Margaret was trying to follow the dictates of her loyalty, but she was embarrassed at being caught out. She didn’t know what to say. Finally, her innate spunk rising, she held up her glass and cried, “General Howe is the toast.”
The table erupted in indignation. Putnam, who had assumed the role of her protector, came to her aid, suggesting to the commander that “everything said or done by such a child ought rather to amuse than affront you.”
Washington was not mollified, but he realized the matter must be brought to an end. A light rejoinder popped into his mind. “Well, Miss,” he said, “I will overlook your indiscretion, on condition that you drink my health, or General Putnam’s, the first time you dine at Sir William Howe’s table, on the other side of the water.”
In an instant Margaret went from embarrassment to relief to joy, for not only was the moment of social awkwardness at an end, but this was the first real indication she had been given that the Americans would indeed get her to the British. She promptly assumed the role of obedient girl and promised Washington that she would do as he asked.
Her wishes were not gratified at once. Instead of being taken to Staten Island, she found herself whisked to Kingsbridge, at the northern tip of Manhattan, where the colonials were constructing a fortification. She considered it some sort of punishment, but it was more likely done to keep her from overhearing military plans. General Thomas Mifflin was in command here, and his wife, Sarah, took charge of Margaret.
So she took up residence in another military household. Officers came and went. Almost at once, she fell powerfully, hypnotically in love with one. He was twenty-one years old, a colonel, with dark hair, an angelic face, and soulful eyes. He had studied theology, then switched to law before leaving to join the army. He’d served valiantly in the effort to take Quebec, which had attracted Putnam’s notice, so here he was assisting in the effort to defend New York. His name was Aaron Burr.
Burr was developing a reputation as a lady-killer. He was seven years older, but Margaret was highly sexually aware and both of them had a magnetic affect on the opposite sex. They had very little occasion to be together, but they managed to find some time to be alone, for she admitted later that “to him I plighted my virgin vow,” that he “subdued my virgin heart,” and that “the immutable, unerring laws of nature” had pointed him out to be her husband. As July gave way to August, a heat wave was engulfing Manhattan Island, and it particularly inundated Margaret Moncrieffe. She was smitten beyond words, but she tried to use them to convey the storm of feelings. Burr was “the Conquerer of my soul.” She had no more thoughts about her father and the need to fly to him for protection. Instead, she dreamed of running away from the war with her lover into the wilderness, with “the woods affording us our only shelter, and their fruits our only repast.”
In her fiery and spontaneous way, she dashed off a letter to General Putnam, at the other end of the island, informing him that she intended to marry. If she was looking for his approval, she did not get it. Putnam was alarmed and flabbergasted at this turn of events. Assuming the role of a disapproving parent, he pushed ahead plans that were already underway to send her to the British side.
Margaret was filled with a new dismay. What she had longed for—to be reunited with her father—was now about to happen, and suddenly she didn’t want it. Why should she care about him? He had spent most of her life in other places, rejecting her. Now it was her turn to reject him. She wanted to stay on Manhattan, with him.
But two military commands that were in the midst of preparing to attack one another in a battle that could dictate the future of the British Empire had managed to come together on this one point. The American high command had arranged to deliver this girl to their British counterparts. There was nothing she could do. August 7 was a blustery day. The boat that rowed her out into the bay tossed violently; she was soaked by the waves. They came within hailing distance of the Eagle, Admiral Howe’s flagship, and a boat from it headed toward them. As an indication of the seriousness with which the American side viewed the matter of handing over this teenaged girl, the job of doing so was given to Washington’s top aide, Colonel Knox. He exchanged shouted formalities over the wind with the British officer who had rowed out to meet them, and Margaret stepped from the American barge to the British.
That evening she found herself at an officers’ dinner hosted by General Howe. There were forty or fifty people present, and as she entered the room, she was rattled by their gazes and murmurs: “a sweet girl”; “divinely handsome.” She was just noticing, with relief, that she had been seated next to a woman she knew, the very elegant Frances Montresor, wife of a British officer, when she found that, as a matter of politeness to her as the new arrival, and one who had reached them through such dramatic circumstances, she was being asked to offer a toast. After a pause to gather her thoughts, she did as Washington had asked and uttered the name of General Putnam.
The reaction was a mirror image of the last time she had offered a toast: gasps. But where Washington’s first impulse had been to censure her, General Howe saw fit to reply with a joke. Apparently, they had heard that the girl had fallen in love while she was with the Americans. Everyone knew that Putnam was a round, rough and elderly man. “If he be the lady’s sweetheart, I can have no objection to drink his health,” Howe cried, to general laughter.
The next day Margaret boarded a coach and was driven nine miles away, to the other end of Staten Island. Hugh Percy, a thirty-four-year-old nobleman who had the rank of brigadier general, had his quarters in a fine house here. The coach pulled up, and there, standing on the lawn, conferring with Lord Percy on military plans, was her father. It had been more than a year since she had seen him. The last few weeks had felt like ages. She fainted in his arms.
