The Adventures of John Paul Jones
John Paul Jones had spent the past few years cruising the waters around Britain, capturing one British ship after another. Jones’s favorite targets were British trading ships, which were loaded with valuable goods. After capturing these ships, Jones sailed them to nearby ports, sold the goods, and split the profits with his crew: Basically, he was a pirate. But this was legal in the 1700s. If you were at war with another country, you were allowed to capture any ship flying their flag (and you called yourself a privateer, not a pirate).
By 1778 Jones was the most feared captain in the American navy. Abigail Adams heard so much about his bold fighting style, she expected him to be a fire-breathing giant. She was surprised to meet the short (just over five feet), gentle-looking Jones. Abigail commented: “I should sooner think of wrapping him up in cotton wool and putting him in my pocket, than sending him to contend with cannon balls.”
The British, of course, felt a bit differently about Jones—they were dying to catch and hang him. And on a warm night in September 1779, with moonlight reflecting off the smooth sea, they got their chance. A British warship named the Serapis spotted an American ship.
“What ship is that?” called out Richard Pearson, captain of the Serapis. “Answer immediately, or I shall be under the necessity of firing into you.”
The next thing Pearson knew, a cannonball was flying toward his ship. Pearson had run into the Bonhomme Richard, under the command of John Paul Jones. Floating so close that they sometimes crashed together, the two ships battered each other with cannonballs, guns, and grenades. Both crews had to stop fighting every few minutes to put out fires on their wooden ships. Seeing that the Bonhomme Richard was badly damaged, Captain Pearson asked John Paul Jones if he was ready to surrender.
Jones barked back one of the best lines in American history:
“I have not yet begun to fight!”
The fighting continued for nearly four hours, and the Bonhomme Richard was soon blasted so full of holes that British cannonballs sailed in one side of the ship and out the other without hitting anything.
John Paul Jones
Then Jones saw one of his sailors, William Hamilton, do something amazing. “This brave man, on his own accord, seized a lighted match and a basket of grenades,” Jones said. Hamilton climbed up the mast and started tossing grenades down onto the deck of the British ship. One of these grenades landed in a pile of gunpowder on the Serapis, sparking a massive explosion.
“It was awful!” reported British officer Francis Heddart. “Some twenty of our men were fairly blown to pieces. There were other men who were stripped naked, with nothing on but the collars of their shirts and wristbands.”
The British pulled down their flag—the signal for surrender.
Jones had won, though his ship was so badly damaged, it sank two days later. And Jones himself was shaken by his violent victory. “A person must have been an eyewitness,” he said, “to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck and ruin that everywhere appeared.”
Benedict Arnold in Love
Now we return to the never-boring Benedict Arnold. Nearly a year after the battle of Saratoga, Arnold had still not recovered from his wounds. Splinters from his shattered bone often poked into the nerves in his left leg, causing unbearable pain. Clearly, Arnold was not well enough to charge around the battlefield on horseback. So Washington gave him the fairly easy job of protecting Philadelphia.
Arnold had not been in town long before he met and fell in love with … guess who? Young Peggy Shippen! Peggy easily accomplished something British guns had not—she made the great general nervous. Arnold wrote:
“Twenty times have I taken up my pen to write to you, and as often has my trembling hand refused to obey the dictates of my heart.”
Benedict Arnold
Arnold got over his fears, though, and soon he won Peggy’s heart. They were married in April 1779 (he was thirty-nine; she was nineteen).
You might think Benedict Arnold would finally be happy. Aside from the pain in his leg, though, he was still bitter about seeing Horatio Gates take credit for his victory at Saratoga. Arnold was the kind of guy who always felt people didn’t appreciate him enough. Also, Arnold was broke. He had recently borrowed a fortune to buy Peggy a huge house, and he had no hope of paying back the loan.
Just a month after his marriage, Benedict Arnold decided to see how much the British would pay him to change sides in the war.
Peggy, a Loyalist at heart, played a key role in Benedict Arnold’s secret plan. She knew that he would need to begin sending messages to the British, so she helped him contact her good friend John André. André was now an assistant to General Clinton—in a perfect position to help with the plot. In a long series of coded letters written in invisible ink, the three started working out their strategy.
Arnold’s Fiendish Plan
In the summer of 1780, Benedict Arnold took over command of West Point, an American fort on the Hudson River in New York. Control of West Point was so important, Washington called it “the key to America.” It was also the key to Arnold’s plan.
Here’s how it was supposed to work. Arnold and André would agree on a time for the British to attack West Point. Arnold would make sure to have his soldiers in all the wrong places, and the British would capture the fort easily. And there was more. George Washington was coming to inspect West Point in September. If the British timed their attack just right, they could grab General Washington too! In exchange, Arnold was to be paid a cool 20,000 pounds and made a general in the British army.
