MINOR EVENTS AND GRAVE CONDITIONS, 1779.
The Headquarters of the American Army remained at White Plains until the
latter part of September. Upon reaching that post, immediately following
the Battle of Monmouth, after two years of absence, the American
Commander-in-Chief, profoundly appreciating the mutations of personal
and campaign experience through which himself and army had kept company
in the service of “God and Country,” thus expressed himself:
“The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous, that he must be worse
than an infidel that lacks faith; and more than wicked that has not
gratitude enough to recognize the obligation.”
Washington’s self-control of a strongly passionate natural temper, and
his equanimity under most exasperating ordeals, first were due to
maternal influence, and then to his faith in some guiding principle of
the inner self which enabled him to devote his entire faculties to
passing duty, unhampered by the many personal considerations which so
grievously worried many of his subordinates.
Upon the failure of operations against Newport, Sullivan reoccupied
Providence; Lafayette occupied Bristol, and afterwards withdrew to
Warren, beyond the reach of the British shipping. Greene, still acting
as Quartermaster-General, went to Boston, to superintend the purchase of
supplies for the French fleet. It is to be noticed, in connection with
the presence of the French fleet at Boston, that one of its officers,
Chevalier de Saint Sauveur, was killed while attempting to quiet an
affray between the French and some disorderly persons who visited a
French bakery. On the next day, the Massachusetts General Assembly,
ordered the erection of a monument to his memory.
Washington removed from White Plains to Fishkill, ever on the watch for
the defences of the Hudson and the assurance of constant communication
between New England and New York. On the tenth, he was at Petersburg. On
the twenty-seventh, he announced the disposition of the army for the
approaching winter.
The formal assignments of commands to posts and departments, at this
time, indicate his judgment of their relative value and exposure: “Nine
brigades are disposed on the west side of the Hudson River, exclusive of
the garrison of West Point; one of which will be near Smith’s Clove, for
the security of that pass, and as a reënforcement to West Point, in case
of necessity. The Jersey brigade is ordered to spend the winter at
Elizabethtown, to cover the lower parts of New Jersey. Seven brigades,
consisting of the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania troops,
will be at Middlebrook; six brigades will be left on the east side of
the river and at West Point; three of which (of Massachusetts troops)
will be stationed for the immediate defence of the Highlands,—one at
West Point, in addition to the garrison already there, and the other two
at Fishkill and Continental Village. The remaining three brigades,
composed of the New Hampshire and Connecticut troops, and Hazen’s
Regiment, will be posted in the vicinity of Danbury, for the protection
of the country lying along the Sound; to cover our magazines lying on
Connecticut river; and to aid the Highlands, on any serious movement of
the enemy that way. The park of artillery will be at Pluckemin; the
cavalry will be disposed of thus: Bland’s Regiment at Winchester, Va.”
The significance of this last assignment will be apparent, if it be
remembered that the Hessian troops, captured at Saratoga, preferred to
remain in America; so that, when Burgoyne’s army reached Cambridge for
transportation to England, the foreign troops were sent to Virginia.
Some threats had reached the ever-attentive ear of the American
Commander-in-Chief, that an attempt would be made to release this
command and employ it in the field, at the south. Of the other cavalry
squadrons, Baylis’ was to occupy Frederick, or Hagerstown, Md.;
Sheldon’s, to be at Durham, Conn.; and Lee’s Corps, (Col. Harry Lee),
“will be with that part of the army which is in the Jerseys, acting on
the advanced posts.”
General Putnam was assigned to command at Danbury, General McDougall, in
the Highlands; and general headquarters were to be near Middlebrook.
No extensive field operations took place in the Northern States, after
the Battle of Monmouth. Several restricted excursions were made, which
kept the American Commander-in-Chief on the watch for the Highland
posts; but these became less and less frequent as the year 1778 drew
near its close. The British cabinet ordered five thousand of Clinton’s
troops to the West Indies, and three thousand more to Florida.
On the twenty-seventh of September, General Gray surprised Colonel
Baylor’s Light Horse at Tappan, on the Hudson, as completely as he had
surprised Wayne at Paoli. Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, accompanied by
Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, confirmed their usual custom of warfare by
forays which brought little plunder and less intrinsic credit.
