LONG ISLAND IN POSSESSION OF THE ENEMY—DISTRESSED SITUATION OF THE
AMERICAN ARMY AT NEW YORK—QUESTION OF ABANDONING THE CITY—LETTERS FROM
EITHER CAMP—ENEMY’S SHIPS IN THE SOUND—REMOVAL OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN
FROM THE CITY—YEARNING FOR HOME AMONG THE MILITIA—TOLERANT IDEAS OF
WASHINGTON AND GREENE—FORT CONSTITUTION—CONFERENCE OF LORD HOWE WITH A
COMMITTEE FROM CONGRESS.
The enemy had now possession of Long Island. British and Hessian troops
garrisoned the works at Brooklyn, or were distributed at Bushwick,
Newtown, Hell Gate and Flushing. Admiral Howe came up with the main body
of the fleet, and anchored close to Governor’s Island, within cannon
shot of the city.
“Our situation is truly distressing,” writes Washington to the President
of Congress, on the 2d of September. “The check our detachment sustained
on the 27th ultimo, has dispirited too great a proportion of our troops,
and filled their minds with apprehension and despair. The militia,
instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly
opposition in order to repair our losses, are dismayed, intractable, and
impatient to return. Great numbers of them have gone off; in some
instances almost by whole regiments, by half ones, and by companies, at
a time. * * * * With the deepest concern, I am obliged to confess my
want of confidence in the generality of the troops. * * * Our number of
men at present fit for duty is under twenty thousand. I have ordered
General Mercer to send the men intended for the flying camp to this
place, about a thousand in number, and to try with the militia, if
practicable, to make a diversion upon Staten Island. Till of late, I had
no doubt in my own mind of defending this place; nor should I have yet,
if the men would do their duty, but this I despair of.
“If we should be obliged to abandon the town, ought it to stand as
winter quarters for the enemy? They would derive great conveniences from
it, on the one hand, and much property would be destroyed on the other.
It is an important question, but will admit of but little time for
deliberation. At present, I dare say the enemy mean to preserve it if
they can. If Congress, therefore, should resolve upon the destruction of
it, the resolution should be a profound secret, as the knowledge will
make a capital change in their plans.”
Colonel Reed, writing on the same day to his wife, says, “I have only
time to say I am alive and well; as to spirits, but middling. * * * * My
country will, I trust, yet be free, whatever may be our fate who are
cooped up, or are in danger of so being, on this tongue of land, where
we ought never to have been.”[103]
We turn to cite letters of the very same date from British officers on
Long Island, full of rumors and surmises. “I have just heard,” writes an
English field-officer, “there has been a most dreadful fray in the town
of New York. The New Englanders insisted on setting the town on fire and
retreating. This was opposed by the New Yorkers, who were joined by the
Pennsylvanians, and a battle has been the consequence, in which many
have lost their lives. By the steps our general is taking, I imagine he
will effectually cut off their retreat at King’s Bridge, by which the
island of New York is joined to the continent.”
An English officer of the guards, writing from camp on the same day,
varies the rumor. The Pennsylvanians, according to his version, joined
with the New Englanders in the project to set fire to the town; both had
a battle with the New Yorkers on the subject, and then withdrew
themselves from the city—which, “with other favorable circumstances,”
gave the latter writer a lively “hope that this distressful business
would soon be brought to a happy issue.”
Another letter gives a different version. “In the night of the 2d
instant, three persons escaped from the city in a canoe and informed our
general that Mr. Washington had ordered three battalions of New York
Provincials to leave New York, and that they should be replaced by an
equal number of Connecticut troops; but the former, assured that the
Connecticutians would burn and destroy all the houses, peremptorily
refused to give up their city, declaring that no cause of exigency
whatever should induce them to intrust the defence of it to any other
than her own inhabitants. This spirited and stubborn resolution
prevailed over the order of their commander, and the New Yorkers
continue snugly in possession of the place.”[104]
“Matters go on swimmingly,” writes another officer. “I don’t doubt the
next news we send you, is, that New York is ours, though in ashes, for
the rebel troops have vowed to put it in flames if the tory troops get
over.”
An American officer writes to an absent New Yorker, in a different tone.
“I fear we shall evacuate your poor city. The very thought gives me the
horrors!” Still he indulges a vague hope of succor from General Lee, who
was returning, all glorious, from his successes at the South. “General
Lee,” writes he, “is hourly expected, as if from heaven,—with a legion
of flaming swordsmen.” It was, however, what Lee himself would have
termed a mere _brutum fulmen_.
