Even so, as Putnam’s aide, Burr was able to gain firsthand knowledge of Washington’s questionable decision making. After the disaster on Long Island, the commander in chief wavered back and forth over whether to abandon or defend New York. He asked his generals for advice, and seemed willing to support Congress’s wish to safeguard the city, but then he reversed himself. Despite this indecision, Washington must be credited with having orchestrated the daring operation by which 12,000 of his remaining troops were spirited off Long Island in the middle of the night. Putnam assisted in this stealthy retreat. As an old Indian fighter, he called upon the Native Americans in his service to wail their war chants, which caused the neighborhood dogs to howl, and effectively concealed the noise made by the escaping American soldiers.47
Washington dangerously hesitated before making his next move and finally ordering the retreat. Luckily, the British were in no hurry, and waited until mid-September to invade Manhattan. On the morning of the 15th, amid another embarrassing defeat, the Continentals benefited from the slow movement of British reinforcements, giving Putnam the time he needed to lead the American army out of the city.48
Burr assisted Putnam in this daring retreat. More familiar with the city than his commander, Burr pointed out a safe route along Bloomingdale Road, salvaging some of the army’s artillery while guiding 5,000 men to safety. During this exodus from Manhattan, Burr rescued Colonel Gold Selleck Silliman’s party at Bayard’s Hill Redoubt at Grand and Mulberry Streets, just as these men were about to be surrounded by the British.49
According to an account based on an interview with Burr and later published by Silliman’s son, Burr urged the men to withdraw, but the brave colonel refused. He would not abandon his post until he received orders to do so. So, with little time to waste, Burr improvised. He rode away from the vulnerable redoubt, then galloped back, yelling to the colonel that he had just been ordered to retreat. He had a rare talent for solving logistical problems quickly and skillfully, without offending a superior officer. Young officers tended to lack prudence, but Burr was bent on action, without being considered rash.50
The Americans’ blundering did not end in New York. Putnam’s men achieved a temporary victory in a brief skirmish at Harlem Heights, while Washington waited for Howe to make his next move. As October arrived, Washington’s war council agreed to forsake lower Manhattan, but not Fort Washington, which was north of the city. Indecision again plagued the commander. When Howe toppled the fort, Generals Washington, Putnam, and Nathanael Greene—and most likely Burr—watched from Fort Lee, just across the Hudson in New Jersey. Fort Washington was perhaps the worst defeat in the contest for New York: 2,818 officers and men were taken prisoner, and valuable artillery and equipment were lost to the enemy.51
The debacle at Fort Washington proved quite damaging to General Washington’s reputation. He peevishly blamed others and refused to take personal responsibility. While no one in Congress openly questioned the general, private criticism flowed freely, and many began to look to General Charles Lee as the army’s savior. Even Washington’s closest aide, Joseph Reed, joined the chorus of Lee’s supporters. Fears of conspiracy in his own midst put Washington on his guard. If the men around him ridiculed his indecision, then perhaps Congress would replace him. This was the start of an obsession among Washington’s staff, talk of “cabals” or secret plots, which in turn fueled the “party business” that Burr assiduously wished to avoid. In his yearlong tenure as Putnam’s aide, Burr clearly saw the worst side of Washington, yet the historical record gives no evidence that he ever reproached the embattled commander.52
Rather, Burr vociferously defended the evacuation of New York. In letters to his aunt and uncle, he called it “a necessary consequence.” He went on to claim that defeat had made the patriot force “more united, theirs more divided,” and that it had aroused “our leading men . . . from their lethargy,” insofar as Congress was “now levying a new army.” In this surprisingly optimistic account, Burr is interested in assuaging his aunt’s fears, dismissing accounts of “barbarities” by the Hessians as “incredible and false.” He voices an unshaken commitment to the war, embracing America’s cause as “the most important revolution that ever took place.” He wrote with rhapsodic confidence: “We may be truly called a favoured people.” The only criticism he expressed was directed at the British. He scoffed at an enemy that held the Americans “in the utmost contempt,” and who felt they could “force all our lines without firing a gun.” With grit and national pride, Burr taunted: “They have forgot Bunker’s Hill.”53
