American Crisis

by William M. Fowler Jr.

  Angry letters flew in both directions. In late November 1781, when Heath dispatched a staff officer to deliver orders to McDougall, the dour soldier shot back that the next time he sent orders so “unmilitary and absurd” he would put the messenger under “arrest.”31 The sniping escalated until finally, after McDougall made a particularly vicious attack on his character, Heath issued an order for his arrest, charging him among other things with “conduct unmilitary and unbecoming an officer.”32 Quickly both men wrote to Washington, McDougall exploding that Heath had treated him “like a Bastard.”33

  It was not the first time that Washington had to quell an internecine war among his officers, but this one was especially difficult. He told Heath that he was “extremely sorry” that this had come about, but he was prepared to order a general court-martial of McDougall. Washington could not have begun to imagine the headache to follow. McDougall, perhaps harkening back to his days of bedeviling royal authority as a Son of Liberty, used every tactic possible to delay and prolong the proceedings. He objected to the officers appointed by Washington. The place set for the trial, he said, was inconvenient. He constantly asked for additional information, all the while doing everything he could to rally support for himself, publicize the affair, and humiliate Heath, even threatening to retaliate by pressing official charges against him. McDougall was, Benjamin Lincoln confided to Nathanael Greene, “very severe in his remarks on General Heath.”34 Fortunately, McDougall backed away from pressing charges, not because he felt his accusations were ill founded, but because “an altercation between officers … might have an ill aspect in the eyes of our allies.”35

  The dispute dragged on for six months as verbal salvos echoed up and down the Hudson Valley. Gossip and rumors about the generals enlivened the dull days of camp life. Enlisted men found entertainment in the battle of the brass, while in the officers’ mess and at Hasbrouck House the reaction was embarrassment. Congress, on the other hand, was neither entertained nor embarrassed, viewing the squabble as further evidence of a decline in patriotic spirit and collapsing discipline in the army.

  When McDougall’s trial finally finished in August 1782, the court found him guilty of only one of the seven charges: “Pulling down two buildings and moving them to West Point without the knowledge of the commanding general.”36 Punishment was a simple reprimand from the commander in chief, which Washington issued “with extreme reluctance.” In Washington’s estimation the whole sorry affair had brought “ill consequences” and damaged the reputation of the entire army.37

  The affair of Heath and McDougall was a visible sign of Washington’s greatest challenge: anger and despair in the army. At the end of prior winter encampments the army had been stirred to action by the promise of a new campaign, but in the spring of 1782 no campaign was expected. There still lingered a faint hope that the French fleet would return and an attack might be launched against New York or Charleston. Others speculated that a march to Canada was being planned, but none of this was real. The French were not coming back, and no one had an appetite for a second invasion of Canada. At the same time the British in New York City held tight, showing no inclination either to provoke Washington or to abandon the city. In this uncertainty Washington awaited the arrival of Sir Guy Carleton. He was particularly anxious to address Sir Guy on two issues of pressing importance: prisoners of war and the “murder” of Captain Joshua Huddy.38

  Prisoners of war were a heavy burden to both the Americans and the British. After Yorktown the Americans held at least twelve thousand prisoners while the British guarded barely five hundred.39 Given the numbers, the Americans bore the greater brunt of responsibility and expense. They did not always acquit themselves well.40

  Since the king spurned recognition of any legitimate American government, formal communication was difficult. Under the usual eighteenth-century “rules of war” the prisoners’ home country was duty bound to provide support for soldiers held by the enemy. When Congress reneged on the arrangements Gates had made at Saratoga in 1777 to allow Burgoyne’s troops to return home, Clinton was furious. In retaliation for Congress’s actions he declined to provide supplies or cash for troops he alleged were being held in violation of the Saratoga agreement, leaving Congress with several thousand enemy mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. A number of meetings had been held between American and British representatives, but until the king would agree to pay Congress the £200,000 that it estimated the British owed, it would not discuss any release or exchange of prisoners.41 In the meantime Washington ordered that the British prisoners be moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.42 In December 1781 Benjamin Shield visited the Lancaster prison and reported to Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln that the prisoners were “a set of poor miserable wretches without the common necessaries pinning thro neglect and want.”43 Partial relief for the imprisoned German mercenaries arrived when informal arrangements were made to “lease” German prisoners to local farmers. Once released to work, many of these prisoners disappeared into the German-speaking countryside.44

