The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  All of the men seemed to have been withdrawn when Dr. James Thacher was spotted riding to the battlefield, not away from it like everyone else. He had seen an American fall and wanted to treat him. He dismounted, tied his horse to a wood rail fence, grabbed his medical pouch, and ran to the wounded soldier’s side, kneeling next to him. Suddenly, a cannonball exploded within a few yards of the horse, ripping up the rail fence and huge chunks of grass and dirt. Several soldiers raced to Thacher and screamed at him to get off the battlefield—fast. They pulled the wounded man back to the woods with them and the brave but frightened doctor ran to his horse, mounted it, and, his spurs digging into the side of steed, raced into the woods and safety.

  The enormous outpouring of militia now gave Greene seventy-five hundred men, more troops than the British, and he was no longer at a disadvantage. The Americans were arrayed throughout the woods at the foot of the Watchung Mountains, where they could look down at the British with their muskets and cannon. They were thus able to stop the British advances. George Washington had been marching toward West Point, where he was convinced the enemy would attack. General Knyphausen learned Washington had been alerted and had turned his army southward. The Americans were moving quickly and would be at Springfield within an hour or two. The British general, thwarted already by Greene and the militia, would not risk a major defeat in a battle with Washington. He retreated, ordering the burning of most of the village of Springfield as he went. The Americans’ view of the British army fleeing to New York was soon blocked by columns of black smoke rising into the sky from the torching of Springfield.

  The Americans only lost fifteen killed and sixty-one wounded in both battles of Springfield. British losses were not reported, but villagers said they saw several wagons filled with dead soldiers rolling down the highway as the soundly beaten British retreated.6 Later, in a report that would have made the Morris militia and other militia units proud of themselves, General Knyphausen wrote to George Germain, head of Britain’s colonial office and in charge of the war, “I found the disposition of the inhabitants by no means such as I expected; on the contrary they were everywhere in arms.”7 Even more pleasing was Washington’s assessment of the militia. The general had been critical of them since he took command of the army three years earlier. The militiamen fought in the two Springfield engagements, he wrote to General Robert Howe, “with admirable spirit.”8

  Washington praised the Second Rhode Island, too, writing that “the gallant behavior of Col. Angell’s [men] on the 23 instant, at Springfield, reflects the highest honor upon the officers and men. They disputed an important pass, with so obstinate a bravery, that they lost upwards of forty killed, wounded, and missing before they gave up their ground to a vast superiority of force.”

  The Rhode Island Assembly was even more effusive in its praise. An official proclamation conveyed “sincere thanks to the officers and soldiers in general, belonging to the regiment, for that bravery, patriotism, and perseverance and those military virtues manifested on all occasions so similar to those exhibited by the famous legions of ancient Rome, in the shining periods of the history of that republic.”9

  The battles for Springfield have usually been dismissed by historians, but they were two of the most important encounters of the war. If the Americans had not turned the enemy back both times, the British might have defeated Washington, decimated the American army, and moved into Morristown to capture all of the Continental Army’s supplies, food, and ammunition. The French had agreed to send ships, cannon, ammunition, and several thousand soldiers in 1780, but their fleet and troops had not yet arrived. So a defeat at Springfield, coupled with the loss of Charleston, lack of provisions, and the reeling U.S. economy might have resulted in American capitulation.10

  The awful winter and spring had brought about a mutiny, starvation, inflation, the loss of Charleston, the defeat at Staten Island, the corruption trial of Arnold, and animosity between the people and the troops. But in an odd way, these travails had somehow rekindled the spirit of many in the service. Wrote one foot soldier in a long and passionate letter to the Jersey Journal:

  At least half the whole family of mankind may be interested in our success; a prize as important was never before disputed on the stage of the world. We have every virtuous, every great and noble idea to animate our exertions; the superior Beings who inhabit other worlds may behold our efforts with pleasing admiration—and the Eternal may look down with approbation and pleasure, while we contend for the rights of creation and refuse to part with our divine inheritance.11

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  1781:

  Victory at Yorktown

  The War

  The Revolution, its critics claimed, was about to collapse as a series of events worked against the American cause throughout 1780 and 1781.

