1776

by David McCullough

  Suppose this army should be defeated, two or three of the leading generals killed, our stores and magazines all lost, I would not be answerable for the consequences that such a stroke might produce in American politics.

  At Adams’s request, Knox provided a list of recommended books on military matters, and in a letter to Adams of May 16, Knox expressed in the strongest terms his belief that it was time to declare American independence. Like Washington, like Greene—and like Adams—Knox longed ardently for a separation from Britain, and the sooner the better.

  The future happiness or misery of a great proportion of the human race is at stake—and if we make a wrong choice, ourselves and our posterity must be wretched. Wrong choice! There can be but one choice consistent with the character of a people possessing the least degree of reason. And that is to separate—to separate from that people who from a total dissolution of virtue among them must be our enemies—an event which I de[v]outly pray may soon take place; and let it be as soon as may be.

  As Martha Washington had joined the commander-in-chief in New York, so Lucy Knox and Caty Greene traveled from New England to be with their husbands, each young woman bringing an infant born within the year—little Lucy Knox and George Washington Greene. An undated invitation sent from Greene’s Long Island quarters that spring reads: “Gen Green[e] and Lady present their compliments to Col. Knox and his Lady and should be glad of their company tomorrow at dinner at 2 o’clock.”

  II

  THROUGH DAYS OF TOIL ON DEFENSES, through endless hours taken up with military routine, endless problems of supply and paperwork, and the innumerable day-to-day preoccupations of those trying to carry on with the little that remained of normal civilian life, the thought that the British could appear any time was seldom out of mind. Every soldier, every civilian, it seemed, had one eye cocked on the harbor for the first sign of British sails. Every waking day began with the thought that it could be the day.

  Washington ordered a signal system set up between Long Island, Staten Island, and New York. On May 18 a rumor flew through the city that the British had been sighted off Sandy Hook in the Lower Bay, and though there was nothing to it, the story carried for days.

  The number of sentries at gun emplacements was doubled. They were “not to suffer any person whatever…to go into the batteries at night,” Washington’s order read. “Nor is any person whatever, but generals or field officers of the army, and officers and men of the artillery who have real business there, to be permitted even in daytime.”

  More orders followed. Soldiers were to “lay upon [sleep with] their arms and be ready to turn out at a minute’s notice.” To practice the use of their arms, they were each to fire at least two rounds, and practice moving rapidly from their camps into the trenches and fortifications, to become familiar with the ground they would have to cover when the attack came.

  According to his own returns, Washington had 8,880 men at hand, 6,923 of whom were fit for duty. At the same time, he received reliable word that no fewer than 17,000 hired German troops were on the way to serve under the British command, and that the full enemy force could number as many as 30,000.

  When Washington was called to Philadelphia to consult with Congress, arrangements were made for fast horses to be held ready at intervals along the road, so that if necessary he could get back to New York with “utmost expedition.” It was the first time Washington had left the army since taking command. No sooner had he departed, on May 21, leaving General Putnam in charge, than the rumor spread that he had gone to Philadelphia to resign his command. When he returned, on June 6, after an absence of two weeks, it was to a rousing welcome with drums rolling and five regiments parading.

  “Through Broadway we marched, round the King’s statue,” wrote Lieutenant Bangs, jubilant, like all the army, at the commander’s presence among them once more.

  There was further bleak news from Canada, including word that General John Thomas, who had been sent north with the expectation that he could set things straight there, had died of smallpox.

  The one positive development for Washington was that during his stay in Philadelphia he had convinced Joseph Reed to rejoin the army, to serve as the army’s adjutant general—its administrative head—with the rank of colonel, in place of General Horatio Gates, who had been sent by Congress to see what he could do about Canada.

  Reed returned full of misgivings. He questioned his fitness for the job—“It is so entirely out of my line,” he told his wife—and in a few days he was ready to quit again. But Washington’s faith in the gifted Reed, and his need for a confidant, were no less than ever. To Washington his return was a godsend.

  ***

  SUDDENLY, with the impact of an explosion, news of a Loyalist plot to assassinate the commander-in-chief burst upon the city. A dozen men were arrested, including the mayor of New York, David Matthews, and two soldiers from Washington’s own Life Guard. The plot reportedly was to kill Washington and his officers the moment the British fleet appeared.

  Patriot mobs took to the streets to hunt down Loyalists. Those they seized were beaten, tarred and feathered, burned with candles, or made “to ride the rail,” the cruel punishment whereby a man was forced to straddle a sharp fence rail held on the shoulders of two men, with other men on either side taking a grip on his legs to keep him straight, and thus the victim was paraded through the streets.

