The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  Much of the food the soldiers carried to sustain them was ruined during those first few weeks because of misplanning and misfortune. Large supplies of cod fish were all left in the bottoms of the boats and the fresh river water that spilled into the craft from the Kennebec destroyed them. Shabbily built barrels of dry bread were similarly ruined when the water seeped into them, as were barrels of peas.

  The bateaux had been manufactured in haste for the invasion and constantly sprung leaks. Complained George Morison, a private from Pennsylvania, “Many of the bateaux were so badly constructed that in them or out of them, we were wet. Could we have then come within reach of the villains who constructed these crazy things, they would fully have experienced the effects of our vengeance.”7

  The men began to fall sick; some died. Dr. Isaac Senter, the physician accompanying the expedition, reported on October 12, a week’s marching time before the men would reach the aptly named Dead River, that many soldiers had come down with dysentery and diarrhea and that the water in their barrels had gone bad. He wrote, “No sooner had it got down than it was puked up by many of the poor fellows.”8

  Greenman fought his way through clusters of bushes and trees. The clearings were littered with stones and the paths that did exist were covered with fallen trees and brush. One clearing they traversed at the bottom of a ridge was very swampy and strewn with lengthy rotted-out logs that they had to step over. When they approached the Chaudière River, they had to push their way through jungles of spruce, cedar, and hemlock trees and cross deep and winding ravines that nature had slashed into the slopes of the hills near the water.

  Their grittiness and determination, hallmarks of the entire American army throughout the Revolution and in the years to come, was evident to Arnold, who marveled at the way the enlisted men plunged through the forests. “Our men,” he noted, “are very much fatigued in carrying over their bateaux, provisions. The roads being extremely bad . . . They appear very cheerful . . . Their spirit and industry seem to overcome every obstacle.”9

  The divisions of troops became easy victims of the terrain. Dozens of bateaux had been so badly damaged that they had to be left behind. Supplies had to be put in all of the boats and about half the men on the expedition were forced to walk, not ride, as the army moved ever northwards toward Canada. Their coats were ripped by branches and soon could not protect the men from the wind and cold. Their shoes were cut up, too, by the jagged rocks in the streams they traversed, and by the time they approached the headwaters of the Dead River many had become barefoot.

  Exhausted upon their arrival at the Dead River, an extension of the Kennebec, on October 20, the men were drenched by a heavy rain that grew in intensity all day and by nightfall, aided by south by southwest winds, became a full-blown storm. Meandering nearby creeks began to overflow and swiftly running water surged over the banks of the river and shores of the ponds and tore through the woods. The strong winds knocked over dozens of large trees. The men scrambled into clearings to avoid falling trees but were afraid to put up tents for fear that the winds would knock them over and injure the inhabitants. Many simply laid on the open ground in clearings, huddled against each other, hats pulled down over their heads, coats wrapped tightly around them, and sat out the storm. Despite gallant effort to save them, the soldiers lost dozens of barrels of flour, pork, and other supplies that were carried away by the badly flooding ponds.

  The men found themselves in the center of a calamitous natural disaster when the sun rose over the rain-soaked countryside in the morning. The ponds, now lakes, and the overflowing Dead River flooded out many of the landmark trails and creeks on Arnold’s previous maps and the men did not know what direction to take. Several divisions, including Greenman’s, became lost, some for as long as a day, before backtracking to the main army.10 Others ignored Arnold’s orders to walk on high ground, above the new shorelines created by the overflowing water. To save time they waded through the three feet deep waters of the “ocean swamp,” as Greenman called it. The freezing waters soon made their legs and lower bodies numb and they had to leave the water, find high ground, and then dry off. They all rested to regain circulation in their legs, which caused further delays.11

  Dissension over the weather, lack of food, bad maps, and general mismanagement of the army had grown throughout the trip, especially among the last two divisions in the expedition, led by Lt. Col. Christopher Greene and Colonel Roger Enos, whose divisions had suffered the most from lack of food, sickness, and lost bateaux. A few days after the Dead River flooded, on October 25, following a storm that dumped several inches of snow on the ground, the officers of both divisions called a council of war to determine whether they should go on or turn back, an action that verged on mutiny. Many of the officers and men were panicstricken following the series of natural disasters that had befallen them.

  After a lengthy discussion at the council, held in a wide clearing, Greene and Enos urged the men to catch up with Arnold, regardless of the dangers. Others vigorously argued that they should go home because to advance meant certain death. Greene, angry at the men who wanted to depart, reminded them that both he and Enos had received letters that very day from Arnold assuring them that they would arrive in Quebec within fifteen days. Greene reminded them that it would take them more than fifteen days to get back home.

  The colonel’s strident lecture did little good. The officers in Greene’s division voted to go on, but Enos’s officers decided to go home. Enos’s companies, totaling three hundred men, or nearly one-third of the entire force, left the following morning and made it back to the coast in eleven days. Enos was brought before a court of inquiry for desertion, but acquitted following emphatic testimony by his officers that they firmly believed that, under-supplied, they would perish in the wilds of Maine.