These letters show the state of feeling in the opposite camps, at this
watchful moment, when matters seemed hurrying to a crisis.
On the night of Monday (Sept. 2d), a forty gun ship, taking advantage of
a favorable wind and tide, passed between Governor’s Island and Long
Island, swept unharmed by the batteries which opened upon her, and
anchored in Turtle Bay, above the city. In the morning, Washington
dispatched Major Crane of the artillery, with two twelve-pounders and a
howitzer to annoy her from the New York shore. They hulled her several
times, and obliged her to take shelter behind Blackwell’s Island.
Several other ships of war, with transports and store-ships, had made
their appearance in the upper part of the Sound, having gone round Long
Island.
As the city might speedily be attacked, Washington caused all the sick
and wounded to be conveyed to Orangetown, in the Jerseys, and such
military stores and baggage as were not immediately needed, to be
removed, as fast as conveyances could be procured, to a post partially
fortified at Dobbs’ Ferry, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, about
twenty-two miles above the city.
Reed, in his letters to his wife, talks of the dark and mysterious
motions of the enemy, and the equally dark and intricate councils of
Congress, by which the army were disheartened and perplexed. “We are
still here,” writes he on the 6th, “in a posture somewhat awkward; we
think (at least I do) that we cannot stay, and yet we do not know how to
go, so that we may be properly said to be between hawk and buzzard.”
The “shameful and scandalous desertions,” as Washington termed them,
continued. In a few days the Connecticut militia dwindled down from six
to less than two thousand. “The impulse for going home was so
irresistible,” writes he, “that it answered no purpose to oppose it.
Though I would not discharge them, I have been obliged to acquiesce.”
Still his considerate mind was tolerant of their defection. “Men,” said
he, “accustomed to unbounded freedom, cannot brook the restraint which
is indispensably necessary to the good order and government of an army.”
And again, “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 is followed by a want of confidence in themselves,
when opposed to troops regularly trained, superior in knowledge, and
superior in arms), are timid and ready to fly from their own shadows.
Besides, the sudden change in their manner of living, brings on an
unconquerable desire to return to their homes.”
Greene, also, who coincided so much with Washington in opinions and
sentiments, observes: “People coming from home with all the tender
feelings of domestic life, are not sufficiently fortified with natural
courage to stand the shocking scenes of war. To march over dead men, to
hear without concern the groans of the wounded—I say few men can stand
such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride.”
Nor was this ill-timed yearning for home confined to the yeomanry of
Connecticut, who might well look back to their humble farms, where they
had left the plough standing in the furrow, and where every thing might
go to ruin, and their family to want, in their absence. Some of the
gentlemen volunteers from beyond the Delaware, who had made themselves
merry at the expense of the rustic soldiery of New England, were
likewise among the first to feel the homeward impulse. “When I look
around,” said Reed, the adjutant-general, “and see how few of the
numbers who talked so loudly of death and honor are around me, I am lost
in wonder and surprise. Some of our Philadelphia gentlemen who came over
on visits, upon the first cannon, went off in a most violent hurry. Your
noisy sons of liberty, are, I find, the quietest on the field.”[105]
Present experience induced Washington to reiterate the opinion he had
repeatedly expressed to Congress, that little reliance was to be placed
on militia enlisted for short periods. The only means of protecting the
national liberties from great hazard, if not utter loss, was, he said,
an army enlisted for the war.
The thousand men ordered from the flying camp were furnished by General
Mercer. They were Maryland troops under Colonels Griffith and
Richardson, and were a seasonable addition to his effective forces; but
the ammunition carried off by the disbanding militia, was a serious loss
at this critical juncture.
A work had been commenced on the Jersey shore, opposite Fort Washington,
to aid in protecting Putnam’s chevaux-de-frise which had been sunk
between them. This work had received the name of Fort Constitution (a
name already borne by one of the forts in the Highlands.) Troops were
drawn from the flying camp to make a strong encampment in the vicinity
of the fort, with an able officer to command it and a skilful engineer
to strengthen the works. It was hoped, by the co-operation of these
opposite forts and the chevaux-de-frise, to command the Hudson, and
prevent the passing and repassing of hostile ships.
The British, in the mean time, forbore to press further hostilities.
