From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  And now Washington was busy forming a line of battle on the edge of a marsh. General Greene’s division, including the Virginians, was to form its right wing, and that was where they were going now as they clambered, faint with heat, up this rise to take their position.

  That poor, sorry Lee, Jonathan thought. There had been rumors lately, in the officers’ circles, that Lee was trying to discredit General Washington, to betray him. The air was always full of such intrigue and speculation. Jonathan chose not to believe that Lee was a traitor. An overrated tactician, perhaps, but surely no traitor. At any rate, he had retreated, and had brought the battle to this state of affairs, and now the Virginians were climbing up one side of a rise, on the other side of which the battle seemed to be raging full force, and now they would be in battle in this inferno of a summer day, and Jonathan once again would be responsible for that one little corner of battle he could see and understand.

  Now the fence was down and the ranks began moving forward again, still further thinned by heat-strokes. Jonathan looked down the line at his men. Most were so heat-flushed and gaping-mouthed that if they had fear, it could not show through their physical misery.

  Close on the left now a tremendous artillery barrage was under way. Smoke and dust hung over the field like a choking fog.

  “Fix bayonets!” was the first order to come down the line. And as Steuben had taught them to do, they all at once slipped the steel spikes out of their scabbards and locked them with twisting wrists onto their sunhot musket muzzles.

  “Music!” The drums started rapping their ominous, blood-stirring cadences.

  “Arms at port, march!” And with their weapons aslant across their chests the Virginians toiled obediently through the sand and heat into the drifting banks of smoke. Jonathan’s eyes watered and the membranes of his nostrils stung. Every breath was an assault on his lungs. In the pall of smoke he could see only the sere, sparse grass and the limp weeds before his feet; the shape of a dark bush or scrub tree would materialize in front of him, and he would expect it to be a Redcoat or a dragoon.

  But the enemy did not appear yet in the choking yellow smoke, and soon Greene’s brigades were on line in control of this high ground. By now the sun was low in the west, glowing a sullen orange.

  The heaviest action, judging by the noise of it, seemed to be down toward the left. Most of the smoke seemed to be drifting from there. Now and then through a rent in that curtain, Jonathan could see rows of scarlet uniforms, or winking yellow muzzleblasts. A staff officer galloped along the Virginians’ front, pointing down that way and exulting: “What luck! We’ve got the buggers enfiladed!” And he rode through the ranks back down the hill, shouting for artillery.

  In a minute, caissons came rattling up the slope behind the Virginians, the horses surging to pull their loads up through the sandy ground. The pieces were unlimbered and chocked and aimed straight down along the enemy’s ranks. The British down there were not advancing; they had been fought to a standstill by the troops and cannon of the left wing. And now the artillery here on the hill opened up on the exposed flanks of those Redcoats, cutting them down in swatches. It was like a nightmare, all outlines blurred by a smoke as thick and sour as Hell’s brimstone. The cannon crashed repeatedly here on the high ground, while the artillery of the left wing thumped down there, and the British ranks at the bottom of the slope were trapped in the bombardment from two angles. The ground down there was strewn with fallen Englishmen, lying inert or crawling, while the ranks of them kept wavering, re-forming, trying to advance. Once again Jonathan was stirred by amazement at what those British Regulars could endure.

  And now he saw that a wide front of the Redcoats—perhaps a battalion of them, though he could see only fragments of the picture through the haze—was wheeling left and coming toward this high ground, led by a saber-swinging officer. They were apparently coming this way to outflank the force in front of them, or were simply charging straight against this artillery that was devastating them. It was a brave mad move if they were coming here; they had a long way to come, in the open, in the breathless furnace-heat of the slope, hidden by nothing but drifts of smoke. Jonathan turned to his captains. “Stand this ground!” he yelled. “Prepare to fire in volley! But don’t shoot till you can see the pimples on their chins!”

