Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

by Joseph J. Ellis

  Then Henry Clinton came up with a bold, if stunningly simple, solution. He had also been studying the maps. Far to the east, about seven miles from the center of the American defenses, was a little-used road called Jamaica Pass. Local loyalists reported that the Americans regarded it as too far away to justify anything more than a token force of defenders. But it was, Clinton claimed, the key to the battle for Long Island, because it would allow Howe to outflank Greene’s layered entrenchments.

  Clinton proposed a flanking maneuver up Jamaica Pass that would place British troops behind the American lines on Gowanus Heights, cutting off their retreat to the forts on Brooklyn Heights. He also proposed that British and Hessian units engage the right and center of the American defensive front in order to compel their attention until they found themselves surrounded. It was a brilliant plan, the obvious answer to Howe’s tactical dilemma, but it was burdened by the awkward liability of coming from the obnoxious Clinton.15

  Clinton later acknowledged that he was his own worst enemy during tactical debates with Howe. “My zeal may perhaps on these occasions,” he recalled, “have carried me so far as to at times be thought troublesome.” In this case, however, Clinton had the good sense to delegate the presentation of his plan to a subordinate. On August 26, Howe embraced it, invoking the commander’s prerogative to claim it as his own.16

  A group of loyalists then volunteered to guide British troops up Jamaica Pass in a night march. It was telling that no Long Island residents exposed the British plan to anyone in the Continental Army. This was perhaps the one place in America that was so predominantly loyalist in sentiment that the British enjoyed a significant advantage in intelligence, a rare occasion that Howe exploited fully.

  AT NIGHTFALL ON August 26, Clinton led the vanguard of 10,000 British and Hessian troops on a looping seven-mile march around the left flank of the American defenses, Howe and Cornwallis trailing with the main body. How Sullivan could have neglected to defend Jamaica Pass invited criticism at the time and speculation ever since. He was aware that the pass existed, since he dispatched five horsemen to guard it, all of whom were quickly and easily captured. How a British force so large, hacking and sawing its way through underbrush, could move undetected has also seemed strange. In fact, two American officers, Samuel Miles and David Brodhead, later testified that they did spot the British column. “I was convinced … that General Howe would fall into the Jamaica road,” Miles recalled, “and I hoped there were troops there to watch them.” But there were not. Sullivan subsequently attempted to excuse his blunder by claiming, rather lamely, “I had no foot [i.e., soldiers] for the purpose.”17

  Meanwhile, up on Gowanus Heights, Clinton’s plan was working perfectly. A formidable British force of 5,000 infantry and 2,000 marines commanded by General James Grant engaged Stirling’s brigade on the right flank. Sullivan apprised Putnam that the main British attack had begun, and Putnam in turn urged Washington to cross the river and join him on Brooklyn Heights to oversee the battle. In truth, Grant’s attack was only a diversion, designed to engage the American troops while the force under Clinton and Howe came around from the rear.18

  Grant nevertheless used the occasion to bombard Stirling’s men from a distance for two hours. “Both the balls and shells flew very fast,” one soldier reported, “now and then taking off a head.” Stirling had ordered his men to stand in formation rather than take cover, a way of exhibiting military discipline and embracing the code of honor still alive and well in the eighteenth century. “Our men stood it amazingly well,” one soldier proudly declared, “not even one showed a disposition to shrink.” A Hessian force under General Leopold von Heister, another 4,000 troops, gathered to the right of Grant’s men as together they braced themselves to become the anvil to the Clinton-Howe hammer, the Continental Army in between.19

  The hammer came down at nine o’clock on the morning of August 27, when 10,000 British soldiers emerged behind the American lines, producing panic among new recruits, who were simultaneously surrounded and outnumbered. In most units, discipline dissolved immediately as soldiers attempted to flee to the forts on Brooklyn Heights. Joseph Plumb Martin, then only fifteen years old, remembered that a young American lieutenant broke down, sobbing uncontrollably, begging forgiveness from his men as they ran past him to the rear. He also remembered officers removing the cockades from their hats so they could not be recognized as officers if captured. He witnessed a massacre at Gowanus Creek as retreating American soldiers either drowned or were gunned down by British infantry from the bank, the dead bodies floating over the entire surface of the water.20

  In certain pockets of action, captured American troops were summarily executed. “The Hessians and our brave Highlanders gave no quarter,” recalled one British officer. “And it was a fine sight to see with what alacrity they dispatched the rebels with their bayonets, after we had surrounded them so they could not resist.” Other witnesses described Hessians pinning American prisoners to trees with their bayonets. Such atrocities were the exception rather than the rule, but they later became standard features in American newspaper accounts of the battle that depicted the Hessians as barbaric mercenaries.21

  While the dominant response of the American troops was fear and flight, in some sectors of the battlefield they fought with a ferocity that even the British acknowledged as impressive. This was especially true on the right flank, where Stirling commanded veteran regiments from Maryland and Delaware. Stirling himself was an unlikely combat leader, described by his biographer as “an overweight, rheumatic, vain, pompous, gluttonous inebriate.” But in this intense time of testing, he was magnificent, several observers agreeing that he “fought like a wolf.” In order to buy time for his other troops to escape, Stirling led his Marylanders on seven suicidal attacks against British regulars—400 against 2,000—suffering a 90 percent casualty rate in the process of inflicting heavy losses on the British. Observing the action from Brooklyn Heights through his spyglass, Washington was heard to remark, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose.”22