  All of America was enraged at the defection of Benedict Arnold in September 1780. The disgruntled Arnold, thirty-nine, had just married the nineteenyear-old daughter of a Philadelphia Tory. He still fumed about his conviction on corruption charges in the winter and shortly thereafter defected to the British after selling them the military plans for the American fortifications at West Point; his connection, British Major John Andre, was captured and hanged. Arnold’s betrayal hurt Washington deeply, but it also infuriated every soldier who had served with Arnold, including Ebenezer Wild, at Saratoga, John Greenwood, and Jeremiah Greenman, plus Dr. Lewis Beebe, and Rev. Ammi Robbins, now at home (Greenman was present at Andre’s execution).

  The army was hurt again in January 1781 when a large-scale mutiny took place at Morristown, where another uprising had occurred the previous winter. This time nearly fifteen hundred unhappy Pennsylvania troops mutinied, presenting grievances connected to lack of food, clothing, back pay, and enlistment time, and marched out of camp. The mutineers planned to travel to Philadelphia to plead their case to Congress, but wound up in Princeton, where they seized the town. The mutiny ended when Congress agreed to pay troops who wanted to leave—almost all of them—and give proper clothing and food to those who remained. All were pardoned. The leaders of another mutiny three weeks later in Pompton, New Jersey, were not so lucky. Washington had the mutiny put down with force and ordered the three leaders shot by their closest friends in the regiment. The mutinies strengthened British belief that support for the Revolution was fading fast.

  American finances were also at a low point and recruitment was difficult. The French alliance had not been as successful as most hoped and British commander Henry Clinton had just asked the home office for ten thousand more men and more warships to win the war.

  Furthermore, the British had established a near stranglehold in the southern states, where they had the support of thousands of Loyalists. The Redcoats’ capture of Charleston, along with five thousand American soldiers in May 1780, and the continued occupation of Savannah, solidified their dominance in the lower half of the country.

  At first, efforts to end British control of the South failed. Blithely overriding Washington’s recommendation of Nathanael Greene, Congress named Horatio Gates, the “hero of Saratoga,” to lead forces there. His leadership proved a disaster. Cornwallis promptly routed Gates’s army of two thousand regulars and two thousand militia on August 16, 1780, at Camden, South Carolina. Gates foolishly matched his poorly trained militia up against Cornwallis’s best troops; the militia folded quickly, most of the men dropping their guns and running. Hundreds of Americans were killed, wounded, captured, or went home. Within two weeks, his army shrank to just seven hundred men.

  Two events then helped the Americans. Militia defeated a large Loyalist army under Col. Patrick Ferguson at King’s Mountain, South Carolina, on October 7, 1780. Ferguson was shot dead. This severely undercut the Loyalist movement. Then, in early December, Greene replaced Gates.

  Greene knew that he was an underdog in any battle he entered against Cornwallis and his savage cavalry leader, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton. Greene cagily engaged in a hit and run strategy,
trying to inflict huge losses on the British in every battle and then escape to fight another day. Cornwallis was so eager to destroy Greene’s army that he chased it all over the South. Cornwallis could do so because the home office gave him total freedom of movement; he no longer had to clear any decisions with Henry Clinton, whom he despised.

  The Americans surprisingly defeated the British at the Cowpens, South Carolina, January 17, 1781, capturing five hundred British regulars, and immediately fled. Cornwallis pursued them to get his men back, but could not catch the Americans. Later, on March 15, the two forces met again at Guilford Court House, in North Carolina. The British won this time, but suffered heavy losses. Throughout 1781, Greene had the assistance of nearly two thousand local militia led by shrewd backcountry partisan commanders, such as South Carolina’s Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox.” They all engaged the British in skirmishes, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, and inflicting heavy losses on Cornwallis’s army. At Eutaw Springs, in a bloody confrontation, the Americans again lost but killed 693 of Cornwallis’s men, nearly one quarter of his army, the highest percentage loss of men in the entire Revolution.