Bunker Hill was the glorious highlight of his good old general’s career. As Putnam’s aide, Burr had to think like Putnam in order to translate his commands. As the general’s secretary, he often wrote letters for him, especially because Putnam had little formal education. Nor was he known as an administrator. Thus he relied heavily on Burr’s advice in coordinating military operations. After leaving New York, Putnam and Burr were sent to Philadelphia to shore up its defenses in preparation for a British attack. After a short time, they had safely stored the city’s available ammunitions, procured necessary supplies, imposed price controls to curtail the spiraling inflation, established a curfew, and advised Congress to leave the city, which it did. Putnam and Burr had maintained civil order. Now Burr helped Putnam devise administrative solutions to forestall the political collapse of Philadelphia, as many residents began to switch sides in anticipation of the British army’s arrival.54
Burr enjoyed his post at the side of Israel Putnam, to whom he never showed any disloyalty. As he wrote to his college mentor, William Paterson, his position left him at a distance from military gossip; he was “no epistolary politician or newsmonger.” As Putnam’s aide, he became a kind of omnibus man, wearing many hats—clerk, adviser, and bureaucrat—assuming whatever role was needed to get the job done. Many of Burr’s activities were logistical: he collected intelligence and kept track of the enemy’s progress. He displayed a knack for overseeing military operations, developing some of the key organizational skills that would later serve him in his political career.55
His desire to prove himself a competent officer made him less likely to speculate on the failings of his commanders. Indeed, in the letter to his aunt, Burr criticized politicians who relied on “grand designs,” and felt more comfortable with an approach to the war that stayed focused on the present. He seemed to be acquiring a style of problem solving that required realistic assessments, strategic planning, and an ability to find utilitarian rather than utopian answers. He retained his earlier patriotic zeal, though he tempered that zeal with a growing pragmatism. He saw himself as an able and loyal administrator, and by the spring of 1777, he felt confident that he was ready for his own command.56
TO DO “JUSTICE TO THE VIGILANT MEN”
On June 27, 1777, Burr finally received the promotion he felt he deserved. General Washington notified him of his appointment as lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army and of his attachment to Colonel William Malcolm’s regiment. Malcolm’s “Additional Continental Regiment” was brand new, consisting of 260 men, and all six companies were recruited from southern New York. Struggling to find the money to support new troops, Congress adopted a practice of allowing wealthy patrons to raise their own regiments. Malcolm acquired his command in this fashion. As a fabulously rich shipping merchant of New York City, he literally purchased his commission as colonel. By September, Burr headed off to the Clove, in the Ramapo Mountains in New York, to join his new regiment.57
There were no strict rules for promotion in the Continental Army. Burr understood this. Congress used what was later satirized as a “mysterious trinity of Seniority Merit and Quota,” a system so flexible (if not arbitrary) that officers constantly bickered over rank. Ambitious subalterns who lobbied Congress, or appealed to state legislators, or who succeeded in catching the eye of senior officers, moved easily through the ranks. By the time Burr received his promo
tion, his good friend Matthias Ogden was already a full colonel in a New Jersey regiment, owing to these conditions; he would advance to the rank of brigadier general by the end of the war. But Burr’s promotion from Washington would be his one and only: he remained a lieutenant colonel until he left the service in March 1779.58
When he learned of his promotion, Burr sent Washington a perfunctory response. He begins his letter by acknowledging the “honour done me,” and goes on to assure Washington that he will be “studious that my Deportment in that Station be such as will insure your future esteem.” He then observes, pointedly, that the “late date of my Appointment subjects me to the Command of many who are younger in the Service and junior officers the last Campaign,” and he wonders whether it was “any Misconduct in me or extraordinary service in them, which entitled the Gentlemen lately put over me, to that Preference.” Closing his letter with the accustomed nod to a sense of honor and order, Burr says he wishes “to avoid the Character of turbulent or passive,” desiring only “a decent Attention to Rank.”59
Burr’s letter is relatively tame compared to the complaints Washington commonly received from disgruntled officers. After another officer was given seniority over him, Colonel John Lamb wrote the general that the action had “degraded” him. Lamb felt that his honor—the “only jewel worth contending for”—had been stripped from him. His “just right” had been given to another. He found it impossible to remain silent, because his “sensibilities” were so “deeply wounded.” In 1777, the same year as Burr’s complaint, the artist John Trumbull refused a commission from Congress. He protested that a manipulation of dates of service placed him under the command of those he had previously outranked. This kind of demotion, Trumbull concluded, “tasted indeed too loathsome of degradation.”60
