While the winter seems to have passed pleasurably for many of the officers, the Marylanders still faced their share of hardships. Beatty wrote that they “fared very well as to the quarters but the duty Was very hard & the troops Very bare of Clothing” until a British vessel shipwrecked nearby and the men captured “a valuable Prize of cloathing.”
Petty disputes broke out, and Smallwood became “very unpopular, owing to his Stateliness and excessive Slowness of Motion.” Smallwood didn’t make any friends among the officers by announcing that they could speak with him only between three and six in the afternoon. “A pretty Condition he would be in, were the enemy to attack him in the morning,” observed one of the men.
Disease also took a toll, and the Maryland ranks declined precipitously. The Marylanders didn’t meet again with Washington until June 1778, and by that time only 269 of the 455 men in the 4th Maryland Regiment were fit for duty. During these trying times, desertion became a problem for the Maryland Line. During the winter, William Chaplin, who barely survived the Battle of Brooklyn, deserted to the British along with over a dozen of his fellow soldiers. A British newspaper reported the incident: “[Chaplin] and sixteen others deserted from Wilmington, and came in to Gen. Howe, at Philadelphia, where they took the oath of allegiance, were treated with great humanity by the British officers, and, at their own request, suffered to leave America.” Chaplin and his fellow Marylanders left for England and were never heard from again.
For the troops in Valley Forge, endless drills under the direction of Baron Friedrich von Steuben occupied much of the long winter. The Prussian nobleman and officer entered Washington’s service on the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, who met von Steuben in France and mistakenly believed him to be a “Lieutenant General in the King of Prussia’s service.” In reality, he had been discharged from the Prussian army as a captain in 1763, and at the time he met Franklin, he was serving as grand marshal to Josef Friedrich Wilhelm, prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen in southern Germany. Volunteering to work without pay, the baron overhauled the Americans’ training practices, setting up a model company of 120 soldiers that could then train other men. He imposed a strict camp layout and new sanitation standards that helped improve the health of the soldiers. According to legend, because he spoke little English, von Steuben relied on a translator to chew out the men, frequently yelling, “Over here! Swear at him for me!” when his insults in French and German failed to achieve the desired results. A dog lover, the colorful Prussian had an Italian greyhound name Azor who went everywhere his master did. Steuben collected his training advice in the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, which the Americans used through the War of 1812.
To serve a similar role in Wilmington, Washington sent one of von Steuben’s assistants, Marquis François-Louis Teissèdre de Fleury, who had staunchly defended Fort Mifflin with the Marylanders. The training and the cold weather took a toll on the men, in terms of both their health and their morale, but through the baron’s drill and training, the Marylanders and the American army were evolving and becoming a potent fighting force.
1778
Chapter 21
“A Damned Poltroon”
For nearly twelve miles, a seemingly endless train of wagons snaked across the hot, dusty roads of New Jersey. General Henry Clinton, who had replaced General William Howe as the commander in chief of the British forces, had ordered the evacuation of Philadelphia. He was moving his men to New York City, which was vulnerable to a naval attack by France, the French having entered the war on the American side. Clinton didn’t have enough troops to hold both cities effectively. On June 18, 1778, more than ten thousand British and Hessian troops began the trek north to New York, accompanied by countless numbers of camp followers and Loyalists. The sheer size of the group made it extremely unwieldy, and the unrelenting heat and sandy roads slowed the lumbering column even further. On a good day, the long procession of scarlet crept only five or six miles closer to New York.
Back at Valley Forge, General George Washington had a decision to make: should he allow the British to escape to New York or should he take a chance at obtaining an impressive victory by attacking the troops on the move? The glacial pace of the British army made it seem an easy target; Washington was eager to prove that the Patriot victory at Saratoga in the fall of 1777 was not a fluke.
Ever a man of action, Washington decided that the potential gains from a victory outweighed the risks: he opted to attack before the enemy could reach New York. Command of the colonies’ advance troops fell to Charles Lee, who had been back with the army for little more than a month. British cavalry led by Lieutenant Colonel William Harcourt and Cornet Banastre Tarleton had boldly captured the general at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in December 1776. The British had given Lee up in a prisoner exchange, but not before the garrulous Lee bragged about and freely revealed his strategies for how best to defeat Washington. Now he met his former captors on the ground near the courthouse in Monmouth, New Jersey, in what was the longest battle of the war.
On June 28, 1778, Lee set out with fifty-four hundred men to attack Clinton’s rear guard near present-day Freehold, New Jersey. However, upon hearing of Lee’s thrust, Clinton had quickly ridden back two miles and ordered six thousand of his best men “to face about and march back with all speed to attack the Rebels.”
The battle began around midday in a three-mile-long, one-mile-wide area of solid ground hemmed in by swamps and rocky hills. It was a scenic location full of lush rolling farmland intersected by a series of creeks and ravines. Lee planned to surround Clinton’s forces, but the strength of the opposition took him by surprise. After only an hour wilting in the blazing sun with temperatures soaring above one hundred degrees, the Patriots began a disorganized retreat.
