The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  The foot soldiers did not yet know, or comprehend, what they had accomplished in their two brutal battles at Trenton and Princeton within that brief ten-day span. They had soundly defeated the best troops of the British Empire, killing over three hundred and taking over twelve hundred prisoners. They had freed most of the state of New Jersey of the main British army and prevented the occupation of Philadelphia. The Continental Congress was now free to return to the city of brotherly love and reconfigure the national government and the New Jersey state legislature was able to meet again.

  Foreign powers, especially France and Spain, now believed that it was entirely possible that the Americans might win the war and began to think seriously of coming into the conflict as allies; the French even ordered four ships stocked with gunpowder and muskets to set sail for America. The British government was rocked by the dual defeats. Lord George Germain, head of the colonial office and director of the war effort, realized that the conflict would last much longer than he and his generals had anticipated. Many Americans who had been either sympathetic to the Crown or neutral about the war now changed their mind and embraced the Revolution. The American press, split on its support for the Revolution at the start of the conflict, now sided with the rebels and, in effect, became propaganda sheets for Washington and the army. None explained it better than a doctor traveling with the army, who wrote home that the double victories “have given new life and spirits to the cause.”13

  There was much praise for George Washington, but there was also substantial praise for the common soldiers in the American army. British historian George Trevelyan wrote of them, “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.” And the proud editor of the Freeman’s Journal, an American newspaper, wrote of the troops that “the men behaved with the utmost bravery.”14 George Washington, riding at the head of the column trudging northward to Morristown, may have thought of all the consequences of the dual triumphs, but Sergeant Joe White had neither the time or the inclination to do so. As he walked along the highway north toward Morristown he devoted his attention to pulling from his knapsack one of the cakes that woman in Princeton had baked for him and thinking about how pretty her daughters were.

  Chapter Fifteen

  NEW JERSEY AND PENNSYLVANIA, 1777–1778:

  Lieutenant James McMichael: A Poet Goes to War

  The War

  The Continental Army struggled through the winter of 1777 at Morristown. Following the twin victories at Trenton and Princeton, the army marched north to the small community in the heart of northern New Jersey to establish a winter camp. The town was protected by the Watchung Mountains to the east, intersected by two main highways, home to a large militia, run by patriotic public officials and close enough to New York that Washington could keep an eye on the British army there.

  It was a winter of discontent for the American army. Hundreds of men either deserted or went home after their enlistments were up, and at one point Washington had only fourteen hundred regulars and militia left. Another smallpox epidemic hit America that winter, threatening not only the existence of the army but the lives of thousands of civilians. Washington took the unprecedented step of immediately inoculating all of the troops and any civilians who chose to participate. His bold step saved the army and thousands of citizens.

  There was nothing but bad news. Just before the arrival of the army at Morristown in December 1776, the British attacked and occupied Newport, Rhode Island, a key seaport. Throughout the winter, U.S. currency continually depreciated in value, making it difficult for the army to purchase needed supplies.

  Most of the troops in Washington’s main force remained in Morristown until the end of May, but some regiments were assigned elsewhere.

  Lieutenant James McMichael’s Pennsylvania State Regiment of some five hundred men (renamed the Thirteenth Pennsylvania Regiment in late 1777), remained at Morristown all winter. In April 1777, the regiment was sent to Liberty Island in the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia to protect the city in case of a British attack, which George Washington fully expected. The capture of Philadelphia—the capital of the United States and the home of Congress and a major port—would be a major military victory for the British.

  On May 1, a Sunday, a local band arrived on Liberty Island, the musicians carrying their instruments from boats to a compact parade ground to entertain the troops stationed there. Among them were the three companies of Lieutenant McMichael’s regiment. They needed entertainment.

  The Pennsylvanians had been through some of the most dangerous battles and hardest marches of the American Revolution. The men had no sooner left their villages in Pennsylvania on May 27, 1776, to applause and cheers from their friends and neighbors, then they, and McMichael, in his early twenties, found themselves on the front lines of the battles to defend New York. The enlisted men were thoroughly beaten at the battle of Long Island on August 27. There, in the early afternoon, the Pennsylvanians found themselves cut off from the army. They fought courageously but were hopelessly outnumbered. At first, under McMichael’s direction, a line of enlisted men attempted to make a stand. In the first round of volleys the man positioned right next to McMichael had his head blown off. McMichael was badly shaken. The regiment’s only chance to escape was to swim or wade through a large mill pond behind them with the enemy in hot pursuit.

  McMichael, his musket held above his head, plunged into the pond, exhorting his men to follow him. Some of the men, their clothing, packs, and muskets too heavy for them, could not make it through the waters of the pond and drowned. The advancing British troops made it impossible for McMichael or other officers to go back to save them. McMichael himself was astonished that he reached the far shore of the pond. “It was the will of providence that I should escape,” he wrote.

