SYSTEMATIC WAR WITH BRITAIN BEGUN.
Within twenty-four hours after General Howe embarked his army, the
American Commander-in-Chief developed his matured plan to anticipate any
design of General Clinton to occupy New York City. The great number of
fugitive royalists who accompanied Howe’s fleet and encumbered even the
decks of battleships with their personal effects, and the necessity of
consulting the wishes of very influential families among their number,
were substantial reasons for the selection of Halifax as the destination
of the ships. But of still greater importance was the reorganization of
his army, and a new supply of munitions of war, in place of those which
had been expended, or abandoned on account of the siege of Boston. Time
was also required for the preparation and equipment of any new
expedition, whether in support of Carleton in Canada, or to move
southward.
Washington did not even enter Boston until he started General Heath with
five regiments and part of the artillery for New York. On the twentieth
the Commander-in-Chief entered the city.
The British fleet was weatherbound in Nantasket Roads for ten days; but
on the twenty-seventh day of March, when it finally went to sea, the
entire American army, with the exception of the Boston garrison, was
placed under orders to follow the advance division. General Sullivan
marched the same day upon which he received orders; another division
marched April 3d, and on the 4th General Spencer left with the last
brigade, Washington leaving the same night.
In order to anticipate any possible delay of the troops in reaching
their destination, he had already requested Governor Trumbull, of
Connecticut, to reënforce the New York garrison with two thousand men
from Western Connecticut; and he also instructed the commanding officer
in that city to apply to the Provincial Convention, or to the Committee
of Safety of New Jersey, to furnish a thousand men for the same purpose.
In advising Congress of this additional expense, incurred through his
own forethought, but without authority of Congress, he wrote thus
discreetly: “Past experience and the lines in Boston and on Boston Neck
point out the propriety and suggest the necessity of keeping our enemies
from gaining possession and making a lodgment.”
The Continental Army had entered upon its first active campaign; but
before Washington left Cambridge he arranged for the assembling of
transports at Norwich, Conn., thereby to save the long coastwise march
to New York; and digested a careful itinerary of daily marches, by which
the different divisions would not crowd one upon another.
Quartermaster-General Mifflin was intrusted with the duty of preparing
barracks, quarters, and forage for the use of the troops on their
arrival, and all the governors of New England were conferred with as to
the contingencies of British raids upon exposed sea-coast towns, after
removal of the army from Boston. A careful system of keeping the Pay
Accounts of officers was also devised, and this, with the examination of
an alleged complicity of officers with the purchase of army supplies,
added to the preliminary work of getting his army ready for the best of
service in garrison or the field. Two companies of artillery, with shot
and shell, were detailed to report to General Thomas, who had been
ordered by Congress to Canada, _vice_ General Lee ordered southward.
Washington’s journey to New York was via Providence, Norwich, and New
London, in order to inspect and hasten the departure of the troops.
A reference to the situation in that city is necessary to an
appreciation of the development which ensued immediately upon the
arrival of the Commander-in-Chief.
William Tryon, who subsequently invaded Connecticut twice, and left his
devastating impress upon Danbury, Ridgefield, New Haven, Fairfield,
Norwalk, and Green Farms, was the royal Governor of New York. It is
interesting to recall the antecedents of this governor. He had been
Governor of North Carolina once, and attempted a part similar to that so
foolishly played by Governor Gage at Lexington and Concord. Until this
day, the people of North Carolina will cite the “Battle of Alamance,”
which was a pretty sharp fight between Tryon’s forces and the yeomanry
of the “Old North State,” on the sixteenth day of May, 1771, as the
first blood shed in resistance to the usurpations of the royal
prerogative. It was the same William Tryon, in person, temperament, and
methods, who governed New York City in 1776, and Washington knew him
thoroughly. The royalists and patriots of New York City, in the absence
of a controlling force of either British or Continental troops,
commingled daily. A few British men-of-war really controlled its waters;
but the city was practically at rest. There prevailed a general
understanding that each party should retain its own views; that the
officers of the Crown should keep within the technical line of their
official duty, and that the citizens would not interfere. Congress had
no troops to spare, and there was quite a general suspension of arming,
except to supply the regiments already in the field.
An extraordinary coincidence of the arrival of General Clinton from
Halifax, with a small force, and the arrival, on the same day, of
General Lee, from Connecticut, with about fifteen hundred volunteers,
brought this condition of armed neutrality to an end. Clinton had
positive orders to “destroy all towns that refused submission.” When
Clinton cast anchor at Sandy Hook and communicated with Governor Tryon,
and learned the facts, he judiciously made the official courtesy due to
the governor his plausible excuse for entering the harbor at all, “being
ordered southward.” Lee, doubtful of Clinton’s real purpose, fortified
Brooklyn Heights back of Governor’s Island, and began also to fortify
the city, at the south end of the island, still called “The Battery.”
