Spies and Deserters

by Martin Ganzglass

  Coincidentally, Paulus Hook was the last British military post in New Jersey at the time of the Treaty of Paris. It was evacuated on November 22,1783, two days before the British sailed out of New York harbor for good. (Petrocci, Charles A. “The Battle of Paulus Hook,” Military History, August 2000.)

  5) Sometime following the British evacuation of Philadelphia, the 16th Light Dragoons disbanded, its officers returned to England and the men and horses remaining were transferred to the 17th Light Dragoons. (McBurney, Christian, “Abductions in the American Revolution - Attempts to Kidnap George Washington, Benedict Arnold and Other Military and Civilian Leaders,” p. 88.)

  6) Ann Bates continued her remarkable career as a British spy. Together with her husband, an armorer in the Civil Branch of the Royal Artillery Regiment, she accompanied the army to New York City. She was introduced to Major Duncan Drummond, an aide-decamp to General Clinton, responsible for gathering intelligence about the American army. She crossed the lines and frequently entered the American camp, selling ribbon, thread, needles, combs and like goods, while determining the number of soldiers and cannons, including the “weight of Ball of each Cannon” in the different Companies, Regiments and Brigades. (Braisted, pp. 36-40.)

  7) In response to raids by the King’s Militia Volunteers and other Loyalist units on prominent Rebel militia leaders in Connecticut, the Connecticut militia crossed the Long Island Sound in whaleboats, seeking to kidnap notorious Tories, either military or civilian. One such raid took place on November 4, 1779. About thirty men landed on Long Island, hid all day and marched almost fifty-two miles in two nights, to kidnap Judge Thomas Jones. The infamous Tory Judge was hosting a dinner party. The raiders broke in, grabbed the Judge and his nephew and escaped with their captives, crossing the Sound again in their whaleboats to Connecticut. Thomas was exchanged for a Connecticut General, Gold Selleck Sillman, commander of the for a Connecticut General, Gold Selleck Sillman, commander of the 82.)

  8) Captain John Montresor resigned his commission in March 1779 and returned to England. The island he owned and now called Randall’s Island was confiscated by the Americans after the British left New York City. Ironically, it was John Montresor who was responsible for stealing the head of King George’s statue, torn down by a large crowd at Bowling Green on July 9, 1776. When the British defeated Washington’s army in Brooklyn and occupied New York City, Montresor sent men to Moore’s Tavern where it had been buried, resurrected the disfigured head of the King and “sent the Head by the Lady Gage to Lord Townshend in order to convince them at home [London] of the Infamous Disposition of the Ungrateful people of this distressed Country.” It in fact had reached the Townshends. When the former Royal Governor of Massachusetts visited in November 1777, “Lady Townshend asked me if I had a mind to see an instance of American loyalty? And going to the sopha, uncovered a large gilt head. . .that of the King. . .The nose is wounded and defaced, but the gilding remains fair; and as it was, it was well executed, it retains a striking likeness.”

  (Ruppert, Bob, Journal of the American Revolution, September 8, 2014,“The Statue of George III”.)

  Chapter 16 – With the Black Brigade 1) From 1776 until the end of the war, Monmouth County itself was racked by communal violence. Local patriotic militias, aided by Continentals, clashed with local Tories and the Loyalist New Jersey Volunteers. Whigs confiscated Loyalist estates and sold them at auction. Raids into the County were conducted from the Loyalist and British base on Sandy Hook and Staten Island.

  Retaliators were members of the Association for Retaliation, a Whig organization in Monmouth County, formed in the summer of 1780.

  It took revenge on behalf of its members for any harm or plundering by Loyalist militias or raiders. (Adelberg, Michael pp. 16-22.)

