If he happened to walk by between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., Townsend would have seen soldiers on fatigue duty—monotonous but not back-breaking chores like shoveling snow, cutting wood, unloading provisions, and, hated more than anything else, standing on guard, which every man was required to perform once every three or four days.46 For hours each day, there was drill, a repetitive series of facings, wheelings, and stiff-legged marching in the synchronized patterns needed to execute the era’s complex tactical maneuvers on the battlefield. Mastering the art and science of gunnery required incessant, rote practice. Loading and firing one of the army’s standard .75-caliber “Brown Bess” muskets was a twenty-four-step process that had to be repeated until it became second nature. A decently trained infantryman could fire two rounds a minute, though the British army was unique in being able to shoot thrice in that time.47
Small wonder that in their free time soldiers fled their barracks, crossed the street, and entered Holy Ground—on Townsend’s left—the biggest red-light district on the continent. The Americans had done exactly the same, of course: During his time in New York in early 1776, Lieutenant Isaac Bangs of Connecticut complained that his men were indulging in “intimate connexion[s]” with the “worse than brutal creatures” inhabiting the area; worse, they, and officers, too, had picked up the clap and “the Fatal Disorder,” by which he meant syphilis. No fewer than forty men from this single regiment contracted the disease during Bangs’s time in New York. Even the upright Bangs may have succumbed to the temptation of a bit of slap and tickle: After all, “the whole of my aim in visiting this place at first” was “out of curiosity,” but as he tantalizingly reveals, he subsequently went “several times” more.48
Holy Ground was a violent, murky place where one might easily find, as Bangs wrote, two soldiers “inhumanly murdered & concealed, besides one who was castrated in a barbarous manner.” (Their mates returned the next day to the brothels where the men were rolled and “leveled them to the ground.”) Another time, “an old whore who had been so long dead that she was rotten was this day found concealed in an outhouse.”49
Killing “cracks,” the slang for nymphs du pave, was rarely punished by either army, partly because it was so difficult to catch the murderer. So it was that a naval officer thought he could get away with stabbing a madame after one of her employees cheated him, and how in the local taverns, “fireships”—prostitutes known to have venereal disease—were set alight as punishment.50
The rest of the Holy Ground slum was a nest of rotgut joints, pawnshops, and questionable taverns, with a sprinkling of molly-houses (gay brothels) and astrologers’ stands, and populated by assorted swindlers, hoods, and tallymen—loan sharks who could harry you into prison (or an early grave) if you didn’t pay on the nose. Abortionists, unsurprisingly given the number of prostitutes, set up shop there, as well. These were mainly midwives and nurses, often German, working for extra pin money, but some men, usually failed doctors, were known to provide “cures for ladies.” Abortion rates were high at the time: One in four children was born either dead or prematurely, both euphemisms for the practice. If a woman hadn’t the desire to abort, she could leave her child somewhere—a church usually—as a foundling and hope he was adopted, hand him over to the almshouse (effectively a death sentence, as few infants survived there a year), strangle him, or rent him out to beggars for use as a prop. And in the gloomier recesses of New York’s underworld there were always the baby farmers, who bought attractive babies and discreetly sold them to barren couples. It was a cash business and babies that the farmer overstocked and weren’t adopted were terminated to keep down expenses.51
The house of Templeton & Stewart, which had long dealt with the Townsends, was a “vendue” and retailing operation that catered to the respectable working-class residents of the Holy Ground. A vendue house, essentially, was a combination of a flea market and a discounter used by small merchants to clear slow-selling or damaged stock. The public loved them, because they could pick up goods at everyday low prices, but the large retail stores, with their fat overheads, thought the vendue houses unfairly undercut them.52 For more upmarket clients, Templeton’s also had a retail arm, which sold everything from Connecticut pork to Irish butter to Philadelphia soap.53 Townsend dealt more with the retail side. In early 1773 he left the firm and on April 1 opened his own dry-goods business (“dry-goods” usually meant one didn’t import rum, but during the war, this old colonial distinction softened).54
Being concerned solely with his business career, Robert Townsend remained resolutely unpolitical in these tumultuous years. The war, however, would soon change that happy state of affairs. By late June 1776, it was a dead certainty the British were coming to New York. That month, three warships carrying the first contingents of troops under General Howe arrived in lower New York harbor. On July 2—the very same day that the Continental Congress approved a resolution for independence (followed, two days later, by its Declaration to that effect)—Howe occupied Staten Island. By mid-July, ten ships of the line, twenty frigates, and nearly three hundred transports and supply ships clogged the bay. Residents of the city and Long Island could see nothing but a forest of masts across the water. Over the next two months, Howe deployed 32,000 soldiers, the largest expeditionary force Britain had ever amassed.
