by Ron Carter
Putnam raised grateful eyes.
“I repeat. Howe is not going to trap us again. I am abandoning New York City first, then Manhattan Island. The single exception might be Fort Washington. With a strong command there, we might hold it, and that would force the British to leave a considerable number of their troops there. The rest of our army is going to the mainland where we cannot be trapped, probably to White Plains.”
Scott brought his racing thoughts under control. “Did Congress agree?”
Washington spoke with measured words. “I understand Congress has said I should not remain in New York City longer than I think prudent, and in my view that time has arrived. I’m expecting their letter at any time. So, we abandon New York and move north. We might be able to hold Fort Washington, but whether we do or not, my intention is to move on over King’s Bridge to the mainland and get out in the open. I regret giving New York City to Howe, but in the balance, I prefer having an army rather than losing it trying to hold New York, when it is obvious it cannot be held.”
Putnam raised a hand. “Are you asking our opinion?”
The blue-gray eyes narrowed and the generals saw the lightning as Washington spoke. “No. Only your approval. If any of you disapprove, say so now.”
Ten officers approved at once. Three pondered a moment, then chose to stand by the earlier decision to try to hold New York. General Washington accepted it, and moved on.
“We have a major hospital in New York City, with over ten thousand sick and wounded. I will order their evacuation as soon as wagons can be arranged. I soon will be moving my headquarters to the Morris house, just south and east of Fort Washington in Harlem Heights. Get your commands ready to march, and wait for my written orders to move north. Does everyone understand?”
They did. Washington refolded his map and assembled his valise.
“Take charge of your troops. Dismissed.”
By four o’clock in the afternoon, wagons were rolling into New York City on every road from the north. By sunset they were parked in every field and lot in and around the city, horses fed and watered and hobbled, with the drivers gathered around the cooking fires for supper.
At five-thirty a.m. the regimental drummers pounded out reveille, and the Continental army in New York City began moving their ten thousand sick and wounded out of the hospital tents to the waiting wagons, and then began crating all medicines, all bandages and surgical and medical equipment. Last they began the task of striking the great tents as they emptied of the disabled, while the first of the loaded wagons moved north, winding like a great, long snake on the twists and turns in the dust and dirt of Bowery Lane and the Post Road.
Company Nine of the Boston regiment, assigned to load wagons at the military hospital directly behind the Jersey Battery on the Hudson, answered the twelve o’clock call for their midday meal and lined up for their ration of boiled fish and cabbage, with stale black bread and warm canteen water that tasted of pine pitch. Sweaty, dirty, they sat down in the nearest shade to get out of the sweltering noon heat of the September sun, to eat in silence, lost in their own thoughts.
Moving the sick and wounded out—getting ready for another retreat—run rather than fight—if all those British ships start with their cannon . . .
Billy sat cross-legged with his back against a wagon wheel in the thin line of shade cast by the wagon. He finished, wiped the pewter plate clean with his last piece of bread, and thrust it into his mouth. He drank from his canteen and leaned back against the wagon wheel and closed his eyes.
Eli sat on the ground at the end of the wagon, hunched over his plate, finishing. He drank long, set his plate in the sandy dirt, and shifted out of the direct sun. Ten minutes later a young lieutenant neither of them had ever seen shouted orders, and Company Nine came to its feet. They took their dirty plates and forks back to the cook fire and dropped them into a steaming kettle, and walked on to the huge pile of canvas that was one-half of a great hospital tent.
The company formed on all four sides, grasped the canvas, and backed up, stretching it flat. They folded the rounded top back over the rectangular wall, again straightened and stretched it, then began the work of folding it. They sweated with the bulky, awkward canvas for half an hour, continually folding, walking on it to push out the captive air, folding again, walking on it, until it was a rectangle, twelve feet long, six feet wide, five feet high. It weighed twelve hundred pounds.
Patiently they worked ropes under it, threw them over the top, jerked them tight, tied them off, and signaled the next wagon. It rolled three feet past the huge bundle and stopped, and ten men of Company Nine lined up on each side, Billy and Eli among them. With Billy calling the steps, they bent, grasped the bottom layer of canvas, stood, and slid the great package into the wagon bed. Others tied it down and then signaled the driver, and he gigged the horses forward to the next station to finish loading his wagon with blankets bound into bundles.
Company Nine turned to the other half of the tent and again grasped all sides to stretch it flat. Forty-five minutes later they stood, finished, and Billy waved to the next driver to come in, and froze. Eli turned to look, and he started and his breath came short as he saw the flat-topped, flat-brimmed straw hat with the chin string, and the heavy Percheron draft horses pulling a heavy, high-walled wagon, and he did not expect the relief that flooded through his being.
Mary Flint!
The two waited while she gigged the horses and the wagon rumbled forward, to stop three feet past the great, tied bundle of canvas, and then the two were there beside the driver’s box, staring up at her, grinning, and she was smiling down at them, eyes bright. A civilian sat beside her, musket between his knees, watching everything around.
Eli spoke first. “You got over the fever?”
“Eight days ago.”
