Washington's Immortals

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Another wounded American soldier wasn’t so lucky and faced the stark reality of British imprisonment or service to the Crown. Michael Dougherty of the Delaware Regiment claimed, “I fought with desperation till our ammunition was expended and my comrades being compelled to retire, I was left helpless and wounded on the ground, and fell into the hands of the enemy.” Because “confinement was never agreeable to me,” Dougherty agreed to join the British cause, accepting the “King’s bounty” and joining the 17th Regiment. This was not the last time Dougherty was captured, or the last time he turned his coat.

  The battle was bloody with hundreds of dead and wounded—on both sides. Howe ordered his men to bury the dead and tend to the wounded, slowing their movement. As the bulk of Washington’s army retreated east of the Brandywine toward Chester, Pennsylvania, Howe once again failed to vigorously pursue his defeated foe. Passing through Chester, Washington veered slightly north, then marched through Darby, Pennsylvania. His force then crossed a pontoon bridge that spanned the Schuylkill at Middle Ferry, near today’s Market Street Bridge in Philadelphia.

  Howe and Cornwallis pursued, and skirmishing broke out near White Horse Tavern on the outskirts of the city. Far from defeated, many of the Americans welcomed the chance to engage the enemy. Captain Bob Kirkwood of the Delaware Line recalled, “Every one Rejoiced, hoping to see [the British] in a few hours.”

  As the British approached the Americans, Hessian Colonel Count Karl von Donop decided to lead his Jaegers into battle personally. British light infantry followed the Jaegers. Surprised by the attack, Washington positioned his army poorly. Making matters worse, only a few roads provided an escape route.

  Washington’s adjutant general gloomily informed the commander in chief of the impending peril. “The order of battle is not complete. If we are to fight the enemy on this ground the troops ought to be immediately arranged.” It looked as though the British army would have the opportunity to strike a crushing blow unless the Americans could gain the high ground on the far side of the valley. Hurriedly, the Americans rushed toward the more favorable ground, but the Hessians had already arrived and begun fighting the Patriots.

  Fortunately for the Americans, weather once again intervened at the most opportune moment. “An extraordinary thunderstorm occurred, combined with the heaviest downpour in the world,” wrote Hessian Captain Johann Ewald. Despite the torrential rain, the British forces weren’t ready to give up their attack plans: the Jaegers and light infantry charged with sword and bayonet. Ewald and his men became enmeshed in hand-to-hand combat. The rain dampened the powder of both armies, caused their weapons to misfire, and forced an end to the melee. Marylander John Eager Howard, recently having rejoined the army after attending his father’s funeral in Baltimore, recalled, “The inferiority of [our] arms . . . never brought [us] into imminent peril as on this occasion.” But the weather once again gave the American army an opportunity to retreat. William Beatty remembered, “Hard rain that took us to the Waist & under the arms.” Because the weather played the deciding factor in the conflict, it became known as the Battle of the Clouds.

  After putting enough distance between his army and the British, Washington ordered General Anthony Wayne’s two brigades, a complement of Continental dragoons, and four light cannon to link up with Maryland militiamen led by Mordecai Gist and William Smallwood traveling from Baltimore and get behind Howe’s rear and harass him. The general emphasized that “cutting off the Enemy’s Baggage would be of great matter.” Washington ended his orders with a dire warning: “Take care of Ambuscades.”

  Born to a family of Irish immigrants in Pennsylvania, Anthony Wayne trained as a surveyor and worked in that capacity for Benjamin Franklin, in addition to assisting with his father’s tannery business. When war broke out, the charismatic thirty-year-old recruited a militia regiment, of which he became colonel. Commonly known as Mad Anthony, Wayne earned a reputation for a hot temper. In the midst of battle, he had an almost berserk manner and had been heard to call out to his men, “I believe a sanguine god is rather thirsty for human gore!”

  The British knew about Wayne’s plans and that his encampment was somewhere within a several-mile radius of Paoli Tavern, located near present-day Malvern, Pennsylvania. They dispatched seventeen hundred light infantry and a few dragoons to “surprise these gentlemen.” In a daring nighttime assault, the British ordered their men to unload their weapons and march in silence—they would use only bayonet and sword in the attack to preserve the element of surprise. As they began the march, an electric mood enveloped the Redcoats: “the lads were all in high spirits in hopes of a frolic.”