  Separated from the rest of the army, he and his men did not learn until later the extent of the devastation the army suffered in the Long Island battle. McMichael later wrote that his regiment and those fighting nearby lost two colonels, nineteen officers, twenty-three sergeants and three hundred ten enlisted men, all taken prisoner (total American losses that day were 312 killed, 1,097 captured1). The lieutenant had survived one of the most severe engagements of the Revolution. “My preservation I only attribute to the indulgence of God,” he wrote. “For though the bullets went round me in every direction, yet I received not a wound.”

  The Americans continued to lose in their confrontations with the British in New York and were forced to pull back from a position on Harlem Heights. The army retreated north to White Plains and formed a three mile defensive line that cut through the village.

  On the morning of October 28, Howe’s army, consisting of nine thousand British regulars plus four thousand Hessians, advanced on the town after crossing the Bronx River. McMichael’s company and several militia units marched two miles to meet the enemy and test the Redcoats’ strength. There, McMichael described a furious Redcoat and Hessian assault against the American advance party.

  He wrote, “We were attacked with [their] right wing being all Hessians. We kept up an incessant fire for nearly an hour when being informed from our flanking party that the [British] light horse were surrounding us. We were necessitated to retreat to the lines.” The Pennsylvanians, ordered back, joined the main line of defense later in the morning as General Howe’s entire force moved forward.

  “Their left wing attacked a party of ours at an advanced post on a hill,” McMichael continued. “Our troops behaved with great fortitude but being overpowered by numbers were at last obliged to retreat to the lines. The enemy attempted to force our right wing in the lines but were put to a precipitate retreat back to the hill. The attack continued from 9 a.m. until 2 in the afternoon.” Finally, the left side of the American line collapsed when the Massachusetts militia units broke and fled. That was the beginning of the end and Washington soon ordered another general
retreat north, beyond the Croton River.

  Word spread that American losses were light (actually, they had lost only one hundred fifty men, killed or wounded) and that the enemy had lost six hundred (actually 313), but McMichael, at the center of the action that day, knew that regardless of numbers, the field in front of him was covered in blood.

  A wing of the American army that was sent to hold Fort Washington in Manhattan was defeated. The main army was forced to run for its life across New Jersey toward Pennsylvania, with the British in pursuit. All felt the end was near. “Our army now being reduced to a small number gives us less hope of victory,” McMichael wrote.

  The soldiers were bitter about the lack of public help for an army that was on its last legs. There was no assistance with food, shelter, or clothing from the New Jersey towns through which the army retreated. No local militias marched into camp to swell the ranks and, in fact, continued desertions badly depleted the army. The cheers the troops remembered in Boston had faded rather abruptly in New Jersey. In New Brunswick, a town on the banks of the Raritan River halfway across the state, McMichael watched two thousand soldiers whose time was up march home. He wrote that “the Tories now began to look at us with a disdainful countenance, wishing the enemy may drive us shortly out of town.”

  The Pennsylvania state regiment moved to Morristown for winter camp, but McMichael managed to talk his commanding officer into granting him a furlough to return to Pennsylvania. His request was among many granted by lower-ranking generals who did not check with the commander in chief, who agreed to furlough men, but did not want all requests approved. Washington did not realize they had been sent home until it was too late. Those soldiers who left included men such as McMichael. The furloughs, along with desertions and the departures of men whose enlistment was up, plus those whose emergency ten-day enlistment ended, left Washington with an army of just twenty-five hundred men in Morristown, his winter camp.

  McMichael, who may have had smallpox earlier in life and was immune, did not get sick when the epidemic struck that winter. In fact, his health remained hearty throughout the winter. That was good, too, because his sturdy constitution permitted him to spend his time off in the village of Stony Brook, New Jersey.

  It was in Stony Brook, just one mile from Princeton, where McMichael had met Susanna Vetnoy, twenty-five, the previous winter and was hopelessly smitten with her. He scribbled in his diary that it was there “when first I beheld the face of my dear Susanna.” They were married on March 4, 1776, after a steamy, whirlwind courtship of just ten days.

  And so, on May 1, 1777, almost a year later, McMichael listened to the musicians on that fine spring day at his army camp on an island on the Delaware River and enjoyed their songs. But it was visions of his new wife Susanna, not the tunes of the lively band, that filled the lovesick lieutenant’s head.

  McMichael had been seeing Susanna on short furloughs and, like so many soldiers in the Revolution, missed her terribly when he had to leave her embrace and rejoin the army. He had spent his last furlough, from April 2 through April 7, in bed with her for six days of “conjugal bliss.” The satiated young groom, like all young grooms, probably could not sleep for several days afterward, just thinking about his new bride and her enduring charms.

  At the Delaware River outpost, his yearning for her grew even greater and then, on May 3, he received a steamy letter from Susanna that was full of lustful suggestions and a plea to him that she had physical “needs” that had to be satisfied. He wrote that her letter “exhilarates my animal spirits,” adding that “every sentence thereof was so pleasing and so calculated to render me happy that language fails to express the dictates of my mind.”

  That letter sent poor McMichael reeling. It was then that he turned to poetry to express his feelings for Susanna for the first time in the war.