He saw the slight hollow in her cheeks, the pinch around her mouth, and the lack of bloom in her face, and there was concern in his voice and his eyes. “You look pale, thin. You shouldn’t be working like this.”
She beamed. “I’m gaining my strength back. I feel fine. Right now work is the best thing for me.”
Billy broke in. “We worried.” He pointed at the bundled tent. “You know where this load is going?”
“North. Harlem Heights.”
“You’re driving it up there?”
“Yes.”
Billy glanced back at the men waiting to load, and Eli spoke. “We have to get you loaded and moving. We’ll try to find you up there.”
They started back to the waiting men as she called, “I was so frightened when they told me you were in the fighting at Long Island. I’ll see you up north.”
The crew heaved the bundle into the wagon, and Mary once again slapped the reins on the rumps of the big horses. They settled into the horse collars and the wagon moved on to the next station to finish out the load with blankets. Billy and Eli watched for a moment, and waved when Mary turned to look back. Eli watched her until she was out of sight, while Billy waved to the next wagon and gave hand signals, and the driver clucked his horses forward towards the stacked sections of tent frame.
Company Nine worked on, sweating, steadily loading the wagons and watching them wind their way north, each man silent in his own thoughts. At six o’clock they slowed and stopped at the call to supper, and took their places in line. The soup was thin and the biscuits hard, but they took them and floated the biscuits on the top of the greasy, steaming gruel and stirred them in and broke them.
They drank from their canteens and walked one hundred yards to the west, to the bank of the Hudson River, and they waded in to their knees and sat down, gasping at the bite of the cold, dark water. They ducked their heads under and threw water when they jerked them out, then did it again, and again. They rose and sloshed back to the store, water streaming from their clothes and hair and beards, digging at their eyes with the butts of their hands, smoothing their hair back.
They made their way to their own blankets, and sat
down, exhausted, feeling a sense of frustration, anger, knowing they were all but encircled by a vastly superior army with enough cannon to blast them to oblivion in one day, but not knowing by what plan their own officers intended saving them.
With the setting sun casting long shadows, the pounding rumble of distant cannon came rolling from the east, and every American on the southwest side of Manhattan Island stopped dead in his tracks and turned his head to peer east, eyes wide. The thunder came again, and then it continued in a steady roll, and the Americans swallowed dry. They looked at each other in question, fear creeping as the thudding blasts continued for twenty minutes, and then they slowed and stopped. All of the Americans stood stock-still with one thought driving everything else out of their minds. Have they begun the bombardment that will destroy everything we have and all of us along with it?
Billy ran a hand over his mouth and spoke quietly. “I don’t think they attacked, or they’d still be shooting. I wonder what it was.”
Eli shook his head. “Maybe a skirmish. Maybe more ships going up the East River. I don’t think it’s the big attack.”
Slowly the men moved back to their blankets and carefully inspected their muskets, then their cartridge boxes, and laid them where they could be reached instantly. Then they finished cleaning their dirty utensils and settled down for the evening, glancing eastward in the gathering twilight. At full dark they were silent, sitting near campfires, saying little, constantly turning to listen and peer into the darkness to the east.
At half past nine o’clock a mounted messenger reined in a lathered bay gelding and handed written orders to the officers. Ten minutes later they walked among the troops, stopping at each regiment in the flickering firelight to repeat the message.
“The British sent forty more gunboats and transports up the East River. We traded cannon fire with them. Get packed, ready to march north in the morning.”
At ten o’clock the regimental drummers tapped out tattoo and the campfires winked out. An eerie silence crept into the camp while every soldier settled onto his blanket with his musket by his side, ready, and every ear strained to hear the first sound of a night attack. They dreaded nothing more than the sudden blasting of British cannon in the middle of the night, blowing grapeshot and cannister into the sleeping camp, and the fifes and drums of thousands of blue-coated Hessians in a full charge, bayonets leveled.
Pickets began the battle of nerves, jerking at night sounds in the brush, hearing the creak of cannon wheels where there were no cannon, certain the calls of night birds were signals to attack.
At eleven o’clock Eli spoke quietly to Billy in the dark. “I’m glad we saw Mary—that she’s all right.”
Billy heard something in Eli’s voice. “It was good.” He waited for Eli to answer.
“Yes. It was.”
It was there again, a softness in the way he said the words. Billy clasped his hands behind his head. “Maybe we’ll see her again up north.”
“Maybe. I hope so.”
For a time they lay in silence, peering at the endless scatter of stars in the black heavens before Eli spoke again. “You said this war is for liberty—that it’s the Almighty’s work.”
“It is.”
“Was he there at Long Island?”
For a long time they lay in silence before Billy answered. “He was there.”
“We got beat bad. Nearly lost the whole thing.”
“I know.”
“Is that how he works?”
“Sometimes. We don’t see what he sees. What do you think?”
Minutes passed in silence, and Billy raised his head. “Eli?” He heard the intake of breath.
“He was there. I doubt he could stop us from our own foolishness at Jamaica Pass. But after, when we were at Brooklyn, I don’t think it was an accident the heavy rains stopped the British for two days, and then when the winds came from the northeast and changed so fast to the southwest and Glover moved our whole army across the river in one night—I never heard of anything like that. And when the rain stopped and our last boats were caught out in the open, and that fog came up the river until Glover got us all across . . .” A time passed before Eli concluded. “He was there.”
