The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  Boston was a busy seaport in 1775, home to more than forty wharves and a dozen active shipyards. The city’s vessels were involved in a profitable trade between England, Europe, and the Caribbean, with some ships bringing slaves to the southern colonies from the Caribbean. The city was the most sophisticated in America, with more than a dozen handsome churches; several theaters; a government house, Fanueil Hall, with its handsome brick and column exterior; prosperous Merchants’ Row, a street along the waterfront jammed with three-story-high buildings; a good newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy; and more than two thousand homes and businesses. It was a city filled with popular taverns and hundreds of chimneys that could be seen for miles. The streets were filled with men on horseback, women in carriages, and workers with their small, horse-drawn carts.2

  The city had become the colonies’ leading shipbuilding port, the center of the Atlantic fishing industry, and North America’s capital for hat making, the leather trade, distilled rum, hardware, and inexpensive furniture and carriages. Now it was a town under siege.3

  The residents felt trapped. The city was under martial law and travel was severely restricted. The British army camped on the commons and commandeered warehouses, infuriating patriots. The editor of the Pennsylvania Journal called the Redcoats there “creatures” and wrote “the spirit which prevails among the [British] soldiers is that of malice and revenge; that there is no true courage to be observed among them.”4

  The town’s loyalists constantly feared an attack by the rebels outside the city limits. One British sympathizer, Peter Oliver, wrote that “Our situation here, without exaggeration, is beyond description almost; it is such as eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive Boston ever to arrive at . . . we are besieged this moment with ten or fifteen thousand men . . . all marketing from the country stopped . . . fire and slaughter hourly threatened and not out of danger from some of the inhabitants within of setting the town on fire.”5

  All was chaos.

  Greenwood was told that many houses in Charlestown were vacant, abandoned by residents who had fled. He found one and slept there for several days, with others. One night he was in a crowded Charlestown tavern and was asked to play his fife by Hardy Pierce, the first corporal in Captain T. T. Bliss’s company, after some soldiers saw the instrument sticking out of his pocket. He played several tunes, the music drowned out by the noise in the tavern, and the men were delighted. They brought him to the home of an Episcopal minister that had been commandeered as their regimental headquarters after the clergyman fled the city. The soldiers, and Captain Bliss, eventually convinced him to join their regiment as a fifer for an eight month enlistment at pay of eight dollars per month.

  Most of the men in the American army slept in tents, but some, like Greenwood, were lucky. In addition to his eight dollars, Greenwood, probably because of his age, was allowed to live in the home of a local man who had left town and turned his residence over to the American army. Greenwood and several others shared a room, each sleeping on the floor with their knapsacks for pillows.

  Another teenager, seventeen-year-old Elijah Fisher, from Attleboro, Massachusetts, whose six brothers all served in the war in some capacity, slept with others in the home of a local merchant named Nepven in Jamaica Plains, four miles outside Boston.6 Many men were given quarters in rooms at different buildings at Harvard College. For others, luck sometimes ran out. Private James Stevens, of Massachusetts, like Greenwood, was fortunate to be given a small room in a Charlestown house for his quarters. Stevens returned from guard duty one evening, however, to discover that he had been kicked out of the room by an officer who decided that he wanted it.7

  All of the soldiers, no matter where they lived, regretted the British occupation of Bunker Hill, territory won in the bloody June 17, 1775, battle. None saw it as a true triumph, though. As a Rhode Islander who witnessed the brutal fighting wrote a friend, they all believed that Bunker Hill was, in fact, a great victory for America. “If our people had been supplied with ammunition, they would have held possession most certainly. Our people are in high spirits, and are very earnest to put this matter to another trial.”8

  Bunker Hill was the only battle during the siege of Boston, but the Americans and British were engaged in constant skirmishes through the end of 1775 and in the winter of 1776. Detachments of troops from one side would be sent somewhere to do something—anything to draw attention—and soldiers from the other side would attempt to stop them. These mini-engagements were a part of Pvt. John Greenwood’s life. One of the earliest came just after the British had seized control of Bunker Hill and hauled cannon to the top of it.

  Several dozen British soldiers rowed ashore at Lechmere’s Point to steal some cows, and a detachment of Americans, including Greenwood, was sent to stop them. They had to cross Willis Creek, waist-deep following several days of heavy rainfall, with their muskets held above their heads in order to reach the point. As soon as the men emerged from the creek, soaking wet, they were fired upon by British artillerists on top of Bunker Hill who had spotted them.

  Greenwood wrote, “As eight or ten of us were in a huddle running up the hill, a ball from a twenty-four-pounder struck about three feet before me, driving the dirt smack in our faces. We ran on and just got down so as to get a shot at them before they pushed off.”

  The skirmish at Lechmere Point, won by the Americans when they later posted cannon there, was one of a dozen. One of the hottest occurred in late May, in the section of the Boston area known as Chelsea. The Americans were determined once again to retrieve livestock taken by the British. The Americans tried to sneak up on the British but were spotted. Pvt. James Stevens was caught like the rest.