In order to deprive the British of meat for their hungry army, Samuel Townsend and General Nathaniel Woodhull were ordered to herd the estimated 7,000 cattle, 7,000 sheep, and 1,000 horses in Queens County away from the expected British invasion spot.55 On August 22, Howe’s transports began ferrying 15,000 troops over to Gravesend Bay on Long Island. Washington and his subordinates, in the meantime, had covered the passes surrounding their positions in Brooklyn Heights. But, laboring under the misapprehension that one, Jamaica Pass, was too far away to do Howe much good, had left there just five officers. At 3.15 a.m. on August 27, the unlucky quintet received a rude shock when Howe and 10,000 redcoats poured through the pass after a silent night march. Howe wheeled westward, encircling the 2,500 Patriots manning the other three passes. By 11 a.m., Howe was two miles from Brooklyn Heights. The defenders there were saved only by an adverse wind and the ebb tide that prevented the British grand fleet from sailing up the North River and blasting them to pieces from the rear. Washington himself had come over to the Heights from the city at 8 a.m. only to see his disastrous position collapse around him.
For the moment, however, Howe’s men were disorganized and so he dug in six hundred yards from the Heights, intending to besiege the American remnants. Surely, the man would see sense and surrender? On August 29, Washington realized he must evacuate his position or die. He ordered every boat he could find to come across the river, and at 1 a.m. on August 30, the men began boarding. A dense fog rolled in, helpfully obscuring the Americans’ activities and allowing Washington and the last of the men—including Tallmadge and Hale—to reach Manhattan safely several hours later.
Meanwhile, Samuel Townsend had been helping General Woodhull herd the livestock onto Hempstead Plain. The operation had not been a success: Woodhull had managed to move fewer than 2,000 head of cattle eastwards. He had, however, only 190 militiamen at his disposal, which made the task an impossible one from the start. Given the dire state of affairs in Brooklyn, and the increasing likelihood of a British victory, each night another dozen of his men would desert.
It is here that Robert Townsend officially shuffles into our history for the first time, albeit briefly. On August 24, the Convention appointed him commissary—the man in charge of ensuring supplies and provisions—to Woodhull, now camped at Jamaica, a short distance from the British lines. The general received notice of this appointment on August 27, most likely when Robert Townsend himself rode out to Jamaica and handed General Woodhull his letter of introduction.56 Young Robert was not allowed much of a chance to shine. Later that day, when a thunderstorm rolled over Long Island, Woodhull fatally sought refuge at Increase Carpenter’s roomy inn. As for Robert, he evaded
British advance units as they fanned through Queens County, and by the first days of September, he was almost certainly at home in Oyster Bay, as was his father.
Long Island was soon after cleansed of American insurgents. In the days before the fall, Patriots sent their wives, children, and slaves, as well as their livestock, grain, and stores to Connecticut. One in six Long Islanders departed as refugees, leaving behind their farms, belongings, and homes. In some places, it looked like the Marie Celeste. Tory Loyalists emerged with red cockades in their hats or red ribbons on their coats to greet the King’s troops as they entered liberated towns. Having been humiliated by the “Tory Hunting parties” and the blacklist of “non-Associators,” Loyalists were in no mood to forgive the men they regarded as collaborators with the illegal Revolutionary government. Loyalists informed on leading Whigs, who were taken into custody by the redcoats. Which is how Samuel Townsend came to be arrested in the first week of September 1776.
