QUESTION OF COMMAND BETWEEN GATES AND SCHUYLER—CONDITION OF THE ARMY AT
CROWN POINT—DISCONTENT AND DEPARTURE OF SULLIVAN—FORTIFICATIONS AT
TICONDEROGA—THE QUESTION OF COMMAND ADJUSTED—SECRET
DISCONTENTS—SECTIONAL JEALOUSIES IN THE ARMY—SOUTHERN TROOPS—SMALLWOOD’S
MACARONI BATTALION—CONNECTICUT LIGHT-HORSE.
While the security of the Hudson from invading ships was claiming the
attention of Washington, he was equally anxious to prevent an irruption
of the enemy from Canada. He was grieved, therefore, to find there was a
clashing of authorities between the generals who had charge of the
Northern frontier. Gates, on his way to take command of the army in
Canada, had heard with surprise in Albany, of its retreat across the New
York frontier. He still considered it under his orders, and was
proceeding to act accordingly; when General Schuyler observed, that the
resolution of Congress, and the instructions of Washington, applied to
the army only while in Canada; the moment it retreated within the limits
of New York, it came within his (Schuyler’s) command. A letter from
Schuyler to Washington, written at the time, says: “If Congress intended
that General Gates should command the Northern army, wherever it may be,
as he assures me they did, it ought to have been signified to me, and I
should then have immediately resigned the command to him; but until such
intention is properly conveyed to me, I never can. I must, therefore,
entreat your Excellency to lay this letter before Congress, that they
may clearly and explicitly signify their intentions, to avert the
dangers and evils that may arise from a disputed command.”
That there might be no delay in the service at this critical juncture,
the two generals agreed to refer the question of command to Congress,
and in the mean time to act in concert. They accordingly departed
together for Lake Champlain, to prepare against an anticipated invasion
by Sir Guy Carleton. They arrived at Crown Point on the 6th of July, and
found there the wrecks of the army recently driven out of Canada. They
had been harassed in their retreat by land; their transportation on the
lake had been in leaky boats, without awnings, where the sick, suffering
from smallpox, lay on straw, exposed to a burning July sun; no food but
salt pork, often rancid, hard biscuit or unbaked flour, and scarcely any
medicine. Not more than six thousand men had reached Crown Point, and
half of those were on the sick list; the shattered remains of twelve or
fifteen very fine battalions. Some few were sheltered in tents, some
under sheds, and others in huts hastily formed of bushes; scarce one of
which but contained a dead or dying man. Two thousand eight hundred were
to be sent to a hospital recently established at the south end of Lake
George, a distance of fifty miles; when they were gone, with those who
were to row them in boats, there would remain but the shadow of an
army.[79]
In a council of war, it was determined that, under present
circumstances, the post of Crown Point was not tenable; neither was it
capable of being made so this summer, without a force greatly superior
to any they might reasonably expect; and that, therefore, it was
expedient to fall back, and take a strong position at Ticonderoga.
General Sullivan had been deeply hurt that Gates, his former inferior in
rank, should have been appointed over him to the command of the army in
Canada; considering it a tacit intimation that Congress did not esteem
him competent to the trust which had devolved upon him. He now,
therefore, requested leave of absence, in order to wait on the
commander-in-chief. It was granted with reluctance. Before departing, he
communicated to the army, through General Schuyler, his high and
grateful sense of their exertions in securing a retreat from Canada, and
the cheerfulness with which his commands had been received and obeyed.
On the 9th of July, Schuyler and Gates returned to Ticonderoga,
accompanied by Arnold. Instant arrangements were made to encamp the
troops, and land the artillery and stores as fast as they should arrive.