Unlike Lamb and Trumbull, Burr avoids all the hyperbole of outraged honor and personal degradation. His word choices are deferential: he asks his question “with submission”; he begs not “to have troubled his Excellency”; and signs his letter: “I have the Honour to be with the greatest Respect Your Excellencys very hum[ble] servt.” He blames no one, presuming that his late appointment happened rather “thro Accident than Design.” Nor was it odd that Washington did not reply. Both men knew the value of honor and ritual. There is a highly ritualized tone to Burr’s complaint: he acknowledges his displeasure (something Washington would have expected from a man of honor), and yet he makes clear his desire not to offend the commander in chief. Burr’s prosaic and predictable letter complied with the unwritten rules concerning honor—nothing more or less.61
When Burr joined Malcolm’s regiment in the summer of 1777, he was stationed at Smith’s Clove, in the Ramapo Mountains of New York State. At this time, General Putnam had authority over the Hudson Highlands, a sprawling command that extended from Fishkill to its southern boundary in Westchester County, and stretched west from the Hudson Valley to the Ramapo Mountains and the narrow valley within, known as the Clove. Washington recognized the importance of controlling this region because of the vital artery of the Hudson River; the Hudson bisected the Highlands and provided direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. Protecting the Highlands meant guarding the river. It was believed that if the British gained control of the river, they could cut off New England from the rest of the colonies.
Along the Hudson were five garrisons. In close proximity sat Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery on the western bluffs of the river; Fort Independence was to the southeast (near Putnam’s headquarters at Peekskill). Farther up the Hudson was Fort Constitution, an island garrison; then West Point, destined to become key to the region’s defense. Burr would briefly be stationed there in 1778.62
In the first months of Burr’s appointment to Malcolm’s regiment, the Continental Army suffered another series of humiliating defeats. Ticonderoga fell on July 5, 1777, when General Arthur St. Clair abandoned the fort without a fight, to Washington’s chagrin. Next, in what Washington considered an embarrassing failure prompted by “vanity,” General John Sullivan launched a futile raid on Staten Island in mid-August that left 150 Americans dead. On September 11, Washington himself suffered a devastating defeat at Brandywine, Pennsylvania. The battle at Brandywine bore similarities to the Battle of Long Island, demonstrating once again the tactical superiority of the British in outmaneuvering the Continental forces. Casualties were high: the Americans lost 1,000 men, twice as many as the British. The marquis de Lafayette, who had just joined Washington’s staff, was wounded there. At the end of the day, Washington had no alternative but to escape, and salvage what remained of his army.63
Minor victories were all that Washington’s Continentals could celebrate in these bleak months. Burr obtained laurels when a party under his command captured an advance guard during the British invasion of New Jersey, on September 14. While Putnam sent off Brigadier General Alexander McDougall to New Jersey with around 700 Continentals and 200 militiamen, Burr’s men were already within reach of the enemy. Before McDougall arrived, Burr led a successful sortie against the British picket near Hackensack. Leading a small party, and carefully scouting the area, he surprised the sleeping enemy at night. They had little time for resistance, waking when Burr’s men were within yards of their camp. According to Private Alexander Dow, a few “brave and obstinat[e]” men in the enemy’s ranks received bayonet wounds, leaving at least sixteen dead. Burr’s party secured the guardhouse and took several prisoners. His timing and daring gained the attention of other officers, demonstrating that the new lieutenant colonel had been worthy of his promotion.64
The Highlands command was politically risky. Despite the river forts, the vastness of the territory made it vulnerable to British and Tory raids. Troop strength was constantly depleted, because Washington regularly drew additional regiments from the area to reinforce the main army. Putnam was expected to fortify his defenses with militia, but as he and other Continental officers knew, the “militia intractables,” as Colonel Malcolm labeled them, were notoriously unreliable; they often failed to show up when called and refused to stay and fight when needed. Burr discovered the seriousness of this problem on the morning of his successful surprise attack. “Not a man of Militia be with me,” he angrily informed Malcom, despite the fact that “some Join’d us Last Night but are Gone.”65
Putnam’s tenure in the Highlands proved disastrous to his reputation. In addition to troop shortages and questionable militiamen, he had to put down a mutiny of disgruntled soldiers clamoring for their pay, in November 1777. A month earlier, he had watched Forts Clinton and Montgomery fall into British hands, losses that permanently stained his record. Two of New York’s most powerful figures, Colonel George Clinton, who was also governor of the state, and his brother Colonel James Clinton, were commanding the garrisons; they, along with Washington and most of the members of Congress, blamed Putnam for this fiasco.
