Galloping towards the firing, Washington, “to my great surprise and mortification,” found himself surrounded with fleeing men. They only ran the faster when they saw him. Then, to his relief, two fresh brigades came marching up in good order. Washington ordered them to disperse behind some walls and in a cornfield to await the enemy. They waited bravely enough, but when a small British force—not more than sixty or seventy men—appeared, they jettisoned their guns and knapsacks and took off for the rear. Washington galloped after them, shouted, struck at them with his riding whip, but to no avail. He threw his hat on the ground, crying out, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” And again, “Good God! Have I got such troops as these?”
Unwilling to follow the retreat, Washington soon loomed on horseback alone. Some fifty of the enemy dashed towards him. He watched them without moving. Had not aides galloped up and pulled him away, he would have been killed or captured. He was, General Nathanael Greene wrote, “so vexed at the infamous conduct of his troops that he sought death rather than life.”
The British, satisfied that they were achieving with almost no loss their objective of capturing New York City intact, made little effort to pursue the fleeing rebels or cut off the garrison threading up from the city through the west-side forest. Almost the total army found refuge on Harlem Heights. What Washington denounced as “the dastardly behavior of the troops,” had kept American casualties to a minimum, but had presented the British with an invaluable military base, and also permitted them to capture a staggering quantity of tents, baggage, wagons, cannon.
The next day, an American scouting party ran into a British advance guard in a rocky, wooded area. British reinforcements hurried up, confident that they could easily handle this part of the army they had twice so easily put to flight. But the Americans, firing from behind rocks and trees, stood. With trepidation, Washington ordered into the fight whole battalions that had fled the day before. Now it was the British who ran away. The Battle of Harlem Heights, which Washington ended by calling his troops back when sounds indicated that they were running into British artillery fire, was the first victory won in combat by Washington’s army. Yet it had been no more than an enlarged skirmish. It seemed too insignificant to give Washington much comfort.
“If I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave,” Washington wrote his cousin Lund Washington, “I should put him in my stead with my feelings—and yet I do not know what plan of conduct to pursue. I see the impossibility of serving with reputation, or doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command, and yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow from the distraction that will ensue. In confidence, I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born. To lose all comfort and happiness on the one hand, whilst I am fully persuaded that under such a system as has been adopted, I cannot have the least chance for reputation, nor those allowances made which the nature of the case requires; and to be told, on the other, that if I leave the service all will be lost, is, at the same time that I am bereft of every peaceful moment, distressing to a degree.”
The “system” that was sinking the cause, so Washington explained to his masters in Congress, was the reliance on short-term troops. The militia who made up the majority of his army were perpetually in flux, appearing briefly and then disappearing, to be perhaps replaced. Having been “just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life,” they were “ready to fly from their own shadows” Themselves immune to discipline, the militia destroyed whatever discipline Washington had been able to inculcate in those more regular troops who were designated the Continental Army. And the common soldiers in the Continental Army, having been enlisted only for the year 1776, would soon go home.
Washington begged that the new army, which would have to be created with the new year, should be large enough so that major reliance on militia would not be necessary. The soldiers should be enlisted for three years, time enough for him to develop an efficient force. For this to be achieved, Congress would have to expend more money. Men would surely not enlist for the longer term unless they were given larger “bounties”: cash sums paid common soldiers at the time of enlistment. Washington expressed worry lest the British, having a more ample war chest, should recruit Americans faster than Congress could. American liberties would then be at an end.
The long-term enlistments which Washington insisted were essential were for many congressmen a bitter pill. That the Congress lacked the necessary money was the lesser part of the problem since the delegates had got into the habit of voting, as they now did again, funds they did not have. Members were more bothered by political implications. The leaders of the various colonies (now known as states) had by no means decided that, when the war that clearly required cooperation was won, they would agree to forming a united nation. The states, it was commonly believed, should be no more than friendly neighbors. It was thus worrisome that soldiers kept from home for three long years might lose their special allegiance to their home states. And there was always the danger so underlined by history, that an army which became coherent within itself would become an instrument for tyranny. While accepting, because they felt they had to, three-year enlistments, the Congress made provisions for state control of officer appointments that added further confusions to Washington’s seemingly endless difficulties in holding the Continental Army together.
Ever deliberate, the British spent a month consolidating their hold on New York City. Then, starting on October 12, they sailed up the East River and into Long Island Sound, landing troops on the mainland, well above the northern tip of Manhattan Island. If they marched westward, they might be able to draw a line from the Sound to the Hudson River that would seal Washington’s army away from New England and upstate New York. Washington considered it necessary to march hurriedly north of the British beachhead. He occupied a strong position on hills near White Plains, New York. On the 28th, the enemy outflanked Washington’s position by capturing with discouraging ease a nearby hill which Washington had partially fortified. Again moving silently at night, the Americans retired to higher hills near New Castle. The British thereupon wheeled to their left and disappeared in the direction of the Hudson River.