Great exertions, also, were made to strengthen the defences of the
place. Colonel John Trumbull, who was to have accompanied Gates to
Canada, as adjutant-general, had been reconnoitring the neighborhood of
Ticonderoga, and had pitched upon a place for a fortification on the
eastern side of the lake, directly opposite the east point of
Ticonderoga, where Fort Independence was subsequently built. He also
advised the erection of a work on a lofty eminence, the termination of a
mountain ridge, which separates Lake George from Lake Champlain. His
advice was unfortunately disregarded. The eminence, subsequently called
Mount Defiance, looked down upon and commanded the narrow parts of both
lakes. We shall hear more of it hereafter.
Preparations were made, also, to augment the naval force on the lakes.
Ship carpenters from the Eastern States were employed at Skenesborough,
to build the hulls of galleys and boats, which, when launched, were to
be sent down to Ticonderoga for equipment and armament, under the
superintendence of General Arnold.
Schuyler soon returned to Albany, to superintend the general concerns of
the Northern department. He was indefatigable in procuring and
forwarding the necessary materials and artillery for the fortification
of Ticonderoga.
The question of command between him and Gates, was apparently at rest. A
letter from the President of Congress, dated July 8th, informed General
Gates, that according to the resolution of that body under which he had
been appointed, his command was totally independent of General Schuyler,
_while the army was in Canada_, but no longer. Congress had no design to
divest General Schuyler of the command while the troops were _on this
side of Canada_.
To Schuyler, under the same date, the president writes: “The Congress
highly approve of your patriotism and magnanimity in not suffering any
difference of opinion to hurt the public service.
“A mutual confidence and good understanding are at this time essentially
necessary, so that I am persuaded they will take place on all occasions
between yourself and General Gates.”
Gates professed himself entirely satisfied with the explanation he had
received, and perfectly disposed to obey the commands of Schuyler. “I am
confident,” added he, “we shall, as the Congress wish, go hand in hand
to promote the public welfare.”
Schuyler, too, assured both Congress and Washington, “that the
difference in opinion between Gates and himself had not caused the least
ill will, nor interrupted that harmony necessary to subsist between
their officers.”
Samuel Adams, however, who was at that time in Congress, had strong
doubts in the matter.
“Schuyler and Gates are to command the troops,” writes he, “the former
while they are without, the latter while they are within, the bounds of
Canada. Admitting these generals to have the accomplishments of a
Marlborough, or a Eugene, I cannot conceive that such a disposition of
them will be attended with any good effects, unless harmony subsists
between them. Alas, I fear this is not the case. Already disputes have
arisen, which they have referred to Congress; and, although they affect
to treat each other with a politeness becoming their rank, in my mind,
altercations between commanders who have pretensions nearly equal (I
mean in point of command), forebode a repetition of misfortune. I
sincerely wish my apprehensions may prove groundless.”[80]
We have a letter before us, also, written to Gates, by his friend Joseph
Trumbull, commissary-general, on whose appointment of a deputy, the
question of command had arisen. Trumbull’s letter was well calculated to
inflame the jealousy of Gates. “I find you are in a cursed situation,”
writes he; “your authority at an end; and commanded by a person who will
be willing to have you knocked in the head, as General Montgomery was,
if he can have the money chest in his power.”
Governor Trumbull, too, the father of the commissary-general, observes
subsequently: “It is justly to be expected that General Gates is
discontented with his situation, finding himself limited and removed
from the command, to be a wretched spectator of the ruin of the army,
without power, of attempting to save them.”[81] We shall have frequent
occasion hereafter to notice the discord in the service caused by this
rankling discontent.
As to General Sullivan, who repaired to Philadelphia and tendered his
resignation, the question of rank which had aggrieved him was explained
in a manner that induced him to continue in service. It was universally
allowed that his retreat had been ably conducted through all kinds of
difficulties and disasters.
A greater source of solicitude to Washington than this jealousy between
commanders, was the sectional jealousy springing up among the troops. In
a letter to Schuyler (July 17th), he says, “I must entreat your
attention to do away the unhappy and pernicious distinctions and
jealousies between the troops of different governments. Enjoin this upon
the officers, and let them inculcate and press home to the soldiery, the
necessity of order and harmony among those who are embarked in one
common cause, and mutually contending for all that freemen hold dear.”