  Light rain fell while they marched toward Paoli. After a little more than an hour, they came upon Wayne’s camp around midnight. An outpost on the outskirts of Wayne’s camp notified the general that the British were bearing down on his sleeping men. Mounting his horse, he rode through the camp and shouted, “Turn out my Boys, the Lads are coming, we gave them a push with the Bayonet through the Smoak.”

  As the British descended on the American bivouac, Wayne’s British counterpart, General Charles Grey, shouted at his men, “Dash, Light Infantry!”

  “HUZZAH!”

  The guttural war cry echoed through the woods as hundreds of Grey’s men hacked, slashed, and bayoneted their way into the American camp. Panic ensued.

  Around the same time, Smallwood and Gist with a force of twenty-one hundred Maryland militia their way and three cannon were slowly working their way toward Wayne. The Redcoats had managed to load their muskets, and as shots rang out, the militia grew skittish. “One of our Men about the center of the Main Body was shot Dead by some of their Stragglers, which threw great part of our Line in great Consternation, many flung down their Guns & Ran off, & have not been heard of since,” Smallwood wrote. The cavalry with him drew friendly fire: “The Rear taking us for British light Horse fired a Volley on us within 15 or 20 Foot, wounded several, and killed a light Horseman alongside of me in waiting for Orders.” Smallwood stopped the friendly fire by dismounting and sardonically yelling out to the militia, “I should have been glad to have seen them as ready to fire on the Enemy as they now seemed on their friends.”

  Gist attempted to rally the poorly trained men but nearly died in the melee as he covered the rear of their retreat. He wrote to Captain John Smith of his own regiment, “My Horse received two Balls through his Neck but fortunately only fell on his Knees and Hams otherwise I must have received the Bayonet or fallen into their Hands.” Smith, a fellow Baltimorean, was a close friend of Gist’s and rose through the ranks of his unit. This incident did nothing to halt the terrified, fleeing Marylanders. Out of the original twenty-one hundred militiamen, more than a thousand deserted.

  Wayne’s men fought more bravely, but the attack diminished their ranks. The British sneak attack left nearly three hundred of them killed, wounded, or captured. On the enemy’s side, only three were killed and eight wounded. The “Paoli Massacre” shocked Washington, who now maneuvered to avoid being trapped against the Schuylkill and Howe’s army. But instead of attempting battle, the British general marched ten miles up the river and slipped into Philadelphia unopposed, capturing the American capital on September 26, 1777. In the eighteenth century, capturing the enemy’s capital normally meant the end of the conflict. A year earlier, the loss of Philadelphia might have been a knockout blow to the rebellion, but with Washington’s army intact and word of a British advance from Canada stalled near Saratoga, New York, Congress fled the city rather than surrender. The Marylanders and the rest of the Patriot forces steeled themselves for a counterattack.

  On the morning of October 4, 1777, the Marylanders once again found themselves at the vortex of a major battle. Heavy fog and black smoke from burning fields of buckwheat created a hellish scene as the Marylanders assaulted the far right wing of the British army camped in German­town. Visibility was measured in yards. One American reflected, “The
fire of cannon and musketry, and other combustibles . . . made such a midnight darkness . . . that [a] great part of the time there was no discovering friend from foe.”

  The stage had been set a little over a week before when the British quickly seized control of Philadelphia without an urban battle, because the Americans had evacuated the capital. Washington wasn’t willing to let the prize go without a fight. He began laying plans for an elaborate assault on Germantown, a small village about five miles north of the city that later became part of Philadelphia proper. General Howe had stationed about nine thousand of his men in the town. Washington, who had eight thousand Continentals and three thousand militiamen at his disposal, believed that he had the resources necessary to defeat Howe, the first step in his strategy for reclaiming the City of Brotherly Love.