  “Dear Brother,” a New Yorker named Peter Elting wrote approvingly on June 13, “We had some grand Tory rides in this city this week and in particular yesterday. Several of them were handled very roughly, being carried through the streets on rails, their clothes tore from their back and their bodies pretty well mingled with the dust.”

  A local Moravian pastor, Ewald Shewkirk, writing in his diary of such “very unhappy and shocking scenes,” noted also, “Some of the generals, and especially Putnam, and their forces had enough to do to quell the riot and make the mob disperse.”

  Washington shifted his headquarters to City Hall. Knox and his wife moved into No. 1 Broadway, while Martha Washington remained at the Mortier house beyond the city—all this apparently out of concern for Washington’s safety.

  What was learned of the plot, in the course of a court-martial of the two soldiers from the Life Guard, was less sensational than first reported, but serious indeed, even if the evidence was thin. According to the accused themselves, the plan had been to recruit other soldiers to sabotage gun emplacements “when the fleet arrives,” in return for royal pardons and financial bonuses (“encouragement as to land and houses”). Besides the mayor, the others arrested and imprisoned included two doctors, a shoemaker, a tailor, a chandler, and a former schoolteacher. But only one of the soldiers was convicted, an English immigrant named Thomas Hickey, whose defense was that he had gotten involved only “for the sake of cheating Tories and getting some money from them.”

  Hickey was hanged before an enormous crowd on June 28, a fate that most in the army approved. (“I wish twenty more were served the same,” wrote Joseph Hodgkins.)

  That same night Washington learned for the first time that the British had sailed from Halifax bound for New York on June 9, General Howe having departed somewhat earlier on the frigate Greyhound. The information came by express rider from the captain of an American schooner that had been captured by the Greyhound off Cape Ann, then retaken by an armed American sloop.

  The next morning, Saturday, June 29, officers with telescopes on the roof of Washington’s headquarters and other vantage points in the city and on Long Island, saw signals flying from the hills of Staten Island. The first of the British fleet had appeared.

  In a matter of hours, forty-five ships had dropped anchor inside Sandy Hook in the Lower Bay, ten miles beyond the Narrows. To a Pennsylvania rifleman closer at hand their masts looked like a forest of trimmed pine trees. “I declare that I thought all London was afloat.”

  ***

  HENRY AND LUCY KNOX were at breakfast at No. 1 Broadway when they
saw the fleet. It had become their practice to enjoy breakfast beside a large Palladian window on the second floor with a panoramic view of the harbor. But now suddenly the morning was shattered and Lucy Knox was in a state of abject terror.

  “You can scarcely conceive of the distress and anxiety which she then had,” Knox would write to his brother William. “The city in an uproar, the alarm guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts, and everything in the [height] of bustle. I not at liberty to attend her, as my country cries loudest.”

  For weeks Knox had been urging Lucy to leave the city, for her own safety and that of their infant daughter. “My God, may I never experience the like feelings again! They were too much, but I found a way to disguise them, for I scolded like a fury at her for not having gone before.”

  By sunset the enemy ships at anchor down the bay numbered more than one hundred.

  Riders galloped off to Connecticut and New Jersey to spread the news and “hurry on the militia.” Martha Washington said her goodbyes to her husband and departed the city by carriage with all possible speed, as did Lucy Knox, Caty Greene, and their children, along with hundreds more of the city’s inhabitants.

  “The great being who watches the hearts of the children of men, knows I value you above every blessing, and for that reason I wish you to be at such a distance from the horrid scenes of war,” Knox wrote to Lucy after she reached Connecticut, and lest anyone forget all that was at stake, he reminded her, “We are fighting for our country, for posterity perhaps. On the success of this campaign the happiness or misery of millions may depend.”

  Further details on the makeup of the enemy armada followed quickly. The ships included the Centurion and the Chatham, of 50 guns each, the 40-gun Phoenix, and the 30-gun Greyhound with General Howe on board, in addition to the 64-gun Asia. In their combined firepower these five warships alone far exceeded all the American guns now in place on shore. Nathanael Greene reported to Washington that the total fleet of 120 ships had “10,000 troops received at Halifax, beside some of the Scotch Brigade that have joined the fleet on the passage.” And as Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb of Washington’s staff further noted, an additional 15,000 to 20,000 could be expected “hourly” on still more ships from England under the command of General Howe’s brother, Admiral Richard Lord Howe.

  The whole of New York was “in commotion,” wrote Pastor Shewkirk. “On the one hand everyone that could was packing up and getting away; and on the other hand country soldiers from the neighboring places came in from all sides.”

  On Long Island, one of Nathanael Greene’s field officers took time to pen a note to his son back home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. “I am of opinion our hands will be full,” wrote Colonel Moses Little, a veteran of Bunker Hill.