  Cornwallis finally joined forces with General Benedict Arnold in Virginia. Arnold was ordered back to New York. On August 1, Cornwallis took his combined forces of six thousand to Yorktown, a port on the York River, close to the Chesapeake Bay, where he hoped to establish a defensive position near a harbor.

  At that same time, George Washington held several meetings in Connecticut with the head of the French army, Lt. General Donatien Marie Rochambeau. The French had arrived in force in the summer of 1780, too late to see any major action, but now Rochambeau wanted to put together a plan of action with Washington to strike a major blow against the English. Its result would be a final campaign to defeat Cornwallis.

  Washington had long dreamed of reclaiming New York City, where his army had been beaten so badly in 1776. Upon news that the French fleet, under Admiral Comte de Grasse, with three thousand troops, could sail from the West Indies to Virginia in early September, Rochambeau instead suggested moving their combined force southward all the way to Virginia to attack Lord Cornwallis and end the war. The plan was to merge with forces already in the south under Lafayette and Anthony Wayne, surround Cornwallis by land, and have the French ships blockade the mouth of the Chesapeake so that he could not escape by ship or be rescued. Washington quickly saw it as a golden opportunity.

  The Americans did feign an assault on New York to make Sir Henry Clinton believe an attack on him was imminent; Clinton was also certain that the British navy would annihilate de Grasse’s fleet. Then the American-French army marched southward to Maryland. French transports and American ships carried the army from Elkton and Annapolis, Maryland, to Virginia for the attack. Washington and Rochambeau together had nearly eighteen thousand soldiers and one hundred cannon, making it one of the largest American forces of the war. Would the plan work? Could they defeat the well-entrenched Cornwallis? Would the British fleet rout French admiral de Grasse? Could they achieve victory before October 15, when de Grasse said he had to leave?

  The journey of the First Massachusetts and its newly promoted lieutenant, Ebenezer Wild, to York, Virginia, or Yorktown, as it was also called, began in earnest on April 21, 1781, when the regiment crossed the Potomac River from Maryland into Virginia. The regiment was now attached to the combined French-American forces led by the Marquis de Lafayette. A month later, on the evening of May 21, the First Massachusetts was met by two regiments of Virginia militia on the northern bank of the James River, just outside of Richmond, where they had camped overnight. The next day, the First Massachusetts, with the others, crossed the James.

  Wild’s confidence in the army was given a jolt a few days later when a sudden thunderstorm broke over the Virginia countryside following a day of excessive heat. The storm hit while the army was marching down a roadway. The thunder was so loud and so quick that the local militia troops that had just joined the column thought the noise was enemy cannon and fled into the woods for protection. It took the officers ninety minutes to bring the frightened militia back to the road.

  Wild, who had been in the service for six years, had just been promoted and he seemed delighted to be an officer. He wrote that he was pleased to have been invited to Colonel Vose’s tent for a dinner of his officers just outside of Richmond and seemed to enjoy spending time with his fellow officers, among them a new acquaintance, Captain Stephen Olney. Now he would receive more pay, live in a better tent in summer, and larger hut in winter. He was also satisfied that since he was an officer he could be a member of courts martial boards. Ebenezer Wild was now a man to be respected.

  Throughout the march, supplies the men had been clamoring for since winter arrived. On June 3, the angry enlisted men were quieted when a man who had ridden all the way from Boston trotted into camp on a horse with large bags of hard money consisting of gold and silver to distribute to the enlisted men in salary. A week later, on June 10, a wagon train loaded with twelve hundred shirts for the soldiers pulled up to the column as the men marched. For some, these were the first new shirts they had been given in a year.