  Once again demonstrating a proclivity for complex battle strategies, Washington created a highly detailed plan that called for marching his troops in the dead of night from their camp at Methacton Hill. If all went as scheduled, separate pincer movements would converge on the British camp in the morning. Each unit would be required to travel between fourteen and twenty-five miles without alerting the enemy in order to reach its assigned location. Washington would lead a column of three thousand men, including most of the Marylanders, up the center on the main road from the west. Greene, General Adam Stephen, and Brigadier General Alexander McDougall would take the left flank with another six thousand men. The Maryland militiamen, led by Smallwood and Gist, would hold the extreme left pincer and march down an ancient Indian trail known as Old York Road. Each of the groups needed to be in position by 5:00 a.m. in order to begin the coordinated attack—­something even the most drilled and experienced army would find difficult to execute. For Washington’s group of militia and slightly more experienced Continentals, it was ambitious in the extreme.

  From the very beginning, poor visibility hampered the assault. A thick fog rolled in, which, combined with the complicated system of roads and the moonless night, made it very difficult for the commanders to navigate. The bulk of the Marylanders were unfortunately still under the command of John Sullivan, and the triple debacles at Long Island, Staten Island, and Brandywine—thanks to his inept leadership—remained seared in many of the men’s minds. The Marylanders under Sullivan got lost, as did the other column of Continentals. Despite being behind schedule, Sullivan called a halt so that his men could rest and drink a bit of rum to fortify themselves for battle. They were soon back on their feet and in the correct position for the attack, but they had missed the 5:00 a.m. start time. The sun was already up, although it was difficult to see through the fog, which only grew thicker with the break of day.

  Having received a warning about the American attack, the British had posted pickets to keep watch for the approaching enemy. They soon spotted the advancing column, and the artillery opened fire, killing several Patriots. With the fight already begun, Sullivan hurriedly ordered his men to assume battle positions. Almost immediately, he commanded the Marylanders to advance across an open field to meet an “encampment of the British Light Infantry in an orchard, where we found them formed to receive us,” recalled Howard. He added, “A close and sharp action commenced.” For around fifteen minutes the two groups shot at each other before “the British broke and retreated.” In the thick of the action, William Beatty “survived the hottest of the fire” and miraculously was just grazed from “Dead ball on my thigh . . . but did no harm only made the [thigh] a little red.” Also at the battle was Sergeant Gassaway Watkins, recently returned to the thick of the action after a long recovery from an illness that began in November 1776.

  The commanding officer of the 4th Maryland Regiment, Colonel Josias Hall, who was on foot, sent John Eager Howard to order the Marylanders to withdraw. However, when Howard saw the situation for himself and found them “engaged from behind houses with some of the enemy,” he reported back to Hall that he “judged it not proper to call them off, as it would expose our flank.” Incensed, Hall demanded that Howard give him his horse, and he set off to deliver the orders himself. In his anger, the colonel failed to watch where his horse was going. It soon ran “him under a cider-press, and he was so hurt that he was taken from the field.” Command of the regiment fell on the shoulders of the twenty-eight-year-old Howard. Sprinting through withering gunfire from the top windows of Cliveden, the house where the British officers had been staying, Howard led his men deeper into the British lines.21

  21. Ironically, the very house that would bring death to many Patriots during the battle was the home of Howard’s future bride, the beautiful Peggy Chew. Howard fell in love with Miss Chew after the war. Cliveden also hosted the young newlyweds’ May 1787 dinner reception, attended by many dignitaries including George Washington. Gorgeous, charming, and animated, Mrs. Howard wielded significant sway over her husband, fondly calling him “Lord and Slave” and “good squire.”

  Meanwhile, other American troops pushed through the morning mist and fog and soon clashed with British Colonel Sir Thomas Musgrave’s 40th Regiment of Foot, which had been deployed to cover the Redcoat retreat. Hearing a rumor that the Americans were giving no quarter, Musgrave ordered his men to barricade themselves behind the heavy wooden doors of Cliveden. The home, which was owned by Loyalist Chief Justice Benjamin Chew, had sturdy walls made of quarried schist, which provided some protection from musket fire and artillery. As the Redcoats streamed into the house, “the rebels pressed so close upon their heels, that they must inevitably have entered the house at the same time, if he had not faced regiment about and given them a fire, which checked them enough for him to have time to get his regiment into the house and shut the door.” Barring the mansion’s doors, British troops turned the structure into an impenetrable fortress.

