The Philadelphia Campaign

by Thomas J McGuire

  CHAPTER 5

  “Now prepare thyself, Pennsylvania, to meet the Lord thy God!”

  THE FALL OF PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER 12–25, 1777

  “At Midnight, Chester, September 11, 1777…I am sorry to inform you, that in this day's engagement, we have been obliged to leave the enemy masters of the field,” Washington notified John Hancock. “I have directed the Troops to assemble behind Chester, where they are now arranging for the Night.”1 The Concord Road between Dilworth and Chester was a scene of horror and confusion, but not panic, as Washington's troops withdrew from the field. Stragglers by the hundreds swarmed through the moonlit countryside, exhausted, hungry, many of them wounded and bleeding.

  “My first recollections of the War were of the Battle of Brandywine,” Phebe Mendenhall Thomas remembered nearly a century later. “We heard the guns all day and Mother would say whenever we heard a great volley of noise, ‘Dear me, what are they doing?’ But they let us know what they had been doing in the evening. Father said it was a great battle near, he could only judge where, by the directions of the sound.”

  Phebe was seven years old when the battle took place. Despite the passing of the decades, she retained vivid memories of that day, especially of the evening as the Continental Army retreated past her family's home about four miles east of Dilworth on the road to Chester in Concord Township. “In the evening a great company of American soldiers came. Father told us to shut up the front of the house and come back to the kitchen. They came flocking into the yard, and sat down on the cider press, trough and benches, and every place they could find. They seemed so tired,” Phebe distinctly remembered. “Father said, ‘bring bread and cheese and cut for them.’ They were so hungry.”

  The neighbors, who were Mendenhall cousins, came to help. “Margaret, Stephen's wife, came running in with her 2 children,” she recalled. “Stephen was away off at the other end of the place and knew nothing of it. As it happened both houses, ours and Stephen's, had baked that day, and we cut up all the bread and cheese we had. I know, I got no supper and they had to bake bread on the iron,” meaning that quick breads such as cornbread or rye and Indian meal (“rye ’n’ Injun”) were baked on the hearth in deep-lidded iron pans called Dutch ovens.2

  The distraction and fear caused by the sounds of battle produced some interesting consequences to the baking in the Osborne household over in Westtown Township, near where Cornwallis's attack had begun. “An aged colored woman, named Grace, lived with Peter Osborne in the house,” and she revealed that several friends and neighbors had gone there to avoid the armies. To feed everyone, “several women were engaged in making pies,” and Grace recalled that “at each report of cannon and volley of musquetry, they would all leave their employment and fly to the door, perhaps just as they had fixed their under-crust on the plate; returning, would place the lid or cover on without putting any fruit in their pie, not being conscious of any mistake until they came to eat them.”3

  A few miles north of the Osborne home, young Thomas Cope recalled that “in the night after the battle, the family where we were—our uncle Nathan Cope's,” in East Bradford Township—“were aroused out of their sleep by a small party of Americans who demanded shelter & something to eat.” More than sixty years later, he clearly remembered that “having eaten some pye & milk, they hastily withdrew.” Nine years old at the time, Cope recognized the company commander from his hometown of Lancaster. “When gone, I told Uncle I knew one of them, Col. Ross, of the Lancaster Militia.” This was Lt. Col. James Ross, whose rifle detachment had skirmished with the rear of Cornwallis's column earlier in the day. “He was a handsome man, but in a sad plight, being destitute of hat & coat & his hands and face besmeared with gunpowder.”4

  The acrid, sulfurous smoke produced by black gunpowder quickly dries the mouth, throat, and nasal passages, and everyone inhales it continuously during battle. Infantrymen not only inhale the smoke, but also swallow quantities of the powder itself as a result of the musket-loading procedure. The ammunition was made up in paper cartridges, which had to be bitten open, resulting in the blackening of the soldier's mouth, especially at the right corner as the teeth held and tore the cartridge while the right hand pulled it away, smearing the gritty powder across the face and hands. In the haste and chaos of fighting, powder also spilled into the soldier's mouth, sometimes in large amounts if the biting was not done carefully—hardly possible in the heat of battle. A compound of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal, black powder is very salty and astringent. Together with the marching, shouting, and stress produced by battle, a maddening thirst was a constant companion of the combat soldier.