  The men who remained in the expedition, knowing that the departure of Enos’s men weakened their forces, were angry. The men of Captain Henry Dearborn’s company even prayed out loud that the men going back with Enos would die on the way as punishment for abandoning them in the middle of the wilderness.12

  It was here, too, that the unhappy men, with nothing left to eat, first discussed killing the dogs that had accompanied them, many of them personal pets, in order to stay alive. It was a disturbing conversation, but one they felt necessary, even though they did not think they would actually do so. Surely they would find food.

  The Dead River was the halfway point on the trip, and when he reached it on October 25, Arnold was furious that it had turned out to be twice the distance from the mouth of the Kennebec that the maps showed. Quebec, too, was not one hundred eighty miles from the sea, but closer to three hundred sixty miles. They were already seven days behind schedule and had consumed most of their provisions, which were soon cut to half rations. Arnold, ever cautious, had, in fact, feared problems with supplies and taken along 50 percent more than he believed he would need. The additional supplies were now nearly gone, too.

  The Dead River began with a series of ponds much farther apart than Montresor’s maps indicated. All in all, the men, now reduced to about seven hundred with the loss of Enos’s troops, had to carry their boats and remaining supplies nearly eight miles between two of the ponds and it debilitated them. Greenman was done in. He observed, “[Men] were greatly fatigued by carrying over such hills, mountains, and swamps such as men never passed before.”

  Life did not improve when they reached the Chaudière River, the watery path to Quebec, eighty miles away. It, too, ran too fast for the leaky bateaux and exhausted men. The bateaux with the sick troops loaded into them could not be maneuvered by the healthy men assigned to pilot them and had to be taken out of the river. The sick then had to walk several miles and help carry their boats. One man was lost, along with dozens of guns and several thousand dollars stashed into a sack, when his bateaux overturned with two others in one of the rapids in the Chaudière.

  The men began to kill and eat their dogs that same night, during their f
ifth week on the expedition. Greenman was so hungry that he put the animal cannibalism out of his mind. Greenman wrote of the dog, “I got a small piece of it and some broth that it was boiled in with a great deal of trouble.” On the following day, the men learned that those in another company, and in a third, had also killed and devoured their pet dogs. By November 1, Greenman was writing in his journal that food was so scarce “there was nothing to eat but dogs.”

  But there was, as the hungry men discovered. Some men boiled their cartridge pouches and others their moccasins and ate them. The men in one division removed all of the candlesticks they had been carrying for light in the evening and had them for dinner. Others gleefully consumed lip salve and slender chunks of shaving soap that they carved off the bars with their knives.

  It was the lowest point in their lives and they feared dying in a grim, desolate wilderness hundreds of miles from their loved ones. Private Abner Stocking walked through the camp that morning and saw men “so weak that they could hardly stand on their legs.” They were despondent, he wrote, “many sitting wholly drowned in sorrow, wishfully placing their eyes on everyone who passed by them, hoping for some relief. Such pity-asking countenances I never before held. My heart was ready to burst and my eyes to overflow with tears when I witnessed distress which I could not relieve.”

  Private Morison observed that “the universal weakness of body that now prevailed over every man increased hourly on account of the total destitution of food; and the craggy mounds over which we had to pass, together with the snow and the cold penetrating through our death-like frames made our situation completely wretched and nothing but death was wanting to finish our sufferings.”13

  Finally, on October 30, forty-two days after they began their journey, Benedict Arnold, leading an advance scouting party searching for food, arrived at the first of several houses near the Chaudière. There he was able to procure from a local farmer a number of cattle for his men, which they first saw a day later when they encountered the advance scouts on their return. The men were delirious with happiness. Greenman wrote, “It was the most joyful sight I ever saw and some could not refrain from crying for joy. Some of the men were so hungry before the creatures [cattle] were dressed that they had the skin and all entrails guts and everything that could be eaten on the fires a-boiling.”

  Two days later, they passed a farmhouse where the residents offered to sell Arnold more food. Greenman wrote, “There was beef and bread for us, which we cooked plenty of. Some of the men made themselves sick eating so much.” He added that it snowed that night as they lay on the ground, but, thanks to the food, “we slept very hearty.”

  On November 12, Arnold’s expedition, fortified by more food from farmers they met, arrived on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, one of North America’s major waterways, which connected the Atlantic Ocean to both Quebec and Montreal. Their journey was nearly over. The enlisted men and their officers, and Arnold, had accomplished quite a feat; they had walked and sailed through three hundred fifty miles of some of the most difficult terrain in the United States, traveled up three rivers, crossed two mountain ranges, survived a severe storm, a treacherous flood, and several snowstorms and made it to the gates of Quebec City with 675 men, losing just 55—dead, sick, or deserted—not counting the three hundred men who turned back with Enos.

