory hinged on the implementation of a complicated plan executed by a callow army that operated under difficult conditions, including the need to fight a professional army. Given the impediments to success, it is more surprising that Washington’s army came so near to victory than that it failed.

  The British held Philadelphia. But the struggle for that municipality had not ended. Washington believed that he could besiege the town and inhibit British foraging activities as he had done at Boston two years earlier. If he could simultaneously thwart Britain’s access to the sea, Howe’s taking of the city could “prove his Ruin,” the commander told Congress.44 The army and the militia had a good record when it came to sitting on British foraging parties, but obstructing Howe’s maritime lifeline was a different matter. The booby traps and fortifications along the Hudson had been spectacularly unsuccessful summer before last. Could they succeed now?

  General Washington first raised that question on the day he passed through Philadelphia en route to the Brandywine. Greene, Knox, Reed, and Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray, a French officer who had surfaced at Morristown in the spring, studied the problem and counseled that the British could be denied the use of the Delaware. Various traps and snares had been in place for nearly two years; in addition, each added, the river was long and narrow, and the ingenious utilization of fire rafts, together with the careful selection of gun emplacements, could render the waterway too perilous for use. Washington was won over, and in August work commenced on the defenses.45

  The plan was to fortify and otherwise obstruct a five-mile stretch of the river below Philadelphia. Not only were three forts constructed, but six sets of chevaux de frise, heavy timbers laced together by wire and studded with iron spikes, were submerged in the space between the islands and the sandbars that dotted the river. Any British vessel that sought to reach the capital would have a gauntlet to run.46

  It sounded impregnable. It was not, although several bloody weeks of fighting passed before Howe secured the river. Not until late November, with casualties above four hundred on each side, did the first British vessel reach Philadelphia.47

  This is the situation, Washington wrote his younger brother Samuel three weeks after the clash at Germantown: “The Enemy are in Phila., and we are hovering round them, to distress and retard their operations as much as possible.”48 Ten days after Germantown, Howe fell back into Philadelphia with his principal army; there, behind fourteen redoubts constructed in a giant arc spanning from the Schuylkill to the Delaware on the north side of the city, he took up quarters in relative safety. Washington, meanwhile, oddly—uselessly, too, it would appear—moved his army from pillar to post during October, before lighting at White Marsh, ten or twelve miles north of Philadelphia.

  That was indeed the situation. But there was more, too, which Washing
ton did not mention. Above Albany the trapped redcoats in Burgoyne’s army had flailed and struggled for sixteen days to extricate themselves from Gates’s web. They did not succeed. With little food or water left, and no hope of being rescued by Clinton, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army on October 17. In the space of a one-hundred-day campaign Great Britain had lost a six-thousand-man army. Washington immediately sent his congratulations, trumpeting this “Event that does the highest honor to American Arms.” However, on the same day he churlishly admonished Gates for having failed to keep him informed of his activities at Saratoga.49

  Late in October the commander summoned a council of war to consider an attack on Howe in Philadelphia. In all likelihood Washington knew the answer before he raised the question. No, the generals responded. Howe was too strongly entrenched to be challenged, they said, and, besides, the enervated American army was too tired and too inadequately supplied to contemplate any move. Most of the meeting was consumed by a discussion of administrative problems (promotions and rewards, for instance), concerns that predominate when a year’s campaign is at an end. But the Continental army did not immediately enter winter quarters. Instead, it remained at White Marsh through the struggle for the Delaware River, although Washington continued to consider undertaking a more active role. When Howe began to pound the Delaware River forts, Washington toyed with the notion of a strike by about fifteen-hundred men against the British gunners. Ultimately he abandoned the idea as too dangerous. Later, when Cornwallis was ordered out to complete the sequestration of the river bastions, Washington directed Greene to counter the advancing redcoats.

  It was not the best idea that the commander ever hatched. Greene’s force was only about 60 percent the size of his adversary’s army, and he would have to fight on terrain that was boggy and difficult to traverse, and in a region that was lined with winding streams and branches. In short, it was the sort of place in which an army easily could find itself trapped. Greene delicately explained these problems to his commander, but he also knew the reason for Washington’s order: the commander was under heavy pressure to act, some of it self-imposed, but much of it, in Greene’s words, the result of criticism from “an ignorant and impatient populace.” Greene’s response, thus, was one of the most remarkable missives sent by any subordinate to this thin-skinned general. Not to act, he advised Washington, would be the wise option militarily, yet it would result in additional censure by civilians; to act would be unwise, and if the action failed Washington would be “condemned ... by all military Gentlemen of Experience.” Do not commit “a lasting Evil,” Greene counseled. “The Cause is too important to be trifled with to shew our Courage, and your Character [is] too deeply interested to sport away upon unmilitary Principles.” Washington knew that Greene was correct, and the next day, without acknowledging the Rhode Islander’s advice, he withdrew his orders and, in fact, summoned that force to White Marsh.50

