Patriots

by A. J. Langguth

  Only one man could save them, and it was not the commander in chief. From a hilltop, William Howe looked out over the day’s success and called on his grenadiers to halt. “Enough has been done for one day,” he said. His troops hardly agreed. Their blood was running hot from the hours of fighting, and they wanted to charge on and crush the enemy. Howe had to issue his order repeatedly before he could convince them to stop in midvictory.

  —

  General Washington slept fitfully that night. He had assumed at first that Howe was only pausing to regroup and would finish the battle in the late afternoon. But as the hours stretched on toward night, Washington’s men became less sure that this was America’s last day of independence. His marksmen kept a steady barrage pouring down on the British camp, and by midnight it seemed clear that this time there was no deception. Howe’s army had taken to its tents.

  There were new fears of a British attack at dawn, and Washington was back at his post by 4 A.M. He had decided that he could draw only limited reserves from New York. Though Howe had committed a large part of his army to Long Island, he might still be planning an attack against the town. Washington felt he must keep men there to repel it. The morning passed. Howe remained silent.

  A piercing rain began on the Heights, and Washington’s men, who had no tents, stood in their muddy trenches waist deep in water. They couldn’t cook the pickled pork that was their only food. Worse, the rain was soaking their powder and clogging their muskets. If Howe sent his Hessians to advance now, the Americans would have no protection against their bayonets.

  Washington couldn’t depend forever on Howe’s inertia. Throughout the day he was developing a plan, which he kept secret even from his aides-de-camp. When he found a moment to send a report to the Congress in Philadelphia, he didn’t mention his hope for recovering from an unquestioned defeat. Washington told the delegates that his army was almost broken. After the two nights and a day since the battle had ended, he still could not estimate American casualties, and both General Sullivan and Lord Stirling were missing.

  Later that afternoon, it was still raining when Washington called his seven generals to a council of war at the country house of Philip Livingston, one of New York’s delegates to the Congress. Everyone understood how perilous their situation was. Washington’s strategy had left them with fewer than ten thousand weary and disheartened men boxed into a narrow space about two miles square. Ahead were twice that number of British and German soldiers ready to finish off the job, and to the rear was the East River, a barrier one mile wide. Reports had arrived that Lord Stirling had surrendered to General von Heister and that General Sullivan had been caught in a cornfield and taken to a ship of Admiral Howe’s fleet. The longer Washington and his staff delayed, the nearer they came to the same fate.

  —

  William Howe saw conditions the same way. The Americans were doomed. He would now bring up his cannon, his scaling ladders and the other tools his artillery would use to launch a methodical siege. His careful approach had saved fifteen hundred British lives. That was reason enough to forgo a premature rushing of an entrenched position. His brother’s fleet was nearby to guarantee that Washington and his men would stay bottled up.

  Throughout two rainy days, the British repaired the damage from the fighting on August 27. Then, on the morning of the thirtieth, Howe sent out a patrol. American sniping had continued throughout the night, and Howe wanted to know why there was now a lull in the fire.

  The British scouts came back with an incredible answer. During the night, George Washington had disappeared with all of the American Army.

  New York patriots pulling down the statue of George III

  PRIVATE COLLECTION

  New York

  1776

  IT WAS little consolation for George Washington, but, in its way, his retreat had been as skilled as the British attack. From the time his general staff approved the evacuation, he had moved with absolute secrecy. His troops were told only that the wounded men would be sent back across the river to Manhattan that night. Washington ordered every available vessel brought to the shore behind him, and swarms of barges, sailboats and punts collected there. Many of the sailors were fishermen from Marblehead, Massachusetts. By 10 P.M., Washington was ready to begin. Instead of facing the night attack they had been dreading, the American soldiers were called from their positions in the trenches. Their lines were so tightly organized that no gaps could be spotted by the British sentries. Campfires were kept burning while regiment after regiment left their stations and were replaced by the men behind them. Washington had gone ahead to the river and was supervising the loading of the troops.