  Amidst alarms my love is placed

  On my Susanna, Dear

  Whilst her sweet charms is by me traced

  As well remote as near

  But when the war is at an end

  To visit her I do intend

  And with her spend the rest of life

  For hope she’ll prove a good wife

  McMichael fell sick after he sent that poem, as he had from time to time during his nearly two years of combat, but learned just a few weeks later, in early June, that he might obtain another furlough. The thought of traveling to see Susanna, and attending to her “needs,” sent the lieutenant into another spate of poetry:

  I now thought I was in her arms

  And drowned in bliss amidst her charms

  And though not well yet I seemed all alive

  For pleasing thoughts did me revive

  Then I thought were I but at Stonybrook

  That on my dear Susanna I might look

  Her smiles to me would a physician prove

  We did each other admire with ardent love

  I will with speed a visit pay to she

  Who of all others most pleasing is to me

  That when her charms I do behold

  Which are as if formed in a mold

  I may be happy whilst I do enjoy

  Her truest love without the least annoy

  The furlough did come through, but Susanna’s ardent young husband was forced to cool his heels for two long days in Philadelphia before the next ferry sailed to Trenton. He crossed the Delaware with a group of officers he knew who persuaded him to join them for some “refreshments” at a tavern in Trenton that afternoon, further delaying his arrival at Susanna’s house. Finally, just after sundown, he wrote in his journal, he was in the arms of his amorous wife, “which filled my mind with all the delights possibly able to flow from the transitory enjoyments.”

  In addition to his romantic desire for Susanna, McMichael had other reasons to ride to her home. It was a chance to live in a warm house, and not a cold tent, for a week or more. His wife surely cooked better meals than the army. Susanna, like all wives in the war, probably sewed his torn clothing. She might have sewn him new leggings or purchased new clothing for him. The diary indicates that they spent time with friends and her family, too, surely a comfort.

  Again, duty called, and after a few days the lieutenant had to return to the military. There, he learned that his regiment was going into battle. McMichael then surprised his fellow officers and the enlisted men when he seemed overjoyed at the news. He was not thrilled about facing the British; he was ecstatic because the battle, he was told, would take place somewhere near Somerset Court House, in New Jersey. The highway to that town from Pennsylvania went through Ringoes, a New Jersey town just thirteen miles northwest of Stony Brook.

  The regiment traveled to Fort Mercer, a fort on the Delaware, and then dawdled at Philadelphia. Time passed and McMichael’s frustrations grew. Would this be just one more of the hundreds of false alarms the regiment had been through? Would they again sleep on their arms all night and then do nothing in the morning? Would they be marched back to their island? Finally, on June 24, they crossed the Delaware at Coryell’s Ferry (today New Hope, Pennsylvania) and headed east, first for Ringoes and then toward Somerset Court House, a sleepy little village in the center of the state. The Americans there were nervous because General Howe’s main army of some eighteen thousand troops had left New Brunswick. Several of Howe’s regiments started to engage American units in northern New Jersey. They expected him to attack them.

  What happened next is not clear. McMichael either decided to go AWOL so that he could see his wife or he talked his commanding officer into letting him sneak away from the regiment for a romantic tryst. He jumped on a horse shortly after noon on June 25 and left the column of troops as they marched down the dirt highway through Ringoes. He rode as quickly as he could, taking every shortcut he knew, crossing meadows and streams at full gallop, and reached Stony Brook, and his young wife, who was very happy to see him, at 2 p.m.

  McMichael did not have much time with his spouse and presumably after a day and night of he
ated lovemaking he left her home at 2 a.m., climbing back on his horse in total darkness. McMichael rode through the night to Somerset Court House where, sleepless and physically drained, he trotted into camp astride his horse as the men rose at 6 a.m. He had nothing to fear if he had worried about being ready for battle after an evening with his wife, though. There was no encounter with the British that morning. The Redcoats were nowhere to be found.

  Then, in what was a familiar pattern to the soldiers by then, the army marched about, looking for the British, but not finding them. The men finally arrived two weeks later at Morristown. The one night stand with his wife fresh in his mind, and sleepless once more thinking about her, he went to headquarters and asked for yet another furlough to return to Stony Brook, but was denied. With time on his hands, McMichael wrote another poem to Susanna, lamenting his inability to receive a pass to visit her:

  This has my patience almost tired, and filled with regret

  Because for to go see my friends, I now no time can get

  Farewell dear creature I must go, away to the wars

  And for sometime quit Venus far, and join myself to Mars

  Whose thundering noise does fill the ears of those which do be bold

  And undergo his difficulties which scarcely can be told

  The lieutenant was a lucky fellow, however. No sooner had he sent the poem off than he was ordered to return to his home state of Pennsylvania to hunt down deserters. He was ordered to ride to Bucks and Chester Counties—back via the highway through Ringoes—and track down men from his regiment who had left the army, and men from other regiments in those counties, arrest them, and return them to camp. It was made clear his mission was of the utmost urgency.

  Desertion and the refusal of men to serve more than a single enlistment had been a constant problem in the Continental Army since the siege of Boston in the winter of 1775–1776, when Washington lost half his army and when men whose terms were up decided to simply walk home. Now, in the summer of 1777, Washington worried about the loss of troops once again.