Cornwallis with five thousand men made an incursion into New Jersey,
between the Hudson and the Hackensack; and Lieutenant-General
Knyphausen, with three thousand men, operated in Westchester County,
between the Bronx and the Hudson, but with small acquisition of
provisions or other supplies.
On the eighth of October General Clinton, in writing to Lord Germaine,
says: “With an army so much diminished, at New York, nothing important
can be done, especially as it is weakened by sending seven hundred men
to Halifax, and three hundred to Bermuda.” On the fifteenth of October,
Captain Ferguson of the Seventieth British Foot, with three thousand
regulars and the Third New Jersey Volunteers (royalists) made a descent
upon Little Neck, N.J., where many privateers were equipped; surprised a
detachment of Count Pulaski’s American Brigade, and inflicted a loss of
fifty killed, but none wounded, including Lieutenant-Colonel the Baron
de Bose, and Lieutenant de la Borderie. Ferguson says, in his official
report: “It being a night attack, little _quarter_, of course, could be
given; so that there were only five prisoners.” Count Pulaski vigorously
pursued the party, inflicting some loss. This Ferguson was one of the
partisan leaders who was merciless in slaughter, as too many of the
auxiliary leaders of that period proved themselves to be when upon
irresponsible marauding expeditions.
Meanwhile, Indian massacres in Wyoming Valley, during July, and that of
Cherry Valley, on the eleventh of November, afterwards to be avenged,
multiplied the embarrassments of the prosecution of the war, and kept
the Commander-in-Chief constantly on the alert. The condition of
Clinton, in New York, had indeed become critical. The position of the
American army so restricted even his food-supplies, that he had to
depend largely upon England; and on the second day of December he wrote
again, and even more despondently, to the British Secretary of State: “I
do not complain; but, my lord, do not let anything be expected of me,
circumstanced as I am.” The British Cabinet had already indicated its
purpose to abandon further extensive operations in the Northern States,
and to utilize the few troops remaining in America, in regions where
less organized resistance would be met, and where their fleets could
control the chief points to be occupied. As early as November
twenty-seventh, Commodore Hyde Parker had convoyed a fleet of transports
to Savannah, with a total land force of thirty-five hundred men; and on
the twenty-ninth of December, Savannah had been captured.
The year 1778 closed, with the Southern campaign opened; but the
American Congress had no money; and the loose union of the States
constantly evoked sectional jealousies. Any thoughtful reader of this
narrative must have noticed with what discriminating judgment
enlistments were accommodated to the conditions of each section, and
that care was taken to dispose of troops where their local associations
were most conducive to their enthusiastic effort. Washington thus
forcibly exposed the condition of affairs, when he declared that “the
States were too much engaged in their local concerns, when the great
business of a nation, the momentous concerns of an empire, were at
stake.”
Bancroft, the historian, thus fitly refers to Washington at this
eventful crisis in American affairs: “He, who in the beginning of the
Revolution used to call Virginia his country, from this time never
ceased his efforts, by conversation and correspondence, to train the
statesmen of America, especially of his beloved State, to the work of
consolidation of the Union.”
At the close of 1778, General Washington visited Philadelphia; and thus
solemnly and pungently addressed Colonel Harrison, Speaker of the
Virginia House of Burgesses. After urging Virginia to send the best and
ablest of her men to Congress, he thus continues: “They must not slumber
nor sleep at home, at such a time of pressing danger; content with the
enjoyment of places of honor or profit in their own State, while the
common interests of America are mouldering and sinking into inevitable
ruin.... If I were to draw a picture of the times and men, from what I
have seen, heard, and in part know, I should, in one word say: that
idleness, dissipation, and extravagance, seem to have laid fast hold of
many of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for
riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and
almost of every order of men; that party disputes and personal quarrels
are the great business of the day; ... while a great and accumulating
debt, depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its consequences
is the want of everything, are but secondary considerations, if our
affairs wore the most promising aspect.... An assembly, a concert, a
dinner, a supper, will not only take men away from acting in this
business, but even from thinking of it; while the great part of the
officers of our army, from absolute necessity, are quitting the service;
and the more virtuous few, rather than do this, are sinking by sure
degrees into beggary and want.”