  Down at the Painter farm, near the intersection of the Great Nottingham Road and the Wilmington Road (later called Painter's Crossing), Jane Carter Painter had been baking too. Her grandson William recalled that “the American army passed by the Painter house, and his grandmother, a staunch patriot, making bread, the soldiers, hungry and tired, ate all the dough and drank the well dry.”5 It was no exaggeration. Artilleryman Jacob Nagle wrote, “It coming on night, I was famishing with drouth [drought, i.e., thirst]. Coming to a well, but could not get near it for the mob of soldiers, but falling in with one of the artillerymen, he worked his way through them and brought me water in his canteen. Otherwise I should of fell on the road.”6

  Many of the American wounded were brought along with the army, though scores had to be left behind on the field. “Then after a bit a Captain came on his horse,” Phebe Mendenhall recounted. “He was wounded and had his servant and a Doctor. He wanted to stay all night. Father didn't want him to stay, for he told him he expected the English would be along in the morning, and would tear us all to pieces, but they didn't mind that. They took him off his horse, brought him in and they staid. The girls brought him a bed, and he laid there in the common house and the Doctor staid with him. The servant slept in the barn. They all got their suppers too.”

  The captain had been shot in the thigh. In an era before antibiotics, sterilization, or anesthesia, wounds typically festered and became inflamed. The shock of the injury, especially from a lead musket ball, blunt and heavy, also aggravated thirst. “Next morning the wounded man was too bad to get on his horse. They got the horse there, and the girls helped to lift him, but he couldn't get on. Father didn't want him there when the English came. As the wounded man was laying there, Adam came running in and said ‘The Red-Coats are coming! The Red-Coats are coming!’ The poor sick man raised up and called for mercy. The Doctor hid under the porch, but it was only one of the neighbors that had a reddish-brown coat.”

  The horror stories of British and Hessian behavior that had circulated for the past year, first from North Jersey, then from Head of Elk and the Newark area, were enough to convince sixty-four-year-old Robert Mendenhall that his family was in mortal danger should any American military personnel be found on his premises. He and his third wife, Ester Temple, little Phebe's stepmother, had married only six months earlier. “Mother and Father sat up all the night,” Phebe remembered; the next morning, “finding that the Captain couldn't ride (he had a bullet in his thigh), Father geared up a great black horse we had, a noble fellow, to the carriage, and they took him to the Black Horse,” a tavern outside of Chester.

  “Oh! How glad I was to see father come home,” Phebe exclaimed. “He had just put the horse away, when the English came, sure enough, but they didn't come to the house. We were so afraid while Father was away, but he wasn't gone long. I remember when I saw him coming I couldn't think what made the gears all white, but it was the foam” from the horse sweating and overheating. “It was 10 miles to the Black Horse and back, and he had driven very fast.”7

  The trauma of the day was vivid, especially for the Quaker adults, who had their worst fears about war and military behavior confirmed, and then some. Their quiet, peaceable kingdom had been invaded; many of their fields were ruined, trampled, soaked in blood, and strewn with the hideous human wreckage of battle. The dead and wo
unded now lay starkly illuminated in a ghastly moonlight where they fell. Broken fences and shattered trees, dead horses, abandoned wagons, bits of clothing, blankets, shoes, and hundreds of muskets told of the course of battle for miles. Stories abounded of forced participation in military activity, such as that of Emmor Jefferis and Joseph Brown, pressed to serve as guides by the commanders of both armies.

  Col. Samuel Smith of the 4th Maryland Regiment admitted in his memoirs that he “applied to a Quaker Farmer, to guide him to the road leading to Chester, which he refused; but a pistol having been pointed at his breast, he complied. On being thanked he replied, ‘I want no thanks, thee forced me.’”8 Smith later revealed the details that he “assured him he was a dead man if he did not get his horse instantly and show the way to Chester. The Friend was alarmed, and, exclaiming, ‘What a dreadful man thou art!’ went and saddled his horse and prepared to set out.”