Washington, meanwhile, was still leading the bulk of the Continental Army, including the Marylanders, toward the battleground when he began to encounter Lee’s men fleeing from the field. The first sign of disaster was a panicky young fifer who carried the news. Soon larger groups of soldiers, many of whom were wounded and suffering from heat exhaustion, confirmed his story. Incensed, Washington questioned every officer he met about why Lee had ordered a retreat. Eventually, he met Lee himself in an encounter that has become legendary.
By some accounts, Washington simply looked Lee in the eye and asked, “I desire to know, sir, what is the reason—whence arises this disorder and confusion,” to which Lee had no real reply. Other eyewitnesses insist that Washington’s language was much more colorful. Lafayette reported that Washington called the younger general “a damned poltroon,” and others described Washington’s speech on the occasion as “a terrific eloquence of unprintable scorn.” General Charles Scott, who later became governor of Kentucky, said it was the only time he heard Washington swear. “It was at Monmouth and on a day that would have made any man swear,” Scott said. “Yes, sir, he swore that day till the leaves shook on the trees, charming, delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since. Sir, on that memorable day, he swore like an angel from heaven.”
No matter what his choice of words, Washington dismissed Lee and took charge of the battle. Eyewitnesses remember him riding up on his white charger, halting the fleeing men and inspiring them to turn and face their enemy. Lafayette later wrote, “General Washington was never greater in battle than in this action. His presence stopped the retreat; his strategy secured the victory. His stately appearance on horseback, his calm, dignified courage, tinged only slightly by the anger caused by the unfortunate incident in the morning, provoked a wave of enthusiasm among the troops.”
Once again Washington called upon the Marylanders.
“If you can stop the British for ten minutes, till I form, you will save my army!” Washington sternly told Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Ramsay, second in command of the 3rd Maryland Regiment.
“I will stop them or fall,” stammered Ramsay, one of the original members of the Baltim
ore Independent Cadets.
Washington gave the 3rd Maryland Regiment and a Pennsylvania regiment the task of delaying the British while the rest of the American army formed up. Normally under the command of Mordecai Gist, the regiment was detached, and Ramsay led it into the battle at Monmouth. Hastily, Ramsay ordered his men to hide in a wood near the road and await the arrival of the enemy, then just two hundred yards away. As the British troops approached their position, the Continentals opened fire. The Redcoats immediately charged into the trees, cutting down dozens of Patriots. Gist’s second in command that day sacrificed himself and the unit to buy crucial time for the rest of the army to come to the field and save Lee’s retreating troops. Interestingly, this was also the closest the Maryland Line came to fighting James Chalmers’s Maryland Loyalists. The Tory regiment was guarding the British baggage train, a few miles away from where the Maryland Patriots fought so desperately. It was the last time the rivals were near each other. After more garrison-type duty for the Maryland Loyalist regiment, the British sent it to British West Florida, where it fought the Spanish in a doomed raid on Mobile in January 1781. After the Crown’s defeat at the hands of the Spanish, what was left of the Maryland Loyalists returned to New York. At the close of the war, many of Chalmers’s Loyalists made the great exodus from America to places in the British Empire such as Nova Scotia.
Otho Holland Williams had recently been released from British captivity in New York as a result of a prisoner exchange. During his captivity he had been promoted to colonel and given command of the 6th Maryland. The 6th, one of the newer regiments created in 1777, was “rather noted for its looseness of discipline and did not stand upon a mark with others of the line.” Williams, a born leader, strategist, and organizer, whipped the regiment into shape, “making it equal, if not superior, in thorough discipline, to any in the whole army.” Of this battle, Williams recalled, “Lt. Col. [Nathaniel] Ramsay of Maryland covered the retreat of his party and stood the attack of a body of horse.” Brandishing his sword, Ramsay killed the first Redcoat who approached, but the British soon had him surrounded. A pistol shot grazed his right cheek and several other officers died. During the engagement, “Our Great good General [Washington] in person led the fight and was the whole time exposed to the fire of the Artillery,” Williams added.
One of the dragoons charged Ramsay, but the Redcoat’s pistol misfired, allowing the Marylander to attack with his sword, drag the cavalryman from his horse, and take his place in the saddle. His heroics ultimately failed to save him, however, as the dragoons eventually overpowered him and took him prisoner. Accounts of how Ramsay avoided death differ. One legend says that a British officer decided to spare Ramsay’s life when he saw the American’s Masonic ring. Another story claims that Ramsay covered himself in blood and mud and played dead until a merciful Redcoat officer saw through the ruse and decided to take him prisoner. In any case, by all accounts, Ramsay’s captivity was not particularly arduous. The British took him to Long Island, where his wife, who had been accompanying him since the beginning of the war, joined him. The wealthy couple bought a house in New York and regularly entertained other officers who were “prisoners” and “endeavoured to make themselves as happy as their situation permitted.”
Once again the Marylanders sacrificed themselves to buy precious time to set up a line on the high ground that bordered the battlefield. Washington placed his artillery units on both flanks, particularly the right, where he also positioned Greene’s men. Lord Stirling (William Alexander) was on the left, with Washington himself commanding the troops in the center. Lafayette handled the second line of defense, which included the Delaware Regiment.