  It was all over before noon. Both armies reported inflated casualty rates for the other side, Howe rather preposterously claiming more killed, wounded, or captured Americans than were engaged in the fighting on Gowanus Heights. The best estimate is that both sides suffered between 300 and 400 dead and wounded, the Americans more dead than wounded because of the Hessian massacres. But the best measure of the British victory was the number of Americans captured, nearly 1,000, most of whom were fated to die miserable deaths from disease and malnutrition on British prison ships in New York harbor supervised by Betsy Loring’s husband. Two American generals, Stirling and Sullivan, were among the prisoners.23

  Ironically, because so many inexperienced American troops fled so precipitously, simply ignoring the efforts of their officers to stand and fight, about 2,000 made it back to the forts to fight another day. Veteran British troops would have obeyed their officers and ended up casualties or prisoners.

  Beyond the sheer calculus of casualties and captured, however, the will of the Continental Army had been broken and any semblance of military discipline destroyed. The psychological momentum on the battlefield had swung entirely in the British direction, so much so that British and Hessian troops had to be restrained from pursuing the fleeing Continentals into the forts on Brooklyn Heights.

  Several witnesses, including Howe himself, believed that the forts and the entire American army on Long Island would have been taken if the British attack had continued. “Had they been permitted to go on,” he later acknowledged, “it is my opinion that they would have carried the redoubts.” Looking down from Brooklyn Heights, Putnam observed that “General Howe is either our friend or no general.” In Putnam’s judgment, Howe “had our whole army in his power.… Had he instantly followed up his victory the consequences to the cause of liberty must have been dreadful.” And Clinton, true to form, believed that Howe had missed the chance to end the war in a single stroke. “Com
plete success would most likely have been the consequence of an immediate attack,” he recorded in his memoirs, “for there is no saying to what extent the effect resulting from the entire loss of the army might have been … or where it would have stopped.” Clinton held to his conviction that the destruction of the Continental Army would have generated traumatic shock waves that in turn would have destroyed the will of the American people to continue the war.24

  William Howe thought differently, though his thought process at this stage had become as layered as the American defenses on Long Island, and any attempt to do it justice requires the kind of analytical skills customarily associated with psychoanalysis.

  As we know, Howe had once entertained serious hopes of negotiating a peaceful end to the rebellion, which he tended to regard as an unfortunate misunderstanding that had somehow escalated to the current bloodletting because of radical leaders in Philadelphia and ill-informed officials in London and Whitehall. His fondest dream, shared by his brother, was to go home not as a conquering hero but as a statesman who had successfully brokered a peaceful reconciliation with his former American brethren.

  This dream was dashed in July, when his brother’s entreaties were dismissed as wholly inadequate by both Washington and the Continental Congress. Having crossed the line toward independence just before the Howes arrived, the rebels were not disposed to retrace their steps. By August, then, Howe had become convinced that only a decisive military defeat could bring the Americans to their senses by exposing the utter futility of their fight against a vastly superior British army and navy. And he was fully prepared to deliver that defeat on Long Island, which is what by late August he was in the process of doing.25

  Nevertheless, the dashed dream of a negotiated settlement never died. Howe had only put it aside to administer a proper thrashing to Washington’s amateur army, after which the rebels would be more disposed to recognize the hopelessness of their cause. And for this reason, he conducted the war on the assumption that a careful and calibrated demonstration of British military supremacy was sufficient for the task at hand. Unlike Clinton, who believed that the war must be won quickly with a massive blow that destroyed the Continental Army so that it did not evolve into a protracted conflict of dubious conclusion, Howe thought British victory was inevitable, which in turn meant that a more limited strategy was wholly adequate. Unlike the British campaigns against the Irish and the Scots, which were savage, genocidal conflicts that left residues of resentment for centuries, Howe wanted his American campaign to be a more measured affair, permitting a postwar resumption of the prewar mutual affection that he remembered so well.26

  Howe’s preference for a strategy of limited war had a British component as well. He was obsessed with keeping his own casualties low, which was the consideration he subsequently cited in defense of his decision to halt the attack on Brooklyn Heights. “I would not risk the loss,” he explained, “that might have been sustained in the assault.” Bunker Hill still haunted him, to be sure, but so did a keen sense that he was managing resources that were expensive, finite, and not easily replaced.27

  The American and British sides of the Howe equation, then, were perfectly balanced. On both sides, he preferred to keep damage to a minimum. In the case of those forts on Brooklyn Heights, that meant conducting a siege while the British navy bombarded them from offshore. In a matter of days, Washington would have no choice but to surrender, a delay of small consequence when compared to the losses on both sides that would be entailed with an immediate frontal attack. After all, if you were sure of the outcome, there was no need to hurry, a posture that also suited Howe’s laid-back style.

