For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  Washington’s new position was no safer than Brooklyn or New York. As long as the British could ferry men up the Hudson or East Rivers, they could outflank the Americans. A month after Kip’s Bay, Howe did just that with disembarkations at Throg’s Neck and then Pell’s Point. Had the British made a rapid thrust inland, they could have cut off Washington’s retreat from Manhattan Island. But Howe again acted with caution, allowing the Americans to escape and assume another strong defensive position at White Plains, where Washington again hoped Howe would make a frontal attack. At the Battle of White Plains, Howe refused to accept the bait and instead executed a flanking movement, forcing the Americans to retreat and presenting the British with still another opportunity to annihilate Washington. But Howe again dallied, and Washington withdrew five miles to North Plains.

  Throughout the entire New York campaign, Howe never utilized his maneuverability—which command of the waterways in the area gave him—to trap and destroy the Continental Army. He has been criticized for his failure to do so, but he faced at least two constraints. Howe fought according to the precepts of eighteenth-century warfare, which emphasized avoiding battles and deemphasized ruthless exploitation of success. Furthermore, as members of a peace commission that accompanied the military forces, the Howe brothers had a dual role as soldiers and diplomats. Sympathetic to America, they hoped to end the rebellion with a minimum of bloodshed by a judicious combination of the sword and the olive branch. Their peacemaking faltered because the United States had declared independence, which the Howes could not concede. Their warmaking failed because they allowed Washington to escape when he should have been crushed.

  The British had nevertheless jostled Washington’s army from Manhattan. As the Americans withdrew northward, Washington left garrisons at Forts Washington and Lee, on opposite banks of the Hudson. Rather than pursue Washington to North Plains, Howe suddenly turned southward, captured Fort Washington and its garrison, and forced the evacuation of Fort Lee. Howe then dispatched Clinton to capture Newport, Rhode Island, while the remainder of his army fanned out into New Jersey. Washington fled across the Delaware River, trying to stay between the advancing enemy and the rebel capital at Philadelphia.

  With Washington’s army numbering fewer than 3,000 men, the Revolution seemed about to expire. However, one bit of success pierced the gloom: The British advance from the north had failed. Arnold, recovered from his wound sustained at Quebec, built a flotilla of small ships on Lake Champlain, and Carleton paused to construct his own fleet. At the Battle of Valcour Island, Arnold’s outgunned fleet fought a stout delaying action that unnerved Carleton, who retired northward. Washington saw other possibilities for successful operations. Howe’s army was scattered throughout New Jersey in winter quarters. Perhaps one or more of these encampments could be surprised. Washington knew it would be a daring enterprise, but something had to be attempted “or we must give up the cause.” With an unorthodoxy born of desperation, he began a winter campaign. On Christmas night his men crossed the Delaware and assaulted the Hessian outpost at Trenton, capturing or killing almost 1,000 men. He retreated back behind the Delaware, called up militia reinforcements, recrossed the river, and occupied Trenton. When Cornwallis approached with 6,000 troops, Washington sidestepped them and attacked Princeton, inflicting another 400 casualties. The Americans then took refuge near Morristown. Trenton and Princeton revived the Revolutionary cause, and Howe, twice stung, withdrew his garrisons from almost all New Jersey. The 1776 campaign ended with the Continental Army small but intact and with the British in control of only New York City and Newport, which were minimal gains for England’s maximum effort.

  The British had learned a sobering lesson. Washington was a clever commander whose army could fight well, even though the men were so ill-shod that they left bloody footprints in the snow. Henceforth the American commander would be an even more formidable adversary, for Washington had gained great insights from the 1776 campaign. He knew he was fortunate to have survived his eagerness to fight around New York. And he realized that the Revolution would continue as long as the Continental Army, the backbone of the Revolution, existed. Since his army was inferior to the enemy’s, it should not be risked except in an emergency. No city, except perhaps Philadelphia, could warrant hazarding the army because, said Washington, “it is our arms, not defenceless towns, they have to subdue.” After 1776 Washington assumed the strategic defensive and became determined to win the war by not losing the Continental Army in battle, fighting only when conditions were extraordinarily advantageous. He would frustrate the British by raids, continual skirmishing, and removing supplies from their vicinity, always staying just beyond the enemy’s potentially lethal grasp. This strategy entailed risks. Americans might interpret it as cowardice or weakness, and since defensive war meant protracted war, they might lose heart. But Washington believed he could be active enough to prevent excessive war-weariness. Prolonged resistance would also fuel opposition to the conflict in England, as well as strengthen America’s hand in European diplomacy.