  For three nights the men had barely slept, and they were past fatigue. The embarkation had begun smoothly, but when the men realized that they were being shipped out they were soon jostling and fighting for places in the first boats. Washington did his best to keep order, but frightened men at the back were trying to trample over the front ranks.

  The noise and confusion awakened a woman who lived near the ferry point. She had no reason to support the rebels. Neighbors had reported her for still drinking English tea, and American soldiers had fired on her house. Now she sent a black servant to alert the British to the evacuation. The man worked his way through the lines until he came upon a German officer, but the German spoke no English and arrested the servant.

  Even though soldiers were panicking along the shore, the rotation of troops through the lines facing the British had gone as ordered. Then one of Washington’s aides made a near-fatal mistake. At 2 A.M. Washington was watching impatiently over the loadings when he was surprised to see Colonel Israel Hand riding toward the ferry. He had instructed Hand and his Pennsylvania troops to hold the American defenses to the very end.

  Washington called to him through the darkness. “Isn’t that Colonel Hand? You of all officers! I thought you would never abandon your post!”

  Hand assured him that he had left only under orders from his immediate commander, General Thomas Mifflin.

  “Impossible!” Washington said. Hand was trying to convince him when General Mifflin rode up and asked what was the matter.

  Washington rounded on him. “Good God, General Mifflin! I’m afraid you have ruined us by so unseasonably withdrawing the troops from the lines.”

  Mifflin had slept no more than George Washington. He said angrily, “I did it by your order.”

  Washington said it couldn’t be true.

  “By God, I did!” Mifflin insisted. “Did Scammell act as aide-de-camp for the day or did he not?”

  Washington acknowledged that Alexander Scammell had held that post.

  “Then,” said Mifflin, “I had orders through him.”

  Washington immediately became conciliatory. It had been a dreadful mistake, he said, but, with all of the confusion on the riverbank, if the British discovered that the front lines had been abandoned they could annihilate them. The common danger cooled tempers on both sides, and Colonel Hand led his men back to the trenches. They were reluctant, but they moved quickly and quietly, and the British didn’t profit from the blunder.

  As the night was ending, the last regiments who were left behind in the American lines became increasingly nervous. Then, just as dawn might have exposed their weakness, heavy billows of fog rose off the water and hid them in mist. The men blessed a cover so thick they couldn’t see six yards in front of them. The fog persisted as they got their orders to head for the ferry. The last soldiers waiting to cross had one final scare: the boats had not returned from an earlier trip, and men huddled in the fog along the shore, fretting until they could be rowed to safety. General Washington waited with them and crossed with his gray charger in one of the last boats. He had left behind only a few old cannon sunk deep in mud.

  —

  When Washington reviewed the lessons of Long Island, he didn’t dwell on the way he had overlooked the Jamaica road. And on the British side, General Howe’s account of the triumphant
battle filled three and a half columns in the London newspapers, while Washington’s escape rated barely half a paragraph. Since Lord North’s Ministry did not learn immediately about Howe’s miscalculations and delay, George III rewarded Howe with a knighthood.

  Washington knew he couldn’t expect honorary degrees or gold medals this time. In his defense, he reminded one New York legislator that he had gone without sleep for forty-eight hours. Privately, he complained about the drawbacks in trying to fight a war with a militia rather than a standing army. Militia recruits had signed up for such short service that Washington’s troops were usually preparing to go home before they had been properly trained. He had lost fifteen hundred men in combat on Long Island, and others were leaving the cause every day because they had crops to harvest or because they had been stricken with an illness their skeptical comrades called “cannon fever.” The Connecticut militia dropped abruptly from eight thousand men to two thousand. Disembarking from the boats, Washington’s survivors from Brooklyn limped into the town of New York sick, emaciated and, according to the Tories near their camp, smelling like pigs.