“The Army under my command,” General Washington declared to the leader of the Massachusetts provincial congress on August 14, “are in good Spirits.” He knew battle was shortly to commence, and he hoped his troops would act like men “fighting for every thing worth living for, in this case with the Smiles of Providence.” He had trained them hard in the weeks of waiting, and he was feeling optimistic.
On August 22, a bright morning that followed a wracking nighttime summer storm, the British landed on Long Island. The sails, the precision oarwork of the barges, the disembarkation of 22,000 soldiers on the beach, who then formed themselves into neat lines on the nearby plain made for, declared Admiral Howe’s secretary, “one of the finest & most picturesque Scenes that the Imagination can fancy or the Eye behold.”
In short order, this vast and efficient fighting machine decimated the American troops in the vicinity. With all the time he had to prepare his defense, Washington had done virtually everything wrong. In defiance of one of the oldest maxims of war, he had divided his army against a superior enemy. Having no idea where Howe would strike, he had put some of his men on Long Island and others across the East River on Manhattan. Further diluting his strength, he had spread out the troops on Long Island thinly across six long miles of shoreline.
Over the next few days Washington was constantly on horseback, moving back and forth from Gravesend to Brooklyn Heights, scope in hand, scanning the horizon, trying to guess Howe’s strategy even as it was unfolding. On the night of the twenty-sixth, Howe made his move. He had discovered that Washington had left the Jamaica Pass undefended. He sent 10,000 men through it, while two smaller forces attacked as well. All converged on Brooklyn Heights, which looked directly onto the city of New York. In some places the American soldiers blazed away and slowed the oncoming enemy. But all the columns advanced, murderously. After routing the colonials along the Gowanus Road, the Scottish Highlanders, together with the Hessian forces that George Germain had brought into the conflict, pressed forward in a gory frenzy, slashing at the retreating men with sabers and sticking them through with bayonets.
Washington had a steady stream of messengers riding to him with news of each setback. Hundreds of his men were killed in the fi
rst phase of the battle, and two of his generals were captured. The rest of the army that was on Long Island was pinned down, and it looked like Howe would move forward in one final grand assault and utterly destroy him, potentially ending the American rebellion.
But Howe did nothing. Washington was confounded. As it turned out, one general’s inexperience was pitted against another’s excessive caution. Washington had hoped to win a great victory. Now he was forced to exert every effort to organize a massive retreat. A storm swept in on the night of August 29; taking advantage of the wind, and the thick fog that blanketed the East River at dawn, he did some brilliant scrambling and managed to get his troops across to Manhattan.
His men had been harried for days; they were sick, wet, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. Washington himself had spent forty-eight straight hours on his horse in his effort to avoid calamity. Reaching Manhattan, however, gave them no relief. They were being hunted.
Now New York City itself became the issue. Its 4,000 or so houses, its little network of streets, the churches and stables, the inns and taverns, and of course the inhabitants: if his army stayed in or near it, the swarms of redcoats and their bayonets would be upon them. The destruction would be appalling. More prudent, in strategic terms, would be to evacuate the city and set fire to it, and flee northward up the river. It was a hard choice to make, but war was about hard choices. That would at least deny the British their prize.
Washington sent a rider up the highway to the little village of Harlem perched at the northern end of Manhattan. Three weeks earlier, the members of the New York Convention, in order to exchange information with Washington more efficiently, had moved themselves here from White Plains. Washington’s messenger dismounted in front of the church where they had taken up residence, rushed inside and delivered his letter to the Convention’s chairman, Abraham Yates.
Yates took the message and read it aloud to his colleagues. Washington informed the delegates that “the city of New York will, in all human probability, very soon be the scene of a bloody conflict.” He asked them to “form, and execute some plan for their removal and relief.” The members chose a committee to carry out an evacuation of the city, and Yates scribbled a hastily composed reply to Washington and stuffed it into the messenger’s hand:
Sir
I am directed to inform your Excellency that immediately upon the receipt of your favor of this morning respecting the Women, Children and Infirm persons remaining in the City of New York—the Convention appointed a Committee for the purpose of removeing and provideing for such persons—I inclose a Copy of the Resolves for that purpose and hope you will soon be releived from the Anxiety which their continuence in Town has occationed. And I have the Honor to be with verry great Respect Your Most Obedt Hume Servt
Abm Yates Junr President
Yates had until recently been consumed by another task: setting up a government for the new state. To the consternation of some of his colleagues, he had objected to their plan to draft a state constitution. Such a document, in his eyes, concerning itself with defining the powers of the state, would inevitably leach away rights to which individuals were naturally entitled. His close friend Matthew Adgate put forth a resolution that the constitution be accompanied by a bill of rights. The delegates divided into two groups in debating whether this was necessary, with those who had previously counseled moderation in dealing with Britain believing such a statement of individual rights was not necessary, while Yates and his party insisted it was.