By February 1778, Malcolm wrote to Burr that the Highlands were in a state of “chaos,” and that the “old general is gone to Boston.” Malcolm had no idea whether Putnam would return to his post, observing that “he is very unpopular and the militia declare they will not serve under him.” In late March, Washington relieved Putnam of his command, while Congress demanded a full investigation into the events that resulted in the loss of the two forts. Congress wanted a scapegoat, and Putnam’s political enemies in New York easily obliged. Although he was eventually vindicated, “old Put” never again was entrusted with a major independent command.66
Burr was nowhere near the river forts when they were captured. Soon afterwards, he was sent with Malcolm’s regiment to join the main army at White Marsh in Pennsylvania. He then settled in the winter camp at Valley Forge with the rest of the Continentals. The British took and occupied Philadelphia at the end of September 1777, and Washington shifted his focus to regaining the key city. He surrounded Philadelphia and cut off the British supply line. This tactic worked for a time, until the two Delaware River forts finally fell to the
British commander, General Howe.67
During these months, the complexion of the war changed for Burr. The new lieutenant colonel found himself fighting with his own men over issues of discipline, and fighting the “rascally inhabitants” of southeastern Pennsylvania who were smuggling goods into the occupied city of brotherly love. He was not, however, fighting the British army. Adapting, Burr learned to use his military authority to police his men and local residents. He was finding that the war had less to do with grand battles than with finding a “system” (his word) for solving day-to-day problems: low morale, mutiny, petty crime, and plundering.68
American soldiers embraced discipline slowly and grudgingly. Men in the camps randomly fired off their muskets for entertainment; few companies ever truly mastered the drills and maneuvers meant to prepare them for battlefield conditions. Many soldiers got drunk, stole, and rioted, and some even threatened to kill their company commander. The British system allowed up to 1,000 lashes for such crimes, but that seemed too harsh to Americans. So the Continentals adopted the Mosaic rule of 39 lashes; this number increased to 100 in 1776, and remained the standard punishment until the end of the war. Military guidebooks of the time advised young officers to make themselves “both beloved and feared.” Severity was to be “accompanied with great tenderness and moderation.” In this way, Americans never matched the rigors of the British army, though officers did rely on different kinds of social coercion. Shaming was a common method. In mock executions, condemned soldiers were pardoned at the gallows. Courts-martial occurred with great frequency.69
As with every story about Burr, his image as a disciplinarian is riddled with contradictions. He was, on the one hand, praised for his unparalleled leniency; one soldier in Malcom’s regiment claimed many years later: “He never, in a single instance, permitted any corporal punishment.” On the other hand, his supposedly authoritative biographer Matthew Davis paints him as a rigid taskmaster: in one vignette, Burr single-handedly puts down a mutiny at the Gulph, a post just a few miles from Valley Forge. In this episode, Burr learns that the leaders of the mutiny planned to kill him in response to his “rigid system” of policing, drilling, and discipline. Emptying their muskets of cartridges, Burr cleverly thwarts the plot. When the men assemble one night, the ringleader of the mutineers levels his gun at Burr and orders his comrades to shoot. At that instant, Burr draws his sword and “smote the mutineer above the elbow,” foiling the mutiny with a dramatic display of intimidation. He was, we are to understand, not afraid to employ brute violence.70
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