The day it happened, the sun glared at the troopers of the Seventeenth Light Dragoons—eight of them there were—lusting for water. It was searingly hot and humid, even for September. Their splendid uniforms smelled. Weeks’ worth of dried sweat clung to the fibers of the thick, woolen red cloth spattered with muck. Tucked into knee-high black cavalry boots, their yellowish buckskin breeches, designed to ease chafing, were as scuffed and muddy as the once-bright white facings and linings of their coats. Their helmets, cast of brass, padded with leather, and decorated with a crest of dyed red horsehair falling to the shoulder, were heat traps. Whenever a man took his off, a glistening circlet of perspiration crowned him. Even so, a black, burnished plate attached to the front of the helmet added a designedly sinister touch: It featured a death’s-head—the symbol usually favored by pirates—with the motto “Or Glory” scrolling underneath.
This little detachment was following up a tip from some Loyalists. They wheeled in front of Raynham Hall and dismounted. The young subaltern in charge, haughty as a warlord, clanked over to the nervous fifty-nine-year-old man sitting on the verandah and demanded whether “Sam” Townsend was at home. “I am the man,” he replied. Discourteous to a fault, the officer ordered him to get ready, for he was under arrest and bound for prison. Shaken, Townsend asked whether he could send a servant to fetch his horse, a request rudely yielded (and accompanied, for good measure, by a blasphemous curse).
As he waited, the subaltern (a certain Lieutenant Nettles) strutted about the house, sneering at its plainness, which he naturally associated with backwardness and poverty—the marks of colonials cut off from civilization. True, like every Quaker residence, the furniture was modest and simple, the colors muted, the rooms uncluttered. Spotting a small musket the servants used for hunting fowl, the martinet strode over and shattered it. No rebel had the right to own such a weapon, he declared. In the corner, Samuel’s wife and children—Sarah, Phebe, and Robert were present—grew frantic with worry as to his fate.
By now, drawn by the commotion, a knot of people had gathered outside. Among them were the informers who had denounced Townsend to the authorities. Witnessing this dreadful scene, even they were moved to sorrow and pity, according to one Tory present. Allowed only a change of clothes, Townsend was hustled onto his horse and escorted out of town. The dragoons were heading for Jericho, about five miles south of Oyster Bay, where their colonel had his field headquarters.
Along the way, the party met an in-law, Thomas Buchanan, an affluent merchant well known as a Loyalist, who demanded that the lieutenant allow him to accompany Townsend to Jericho. When they arrived at headquarters, Buchanan pleaded to Colonel Samuel Birch that Townsend was harmless. To his credit, and impressed by Buchanan’s credentials, the colonel agreed to free Townsend on bail for several thousand pounds and on condition that he be produced with six hours’ notice. The two men, one utterly unnerved, arrived home late that night.57
Less than a week later, the New York authorities summoned Townsend. There was no heroic defiance; it wasn’t cinematic. Instead, Samuel Townsend showed up as directed and Whitehead Hicks, a judge of the Supreme Court, duly certified that “he hath submitted to government and taken the oath of allegiance to his Majesty King George this 10th Sept. 1776 before me.”58
In swearing his loyalty to the Crown, Townsend’s political career was finished. Like so many others on Long Island, he made his peace with the new rulers. His arrest was the first and last time during the war that Samuel Townsend ran afoul of the British authorities. Henceforth, he kept his Whiggish views to himself. Still, Samuel was not quite so tame as he seemed, according to an 1850s recollection of Elizabeth Titus, who knew every member of the Townsend clan, and met Washington thrice to boot. Throughout the war, she wrote, Townsend would arrange to meet some of his old Whig confreres to discuss Washington’s progress: “Whenever they used to hear of the escapes of their countrymen on the main[land] they contrived to gather in each other’s houses, and find in their joy and mutual congratulations at such auspicious news some consolation for the hardships and the suspense they had to endure on account of their insulated position.”59
As for Robert, he too bent his knee, for the new British administration was surprisingly lenient and stopped Loyalist harassment of their former tormentors. So long as they could produce someone to vouch for them, most Whigs were released on bail. By the end of 1776, in Queens County alone, 1,293 men had sworn allegiance to their sovereign.60 All in all, about 3,000 Long Islanders were given certificates proving their loyalty, according to a letter from Tryon to Lord Germain that December. He, said Tryon, “had the satisfaction to observe among them a general return of confidence in govern[men]t.”61