  2) This fictional account of the raid on Shrewsbury is a combination of two actual raids. The first, known as the Allen House Massacre, occurred in the summer of 1779. Allen House was a tavern in Shrewsbury and at the time about a dozen soldiers, either militia or Continentals, were stationed there to monitor the movements of Tories. They were attacked by a band of Loyalists (not Colonel Tye’s Black Brigade) who came up a branch of the South Shrewsbury River, landed near the Episcopal Church and surprised the Americans by a bayonet attack. The Tories killed three, took nine soldiers prisoner and escaped.The second raid that occurred on July 20, 1779 was conducted by Colonel Tye on Joseph Halstead’s Tavern, (the same Allen House). The New Jersey Gazette (a Whig newspaper) reported: “About fifty Negroes and refugees landed at Shrewsbury, and plundered the inhabitants of nearly eighty head of cattle, about 20 horses and a quantity of wearing apparel and household furniture. They also took William Brindley and Elihu Cook, two of the inhabitants.” (Adelberg, p. 85.) The word “refugees” applies to Tories who had fled Rebel violence. They probably were white men.

  3) Colonel Israel Angell’s Diary records that on September 12, 1780, “a Soldier in Col. Stewarts Battalion was hanged this day on the Grand Parade for Plundering the Inhabitants agreable to the Sentence of a Gen. Court Martial.” (Field, Angell Diary, p. 115-116.)

  Edward Field, the Historian of the Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the American Revolution who transcribed the original diary and added notes, quotes General Washington’s order as follows: “‘The Gen’l again exhorts officers and soldiers of every rank to pay the closest attention to the conduct of their men and to use every precaution to prevent the soldiers from rambling and committing such outrages, the subject of daily complaint and representation to him. It is highly incumbent on them to do this, to prevent the consequences which will follow as he is determined to show no favor to soldiers who are convicted of these pernicious and disgraceful offenses.’ – Rev. Order of Gen. Washington.” (Field, Angell Diary, p. 116.)

  4) According to the National Park Service, approximately 10,000 soldiers and officers were housed in 1,200 huts constructed at Jockey Hollow south of Morristown. They were laid out eight huts in a row, three or four deep, each hut approximately fourteen feet wide and sixteen feet long. There was a chimney at one end and a door at the other. Twelve soldiers per hut slept on wooden plank bunk beds. (Spending the Winter at Jockey Hollow, The History Girl.)

  5) It is not clear where General and Mrs. Knox stayed during the winter of 1779-1780 at Morristown. In “Following the Drum,” the location is described as a “farm near camp.” Three of Knox’s biographers, Mark Puls, Noah Brooks and North Callahan are all silent on the location of the place where the General and his family stayed. Drake does not quote any letter or entry by Knox in his diary detailing the Morristown location. The Morristown County Tourist Bureau, in describing “The Willows” which was the former mansion of Paul Revere’s grandson, states that it is “locally believed to have been the home of General Henry Knox during the Continental Army’s encampment of 1779-1780.” I have described the Wick Home, a saltbox house where Major General Arthur St. Clair lived during the winter of 1779-1780, as a stand-in for the farmhouse occupied by General Knox and his family, Will and Elisabeth Stoner and Samuel and Mercy Hadley.

  6) General Washington’s headquarters, and where he resided with Martha, their eighteen servants and his staff of five (including Colonel Alexander Hamilton) was at the Ford Mansion just outside Morristown, about three miles away from the Army’s main encampment at Jockey Hollow. Theodosia Ford, the widow of Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr. (and mother of my fictitious character, Mercy Hadley), her servants and four children lived in her mansion as well. The General had the use of “two rooms on the first floor, and all the upper floor, kitchen, cellar, and stable, Mrs. Ford and her family occupying the few remaining rooms.” (National Park Service, Morristown National Historical Park.)

  7) In February 1780, General Knyphausen was the interim commander in chief of the British forces in New York City (while General Clinton was supervising the assault on Charleston, South Carolina). The bitter winter froze the Hudson and the waters of Newark Bay, enabling British cavalry and troops to cross the
ice into New Jersey. Knyphausen authorized a raid to kidnap General Washington, and in a report to General Clinton stated: “General Washington having taken up his quarters at a distance from his army, under the protection of a small corps of infantry, it appeared practicable to surprise that body with cavalry and to penetrate the neighborhood of Morristown.” (McBurney, p. 87.)