They fell into silence for a time while they worked with their separate thoughts, and Billy spoke again. “Anyone say anything yet about your sister?”
“Two or three. Nothing came of it.”
“Keep asking.”
“I will. Someday I’ll know.”
Neither man knew when they drifted into a restless sleep, and both awoke instantly at four a.m. when someone with a lantern nudged their feet and they took their rotation on the picket line. The drums sounded reveille at five-thirty a.m. and the camp came to life, tense, quiet, watching, listening. At eight-thirty a mounted messenger galloped into camp with written orders. At nine o’clock the last of the wounded and the medical supplies rolled north in loaded wagons, and the first of the regiments fell into marching formation.
Their loaded wagons rumbled east towards Bowery Lane, then left, due north, with the soldiers following, four abreast. Their eyes seldom left the low ground swells and draws and brush to their right, towards the East River, from where an attack would come, if it came at all. Where the road forked at Madison Square, they held to the right, angling east, then north, past Kip’s Bay, on north towards the plains of Harlem, then onto the high ground at Harlem Heights, and westward towards Fort Washington.
Steadily, slowly, the regiments under Putnam’s command took their place in the great column, wagons first, horse-drawn cannon next, troops following. Dust rose. By noon every man was sweated out, and all the horses showed sweat streaks on their hides and white lather where the bridle leather and saddles worked. The Boston regiment remained behind with the dwindling command of General Israel Putnam to cover the rear of the retreat.
By seven o’clock, with the sun setting, they had evacuated all but four of the regiments, when a messenger rode in on a lathered horse with a folded paper for General Putnam. At seven-thirty Putnam’s adjutant general read the message to the remaining troops.
“ ‘Approximately six-thirty this evening five more British transports sailed up the East River. They appear bound to join the Rose, Phoenix, Roebuck, Orpheus, and Carysfort anchored at the mouth of Bushwick Creek, just below Newton Creek. They did not engage in cannon fire with our batteries. It appears the British are preparing for a troop movement from Montressor’s Island. Continue the evacuation with all due deliberation. Do not destroy New York by fire. Repeat. Do not destroy New York by fire.’ ”
By midnight there remained but two regiments to evacuate, and Putnam ordered a halt to their work. Should his command have to fight, they would have to be rested. The Americans went to their blankets hungry, dirty, in clothes damp with sweat, and were asleep the moment their heads were down. At five-thirty a.m. the drummers pounded out reveille, and at six o’clock the last of the remaining troops were ready to evacuate. General Putnam called their officers together. His round, plain, bulldog face was set, his words blunt.
“I will stay here with the last two regiments while the rest of you evacuate. If the British attack, it will come from the East River. So do not take the road east to Bowery Lane. Take the road west of here, up towards Greenwich and continue north. Stay against the Hudson River. Pick up the Bloomingdale Road and continue as far as you can, then go on across the plains of Harlem to the Post Road. It will take you to Harlem Heights and Fort Washington.”
He paused until he saw understanding in the eyes of all the officers.
“When you are all evacuated, I’ll wait three hours, then follow with the last two regiments. If they come at us from the rear, you keep moving. I’ll fall back and stop them. Any questions?”
At seven-thirty Putnam’s two remaining regiments watched the dust settle from the last ranks of those already gone, and they stood in silence, tense, nervous, counting the minutes for the three-hour wait to pass, listening for
the cannon fire that was certain to come. Among those remaining was the Boston regiment.
At ten a.m., across the island, the Americans standing behind the breastworks and in the trenches at Kip’s Bay on the east shores of Manhattan Island suddenly stiffened and their eyes opened wide as they watched five great British gunboats emerge from Newton’s Creek, directly across the river on Long Island. The Union Jack fluttered from their mainmasts, and their sails were full, tight in the morning breeze. The ships quartered south, then turned back and ran with the wind to stop in a line that bottled up Kip’s Bay, in easy musket range. They were so close the Americans could see the faces of the sailors and read the names on the prows of the ships.
Behind the gunboats, at the mouth of Newton’s Creek, a troop transport filled with blue-coated Hessians appeared, moved slightly south, and stopped. The Americans gaped as the next one appeared, filled with British redcoats, and for long minutes they watched as the boats kept coming, to fill the mouth of Newton’s Creek, and spill out along the Long Island shore. When they stopped coming, a white-faced American soldier counted eighty-four of them filled with blue and red, and muttered, “They look like a clover field in bloom.”
At ten-twenty the gun ports on the men-of-war opened, and the black snouts of the dreaded heavy cannon rolled forward into the bright sunlight at near point-blank range. The Americans could see the smoke from the linstocks.
At ten-thirty, the Americans heard the shouted command from the gunnery officers on all five gunboats.
“Fire!”
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Notes
Much of the material in this chapter is based on information found in Johnston, The Campaign of 1776, part 1, pp. 227–33 (see also Higginbotham The War of American Independence, pp. 157–61; Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 268–69, 277).