Accordingly, a note in Robert Townsend’s handwriting declares that he was “willing to testify our loyalty to our King,” and resolved “to oppose this unprovoked rebellion now carried on against His Majesty’s Government.” Some decades later, Townsend’s nephew recalled that Robert “inclined at first to the Royal cause [and] stood he admitted on one occasion sentinel” in front of the British commander’s headquarters “in Broadway near the Battery.”62
During the British occupation of the city, Robert Townsend, now cleansed of the taint of rebellion, focused on catering to the military class, especially the officers who could afford to spend lavishly on the rum, spirits, sugar, and lemons that went into making a punch with some kick. A Captain Willington, aide to Governor Tryon, was a regular customer. Townsend was also known for being a good source of navy grog, and many a sailor aboard one of His Majesty’s ships owed his cracking hangover to Robert Townsend.63 He even purchased a share in James Rivington’s coffeehouse, an officers’ favorite, where he would have been well placed to overhear talk of troop movements and army gossip—soon transmitted to Tallmadge.64
Rivington was one of the city’s more notorious characters. A former bookseller and English emigrant, he founded the Royal Gazette newspaper in 1777 and soon became New York’s godfather of journalistic hackdom. Newspapers of the era carried almost no local news (readers were expected to already know it) and no editorials (readers were aware of each newspaper’s political slant and discounted its coverage accordingly), but they did print official proclamations, shipping reports, price listings, stock quotes, theatrical notices, foreign news, Parliamentary minutes and proceedings, extracts from other papers, and lengthy letters from readers (which essentially served as op-eds). In order to offset their low subscription prices, almost half of a newspaper’s pages consisted of advertisements, Lost and Founds, and Help Wanteds.65
Upon buying a copy of the Royal Gazette from a vendor, who shouted “Bloody news! Bloody news! Where are the rebels now?” the visitor would read of the inexorable brilliance and glory of British arms.66 As Rivington had an eye for atrocity stories and punchy tavern-talk, his readers were stunned to discover that Benjamin Franklin had been wounded by an assassin and would likely die; that Congress was about to rescind the Declaration of Independence; that the Tsar was sending thirty-six thousand Cossacks
to stamp out the rebels; that Washington had been made Lord Protector; and that Washington fathered illegitimate children (a favorite theme of Rivington’s, this one), or had died.67
He was also adept at spinning the news in such a way as to buoy New Yorkers’ spirits, so there was a stream of exaggerated “reports” of Patriot misdeeds intended to persuade citizens they had chosen right by sticking with King George. To this end, Gazette readers were informed that nothing was “exempt from the fangs of those devouring locusts,” the Whig legislatures; that two men in Dutchess County had been “crucified” by rebels for trying to join the British army, and that another volunteer had been strapped to a tree by rebels, and shot multiple times.68 Most terrifying of all was the revelation that Washington had allied with France. As part of this diabolical agenda to Romanize stout Anglicans, Washington had agreed to allow French vessels to bring 50,000 mass books, 200 racks and wheels, 3,000,000 consecrated wafers, 70,000 rosaries, and 5 chests of “paint for the ladies’ faces.” Rivington predicted that Louis XVI would soon be crowned King of America if Loyalist hearts faltered.69 Not all was doom-and-gloom, however. The Royal Gazette printed comic pieces, some amusing still today, like this spoof advertisement, which appeared in the Lost and Found section after the terrible American defeat at Camden: “Strayed, deserted, or stolen, from the subscriber, on the 16th of August last, near Camden, in the State of South Carolina, a whole army, consisting of horse, foot, and dragoons, to the amount of near ten thousand.” Anyone possessing any leads as to its whereabouts—“a certain Charles, Earl Cornwallis” was suspected to be the thief—was asked to send the information directly to “Charles Thompson, Esq.; Secretary to the Continental Congress.”70
Precisely for this sort of thing, Rivington had his detractors. One such was Robert Biddulph, a military contractor’s agent sent from London, who observed that “the origin of every report is at a place called Rivington’s Corner—which is at the bottom of this [Wall] Street. Before the door of that most facetious printer you will always see a crowd of redcoats, who as naturally repair there after breakfast, as the ox to his crib before breakfast, to hear and assist in the circulation of any thing that may be stirring. Within is the Venerable Rivington himself, clothed in a long gown, & may very properly be called The Priest of the Temple of Falsehood.”71
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