Spies and Deserters

by Martin Ganzglass

  4) Colonel Angell wrote in his diary for August 27th that he lost one Ensign and “14 men taken prisoners by British troops as they was a Setting their sentries the Ensign was John Viol.” (Field, Edward, Diary of Colonel Israel Angell Commanding the Second Rhode Island Continental Regiment During the American Revolution, 1778-1781, p. 6.; Popek, p. 223.)

  5) General Sullivan gave the order for the Army to retreat to Butts Hill Fort on the night of August 28, 1778. When the British discovered the Americans had abandoned their siege lines on the morning of August 29th, they formed two detachments, one to go up the East Road of the Island, and the other, composed of Hessians, to advance on the West Road. American light infantry impeded their progress by a “masterful fighting withdrawal, firing behind stone walls, where available.” (Popek, p. 224.)

  6) This description of an officer being blown to bloody pieces by stepping in front of a cannon as it fired is not gratuitous gore, invented by the author. Colonel Angell, with his unusual spelling, capitalization and punctuation, described such an incident that occurred on August 30th:

  “Lt. Arnold of the artillery was killed accidentally as he had fired his Piece Stept off to see where the Shot Struck and Steping before the mussel of another Gun as the officer gave the word fire the ball went through his body blo’d him too peaces his Body hung togeather by only the Skin of his belly, one Arm was blown Clear off.” (Field, Angell Diary, pp. 10-11.)

  7) After the successful crossing of the straits of the Sakonnet River to Tiverton, the remaining militias were dismissed and the regular army regiments took up defensive positions. General Varnum’s Brigade, of which the Second Rhode Island Regiment was a part, marched to Bristol and Warren. (Popek, p. 236.) I have given the Regiment home leave in Providence before taking up such positions. General Sullivan ultimately went into winter quarters in Providence, while the British maintained control of the strategic harbor of Newport and sent an additional 4,000 troops as reinforcements. (Savas and Dameron, p. 188.)

  The casualty reports vary but generally the British lost 38 killed, 210 wounded and 12 missing; the Americans 30 killed, 137 wounded and 44 missing.

  The main casualty of the battle was the loss of trust between the Americans and the newly arrived French forces. General Sullivan claimed the French had left his men stranded on the Island and he and General Greene wrote a letter to d’Estaing “accusing him of craven betrayal.” (Chernow, p. 348.) To smooth the ruffled feathers of the alliance, John Hancock held a banquet at his Beacon Hill home in Boston for the French Vice Admiral and presented him with a portrait of George Washington. “I never saw a man so glad at possessing his sweetheart’s picture, as the admiral was to receive yours,” was how Lafayette reported it. (Chernow, p. 349.)

  American troops were not impressed by the French soldiers in their white uniforms and high-heeled shoes. The French returned the disdain, particularly toward the militias who one officer described as “a laughable spectacle, . . . mounted on bad nags and look[ing] like a flock of ducks in cross belts.” (Chernow, p, 349.)

  Most accounts of the battle report that black troops from Rhode Island (the First Regiment) played a prominent role in repulsing the Hessian attacks. (Samos and Dameron, p. 187.) A publication of the Rhode Island Historical Society states that the 202 men of the First Rhode Island Regiment were praised for their “desperate valor” in anchoring the right flank of the American army. (Rhode Island History, Volume 62, # 3, Fall, 2004, Conley, Patrick T., The Battle of Rhode Island, 29 August, 1778 - A Victory for the Patriots, p. 58.) Popek, on the other hand, based on eye witness accounts of the battle and an exhaustive review of Regimental Muster and Pay Rolls, pension records and casualty reports, concludes that the First Regiment (Black Regiment) was not in the thick of the battle. The “deeds of desperate valor,” was a legend created by an abolitionist historian at Brown University.” (Popek, pp. 235-236.)

  Whatever the truth is of the First Regiment’s role in the Battle of Rhode Island, it is ironic that the “only New England Continental Regiments at the Battle of Rhode Island that were not integrated were the First and Second Rhode Island Regiments. . . . [A] few of the veteran Massachusetts and Connecticut Continental Line soldiers . . . were men of color.” (Popek, p. 235.)

  8) According to the 1790 Census, New Jersey had 11,423 slaves or 6.2% of the State’s total population. (Historical Census Browser, 1790 Census.) Bergen County was the largest slave-holding county in the State. Slaves were generally used in agriculture but also worked in shipyards and ports.