  “The (British) regulars saw our men and fired on them. The firing then began on both sides and the firing was very warm. There come a man and ordered us over a knoll right into the mouths of (their) cannon. We got on to the top of the knoll and the grapeshot and cannonballs came so thick that we retreated back to the road. Marched down to the ferry. The regulars shouted. Our men got the cannon and plastered them and gave them two or three gunsides. The firing then set in some measure and there was a terrible cry amongst the regulars.”9

  There were American attacks on British ships that attempted to land troops or to navigate Boston harbor near Charlestown. In one, General Israel Putnam ordered his men, hidden in a ditch, to wait until one ship, the Diana, and several accompanying barges were right in front of them before they opened fire. Their musket balls hit the schooner and barges like sheets of hail. One eyewitness said that the British “were engaged with great fury by our men along the shore.” A few moments later, Putnam ordered two cannon nearby to fire on the Diana. The well-placed shot ripped into the sails and rope rigging of the ship, setting it on fire. The flames could be seen throughout Boston that night.

  Greenwood recorded these daily skirmishes between the armies. The much vaunted Pennsylvania riflemen, as bored as everyone else as the occupation and siege dragged on, spent many nights taking potshots at British soldiers in the city, or anyone they believed to be a British soldier, or, sometimes, anything that moved. The marksmen did kill some soldiers and wounded others, but their aim was nowhere near as accurate as legend had it—and they all bragged—and they often shot up the homes of residents. One night a rifleman mistook another rifleman for a British soldier and shot him. One evening some artillerists lobbed shells at British fortifications in the town and a shell burst in a guardhouse, shearing the legs off of several of the ten Redcoats in it and badly damaging the legs of the others.

  The British harassed the regiments of Greenwood and others in similar fashion, their regulars often firing at Continental Army sentries. Few were hit, but the shooting was relentless. One private, Sam Haws, reported that he was fired at by the “wicked enemy” just about every day that he worked as a sentry in August 1775. 10 Many of the nervous sentries, Greenwood said, bribed others into taking their post with half a pin
t of aniseed water, a popular liquid.

  The British shot cannonballs at the Americans, too, but most of these did little damage. The cannon fire intrigued the young teenaged soldiers. Greenwood recalled, “The British were constantly sending bombs at us, and sometimes from two to six at a time could be seen in the air overhead, looking like moving stars in the heavens. These shells were mostly thirteen inches in diameter and it was astonishing how high they could send such heavy things. I have often seen them strike the ground when it was frozen, and bounce up and down like a foot-ball and again, falling on marshy land, they would bury themselves from ten to twelve feet in it.”

  Greenwood knew men who dug the shells, now with burned-out fuses, from the ground, ripped the fuses off, and poured the powder that was inside into kegs for musket use. Once a British cannonball arced through the night sky and landed right in front of a building housing Greenwood and about two hundred other men. One of Greenwood’s teenaged friends in his company, Private Shubael Rament, seventeen, saw it coming through the air. He raced from the door of the building into the yard, stopping it as it rolled along the ground, and managed to pull the fuse out before it went off, saving the lives of the men inside.

  Chapter Three

  CAMP LIFE

  Life in camp outside of Boston was busy for Greenwood. George Washington had been appalled at the disorder of both the men and the camp when he first arrived, but within a month his tough discipline and dozens of daily orders concerning construction and cleanliness had turned the Boston camp into a military city. The men slipped easily into routines that would be seen in every camp in every year of the Revolution. The enlisted men rose at dawn, and often before it when sentries misjudged the rising of the sun. The days were filled with work, performed individually or in work gangs. Large and bulky earthworks of dirt, stone, and wood, often constructed around camps, required long weeks of labor.

  Crews gathered and cut firewood throughout the war so that food could be cooked and men kept warm. Huts and tents were frequently repaired, especially during the fierce winters. Men who were quartered in civilian homes, usually officers, were ordered to help keep those houses clean and assist with chores. Men fed the thousands of horses that accompanied the army. Enlisted men took turns standing guard over the camp as sentries. Squads of men were sent to fish for food or to shoot game. Soldiers from seafaring areas were asked to build small ships or whaleboats for transportation and battle. Some of the enlisted men cooked for the men in their homes or barracks—usually with one cook for every twelve men—and some were assigned as guards at hospitals.

  All soldiers like to complain and the men of the first American army were no different. The enlisted men, who had joined what they thought was the military business, were especially unhappy toiling in construction. Later in the war, the soldiers at Morristown were ordered to spend much of their time building a huge earthworks fort to repulse a British attack that did not come in four years. The exhausted enlisted men, displacing tons of dirt, trees, and shrubs, mockingly nicknamed the structure “Fort Nonsense.” One soldier involved in the construction of Fort Washington, in New York, sneered that the only wounds he had suffered during the entire war were eye inflammations from the dirt that flew into them as his shovel plunged into the earth.1

  The Boston camp was a messy collection of badly built structures that lined crooked dirt lanes. Some men lived in private homes, some in tents, some in huts, and some in crudely formed stone, wood, and dirt enclosures. Some tents had boards for sides and some had canvas. Some huts were well built and some badly designed. Some held too many men and some too few. The construction of wooden barracks outside Boston, and huts later in the war, began as soon as Washington took command. Groups of men erected barns for horses and slaughterhouses for cattle. Artillery crews spent their day at first mounting cannon and then cleaning and maintaining them and practicing gunnery drills. Men sewed their tattered uniforms and those who had been tailors before the conflict assisted and supervised them. Cleaning crews dug, filled up, and maintained latrines. Some men drove wagons. In the early days of the war, the army sometimes loaned crews of enlisted men to the counties or villages where they were camped to help with necessary governmental work; many enlisted men were employed as workers to construct barns for towns.