  Some of the men grinned at the sound of this command. Jonathan had thought it up at Germantown: words chosen to make the oncoming juggernaut ranks of scarlet seem less formidable. At times like these it was hard to remember that Redcoats were vulnerable flesh and blood, as well as guts and steel.

  A slight, hot breeze was stirring the smoke as the sun descended, and now much of the main front could be seen; it was more than a half-mile long, stretching away across the main road, in and out of copses of brushy growth, tall trees, morasses, orchards. A bridge across the low ground was packed with British infantry and light-horse. Now and then the smoke clouds would part and Jonathan could see a jutting structure among the trees that apparently was Monmouth Court House, more than a mile away. The masses of British units did not seem to be advancing anywhere, except the grenadiers tramping resolutely up the slope toward the Virginians. Coming up to meet the hail of lead, which now was poised to fall upon them.

  But now a quicker motion down the slope, off to the right, caught Jonathan’s eye. It was a squadron of British light cavalry coming around the marching grenadiers to lead the charge up the hill. Jonathan’s heartbeat quickened. Cavalry was always a fearsome and stunning sight, sweeping across a field: the great horses, blacks and bays and sorrels and grays, racing forward under the spur, too dumb and disciplined to fear bullets, ridden stirrup-to-stirrup by reckless young men whose own courage was magnified by the speed and power they had at their command; Jonathan himself was enough of a rider and horse-racer and fox-hunter to know the precipitous kind of power they must feel. In battle he and his men had never yet faced a charge of horse, and it frightened him. They came so fast there was hardly time for firing and reloading. And every man, from childhood, had known to get out of the way of a running horse. Jonathan was afraid his men would flee before this; already they were looking confused and irresolute.

  So he ran a few paces out past the front rank toward the oncoming cavalry, pointed his sword toward the plunging, thundering wall of horseflesh, bellowing:

  “Ready and aim! And no man o’ mine dast miss anything so big as a horse!”

  They came on. Jonathan’s heart was slamming. They were a hundred yards away; their hoof-falls were strangely soft in the deep sand, but now he could hear the snorts and their slumping breath and the jingle of metal as they came through the smoke. The riders were swishing sabers around their heads. At seventy yards their commander began a deep-throated war cry that was taken up in chorus by the rest:

  “Yooooooooooo!”

  Jonathan responded, unthinking, with the wild, high-pitched, half-Indian yodel of the frontiersman, and the Virginians all joined in with the blood-curdling ululation, heartened by it, purging their own fears by it:

  “Eeeeyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!”

  To his astonishment, the horses shied at the shrill sound; they flung their heads, wild-eyed; some reared, breaking the impetus of the rush. Those behind virtually ran up the backs of those in front; and at that moment, so thrilled by their own shrieking that they forgot to wait for the command to fire, the Virginians in the front ranks began discharging their muskets. They may have been resisting a cavalry charge, in tactical terms, but in their own quickened minds, they were simply stopping a runaway herd. The animals, first terrified by the hideous wail and now stung and punctured by musketballs, were stumbling, rearing, crumbling back on their cruppers, going every way but forward; their riders thus were transformed suddenly from bellowing demons into mere riders out of control of their mounts, helpless, frightened, and vulnerable. It was like mayhem at a horsefair now: lunging bodies, grunts, whinnying, spraying sand and roiling dust, flailing hooves, ears back, teeth bared, the thud of gre
at bodies falling, legbones and ribs snapping, lost swords twirling through the air, brown beast-eyes wild with pain and terror.

  “Second ranks, FIRE!” Jonathan thought to yell in the face of this appalling spectacle. They delivered a second volley, and more horses wheeled and fell. Cavalrymen in their short red coats groaned and sobbed and tried to disentangle themselves from the crush and surge of their tumbling beasts, or were shot down as they tried to rise from the ground and use their pistols. Some were dragged away, caught in their stirrups, others were galloping away, in or out of control of their mounts.

  Lord God, Jonathan thought, eyes bugging with disbelief, we broke a cavalry charge!