  New Jersey was the last Northern State to abolish slavery, passing a law in 1804 that only provided for gradual abolition. Not until 1846 did New Jersey officially abolish slavery almost entirely, but qualified it by stating that slaves born before the law was passed were considered indentured servants apprenticed for life. It was only with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 that slavery was finally ended in New Jersey.

  9) British ships frequently took shelter from the weather within the arm of Sandy Hook, before continuing on to Staten Island and New York harbor. Daring raids by American privateers on ships at Sandy Hook, as well as in the waters around New York ,were fairly common. This one by Captains Gradon and Holmes, while fictitious is based upon facts drawn from actual attacks, as described in “The Whaleboat Wars of the Revolution -The New Jersey whaleboat men who braved the might of the Royal Navy to carry the war to the enemy,” from WHAT MANNER OF MEN, Cook, Fred J. pp. 278-288, and “The Whale-Boat Men of Long Island Sound,” Kuhl, Jackson, Journal of the American Revolution, November 1, 2013.

  Chapter 12 – Ambush and Betrayal 1) It was extremely difficult to be even politically moderate as many Pennsylvania Quakers were. The general perception among both Patriots and Tories was that Quakers were not to be trusted, although almost 1,000 Quakers in Pennsylvania were disowned for taking up arms to support the patriotic cause.

  The Quaker poet, Hannah Griffitts characterized the disaster of the war as the “mean Distinctions times have made,” and broke “each sacred Tye, each Social Band/and in affliction plunge the parent Land.” (Wulf, Karen, “Despise the mean Distinctions [these] Times Have Made”: The Complexity of Patriotism and Quaker Loyalism in One Pennsylvania Family.”

  2) Elizabeth Drinker, in her diary, recounted the arrest, trial and hanging of two of her Quaker neighbors, Abraham Carlisle and John Roberts, the former being tried and convicted of high treason on September 25, 1778, and the latter on October 2, 1778. Both were hanged on the Philadelphia Commons on November 4th. Drinker visited the Carlisle family and noted the “poor afflicted widdows, are wonderfully upheld and supported, under their very great trial - they have many simpathizing Friends.” (North, Wedge and Freeman, pp. 123-124.)

  The historian Thomas Fleming renders a harsh judgment of the civil administration of Philadelphia. Of the eighty-seven indictments obtained by prosecutor Joseph Reed, acting on behalf of the radical State government, the city’s judges dismissed fifty-seven of them. Of the remaining thirty cases of alleged high treason, Reed was able to obtain convictions of only Abraham Carlisle and John Roberts, both Quakers. In Roberts’s case, the verdict was “more egregious.” Roberts, a miller, “who had concealed the journals of the Continental Congress when they were given to him by panic-stricken Congressman James Lovell, . . . was sentenced to death for making ‘verbal utterances’ against the state government, something four-fifths of the citizens of Pennsylvania did regularly.” (Fleming, pp. 333-334.)

  Pleas for clemency to the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, including “forty state militia officers, and a thousand other Philadelphians, including the judge and jury that convicted Roberts,” went unheeded. (Fleming, p. 334.) “Conspicuous by his absence among these pleaders for mercy was Congressman Lovell, who could have made a powerful statement on Roberts’s behalf by testifying to the way he had protected the vital journals of Congress until they were recovered by General Washington. [He] chose to remain silent, rath
er than reveal his pusillanimous conduct. . .Roberts was hung before a crowd that included [his] weeping wife and nine children.” (Fleming, p 334.)

  3) This fictitious event of the British slaughter of American dragoons is based on an actual attack that occurred on September 27, 1778 at the farm of Cornelius Blauvelt, near Old Tappan, New Jersey, about six miles north of Paramus. The British Light Infantry, led by three Tory guides, surprised Colonel Baylor’s 3rd Light Dragoons while they slept and slaughtered them with bayonets. The soldiers’ flints and charges from the firelocks of their muskets had been intentionally removed in order to prevent accidentally alerting the sleeping Americans, and to enable the British to identify any muzzle flash as that coming from the enemy. Numerous eye-witness accounts substantiate the claim that the British bayonetted dragoons who had surrendered and asked for quarter, as well as the execution of Americans being held prisoner after being captured. The British also stripped the bodies of the dead Americans. (Braisted, pp. 100-108.)

  4) In addition to lectures in tactics and gunnery, there were “work huts for those employed in the laboratory.” (Brooks, Noah, Henry Knox - A Soldier of the Revolution, p. 130.)

