Contrary to basic military doctrine, Washington had divided his forces between Manhattan and Long Island. Expecting a second, larger British landing on Manhattan, he remained there, while on Long Island his battalions braced themselves for the assault. But for days the British command under General William Howe made no move in force, not until August 27, when a furious battle was fought to the southwest of Brooklyn Heights. Washington was by then on the scene with reinforcements from Manhattan. Exhorting his men to conduct themselves like soldiers, he told them everything worth living for was at stake.
But the inexperienced Americans were outnumbered, outflanked, and overwhelmed in only a few hours. Most had never been in battle, and while many fought hard and courageously, many did not. Conceivably, as Adams speculated, had General Nathanael Greene remained one of their commanders, things would have gone differently. Ill of fever, Greene had been replaced by General John Sullivan, a former member of Congress from New Hampshire who knew nothing of the terrain and had little of Greene's ability. More than 1,000 Americans were captured, wounded, or killed, and among the prisoners were several generals, including Sullivan. British losses were perhaps 400.
Howe's forces had gone into action filled with contempt for the traitorous American rabble, and numbers of Americans were slaughtered after surrendering. One British officer happily reported, “The Hessians and our brave Highlanders gave no quarter; and it was a fine sight to see with what alacrity they dispatched the rebels with their bayonets after we had surrendered them so that they could not resist.... You know all stratagems are lawful in war, especially against such vile enemies to their King and country.”
From a hill where with a telescope he watched a Maryland regiment fight its way back to the American lines against terrible odds, Washington was heard to say, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!”
When the remaining American army fell back to the defenses on Brooklyn Heights, General Howe, remembering the cost of his assault on Bunker Hill, chose not to press the attack, then or the following day.
Meantime, the wind held north, preventing any movement of British warships up the East River to cut off escape by the Americans, and on August 29 another storm blew in. A cold, drenching rain continued through the day and into the night. Before morning, a “peculiar providential” fog set in. When daylight came and the fog began to thin, the British discovered that the Americans had vanished.
Through the night, under the cover of darkness, rain, and fog, Washington's army had been ferried across the mile-wide East River, through powerful currents, in every conceivable kind of small boat, most of them manned by Massachusetts fishermen—some 9,000 to 10,000 troops with baggage and equipment, all moving with utmost silence.
The risks involved in so difficult a withdrawal had been extreme. Much had depended on those troops that remained behind, holding the lines until the last possible moment, an assignment given to two Pennsylvania battalions under Thomas Mifflin, who was by now a major general. “Our situation was very dangerous,” an unnamed officer would write in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. “The retreat was conducted in the greatest secrecy, and by six o'clock in the morning we had everything embarked.” But the hero was Washington. “There never was a man that behaved better upon the occasion than General Washington; he was on horseback the whole night, and never left the ferry stairs 'til he had seen the whole of his troops embarked.”
• • •
NEWS OF WHAT HAPPENED did not reach Philadelphia until days later. It was only on August 27, the day of the battle of Long Island, that Congress even learned that the British had landed at Gravesend. The wait for further word seemed interminable and in such “strange uncertainty,” John Adams sensed disaster. “Have we not put too much to the hazard in sending the greatest part of the army over to Long Island from whence there is no retreat?” he pondered.
It was not until August 31 that Congress learned of the battle and of Washington's withdrawal. And though the escape had been brilliantly executed and Washington was justly praised for saving his army, the defeat on the battlefield had been overwhelming, and the effect on Congress and on people everywhere as the news spread was devastating. “In general, our generals were outgeneralled,” Adams would conclude.
Newspapers were filled with eyewitness accounts of the suffering and defeat. For days in Philadelphia the talk was of little else. Then, to compound the atmosphere of uncertainty, the captured General Sullivan appeared in the city. He had been paroled by the British to report to Congress that Admiral Lord Howe wished to confer privately about an accommodation.
Sullivan arrived on September 2, and it was on the following day, Tuesday, September 3, with the outlook as dark as it had ever been, that Jefferson decided to delay his departure no more. As it was; he had stayed three weeks longer than he had intended. Having settled his accounts, he mounted his horse, and with his young servant following behind, started for Virginia.
Adams, too, had reached a decision, as he explained to Abigail in a letter of September 4. Events having taken such a turn at Long Island, he would remain in Philadelphia. When Joseph Bass arrived the next day with the horses to take him home, it made no difference. “The panic may seize whom it will,” Adams wrote, “it will not seize me.”
• • •
WHEN JOHN SULLIVAN, a swarthy, arrogant man, appeared in Congress on September 3 to deliver Lord Howe's request for a conference, Adams was incensed. As Sullivan began his speech, Adams remarked under his breath to Benjamin Rush how much better it would have been had a musket ball at Long Island gone through Sullivan's head.
Taking the floor in protest, Adams called Sullivan a decoy duck sent to seduce Congress into renunciation of independence. But after four days of debate it was decided that a committee be sent to meet with Howe, a decision, said Caesar Rodney, made more to “satisfy some disturbed minds out of doors,” than from any expectation of bringing about peace.
