First Founding Father

by Harlow Giles Unger

  * Matthews escaped behind British lines in New York, and when the British recaptured the entire island of Manhattan, he reassumed his post as mayor late in 1776. Although sentenced to death by the New York provincial government, Matthews remained mayor of New York under the British until Evacuation Day in 1783, when he sailed to Nova Scotia, Canada, with other Tories and then to Prince Edward Island. He died in 1800.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Most Bloody Battle

  AT THE END OF AUGUST THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE ON Staten Island sailed across New York Bay and stormed ashore in Brooklyn. They overran 5,000 American defenders, killing 1,500, seizing the American army’s meat supply, and capturing two army field commanders, Generals John Sullivan and Israel Putnam. Only a thick fog had allowed American survivors to escape in the dark of night across the East River to New York Island (Manhattan) on August 29.

  Crestfallen by the overwhelming defeat on Long Island, Congress ignored Richard Henry Lee’s objections and sent Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edmund Rutledge to talk peace at British headquarters on Staten Island. Once there they found the British commanding general Lord Howe unwilling to talk of a cease-fire until Congress ordered troops to lay down their arms, renewed allegiance to Britain, and revoked the Declaration of Independence. Infuriated by Howe’s arrogance, Franklin and the others stomped out of Howe’s tent and returned to Philadelphia, where they acknowledged their error in having ignored Richard Henry Lee’s objections to their quest for peace. Four days later the British army renewed its assault on Washington’s troops.

  Washington posted the Connecticut militia to guard against a British landing at Kips Bay on the eastern shore of New York Island and moved the main body of troops to Harlem Heights, about six miles to the north.* On the morning of September 15 five British ships pounded American emplacements at Kips Bay with cannon fire. Within hours 6,000 of the 8,000 Connecticut troops—enlisted men and officers alike—had fled, terrified, sprinting to the rear without firing a shot, leaving Washington and his aides exposed to possible capture.

  “Good God,” Washington cried out. “Are these the men with which I am to defend America?”1 As the British landed, Washington and his aides galloped off to safety, with British buglers sounding the call of hunters on a fox chase to mock the fleeing Americans.

  “I never felt such a sensation before,” said a Washington aide. “It seemed to crown our disgrace.”2

  “The conduct of the [state] militia has been so insufferably bad,” Richard Henry Lee fumed to Patrick Henry after hearing from Washington, “that we find it impossible to support the war by their means and therefore a powerful army of regular troops must be obtained or all will be lost.” Lee had again turned to Henry after Washington’s humiliation. As governor of America’s largest, wealthiest, and most heavily populated state, Henry had more political influence and resources than Congress. Lee now believed Henry alone could turn Washington’s humiliation into a victory.

  “It seems to be the opinion that each state should furnish a number of battalions proportionate to its strength,” he wrote to Henry, “and the whole be paid by the continent.” Richard Henry then shared intelligence from his brother Arthur that “letters from Bordeaux… inform us of the greatest preparations for war in France and Spain… and the strongest assurance and acts of friendship imaginable shown to North America.”3

  24. Benjamin Franklin, in the fall of 1776, was sent to France by Congress to negotiate military aid and support for the flagging Continental Army, then in full-scale flight across New Jersey after a stunning defeat by the British in New York.

  On October 1 Arthur Lee sent word to Richard Henry that the French government “could not think of entering a war with England” but would assist America with secret shipments of £200,000 sterling worth of arms. Arthur reported that the French court itself refused to deal directly or indirectly with him regarding officially recognizing American rebels. Instead, they demanded a meeting with an official representative of the Congress—someone with international standing.

  There was but one such American, of course: Benjamin Franklin.

  Richard Henry wrote to Samuel Adams urging the immediate dispatch of American ambassadors to foreign courts—especially to France. The interest of the French government, he argued, “is clearly to support the new Confederacy. When the Court of France has received our ambassador… most of the other European powers will, I apprehend, quickly follow the example.”4

  As Washington’s troops licked their wounds after the disaster in Brooklyn, Connecticut’s militiamen continued disappearing, reducing one regiment to only fourteen men, another to fewer than thirty. With his troop strength disintegrating, Washington withdrew from Manhattan Island to White Plains, on the mainland to the north in Westchester County.

  A few days later, however, the main body of British troops overwhelmed the Americans again, scattering them in several directions. While two regiments fled northward into the Hudson River highlands, Washington led a contingent of about 5,000 across the Hudson River to New Jersey. With winter approaching earlier than usual and the British in close pursuit, Washington’s men staggered westward through sheets of icy autumn rains, eventually crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania by early December. Besides the dead or captured troops, desertions had reduced his army to little more than 3,000. Sickness left half unfit for duty; of seventeen officers, only five stood ready to fight. Only Washington’s foresight in ordering his men to seize all river craft halted the British pursuit at the Delaware River’s edge.

