The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  In a bit of good fortune, Lieutenant Ebenezer Wild’s company found itself stationed right at the beginning of the parade route. Wild and his comrades were up-close eyewitnesses to one of the great surrenders in military history—and for a second time, since they had witnessed the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Wild wrote of the Yorktown surrender, “They began to march out with shouldered arms and drums beating, but were not allowed to beat any French or American march; neither were they allowed to display their colors. In this order they were conducted [by General Lincoln] to a large plain in front of the American encampment, where they grounded their arms.”

  Lord Cornwallis was not with his men. The humiliated military leader, outwitted and outgeneraled yet again by George Washington, stayed in Yorktown and sent word to the Americans that he was “sick.” Someone had to surrender, so he told his blustery Irish general, Charles O’Hara, to do it (The unlucky O’Hara had been with Burgoyne at Saratoga, too). O’Hara then tried to surrender to Rochambeau to insult the Americans by pretending that the French alone had defeated the British. The French general would not talk to him and pointed across the road to Washington. O’Hara then tried to surrender to him, offering Cornwallis’s sword. The American commander would not accept the sword from a second in command, and told him to hand it to General Lincoln, sitting astride a horse next to him. O’Hara did so. Abiding by protocol, Lincoln, who himself had been forced to surrender his army at Charleston in 1780, touched the sword and handed it back to O’Hara.18

  Some observers believed that many British soldiers had been drinking that day. Others said that their line of march was ragged and undisciplined and that even the sober men seemed wildly disoriented. A New Jersey officer standing near Joseph Martin may have put it best when he told those around him that “the British officers in general behaved like boys who had been whipped at school. Some bit their lips, some pouted, others cried. Their round, brimmed hats were well adapted to the occasion, hiding those faces they were ashamed to show.”19

  Washington never said anything about Cornwallis’s refusal to lead his army out of Yorktown, but almost everyone in the American army chortled over his Lordship’s humbling. Dr. Thacher was one. The doctor, who always thought the British generals pompous, skewered Cornwallis. He wrote, “But there is no display of magnanimity when a great commander shrinks from the inevitable misfortunes of war; and when it is considered that Lord Cornwallis has frequently appeared in splendid triumph at the head of his army, by which he is almost adored, we conceive it incumbent on him cheerfully to participate in their misfortunes and degradations, however humiliating; but it is said he gives himself up entirely to vexation and despair.”20

  News of the surrender thrilled America. Nearly five days later, the news arrived at 3 a.m. on October 24 in Philadelphia and by order of the president of Congress, Thomas McKean, men began to ring the Liberty Bell and kept ringing it until dawn. Thousands awakened by the pealing of the bell crowded into the streets with candles to celebrate the victory. In New Jersey, ministers of churches throughout the state ordered their bells to be rung most of the day. When the news reached Boston a day after that, the city was engulfed in wild celebrations and church bells rang for hours. In Fishkill, New York, residents enjoyed a daylong barbecue and at night celebrated with a huge bonfire and fireworks display.

  Couriers rode as fast as their horses could carry them along New England highways, shouting, “Cornwallis is taken! Cornwallis is taken!” to anyone they passed. Villages through which they rode erupted in immediate celebrations that lasted all night. A special courier brought the news to Mount Vernon, where it was received with joy by Martha Washington and Henry Knox’s wife Lucy, preparing to give birth to her fourth child there.21

  On the British side, one of the first to receive word of the defeat was Rear Admiral Samuel Hood, with the British fleet, who, shocked, said the loss was “the most melancholy news Great Britain ever received . . . a heartbreaking business.”22 Upon hearing the news in London, British prime minister Lord North was far more direct. “Oh God!” he said, pacing back and forth in his apartment, “It is over. It is all over.”23

  The war did not actually end at Yorktown. It would take another two years before the peace treaty was finally signed, but nearly everyone at the surrender of Cornwallis’s army was certain that the outcome of the six year conflict, with considerable help from the French, was now certain— independence for America.