  Washington was too beleaguered to affect anything like a style. For two days, he wore himself out riding up and down the line on Brooklyn Heights, exhorting the dispirited troops. Exhausted, still dazed by the ruinous defeat, the man who would one day earn a well-deserved reputation for decisiveness did not know what to do. And as he stared into the abyss, a heavy rain filled the trenches so that sentries were standing waist-deep in water, many of their muskets useless because their powder was wet. Meanwhile, Howe’s engineers were digging their own trenches, angling up toward the forts in zigzag formations that afforded cover in a classic siege tactic. It was now clear that Washington’s decision to order another 1,200 troops over from Manhattan, enlarging the garrison on Brooklyn Heights to 9,500, had been a mistake, since it only put more American troops in the British trap. Given the forces arrayed against him, Washington had only three options: surrender, face annihilation, or attempt an escape across the East River to Manhattan.28

  Joseph Reed had been pressing Washington to make the only plausible choice, but for several reasons he could not bring himself to order a retreat. He had, after all, been lecturing his men to stand fast against the British attack for months. How could he reverse himself now without appearing foolish?29 More elementally, Washington was an honor-driven man in the eighteenth-century mode. He understood completely why Stirling had ordered his men to stand at attention while British artillery rounds and grapeshot (i.e., chain links and iron pellets) were lopping off heads and disemboweling his troops. Though it sounds irrational to our modern mentality, Washington believed that his personal honor, meaning the core of his character as an officer and a gentlemen, obliged him to suffer death rather than the dishonor of retreat. His apparent paralysis was the result of balancing two imperatives: his reputation against the survival of the Continental Army.30

  The resolution of his dilemma came on August 29 in the form of General Thomas Mifflin, who had done a reconnaissance of the American perimeter and reported that troop morale was low, with several units actually talking about surrendering to the British. Mifflin was a wealthy Philadelphia merchant of Quaker background who had rejected his pacifist principles to become Pennsylvania’s preeminent soldier. Washington agreed to call a council of war that afternoon if Mifflin himself proposed the retreat, which preserved Washington’s honor because the request would come from someone else. Mifflin concurred, but with one provision, namely that he command the last troops to evacuate and therefore run the greatest risk of being killed or captured, a gesture that also preserved his own sense of honor.31

  The council of war met at Four Chimneys, the baronial summer home of Philip Livingston, which offered a panoramic view of the escape route the Continental Army would take, near the modern-day Brooklyn Bridge. The conclusion was unanimous, thereby forcing Washington to embrace a course chosen by his generals rather than himself, allowing him to preserve the pretense that he preferred to go down fighting. All that remained was to plan and carry out the evacuation of nearly 10,000 men without alerting the British Army of their departure over a body of water that was controlled by the British navy. One young Connecticut officer, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, put the matter succinctly: “To move so large a body, across a river full a mile wide, with a rapid current, in face of a victorious well disciplined army nearly three times as numerous as his own and a fleet capable of stopping the navigation, so that not one boat could have passed over, seemed to present most formidable obstacles.”32

  At least the wind was blowing the Americans’ way. A northeastern storm restricted the movement of British warships up the East River, though it also posed navigation problems for American boats trying to get across. Although he had no other choice, Washington now needed to perform one of the most brilliant tactical withdrawals in the annals of military history.

  DECEPTION WAS THE essential ingredient in the evacuation plan. Washington issued a General Order to assemble all ships and flat-bottomed boats on Manhattan and Long Island, purportedly to ferry additional troops over from New Jersey. This allowed Colonel John Glover and his Massachusetts regiment of Marblehead fishermen and seamen to gather the fleet to evacuate Long Island under the pretense of reinforcing it. The very sight of Glover and his colorfully attired troops, all moving with the disciplined precision acquired from years of experience aboard ships at sea, made an immediat
e impression: “These were the lads,” noted one young officer from Pennsylvania, “that might do something.” What they were in fact about to do was show this army of amateur soldiers how a regiment of seasoned seamen staged a rescue operation at night.33

  Only a few of the officers and none of the enlisted men knew that an evacuation was under way. In some units, when ordered to go “under arms with packs,” the troops assumed they were about to attack the British trenches and proceeded to make out their wills in anticipation of certain death. Joseph Plumb Martin remembered the sudden code of silence: “We were strictly enjoined not to speak, or even cough. All orders were given from officer to officer, and communicated to men in whispers.” Tench Tilghman, a young lieutenant soon to become one of Washington’s most trusted aides, reported that whole regiments moved to the rear without knowing their destination: “The thing was conducted with so much secrecy that neither subalterns nor privates knew that the whole army was to cross back again to New York.”34

  The tactical retreat of an entire army currently engaged with a larger enemy force is so difficult to orchestrate because units have to be removed piecemeal, in staggered fashion, leaving a sufficient complement of troops to hold the perimeter. Timing, therefore, has to be precise, and the remaining troops need to spread out to replace those just evacuated. A nearly fatal blunder occurred on Brooklyn Heights midway through the evacuation, when Mifflin received an order to withdraw all his troops. The order was a mistake, since Mifflin’s men were supposed to leave last and their withdrawal would leave the American front fully exposed. Mifflin questioned the order but reluctantly obeyed it.