  “The retreat across New Jersey,” Virginia lieutenant James Monroe recalled later, “will be forever celebrated in the annals of our country for the patient suffering, the unshaken firmness, and gallantry of this small band… and the great and good qualities of its commander.… [Washington] was always near the enemy, and his countenance and manner made an impression on me which time can never efface. A deportment so firm, so dignified, so exalted, but yet so modest and composed, I have never seen in any other person.”5

  Lee tried to bolster Washington’s spirits: “I congratulate you sincerely on the several advantages your troops have lately gained over the enemy.… May the great Dispenser of Justice to Mankind put it in your power before this campaign ends to give these foes to human kind the stroke their wicked intentions entitles them to.

  I have the pleasure to assure you… that we have the fairest prospect of being soon supplied, and copiously too, with military stores of all kinds and with clothing fit for the soldiers. Immediately, to be sure, we are much pressed for want of the latter, but if we can brush through this crisis, we shall be secure. The French court has given us so many unequivocal proofs of their friendship that I can entertain no doubt of their full exertions in our favor, and… that a war between them and Great Britain is not far distant.6

  Without boats to cross the Delaware River, the British commander ordered his 3,000 Hessian mercenaries to remain on the river’s eastern shore at Trenton, New Jersey, to watch the Americans on the opposite bank. He then led British troops to more comfortable quarters at nearby Princeton to wait for the river to freeze and cross on foot to wipe out Washington’s crippled army and end the Revolution.

  The British advance left most of New Jersey in British hands, and with Redcoats almost within sight of Philadelphia, Congress fled to Baltimore on December 12 and began debating terms of capitulation. Only Richard Henry Lee objected, outraged by the thought of surrender, refusing to cede an inch of American territory to the British. Only Lee sought to move ahead, sensing how to achieve victory. Like Washington, he intended maintaining a constant barrage of correspondence with state leaders such as Virginia governor Patrick Henry to keep them apprised of wartime progress and the needs of the military to achieve victory. In effect Richard Henry Lee had emerged as the civilian leader of the Revolution in concert with the military leader, George Washington.

  Shortly after reaching Baltimore Richard Henry Lee received a coded message
from Arthur warning that the British planned to sail into Chesapeake Bay with a large landing force. “The eastern shore is the first object or place of landing,” Richard Henry relayed his brother’s message to Washington and Patrick Henry.

  “The movements of the enemy’s army in the Jerseys, by which the neighborhood of Philadelphia had become the seat of war, determined Congress to adjourn from thence to this town,” Richard Henry Lee explained in a note to Henry. He maintained his belief that American victory rested on keeping Virginia’s Patrick Henry involved in day-to-day military developments. Although the largest, richest, and most heavily populated state, Virginia had yet to host open warfare with British forces, and Governor Patrick Henry had not participated in the decisions of Congress affecting the war. Richard Henry knew, however, that without the support of Patrick Henry and Virginia, Washington would lose the war.

  “At this place,” Richard Henry explained to Patrick Henry, “the public business can be conducted with more deliberation and undisturbed attention than could be the case in a city subject to perpetual alarm.

  So long as the American army kept together, the enemy’s progress was extremely limited, but they knew and seized the opportunity of coming forward, which was occasioned by the greater part of the [American] army dispersing in consequence of short enlistments.… When a new army is assembled, the enemy must again narrow their bounds, and this demonstrates the necessity of every state exerting every means to bring the new levies into the field with all possible expedition.7

  Even Washington, however, had grown discouraged by then. “It is impossible,” he wrote to his brother, “to give you any idea… of my difficulties—and the constant perplexities and mortification I constantly meet with.”8 Washington seemed ready to concede defeat in the war unless he could stage a remarkable counterattack.

  Still writing from Baltimore, Richard Henry Lee appealed a second time to Patrick Henry to reinforce Washington’s army: “The British army,” he pleaded, “is at present stationed along the Delaware from above Trenton on the Jersey side, to Burlington, about 20 miles above Philadelphia. General Washington… is on the river opposite to Trenton.… If the country reinforces the general with a few thousand, so as to enable him to press the enemy’s front, it may turn out a happy circumstance.”9

  Washington, however, had devised a plan to engineer his own “happy circumstance”—without help from Patrick Henry or anyone else. In the most daring military strike of the Revolutionary War, Washington led some 2,400 troops onto a flotilla of small boats on the night of December 25 and ordered them to row through the blinding snowstorm across the ice-choked Delaware River. At eight o’clock the next morning, they reached the east bank near Trenton, New Jersey, and found the 1,400-man Hessian garrison still abed, dissuaded by the storm from posting their usual patrol. Shocked awake by the reality of their plight, the terrified Germans raced into the snow in night clothes to fire at the approaching Americans. But they were too late. Washington’s troops had battled their way up King Street through the center of Trenton and forced the Hessians to surrender.

  Cheers echoed across the American landscape as news of Washington’s triumph spread from King Street, Trenton, to Philadelphia, then to the congressional meeting house in Baltimore, northward to Boston, and southward to Charleston harbor. Washington’s startling roundup of more than 1,000 Hessian troops—in their underwear, no less—amazed the world. A small, undisciplined mob of ragtag farmers and hunters with muskets had overwhelmed two battalions of the Western world’s best-trained, best-equipped mercenaries.

  The triumph provoked laughter in the halls of Versailles, where King Louis grew convinced an alliance with Washington’s American rebels might help him defeat England and restore Canada to French rule.