  What suddenly concerned Washington at the end of November was that every sign indicated that Howe might make one last sally against his army. This time Washington’s intelligence was correct. Certain that his actions would be questioned even more severely than were Washington’s, Howe at last was anxious to make Washington fight, and with the American army split between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the time seemed propitious to act. Howe moved out of Philadelphia, although, typically, he advanced with the speed of a sluggish tortoise. American headquarters got the first hint of British intentions on November 26. Howe debouched at midnight seven days later. By then not only Green’s force but some of Gates’s men had joined Washington; the American commander monitored every step of Howe’s advance, and, ironically, he even struck the first blow. Washington sent six hundred Pennsylvania militia forward to attack one of Howe’s advance posts. The attack failed, although it did stop the British in their tracks for forty-eight hours. On the 7th Howe moved to within a mile of the American left, then under cover of darkness he tried an ingenious ploy: he staged a flanking movement similar to that which had succeeded at Long Island and Brandywine, sending a large force toward Washington’s right; this time, however, it was a feint, for he planned to make his principal assault on the American left. It was a clever stratagem. But Washington did not rise to the bait, and Howe, flustered that he would not be able to score a cheap victory through chicanery, simply withdrew to Philadelphia. After nothing more than a brief skirmish Howe had abandoned his final opportunity for a clash with Washington. As at Dorchester and Brooklyn, Harlem and Somerset Court House, White Plains and now at White Marsh, Howe had shrunk from an attack because he believed his adversary was too well entrenched in unfavorable terrain.51 It was a familiar excuse, a plaintive lament that served as Sir William’s valediction.

  Washington probably had hoped to get his men into winter quarters as soon as the last Delaware fort fell to the British. His army was tired and battered, and with its meager furnishings any sort of offensive was out of the question. Sometime after the middle of November the high command began to discuss and debate various sites at which to winter, centering on a variety of places between Reading and Lancaster to the north and west of Philadelphia, and somewhere near Wilmington to the southwest. All the general officers favored an immediate retirement to winter quarters, but some in Congress were of a different mind. Many legislators, principally delegates from New Jersey and Pennsylvania who feared that their states would be plundered if the army did not stay on the heels of the redcoats, carped against any thought of the Continentals retreating to winter quarters. Whatever the clout of this faction, Congress resolved unanimously to send a committee to White Marsh to plump for a cold-weather campaign. It was the first time since the army lay before Boston that Congress had meddled to the extent of sending representatives to headquarters in order to influence strategy, and Washington handled these men as easily as he had handled their predecessors two years before. Bolstering his position with testimony written by his officers, Washington pleaded that nothing could be done without militia assistance, and such units could not be procured during the winter months; moreover, if train-bandsmen could be made to come to camp, there would not be enough food for them and the Continentals too. The legislative committee was convinced. It reported that a winter campaign was inexpedient, and it even was induced to propose improving officer’s benefits as a means of ending the chronic “discontents” in the army.52

  If Washington won that round Congress nevertheless pressured him to find quarters near Philadelphia. The congressmen conveyed their wishes to the commander after receiving a somewhat hysterical appeal from the Pennsylvania Assembly, a remonstrance that predicted that Howe’s legions would commit the most hideous excesses if Washington’s army was not nearby. Unwilling to buck Congress, Washington broke camp at White Marsh on December 11. He still was not quite certain where he would lodge for the winter, only that he wished to be on the west side of the Schuylkill. He spent the next week looking for suitable quarters, moving west, then south, then west again, dogged much of the time by Cornwallis; meanwhile, his army camped without tents and suffered first through a cold dreary rain, then through an early winter snow storm.

  All the while Washington seethed and simmered at what was happening, until he could no longer restrain himself from penning two bitter, sardonic letters to Congress. “I can assure those Gentlemen” who had resisted the army’s plans to take up quarters before the winter descended, he wrote in one of the missives, “that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fire side than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and Snow without Cloaths or Blankets.”53

  Finally, upon the advice of some of his Pennsylvania officers, Washington settled on a gently rolling area flanked by the Valley Creek and the west bank of the Schuylkill, a site eighteen to twenty miles from Philadelphia.

  On December 19 the army splashed through the mud and the lingering slush of a recent storm to the rustic locale that had been selected for their win
ter home, a place the locals called Valley Forge.

  9

  The New Continental Army

  “Long Live General Washington”

  Washington had good reason to feel that the campaign of 1777 had been a success. Not only had he preserved his army, he had made the British pay dearly for their sole acquisition—Philadelphia. And his accomplishments had come in the face of a numerically superior adversary. As for Howe’s capture of Philadelphia, Washington concluded that “but for the eclat it is attended with,” the possession of the city “brings no solid advantage to their arms.” Then, too, there was the American victory over Burgoyne in the North. So splendid had been his and Gates’s campaigns, in fact, that almost everyone now suspected that France, and perhaps Spain as well, would openly enter the war in 1778 as America’s ally. Ironically, however, at the very peak of its military achievements, America’s fortunes ebbed to an unprecedented low point. Much later Washington would find it impossible to forget the pain his men faced that winter, and he would tell a historian that “you might have tracked the army from White Marsh to Valley Forge by the blood of their feet.”1

  Valley Forge! Words that would come to symbolize the suffering of the fighting men in that war, a place, a time, of ineffable and needless anguish, the moment when America came nearest to witnessing the extirpation of its army.

  The commander’s first object at Valley Forge was to get his men into some kind of shelter. The soldiers were divided into work parties of a dozen men each and directed to build fourteen-by-sixteen-foot log cabins, abodes in which “to stay. . . not to live,” as one soldier put it. The Marquis de Lafayette thought them “scarcely gayer than dungeon cells,” but they did provide some shelter. Washington and his very highest officers lived more commodiously, usually finding quarters in private residences. In Washington’s case, headquarters was established in a nearby two-story stone farmhouse. The commander and Martha, who arrived at Valley Forge early in February, used the upstairs for their private habitation; the downstairs rooms—including a large dining room which was added to the house that winter—were set aside for official business.2