  On the other hand, Washington admitted that he had “no reason to complain of the treatment of the Continental land prisoners in New York.”45 The same, however, could not be said for American seamen held in the city. Many were confined in crowded filthy prison ships moored in Wallabout Bay. Poor ventilation, rotten food, and festering disease took an incredible toll. Each morning the watch opened the sealed hatches and called down below, “Rebels turn out your dead.”46 Although there was little that Washington could do about such inhumane treatment, the one action he might have taken—an exchange of prisoners—he refused to undertake.

  A murder and hanging exploded the issue of prisoners of war. The crisis began on the evening of March 28, 1782, when a gang of New York loyalists led by Philip White set out from New York City to raid the New Jersey coast.47 They landed at Sandy Hook and then made their way farther down the coast to Long Branch, where a band of local patriot vigilantes, the “Monmouth Retaliators,” surprised them and captured White. The “Retaliators” set their prisoner on a horse and headed toward the town of Freehold about fifteen miles inland. A few miles down the road White leaped off the horse and dashed for nearby woods. One of the American guards fired and hit him in the back, but White showed no sign of stopping. As he crawled toward the wood line a horseman drew his saber and rode at him, calling furiously, “Give up, you shall have good quarters yet.” Ignoring the order, White continued toward the trees. The horseman closed and slashed him to death. When news of White’s savage death—he was, after all, wounded and unarmed—reached New York City, loyalists screamed for revenge. White’s murder, they argued, was only the most recent atrocity committed by the Monmouth Retaliators, whom they accused of murdering a number of the king’s loyal subjects. Retaliation was long overdue. They pressed Clinton to release to them a rebel prisoner for execution.

  When he reacted coolly to their demand, with Governor Franklin’s encouragement they began to plot their own revenge.48 The plan’s architect was Captain Richard Lippincott, a member of the Associated Loyalists and the late Philip White’s brother-in-law.

  Like Franklin, Lippincott was a New Jersey loyalist who early in the war had been imprisoned and driven from his home. He fled to New York and became an officer in a loyalist regiment. On the morning of April 9, less than two weeks after White’s death, Lippincott with several other loyalist soldiers presented himself to the provost’s guard at the prison where a number of Americans were being held. He was accompanied by Walter Challoner, the commissary of prisoners. Challoner ordered the jailers to turn over three Americans to Lippincott, one of them Captain Joshua Huddy, a leader of the Monmouth Regulators, who was notorious for his boast that he hanged the loyalist Stephen Edwards: “[I] tied the knot, and greased the rope.”49

  Under what authority Challoner and Lippincott were operating remains shrouded, although at several points Governor Franklin’s name was invoked. In any case Lippincott removed the three prisoners to the guard
ship Britannia.50 Eventually two of the prisoners were released, but not Huddy. After three days confined aboard Britannia, on April 12 Lippincott brought Huddy to Navesink Hills “on the Jersey shore near the Hook.” Lippincott stood Huddy on a barrel, placed a rope around his neck, and pinned a sign to his chest proclaiming UP GOES HUDDY FOR PHILIP WHITE, and then shook his hand. As Huddy proclaimed his innocence, a “Negro” executioner kicked the barrel away.51

  During the American Revolution burnings, lootings, and even murder, particularly where irregular forces were involved, were not rare. Huddy’s brutal death, especially spectacular and public, brought a flood of demands for retaliation. Pressed to act, Washington ordered a council of senior officers at West Point to convene on April 19. Washington was not present, but through General Heath, who presided, he placed three questions before the council: “Shall there be retaliation for the murder of Captain Huddy?” “On whom shall it be inflicted?” “And how shall the victim be designated?”52 By secret ballot the officers voted unanimously to take retaliation and that “it should be inflicted on an officer of equal rank, viz a Captain; not under Convention or capitulation, but one that had surrendered at discretion; and that in designating such a one, it should be done by lot.”53

  Hanging a British captain gave Washington pause, and so he wrote to Clinton, “To save the innocent, I demand the guilty.” Lippincott, Washington demanded, must be “turned over.”54 If not, retaliation would follow.