One of the most amazing things about Benedict Arnold’s plot is just how close it came to working. Imagine how different our history would be if Washington had been taken to Britain and hanged! Arnold made a critical mistake, though. He insisted on meeting André face-to-face, so the two men could work out the last-minute details of their plan.
At about two in the morning on September 22, André rowed a small boat to a dark spot on the shore of the Hudson River. Arnold was waiting for him.
André Is Captured
Arnold and André talked until sunrise. Arnold wrote out plans showing just how the British should attack West Point. André put the papers in his boot, got on a horse, and rode south toward New York City (which the British still controlled). There he would meet with General Clinton, and then the British attack could begin.
One big problem: the woods north of New York City were a dangerous “no man’s land”—an area in between British and American territory, filled with gangs of violent bandits. Some gangs were pro-American, some pro-British, but mostly they just liked to steal people’s money.
As André rode through these woods, three men jumped out from behind a tree and grabbed his horse. André had a split second to guess which side these guys were on. He guessed wrong:
André: I am glad to see you. I am an officer in the British service.
Bandit: Get down. We are Americans.
Struggling to keep his cool, André instantly changed his story. He tried to frighten the thieves by saying he was actually an American on urgent business for General Arnold: “Gentlemen, you had best let me go or you will bring yourselves in trouble, for, by stopping me, you will detain the general’s business.”
But these guys just wanted to know one thing: “Where is your money?”
“Gentlemen, I have none about me,” André explained.
The men pulled André off the road and searched him. And André really didn’t have much money on him. But he did have some very strange papers stuffed in his boot. The thieves started reading the papers … . .
And Arnold Escapes
Back at West Point, Arnold was eating breakfast at his headquarters when a messenger dashed in and handed over an urgent note. Arnold tore it open and read: a British spy was just captured with maps of West Point in his boot!
Arnold leapt up from the table, ran upstairs as fast as his bad leg would carry him, and tol
d Peggy the terrible news (she was in bed with their newborn son, Edward). Then he hobbled outside, raced his horse down to the river, hopped on a boat, and started rowing south.
That was the last time anyone saw Benedict Arnold in an American uniform.
At that very moment, George Washington and his staff were approaching Arnold’s headquarters. The men were all looking forward to seeing the famously beautiful Peggy. “You young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold,” Washington teased his officers.
But as the boat approached Arnold’s house, it started to seem like something wasn’t right. Arnold should have fired a few cannons as a salute to the commander in chief. But the cannons were silent. “The impropriety [incorrectness] of his conduct when he knew I was to be there struck me very forcibly,” Washington later said. “But I had not the least idea of the real cause.”
Just minutes later, he learned the real cause. As Washington was sitting down to lunch in Arnold’s house, another messenger ran in and handed over the papers found in John André’s boot. They were maps and plans for attacking West Point—all in Benedict Arnold’s handwriting!
Washington sat quietly for a moment, holding the papers in shaking hands. He finally looked up at General Henry Knox and said, “Arnold has betrayed me. Whom can we trust now?”
Washington soon shook off the shock and went to work. He got the soldiers at West Point ready for a British attack (though none came). Then he put John André on trial, found him guilty of being a spy, and hanged him. Washington would much rather have hanged Arnold, but Arnold was beyond his reach, safe in British headquarters in New York City.
Peggy, meanwhile, managed to save her skin with a brilliant bit of acting. When Washington came to her room, Peggy threw a hysterical fit, shouting over and over, “That is not General Washington! That is the man who is going to kill my child!” She was so shocked by her husband’s treason, it seemed, that she had lost her senses! Washington was convinced that she had nothing to do with the plot.
Peggy later joined her husband in New York.
No End in Sight
Once again, Washington had just barely escaped disaster. And while that was something to be grateful for, the entire country was getting sick and tired of this war. The American Revolution entered its seventh year in 1781, with no end in sight. The government didn’t even have enough money left to pay its soldiers.
One day in February, Washington was walking up the stairs at his headquarters. Halfway up the staircase, he met his twenty-year-old assistant, Alexander Hamilton, who was coming down. Washington told Hamilton he needed help right away with some important papers.
“I answered that I would wait on him immediately,” Hamilton later said.
Washington went to his office and sat down. He waited. No Hamilton. Washington stepped out into the hall and started pacing back and forth above the staircase. His impatience turned to anger, and his anger bubbled toward the boiling point. Finally, he spotted Hamilton at the bottom of the stairs.
Washington: “Colonel Hamilton, you have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes.
I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.”
Hamilton: “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you thought it necessary to tell me so, we part!”
And the young man turned and walked away.
Less than an hour later, Washington sent an apology to Hamilton, blaming his outburst on “a moment of passion.” Hamilton accepted the apology and came back to work.