  ***

  IN PHILADELPHIA, the same day as the British landing on Staten Island, July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress, in a momentous decision, voted to “dissolve the connection” with Great Britain. The news reached New York four days later, on July 6, and at once spontaneous celebrations broke out. “The whole choir of our officers…went to a public house to testify our joy at the happy news of Independence. We spent the afternoon merrily,” recorded Isaac Bangs.

  A letter from John Hancock to Washington, as well as the complete text of the Declaration, followed two days later:

  That our affairs may take a more favorable turn [Hancock wrote], the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the connection between Great Britain and the American colonies, and to declare them free and independent states; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the head of the army in the way you shall think most proper.

  Many, like Henry Knox, saw at once that with the enemy massing for battle so close at hand and independence at last declared by Congress, the war had entered an entirely new stage. The lines were drawn now as never before, the stakes far higher. “The eyes of all America are upon us,” Knox wrote. “As we play our part posterity will bless or curse us.”

  By renouncing their allegiance to the King, the delegates at Philadelphia had committed treason and embarked on a course from which there could be no turning back.

  “We are in the very midst of a revolution,” wrote John Adams, “the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”

  In a ringing preamble, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the document declared it “self-evident” that “all men are created equal,” and were endowed with the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And to this noble end the delegates had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

  Such courage and high ideals were of little consequence, of course, the Declaration itself being no more than a declaration without military success against the most formidable force on earth. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, an eminent member of Congress who opposed the Declaration, had called it a “skiff made of paper.” And as Nathanael Greene had warned, there were never any certainties about the fate of war.

  But from this point on, the citizen-soldiers of Washington’s army were no longer to be fighting only for the defense of their country, or for their rightful liberties as freeborn Englishmen, as they had at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and through the long siege at Boston. It was now a proudly proclaimed, all-out war for an independent America, a new America, and thus a new day of freedom and equality.

  At his home in Newport, Nathanael Greene’s mentor, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, wrote in his diary almost in disbelief:

  Thus the Congress has tied a Gordian knot, which the Parl [iament] will find they can neither cut, nor untie. The thirteen united colonies now rise into an Independent Republic among the kingdoms, states, and empires on earth…. And have I lived to see such an important and astonishing revolution?

  At a stroke the Continental Congress had made the Glorious Cause of America more glorious still, for all the world to know, and also to give every citizen soldier at this critical juncture something still larger and more compelling for which to fight. Washington saw it as a “fresh incentive,” and to his mind it had come not a moment too soon.

  On Tuesday, July 9, at six in the evening, on his orders, the several brigades in the city were marched onto the Commons and other parade grounds to hear the Declaration read aloud.

  The general hopes this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, [the orders read] as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: And that he is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honors of a free country.

  The formal readings concluded, a great mob of cheering, shouting soldiers and townspeople stormed down Broadway to Bowling Green, where, with ropes and bars, they pulled down the gilded lead statue of George III on his colossal horse. In their fury the crowd hacked off the sovereign’s head, severed the nose, clipped the laurels that wreathed the head, and mounted what remained of the head on a spike outside a tavern.

  Much of the lead from the rest of the statue would later be, as reported, melted down for bullets “to assimilate with the brains of our infatuated adversaries.”

  ***

  NOT SINCE THE SPRING of 1775 had spirits been so high. But the exuberance of the moment, or any thoughts that grand pronouncements and the toppling of symbolic monuments were sufficient to change the course of history, were quickly dashed in dramatic fashion three days later, on July 12. In a surprise move, the British demonstrated for all to see how much the defenders of New York had still to learn, and the larger, ominous truth that without sea power New York was indefensible.

  It was a brilliant summer day with a brisk wind out of the southwest, ideal sailing conditions. At approximately three in the afternoon, His Majesty’s ships Phoenix and Rose, in the company of three tenders,
cast off their moorings at Staten Island and started up the harbor under full sail, moving swiftly with the favorable wind and a perfect flood tide.

  Alarm guns sounded in New York. Soldiers rushed in every direction through streets crowded with panic-stricken people. The cannon at Red Hook and Governor’s Island opened fire, and as the ships swept by lower Manhattan, heading into the mouth of the Hudson, the guns at old Fort George and other shore batteries opened up. Commanding the fire from Fort George was a nineteen-year-old captain of New York artillery, Alexander Hamilton, who had left King’s College to serve in the Cause. The ships returned the fire. Cannonballs slammed into houses and came bounding down streets still swarming with people. Washington would write of the extreme distress he felt at the shrieks and cries of women and children running every which way, and at the spectacle of his own men standing at the water’s edge gawking helplessly, so awestruck—or terrified—were they by the ferocious barrage let loose by the enemy ships.