  Despite Washington’s rhetoric, “I shall hold myself justifiable in the Eyes of God and man,” and Clinton’s claim that he was “greatly surprised and shocked” at the behavior of the Associated Loyalists, neither side could claim much virtue in this matter.55 Philip White, an escaping prisoner, had been wounded and then cut down by a saber-wielding American trooper. Without the slightest nod to a legal proceeding, Joshua Huddy had been executed in an act of vengeance. To Clinton, whose main preoccupation by this time was salvaging his reputation, the behavior of the loyalist banditti was another potential blot on his command. He described the Associated Loyalists as an “obnoxious Institution” and their behavior as an “audacious breach of humanity, and an insult to the dignity of British arms.”56 What they had done was “reprehensible.” Clinton was convinced that the loyalists, under Franklin’s direction, were involved in a plot “to involve the navy and army … in the guilt, for the purpose of exciting the war of indiscriminate retaliation which they appear to have long thirsted after.”57

  Clinton held Franklin responsible. At the very moment when he was trying to negotiate a prisoner exchange and avoid confrontation with Washington, by this barbarous act the governor and his friends had upended his plans. They had committed a heinous crime, for which Clinton was convinced his enemies in America and England would hold him accountable. Clinton could barely wait to hand the mess over to Carleton.58

  On April 26 Clinton brought the matter before a council of officers. Following their advice, he ordered Lippincott arrested and held for a general court-martial. Franklin protested vigorously, arguing that Lippincott was a civilian over whom the military had no authority.59 Clinton rejected Franklin’s claim. Refusing Washington’s demand that Lippincott be turned over to him, Clinton ordered a court-martial. On May 1, 1782, a court of sixteen officers, with General James Robertson presiding, convened to hear the case.

  Washington reacted quickly. He ordered Brigadier General Moses Hazen, commanding the enemy prisoner camp at Lancaster, to select “by Lot” a British officer to be sent immediately to Philadelphia.60 In the instruction Washington specifically noted that the officer chosen had to be an “unconditional Prisoner,” that is, an officer taken on the field of battle who surrendered without conditions. Since all of the prisoners at Lancaster had been taken “conditionally” through a negotiated surrender, how Hazen was to find such an officer was unclear.61 He could not, and two weeks later Washington ordered Hazen to disregard the written pledges that had been made at Saratoga and Yorktown and select a “Captain” for retaliation.

  Washington’s reasoning is difficult to fathom. Ordinarily he had been inclined to leave matters related to local partisan warfare in the hands of civil authorities. “Irregulars” were often not under his control, and he made this point during negotiations with Cornwallis. Loyalists serving under British arms had to answer to civil authorities.62

  With Washington’s order in hand Hazen, who, ironically, early in the war had himself been a prisoner of the British, arrived at Lancaster. He had an unhappy task. On the morning of May 27 he assembled all the camp’s captains and announced to them that they were to choose by lot from their number a captain to be hanged if General Clinton did not turn over Lippincott.63 Moses Hazen was a professional soldier, and so were the British officers who stood in line at Lancaster to draw lots. Neither Hazen nor the captains had been party to the unlawful events in New Jersey, and both condemned them. Neither was comfortable with what was about to take place. Solemnly the British officers drew straws. The “unfortunate Lot” fell on “Captain Charles Asgill, of the Guards, a young Gentleman of Seventeen years of age … the only son of Sir Charles Asgill, Baronet; Heir to an extensive Fortune, [and] an honourable title.”64 Hazen reported to Washington that the British officers were “enraged” at Sir Henry Clinton for not bringing the loyalists to heel, and for leaving the officers “to suffer for the Sins of the Guilty.” It was, wrote Hazen, “a disagreeable Situation.”65 Hazen and Asgill left for Philadelphia accompanied by Asgill’s friend Captain Ludlow, who carried a letter from Major James Gordon, the ranking British officer at Lancaster, to Secretary Lincoln. Gordon minced no words. He pointed out to Lincoln that Lippincott and his men, who called themselves “Refugees,” were no better than “Banditti.” They were not part of His Majesty’s regular forces. That they had lynched poor Huddy was regrettable, but that such a violent and illegal act should lead to another unconscionable act, “an ignominious death” for Asgill, was equally outrageous. The young captain was innocent of any offense, and furthermore, wrote the major, he was protected by article 14 of the Yorktown capitulation that specifically forbade any “reprisals” against surrendered officers and soldiers.66 The secretary at war did nothing, leaving the matter to Washington and the Congress.