But it was clear that the never-ending stress was starting to affect George Washington. And everyone else, too. Joseph Plumb Martin spoke for the entire United States when he said, “I saw no likelihood that the war would ever end.”
The Great Race to Yorktown
The year 1781 started out badly for George Washington. In early spring, a British warship sailed up the Potomac River in Virginia and docked at Mount Vernon, Washington’s beloved home and plantation. Lund Washington, who was running the plantation while his cousin George was away at war, hurried down to the dock to see what was going on.
Refreshments for the Enemy
When Lund Washington got down to the river, he saw that seventeen slaves had already seized the chance to escape from Mount Vernon by hopping onto the British ship. Then Lund heard the British sailors calling out for service. Bring us food and drink, they demanded, or we’ll burn the plantation!
Lund did as he was told.
When Washington heard the news, he didn’t seem too upset that the slaves had run away. But he was horribly ashamed that his own farm had provided supplies to the invading enemy. As he told Lund,“That which gives me most concern, is that you should go on board the enemy’s vessels, and furnish them with refreshments. It would have been a less painful circumstance to me to have heard, that in consequence of your non-compliance with their request, they had burnt my house, and laid the plantation in ruins.”
Another Wasted Year?
And speaking of Washington’s troubles, here was his biggest one: it was looking like 1781 was going to be another wasted year—yet another year without a major attack on the British.
At this time, Washington and his army were camped just north of New York City. So was a French army of about 4,000 men, under the command of a general known to his friends as the Count de Rochambeau. Washington had been hoping that this year, finally, the Americans and French would launch a serious attack on the British in New York City. So Washington and Rochambeau spent most of July looking through telescopes, studying the British forts in New York City. They were hoping to find a weak spot to attack. There didn’t seem to be a weak spot, though.
Washington was used to disappointments, but this one really got him down. How could he ever win this war? He was having a hard enough time just holding his army together.
And that’s when it happened—Washington suddenly saw a way to win the American Revolution. And he could do it right now! He just had to race his army 450 miles south to a place called Yorktown, Virginia.
Why the race to Yorktown? That question really needs a ninepart answer.
Part 1: The King Tries the South
The first thing we have to do is to take a look at things from King George’s point of view.
Mighty Great Britain had been fighting these pesky Americans since 1775, and all they had to show for it was control of New York City. The war was costing Britain a fortune—so much that the government had to raise taxes.
King George was feeling the heat. More and more people in Britain were sick of war. They wanted to bring the army home and forget the whole thing. But you know George—he was still absolutely committed to victory over the Americans. So starting in 1779, the king decided to try a new strategy: the British army would destroy the Revolution by capturing the southern states. The famously stubborn King George honestly believed that most people in the South were still loyal to him.
Part 2: Bad Peaches, Bad General
At first, it looked like Britain’s “southern strategy” was actually going to work. The British quickly captured big chunks of Georgia and South Carolina.
Then Congress put Horatio Gates (the Saratoga hero) in charge of the American army in the South. Gates showed up in camp in July 1780 and saw that his soldiers were starving and exhausted. So what did he decide to do? He ordered them to march right toward the British!
Hungry enough to eat anything, the men spotted unripe green peaches growing along the road. They feasted—and quickly paid the price. The meal had “painful effects,” said Colonel Otho Williams. That was a polite way of putting it. Let’s just say the peaches didn’t stay in those hungry bellies for very long.
Gates pushed his weakened soldiers on. And on August 16, they ran into the British general Charles Cornwallis and his army at Camden, South Carolina. While Cornwallis was crushing the Americans, General Gates panicked and fled from the battlefield, leaving his entire army behind. He was next seen 180 miles away.
“Was there
ever an instance of a general running away, as Gates has done, from his whole army?” wondered Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s young assistant.
So far, so good, thought King George.
Part 3: British Behaving Badly
If only the king knew how badly some of his soldiers were behaving in the South.
One morning in 1780 a frightened girl came running up to Eliza Wilkinson’s South Carolina home. “O! The King’s people are coming!” shouted the girl. “It must be them, for they are all in red!”
Moments later Eliza saw a group of British soldiers riding up to her house. “Where’re these women rebels?” they cried, waving swords and pistols.
The soldiers jumped off their horses, ran into the house, and started stealing stuff—jewelry, clothes, pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down. Then one of the soldiers saw the silver buckles on Eliza’s shoes. “‘I want them buckles’ said he, and immediately knelt at my feet to take them out, which, while he was busy about, a brother villain, whose enormous mouth extended from ear to ear, bawled out, ‘Shares there! I say, shares!’ So they divided my buckles between them.”
A few minutes later, it was all over. Eliza watched the British soldiers ride off, their shirts bulging with loot.
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