  But the Maryland colonel was not finished. “‘Now,’ said Col. Smith, ‘I have not entire confidence in your fidelity, but I tell you explicitly, that if you do not conduct me clear of the enemy, the moment I discover your treachery, I will blow your brains out.’ The terrified farmer exclaimed, ‘Why, thou art the most desperate man I ever did see!’” The Quaker showed him to the road “and was dismissed with proper acknowledgements for the favor.”9

  A few miles away to the northeast, eight-year-old Sally Frazer was worried about her father and especially her mother, thirty-two-year-old Polly. “She was riding about all day,” first to find her aged mother at the house of her cranky Quaker stepfather, John Pierce, halfway between Thornbury and Chads's Ford; then she “came home once, but was off again and did not return till dark.” Sally was home all day with her two younger brothers and sister, together with Polly Fellows, a woman who had lived with the Frazers for years, and three slaves, “black Rachel and two black men who worked on the farm [and] made up my family.” The last time Sally had seen her father was in early August, when he managed to take a few days’ leave while the army was waiting for news of the British fleet. Unknown to the little girl, her mother was now one month pregnant.

  “We heard musketry with an occasional discharge of heavy artillery through the day,” Sally recalled vividly, “but particularly towards evening.” Even more striking was the sound of platoon-firing. “There was a continual discharge of small arms heard at our house,” she said, the memory still sharp more than half a century later. “My Father was in the engagement sure enough.”

  Lt. Col. Persifor Frazer had been holding the line at Chads's Ford with the 5th Pennsylvania. As the troops retreated in the dark, “he then mounted a wounded soldier on his horse and walked by his side to the Seven Stars tavern in Ashtown [Aston] township, where he put the soldier into a wagon going to Chester. He then rode home 5 or 6 miles and went to bed.”

  Before the colonel turned in, an ominous episode occurred. Earlier that day, “two very genteel looking men” had come to the house and asked to stay overnight. With all of the disruption and displaced persons in the area, they were permitted to stay. When Percy arrived, “it was late and the strangers had gone to bed.” Polly went outside to embrace her husband and help remove his battle-stained uniform, drenched with sweat and grime, as well as blood from the wounded soldier. Frazer's personal servant, an Irishman named Harvey, carried the colonel's saddle into the house. He made noise going up the stairs and woke the strangers, “who called out, asking ‘who had come?’” Harvey answered that his master had come home. “They arose immediately, went out,” probably through a back door while the Frazers were out front, “saddled their horses, and before anyone knew of it were off.” Polly remembered, “We never learned who they were”; Percy thought they were probably “some dreadful good-for-nothing Tories.”

  Much too early the next morning, the exhausted colonel was awakened by a little girl's shrill, hysterical screams, “Oh, my Daddy's killed, my dear Daddy's killed!” It was Sally; she had come downstairs and looked out the front door, where she saw a battle-stained blue-and-white uniform coat with silver epaulettes hanging on the fence outside. “At early morning I got up and seeing my fathers Regimental coat all stained and daubed with blood I set up the murder shout as I thought he must have been killed,” she recalled vividly. To her relief, “turning round [she] saw her father behind her brought from his room by her cries.” The reunion was very brief, for “as soon as his horse was prepared,” Lieutenant Colonel Frazer “mounted and rode off to the army.”10

  That morning, the full impact of the battle became evident. “Friday 12th Sept. Head Qrs. at Dilworth.—party's sent out to look for wounded & bury the dead,” Captain-Lieutenant Peebles of the Grenadiers wrote. “The loss on our side between 5 & 600 killed & wounded, that of the Rebels I suppose twice as much besides 4 or 500 prisoners & Deserters.” The dead were buried in pits near where they fell, sometimes individually, more often in groups. Buildings of all types were converted into makeshift hospitals, even before the shooting had stopped. “An Hospital at Dilworth & houses adjacent,” Peebles noted.11 Birmingham Meeting House had its doors torn off to serve as operating tables, according to Joseph Townsend, and he was pressed into service to assist with the wounded while the battle was still in progress. After witnessing an amputation, he was able to slip away in the darkness and confusion of the night. The dead of both sides found in the vicinity, together with the amputated limbs, were buried in a large trench dug in the walled burial yard.12 The names and number of the dead are unknown.