  Sometimes everything seemed to go wrong, though. Wild and his company were about to capture a herd of horses but the steeds ran off at the last moment. A doctor and two privates drowned while bathing in a river. Somehow, many of the tents of the First Massachusetts were lost during the march and the men had to sleep in the open meadows. Directions were poor and once the men marched all day to wind up at a local meetinghouse where they had started that morning. A surprise attack on a British force General Anthony Wayne had spotted at Green Springs backfired and the First Massachusetts and the Pennsylvanians had to retreat. Promised food shipments were late. The crossings of rivers took all day because there were not enough boats.

  On September 1, Wild heard the news that his “tiny army,” as he called it, would not only join forces with George Washington’s main army, but that the French fleet, with twenty-eight ships carrying four thousand troops, had arrived in Chesapeake Bay, blocking the entrance to the York and James rivers. By September 6, various elements of the plan to surround the British were falling into place. Wild’s regiment had been sent to Williamsburg, twelve miles southwest of Yorktown. The French army, under the Marquis de St. Simon, had arrived five days before. The next day, Lieutenant Wild heard that more ships had arrived and the French now had thirty-seven vessels anchored in the bay. The day after that two regiments from Maryland trudged into Williamsburg as the American and French forces camped in the Virginia capital began to swell. And finally, on Sunday, September 14, George Washington arrived and took command. He asked to greet as many officers as he could that day, and at 2 p.m. he met Ebenezer Wild (oddly, Wild wrote nothing about the encounter). “The arrival . . . of General Washington gave new hopes and spirits to the army,” noted Lt. Col. St. George Tucker of Rawson’s Brigade, a Virginia militia group, who also met Washington that day.1

  The commander in chief had lots of good news. He had just returned from a meeting with Admiral de Grasse, head of the French fleet, on board his flagship, the Ville de Paris, said to be the largest warship in the world. De Grasse informed him that his ships would remain in the Chesapeake Bay until the end of October, giving the combined American and French forces plenty of time to defeat Cornwallis. Washington’s army and the French force had arrived practically intact, with very few desertions and a small number of sick men. The cannon he brought with him over the great distance from the New York area were in good order and few had suffered any damage on the lengthy journey. His spies assured him that British supplies in Yorktown were low. The French had given him just about everything—in men, cannon, and supplies—that they had been promising for more than two years.2

  Yorktown was situated on land originally owned by an ancestor of George Washington’s, Nicholas Martiau, who acquired it in 1691. Over the years, its location on the York River close to the Chesapeake and in the
heart of tobacco country had turned it into a busy port. Its zenith as a trading town was reached in the 1740s, when British visitors remarked that the homes of merchants in the community of three thousand people were as large and as fine as those in the best neighborhoods in London. An explosion in the tobacco trade in other areas of the Chesapeake area near ports, such as Norfolk and Baltimore, soon undercut the importance of Yorktown. The war and British blockades also hurt Yorktown’s business, and by 1781 it turned into a small, depressed community.

  Yorktown still possessed the remnants of its former importance. There were three hundreds homes, three churches, and an ornate red brick courthouse located on its one main street and four cross streets. The town sat on a wide, high bluff that overlooked the river. The small wharf that had been built beneath the bluff still had ships that anchored there on trading excursions and was now home to Cornwallis’s warship, the Charon, and several supply ships. Merchants, farmers, and workers from nearby plantations conducted business in some of its stores and frequented a local tavern.

  The townspeople had embraced the Revolution. In 1774, local men raided British ships in action similar to the “tea party” in Boston. The community elected its leading patriot, Thomas Nelson, to the Continental Congress. Throughout the war, Yorktown was home to a three-hundredman militia company

  The community looked like a ghost town by the time Cornwallis made it his headquarters. The militia had fled, along with dozens of area shopkeepers, plantation owners, and local residents. Many had moved to the interior when the British invaded the state. Some homes, stores, and stables were empty and uncut grass overran walkways and streets.3