  In letters he wrote to his superior, Schuyler, back in Albany, Benedict Arnold praised his men. “Short of provisions, part of the detachment disheartened and gone back, famine staring us in the face, an enemy’s country and uncertainty ahead. Notwithstanding all these obstacles, the officers and men, inspired and fired with the love of liberty and their country, pushed on.”14

  But Arnold’s praise for the enlisted men under his care paled in comparison to the admiration they had for him for leading them through the wilderness. Private Stocking, who feared death on the trip, told friends, in remarks repeated by all of the enlisted soldiers, that Arnold was “beloved by his men.”

  Congress was euphoric. One delegate wrote that the journey through the wilds of New England was “thought equal Hannibal’s over the Alps.”

  Chapter Eight

  JEREMIAH GREENMAN:

  Prisoner of War

  Quebec City was a walled-in fortification that an army could not conquer unless it was starved out, battered it with cannon in a lengthy siege, or stormed it with several thousand troops. This did not worry either General Arnold (he had been promoted on January 10, 1776) or General Montgomery, who arrived there with his army on December 3 and took charge of the entire operation. Both men had said earlier that the inhabitants of Quebec and the towns around it, both French and English, would rise up and join forces with the Americans as soon as the fighting began. This idea had been part of the overall plan for months and this anticipated love of the Americans was reaffirmed for Arnold in conversations with Frenchmen from whom he purchased provisions as his army marched closer to the St. Lawrence.1

  The two generals were wrong. The inhabitants had no intentions of assisting the Americans. That realization led Montgomery to suggest a short siege of the city and its eighteen hundred defenders to soften up its defenses, followed by a storming of the walls. The siege did not last long because it was ineffective, as the American forces totaled around 1,325 men; Montgomery then planned a direct assault. He would wait until a snowstorm hit and then launch a surprise attack, using the blanket of falling snow as a cover. The generals knew that they could not attack the city directly across what was called the Plains of Abraham on the western side of the city because the walls overlooking the wide plains were too well fortified. They had to go around the city and attack from the rear, near the river. That would be a difficult task.

  The central part of Quebec, with its military garrison, administrative officials, and cathedral, was inside a stone fortress that could only be entered through heavily guarded gates. The only feasible assault would have to be a concentrated charge against one of the large gates protecting the city or an attack in which men mounted the walls with ladders. To do so, the Americans would have to charge through the streets of what was called the lower town, a series of neighborhoods in front of one gate that overlooked the St. Lawrence. Two narrow roads led to it.

  Everything fell into place on December 31 when a storm began. The attack was a disaster. Montgomery and Arnold underestimated the firepower of the British inside the town. Very few local residents rose up and joined Montgomery, but the overwhelming majority helped the British hold Quebec against the Americans. The snowstorm did not act as a cover and, in fact, made it difficult for the advancing lines of Americans to see where they were going. The nearly one foot of snow on the ground made it impossible to carry cannon caissons on sleds and some had to be left behind. The roads into Quebec were much narrower than they appeared on maps and the troops found that they had to advance in double, and at times in single file, and became easy targets for British musket fire. The British had suspected a night assault and were prepared with artillery. A single cannon burst killed Montgomery and two of his top aides shortly after his wing of the army reached the town. Benedict Arnold, advancing from another direction, was shot in the leg and went down, cursing loudly. His wound prohibited him from any movement, slowing his column of troops.

  Several companies of men managed to force their way into the lower town after subduing the enemy at barricades at one of the wharves defended by several cannon. Wrote Private Morison, “We fired into the portholes with such effect that the enemy cannot discharge a single cannon.” One company of riflemen led by Daniel Morgan surprised a company of British, taking them prisoners. Morgan was uncertain about what to do next. He had heard that Arnold was wounded, but he had no idea what was happening to Arnold’s main troop. Morgan took command, but did not know the fate of Montgomery and his men, either. His officers insisted on waiting for the general. Instead of moving forward, Morgan opted to wait for Montgomery, who never came. He and his men were eventually confronted by the Brit
ish in the town. Morison continued, “A furious discharge of musketry is let loose upon us from behind houses; in an instant we are assailed from different quarters with deadly fire. We rush on to every part (of the neighborhood) rouse the enemy from their covert and force a body of them to an open fight; (but) now attacked by thrice our number.”2 Morgan’s men were forced to surrender.

  The musket fire from the walls proved deadly. Private Stocking wrote of “a tremendous fire from the windows” that halted the attack of his company. “Thirty of our privates being killed and thirty-five wounded,” he wrote of the enlisted men, “and surrounded as we were without any relief, we were obliged to surrender ourselves.”3

  A Rhode Island company lost several men in a heavy musket fire from the ramparts as they advanced through the lower town but did not make it into the inner city. William Humphrey, a private in the regiment, wrote of the frustration of its members: “We rallied our men and tried to scale the second barrier, and not withstanding their utmost efforts, we got some of our ladders up but was obliged to retreat, our guns being wet, as not one to ten would fire; then we was concluded to retreat, which we did to the first barrier that we had took, and when we came there we found we could not retreat without losing all our men or at least most of them.”4