There is a touch of the pathetic, and an almost despondent tone with
which the closing paragraph of this utterance of the American
Commander-in-Chief closes, when he adds: “Our affairs are in a more
distressed, ruinous and deplorable condition, than they have been since
the commencement of the war.”
There was no danger from any extended movement of British armies in
force, and a consequent relaxation of effort pervaded the Colonies which
had been most largely called upon for men to meet immediate invasion.
This partial repose brought actual indolence and loss of enthusiasm in
general operations beyond the districts immediately exposed to British
attack. The winter garrison of Philadelphia, like that of Howe the
previous year, languished in confinement, grew feeble in spirit, and
weakened in discipline. Congress shared the enervating effect of the
temporary suspension of active hostilities; and it was not until the
ninth of March, 1779, that the definite establishment of the army, upon
the fixed basis of eighty battalions, was formally authorized.
The inaction of Clinton at New York gave the American Commander-in-Chief
an opportunity to turn his attention to the Indian atrocities
perpetrated the previous year in central New York; and on the nineteenth
of April he sent a force under Colonel Schenck, Lieutenant-Colonel
Willett and Major Cochran, which destroyed the settlement of the
Onondagas, on the lands still occupied by them, near the present city of
Syracuse in that State. An expedition was again planned for Canada, but
the wisdom of Washington induced Congress to abandon it. Confederate
money dropped to the nominal value of three or four cents on the dollar;
and Washington was constrained to offer his private estate for sale, to
meet his personal necessities. Congress seemed incapable of realizing
the impending desolation which must attend a forcible invasion of the
southern States, and Washington was powerless to detach troops from the
north, equal to any grave emergency in that section, so long as Clinton
occupied New York in force. General Greene, comprehending the views of
Washington and the immediate necessity for organizing an army for the
threatened States, equal to the responsibility, asked permission to
undertake that responsibility; but Congress refused to sanction such a
detail, although approved by Washington. This refusal, and the
consequent delay to anticipate British invasion at the South, protracted
the war, and brought both disaster and loss which early action might
have anticipated, or prevented. The utmost that could be secured from
Congress was permission for the detail of a portion of the regular
troops which had been recruited at the South, to return to that section
for active service.
Lafayette, finding that active duty was not anticipated, sailed from
Boston for France, January 11, 1779, upon the frigate _Alliance_, which
the Continental Congress placed at his disposal.
General Lincoln, of the American army—who had reached Charleston on the
last day of December, 1778—attempted to thwart the operations of the
British General Sir Augustine Prevost; but without substantial,
permanent results. The British, from Detroit, operated as far south as
the valley of the Wabash River, in the Illinois country; but Thomas
Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia, with troops raised in Virginia and
North Carolina, strengthened the western frontier and placed it in a
condition of defence, unaided by Congress.
The Middle States, however, had some experience of the desultory kind of
warfare which characterized the greater part of the military operations
of 1779. General Matthews sailed from New York late in April, with two
thousand troops and five hundred marines, laid waste Norfolk and
Portsmouth, Virginia, destroyed over one hundred vessels, and returned
to New York with seventeen prizes and three thousand hogsheads of
tobacco, without serious loss to his command. As if keen to watch for
the slightest opportunity of resuming active operations from New York,
and constantly dreading the nearness and alertness of the American
headquarters in New Jersey, Clinton, on the thirteenth of May, under
convoy of the fleet of Sir George Collier, surprised the small garrisons
at Verplanck’s and Stony Point, re-garrisoned them with British troops,
and retired to Yonkers, leaving several small frigates and sloops-of-war
to cover each post.
The American army was removed from Middlebrook to Smith’s Clove, on the
ninth. On the twenty-third, Washington removed his headquarters to New
Windsor, leaving General Putnam in command. General Heath was ordered to
Boston, and General Wayne was stationed between the Clove and Fort
Montgomery, near Dunderburg Mountain.
Such were the modified positions of the two armies of the north, at the
close of June, 1779.
[Illustration: Outline Map of Hudson River. Highlands.]