  England made its second greatest effort in 1777, but the campaign demonstrated the government’s inability to provide coherent strategic guidance. When operations began, the men who played major roles in the planning—Germain, Howe, and Burgoyne—were unsure of each other’s precise orders and intentions, resulting in two uncoordinated expeditions. Burgoyne followed the Champlain route southward while a secondary force under Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger moved eastward along the Mohawk River. These forces were to unite on the Hudson and capture Albany, where, Burgoyne assumed, they would cooperate with Howe. But Howe left a garrison in New York and took 13,000 troops to capture Philadelphia. Instead of marching overland, he went by sea, which ensured that he and Burgoyne would be incapable of mutual assistance. The movement baffled Washington, who mistakenly believed British plans would be logical. Britain’s flawed strategy allowed Washington to plan wisely. He accurately estimated Burgoyne’s strength and calculated that the Continentals in upstate New York, reinforced by militia, would stop him. He also guessed Howe’s destination and wheeled his army toward Philadelphia.

  For political and psychological reasons Washington had to defend the capital. He took up a position behind Brandywine Creek, but Howe outflanked him and defeated, but once again did not destroy, the army. Howe garrisoned Philadelphia, but he quartered part of his army at nearby Germantown and used another detachment to reconnoiter Forts Mercer and Mifflin on the Delaware, which had to be cleared so the army could be supplied. Noting the dispersed deployments, Washington attacked Germantown. His army again fought hard but lost, and by mid-November Howe had also captured the Delaware River forts. Washington’s twin defeats and the capital’s loss were troublesome but not disheartening. The army had performed well and rapidly replaced its losses, and word from the north was joyous.

  Burgoyne had started his campaign successfully by capturing Ticonderoga. From there he inched forward, burdened by an enormous artillery and baggage train. The troops under Philip Schuyler, commander of the American forces in upstate New York, hampered the advance by felling trees into a tangled labyrinth and hastening crops and cattle out of Burgoyne’s reach. In mid-August, Burgoyne sent a detachment to Bennington, Vermont, to raid a rebel supply depot. Angered by atrocities committed by Burgoyne’s Indian allies and elated that Horatio Gates had replaced the hated Schuyler, militiamen annihilated the column. At almost the same time St. Leger turned back after an unsuccessful siege of Fort Stanwix. The arrival of Continental reinforcements, especially a corps of riflemen, made Burgoyne’s situation worse. The riflemen drove his scouts inside their own lines, leaving the British blind in a swelling sea of militiamen. “Wherever the King’s forces point,” moaned Burgoyne, “militia, to the amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours.” Reinforced by the militia, Gates’s regulars fortified a position on Bemis Heights, on the west bank of the Hudson, barring the route south. At the Battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis
Heights the English failed to penetrate this barrier and Burgoyne retreated to Saratoga, where militiamen and Continentals hovered about his dying army like vultures. On October 17 he surrendered.

  After two mighty exertions England was no closer to victory than it had been at Lexington and Concord, and support for the war plummeted. British forces held enclaves at New York, Newport, and Philadelphia, but the Continental Army and rebel militias controlled the countryside. As the rival armies entered winter quarters, their mutual weakness remained in equilibrium.

  The winter at Valley Forge was one of discontent and privation. Rumors about a plot to replace Washington with Gates, although without foundation, kept the commander in ill humor. The troops’ plight did not improve his disposition. Without adequate shelter, food, or clothing, they huddled around their campfires exercising a soldier’s inalienable right to complain. In particular the forlorn men cursed Congress, which they blamed for their distress. In truth, Congress was doing the best it could. The soldiers’ condition was caused by soaring inflation, currency depreciation, the scarcity of goods, primitive transportation, and a rudimentary administrative organization. These were beyond the control of Congress, which was a weak central government that could neither tax nor enforce its requests to the states for resources.