  Howe established general headquarters in a house just over a mile south of Dilworth. Search parties combed the woods and the fields for the next few days, picking up the dead and wounded from both sides. The official British and Hessian casualty list claimed 3 captains, 5 lieutenants, 7 sergeants, and 78 rank and file killed, for a total of 93 dead. In addition, 49 officers, 40 sergeants, 4 drummers, and 395 rank and file were wounded, and 6 missing, for a grand total of 587 casualties. American estimates of British losses run as high as 2,000, based on distant observation and sketchy, unreliable reports.13

  “This victory cost us about 400 men killed & wounded, the latter of which prevented our moving forwards to profit of our advantage for several days,” Capt. Richard Fitzpatrick wrote to his brother, John Lord Ossory. “Some foolish people were much elated with this event and an insufferable torrent of nonsense was talked for some time afterwards, such as that the whole army must disperse, that it was impossible they should ever recover so severe a blow, &c &c but these silly fellows were soon convinced they had no foundation for their opinions, Washington still continued to talk high language.”14 Of the Americans, Howe reported to Lord Germain that “their loss was considerable in officers killed and wounded, and they had about 300 men killed, 600 wounded, and near 400 made prisoners.”15 Other British estimates of American losses run as high as 2,000. “The Nomber Killed & wonded And taken ware About 1000 or 1100 Hundred And they ware Comming in Dayly & taking them prisner,” Lt. Gilbert Purdy reported. His unit was charged with the task of burial, and he wrote, “In the time we Laid their the Dead that was Buryed By Us on the Day After the Batle ware 55 By our Betalion Besides What was Buryed By the rest of the Army.”16 An officer of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion wrote in his memorandum book on the twelfth, “Orders Wass Given for to Revew the ground to Beruie the dead and the Surgens to attend the Wounded. The Enemy had 502 dead in the field. We had 30 beried the Next Morning. The Wounded In not as yet Asserted. We took 400 Prisners that Night and the Next day.”17

  In Philadelphia that morning, Mrs. Margaret Stedman wrote to her friend Mrs. Elizabeth Fergusson at Graeme Park, “Friday 11 O'Clock—Jemmy is this moment came from the Coffee House, where he saw on the book that eight hundred of our People fell yesterday, and as our army continues to retreat this way…Some of the wounded are coming and the Town is all in confusion.” The real numbers may never be known.

  “Gracious God, look down upon us and send help from above,” Margaret prayed, “every fac
e you see, looks wild and pale with fear and amazement, and quite overwhelmed with distress. Some flying and some moving one way some another and the slaughter some think much greater than what is yet made public.” Yet in the midst of it all, she did notice something odd: “Strange it is tho’ at no greater distance than Chester, the accounts should be so very various, that one can't be certain of anything.”18 The rumor mill was working overtime.

  The sheer number of American wounded left on the field or found in buildings nearby prompted General Howe to request Washington to send American surgeons to care for the wounded prisoners. Under a flag of truce, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the surgeon general of the Army's Middle Department and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, together with several other doctors, made his way to Dilworth. “I attended in the rear at the battle of Brandywine, and had nearly fallen into the hands of the enemy by my delay in helping off the wounded,” Rush wrote in his autobiography. “A few days after the battle I went with several surgeons into the British camp with a flag from Genl. Washington to dress the wounded belonging to the American Army who were left on the field of battle. Here I saw and was introduced to a number of British officers. Several of them treated me with great politeness.”

  Some old familiar Philadelphia faces were also present. “I saw likewise within the British lines and conversed for some time with Jos. Galloway and several other American citizens who had joined the British army.” He noted the professionalism of the British regulars, especially regarding camp security—“I was much struck in observing the difference between the discipline and order of the British and Americans”—and wrote about it to John Adams, criticizing the lack of discipline in the Continental forces: “I lamented this upon my return. It gave offense and was ascribed to fear and to lack of attachment to the cause of my country.”19