  AFTERWORD

  The Revolutionary War did not end with the British defeat at Yorktown. England still had armies in New York, Savannah, and in North Carolina. British forces engaged in several small skirmishes on land and on the high seas after Yorktown and England could have continued militarily. However, the capture of Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown brought about antiwar riots in London, strident calls for a cessation of activities in the London press and would cause the resignation of Lord North, the prime minister. The Crown, in effect, decided to end the war and grant the colonies independence after Cornwallis’s defeat in the fall of 1781. Negotiations toward a peace treaty took nearly two years, however, and the war did not technically conclude until the fall of 1783.

  What happened to the soldiers of the first American army when the war finally ended?

  The return to civilian life was difficult for most of them. The army did not disperse en masse in November of 1783, when the British left. The enlisted men went home throughout 1781, 1782, and 1783. There were thousands of them. Those who were not going back to family farms had no guarantees of returning to their old jobs and neither the Continental Congress or the states had job programs for them. Some veterans, particularly craftsmen, did find work or went back to their old employers. Others only landed positions that paid less than they earned before the war; many could not find employment at all. The end of the war also meant the end of the privateering business and thousands of seamen found their careers on the high seas over. Many had to pursue new lines of work.

  That’s what happened to Elijah Fisher. The cantankerous Fisher, who had problems getting along with people throughout the war, was never able to find long term employment in the Boston area after he left the army in 1780. He worked as a laborer and bounced from one job to another, sometimes being dismissed and sometimes quitting. Each job seemed to end in a heated dispute over work rules and pay.

  Disgusted, Fisher signed on as a seaman on a merchant ship out of Boston in 1783 while the war still continued. The vessel was captured by a British ship on the high seas shortly thereafter and the crew was incarcerated on the notorious prison ship Jersey, anchored in New York harbor. There, at long last, Fisher’s penmanship studies and practice finally did him some good. The captain of the Jersey needed a prisoner with good handwriting to serve as a clerk. Fisher won the post. He continued as a prisoner, and still slept in the dreary hold with the men. As a muchneeded clerk, though, he spent the day working in his own office and received decent meals—missing all of the daily misery of the other prisoners. He was on the prison ship when the war ended.

  Fisher had little luck finding a job upon his return to Boston after the peace treaty. Fed up, he moved to the wilderness of Maine, where he met and married Jerusha Keene in 1784. They had eight children. He settled into the village of Livermore and lived out his days as a farmer there.

  Ebenezer Wild remained with the army until the very end of the war in 1783. He was so devoted to the military that he became one of the founding members of the Massachusetts Society of Cincinnati, founded by officers to memorialize the war throughout their lifetimes. Wild moved to Boston in 1789 and became a shopkeeper on Merchants Row, one of the city’s most prominent business streets. He had married Abigail Hayward in 1786. They had two children, Harriot and Ebenezer.

  Shepard Kollock, who founded the Jersey Journal, continued to serve as the editor of the newspaper the rest of his life and made it one of the finest publications in early America.

  Stephen Olney, bayoneted at Yorktown in 1781 an
d told by doctors that he would not live out the week, died fifty long years later.

  Dr. Lewis Beebe had been greatly influenced by his wartime friend, the Rev. Robbins. Beebe himself became a minister in the Congregational Church in Vermont in 1787. The pastorate was not a good choice for the highly opinionated Beebe though, and he left the ministry four years later. He moved to Lansingburgh, New York, where, ironically, the staunch critic of drunkenness at Fort Ticonderoga opened up a liquor store that he ran until his death in 1816.

  Rev. Ammi Robbins stayed in the ministry all of his life, continuously preaching the word of the Lord and the righteousness of the Revolution. He moved from Canaan to Litchfield, Connecticut, after the war and later became a member of the local school board.