  Chapter 13 – Confidences in New York and Secrets at Pluckemin 1) General Washington returned to Middlebrook in February 1779 after six weeks in Philadelphia and after the anniversary date of the French alliance. The celebration with Washington in attendance was held on February 18th and Knox wrote it “was a most genteel entertainment given by self and officers.” (Drake, p. 60; Chernow, p. 353.)

  Peggy Shippen, who married General Benedict Arnold later in April of that year, did not accompany him when he visited Middlebrook in early February, before the celebration. He was on his way to upstate New York where he had been offered a “vast estate at the southern tip of Lake Champlain.” Instead, against the advice of senior officers at Middlebrook, he returned to Philadelphia to face the charges hastily filed against him by Joseph Reed, then President of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council. (Philbrick, Nathaniel, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2016 - Why Benedict Arnold Turned Traitor Against the American Revolution.) He also probably returned because he was deeply in love with Peggy Shippen, writing her from Middlebrook, “Six days absence without hearing from my Dear Peggy is intolerable. Heavens! What must I have suffered had I continued on my journey- the loss of happiness for a few dirty acres [the estate offered in New York]. I can almost bless the villainous … men who oblige me to return.” (Philbrick, Smithsonian, May 2016.)

  2) Some of the eight charges Reed filed against Arnold were petty, such as “being ungracious to a militiaman and preferring loyalists to patriots,” and some were more substantive such as “illegally purchasing goods upon his arrival in Philadelphia.” (Philbrick, Smithsonian, May 2016.)

  Knox wrote to his brother William on February 13, 1779, after Arnold’s visit to Middlebrook:

  “. . .You will see in the papers some highly colored charges against General Arnold, by the State of Pennsylvania. I shall be exceedingly mistaken if one of them can be proven. He has returned to Philadelphia, and will, I hope, be able to vindicate himself from the aspersions of his enemies. (Drake, p. 60.)

  3) Black markets for all manner of goods developed in Philadelphia, after the American Army returned. Arnold profited from selling goods confiscated from Loyalists and in the case of the Charming Nancy purchasing goods from the ship and issuing a pass to Robert Shewell, a Philadelphia merchant and owner, for the ship to leave Philadelphia and sell the goods elsewhere, that is, in New York City. Arnold stood to personally gain by issuing the pass and the scandal angered other Philadelphia merchants who were not allowed to transport their goods to be sold to Tories and the British Army. (Wells, “Philadelphia and the Fate of General Arnold.”)

  4) To satisfy Judge Shippen’s condition that he had the financial means to take care of his daughter, in March 1779 Arnold took out a loan of 12,000 pounds and bought Mount Pleasant, a 96 acre estate with a mansion overlooking the Schuylkill. (Philbrick, Smithsonian, May 2016.) He and Peggy were married on April 8, 1779.

  5) General Washington did indeed, after the socially obligatory dance with the hostess “the obese Lucy Knox. . . danced all evening with Caty Greene. Her husband wrote “His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down.” (Chernow, p. 354.)

  6) There is a detailed description of the Academy at Pluckemin and the celebration of the anniversary of the alliance with France in “The Great Anniversary in Pluckemin,” by John W. Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of the State of New Jersey, pp. 441-442.)

  After noting that the event was attended by General Washington and other officers, Mrs. Washington, Mrs. Knox and Mrs. Greene as well as other ladies and gentlemen, they describe the thirteen gun salute, followed by an elegant dinner in the Academy. “The room was spacious, and the tables very prettily disposed both as to prospect and convenience. . . In the evening was exhibited a very fine set of fireworks.” Afterwards, “the company returned to the academy, and concluded the celebration by a very splendid ball.”

  Of the Academy’s thirteen arches, the ninth one depicted the battle of Saratoga. I have added to the painting a depiction of General Arnold engaged in that battle.

  Knox described the event as “the first of the kind ever exhibited in this State at least. We had about seventy ladies, all of the first ton in the State and between three and four hundred gentlemen. We danced all night - an elegant room.” (Drake, pp. 60-61.) Knox’s use of the word “ton” is French for breeding or manners. (Chernow, p. 354.)

  Chapter 14 – Freedom for All 1) Titus Cornelius or Colonel Tye was a feared Loyalist guerrilla leader in southern New Jersey, primarily in Monmouth County. He was born a slave and owned by a Quaker, John Corlies (or Corlis), who contrary to Quaker practice, did not free him when he became 21. He ran away and joined the British. Corlies advertised in newspapers, offering a reward of Three Pounds. In that advertisement, Titus was described as:

  “. . . about 21 years of age, not very black, near 6 feet high; had on a grey homespun coat, brown breeches, blue and white stockings.”

