THE GREAT BATTLE NEAR ELMIRA
One of the first obstacles to the army, was a very high hill at the
edge of the river. To avoid this, all but the infantry crossed the
river twice, being supported and guarded against hostile attack by
Maxwell’s New Jersey regiments. The other brigades marched over the
hill, and camp was made on the site of the Indian town of Chemung
which the advanced detachments had destroyed two weeks before.
Our fathers thought few articles of food more delicious than green corn
roasted in the ear. So the maize in the fields near by helped to make a
good supper. In addition, the army enjoyed a feast of potatoes, beans,
cucumbers, watermelons, squashes and other vegetables which were here
in great plenty. It was the season of ripeness.
Towards the end of July, there had gathered together, whites and reds,
Indians, Tories, Royal Greens and British regulars, numbering over
a thousand men, at Newtown, the Indian town near Baldwin’s Creek,
opposite to the present village of Wellsburg on the Erie, and at
Lohmansville on the Lackawanna railroad. Here they were for weeks hard
at work. Tearing down the Indian houses, they built, with the old and
fresh-cut logs, a fortification that extended up the slope of the hill
to the north and along the western ridge nearer the Chemung river.
But where was the enemy? It was known that the raid of Brant, down the
Walkill valley to the Delaware, had failed to draw Sullivan from his
main purpose. The other parties of Tories and Indians had been equally
impotent. What then should be done to drive back the avenging army and
save their villages and crops?
Evidently the only safety was to join all forces. At a great council
of Tories and Iroquois, held where Geneva now stands, it was decided
to send wampum belts again to every and all tribes and bands of the
Iroquois, and bid them assemble to oppose the invaders in the Chemung
valley. Some of the parties that started in response to this call
arrived too late. The notorious John Butler, who had led the expedition
against Wyoming, was in command of the mixed forces of King George,
red, black, and white, and the strategy and tactics employed by him
showed the combination of the crafts of both savage and civilized man.
On Saturday evening, August 28, Sullivan’s advance pickets heard the
sound of axes and saw many fires brightly burning along the hills just
beyond Baldwin’s Creek. A scout sent out a day or two before, reported
that the enemy were fortified just beyond the creek and west of the
Indian village of Newtown. The march must now be made with a constant
reference to ambuscade and with the greatest wariness. “Above all, no
Braddocking.”
On Sunday, August 29, the day broke with every indication of very hot
weather. The air was close and heavy. The army moved at nine o’clock,
the riflemen being well scattered in front of Hand’s light corps, so as
to act as scouts and skirmishers, while every man in the brigade moved
with the greatest caution. Hardly had they gone a mile, before they
discovered several Indians in front. One of these fired and then all
fled. Going forward still further a mile, the riflemen found the ground
low, marshy and well fitted for the shelter of hiding Indians. Moving
slowly and alertly, they discovered another party of Indians, who as
before, fired and retreated. Evidently their purpose was to lure the
Americans into ambush.
Major Parr, commander of the rifle corps, now determined to advance no
further without reconnoitering every foot of the ground. Ordering his
men to halt, he sent one of them to climb the highest tree and survey
the whole situation. The scout was unable at first to discover anything
peculiar, but peering intently ahead, he made out a line of brushwood
artfully concealed with green boughs and trees. Starting from near the
Chemung river on the left, it ran up the slope of a high hill to the
right, for possibly half a mile. Here had been the Indian village of
Newtown, consisting of twenty-five or thirty bark houses, but most of
the houses had given way to timber entrenchments and to the camp inside
of them, though two or three were left so as to form, as it were,
bastions for the newly-built fort.
Here the enemy had gathered to make their determined stand. Their
force, numbering about nine hundred warriors from five tribes, had
been reinforced by between two and three hundred white men, Tories and
Canadians, drilled and aided by fifteen regular soldiers of the British
army, and commanded by Butler, McDonald, and Brant, while two or three
hundred more warriors were soon expected.
Such a position was a formidable obstacle to the advance even of an
army provided with artillery. The right flank of the British rested
on the river, their left on the side of a hill, while immediately in
front of them and for a space of about one hundred yards was a clear
field which their fire could sweep easily. Between this field and the
Continental lines was a stream, since called Baldwin’s Creek, and then
very difficult to cross. On the American right lay a valley so low and
marshy that an attack in flank would seem nearly impossible. Thus the
place was evidently well chosen.
