by Ron Carter
Rob’t Magaw, Colonel Commanding
Paterson’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he clacked it shut. “This is the reply you wish me to deliver?”
“It is.”
Paterson snapped to attention and saluted. “Thank you, sir.” He turned stiffly and marched out the door, with Blaisdell following to escort him through the gate and out to safe return to his own lines.
The sun had set when Magaw called his officers together in the small, austere command headquarters of Fort Washington. They came with their capes drawn about them, vapor trailing behind their heads, to sit on plain pinewood chairs in yellow lamplight.
“The British are going to mount a sustained attack in the morning. My scouts tell me there are more than two thousand Hessians north at King’s Bridge, under Colonel Rall and General Knyphausen, and there are two thousand British south on Harlem Plains under General Percy. I don’t know from which direction the attack will come, so this is how we are going to prepare.”
He leaned forward, facing each officer as he spoke their names.
“Colonel Rawlings, you take the north quadrant where the Hessians will be coming. Colonel Baxter, you prepare to command the east wall. Colonel Cadwalader, you prepare to meet the British to the south. It’s clear they can’t scale the cliffs on the west, so we don’t have to prepare a defense there unless they send gunboats up the Hudson to bombard us. If that happens, our cannon will answer. Any questions?”
There were none. The officers rose, each lost in his own calculations and plans to mount the defenses that had fallen on him, and they walked out into the sharp air, across the dark compound to their separate quarters to begin writing the orders that would be delivered in the dark to the companies that would defend Fort Washington.
Campfires burned into the night as the men moved munitions and food and water to their battle stations while others huddled around the flames, blankets drawn over their heads as they warmed fingers and toes numbed by the biting cold. Towards morning, frost crystals came to reflect a million points of light and turn the world white.
With mist rising from the river in the gray before dawn, anxious pickets on the west wall pointed and then shouted, “Gunboat on the Hudson!”
Across the river, on the New Jersey side, below Fort Lee, General Washington led Generals Putnam, Greene, and Mercer into a longboat and settled down for the trip across the river to make their final inspection of the fortifications before the battle they knew was coming. They worked through the thin crust of shore ice out into the current, when suddenly Washington sat straight up and pointed. Dead ahead in the mist was the British gunboat, the Union Jack on the mainmast, anchored one hundred yards from the hill leading up to Fort Washington.
“A British gunboat! Are we too late? Has it begun?”
Greene extended his telescope. “She’s the Pearl. If she’s come to—”
Greene got no further. Twenty-two cannon on the Pearl blasted and the white smoke billowed. Half a second later the cannonballs punched into the west wall of Fort Washington and exploded. Dirt and shards of timber flew eighty feet into the air. With the echo still rolling across the Hudson, the American cannon on the wall of the fort answered.
Five seconds later, cannon at the foot of the steep inclines on both the north and south ends of the fort set up a rolling thunder that reached across the river and echoed off the granite face of the Palisades and the walls of Fort Lee. The four American generals sat in the longboat, silent, spellbound as the battle unfolded before their eyes. Each had his telescope, and they shifted from one place to another as they watched the troop movements and the grape and cannister shot whistle.
At the north end of the fort, Sergeant William Corbin leaped over the wall and down the hill, sliding, falling, to an American cannon emplacement that was exposed to Colonel Rall’s Hessians, battling their way up the one-hundred-foot incline to reach the north wall of the fort.
Corbin tipped the cannon muzzle down the hill and slapped the linstock against the touchhole and the gun bucked and blasted. The first rank of Hessians threw their hands high and fell backwards while Corbin grabbed the sponge to ram down the barrel, and for the first time realized that his wife, Margaret, had followed him. He dropped the sponge and reached for the powder ladle, slammed it home and twisted it, then jerked it out as his wife crammed straw into the muzzle and shoved the ramrod home to lock the powder in place. Corbin pushed the next cannonball into the muzzle, and again his wife drove the ramrod home. Corbin touched linstock to touchhole and the gun roared, and the Hessian lines wavered.