Clinton followed his orders, sailed southward, visited Lord Dunmore in
Chesapeake Bay, joined Earl Cornwallis at Wilmington, N.C., in May, on
the arrival of that officer from Ireland, and took part with him in the
operations against Fort Sullivan (afterwards Fort Moultrie) near
Charleston, during the succeeding summer.
Lee, ever arrogating to himself supreme command, whenever detached,
placed the Connecticut volunteers whom he accompanied to New York upon a
Continental basis of service. In this he deliberately exceeded his
authority and came into direct collision with Congress, which had
ordered one of the regiments to be disbanded; and offended the New York
patriots, whom he characterized as the “accursed Provincial Congress of
New York.” His action received the official disapproval of Washington;
and the visit of a Committee of Congress accommodated the formal
occupation by the Colonial troops to the judgment of all well-disposed
citizens. In no respect was the episode of Lee’s temporary command a
reflection upon the patriotism of the citizens. He was ordered to the
south; and in the attack upon Fort Sullivan and the preparation of
Charleston for defence he gave much good advice, but had to be repressed
and controlled all the time by President Rutledge, who was as resolute
as Washington himself in the discharge of public duty once confided to
his trust. The attitude of South Carolina, at this time, deserves
special mention, and it has hardly received sufficient recognition in
the development of the United States. Without waiting for the united
action of the Colonies this State declared its own independence as a
sovereign republic. John Rutledge was elected as President, with Henry
Laurens as Vice-President, and William H. Drayton as Chief Justice. An
army and navy were authorized; a Privy Council and Assembly were also
elected; the issue of six hundred thousand dollars of paper money was
authorized, as well as the issue of coin. It was the first republic in
the New World to perfect the organization of an independent State.
When Lee was ordered southward, General Thomas had been ordered to
Canada; and the first act of Washington, after his arrival at New York,
was the enforced depletion of his command by the detail of four
battalions as a reënforcement to the army in Canada. These he sent by
water to Albany, “to ease the men of fatigue.” He also sent five hundred
barrels of provisions to Schuyler’s command on the twenty-second.
The activity of the army about headquarters aroused the royalist element
and prompt action became necessary. Washington addressed a letter to the
New York Committee of Safety, directing that further correspondence with
the enemy must cease, closing as follows: “We must consider ourselves in
a state of war, or peace, with Great Britain.” He enforced these views
with emphasis.
Late at night, on the twenty-fifth, an order was received from Congress
directing him to send six additional battalions to Canada, requesting
also an immediate report as to “whether still additional regiments could
be spared for that purpose.” General Sullivan accompanied this division;
and with him were such men as Stark, Reed, Wayne, and Irvine. In reply
to Congress, Washington stated that “by this division of forces there
was danger that neither army, that sent to Canada and that kept at New
York, would be sufficient, because Great Britain would both attempt to
relieve Canada and capture New York, both being of the greatest
importance to them, if they have the men.”
On the twenty-eighth day of April the whole army in New York amounted to
ten thousand two hundred and thirty-five men, of whom eight thousand
three hundred and three were present and fit for duty. Washington’s
Orderly Book, of this period, rebukes certain disorderly conduct of the
soldiers in these memorable words: “Men are not to carve out remedies
for themselves. If they are injured in any respect, there are legal ways
to obtain relief, and just complaints will always be attended to and
redressed.”
At this time, Rhode Island called for protection of her threatened
ports, and two regiments of her militia were taken into Continental Pay.
Washington was also advised that Great Britain had contracted with
various European States for military contingents; that the sentiment in
Canada had changed to antipathy, and that continual disaster attended
all operations in that department. On the twenty-fourth he wrote to
Schuyler: “We expect a very bloody summer at Canada and New York; as it
is there, I presume, that the great efforts of the enemy will be aimed;
and I am very sorry to say that we are not, in men and arms, prepared
for it.”
General Putnam was placed in command at New York, and General Greene
took charge of the defences on Brooklyn Heights and of their completion.
On the first day of June Congress resolved that six thousand additional
troops should be employed from Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Connecticut, and New York, to reënforce the army in Canada, and that two
thousand Indians should be hired for this same field of service. To this
proposition General Schuyler keenly replied: “If this number, two
thousand, can be prevented from joining the enemy, it is more than can
be expected.”