Nearly the whole story of Indian craft in war is told in the one word,
concealment. To hide their breastworks with the hope that the invaders
might come very near to them without their being discovered, the Tories
and Indians had laid boughs and greenery over the front and top. They
had even planted out in front, here and there, fresh young trees, so
as to give the appearance of primitive and untouched forests. They had
stuck these young trees in the ground outside the breastworks and had
thoroughly cleaned up the ground, so that no chips or evidence of human
industry were left lying about. They hoped also that Sullivan’s troops
would rush for plunder into the few Indian houses left standing outside
the lines and would thus be entrapped.
Evidently, also it was their design that the Continentals, moving in a
narrow defile and strung out in a line several miles long, should be
caught between the river and the entrenchments, while the Indians in
ambuscade could pour in their fire. They hoped to “Braddock” Sullivan’s
force by stampeding the pack horses and cattle. On the high hill across
the river, and on the summit to the northward, watching parties were
stationed by Brant so that at the right moment they could quickly
descend. Then by frightening the animals, sending them flying in every
direction, they could complete the destruction of the army thus huddled
together. With so many chances in their favor, the Tories and Indians
hoped to give the Continental army such a check as to compel its return.
All these plans were frustrated by the great caution of Sullivan and
the alertness of his lieutenants. When Major Parr, about noon, reported
to his superior the situation of the enemy, Hand sent forward the
riflemen to occupy the banks of the creek, within one hundred yards of
the breastworks and under cover. The light brigade then moved to within
three hundred yards and deployed in line of battle. Sullivan coming
forward with the main army, sent Ogden’s flanking division along the
river to the left of Hand’s light brigade and further to the west. He
ordered Maxwell to remain in the rear in reserve. For a flank attack,
he detached two brigades, Poor’s New Hampshire and Clinton’s New York,
to move to the right and north. They were to make their way up the
swampy valley, and gain, if possible, the enemy’s left and rear. In
order to divert attention from this flank attack, Hand’s light corps
opened in the center, while Proctor’s nine guns were run forward and
posted on a hillock, directly in front of the angle of the breastworks
and about two hundred yards distance from them. As everything had to be
done in a rough country in the woods, on a fearfully hot day, it took
several hours to get the batteries and the brigades into position.
Then opened a lively fusilade, of small arms, which held the attention
of the enemy. It was proposed to allow until three o’clock for Poor and
Clinton to reach the top of the hill (now called Sullivan’s Hill, on
which the lofty monument stands), whence they were to turn and charge
down upon the enemy. Yet Sullivan listened long in vain for the sound
of musketry upon the distant right wing, notwithstanding that it was
Poor’s intention to advance with unloaded guns and charge with the
bayonet, for Wayne’s handsome work at Stony Point on July 16, only
six weeks before, had stirred the army with an ambition to achieve a
similar victory with cold steel. Colonel Cilley, who commanded a New
Hampshire regiment, had been with Wayne on the Hudson and was now with
Poor.
At three o’clock, Sullivan thinking it not wise to wait longer, gave
order to Proctor to open fire with all his guns. The two howitzers,
the little Coehorn and the six cannon opened with a terrific roar,
while the light corps were ordered to be in readiness for a charge, as
soon as the firing of the flanking column was heard. It was intended
that the cannonade should be the prelude to a general advance on front
and flank. The guns grew hot with firing, however, before anything
was heard from the New Hampshire men, who had been obliged to face
unexpected difficulties and especially to flounder through swamps, far
deeper than anyone had supposed.
Proctor’s round shot, grape and bombs not only cut and tore the forest
trees to the terror of the savages, but did terrible execution. In
many places within the enemy’s line the bloody proofs of the terrific
and destructive power of the shell fire were afterwards amply evident.
Brant, their mighty leader, found it was all he could do to hold his
painted warriors together. Suddenly, rather to their relief, than
otherwise, runners from the hilltop came to inform their chief that the
enemy had made an attack in force on their left flank, driven in the
party of watchers, and were moving forward on the main body. Glad to
escape the terrific missiles of the artillery, and to give his braves
congenial occupation and one more suitable to Indian warfare, Brant led
off a large party, possibly the majority of his warriors, to repel this
new danger.
Turning now to the hilltop on the right and to the flanking operations,
we behold the most startling episode of the battle, when for a moment
it looked as if a cloud of red men was about to overwhelm this one
isolated body of their foes. The second New Hampshire regiment under
Colonel Reid, separated from the others in the brigade, suddenly found
themselves partly surrounded by a semi-circle of rifles and hatchets.