Adams remained adamantly opposed, convinced Howe was up to “Machiavellian maneuvers.” But when unanimously chosen as one of a committee of three to go on the mission, he consented. “The staunch and intrepid, such as were enemies as much as myself to the measure, pushed for me, I suppose that as little evil might come of it, as possible,” he wrote almost apologetically. The other two were Franklin and Edward Rutledge. Thus, New England, the middle states, and the South were to be represented, or, as also noted, it could be seen as a trio of the oldest, the youngest, and the most stouthearted of the members of Congress.
They were to meet His Lordship on Staten Island, and on the morning of September 9, in “fine sunshine,” they set off, the whole city aware of what was happening. Franklin and Rutledge each rode in a high, two-wheeled chaise, accompanied by a servant. Adams went on horseback, accompanied by Joseph Bass. Congress, in the meanwhile, could only sit and wait, while in New York the admiral's brother, General Howe, temporarily suspended operations against the rebels.
Free of the city, out of doors and riding again, Adams felt a wave of relief from his cares and woes, even to the point of finding Edward Rutledge an acceptable companion. The road across New Jersey was filled with soldiers marching to join Washington, mostly Pennsylvania men in long brown coats. But for the “straggling and loitering” to be seen, it would have been an encouraging spectacle.
The journey consumed two days. With the road crowded, progress was slow and dusty. At New Brunswick the inn was so full, Adams and Franklin had to share the same bed in a tiny room with only one small window. Before turning in, when Adams moved to close the window against the night air, Franklin objected, declaring they would suffocate. Contrary to convention, Franklin believed in the benefits of fresh air at night and had published his theories on the question. “People often catch cold from one another when shut up together in small close rooms,” he had written, stressing “it is the frowzy corrupt air from animal substances, and the perspired matter from our bodies, which, being long confined in beds not lately used, an
d clothes not lately worn... obtains that kind of putridity which infects us, and occasions the colds observed upon sleeping in, wearing, or turning over, such beds [and] clothes.” He wished to have the window remain open, Franklin informed Adams.
“I answered that I was afraid of the evening air,” Adams would write, recounting the memorable scene. “Dr. Franklin replied, ‘The air within this chamber will soon be, and indeed is now worse than that without doors. Come, open the window and come to bed, and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my theory of colds.’ ” Adams assured Franklin he had read his theories; they did not match his own experience, Adams said, but he would be glad to hear them again.
So the two eminent bedfellows lay side-by-side in the dark, the window open, Franklin expounding, as Adams remembered, “upon air and cold and respiration and perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep.”
At Perth Amboy the morning of September 11, the three Americans were met by one of Lord Howe's officers who had crossed the narrow channel from Staten Island on the admiral's red-and-gilt barge and presented himself as a volunteer hostage. He would remain in Perth Amboy, he explained, as a guarantee that they would not be seized as prisoners. Adams told Franklin he thought the idea absurd. Franklin agreed and they insisted the officer go back with them on the barge.
Lord Howe was waiting as they came ashore at what was called Billopp's Point, at the southwestern tip of Staten Island. He was an impressive sight, spotless in the superbly tailored uniform of a Royal Navy flag officer—knee-length navy blue coat of fine wool with white lapels, white cuffs, white lace below the cuffs, gleaming gold buttons and buttonholes edged with gold, gold-hiked dress sword at his side and on his head a magnificent black cocked hat with gold edging and a black silk cockade. To the rear stood a line of Hessian Guards with fixed bayonets—German fusiliers of the Lieb Regiment with striking uniforms of blue, yellow, and red—men chosen for their height and bravery, whose tall polished silver caps made them appear taller still.
Seeing his returned officer, Howe remarked, “Gentlemen, you make me a very high compliment, and you may depend upon it, I will consider it as the most sacred of things.”
Franklin, who had known Howe in England, introduced Adams and Rutledge. There were the customary bows, after which they proceeded up a path to a large stone manor house, walking between the Hessian guards who looked, Adams remembered, “fierce as ten furies,” as they presented arms, “making all the grimaces and gestures and motions of their muskets with bayonets fixed, which I suppose etiquette requires but which we neither understood nor regarded.”
Considering the kind of military display the admiral might have provided—given the number of troops encamped still on Staten Island—or the impression he could have made had they met on board his flagship, this was an exceedingly modest show, suggesting both that the meeting was hastily arranged and that Howe, in the role of messenger of peace, felt any attempt at intimidation would be inappropriate.
The Billopp House belonged to a Tory, Christopher Billopp, and had been badly used by the Hessian Guard who were quartered there. Inside, it looked no better than a stable, except for the large parlor, where in a last-minute effort to decorate for the occasion—and dampen the smell—the floor had been spread with moss and green branches. A table was set and following a cold meal of “good claret,” ham, and mutton, the admiral commenced the meeting.