The American commanders were now faced with a series of dilemmas. If they followed the British, the enemy might, having lured them out of the way, turn back and, in a rapid countermarch, proceed into New England. If they did not follow, the enemy might continue unmolested in the direction they were going, cross New Jersey, and take the national capital, Philadelphia. The strategic situation was further confused by the fact that there was still an American presence on Harlem Heights. Washington had left a large garrison in Fort Washington, which was supposed, in cooperation with Fort Lee on the Jersey shore, to close the Hudson beyond that point to the British fleet.
Washington and his staff came up with a four-way division of their already outnumbered army. The garrisons were to remain in Forts Washington and Lee, but, since the forts might at any time have to be evacuated, three or four thousand men should be stationed in secondary forts built further up the Hudson. General Lee should stay at New Castle protecting New England with seven thousand men. With what remained, hardly two thousand men, Washington would cross the Hudson for the protection of New Jersey and Philadelphia. His hope was that he would find considerable reinforcements in New Jersey, and he assumed that, if the main British army committed itself to move toward Philadelphia, Lee would rush across the Hudson to join him.
Lee was later to claim that he had objected to the plan on the grounds that Fort Washington should be evacuated because it could now easily be surrounded (except for the riverbank) by the main British force. However, Lee may not have argued too hard, since in its entirety Washington’s plan offered great opportunities to his ambitions. An experienced officer of (as he believed) great genius, he had been held down by having to serve under an amateur. Now Washington would march of
f, leaving him in command of the lion’s share of the Continental Army. Now he would be in a position to show what he could achieve! Of course, Washington might interrupt by ordering him to join in a defense of Philadelphia. If Lee had already decided that he would not obey, he gave no hint to his trusting superior.
TWELVE
Depths
(1776–1777)
Washington led his fraction of the army across the Hudson on November 12, 1776, and marched down the west bank to Fort Lee, the strong point opposite Fort Washington that was the headquarters of the area commander, General Nathanael Greene. Greene, a former Rhode Island ironmonger, was to develop into one of Washington’s very best officers. However, he was not worried that the main British army, which had come down the east bank of the Hudson, had completely encircled Fort Washington, except for the steep cliff that rose from the river. Although Washington had hinted he might be wise to reduce the garrison, Greene had ferried across the river more men and supplies. He was convinced that the post could be held.
Washington’s original aide-de-camp, Joseph Reed, who was now adjutant general, argued with all the extreme fire of his nature that the men and supplies on the cliffs were a beckoning sacrifice to the enemy: bring them back across the river before it was too late! Washington, Reed remembered, “hesitated more than I had ever known him on any other occasion, and more than I thought the public service permitted.”
Since Greene was the high officer most familiar with the situation, Washington finally decided to accept his judgment. This was only to be for the time being, until the Commander in Chief had dealt with what he considered a more serious menace.
Folding camp cot used by Washington during the Revolution. It is six and a half feet long, made of wood and canvas (Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society)
Washington’s leather pack bag (Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union)
What most worried Washington was that the reinforcements he had expected to find in New Jersey had proved illusory. He concluded that Howe, when informed by spies that the blocking force was only about three thousand, would use his main army to take advantage of what seemed an open road to the American capital of Philadelphia. Washington was strengthened in this conclusion by his belief that, since Howe had refused to storm Brooklyn Heights, he would not storm Fort Washington. Surely, he would again rely on conventional siege tactics to inch his artillery slowly towards the walls. It followed that there would be plenty of time to evacuate Fort Washington, but almost none to prepare the defenses in New Jersey. Washington hurried south towards the Philadelphia road.
What Washington failed to realize was that the analogy with the fort at Brooklyn Heights did not hold because that fort had been defensible against assault while the Fort Washington post was not. This was primarily because the Americans, in their sublime ignorance of military engineering, had extended their ramparts far beyond the actual fort, in an effort to protect all of the heights, an area much too large to be adequately fortified or to be held by the existing garrison. The garrison was nonetheless too large to find protection in the fort if driven back from the other ramparts. They would be utterly vulnerable. To British professional eyes this was a plum that cried out for picking.
Washington had not got very far towards the Philadelphia road when he was informed that the British were advancing with their full army against Fort Washington. He galloped back, but not to take the active command. He decided to leave the defense of the post to the officers who were familiar with the intricate fortifications which they had designed.
Watching from across the river at Fort Lee, Washington saw the widely spread American ramparts prove almost useless against professionally expert assault. His anguish was so poignant that he made no effort, until it was too late, to organize some way to get at least some of the troops down from the cliffs and across the river. Having absolutely no means of escape as a superior British force bore down upon them, thousands of American troops milled helplessly around the main fort, which was too small to hold them. They had only two choices: annihilation or surrender. By nightfall, they had surrendered.