  The disaster had also revealed the shortcomings of America’s commander in chief. One of Lord Stirling’s colonels wrote to a member of the Congress that he revered Washington, that the troops would always remember his patience and fortitude, but Washington had brought much of the calamity on himself. The colonel ended by reporting that officers and men were murmuring, “Would to Heaven General Lee were here!

  Washington hoped to recuperate from his losses by sending spies to find out where Sir William Howe would strike next. He was willing to spend lavishly for information, but money wasn’t the motive for one of his first volunteers. Nathan Hale of Connecticut was twenty-one, a schoolteacher educated at Yale who had become a captain in a ranger company. Hale was also a poet, an expert at checkers and a football player with a powerful kick. So far he had not seen action, and although the penalty for spying was death, he wanted to serve his country. Posing as a schoolmaster in his civilian clothes, Hale made his way to Long Island and slipped behind the British defenses.

  —

  Soon after the American defeat, the Congress was distracted from General Washington’s shortcomings by a dilemma that faced the delegates unexpectedly. Lord Stirling and General Sullivan had been passing the time more comfortably in captivity aboard Admiral Howe’s flagship, the Eagle, than they would have done at Washington’s side. The admiral, who was also a British lord, had decided that John Sullivan was probably less obdurate than his commander in chief. He had convinced Sullivan that they could end the war now and that the Parliament would ratify any treaty Howe made. The admiral had denounced the war as senseless and said that Britain must surrender all rights to tax the colonies. That at least was what Sullivan had thought the admiral was saying. After some hesitation, Sullivan had agreed to carry Howe’s peace overtures to the Congress. Carrying a pass to get him through the British lines, Sullivan had reached New York on his way to Philadelphia hours before Washington completed his evacuation from Brooklyn.

  George Washington was convinced that Howe’s proposals would come to nothing. But after such a humbling defeat he was in no position to cancel Sullivan’s mission. Three days later in Philadelphia, John Sullivan told the Congress about Lord Howe’s generous terms. Sullivan’s behavior in Canada had soured many delegates on him, and he had barely begun to speak when John Adams whispered to Benjamin Rush, “I wish that the first ball fired on Long Island had gone through his head.”

  Like Washington, John Adams distrusted Howe’s overtures. Sullivan explained that the admiral proposed a meeting but could not deal with the Congress as an official body. He would be pleased to receive several members as private gentlemen for an hour or two of conversation. Adams spoke vigorously against any agreement with Howe and made no attempt to spare Sullivan’s feelings. “A decoy duck,” Adams called him, “whom Lord Howe has sent among us to seduce us into a renunciation of our independence.”

  But some delegates believed that spurning Howe’s offer might suggest to people, at home and abroad, who were uncommitted to American independence that the British legitimately sought peace and that the Americans were protracting the war. After days of debate, the members decided to send an official delegation to New York, which Howe would probably refuse to receive. And if he did see the delegates, Howe would have no chance of working his wiles on them. Two of the three chosen to go were John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina was the third. The Congress also accepted Howe’s offer to exchange Sullivan and Lord Stirling for two British prisoners.

  When the delegates reached the town of Brunswick, New Jersey, all the inns were filled, and Adams and Franklin had to share a bed. Their tiny room had one small window. Adams closed it. He considered his health precarious and was wary of chills from the night air.

  “Oh!” Franklin called to him. “Don’t shut the window. We shall be suffocated.”

  Adams explained that he was afraid of catching cold.

  Franklin assured him that with the window closed the air in their chamber would soon be worse than it was outside. “Come! Open the window and come to bed, and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my theory of colds.”

  Franklin was nearly thirty years older and one of the world’s most distinguished men. Adams decided to risk a chill and hear the theory. He threw open the window and bounded back to bed.

