The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  Arriving earlier with Lee was the Second Rhode Island, with Private Jeremiah Greenman. The Rhode Islander, like everyone at Monmouth, complained of the heat, which he described as “hot and sultry.” The pullback ordered by Lee that morning was seen from many perspectives. The soldier’s view was that of a soldier facing the brunt of the English force directly in front of him. Greenman and his comrades were awed by the size of the British army. He wrote, “They formed in a solid column then fired a volley at us. They being so much superior to our numbers, we retreated. They began a very heavy cannonading and killed a few of our regiment.”

  The men, scrambling back and away from the lines of Redcoats, found some protection behind a wooden fence, where they made another stand. He noted, “Light horse advanced against us. We fired very heavy. Then the footmen rushed on us.” Greenman and his men continued to fight as General Lee panicked. The Second Rhode Island seemed pinned down. “After firing a number of rounds, we was obliged to retreat,” Greenman wrote.

  Greenman noted with alarm that many of the men running from the British on that unbearably hot day simply collapsed on the field and died of heatstroke. The entire battlefield was covered with men who died from the heat on both sides. “Left the ground with about a thousand killed and wounded, on our side about two hundred killed and wounded and died with heat.”

  It was during that retreat that Private Greenman’s men were turned around by George Washington and ordered to attack the oncoming waves of the enemy. They did. This time they had assistance from sixteen American cannon opening up on each side of them. Amid the bursting shells and the volleys of musket balls in the warm air, Jeremiah Greenman was shot in the thigh and went down.

  The American lines held against the constant bombardment of British cannon. Their fire was eventually muted by the return fire of the line of American cannon. The American batteries were not destroyed by the British howitzers, as planned, because the shells continually landed short of their marks. The American infantrymen held off a succession of British charges, large and small, that afternoon. Colonel Stephen Olney’s regiment had lost several men during the retreat, but they stopped and formed a solid line when they heard the American cannon erupt behind them and someone arrived, shouting encouragement to them. Olney wrote, “At this instant our main army came up, commanded by Washington himself, and commenced a heavy fire with our artillery and the British found they had got a fresh army to contend with.”16

  The charge that Washington ordered late in the day pushed the British back. The Americans were proud of their work. “Drove the proud King’s Guards and haughty British Grenadiers and gained immortal honor,” wrote Major Joseph Bloomfield of his men in the Third New Jersey.17

  The Americans fought with all the appearances of a fine European army as they were trained to do so at Valley Forge by von Steuben. Late in the afternoon, Britain’s General Clinton launched a classic flanking movement, but following their Valley Forge training in maneuvering, the American line swung over to stop it and halted the Redcoats in their tracks. That force, led by Anthony Wayne, remained exceedingly cool under the heavy British advance that began just five hundred feet away. Wayne and the officers had the men hold their fire until the last possible moment; then they opened up with a thunderous volley that stopped the attack. The Continentals began to chase the British. A group of Redcoats, pinned down in an orchard, were driven back by Americans and then shredded by Continental cannon as they tried to flee. The army had become, just as Washington had dreamed, a professional force capable of holding its own against, and even defeating, any army in the world.18

  The intensity of the battle that day was best described by Washington himself in a letter to Congress. He wrote of the British that “they were bravely repulsed and driven back by detached parties of infantry . . . General Wayne advanced with a body of troops and kept up so severe and well directed a fire that the enemy were soon compelled to retire.”

  The general had nothing but admiration for the regular army and the several New Jersey militia units that had joined it. He declared, “The behavior of the troops in general, after they recovered from the first surprise occasioned by the retreat of the advanced corps, was such as could not be surpassed.”19

  The Americans held the battlefield all night and awoke the next morning to find the British camp vacant. Clinton had had enough of the combined regular army and militia forces; he had departed and headed north, for New York, his original goal. Technically, the battle was a draw, but the Americans claimed victory because they had held the field. American losses were 356 killed and wounded; the British lost 358. More than sixty soldiers on each side died of heat stroke. Monmouth was a military success and a public relations coup for the American army and gave the rebellion new spirit.20

  That spirit was muted for Sylvanus Seely and his militia company, though, because on the following day, another brutally hot one, he and his men were given one of the grim details of the war; they were told to bury the dead at Monmouth. There were so many dead Americans on the field near the courthouse that it took all day to dig their graves.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE SECRET LIFE OF CAPTAIN SEELY

  Seely was under stress throughout the rest of 1778 and in the early days of 1779. He was trying to buy and sell goods for his store, keep the army supplied, run his militia company, and, at the same time, care for his wife Jane, who was nine months pregnant at Christmas and expecting her child any day. The baby finally arrived two weeks later, on January 11, 1779. Betsy Seely’s birth was a very difficult one, however, and Jane was bedridden and sick for weeks.

  The militia leader, knowing how poorly she felt, had to leave for Philadelphia for three days shortly after the birth of his daughter to buy things for his store. “Left my wife very sick,” he wrote in his diary. He was pleased, though, to discover that she was “mending” when he came home. Jane, or “Jenny,” as he called her, was ill for the rest of the month and much of February. Seely did what he could to comfort her and in early February persuaded one of his relatives, a woman, to help him nurse his wife.