A proud, stolid man with a prominent nose and large, sad eyes, Lord Richard Howe was fifty-five years old, older than Adams judged him. He had served in His Majesty's navy since the age of fourteen. He was considered an exceptionally able officer and, by reputation, had an exceptional gift for persuasion. Like his brother, the general, he was also known to be well disposed toward Americans. He was convinced, like most Englishmen, that the great majority of Americans remained loyal to George III and that such men as the three seated before him at the table were an insignificant minority. It was with expressions of affection for America that he chose to open the discussion, stressing in particular his regard for Massachusetts.
Eighteen years earlier, during the French and Indian War, an older brother, Brigadier George Augustus, Viscount Howe, one of the outstanding British soldiers of the time, had been killed at Ticonderoga. The great William Pitt, then Britain's Secretary of State, had called him “a complete model of military virtue,” and the Massachusetts Assembly had provided funds for a marble memorial in Westminster Abbey, an honor that Admiral Lord Howe said he esteemed “above all.” He felt for America, said the admiral, as he did for a brother. “If America should fail, I should feel and lament it like the loss of a brother.”
With a smile, Franklin replied, “My Lord, we will do our utmost endeavors to save your Lordship that mortification.”
But the admiral did not smile. All would have been better, he observed, had he only arrived before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Declaration had “changed the ground.” Were it given up, however, he might possibly “effect the King's purposes ... to restore peace and grant pardons,” and thus such discussions as they were having could lead to a “re-union upon terms honorable and advantageous to the colonies as well as to Great Britain.” Was there “no way of treading back this step of independency?”
It must be understood, he continued, that he could not confer with them as members of Congress—that he “could not acknowledge that body which was not acknowledged by the King, whose delegate he was,” as his secretary recorded in the notes of the meeting—and that he therefore could only consider them “merely as gentlemen of great ability and influence,” private persons and British subjects.
To this Adams immediately responded: “Your Lordship may consider me in what light you please,” Adams said, “and indeed, I should be willing to consider myself, for a few moments, in any character which would be agreeable to your Lordship, except that of a British subject.”
Further, as Howe's secretary, Henry Strachey, noted, Adams expressed “warmly” his determination “not to depart from the idea of independency.” Turning to Franklin and Rutledge, Howe remarked gravely, “Mr. Adams is a decided character,” the emphasis apparently on the word “decided.”
Years afterward Adams would better understand the gloomy look on Howe's face, when he learned that before leaving London, Howe had been given a list of those American rebels who were to be granted pardons. John Adams was not on the list. He was to hang.
In the course of nearly three hours, Howe did most of the talking. But, as the committee would report to Congress, it had soon become obvious that Howe had no authority other than to grant pardons should America submit, which, as Franklin told him, meant he had nothing really to offer.
He was sorry that the gentlemen had had “the trouble of coming so far to so little purpose,” Howe said at last. If the colonies could not give up “independency,” negotiation was impossible.
“They met, they talked, they parted,” wrote one of Howe's staff, “and now nothing remains but to fight it out against a set of the most determined hypocrites and demagogues, compiled of the refuse of the colonies, that ever were permitted by Providence to be the scourge of a country.”
The Declaration of Independence had passed a first test. The war would go on.
• • •
THE BRITISH MOVED at once. On the morning of Sunday, September 15, with favorable winds and tide this time, five British warships sailed into the East River and commenced a thunderous, point-blank bombardment of American shore defenses on Manhattan. “So terrible and so incessant a roar of guns few even in the army and navy had ever heard before,” wrote the admiral's secretary.
In a letter to Congress, Washington had earlier explained his intention of abandoning New York, and his larger conclusion that he and his army must avoid pitched battles with such a disciplined and numerous enemy, but rather fight a defensive war. But what happened when bargeloads of British and Hessian infantry began crossing from Long Isl
and, coming through the smoke of the cannonade to land at Kips Bay, was no orderly evacuation of the kind Washington intended. Since the escape from Brooklyn Heights, militia had been deserting in droves. Now those who remained abandoned their entrenchments and fled, never firing a shot. Entire units turned and ran. Galloping to the scene on horseback, Washington charged up and down among the fleeing men, trying to rally them to stand and fight. Outraged, Washington lost his celebrated self-control and began cursing and striking at officers with his riding crop.
Muskets, knapsacks, wagons, and cannon were left behind in the pell-mell rush to get away. Washington could only move with the troops, retreating rapidly northward, up the island of Manhattan to the rocky defenses of Harlem Heights.
For Washington and the American army it was a disastrous, shameful day, and when the news reached Philadelphia, the effect on Congress was decided. As Samuel Chase wrote, “Our affairs here wear a very unfavorable aspect.”
His army was falling apart, Washington informed John Hancock in a bleak letter from Harlem Heights on September 25. For the moment, the British were again doing nothing, but unless “some speedy and effectual measures” were adopted by Congress, “our cause will be lost.” The war, it was clear, was not to be “the work of a day.” Short enlistments would no longer answer. There must be an army built on “a permanent footing,” a standing army.
To place any dependence upon militia is, assuredly, resting on a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge, and superior in arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows.
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