This debate was put on hold by the disaster just to the south. Yates and Washington exchanged letters again on August 22 as Washington shared his grim deliberations about New York: “that if the fortune of War should oblige our Troops to abandon that City, it should be immediately burnt by the retreating Soldiery. . . .” The delegates were themselves surrounded by war. They were dealing not only with the situation around Manhattan but also with fears of another British army moving from Canada into the Hudson Valley to the north; with buying muskets; with pleas from imprisoned Loyalists; with efforts to obstruct the Hudson River so as to block Howe’s ships; with mustering companies of soldiers; and with money. War was real for them now, and it made them decisive. Yates responded: “The Convention will chearfully submit to the fatal Necessity of destroying that Valuable City whenever your Excellency shall deem it essential to the Safety of this State or the general Interest of America.”
But Washington didn’t do it—he couldn’t bring himself to do it, though reason told him it was right. Besides, the Congress had instructed him not to burn New York.
When word reached the Convention that the British were soon to invade Manhattan, Yates and his colleagues decided that for safety’s sake they had to leave Harlem and move north. They packed everything up once again, sailed 65 miles up the river, and relocated themselves at the town of Fishkill.
One of the pressing issues Yates and his colleagues were trying to assist Washington with was his army’s lack of cannons. Yates wrote Washington on September 5, to say that the Convention had voted to authorize the army to remove all church bells from New York. They would then be sent across the river to New Jersey to be melted down and turned into cannons. Washington responded three days later: “The measure I highly approve of, & shall accordingly have it carried into execution.” As soon as the messenger rode off, he remembered another thing he had wanted to say, and scratched out a second note to Yates: “I wrote you this Morning by your Express, but forgot to mention a Matter of Consequence. It being determined to remove our sick to Orange Town, we shall want four large Albany Sloops for that purpose.” He asked the Convention to “send them down with as much Dispatch as possible to this City.” Yates wrote back: “. . . we have directed every vessel down the river be impressed.” In the midst of chaos, the two men—the general and the local politician—were working well together.
Washington was profoundly exhausted, yet he had no time for rest. He had to consider what Howe was going to do, and what strategy he himself should employ. Having failed in his initial plan to face and defeat Howe in one grand battle on Long Island, he had partially redeemed himself by executing a clever escape. This gave him the idea that the best general tactic to employ was to “on all occasions avoid a general Action,” as he wrote to John Hancock, and rather to stay quick and nimble, to retreat and then make sudden turns to attack. In short, he should use the size and slowness of Howe’s army against it. At his order, the army pulled out of the city and headed northward, up the island.
By the logic of his new strategy, the best move would be to leave the island altogether while there was still time, let the British pursue him on the mainland, and look for skirmishes that he could win. But no sooner did Washington formulate this new strategy than he reverted to the previous, failed one. He expected Howe would land his men at Harlem, so he moved his army there and began digging in for a head-on battle. He was in a house on the heights at the northern end of the island, which he had made into his headquarters, when he heard an echoing boom of cannonfire from the south. The British were not landing at Harlem after all, but at Kip’s Bay, six miles away, on the east side of the island. He mounted his horse and galloped in that direction. Five British warships were firing simultanously, creating a broadside screen for a full-scale amphibious landing, with dozens of flatboats carrying thousands of men ashore. Washington arrived in time to find the troops he had posted there “flying in every direction and in the greatest confusion.” Right in front of him some of his own men, in frantic retreat, dropped their weapons and ran. He was being met by a parade of panic, a rout, an unconscionable wave of dishonor.
His frosty facade fell; he screamed in rage, unsheathed his sword and pulled his pistol, bellowed at the cowards to hold their positions. He threatened to shoot them. But the soldiers ignored him in their wild flight.
He was alone then when the first wave of British soldiers advanced. Fifty of them were heading straight for him. And he froze. His aides ran up, pushed him,
shook him; it was like trying to waken a statue. One later declared his belief that Washington at that moment had chosen an honorable soldier’s form of suicide: to face the enemy alone. The line of redcoats advanced, now 80 yards away. Finally, Washington’s men dragged him off the battlefield.
Howe had outgeneraled him again. The British took control of New York City. But the prize was not pristine: whether through an unofficial order from Washington or not, arsonists set the city ablaze.
As the invaders pursued Washington’s army to the high ground at Harlem, he was able to regather himself and his men. They turned and fought off the pursuers in a two-hour battle, winning a small but heartening victory.
On September 23, Washington sent Yates an account of the battle, seemingly as much in an effort to calm his own mental unrest as to inform the president of New York’s governing body. The British maneuvers, he admitted, were at first “various and perplexing” to him, but then suddenly they became “extremely plain and obvious.” On reaching Kip’s Bay, he told Yates, he found “to my extreme astonishment . . . the troops who were posted on the lines retreating in the greatest disorder.” He omitted any reference to his breakdown, but went on to describe the feisty resistance of the colonial army in the woods before the Harlem Heights, and ended on a cheery note: “I am in hopes this little success will be productive of salutary consequences, as our army seems to be greatly inspirited by it.”
In fact, Washington was far from inspirited. When he sat down in the mansion in which he had taken up residence to write his cousin, who was taking care of Mount Vernon, he opened up to him in a way he had never done with anyone. He confessed that he felt cornered and hopeless, and that he all but wished for death. “I am bereft of every peaceful moment,” he said. “I am wearied to death. . . . In short, such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings.” Abandoning his now famous reserve, he admitted that “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.”
Revolution Song Page 27