  Firing from every window, the British showered a fusillade of musket balls on the Continentals attempting to storm the house. Bayonets ripped into those who broke through windows and doors. The ground around the Chew House became littered with American bodies. One participant later testified that he “was wounded at Germantown through the body, the ball extracted from the side of the back bone.” The British even shot and killed an American officer who approached the house with a white flag to demand their surrender. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave, the six companies of British troops in the mansion stymied the American advance in the center of the battlefield. Darting from room to room, Musgrave inspired his men, yelling, “Hurrah to the King! Hurrah to the English.”

  Washington summoned a conference of officers. Most favored cordoning off the house and bypassing the strongpoint. The rotund Henry Knox, the Patriots’ artillery commander, reminded the group of the military axiom about never leaving a fortified castle in the rear of an advancing army. Washington sided with Knox and pulled away three regiments from their successful advance on the British lines. Under Knox’s direction, cannon pelted the house at point-blank range. After blasting Cliveden’s doors, groups of Americans assaulted the house. “The Bravest [Americans] got to Doors & Windows . . . yet Col. Musgrave defended himself with so much Resolution & animated his People with so much Gallantry that they again fasten’d the Doors & from the Windows kept up so well a directed fire that finally the Rebels were repuls’d with great Slaughter.”

  One Hessian described the carnage: “Seventy-five dead Americans, some of whom lay stretched in the doorways, under the tables and chairs, and under the windows . . . the rooms of the house were riddled by cannonballs, and looked like a slaughter house because of the blood spattered around.”

  The thirty minutes that were wasted attacking the Chew House gave Howe’s men precious time to regroup.

  Meanwhile, Greene’s divisions thrust toward Germantown. One of the units, led by Scottish-born Virginia General Adam Stephen, blundered slightly off course, perhaps drawn by the sound of gunfire at the Chew House or perhaps misled by the general, who was later convicted by a court-martial of bei
ng drunk during the battle. In the fog, Stephen’s men mistook some of the soldiers from Washington’s column for the enemy and began firing. Not only did the friendly fire take many Patriot lives; it caused one American division to withdraw; leaving other parts of Washington’s column vulnerable to attack. As men began to run out of ammunitions, panic set in, and the overly complicated battle plan fell apart.

  On the extreme left flank of the battlefield about a mile from the Chew House, Gist and Smallwood’s Maryland militiamen faced off with the elite of the British army: the Loyalist Queen’s Rangers and the light infantry and grenadiers of the Guards Regiment.22 As with the other columns, poor weather hampered the militiamen’s progress. “We drove the enemy, when we first made the attack, but by the thickness of the fog, the enemy got in our rear,” explained one of the men. “Therefore, [we] had to change our front, and then retreated until [reaching] a proper place.” Gist added, “A thick foggy air prevailed throughout the whole of this Action, as if designed by Providence to favor the British Army which with the smoak of Gunpowder prevented our discovering the situation of their line.”

  22. At that time in Philadelphia there were about three British and German battalions and seven Loyalist battalions.

  Despite the poor visibility, the Marylanders at first experienced some success, driving the Redcoats and Loyalists from some of their earthen fortifications. Gist recalled, “A few Minutes after this attack began, our Division under General Smallwood Fell in with their right flank, and drove them from several redoubts.” Before long, however, the militiamen’s courage gave way. Seeing a group of Queen’s Rangers approaching, Gist and his men mistook them for Hessian mercenaries. Alarmed, Gist ordered a small group into the cover provided by some nearby trees in order to counter the anticipated attack. Gist left to place another group on the left flank. When he returned to the woods, he “found that the whole had retreated.” Even the officers were not immune to cowardice. Gist wrote that when the firing began, one of the militia colonels “was Immediately attack’d with some qualms of Sickness which obliged him to Retreat with precipitation to Maryland.”