by Ron Carter
“I believe our soldiers took pride in their performance at Brandywine. I have information that General Alexander McDougall is on his way from Peekskill with nine hundred Continentals. General William Smallwood is coming with eleven hundred of the Maryland Militia. David Forman is sending six hundred irregulars from New Jersey. All that bespeaks the fact that we have strong support, despite the loss at Brandywine.”
Washington stopped, waiting for a reaction from Hamilton, and Hamilton nodded his agreement.
Washington continued. “Now we are told that General Wayne’s command was ambushed and largely destroyed. Another untoward event. Will the support continue?”
Silence held for a moment while Hamilton weighed the matter. “I believe it will.”
“Have you heard any comments to the contrary?”
“None, sir.”
“Good. There is one other matter. You know that we removed everything that could be used by the British out of Philadelphia. A large supply of food and clothing and ammunition is in a magazine in Reading, more than forty miles up the Schuylkill River.”
“I’m aware of that, sir.”
“Information received this morning indicates General Howe has been informed of the value of those stores and has marched out this morning up the river in that direction. I believe he intends capturing those stores.”
Hamilton’s mind jumped ahead, and with held breath he waited for Washington to conclude.
“I am ordering a march to intercept him. We cannot lose those supplies.”
Hamilton reached to scratch beneath his chin. “And Philadelphia? What of Philadelphia?”
Washington heaved a great sigh. “If General Howe is marching to Reading, he cannot be a threat to Philadelphia.”
For a long moment the two stared at each other before Washington broke it off and gave his orders.
“See to it our entire right proceeds up the Schuylkill to counter General Howe. We must not lose those supplies at Reading.”
“Yes, sir.”
Notes
The description of the soaked munitions in this chapter is historical. See Freeman, Washington, pp. 353–54.
The description of the Paoli massacre is historical. See Freeman, Washington, p. 354; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 356.
Washington was in fact informed that General Howe and a column were marching toward Reading, Pennsylvania, to take valuable munitions and supplies stored there by the Americans, and Washington marched his column away from Philadelphia, toward Reading to save the supplies. See Freeman, Washington, p. 355.
West side of the Schuylkill River
September 23, 1777
CHAPTER XIII
* * *
There is a transcendent power in the New England earth and air that is evident when the suns and rains of summer have done their work to draw abundance from the rolling hills, and the fields and orchards are ripe with the time of harvest. The benevolence of the Creator is evident in the richness of the produce of forests, stream, and field, and the human soul is stirred by the annual fulfillment of the eternal law of the harvest and the realization that man’s labor is once again rewarded. For those who have eyes that see and hearts that feel, there is a quiet sense of rightness that settles over the land, affirming that life is good, living satisfying.
In the warmth of the late afternoon September sun, General William Howe reined his horse away from the head of the two-mile-long column of marching British regulars and stopped, caught in an unexpected moment of awe and wonder as he peered at the patchwork of emerald forests and white wheat fields and meadows and rows of green corn, all delineated by zig-zag rows of split-rail fences and meandering streams. Sheep grazed in pastures with cattle, their muzzles buried in the deep grasses.
He sat still in the saddle, caught up in the sweeping immensity and overpowering beauty of the land, sensing its profound, raw power and the vigor of the people it produced. In his heart of hearts the unspoken question that had haunted him while he was yet in the hallowed halls of the British Parliament rose once again. Can they be beaten? Can men and women nurtured by this vast land be subdued? The question remained unanswered, either because he could not answer it or dared not answer it, neither dared he try.
The sound of two running horses brought him abruptly back to the reality of his army marching westward near the Schuylkill River. He turned and took the slack out of the reins of his mount as General Earl Charles Cornwallis, with an aide-de-camp beside him, reined in their horses and stopped, their crimson tunics and gold epaulets sparkling in the westering sun. Howe waited, and General Cornwallis spoke.