  That done, the rest was easy. Infantry seemed like a shooting practice now. The 8th Regiment fired volley after volley and reloaded with the Prussian precision Von Steuben had taught them, even though every breath was a scorching torture and their vision was blurred with sweat and the tears of smarting eyes; and soon the slope in front of the Virginians was a carrion heap of wounded, twitching, uncomprehending horses, some struggling to rise on their forelegs, and of dying men lying supine on hot sand with their forearms flung over their shattered faces, leaking good English blood into the New Jersey sands.

  And after the assault was repulsed, Jonathan as usual was sunk almost unbearably in remorse and pity, exhausted, miserable as a child, smoke-choked and fatigued almost to the point of collapse.

  The Battle of Monmouth was ending. Washington tried to form a counterattack with his spent forces. But he simply ran out of daylight. In the dusk the armies disengaged and gathered up those who had fallen victim to wounds and heat. Sometime in the middle of the night Clinton’s army crept away. It reminded Jonathan of Charles Town, when this same General Clinton had taken his soldiers off the island and the fleet had cut its cables and sailed off in darkness.

  In the morning when the Americans awoke, sleeping with their muskets on the sandy ground, there was no British army.

  The day after the battle, a woman camp-follower named Mary Hayes, smeared with mud and blood, was brought before General Washington and her story was told. She had been a water carrier for her husband’s crew of cannoneers. When her husband was shot down before her eyes, she had taken his place as loader for the duration of the battle. Washington named the sturdy Irishwoman a sergeant on the spot; the cannoneers nicknamed her Moll Pitcher and spread her fame throughout the army.

  And thus on that day Jonathan saw a widow in triumph and a general in disgrace. General Charles Lee was relieved of command and returned to the dumb companionship of his trusted hounds. He had fought his last battle. Rumor was that he would be court-martialed for cowardice—or even treason.

  July 4, 1778

  LUCY BOUNDED INTO THE HOUSE FROM THE YARD, YELLING, “Mama! Papa! Come see!” Then, as if remembering suddenly the new ladylike demeanor she was trying to attain, she slowed to a walk in the hallway, straightened her posture, and carried herself quietly into the study looking, except for a slight swagger in the attitude of the shoulders, quite feminine. All the windows were open to admit some breeze into the high-ceilinged room where her parents sat. John Clark was at his writing desk and Mrs. Clark was on a settee with a letter-box on her knees. They were looking up at Lucy and starting to set aside their papers. “Come see,” she said in a quiet voice now. “Edmund’s done something for the Fourth of July. Come, please.”

  They followed her out across the driveway and into the shade of the big trees in the yard. Edmund and Billy were standing at attention under a huge oak. Behind them stood Elizabeth and Fanny, squirming with excitement. York stood behind a tree behind the girls. Edmund held a sword, his father’s old militia saber, upright against his right shoulder. Billy stood holding up Edmund’s flintlock long rifle, which was gleaming in the sun-dappled light. It was several inches taller than he was. In front of Billy, stuck in the ground, was a forked stick. “Stand there, please,” Edmund told them, turning his head stiffly. Then he looked severely at Billy and said, “Load.”

  Billy, his heels together and back stiff, lifted the powder horn that hung around his neck and poured a charge down the barrel. Swiftly, then, as if he had been doing this all his life, he pulled a ball and patch from his shot bag, reached high to push them into the muzzle with his thumb, and then whisked the ramrod out from under the rifle barrel and slid it down the muzzle in one sure, straight motion, then tamped twice, whisked it out, and replaced it. Then he lifted the rifle to his waist and poured priming powder into the pan. All this had taken but twenty seconds and he had not left his posture of attention. His parents looked at the two boys with some wonderment, and apprehension, as Billy had never used a loaded firearm before, to their knowledge.