  The overall plan was to stage a series of diversionary attacks at Elizabethtown, Woodbridge and Rahway while the raiding party of the 17th Light Dragoons, accompanied by cavalry from the Queen’s Rangers, moved on Morristown. The mission to grab Washington was originally scheduled for February 8, 1780 but, due to a snowstorm, was delayed until February 11th. Leaving Paulus Hook, the cavalry passed through Hackensack and made it another five or six miles towards Morristown. However, the roads were impassable due to the heavy snow of a few days earlier and “an uncommon fall of rain, . . . encrusting the top of the snow, cut the fetlocks of [the] horses, and rendered it absolutely impossible for [Captain Beckworth] to succeed.” (McBurney, p. 93; Huggins, Benjamin, L., “Raid Across the Ice: The British Operation to Capture Washington,” Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume, 2015, pp. 274-279. Huggins attributes the horses’ difficulties to “a recent fall of sleet [that] had created a layer of ice that cut the horses’ fetlocks.”)

  Colonel Tye’s attempt to kidnap Washington is fictitious but not far-fetched, given his audacity as a guerrilla commander and his intimate knowledge of the terrain. There is no historical evidence that Native Americans were part of the Black Brigade or that Tye attempted to kidnap General Washington by equipping his band with snowshoes and travois.

  Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements

  “Spies and Deserters” continues exploring the theme of invisible diversity, a phrase, suggested by my wife, to describe the role of blacks, women, Native Americans and even homosexuals in the American Revolution. They were all present during our War for Independence. Their roles simply have not been taught in our schools or acknowledged in most history books. Historical accuracy and certainly not any sense of political correctness compels me to include their stories.

  Adam Cooper, who, the reader first met in “Cannons for the Cause,” is a black free man in the Marblehead Mariners, perhaps the first integrated unit of the Continental Army. As Adam frequently is compelled to explain, he was born free and is not a freed man, that is, a slave who has been freed. Approximately five hundred of the 9,000 to 10,000 soldiers who suffered through the deadly winter at Valley Forge were African American, either free men like Adam, or slaves who gained their freedom by enlisting, or slaves who were permitted to serve by their masters in their stead, and were promised their freedom at the end of the war. For purposes of comparison, the 1790 census reported New Jersey had approximately 11,400 slaves or 6.2 % of its total population.

  The First Rhode Island Regiment, consisted of more than four hundred black soldiers with white officers. They were recruited from both free men and slaves and participated in the battles of Monmouth Courthouse and Rhode Island. Ironically, the only segregated units at the Battle of Rhode Island were the First and Second Rhode Islanders. Other States’ Regiments were integrated to some degree.

  Sarah Pence, General Washington’s cook at Valley Forge, is based on the real character of Hannah Mason, a slave lent by her master, Reverend John Mason of New York to General Washington. Washington in turn lent her services temporarily to the Marquis de Lafayette. After returning to work for Washington, Hannah was able to purchase her freedom and married Isaac Till, another of Washington’s Valley Forge servants. After the war, she lived in Philadelphia to the ripe old age of 104, dying in 1824.

  By creating Sarah as a young woman to whom Adam is attracted, I am able to explore the contradiction of a soldier fighting for freedom while being unable to court a slave cook because she is simply property, like a farm animal or a piece of furniture. “Fighting for freedom for whom?” Colonel Tye asks Adam who replies, freedom for all. What did blacks in the army think when they passed by farms and towns where slaves labored under the watchful eye of their masters? I have given Adam an almost uncontrollable anger, over Sarah’s childhood on a southern plantation and her current plight as a slave, as he and she struggle to purchase her freedom.

  The name of her master, Reverend Pence, was chosen at random from a list of colonial families and officers, long before Governor Pence was nominated to be and elected Vice-President. There is absolutely no political significance to the use of the Pence name.