“Sir, I just received a message from one of our patrols.” Cornwallis leaned from his saddle, and Howe reached to take it. He opened it, studied the hastily scrawled words, and a sudden intensity came into his face. He read it again to be certain, then raised his eyes to Cornwallis.
“It appears Washington has taken the bait.”
“So it does.” Cornwallis pointed across the river. “At this moment he is across the river, two miles ahead of us, with most of his army, marching for Reading. There is no indication that he intends to stop before he reaches the town and the magazines with his stores. It is apparent he means to protect them. I presume that is according to plan and that your orders have not changed.”
“My orders remain as they were. We make camp immediately. Your four divisions are to take food and rest at once. At midnight you will march them back to the east in a forced march, cross the Schuylkill, and take Philadelphia. If this report is correct, there won’t be a single rebel soldier to defend the city. You should be able to occupy it without firing a shot. Capture the rabble that call themselves their Congress if you can.”
He paused to arrange his words. “I shall continue the march west for one more day to be certain Washington’s patrols think we are still marching for Reading, and then I will turn back for a forced night march to cover your flank, should Washington discover he has been tricked and try to catch you to attack.”
Cornwallis nodded his affirmation as Howe went on.
“Then I will take about half our forces to camp out near Germantown, six miles north of Philadelphia, and hope the defeat at Brandywine and the taking of Philadelphia will have angered Washington to the point that he will take the bait one more time and attack us there.”
A look of intense calculation came into his eyes. “He escaped from Brandywine before we could destroy his army, and since that time his ranks have expanded with fresh troops from Peekskill and Maryland. Our losses were half his, but our ranks remain depleted because we can’t replace them. It is now manifestly clear that the undoing of this rebellion rests on whether or not we can provoke him into a battle from which he cannot escape. Until the rebel army is destroyed, and him with it, it makes no difference how many battles we win. The result will always be the same: his ranks will swell, while ours diminish. Either we eliminate him and his army, or we lose.”
He brought his eyes to Cornwallis. “Are there any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“We make camp now. You march out at midnight. No lights, no sounds.”
“Yes, sir.”
Under cover of darkness, and the watchful eye of General Howe, General Cornwallis mounted his horse at the stroke of midnight, pumped his arm, and started east with four divisions of regulars, moving silently on the road over which they had just traveled marching west.
In the six o’clock sunrise General Howe listened to the drummers in camp bang out reveille. At seven o’clock he sat his horse at the head of his command and called out his marching orders. One minute later the band struck up its marching music, and the column marched out westward. They nooned near the river, reassembled, and marched on, to make their evening camp at six o’clock with the river to their right and wooded country to their left. They went to their blankets at dusk, tattoo sounded at ten o’clock, and at midnight they silently fell back into ranks. With General Howe leading, they marched
east, over the tracks they had made just six hours earlier.
At dawn a rider caught up with General Howe. “Sir, our patrols have seen no pursuit by the rebels. It appears they are not yet aware we are marching back to Philadelphia.”
At noon the weary British column sought the shade of the forest for two hours, with General Howe watching their back trail like a hawk, waiting for his patrols to report. The force was reassembling for the afternoon march when a red-coated officer rode in.
“No pursuit yet, sir. The rebels are still marching west on the far side of the river.”
Howe shook his head in near disbelief that someone faithful to the rebellion—farmer, militia, or soldier—had not discovered the unbelievable ploy that had drawn Washington and the Continental Army away from Philadelphia and laid the city wide open to being taken at will. Howe’s force marched on, gaining steadily on the four divisions led by General Cornwallis. At six o’clock they stopped to make camp for the night. By eight o’clock they could see the glow of the cook fires of General Cornwallis’s command, four miles ahead, and far beyond the camp, two miles past the Schuylkill River, the flecks of light that marked Philadelphia.
In the deep shadows of late dusk, General Howe walked from a cook fire to his command tent, set a cup of steaming tea on his worktable, and checked his calendar. Then he spread a map, weighted the corners, and leaned over it to study the roads leading into the city.