  Having been raised in Monmouth County, Colonel Tye not only knew the terrain and the numerous rivers and inlets, but also who were Rebel sympathizers. Tye’s Black Brigade raided former masters and known slave-holding Rebels and their sympathizers.

  Tye’s background, as he describes it to Adam Cooper, is accurate. He did capture an American Captain at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse but his prisoner was Captain Elisha Shepard of the Monmouth Militia and not a Captain from Virginia.

  The guerrilla war in New Jersey was brutal on both sides. Loyalist farms and property were confiscated by Patriots, and known Tories were hung first as part of vigilante justice and then under martial law as declared by Governor William Livingston.

  The Royal Governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, the Loyalist son of founding father Benjamin Franklin, authorized attacks on Patriot leaders. Tye’s Black Brigade captured prominent Militia leaders, killed John Russell, a Rebel commander responsible for raids on British-held Staten Island, captured Major James Mott of the Monmouth Militia and raided the home of Captain Joshua Huddy, who was known for his swift execution of captured Loyalists. That raid took place on September 1, 1780 and Tye was shot in the wrist. He died, probably of tetanus and gangrene, a few weeks later. (Adelberg, Michael, S., The American Revolution in Monmouth County -The Theater of Spoil and Destruction, pp. 89-90.)

  Chapter 15 – Raids on Paulus Hook and Long Island 1) Julia Knox, the second daughter of General and Lucy Knox, died on July 2, 1779 at Pluckemin. Two weeks after her death, General Greene wrote that Mrs. Knox “bore the loss of her daughter ‘with a degree of fortitude that marks a phylosophick [philosophic] temper.’” (Loane, p. 83.)General Washington sent Lucy a note of condolence and “an anonymous friend sent her a copy of ‘Elegiac Lines, Inscrib’d to Mrs. Knox, occasioned on the death of her Infant Daughter, who deceas’d nea
r Pluckemin, N. Jersey, July 2d, 1779.’” (Brooks, p. 134.)

  2) Two websites for the Jacobus Vanderveer House, located in Bedminster, New Jersey both state that the local Dutch Reformed Church refused to allow Julia Knox to be buried in their cemetery because the Knoxes were Congregationalists. Vanderveer’s insane daughter (who I have fictitiously characterized as having seizures) had previously been refused burial in the cemetery. This is supported by a reference in “New Jersey - A Guide to Its Present and the Past,” on page 448, to the Vanderveer’s own daughter being refused burial in the cemetery because “she was possessed by the devil.”

  Vanderveer’s daughter and Julia Knox were buried on Vanderveer property, which later was acquired by the Church so that their gravestones came within the boundaries of what is now the Bedminster Reformed Church Cemetery.

  3) One website reports that Jacobus Vanderveer took General Knox “by the hand and led him to the grave of his daughter saying, ‘Gen’ral, this is my ground, bury your child here.”

  That same site reports that the gravestone reads: “Under this stone are deposited the remains of Julia Knox, an infant who died the second of July, 1779. She was the second daughter of Henry and Lucy Knox, of Boston, in New England.” The inscription is confirmed in “Historic Houses of New Jersey,” by Weymer, Jay Mills, p. 82.

  4) On August 18, 1779 a force of Americans, led by Major “Light Horse” Harry Lee attacked Paulus Hook, now Jersey City. The fort was held by New Jersey Tory Volunteers led by Colonel Abraham Van Buskirk and two hundred or so British regulars. Lee’s troops started at New Bridge, marched fourteen miles through dense forest and the final distance through marshes and a rising tide, to attack the fort around three a.m. Unknown to Lee, Van Buskirk had earlier led a force of about one hundred and thirty volunteers out from the fort to engage in raids in the surrounding countryside. The Americans’ surprise attack enabled them to capture Paulus Hook, suffering two killed and three wounded. They took one hundred and fifty-nine prisoners and killed or wounded thirty British soldiers. The remainder of the garrison, including about twenty- six Hessians, retreated to a smaller inner redoubt and kept up a steady defensive fire. Lee, together with the prisoners, retreated back the way they had come. While his men’s weapons were useless because their powder was wet, he was joined by part of his original column which had become lost, and whose powder was dry, and further on by two hundred or so fresh troops who acted as his rear guard. Toward the end of the march, Van Buskirk and other Tories attacked the Americans but were beaten back. Lee arrived victorious in New Bridge around one p.m. August 19th.