  Paris and all France had welcomed Benjamin Franklin a month earlier, fêting him day and night as the great thinker-philosopher-scientist that he was, but the French court had refused to entertain him as a diplomat without assurances that the American military would prove an effective ally if France went to war with Britain.

  “The number of Hessian prisoners does not fall much short of 1,100,” Richard Henry Lee enthused in a letter to Patrick Henry. He went on to describe Washington’s subsequent march to Princeton, where he routed the British a second time—this time using a ruse that humiliated the British army and provoked even more laughter at Versailles and admiration for the American commander-in-chief.

  With intelligence that British general Howe was on the march, Washington ordered large fires built to simulate an encampment. When Howe’s troops attacked the empty camp, Washington’s men surrounded them and, according to Richard Henry Lee, “routed his troops, taking from 600 to 800 prisoners. Pursuing the fugitive, we entered Princeton, where a number of [British] officers, six or seven field pieces, and the 40th regiment were taken.”10 Washington had adopted a new type of warfare developed by American Indians on America’s forested hills but unknown to military strategists in Europe and Britain who fought on large open spaces laid bare by overcultivation.

  Confident his victory at Princeton would encourage the French to provide military aid, Washington ordered his troops to drive British forces eastward to Brunswick, where he hoped to capture a huge British arms depot while leaving western New Jersey in Patriot hands and allowing Congress to return to Philadelphia.

  “We wait in hourly expectation of receiving authentic intelligence of the total rout of the enemy’s army in Jersey and their disgraceful evacuation of that state,” Richard Henry Lee continued his regular reports to Patrick Henry. He wrote that Washington had encamped at Morristown, about twenty miles west of Brunswick, “where the enemy keep their headquarters.… A gentleman who arrived here yesterday and who passed through our army… says the men were in high spirits.… They were 12,000 strong… under marching orders and… going towards Elizabeth Town, which is between the main body of the enemy and New York.”11

  Lee then sent orders to Maryland officials on behalf of the Maritime Committee of Congress “that the State of Maryland be directed to proceed immediately to provide timber for building two thirty-six gun frigates.”12 By mid-February Richard Henry was able to boast to his brother Arthur, “We shall have a number of exceeding fine frigates at sea very soon, from 24 to 36 guns.”

  Facing increased personal dangers in Britain after the battle at Trenton, Arthur and William Lee had already started making secret preparations to flee with Richard Henry Lee’s two boys. “I am exceedingly uneasy about my poor boys,” Richard Henry admitted to Arthur, “and beg of you to get them to me in the quickest and safest manner.”13

  To that end Richard Henry prodded Congress to appoint Arthur Lee a commissioner in Paris with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane. The appointment would allow him to exit Britain with his family without interference by British authorities. For the same reasons he obtained a congressional appointment for William Lee as US commercial agent at the busy French port of Nantes, where he could oversee secret shipments of arms, ammunition, and military supplies to America. Later Congress would expand responsibilities of the Lee brothers by sending Arthur to seek loans and military assistance in Spain, while William went to Vienna and Berlin on similar missions.

  When Richard Henry Lee returned to his sister’s house in Philadelphia, a letter awaited that eased his worst fears: his brothers had escorted Richard Henry’s children out of England without incident.

  “I heard with great pleasure that my dear children were safely arrived in France,” he wrote to his sons Thomas and Ludwell. (He had a curious habit of addressing them in the third person in his joint letters to them.) “I had suffered from apprehensions both for them and their worthy uncles in a country where every consideration of virtue and justice is sacrificed to wicked resentment and views of tyranny.”

  Lee told his boys the war had made him change his ambitions for them. “Instead of the Church, I would now have [Thom]… in commerce. For this purpose if his good Uncle William should resi
de in France, my son will be employed by him as clerk or agent in some capacity, by which a temporary support may be gained and a lasting knowledge of business at the same time.… I want Thom to… learn the French language so that when he returns to his own country he might be qualified to undertake any foreign business that may be entrusted to his care.”14

  In a second letter he stated his ambitions for his younger son:

  I wish Ludwell to go deep into the study of natural and civil law and eloquence, as well as to obtain the military improvement.… My desire being that he may be able to turn either to the law or sword here, as his genius or his interest and the service of his country might point out.15

  Returning to Congress the next day, Richard Henry encountered a barrage of complaints from Washington and other Army leaders about the droves of French officers who had been appearing unexpectedly at Washington’s headquarters demanding high-level commands they insisted Silas Deane had promised them in Paris.

  Two top aides to Washington—Major Generals Nathanael Green and Henry Knox—threatened to resign, along with a score of junior officers. Washington sent an angry letter to Congress, protesting “the distress I am… laid under by the application of French officers for commission in our service.

  This evil… is a growing one… they are coming in swarms from old France and the Islands.… They seldom bring more than a commission and a passport, which, we know, may belong to a bad as well as a good officer. Their ignorance of our language and their inability to recruit men are insurmountable obstacles to their being engrafted into our Continental battalions. Our [American] officers, who… have served through the war upon pay that has hitherto not borne their expenses, would be disgusted if foreigners were put over their heads.16