Their thin scattered line of riflemen, sent out to scour the woods as
skirmishers, and at this time only a few yards in front of them, was
quickly driven back before a whirlwind of fire. With unloaded muskets,
the destruction of Reid’s regiment seemed certain. Nevertheless the
salvation of the Americans was in the Indians firing too high. They
were too certain of victory to keep cool and take sure aim.
This was the situation--Dearborn’s Third New Hampshire, Alden’s Sixth
Massachusetts, Cilley’s First New Hampshire, and Du Bois’s two hundred
and fifty picked New Yorkers, on the extreme right flank, and far to
the northwest of the main body, made up, with the Second New Hampshire,
the brigade. These regiments moving in the woods, in a country which
no white man had ever penetrated, had become quite separated from each
other. Poor, the commander, hoping to completely outflank the enemy,
was far ahead on the right, too distant to be heard from. Clinton’s
brigade, consisting of the Third New York under Gansevoort, the Fifth
New York commanded by Du Bois, the Fourth New York led by Livingston,
and the Second New York on the right under Van Cortlandt, formed the
reserve, but they were still far below in the rear. The regiments
were all small, numbering each about three hundred men. The great and
imminent danger was that Brant’s seven hundred warriors might wholly
overwhelm the men of one regiment before help could reach them from
their comrades.
Such disaster seemed now to threaten. Starting his men on the run,
Brant had reached the hill top, just as the men of Reid’s Second New
Hampshire, nearly out of breath, and toiling amid the terrific heat,
were only half way up the rough face of the rather steep eastern
slope. At the extreme left of their brigade and nearest the British
breastworks, which were a few hundred rods to the westward, Reid’s
men found themselves far away and out of sight from their comrades in
the other regiments, which were further to the right--east and north.
Their guns were unloaded while their ears were deafened with the yell
of hundreds of exultant savages who felt sure of scalps. In a moment
more they were face to face with the foe. With their empty muskets,
defeat and massacre seemed certain. They realized that their brigadier,
Poor, was far away to the right, pressing his troops on to the attack,
hoping to close in upon the enemy and prevent their retreat.
There was but one thing to do. It was to fix bayonets and charge. Reid
shouted the order. His men, jaded as they were, pushed further up the
hill, driving the enemy for a moment before them and getting a bare
chance, in the momentary lull, to load their guns. Then began the usual
fusilade among the trees. Yet it was still a desperate uncertainty and
the enemy outnumbered them.
Not far away, Dearborn, with the Third New Hampshire, hearing the
firing, realized at once the peril in which Reid was. Without waiting
a moment, he took the responsibility, without orders, to right about
face. He did so, supporting Reid and striking the enemy on the flank,
while Clinton, equally alert, pushed forward two of his regiments. His
object was to support the New Hampshires and if possible gain Brant’s
rear.
Then ensued a severe fight in the woods, which from the nature of the
situation could not last very long. Brant seeing his plans upset,
ordered his men to retreat and save themselves.
At the same time, further down on the flats, Sullivan having heard the
report of the guns on the hill, at once ordered an advance along the
whole line. With cheers our men rushed over the entrenchments, and then
a running fight of several miles, indeed all the way into the limits of
the modern city of Elmira, ensued. Nevertheless the enemy were able to
escape, being much more familiar with the country. They carried away
their wounded in canoes up the river, and made off with, or concealed
some of the bodies of their dead.
The battlefield was fully occupied by our trains and camp, and about
six o’clock in the afternoon, when the pursuit stopped, three cheers
told the story of another American victory. The known loss of the enemy
was thirteen whites and many Indians. Twenty-six corpses of red men
were found upon the field. Two prisoners, one a negro and one a Tory
with his face painted black, were taken. General Sullivan reported
three killed and twenty-nine wounded, five of whom afterwards died. All
the patriot dead and most of the wounded were New Hampshire men, and
all the casualties except four were in Poor’s brigade, Reid’s regiment
suffering the worst.
In reality this was one of the great decisive battles of the
Revolution, for it broke forever the power of the Iroquois. Throughout
the war, except in small parties, neither Tories nor savages were
able to gather for raids. As a military factor the warriors of the
Six Nations never again appeared in or with an army. Sullivan and
his soldiers had ended the flank attacks on the army, and opened the
way for civilization into western New York and Pennsylvania. Indeed,
for over half a century, or until the railways dictated the lines of
travel, “Sullivan’s Road” was the main highway into New York from
Pennsylvania.