  The weather improved in mid February 1779, which pleased Seely. He wrote, “We have had so warm a spell that the maple trees are in season and the elm buds are swollen and sundry other buds and the grass begins to start.”

  The British were pleased with the mild weather, too, because they planned to sneak out of New York and raid Elizabethtown where they would kidnap Governor Livingston as he dined with friends there. The surprise attack came on February 25. The Americans were overwhelmed by the British, who burned the army barracks in that community, along with several residential homes. The governor was having dinner with some military officers and Seely. They were startled, but all managed to escape. David Little, a local freeholder, was not so fortunate. He was seized along with twenty other residents in another part of town.

  It was one of a number of attempts by the British to kidnap highranking political and military officials. Some succeeded and some did not. They had captured Charles Lee in 1776 and held him for nearly a year and a half. Later, they would arrest Henry Laurens, one of the presidents of the Continental Congress, when they found him on an oceangoing vessel that they seized. The grand prize in these schemes was George Washington and one year later they would stage a raid deep into New Jersey, and into Seely’s backyard, in a bold attempt to capture the commander in chief.

  Seely was also an eyewitness to another kind of history that winter. His close friend and Chatham neighbor, Shepard Kollock, had been talked into publishing his own newspaper by George Washington and Henry Knox. New Jersey had only one newspaper, the New Jersey Gazette, funded by the state legislature and published in Burlington, in the southern half of New Jersey and far from the population centers in the northern half. Washington wanted a newspaper that would be pro-army, a journal that was independent and respected, but one that he knew would praise the army and the country. Kollock, a lieutenant, was the nephew of William Goddard,
one of America’s most respected editors. Kollock had edited a small newspaper in the West Indies and had recently worked on the newspaper in Burlington. Kollock was also eager to leave the army. Washington and Henry Knox met with the lieutenant and proposed that he become the editor of a new paper, the Jersey Journal, that would be subsidized by the army. He would keep any profits he made from advertising and circulation and the paper would be his when the war ended. He had to promise to promote the interests of the army in its columns.

  Washington would also provide him with all the editorial material he needed, including copies of his letters to Congress and his orders, sermons by ministers that the general knew, and political columns and copies of bills in the New Jersey legislature provided by the commander’s close friend, New Jersey governor William Livingston.

  The army would also provide couriers to deliver the newspaper not only in the Chatham–Morristown area, and to the army camp there, but to other army camps and to towns in New Jersey and New York not occupied by the British. Kollock would also receive an immediate honorable discharge from the army so that he could run the paper as a civilian, permitting him to return to his wife, who lived near Chatham, right away.

  Kollock, a tall, large-framed man with shaggy eyebrows, a large nose, and grey eyes, agreed to the arrangement, one that would give him a career after the end of the war. Seely was there in Day’s Tavern, Chatham, when Kollock published his first issue and admired it along with his assistant, John Woods, and two young apprentices, Shelly Arnett and Matthias Day.1

  There was something in Chatham that Seely admired more, though, and that was the lovely Mrs. Stephen Ball.

  By the spring of 1778, an affair had been going on for some time between Colonel Seely and the attractive Mrs. Ball, the wife of his friend Doctor Ball. It is unknown how it started or how quickly it caught fire, but the two had deep feelings for each other. The relationship between two friends, in a small town where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business, was dangerous, but the pair seemed to have carried it off without the local gossips finding out. Seely and Mrs. Ball usually rendezvoused in an apple orchard on the outskirts of Chatham; they arranged the meetings during the day in brief conversations with each other. The large apple orchards of the surrounding area, thick with trees in spring and summer, offered the privacy they needed.

  Seely was smitten with her and referred to her as his “charmer” and “my jewel” in the cipher code in his diary. She was equally taken by him. They had known each other as friends for over six years since Seely had moved to Chatham. They saw each other in church, at stores in the village, and at dinner parties at the homes of mutual friends. Seely often walked past her residence in the village; the two passed each other constantly when on horseback. Mrs. Ball was friendly with Jane Seely and the women visited each other at their homes.

  Little has been written about sex in the colonial era. There have been some works on the large percentages of women who became pregnant and then married, but the married men and women of the era were careful not to write down anything about the sexual liaisons outside of the marriage bed. There were surely a number of extramarital trysts then, just as there are today, and unhappy people sought new partners outside the home. There were few divorces because people had large families and tended to stay together for the sake of their children. Churches also frowned on divorce. There were some and they were messy. Husbands sometimes took out ads in newspapers to announce the split and to remind all that they would not pay any of their spouses’ bills. Most unhappy men remained married and some, such as Seely, chased other women.

  Seely fancied himself a smooth womanizer, but he was putty in Mrs. Ball’s lovely hands. She sent him notes arranging meetings in the orchard and would not show up, leaving him standing alone, seething. She would agree to meet and then break the engagement at the last moment. She would hold what he termed “sweet” conversations with him at her home but then act coldly later in the evening when they met. Then, without warning, she would thaw out and shower him with affections in the apple orchard. The extent of the liaison was never spelled out in Seely’s diary, but on at least one occasion he said that she came “to his bed,” so it was sexual as well as romantic.