  But Valley Forge was not entirely bleak, and the army emerged a better fighting force and with high morale. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a former captain in the Prussian army, introduced a training system emphasizing simplicity and standardization in drill and musketry, and the men, who had experienced enough confusion under the old system, responded readily. In February, Nathanael Greene, one of Washington’s best subordinates, became quartermaster general and miraculously improved the logistical system. The soldiers, tempered in the fires of adversity, developed a common pride in their military proficiency and ability to survive.

  Best of all, in February 1778, France, convinced by Saratoga that America could win the war, signed a treaty of alliance. France had been providing covert aid, but America could now anticipate far greater assistance. In 1779 Spain also declared war on England, and in 1780 so did the Dutch. Thus a colonial rebellion had expanded into a world war, a development that was essential to the American cause. After 1778 England’s European enemies diverted British resources from North America, disrupted British operations there, and provided loans and equipment that helped sustain the rebels during some of the war’s darkest periods. Equally important, a French army and fleet eventually deployed in North America, providing direct support to Washington’s army. After the French alliance the scales of weakness became unbalanced in America’s favor, although it would be three years before the tilt brought conclusive results.

  After 1778 England considered America a secondary theater and consequently reevaluated its strategy there, resulting in a shift in strategic focus to the south. It would be necessary to coordinate operations on the mainland and in the Caribbean, where the French threat was acute. Some officials believed southerners would not be as intransigent as New Englanders because “their numerous slaves in the bowells of their country, and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet.” But the most compelling factor was the belief in widespread Loyalism in the region. The ministry pinned its hopes on the existence of southern Loyalists, who would have to carry the burden of the fighting, since Parliament refused to send many reinforcements.

  As a prelude to southern operations Clinton, who replaced Howe as commander in chief, abandoned Philadelphia and consolidated his forces at New York. As he marched north with 10,000 men, the New Jersey militia mobilized to resist the advance, so that, as a Hessian officer succinctly phrased it, “Each step cost human blood.” Washington also attacked the rear of the extended British column near Monmouth Courthouse. He entrusted the initial assault to General Charles Lee, a retired British major who had settled in America and adopted the rebel cause, but Lee’s halfhearted assault soon fell back in disorder. Riding to the sound of the guns, Washington rallied the men, and in weather so hot that soldiers died from heatstroke, the armies exchanged volleys and bayonet charges in European fashion. The Continentals, displaying the benefits of von Steuben’s training, more than matched the British for five hours until darkness ended the battle. Washington resolved to renew the assault in the morning, but Clinton escaped during the night. Monmouth Courthouse was the last major battle in the north. For the next three years the British remained in New York City and Washington’s army kept watch on them from an arc of defensive positions in the Hudson Highlands above the city. The armies skirmished and raided constantly, but they engaged in no battles. At least Washington had the satisfaction of knowing that after two years of maneuvers and battles in the north, “both Armies are brought back to the very point they set out from.”

  England’s southern strategy began in November 1778 when Clinton embarked 3,500 men under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell to attack Savannah, which was easily captured. A full year elapsed before Clinton followed up the initial success by investing Charleston from its landward side. In May 1780 the city surrendered, including the entire American army in the south. Two weeks later Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, commanding the Loyalist British Legion, defeated South Carolina’s last organized rebel force at the Waxhaws, killing those soldiers who surrendered. The British quickly established posts throughout the state. In June Clinton departed, leaving Cornwallis to consolidate British gains by protecting and encouraging Loyalists. Hundreds of men renewed their allegiance to the Crown, and Major Patrick Ferguson organized a potent Loyalist militia force. Rebel resistance in South Carolina and Georgia had apparently collapsed.