  Colonel Sylvanus Seely remained the head of the Morris County militia through the end of the war. He and his wife attended the December 4, 1783, fireworks extravaganza in New York that celebrated the signing of the peace treaty. Seely’s tempestuous affair with Mrs. Ball ended sometime in the winter of 1782 but his womanizing continued. He tumbled into an affair of several weeks with Betsy Barnet, a doctor’s wife from the Philadelphia area, whom he met at a vacation resort in northwestern New Jersey. Following that, he became romantically involved with the wife of his friend, Shepard Kollock.

  Seely ran inns in Chatham until 1800 and then, at age fifty-three, decided that New Jersey was too congested. Seely and his family moved to an undeveloped region of eastern Pennsylvania, where he built a sawmill and a gristmill. Other settlers followed and a town was created; the locals named it Seelyville in honor of its founder and Revolutionary War hero. His secretly coded diary indicated that his womanizing wound down after he moved to Pennsylvania. Colonel Seely lived there until his death in 1820. His wife Jane stayed with him despite his unfaithfulness and in 1819 they celebrated fifty years of marriage.

  Young John Greenwood, the fifteen-year-old who worked as a fifer, soldier, and sailor, had the most unusual post-war career of all. Greenwood, unable to find much work in Boston after the war, moved to New York and became a dentist, just like his father. He was a good one, too. Greenwood pioneered the use of foot-powered drills and tooth implants. His specialty, though, was dentures. He invented adaptable springs for dentures and became renowned for creating porcelain false teeth out of ivory from hippopotamus.

  Greenwood knew that George Washington suffered from his bad teeth and that the general was unhappy with the various false teeth dentists had given him. He offered his services once more to the commander in chief, now the president of the United States. Washington was very pleased with the ivory dentures that Greenwood fashioned for him and wore them for the rest of his life, visiting his former private’s Manhattan office on occasion for care. The president also let Greenwood advertise himself in newspapers as “Dentist to His Excellency, George Washington.”

  A few of the lower ranking officers and enlisted men mentioned in this account went on to some prominence. Sam Shaw, a major by the time the fighting ended, was later appointed America’s first consul to China. Joseph Bloomfield, who made out his will soon after he enlisted and was shot at Brandywine, plunged into politics and served as the governor of New Jersey for ten years and later spent two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. At the age of fifty-nine, he abruptly left the governor’s mansion and enlisted in the army to fight the British yet again in the war of 1812.

  Lt. James McMichael, the poet, joined his wife at her home in Stony Brook, New Jersey, in the spring of 1778 after his discharge. Then, after some time with her, he returned to the army on July 1, 1778, with the Seventh Pennsylvania. That unit was consolidated with the Fourth Pennsylvania in 1781 and became the First Pennsylvania in 1783. McMichael saw combat at the battle of Monmouth and in several skirmishes and remained in the army until the peace treaty in 1783, but kept no further diaries. He received two hundred acres in land bounties for his service and moved to back to his hometown, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with his wife Susanna. After the war the McMichaels moved to Philadelphia. The lieutenant, who joined the Society of Cincinnati, too, died there in 1791.

  Perhaps Jeremiah Greenman’s post-war life was representative of most of the unheralded soldiers who fought in the first American army. Greenman, shot twice during the Revolution, had no skills when he entered the army at age seventeen and despite some experience as a regimental clerk, had none when he left on the day the army took possession of New York City in 1783. He drifted for a few years after he returned to Providence and then worked as a sea captain from 1790 to 1805, but never really enjoyed it. Then, with his family, he moved to Marietta, Ohio, in 1806 to run a farm.

  He died there in 1828 at the age of seventy-one. On his tombstone his sons carved an inscription that might have served for all the soldiers in the first American army:

  “Revolutionary Soldier—in memory of Jeremiah Greenman Esq an active officer in that army which bid defiance to britons power and established the independence of the United States.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The writing of The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men behind America’s First Fight for Freedom, was a long journey through original diaries, journals, and letters of nearly one hundred soldiers who fought in the American Revolution. It was a joyous journey because along the way I had the assistance of many fellow lovers of history.