Nowhere were these sectional jealousies more prevalent than in the
motley army assembled from distant quarters under Washington’s own
command. Reed, the adjutant-general, speaking on this subject, observes:
“The Southern troops, comprising the regiments south of the Delaware,
looked with very unkind feelings on those of New England; especially
those from Connecticut, whose peculiarities of deportment made them the
objects of ill-disguised derision among their fellow-soldiers.”[82]
Among the troops thus designated as Southern, were some from Virginia
under a Major Leitch; others from Maryland, under Colonel Smallwood;
others from Delaware led by Colonel Haslet. There were four Continental
battalions from Pennsylvania, commanded by Colonels Shee, St. Clair,
Wayne, and Magaw; and provincial battalions, two of which were severally
commanded by Colonels Miles and Atlee. The Continental battalion under
Colonel Shee, was chiefly from the city of Philadelphia, especially the
officers; among whom were Lambert Cadwalader and William Allen, members
of two of the principal, and most aristocratic families, and Alexander
Graydon, to whose memoirs we are indebted for some graphic pictures of
the times.
These Pennsylvania troops were under the command of Brigadier-general
Mifflin, who, in the preceding year, had acted as Washington’s
aide-de-camp, and afterwards as quartermaster-general. His townsman and
intimate, Graydon, characterizes him as a man of education and
cultivated manners, with a great talent at haranguing; highly animated
in his appearance, full of activity and apparently of fire; but rather
too much of a bustler, harassing his men unnecessarily. “He assumed,”
adds Graydon, “a little of the veteran, from having been before Boston.”
His troops were chiefly encamped near King’s Bridge, and employed in
constructing works at Fort Washington.
Smallwood’s Maryland battalion was one of the brightest in point of
equipment. The scarlet and buff uniforms of those Southerners contrasted
vividly with the rustic attire of the yeoman battalions from the East.
Their officers, too, looked down upon their Connecticut compeers, who
could only be distinguished from their men by wearing a cockade. “There
were none,” says Graydon, “by whom an unofficer-like appearance and
deportment could be tolerated less than by a city-bred Marylander; who,
at this time, was distinguished by the most fashionable cut coat, the
most _macaroni_ cocked-hat, and hottest blood in the Union.” Alas, for
the homespun-clad officers from Connecticut River!
The Pennsylvania regiment under Shee, according to Graydon, promoted
balls and other entertainments, in contradistinction to the fast-days
and sermons borrowed from New England. There was nothing of the
puritanical spirit among the Pennsylvanian soldiery.
In the same sectional spirit, he speaks of the Connecticut light-horse:
“Old-fashioned men, truly irregulars; whether their clothing,
equipments, or caparisons were regarded, it would have been difficult to
have discovered any circumstance of uniformity. Instead of carbines and
sabres, they generally carried fowling-pieces, some of them very long,
such as in Pennsylvania are used for shooting ducks. Here and there one
appeared in a dingy regimental of scarlet, with a triangular, tarnished,
laced hat. These singular dragoons were volunteers, who came to make a
tender of their services to the commander-in-chief. But they staid not
long in New York. As such a body of cavalry had not been counted upon,
there was in all probability a want of forage for their _jades_, which,
in the spirit of ancient knighthood, they absolutely refused to descend
from; and as the general had no use for cavaliers in his insular
operations, they were forthwith dismissed, with suitable acknowledgments
for their truly chivalrous ardor.”[83]
The troops thus satirized, were a body of between four and five hundred
Connecticut light-horse, under Colonel Thomas Seymour. On an appeal for
aid to the governor of their State, they had voluntarily hastened on in
advance of the militia, to render the most speedy succor. Supposing,
from the suddenness and urgency of the call upon their services, that
they were immediately to be called into action and promptly to return
home, they had come off in such haste, that many were unprovided even
with a blanket or a change of clothing.