  Almost as soon as he had given the order to take a hostage, Washington regretted his actions. He realized, too late, that what he had done was morally questionable and undoubtedly illegal. He sought desperately to find an “unconditional prisoner.” If such a person had been found, at least he would have cleared the legal hurdles, but he had no luck.67 He turned to the members of Congress for support, which they gave by a unanimous vote endorsing his actions.68 Nonetheless, he continued to agonize. “I most devoutly Wish his [Asgill’s] Life may be saved,” but “Duty calls me to make this Decisive Determination,” he wrote to Brigadier General Elias Dayton.”69

  Not everyone on the American side agreed with Washington. Alexander Hamilton, who had served closely with the general and knew him well, thought that the whole business of retaliation was “repugnant, wanton and unnecessary.”70 Hamilton knew that Washington’s pride made it difficult for him to back away. He urged Henry Knox, Washington’s closest confidant, to help him find an honorable exit. Might Knox, he wrote, engage some “obscure agents” to settle the crisis? “It is said the Commander in Chief has pledged himself for it and cannot recede. Inconsistency in this case would be better than consistency. But pretexts may be found and will be readily admitted in favor of humanity.”71 Knox too was troubled, but he made no reply to Hamilton. Second-guessing the commander in chief was dangerous business.

  For once, General Clinton fell into some luck. Two days after Lippincott’s court-martial convened, Sir Guy Carleton arrived. Clinton was relieved of duty. The matter rested with Sir Guy and the American Congress.

  Chapter Five

  After a brisk twenty-five-day passage, on Sunday morning May 5 Ceres hove off to Sandy Hook to await the pilot. As soon as they spotted t
he ship, lookouts at the Hook hoisted signals relayed to the city announcing Carleton’s arrival. At last General Henry Clinton’s long American ordeal was coming to a close. In the afternoon Ceres dropped anchor off the Battery. While the guns of Fort George rendered their traditional salute, a small boat came alongside the quay and made fast. Carleton, followed by his secretary and the commissary general, ascended the stairs to be greeted by Clinton, Robertson, and Admiral Digby.1 With the general and admiral were several other officers, including the Hessian commander General Wilhelm von Knyphausen. Governor Franklin was there as well, and so too was Andrew Elliott, lieutenant governor of New York. As loyalist leaders, Franklin and Elliott hoped that the new commander might prove more sympathetic to their cause than Clinton. The welcoming ceremony was brief. Carleton reviewed the honor guard and then retired to quarters.

  As he rode up Manhattan Carleton was taken aback by what he saw. The city was a sad scene of devastation. Six years before, on the evening of September 21, 1776, at a moment when American and British forces were still fighting on the island, a mysterious fire had broken out near the Fighting Cocks Tavern on Whitehall Street, a place known for its after-curfew tippling. Driven by a fresh breeze, the flames had whipped up the west side past the Paulus Hook ferry. Before being extinguished, the flames had consumed nearly five hundred buildings, about one quarter of the city. Since then virtually nothing had been rebuilt or repaired. Indeed, in the aftermath of the devastation even more had been lost as soldiers and refugees went on a rampage vandalizing and looting damaged and abandoned property. Maintaining order amid the rubble of war was a challenge for British authorities.2