General Cornwallis will come in from the west and be inside the city by ten o’clock in the morning. September twenty-sixth. Will there be shooting? And will he catch their so-called Congress?
At nine-forty in the morning, under a bright, warm sun that turned the Schuylkill into a winding golden ribbon and the woods and fields into a great patchwork of beauty, General Cornwallis, surrounded by his staff, rode his horse through the outskirts of the largest city in the United States, into its narrow, winding cobblestone streets. Tories and loyalists were everywhere, voices raised in a tumultuous, hero’s greeting. The men in the first regiment behind Cornwallis marched with their muskets unslung, loaded, watching every window, every rooftop, eyes sweeping the crowd.
There was not a patriot or a soldier or a militiaman in sight.
Cornwallis rode on to the square, brick building where the American Congress had been convened, where he stopped and dismounted. The Tory sympathizers pressed in on all sides, reaching to touch him, shouting their praises for their liberating heroes. Cornwallis raised a hand, and the crowd silenced, waiting.
“I declare this city to be a possession of our Sovereign, King George III of England.”
A roar went up, then subsided when Cornwallis again raised a hand.
“I further declare the rebel Congress to be a body without authority and guilty of sedition against the Crown. I demand to know their whereabouts this instant.”
A portly man wearing the badly ink-stained apron of a printer answered. “They left eight days ago. The whole lot of them. Packed up and snuck away in the night, they did!”
Cornwallis turned to the man. “Where did they go?”
“York. Over eighty miles west, past the Schuylkill, across the Susquehanna River.”
Disappointment crossed Cornwallis’s face as he continued. “Where are the rebel stores? Ammunition? Cannon?”
The printer spoke up once more. “Gone. All gone. They took everything. This city is an empty shell.”
Cornwallis set his jaw. “So be it. We shall quarter our soldiers within the city so far as possible. You will cooperate. General William Howe shall arrive later, and you shall accommodate him and his troops as well.”
Midafternoon, the Tories and loyalists filled the streets once again, to once more shout their hero’s welcome, this time to General William Howe as he entered the city on his horse, sitting tall and straight, leading his foot-weary men. He was met by General Cornwallis’s aides and taken directly to the mansion Cornwallis had commandeered as his headquarters. Howe dismounted, walked across the spacious porch with its white columns and two-storied portico, into the ante room. One wall was a mural of the Adirondack Mountains. A great stone fireplace filled another. On the third wall was an original oil painting of King George II, eight feet by ten feet, with another like it of his son, King George III.
Cornwallis came quickly from the library.
“Sir, the city is ours. Congress fled eight days ago to York, eighty miles west. The rebels stripped everything of value before they vacated.”
Howe shrugged it off. “I’ll bivouac my troops at the edge of town tonight. Tomorrow we march for Germantown. I’ll take the master suite here for the night.”
“Yes, sir.”
Howe turned to his nearest aide. “Prepare a message for my signature immediately. It will be delivered earliest to Joshua Loring in New York. You’ll remember he’s the commissary of prisoners. I order him to come to Germantown at once, and he shall bring his wife, Elizabeth.”
“Yes, sir.” The guard strained to maintain decorum. He’s simply got to have that blue-eyed, blonde-haired vixen at his side.
Howe walked back out into the crowded street and mounted his horse. For a moment he paused, eyes cast west, mind running.
We took Philadelphia without firing a shot. I wonder what Washington will do when the news reaches him. And I wonder what he’ll do when he finds I’m six miles west in Germantown, with only half my forces. Will he come? Will he?