The exhausted Commander in Chief, who had not in more than a year allowed himself a full day’s rest, had presided over the worst defeat so far of the Continental Army: in addition to many cannon, he had lost some three thousand men (mostly captured). This catastrophe created the greatest damage to Washington’s reputation since his youthful debacle at Fort Necessity. General Lee was quick to seek advantage. He wrote a friend in Congress, “A total want of sense pervades all your military councils.… Had I the powers, I could do you much good.” He urged the New England authorities to send reinforcements not to the Commander in Chief but directly to him.
Fort Lee was now indefensible. Although Washington had some time before ordered that the stores which had been kept there be removed to a safer place, they had not been. He hurried to get them out, but could not move fast enough. Three mornings after the fall of Fort Washington, a strong British column appeared on the west bank of the Hudson. As Washington led the garrison in a precipitous flight, Reed became hysterical. He commandeered a horseman to ride to General Lee. The horseman had a scrap of paper and Reed a pencil. “Dear General,” he wrote. “We are flying before the British. I pray—” Here the pencil broke. He had to complete his message verbally: Lee should come at once to save the army from completely incompetent leadership. The horseman rode off to repeat what he had been told whenever he stopped for refreshment at a tavern.
His troops having successfully evaded the British, Washington wrote Lee suggesting that he bring his part of the army across the Hudson so that their combined force could make at least an appearance of a defense of New Jersey. Otherwise the citizens, seeing themselves deserted, might go over to the British, carrying many Pennsylvanians with them. Reed secretly inserted in Washington’s letter one of his own stating that the entire army felt Lee’s presence was their only hope.
Washington was soon falling back through New Jersey before a British column too strong for his feeble force to oppose. Every time a dispatch rider came in, he hoped the message was from Lee. Finally a message did come. It was addressed to Reed, but the aide was absent. The Commander in Chief broke the seal. Lee (who had no intention of abandoning his independent command) had written that too many opportunities existed in New York for beating up the British for him to join Washington. Lee thanked Reed for his “most flattering, obliging letter.… To confess a truth, I really think our chief will do better with me than without me.” He agreed with Reed in lamenting “that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity.… Eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if cursed with indecision.”
The implication was unavoidable: Lee was agreeing with strictures against Washington that Reed had made. And Washington considered Reed his closest adviser. So that was what his best military friend thought of him!
Washington’s first reaction was anger. He wrote Reed a cold letter that would, he knew, cause the adjutant general’s resignation. But his mood soon changed. He wrote Reed a second letter, almost abjectly begging his old friend not to desert him at this desperate time.
Reed agreed to stay on. He reappeared at headquarters with a well-rehearsed explanation. When the Commander in Chief, not seeking an emotional reconciliation, behaved as if no unpleasantness had taken place, Reed’s self-pride was hurt. He soon resigned. Elected chief executive of Pennsylvania, he used his exalted post to fight Washington’s leadership.
The retreat through New Jersey continued. The troops Washington commanded remained too few for any formal resistance, and what Washington called “a level champaign country” provided no crags or even stone walls for guerrilla fighters to hide behind. The inhabitants, left without protection, lined up to swear allegiance to George III. The British were jubilant at the seeming demonstration of their belief that, when the rabid revolutionaries were driven away, t
he mass of Americans would give expression to a continuing love of the Crown.
Early in December, Washington’s flight carried him across the broad Delaware River. Although small, frozen, sick, and starved, his army was safe: Washington had seen to it that all boats that might enable the British to follow had been moved over to the Pennsylvania shore. But the respite might be brief. The enemy could bring boats overland from New York in wagons. Then they could strike anywhere along the miles of river.
As always, Washington felt that to meet an undefinable attack, he would need twice the enemy’s numbers. He had only one quarter that many. The most desperate efforts to inspire Philadelphians to mount a last stand only increased his army to about half the British force. Congress considered it prudent to flee from Philadelphia to Baltimore.
Finally Lee, having failed in his attempts to make a splash by catching the British napping, decided to obey orders. Washington learned that his subordinate was in New Jersey, and that other reinforcements were also approaching through the hilly northern part of the state. He thereupon offered Lee everything that his second-in-command had been scheming to achieve. Lee was to try to get all the forces in New Jersey together and then, if opportunity offered, he was to attack the enemy without waiting to consult Washington. Washington would stay on the far side of the Delaware, leaving the field open to the officer he knew was more experienced than he. This was surely one of the most magnanimous acts of Washington’s whole career. He was, to further the cause, opening the possibility of a triumph to an insubordinate officer whom he could reasonably suspect of eagerness to replace him as commander in chief.
Washington- The Indispensable Man Page 10