Washington speaks of them as being for the most part, if not all, men of
reputation and property. They were, in fact, mostly farmers. As to their
sorry _jades_, they were rough country horses, such as farmers keep, not
for show, but service. As to their dingy regimentals, we quote a word in
their favor from a writer of that day. “Some of these worthy soldiers
assisted in their present uniforms at the reduction of Louisburg, and
their ’lank checks and war-worn coats,’ are viewed with more veneration
by their honest countrymen, than if they were glittering nabobs from
India, or bashaws with nine tails.”[84]
On arriving, their horses, from scarcity of forage, had to be pastured
about King’s Bridge. In fact, Washington informed them that, under
present circumstances, they could not be of use as horsemen; on which
they concluded to stay, and do duty on foot till the arrival of the new
levies.[85] In a letter to Governor Trumbull (July 11), Washington
observes: “The officers and men of that corps have manifested so firm an
attachment to the cause we are engaged in, that they have consented to
remain here, till such a body of troops are marched from your colony as
will be a sufficient reinforcement, so as to admit of their leaving this
city with safety. * * * * They have the additional merit of determining
to stay, even if they are obliged to maintain their horses at their own
expense.”[86]
In a very few days, however, the troopers, on being requested to mount
guard like other soldiers, grew restless and uneasy. Colonel Seymour and
his brother field-officers, therefore, addressed a note to Washington,
stating that, by the positive laws of Connecticut, the light-horse were
expressly exempted from staying in garrison, or doing duty on foot,
apart from their horses; and that they found it impossible to detain
their men any longer under that idea, they having come “without the
least expectation or preparation for such services.” They respectfully,
therefore, asked a dismission in form. Washington’s brief reply, shows
that he was nettled by their conduct.
“Gentlemen: In answer to yours of this date, I can only repeat to you
what I said last night, and that is, that if your men think themselves
exempt from the common duty of a soldier—will not mount guard, do
garrison duty, or service separate from their horses—they can no longer
be of any use here, where horses cannot be brought to action, and I do
not care how soon they are dismissed.”
In fact, the assistance of these troops was much needed; yet he
apprehended the exemption from fatigue and garrison duty which they
demanded as a right, would, if granted, set a dangerous example to
others, and be productive of many evil consequences.
In the hurry of various concerns he directed his aide-de-camp, Colonel
Webb, to write in his name to Governor Trumbull on the subject.
Colonel Seymour, on his return home, addressed a long letter to the
governor explanatory of his conduct. “I can’t help remarking to your
honor,” adds he, “that it may with truth be said, General Washington is
a gentleman of extreme care and caution: that his requisitions for men
are fully equal to the necessities of the case. * * * I should have
stopped here, but am this moment informed that Mr. Webb, General
Washington’s aide-de-camp, has written to your honor something
dishonorable to the light-horse. Whatever it may be I know not, but this
I do know, that it is a general observation both in camp and country, if
the butterflies and coxcombs were away from the army, we should not be
put to so much difficulty in obtaining men of common sense to engage in
the defence of their country.”[87]
As to the Connecticut infantry which had been furnished by Governor
Trumbull in the present emergency, they likewise were substantial
farmers, whose business, he observed, would require their return, when
the necessity of their further stay in the army should be over. They
were all men of simple rural manners, from an agricultural State, where
great equality of condition prevailed; the officers were elected by the
men out of their own ranks, they were their own neighbors, and every way
their equals. All this, as yet, was but little understood or appreciated
by the troops from the South, among whom military rank was more defined
and tenaciously observed, and where the officers were men of the cities,
and of more aristocratic habits.
We have drawn out from contemporary sources these few particulars
concerning the sectional jealousies thus early springing up among the
troops from the different States, to show the difficulties with which
Washington had to contend at the outset, and which formed a growing
object of solicitude throughout the rest of his career.
John Adams, speaking of the violent passions, and discordant interests
at work throughout the country, from Florida to Canada, observes: “It
requires more serenity of temper, a deeper understanding, and more
courage than fell to the lot of Marlborough, to ride in this
whirlwind.”[88]