Then, at the bottom of the incline, two Hessian cannons answered, and Corbin threw his wife down and fell partially on her as the cannonballs struck and dirt and rocks showered them. The smoke and dust settled and they leaped to their feet again, loading and firing down at point-blank range into the oncoming Hessians.
At the south end of the fort, Percy’s redcoats waited until the freezing air was filled with cannon smoke, then surged forward into Cadwalader’s command, trading cannon volleys, then musket volleys. Howe, watching and waiting on the east bank of the Harlem River, waited until the right moment, then shouted orders above the roar of the ongoing cannonade.
“Sterling, take the Forty-second Highlanders and get between Cadwalader and the fort.”
Twenty minutes later the Highlanders lowered their bayonets and marched up the steep incline from the Harlem River to the level ground leading to Fort Washington, and plowed into the rear of Cadwalader’s command in fierce, hot, mindless, hand-to-hand fighting, bayonets against clubbed muskets and axes and pitchforks. The chaotic battle teetered, and then the British surged forward and within minutes Cadwalader’s command was caught, Sterling on the north, Percy on the south.
Cadwalader cursed as he watched one hundred fifty of his advance company surrounded, and he groaned as they threw down their arms and huddled in surrender. Percy’s command continued on, rank upon rank, firing as they advanced. Cadwalader paused long enough to realize that within minutes he would lose his entire command if he remained where he was. He turned and shouted to his men, “Fall back, fall back.”
On the river, Greene turned to Washington in the longboat. “We should get you back to the New Jersey side. If the Pearl sees us, her cannon can sink us in minutes. I’ll go back over to help Magaw.”
Washington slowly shook his head. “No, we’ll all go back to the New Jersey side, and we’ll stay there.”
The generals looked at each other and said nothing, aware that their commander in chief already understood that Fort Washington was going to fall. Fort Washington—the one bastion they had thought was invincible, indestructible.
As the oarsmen turned the boat and dug their oars into the dark Hudson waters, Washington watched, face set like stone, as the Hessians once more clawed their way up the north incline towards the cannon of Sergeant Corbin. Once more the cannon fired, and the leading rank of blue-coated soldiers fell back on those below. As Corbin grabbed the sponge to ram down the hot, smoking gun barrel, a Hessian laid his musket over a rock, steadied it, and fired. The huge ball struck Corbin just beneath his ribs and he grabbed his chest and moaned and fell backwards and did not move.
Margaret screamed and clasped both hands over her mouth, then crouched beside her dead husband, cradling his head against her for a moment, and then the next volley of musket balls came whistling, tearing dirt and whanging off the cannon.
Margaret tenderly laid her husband’s head down and spun on her heel. She loaded the powder and the straw and the cannonball, grabbed the linstock, and laid it on the touchhole. The blast knocked the leading ranks of the Hessians thirty feet downhill, and Margaret grabbed the sponge. Ninety seconds later she touched off the next shot and again the Hessians fell back.
On the east side of the fort, Colonel Baxter watched helplessly as the unrelenting bombardment of grape and cannon shot ripped holes in his command. “Fall back. Fall back to the fort.”
To the
south, Cadwalader was desperately trying to lead a controlled retreat, shouting, “Fire and fall back. Reload. Walk. Don’t run.”
On the north, the Hessians once again angled the muzzles of their two cannon upwards at the gun emplacement where Margaret Corbin, face smudged with cannon smoke, hands blistered by the heated gun barrel, was still loading and firing. On command the two big guns blasted and an instant later both cannonballs ripped through what was left of the thin breastworks of the gun emplacement. One hit the wooden carriage of the American cannon and blew one wheel to pieces to leave the cannon pointing into the dirt. The other cannonball tore the left sleeve of Margaret’s dress before it smashed into the hillside directly behind her and exploded. It blew her forward, rolling, her left shoulder torn and bleeding, and she came to rest against the wrecked cannon, unconscious, blood soaking into the dirt beneath her shoulder.