After the British scattered the Marylanders and other troops positioned in the trees, the Redcoats turned their attention to the left side of the American line. Failing to break through, the British and Hessians mounted attacks on the right flank, then the center. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, commanding the rear formations, personally directed the attack on the American position, including the Marylanders. The second line consisted of the light infantry, Brigade of Guards, and other famous regiments considered “the very flower of the rear division and of the army.” For hours, British and American cannon fired volley after volley at each other. As the battle drew on toward evening on June 28, 1778, the heat began to take its toll on man and animal alike. Washington’s own horse, a beautiful white charger, dropped dead from heat exhaustion. Like the horse, the men in the thick of the battle had grown incredibly fatigued from hour after hour of endless fighting in the punishing sun. However, Stirling brought forward some fresh troops, and the American lines stood firm, buttressed by Washington’s commanding presence. Throughout the long winter at Valley Forge and Wilmington, they had drilled for countless hours under Baron von Steuben. Now those drills were paying off as Washington’s army found the courage and tenacity to throw back repeated attacks.
It wasn’t only the American men who fought tenaciously at Monmouth; legend says that women were involved as well. Mary Ludwig Hays, the wife of one of the Pennsylvania Continentals, began taking pitchers of water to the soldiers suffering from the heat, earning herself the nickname Molly Pitcher. According to Maryland Private Joseph Plumb Martin, she also assisted her husband, an artilleryman, in loading his cannon. Martin wrote, “While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and continued her occupation.” Some accounts say that later in the battle, when Mr. Hays became unable to carry on, likely owing to heat exhaustion, Molly Pitcher continued loading the cannon.
Around six o’clock in the evening, it was over; the British pulled back. Eager to press his advantage, Washington called forward his least exhausted troops to make an assault of their own. But it was not to be. The lateness of the hour and the approaching darkness forced Washington to scotch the attack until dawn. The Patriots slept in the field that night with their rifles and muskets close at hand. “The Whole of our army lay On their arms all night,” recalled Captain William Beatty. Washington himself lay under a tree, using his cloak as a blanket.
When dawn broke the next morning, the refreshed Americans arose and prepared to resume the battle. However, the British were nowhere to be found. “The Enemy took the advantage of Moon Shine about 1 o’clock the Morning of the 29th and retreated to avoid the attack Intended to be made on them by daybreak,” wrote Beatty. “They left a number of their Wounded Officers & Men at Monmouth Courthouse & Some prisoners they had taken.” Washington would have to put off further battle until another day.
When they tallied the total killed and wounded at Monmouth, both sides reported similar losses. The Americans reported eight officers and sixty-one enlisted men killed, compared with four officers and sixty-one enlisted men killed on the enemy side. The British also noted, “Three sergeants, fifty-six rank and file died with fatigue,” presumably due to the extreme heat. In addition, they lost 136 of their own men and 440 Hessians who deserted on the march.
Pursuing Clinton’s retreating forces, the Marylanders and the rest of the army marched up to take positions around White Plains and the Bronx, New York.
A little more than a week after the Battle of Monmouth, a French armada dropped anchor off Delaware Bay. The fleet was commanded by a forty-eight-year-old general turned admiral, Count Jean-Baptiste d’Estaing. The nobleman’s first career stuck in the minds of many of his men, who often still referred to him as “General.” D’Estaing’s flotilla included twelve ships of the line and four frigates, and it carried four thousand French regulars. Had they arrived eight days earlier, the battle could have been a decisive American victory and Clinton could have shared the same fat
e as Burgoyne, having been trapped between the American and French forces. It might have been the end of the war.
The fleet then moved toward Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and Washington saw a chance to trap and destroy the British fleet in New York Harbor. However, the hulls of the French ships were believed to be too large to get past the sandbar at the entrance to the harbor. With the operation in New York looking impossible, d’Estaing and Washington hatched a new plan to destroy the British garrison of six thousand men at Newport, Rhode Island. Sullivan and Greene would make an overland assault with more than ten thousand men, while the French attacked by sea. Here the weather favored the British. An unexpected storm and the British fleet commanded by Admiral Howe scuttled the amphibious portion of the assault. As a result, the Americans and French called off the entire operation, and d’Estaing retreated to Boston Harbor for repairs.
The Americans’ initial joy over the French alliance wore off. Livid, Sullivan and other officers accused d’Estaing of betrayal. Washington wisely took on the role of statesman and took care not to ruffle French feathers. However, as the two forces began to work together, each was dismayed by the other. The French had expected that the American army had more men and that it was better outfitted. One of the French officers said of Washington’s army, “I have never seen a more laughable spectacle. All the tailors and apothecaries in the country must have been called out. . . . They were mounted on bad nags and looked like a flock of ducks in cross belts.” Washington, accustomed to being in sole command, found it irksome to have to run his plans by the French officers, and he mistrusted their motives. His perspective on the situation led him to assert a timeless truth: “It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest.” Similarly, John Adams expressed frustration with the French involvement, saying that the French foreign minister kept “his hand under our chin to prevent us from drowning, but not to lift our heads out of water.”
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