  What Jane Seely knew about the affair was never known and throughout the Revolution, as the extramarital relationship continued, she never accused her husband of a liaison. But she knew something was going on. Mrs. Ball and Seely had several meetings in the orchard in July 1778. On August 3, Mrs. Ball visited Jane Seely, unannounced, for another casual visit between friends, but Mrs. Seely was cold and aloof toward her. A nervous Seely, at home when she arrived, scribbled in his diary that his wife “acted imprudently” toward his girlfriend. Mrs. Ball then fretted Jane Seely knew something and cancelled their next meeting in the orchard.

  Seely continued his relationship with the doctor’s wife, but it was always an uncertain love. She would meet with him but argue about something. At their next meeting they would “share sweet kisses,” as he put it. Then she would not show up while he waited on cold nights in the orchard. His nighttime disappearances did not go unnoticed by his wife and throughout the entire fall of 1778, Seely wrote in his secret journal, Jane Seely was cold toward her husband.

  In February 1779, following yet another snowstorm, Seely and his lover ended one of their evenings with a horrific argument over something and Seely was shaken. “Had great difference with the delight of my soul, so great that I believe it will never be made up. Oh, my heart. How shall I bear it?” he wrote in his diary.

  Then, just four days later, the pair made up.

  In the middle of this extramarital jousting, which Seely admitted made him “miserable,” his wife Jane appeared to have lived through a bout with breast cancer. She had been to a doctor who prescribed a mixture of roots and herbs, popular at the time, to treat some abnormality in her breasts. A distraught Seely went with his brother Sam to his friend Thomas Gardner’s home to obtain some roots to pound into a mixture to treat her breast ailment.

  Jane recovered. She resumed her work as a midwife and continued to accompany her husband to dinner parties, church, and receptions. They visited friends and relatives and kept up a public facade of a happy marriage. There was always a chill in the union, though, as the militia leader kept meeting Mrs. Ball. The affair would not continue much longer, however, because Mrs. Ball became more interested in another man.

  March and April featured warm days and other days when the temperature fell well below freezing and snowfalls of up to several inches were recorded. On April 18, 1779, Seely wrote in his diary that “it froze so hard as to kill the leave and the ice is half an inch thick.” The wild weather also brought diphtheria, whooping cough, typhoid and scarlet fever, and tuberculosis to Chatham and other towns in northern New Jersey.

  The rough weather foreshadowed one of the worst winters of American history later that year, a winter that would threaten to destroy the army and end the Revolution.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SPRING 1778:

  The African American Soldiers

  The War

  The victory at Monmouth was the only major engagement in the summer of 1778. Following the battle, the British continued on to New York, fearful that the city might be attacked by the French fleet that had sailed for America. The French admiral claimed that he could not maneuver properly in New York harbor and did not assault the city. Washington set up his summer camp in White Plains, north of New York, to monitor British movements in the area.

  Revolutionary activity took place in the west that spring when George Rogers Clark gained authorization from Virginia governor Patrick Henry to lead an expedition west to attack British forces and their Indian allies in the territories of Ohio and Illinois. He captured Kaskaskia, in Illinois, without resistance and then convinced the French settlers at Vincennes to side with the Americans. The British governor of the territory gathered a force of regulars and Indians from headquarters in Det
roit and took back Vincennes in December 1778. The governor sent his Indians home a few weeks later and in February 1779, Clark returned and captured the fort for a second time following a short siege.

  One of the Continental Army’s continuing problems in the winter and spring of 1778 was the loss of men. Measures taken by George Washington to curb desertions following the large exodus of troops the year before had cut down the number of deserters, but they were still a problem. Officers continued to have difficulty convincing others to reenlist when their time was up. Recruiting new troops always proved difficult and doing so became even harder following the terrible winter at Valley Forge and the recent smallpox epidemic.

  One of the answers to the problem was the recruitment of African Americans, both freedmen and slaves. Freedmen would earn salaries and receive cash or land bounties, like white recruits, but slaves would be given something more valuable—their freedom. Any slave who served a full term, ranging from one to three years, would be freed when he left the army; they would also be paid. There were a half million slaves in the southern colonies in 1776, but there were also sixty thousand in the north. They worked for farmers, city merchants, shipping companies and as domestics. Some states, such as New York, had as many as twenty-one thousand slaves.

  Black American soldiers were not new; a few had fought for the colonial militias that served with the British army during the French and Indian War from 1756–1763. Prior to the war, and during its early days, several blacks had fought for local state militias. Washington was hopeful that freedom would be a powerful incentive to persuade African Americans to enlist and to remain in the army, thus swelling the ranks for the 1778 summer campaign. And, too, African Americans who joined the service and some white public figures believed victory in the Revolution, fought to end America’s slavery to England, would end slavery itself in America.