One minute later the shouting Hessians stormed the gun emplacement and the leaders continued on past, up the hill, to the north wall of Fort Washington. Those behind traded musket volleys with the Americans on the top of the wall while the first two ranks threw up their ladders and scaling ropes and went up, those behind taking the place of those above who fell.
Behind them, at the gun emplacement, a Hessian slowed and stared as he passed Margaret, and he stopped, unable to believe he was looking at a woman. He called to his captain, who walked to him and looked down, wide-eyed. The captain barked orders and strong hands lifted her up while a trooper ran for the regimental surgeon. Minutes later they had her shoulder washed clean, bound up, and they were gently moving her down the hill to be taken to their infirmary. Whatever their reputation, whatever their shortcomings, the Hessians had respect for a courageous soldier, and this one—a woman—they meant to save if they could.
To the south, Cadwalader’s command came streaming in through the main gates of the fort, followed by Baxter’s decimated ranks, crowding two thousand nine hundred soldiers into a space built for one thousand. Magaw shook his head in disbelief. He was no longer in command of a fighting force inside a fort. He was in command of a death trap.
Within three minutes the Hessians held the north wall of the fort, and it was then that Colonel Johann Rall, proud, contemptuous, sent his demand to Colonel Magaw.
“Surrender or die.”
Slowly Magaw lowered his face. In his heart he knew. Quietly he told his aide, “Strike our colors.”
It was over. Fort Washington had fallen. In less than one day the British forces had stormed and taken the one American position that none thought could be conquered.
On the New Jersey side, in cold wintry sunlight, Washington stared stoically as the American colors were lowered and the British Union Jack made its way up the once-proud flagpole, and he turned cold inside as the realization sunk in.
Two thousand nine hundred men. Two hundred nineteen cannon. Two thousand five hundred muskets. Four hundred thousand cartridges. Thousands of blankets. Tons of food. Irreplaceable. Gone. Lost in one day.
Washington folded his telescope and turned to his officers. Their faces were blank, eyes flat as they struggled to accept the staggering loss they had witnessed across the river, and to make calculations of how deep an impact it would have on the war they had so eagerly started just over one year earlier. For the first time it broke clear in their minds that the loss of the men and munitions and supplies at Fort Washington could trigger mass desertions from the army, and the withdrawal of congressional support, without which the battle for liberty was doomed.
Was it all over? finished? an illusion? a dream doomed from the beginning? They silently asked the question and then they backed away from it, unwilling to force an answer they did not want.
Washington spoke with deliberation to Putnam and Greene. “You remain here at Fort Lee. I’m going on to my camp at the Hackensack River. I’ll be back when I know what to expect from Howe.”
Head bowed, Washington put foot to stirrup and, with his aide Tench Tilghman at his side, turned his mare west. They rode in silence, both grappling to comprehend the soul-wrenching disaster they had witnessed across the Hudson River. In the late afternoon sun they worked their way through the scattered camp on the banks of the Hackensack River to Washington’s command tent, and Tilghman took charge of Washington’s horse as the commander in chief walked inside and closed the tent flap. He removed neither his hat nor his cape as he sat down on the chair facing his desk, and for a long time he did not move as he gathered his thoughts that had been shattered by the loss of Fort Washington. Twilight came and Tilghman brought his supper. Washington nodded his thanks and gestured to the table, and Tilghman set the tray down.
“General,” he ventured, “Thomas Paine walked into camp about an hour ago. He’s carrying a musket. I thought you should know.”
Washington turned, surprised. “The writer? Common Sense?”
“The same.”
“Is he here now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ask him if he would share supper with me. Bring him, and a second tray.”
Ten minutes later Tilghman returned and set a second tray of smoking coffee and food on the table. “Mr. Paine is outside.”