As early as the fifteenth of February Congress had appointed Benjamin
Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, as Commissioners to visit
Canada and learn both the exact condition of the army and the temper of
the people. Rev. John Carroll, afterwards Archbishop of Maryland,
accompanied them, and reported that “negligence, mismanagement, and a
combination of unlucky incidents had produced a disorder that it was too
late to remedy.” Ill-health compelled the immediate return of Franklin,
but the other Commissioners remained until the evacuation of Canada. The
scourge of small-pox, to which General Thomas became a victim, and other
diseases, together with the casualties of the service, had cost more
than five thousand lives within two months, and the constant change of
commanders, ordered by Congress, hastened the Canadian campaign to a
crisis. Scattered all the way from Albany to Montreal there could have
been found companies of the regiments which Congress had started for
Canada, and which Washington and the country could so poorly spare at
such an eventful and threatening period. General Sullivan had been
succeeded by General Gates, but with no better results. Sullivan had
under-estimated the British forces, and when apprised of the facts, of
which the American Commander-in-Chief had not been advised in time, he
wrote: “I now only think of a glorious death, or a victory obtained
against superior numbers.” The following letter of Washington addressed
to Congress, enclosing letters intimating the desire of General Sullivan
to have larger command, indicates Washington’s judgment of the
situation, and is in harmony with his habitual discernment of men and
the times throughout the war. He says: “He (Sullivan) is active,
spirited, and zealously attached to our cause. He has his wants and his
foibles. The latter are manifested in his little tincture of vanity
which now and then leads him into embarrassments. His wants are common
to us all. He wants experience, to move on a large scale; for the
limited and contracted knowledge which any of us have in military
matters, stands in very little stead, and is quickly overbalanced by
sound judgment and some acquaintance with men and books, especially when
accompanied by an enterprising genius, which I must do General Sullivan
the justice to say, I think he possesses. Congress will therefore
determine upon the propriety of continuing him in Canada, or sending
another, as they shall see fit.”
Already the St. Lawrence river was open to navigation. On the first of
June, General Riedesel arrived with troops from Brunswick, and General
Burgoyne with troops from Ireland, swelling the command of General
Carleton to an aggregate of nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-four
effective men; and British preparations were at once made to take the
offensive, and expel the American force from Canada. Before the last of
June the “invasion of Canada” came to an end, and the remnants of the
army, which had numbered more than ten thousand men, returned, worn out,
dispirited, and beaten.
Washington had been stripped of troops and good officers at a most
critical period, against his remonstrance; and Congress accounted for
the disaster by this brief record: “Undertaken too late in the fall;
enlistments too short; the haste which forced immature expeditions for
fear there would be no men to undertake them, and the small-pox.”
Gradually the principal officers and many of the returning troops joined
the army at New York. The occupation of New York, the fortification and
defence of Brooklyn Heights, the tardy withdrawal of the army to Harlem
Heights, with a constant and stubborn resistance to the advancing
British army and its menacing ships-of-war, have always been treated as
of questionable policy by writers who have not weighed each of those
incidents as did Washington, by their effect upon the Continental army,
as a whole, and in the light of a distinctly framed plan for the conduct
of the war. This plan was harmonious and persistently maintained from
his assumption of command until the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown,
in 1781.
Operations in Massachusetts, and elsewhere, south as well as north, from
the first, proved that the heat of patriotic resistance must be
maintained and developed by action; that, as at Bunker Hill and before
Boston, passive armies lose confidence, while active duty, even under
high pressure, nerves to bolder courage and more pronounced vigor.
The correspondence of Washington and his Reports, as well as letters to
confidential friends which have been carefully considered in forming an
estimate of his career as a Soldier, evolve propositions that bear upon
the operations about New York. The prime factor in the Colonial
resistance was, to fix the belief irrevocably in the popular mind, in
the very heart of the Colonists, that America could, and would, resist
Great Britain, with confidence in success. The inevitable first step was
to challenge her mastery of the only base from which she could conduct a
successful war. To have declined this assertion of Colonial right, or to
have wavered as to its enforcement, would have been a practical
admission of weakness and the loss of all prestige thus far attained.
It was well known to Washington that the British Government was so
related to Continental rivals that about forty thousand troops would be
the extreme limit of her contributions to subdue America. It will appear
from official tables, appended to this narrative, that, during the
entire war, the British force of every kind, throughout America,
exceeded this number slightly in only one year; and that Washington’s
plans, from time to time submitted to Congress, were based upon
requisitions fully competent to meet the largest possible force which
could be placed in the field by Great Britain.
It was further evident that resistance of the first attempt of the
British to land, and the reduction of their numbers and supplies, by
constant, persistent, and confident battle, would not only dispirit that
army, but equally arouse the spirit of the American army, assure its
discipline, and stimulate both Congress and the people to furnish
adequate men and means to prosecute the war to success. Prolonged face
to face hostilities in and about New York, therefore, indicated not only
Washington’s faith in success, but prolonged the restriction of British
operations to a very limited field.
The Declaration of American Independence, on the Fourth Day of July,
1776, was an emphatic act that enlarged his faith and inspired
resistance, upon the plans so carefully matured before that event. And,
even if there be taken into account the peculiar circumstances which
facilitated the eventual retreat from Brooklyn Heights, it is no less
true that the Battle of Long Island, the resistance at Pell’s Point,
Harlem Heights, White Plains, and about Fort Washington, were
characterized by a persistency of purpose and a stubbornness of
hand-to-hand fighting, which kept his main army practically intact, and
enabled him to terminate the campaign of 1776 with a master stroke that
astounded the world, and challenged the admiration of the best soldiers
of that period.