  In a unique labor system apparently used only during the Boston siege, commanders even permitted enlisted men to sell furniture or other things that they made in camp to civilians. Some made furniture for generals in return for favors. Private William Parker continued his shoemaking business in the military, producing footwear that he sold to soldiers.2 Some men were even allowed to work for civilians in the community for a few weeks, walking back and forth from camp. The long-standing system of job-time swapping was honored, too, and many enlisted men had another do their work for them while they took the day off and swam or visited local women. Upon their return, at an agreed upon date, they worked the time of the man who had substituted for them.

  Greenwood and all of the troops were drilled periodically during the day and much time was spent in the early months of the war simply training men how to load and fire muskets and maneuver with bayonets. Men attended prayers in the morning and in late afternoon when chaplains were on hand, usually led by one chaplain for each regiment. All were ordered to attend Sunday services and many went to those in nearby communities.

  Hours were set aside for leisure. Ball games, such as lacrosse played by the Indians, proved popular and men competed against each other on the wide fields that surrounded the city. Washington saw so much merit in the ball games that he had men clear fields for them at every winter camp. Enlisted men engaged in wrestling matches in large, roughly hewn dirt areas. Sports fields were even cleared at Valley Forge. Many enlisted men, especially those from New England, delighted in ice skating on frozen ponds and rivers. Some went swimming in nearby lakes during the spring and summer. Shooting contests were allowed from time to time.

  Men spent much of their time playing cards until this practice took up so much time and generated so many arguments that all gambling was outlawed in the winter of 1777. It was eradicated after a woman who permitted some soldiers to live in her Morristown, New Jersey, home reported that one of them had become ill during a card game and was placed in his bed by the others, who went back to their card game. Twenty-four hours later, she found the private dead and the men still playing cards, oblivious to his condition.

  Men in the army indulged in a considerable amount of drinking, a common activity in colonial America. Beer and rum became a part of everyday life. The standard daily issue to the men included whiskey when available. It created substantial problems for the enlisted men throughout the war. Men in Greenwood’s regiment and others often staged drinking contests, with predictable results. Winners and losers became quite ill. James Stevens wrote that in one legendary drinking contest in Boston on February 7, 1776, one man defeated the other by downing forty-four glasses of beer and then, an hour later, died of alcohol poisoning. One drunk private shot and killed another following a dispute in camp at Boston one evening. The ill-tempered assailant’s stunning defense was that the shooting of the private was an accident; he was really trying to shoot the officer behind him.

  Outside Boston, wives, girlfriends, relatives, and friends visited the soldiers in camp, sometimes staying at the nearby homes of friends for days. Some even lived with them. George Ewing’s uncle James traveled to Valley Forge to visit him in 1777 and lived in his hut with him and another soldier for three days.3 They brought extra food for the soldiers in the first American army, who quickly also became the first to complain about army food, as they have ever since. The women and friends also bought presents and clothing.

  Many of the enlisted men maintained relationships with family and girlfriends far away by writing letters whenever they could. They looked forward to letters from home, too. Friends and family always asked how they were doing. Letters that arrived after a well-publicized and bl
oody battle usually were full of pleas for a letter back to assure family members, or wives and girlfriends, that their loved ones had not been hurt in the skirmish. An inordinate amount of correspondence that followed fierce battles, such as those that arrived in the days after the assault on Bunker Hill, started with the rather chilling line, “I realize that I may be writing to a dead man.”4

  The foot soldiers debated and greatly embellished every rumor that floated through camp, and there were many. Benedict Arnold had been killed. No, he had been taken prisoner. No, he had been taken prisoner and escaped. The British had hired twenty, forty, or fifty thousand Russian soldiers (pick any number) to help them fight the Americans. A huge British force had secretly landed on the southern tip of Florida and had started to march up the Atlantic seaboard toward Boston (why any army would land in Florida to attack Boston, fifteen hundred miles away, was never questioned).

  Some younger brothers mesmerized by the service eagerly agreed to take their older brother’s place in the regiment for a few days as the brother returned home for a brief vacation, all authorized by lower-ranking officers. Joel Fisher once took his brother Elijah’s place in Boston for two entire weeks.5

  The men celebrated holidays in camp or by visiting the homes of fellow enlisted men. This was rather easy during the Boston siege since many of the enlisted men there lived in communities within thirty miles of the city and invited their friends for dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas.6

  The single men talked frequently about the lovely women they had met in whatever community near where the army had camped. Some in Boston were so mesmerized by the numerous beauties walking about the streets of Cambridge and Boston itself, across the harbor, that they watched them through the spyglasses that they were supposed to be using to track enemy movements.