Washington stood. “Bring him in.”
Tall, wiry, slightly round-shouldered, long nosed, with bushy brows and piercing eyes, Paine followed Tilghman into the tent.
“Sir, may I present Thomas Paine.”
The tall Virginian grasped the firm hand of Paine. “I believe we met once before while I was serving in the Second Continental Congress,” Washington said. “In any event, I am honored at your visit, Mr. Paine. Please take a seat and share my table.”
Paine removed his hat and cape, and they sat at the table opposite each other. Washington bowed his head and returned thanks for their food, and they reached for their forks and began. Paine worked his food slowly, savoring it.
Washington spoke. “It’s good to see you again. To what do I owe this honor?”
Paine broke heavy brown bread and thoughtfully chewed for a moment. “General, I’ve heard some troubling things. I wanted to find out for myself.”
Washington slowed. “What things?”
Paine stopped and raised his eyes, clear, sharp, penetrating. He studied Washington for a time. “Your losses. Your army near mutiny. Officers murmuring. Congress considering replacing you.”
Washington put down his fork and locked eyes with Paine, waiting. Sitting there in the yellow lantern light, they were just two men, carefully speaking the hard truth as best their understandings would permit.
“You know about these things?”
“It’s my business to know. That’s why I’m here. To find out for myself.”
“You’re carrying a musket?”
“Yes.”
“What regiment?”
“None. I joined the Pennsylvania Associators regiment back in July—then General Greene appointed me his aide-de-camp in September, at Fort Lee, as you know. I left there to join you. I belong here with your army to find out what I can. I’ll go with whatever regiment you say.”
“You’ve been among the men?”
“Here and back at Fort Lee.”
“You’ve heard talk of mutiny?”
“Open talk. Desertions are wholesale. Their enlistments are up on New Year’s Day, and right now I expect you’ll lose at least seventy-five percent of your army, maybe more.”
“The officers?”
Paine shook his head and sipped at his steaming coffee. “There’s a rising clamor to have Congress appoint Lee in your place. Your adjutant general—Reed, I think—wrote a letter that’s being circulated. He sees Lee as the savior of the Continental army, if it can be saved at all.”
Paine paused and looked directly into Washington’s eyes to see how violent the reaction would be.
Washington leaned back, struggling to hide his profound surprise. “Reed?” he whispered.
“Reed.” Paine scooped stew into his mouth and chewed. “T
here’s a cabal now forming to unseat you as commander in chief.”
“Who’s forming it?”
“Some men in Congress. A few officers.”
“Can you name names?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is they’re beginning to talk about some sort of terms with England to end the rebellion.”
“How strong is it?”
Paine shrugged and dipped bread in his stew and bit it off. “Growing. But that’s not important either.”
A minute passed in silence before Washington asked, “What is important?”
Paine slowed, and laid his bread on the side of his plate. He sipped at his smoking coffee cup for a moment, then set it down, and with an intensity that was nearly tangible brought his face square with Washington’s. He leaned slightly forward and spoke.
“That someone stand and shout down these naysayers. Did they think breaking from the British would be easy, simply because it was right? Did they think they could give birth to a new nation without walking through the valley of the shadow? The fools! The need is not for brilliant generals. The need is for men who know in their souls that this is the work of God, and have dedicated themselves to it!”
He stopped, eyes blazing, and the force of his will seemed to reach into every corner of the chill tent. Washington sat silent, unmoving, as the power of Paine’s words reached inside him and took root, and spread.
Paine leaned back and his face softened. “I’d like your permission to move among your men. I need to talk with them, eat with them, share with them. I’d like to take notes. Maybe write something. Maybe it will help.”
Washington cleared this throat. “This camp is open to you. Would you like me to sign an order?”
Paine shook his head. “No. They need to see me as one of them—a common citizen.”
They finished their meal in near silence, and stood. Paine picked up his hat and cloak. “Could we talk again sometime?”