Notes
General Howe’s trick succeeded. While Washington was marching to Reading to protect his precious supplies, Howe reversed his march and sent General Cornwallis ahead to take and occupy the city of Philadelphia without firing a shot. The United States Congress had fled Philadelphia eight days earlier, to reconvene at the small town of York, eighty miles west, beyond the Susquehanna River. Howe realized he had won the battle of Brandywine, but though the Americans had lost more men than the British, the Americans could replace their losses, while the British could not. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, General Howe immediately sent for Joshua Loring, Howe’s commissioner of prisoners, and his wife, Elizabeth, known as Betsy, to join him. See Freeman, Washington, p. 355; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, pp. 186, 356; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 356.
Continental Army Camp
Twelve miles northwest of Germantown, Pennsylvania
October 2, 1777
CHAPTER XIV
* * *
There was frost on the blankets of the sleeping soldiers of the Continental Army when the sound of the reveille drum came rattling through the trees. The men stirred, then rose shivering against the sharp bite of early fall in the crisp air. Overhead the leaves of the maples and oaks and sycamores caught the first rays of the rising sun, and the forest became a blaze of incomparable reds and yellows and greens.
In the command tent at the south end of the camp, General George Washington cupped his hand about the top of the chimney to the lamp on his worktable and blew out the flame. With the tent roof glowing gold in the sun, he leaned forward, forearms on the table, and stared unseeing at his long, interlaced fingers. He was fully dressed in the wrinkled, wilted uniform he had worn for the previous twenty-four hours, and he had not shaved nor cleaned himself for the day.
He had paced in his tent until after three o’clock in the morning, until exhaustion drove him to sit at his worktable. At four o’clock his head tipped forward, and he slept for forty minutes with his head on folded arms before he jerked awake. His face lined, drawn under the relentless weight of command, he checked his watch and once again began pacing in the yellow lamplight, head down, hands clasped behind his back, laboring with conflicted thoughts.
Brandywine—defeated—Congress blamed Sullivan for not scouting the terrain—not all his fault—partly mine—his failure understandable under the conditions he faced—I told Congress—they relented—the miracle is the soldiers don’t see it as a defeat—outnumbered, they still held the British regulars five times—took great pride in it—m
arvelous men—but still, we were driven off—defeated.
He reached to wipe at his dry mouth.
Paoli—Wayne’s command—the massacre—tragic—avoidable—nothing to be done about it now.
He stopped his pacing for a moment, reflecting. Philadelphia—General Howe outmaneuvered me completely—I was twenty miles away protecting the stores at Reading from an attack that never happened while he reversed the march of his entire command and took Philadelphia without firing a shot—not one shot—made me look like a bungling fool.
A look of pain crossed his face. And then John Adams—Congress—publicly shouting: “O, Heaven, grant us one great soul!”—aimed directly at me.
The scalding humiliation rose once again, and he forced his mind to move on.
The Country rallied after all of it—McDougall came with his New York Brigade—one thousand fresh militia from Virginia—more from New Jersey—Heath’s Massachusetts’ line—some of Morgan’s riflemen—our strength is slightly higher than before the Brandywine battle. Despite all the blunders—the mistakes—the losses—the errors—the Country still supports us.
Once again he ceased pacing, caught up in the vortex of the dark thoughts that would not let go.
But Congress?—and my own officers? He drew and exhaled a great, weary breath as the stark reality came rushing once more.
General Gates—decisive victory against Burgoyne at Nielsen’s farm up on the Hudson—deliberately sent his report of his victory directly to Congress and not to me although I am his commander in chief—openly talking against me—consumed by ambition—he wants my position. General Thomas Conway—driven by blind ambition just like Gates—Adjutant General Timothy Pickering—General Jean de Kalb—and even Nathanael Greene—all murmuring against me.
For the first time, anger surged hot. He set his chin and battled with the compelling need to strike out against all those who perceived themselves to be his superiors without ever having tasted the grinding, soul-destroying demands of feeding an army of untrained citizens when there was no food, clothing them when there were no clothes, leading them into battle when they were little more than a mob, shaping them into a unified command when they came from states with nothing in common to bind them together.