Lord Howe was really desirous of a peaceful adjustment of the strife
between the colonies and the mother country, and supposed this a
propitious moment for a new attempt at pacification. He accordingly sent
off General Sullivan on parole, charged with an overture to Congress. In
this he declared himself empowered and disposed to compromise the
dispute between Great Britain and America, on the most favorable terms,
and though he could not treat with Congress as a legally organized body,
he was desirous of a conference with some of its members. These, for the
time, he should consider only as private gentlemen, but if in the
conference any probable scheme of accommodation should be agreed upon,
the authority of Congress would after wards be acknowledged, to render
the compact complete.[106]
The message caused some embarrassment in Congress. To accede to the
interview might seem to waive the question of independence; to decline
it was to shut the door on all hope of conciliation, and might alienate
the co-operation of some worthy whigs who still clung to that hope.
After much debate, Congress, on the 5th September, replied, that, being
the representatives of the free and independent States of America, they
could not send any members to confer with his lordship in their private
characters, but that, ever desirous of establishing peace on reasonable
terms, they would send a committee of their body to ascertain what
authority he had to treat with persons authorized by Congress, and what
propositions he had to offer.
A committee was chosen on the 6th of September, composed of John Adams,
Edward Rutledge, and Doctor Franklin. The latter, in the preceding year,
during his residence in England, had become acquainted with Lord Howe,
at the house of his lordship’s sister, the Honorable Mrs. Howe, and they
had held frequent conversations on the subject of American affairs, in
the course of which, his lordship had intimated the possibility of his
being sent commissioner to settle the differences in America.
Franklin had recently adverted to this in a letter to Lord Howe. “Your
lordship may possibly remember the tears of joy that wet my cheek, when,
at your good sister’s in London, you gave me expectations that a
reconciliation might soon take place. I had the misfortune to find those
expectations disappointed.
* * * * *
“The well-founded esteem, and, permit me to say, affection, which I
shall always have for your lordship, makes it painful for me to see you
engaged in conducting a war, the great ground of which, as expressed in
your letter, is ’the necessity of preventing the American trade from
passing into foreign channels.’ * * * I know your great motive in coming
hither, was the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation; and I
believe that when you find _that_ impossible on any terms given to you
to propose, you will relinquish so odious a command, and return to a
more honorable private station.”
“I can have no difficulty to acknowledge,” replied Lord Howe, “that the
powers I am invested with were never calculated to negotiate a reunion
with America, under any other description than as subject to the crown
of Great Britain. But I do esteem these powers competent, not only to
confer and negotiate with any gentlemen of influence in the colonies
upon the terms, but also to effect a lasting peace and reunion between
the two countries, were the tempers of the colonies such as professed in
the last petition of Congress to the king.”[107]
A hope of the kind lingered in the breast of his lordship when he sought
the proposed conference. It was to take place on the 11th, at a house on
Staten Island, opposite to Amboy; at which latter place the veteran
Mercer was stationed with his flying camp. At Amboy, the committee found
Lord Howe’s barge waiting to receive them; with a British officer of
rank, who was to remain within the American lines during their absence,
as a hostage. This guarantee of safety was promptly declined, and the
parties crossed together to Staten Island. The admiral met them on their
landing, and conducted them through his guards to his house.
On opening the conference, his lordship again intimated that he could
not treat with them as a committee of Congress, but only confer with
them as private gentlemen of influence in the colonies, on the means of
restoring peace between the two countries.
The commissioners replied that, as their business was to hear, he might
consider them in what light he pleased; but that they should consider
themselves in no other character than that in which they were placed by
order of Congress.
Lord Howe then entered into a discourse of considerable length, but made
no explicit proposition of peace, nor promise of redress of grievances,
excepting on condition that the colonies should return to their
allegiance.
This, the commissioners replied, was not now to be expected. Their
repeated humble petitions to the king and parliament having been treated
with contempt, and answered by additional injuries, and war having been
declared against them, the colonies had declared their independence, and
it was not in the power of Congress to agree for them that they should
return to their former dependent state.[108]
His lordship expressed his sorrow that no accommodation was likely to
take place; and, on breaking up the conference, assured his old friend,
Dr. Franklin, that he should suffer great pain in being obliged to
distress those for whom he had so much regard.
“I feel thankful to your lordship for your regard,” replied Franklin
good-humoredly; “the Americans, on their part, will endeavor to lessen
the pain you may feel, by taking good care of themselves.”
The result of this conference had a beneficial effect. It showed that
his lordship had no power but what was given by the act of Parliament;
and put an end to the popular notion that he was vested with secret
powers to negotiate an adjustment of grievances.