  Colonel Tye is another real character- a masterful guerrilla commander of the Black Brigade that terrorized Whigs in Monmouth County, as those supporting the Revolution in turn terrorized Loyalists and suspected supporters. Not much is known about him, other than through reports of the raids he conducted, freeing slaves, punishing their masters, and looting for the purpose of providing supplies to the British.

  What is known is that he was not freed by his Quaker master as was the custom when he attained age 21. I have therefore provided him with a degree of righteous anger against all slaveholders and a mission to free as many slaves as possible. However, he recognizes the attitude of the time - educated whites, and in particular his British, class-conscious allies, regarded blacks as almost sub-human beings, barely brushed with a thin veneer of civilization.

  Native Americans were simply savages, meaning they were characterized by their apparent savagery, although the brutality of the guerrilla war in New Jersey and elsewhere would lead one to conclude there was enough savagery to go around. Even the Marquis de Lafayette, who was honored by the Oneida, called them “scalping gentlemen.” Their crucial role in saving Lafayette from being encircled and captured by General Howe outside Philadelphia has never been adequately recognized. If Lafayette had been captured it could have been a turning point in the war or, at least, severely tested the new alliance between France and the United States.

  I have created two Native American characters, as members of Colonel Tye’s Black Brigade. Neither have major speaking roles but they teach Tye’s men how to make snowshoes for a crucial winter raid.

  The role of women during the Revolution has also long been ignored. Sure, there is the myth of Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, courageously manning the cannon as her wounded husband lies nearby, or Betsy Ross dutifully designing the American flag. Women were spies on both sides. Ann Bates, to whom I give a fictional role as being employed by John Stoner, was an accomplished agent for the British. She frequently crossed through the lines and entered the American camps. With her knowledge of cannons and guns, she accurately reported on armaments as well as the disposition of Regiments to her British controllers. On one occasion, she even penetrated Washington’s own headquarters.

  Elisabeth Van Hooten is a fictional stand in for the many American women who passed information by secret codes and invisible messages in common everyday letters. Her friends among the upper class young ladies of Philadelphia, among them, Peggy Shippen, who later married Benedict Arnold, are examples of the beautiful young women who fraternized with the charming British Officers, their love of entertainment far outweighing their commitment, if at all, to the rebel cause.

  Many women served as nurses at Continental Army hospitals where they tended to the sick and wounded and probably assisted the surgeons in operations, the most common being amputations. They were exposed to the diseases prevalent among the soldiers - typhus, typhoid, dysentery, and pneumonia. Mercy Hadley typifies one such nurse.

  We know from the correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband and others, that women were involved in politics. They also ran their husbands’ businesses when they were away for long periods of time serving in the army. When the Pennsylvania State Government imprisoned more than twenty prominent Philadelphia Quaker men on questionable evidence, their wives not only tended to the businesses, but managed the households, cared for the children and petitioned for their release. It is a historical fact that four Quaker women
visited General Washington to plead their case and then went on to York, Pennsylvania to do the same before the State Government.

  Finally, Randy Shillet in “Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military,” presents convincing evidence that Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August von Steuben, the epitome of Prussian militarism, the man described by an eyewitness as personifying the God of War himself, was homosexual. Yet, from all the history books we have been assigned throughout our studies of the American Revolution, there is not a hint of this.

  Today, it does not matter whether or not he was homosexual. What does matter is that had we been taught the diversity of those who contributed to our war for independence - blacks, Native Americans, women, homosexuals- we might have been more readily accepting of the current diversity in our society. These people were there from the beginning of the Revolution and the successful conclusion of the war is attributable, at least in part, to their participation and sacrifice.

  The more I read about the American Revolution, the more I realize we are prisoners of our myths. Valley Forge is embedded in our collective memory as a place of severe deprivation, ragged unpaid soldiers freezing to death, dying of a wide variety of diseases and suffering from starvation. Approximately 2,000 soldiers out of a total force of around 9 to 10,000 died at Valley Forge, more than had been killed in all the Revolutionary War battles to date. Over 1,500 horses died. Their deaths required that the soldiers assume the role of beasts of burden, hauling firewood and supplies on sleds in the bitter cold.