  The Charleston and Waxhaws disasters capped a very bad winter and spring for the Americans. The army, which had its 1779–1780 winter quarters at Morristown, had endured a more miserable experience than it had at Valley Forge, since the weather was colder with more snow, and most of the causes of privation at Valley Forge had grown worse. On three occasions between January and June, Continental units mutinied. The men were incapable of suffering further misery and believed that the populace had betrayed the foremost defenders of the Revolution by failing to support them. The wonder is that no mutinies occurred sooner. Because the soldiers wanted to continue to serve the Revolutionary cause and mutinied only as a means of self-preservation, officers quickly quelled the outbreaks. But the mutinies were an ominous sign that the Revolution had reached its lowest point since Washington’s flight across New Jersey in 1776.

  The rebel situation deteriorated further when Congress, against Washington’s wishes, appointed Gates to command a new southern army formed around 1,400 Continentals, reinforced by militiamen. In August Gates marched into South Carolina, met Cornwallis’s advancing army at Camden, and deployed his regulars on his right wing while entrusting his left to militiamen alone. When Cornwallis attacked, the militiamen threw down their weapons and fled. The outnumbered Continentals fought valiantly but were overwhelmed. In just three months, two American armies had disappeared.

  Compounding the agony was the treason of Benedict Arnold, who conspired to sell the plans of West Point—the crucial fortress in Washington’s Hudson Highlands defense system—to the British. While some Americans believed the conspiracy’s failure afforded, as Greene said, “the most convincing proofs that the liberties of America are the object of divine protection,” others wondered whether the cause would survive. If Arnold, who served so nobly at Quebec, at Valcour Island, and during the Saratoga campaign, had lost all sense of honor and patriotism, how many others might follow his treasonous path?

  Despite Morristown, the southern calamities, and Arnold’s defection, three factors furthered the American cause in 1780. First, in July a 5,000-man French expeditionary force commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau and accompanied by a small fleet arrived at Newport, which the British had evacuated. Second, the Revolutionary spirit revived in the south. British troops and Loyalists plundered and raped, and they angered the
neutral Scotch-Irish by persecuting the Presbyterian Church. The British decreed that anyone who failed to take an oath of allegiance would be considered in rebellion. Men who had adopted a passive stance had to choose collaboration or resistance, and many chose the latter. The dying embers of the Revolution ignited in guerrilla warfare under men like Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens. Convincing proof of resurgent resistance came at King’s Mountain, where five backcountry partisan bands coalesced against Ferguson’s Loyalist militia and annihilated it. Finally, bowing to Washington’s request, Congress appointed Greene to replace Gates. Greene found the difficulties of his command “infinitely exceed what I apprehended.” His minuscule army was in wretched condition, and the bonds of society had disintegrated as rebels and Tories committed “dreadful, wanton Mischiefs, Murders, and Violences of every kind, unheard of before.” But Greene skillfully coordinated rebel maraudings with the activities of his army, which slowly grew larger and stronger. Greene was especially heartened by the arrival of Daniel Morgan, who had commanded the rifle corps that had fought so well against Burgoyne.

  Greene was an unorthodox strategist who took grave risks that yielded great dividends. He assumed command in December 1780 and divided his outnumbered army between himself and Morgan, inviting defeat in detail. Somewhat mystified, Cornwallis split his own army, sending Tarleton directly after Morgan while he took a circuitous route to cut off Morgan’s retreat. Morgan stopped retreating at Cowpens. Shrewdly deploying his mixed force of Continentals, cavalry, and militiamen, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the British, and 90 percent of Tarleton’s 1,100 men became casualties or prisoners.

  After Cowpens, Morgan hastened to join Greene. Anxious to refurbish British prestige, Cornwallis gave chase. A game of hounds and hare ensued, with Greene playing the rabbit’s role willingly. By luring Cornwallis away from South Carolina, the partisans could harass enemy outposts with relative impunity. Still, the race was desperate. Frequently the American rear guard skirmished with the British van, but Greene always eluded the main body and finally crossed the Dan River into Virginia. His men exhausted, Cornwallis reversed course to Hillsborough to refit his army, but Greene decided the time to fight had arrived and recrossed the Dan. The armies met at Guilford Courthouse in a furious battle in which the British won a Pyrrhic victory. Cornwallis’s losses were so severe that he moved to Wilmington, where he could recuperate and be resupplied by sea. Soon he marched into Virginia, which he believed was the Revolution’s southern center. The move betrayed southern Loyalists, who had offered support and in return expected protection.