  Franklin began a detailed explanation. By respiration and perspiration, the human body destroyed a gallon of air every minute. Two persons in this room would consume all of its air within an hour or two. Then they would begin breathing in the material thrown off by the lungs and the skin, and that was the true cause of colds. Adams thought that Dr. Franklin sounded more than half asleep as he spoke, and Adams himself dropped off before the explanation was over.

  There had been no chance that Admiral Howe would refuse to see the Americans. Protocol would not deter him if he had a chance to persuade the Congress to give up its war. He agreed to meet the delegates on Staten Island at a house across from Perth Amboy and sent a barge to fetch them. He greeted the Americans with elaborate thanks for the honor they did him in coming and led them past ranks of grenadiers to the house, where they found, amid the military squalor, one large and handsome room spread with moss and green sprigs for a carpet. John Adams approved the effect—romantically elegant, he thought—and the fine dinner of cold ham, tongue and mutton, accompanied by a good claret.

  Adams was somewhat relieved not to be overwhelmed by this titled Englishman. He calculated that Lord Howe was about fifty and certainly well-bred, but Adams had met many Americans around Boston who were more clever and articulate. Early on, Adams scored off the admiral when Howe said he was meeting with them not as members of Congress but only as gentlemen of great ability and influence. Adams replied that his lordship might consider him any way he pleased, except as a British subject.

  Howe turned to the others with a smile and said, “Mr. Adams is a decided character.”

  After a few more exchanges, it was clear that Adams had been right in his suspicions. Richard Howe had no particular powers. Any peace depended on the colonies once again pledging their full allegiance to the throne. As for John Sullivan’s assurances that Parliament would give up its right of taxation—why, said Howe, Sullivan had evidently misheard him.

  At one point, Lord Howe insinuated a threat into his argument. Ravaging and destroying America, he told his guests, would give him great pain.

  Benjamin Franklin promptly replied that the Americans must take proper—and, he hoped, effective—care to spare his lordship’s feelings.

  The night with Howe ended as fruitlessly as John Adams might have wished, and the war remained George Washington’s to lose or win.

  —

  Henry Clinton had another bold plan and, after his masterful strategy on Long Island, might have expected William Howe to embrace it. Clinton wanted the Br
itish to surround Washington again, this time on Manhattan. He wasn’t satisfied with simply making the American Army run; he wanted to exterminate it. But Howe continued to have different ideas. For two weeks after the Americans crossed the river, he did nothing. Once more, Washington was waiting from night to night for an attack that didn’t come. Israel Putnam summed up the American response to Howe’s inaction: “General Howe is either our friend or no general.”

  Washington realized by now that he could not possibly hold New York. Nathanael Greene, recovering from malaria, had been reading military history and suggested a precedent that might be useful for the Americans. When France under Francis I had been invaded by the Germans, Francis had laid waste to vast territories, starving his enemies and defeating them without a battle. Why not burn New York? Tories owned two thirds of the town, and their hostility to the cause of freedom should cost them their property. The Congress had advised against that tactic, but John Hancock had written lately from Philadelphia that the army should not remain in New York a moment longer than the commander deemed safe. Washington’s generals were divided on whether the army should stay or go, but Washington reminded himself that America’s strategy had to be defensive. He must never let himself be drawn into a battle he could avoid. That was the advice of history, of his own experience, of friendly strategists visiting from Europe. The time had come to leave New York. Many citizens would welcome the British, and the town would provide excellent winter quarters for William Howe’s army, but that couldn’t be helped.

  And yet Washington’s pride was telling him not to give up New York without another fight. Once again, he split his already weakened and badly trained forces. Putnam’s five thousand men were ordered to stay in the lower three miles of Manhattan that made up the town of New York. Another nine thousand soldiers would hold a section of Harlem Heights to the north. Their northern flank would reach to a new set of trenches and bulwarks called Fort Washington. Nathanael Greene would hold the territory in between with somewhat less than six thousand men, most of them militia. Washington’s plan stretched the American Army over sixteen miles in a thin line that was particularly vulnerable at its center.