  “Now, ready and aim,” Edmund commanded, and as Billy strained with a contorted mouth to swing the heavy gun up and settle it in the fork of the stick, Edmund pointed the sword toward a distant elm. Upon its trunk, some twenty-five yards away, they now saw a pinkish speck: a tiny square of paper fixed to the tree trunk. John Clark’s mouth dropped open and he started to say something, because beyond that tree lay a fenced pasture full of his precious army beef cattle. York, behind his own tree, had his hands over his ears. But Edmund was saying now as Billy cocked the gun with his small hand and squinted down the long barrel:

  “In celebration of the second anniversary of our independence, and in the honor of our brothers Jonathan and George and John Clark: Fire!”

  The powder flared and puffed, then the rifle crashed and its recoil shoved Billy’s upper body back five inches.

  Immediately, then, Dickie stepped out from behind the distant elm and came around it to look at the little target pinned to it. And even as the acrid smoke drifted away from the rifle, they heard Dickie yelp:

  “Great Haunt! You won’t believe your eyes!” And he came running to them. His mother rolled her eyes and touched her throat, gasping:

  “He was right behind that tree … He …”

  “Lookahere!” Dickie cried, and thrust his hand under their noses. In his palm lay the paper, a rectangle of about four by five inches, with the Union Jack of Great Britain drawn on it with red and blue paints.

  And in the very center, at the junction of the crosses, gaped a ragged-edged bullet hole.

  The girls had come close to look. York had crept out from behind his tree, and was coming forth with his face full of curiosity. Edmund and Billy still stood by their posts, beaming, and the parents looked at them aghast.

  “I been teachin’ him in the woods,” Edmund said. “Give him a few years till he can lift that thing without busting his guts, and he’ll be good as me.”

  BEHIND JOHNNY’S CLOSED EYELIDS BLAZED AN ORANGE glow, swimming with white specks. The sun baked his chest. His breeches were soaked with sweat. The planks of the Jersey’s decks were hard under his bony rump and elbows. His chin was sunk on his chest and he breathed through his mouth, both to shut out the stink of decay and disease and to inhale as much sunny air as possible into his lungs.

  Johnny believed his lungs were improving because of these sunny days on deck; he believed it even though one damp night of cold harbor air would make his lungs tickle and hurt and fill up with bloody mucus again. This summer, he thought, I will become well in the lungs. I have to do that or the next winter will kill me.

  The deck of the prison ship was like an anvil and the sun was like a hammer, and he lay between them, suffering the full weight of the sun instead of seeking shade, because sunlight, he believed, was his only cure. It’ll cure me or kill me, that’s all right either way, he thought. I had rather be dead o’ parching right now than drown in my own snot come winter.

  He would think like that for a while, then he would find himself beside the Brandywine with his soul full of bittersweetness, the sunlight through willow-leaves dappling and dancing on his thighs, while a thousand voices droned like bumblebees. Then he would open his eyes to the glare of the sun again and there would be the gray, splitting, weathered wood o
f the old ship’s oaken taffrail a few feet above; the murmur of voices would still be around his swimming head, and he would know where he was for a while, and would consciously gasp the hot air for a while longer until he would drowse again and the dream of Brandywine would come. It was as if he had been born at Brandywine and there were no dreams from any earlier time.

  “Ahhhh,” said a mournful voice nearby, “here they come, God rest their souls.”

  “Aye,” said someone else with equal mournfulness. “God rest.”

  Johnny did not have to look; he knew they were talking about the corpses. In this July heat, the enlisted men in the holds were dying of a dozen diseases, or simply from heat and suffocation. The dead-boat was making three or four trips a day now. Even in the less crowded gun room, two Yankee officers had died in their bunks the last week.

  Despite himself, Johnny opened his eyes and took a sidelong look forward to the gangway where prisoners, two by two, were carrying shrouded corpses to take them down the ladder to the docking raft off the starboard side. The soldiers were half-naked, bearded, their scrawny bodies so gray with filth and slick with sweat they looked like field slaves or coal diggers as they carried their pitiful burdens through the gangway and toiled down out of sight over the side with them.