  Many people aided me in the work on this book. The most helpful was historian Joseph Lee Boyle, the author of a five volume series of books on Valley Forge and an expert on the American Revolution. Lee served as the official historian at Valley Forge National Historical Park for many years. He read through the book and offered numerous helpful suggestions for its historical structure.

  Of considerable help in my research were Kathy Ludwig and Greg Johnson, librarians at the David Library of the American Revolution, at Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania. They spent an entire summer helping me locate the enlisted men whose stories comprised the bulk of this book and then were of invaluable assistance through a long winter and spring on other research.

  Librarians everywhere were of assistance. These included Marie Heagney at the Morris County Free Library, in Whippany, N.J., Kim Nusco at the Massachusetts Historical Society, in Boston, and the library staffs at New Jersey City University, Rutgers University, the New York Public Library, and the New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Connecticut Historical Societies.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to New Jersey City University, especially Jo Bruno and Liza Fiol-Matta, for giving me travel grants to complete the research on the book.

  I had generous help in finding photos to accompany the book. I owe an enormous debt to Peter Harrington, the curator of the S.K. Brown military history collection of paintings and prints at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He gave me access to the University’s vast collection and helped in the production of photos. I am grateful, too, to Scott Houting of the museum services office at Valley Forge National Historical Park, Andrea Ashby-Leraris at Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, Johnni Rowe at the Morristown National Historical Park, and Christine Jochem and Suzanne Gulick at the Morristown- Morris Township library.

  I would like to thank Hillel Black, the executive editor of Sourcebooks, who urged me to write The First American Army and did a superb job of editing the manuscript. Thanks also to Peter Lynch and Michelle Schoob, other editors at Sourcebooks, and Vicky Brown and Terri Rieck, the Sourcebooks publicists.

  Many thanks to my literary agents, Elizabeth Winick and Henry Williams, of McIntosh & Otis, both history lovers, who were so enthusiastic about this book. Finally, thanks to my wife Marjorie, who helped with the research.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  All of the quotes from Dr. Lewis Beebe, Rev. Ammi Robbins, Elijah Fisher, John Greenwood, Jeremiah Greenman, Ebenezer Wild, James McMichael, and Sylvanus Seely, the central figures in the book, were from their diaries. To cite each of the hundreds of quotes from t
he same sources would be futile, so the single sources for each man’s quotes are listed below. The citations from the more than one hundred other people in the work are listed separately.

  Central Figure Sources

  Beebe, Lewis. “Journal of a Physician on the Expedition Against Canada, 1776,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 59, October, 1935, pp. 320–361.

  Bray, Robert and Paul Bushnell. Eds. Diary of a Common Soldier in the American Revolution, 1775–1783: An Annotated Edition of the Military Journal of Jeremiah Greenman, Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978.

  Greenwood, John. A young patriot in the American Revolution, 1775–1783: The wartime service of John Greenwood: a record of events written during the year 1809 at such leisure moments as the arduous duties of a professional life permitted the dentist to his Excellency, George Washington. New York: DeVinne Press, 1922, reprint, Westvaco, 1981.

  Lapham, William. Ed., Elijah Fisher’s Journal While in the War for Independence and Continued Two Years After He Came to Maine, 1775–1784, Augusta, Me: Press of Badger and Manley, 1880.

  McMichael, James. “James McMichael’s Diary.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 16, 1892.

  Robbins, Rev. Ammi. Journal of the Rev. Ammi Robbins, a Chaplain in the American Army in the Northern Campaign of 1776, New Haven: B. L. Hamlen, 1850.

  Wild, Ebenezer. “The Journal of Ebenezer Wild,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1890, vol. 6, pp. 78–161.

  Archival Sources

  Avery, David. Papers. Princeton Theological Seminary.

  Force, Peter. Papers. David Library of the American Revolution.