Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

by Joseph J. Ellis

  As he led his troops back toward the ferry, Washington rode up and demanded to know what Mifflin was doing. “Good God! General Mifflin, I am afraid you have ruined us,” he shouted. Mifflin, understandably exasperated and confused, explained the communication error, then led his troops back to the trenches. Though the American position had been undefended for over an hour, the British never noticed.35

  This piece of good fortune was more than matched when the northeastern storm subsided and the winds shifted to the southeast, which greatly facilitated the movement of Glover’s boats across the East River. The weather change should have prompted the appearance of British warships on the water, which would have transformed the American evacuation into a full-scale massacre, since the overloaded rowboats were defenseless. But Lord Howe, uncharacteristically, never noticed the wind shift and never brought the British fleet into play.

  He was preoccupied with dinner conversation aboard the Eagle, his flagship, where the two captured American generals, Stirling and Sullivan, were his guests, and Lord Richard was fixated on discovering whether the recent humiliation of the Continental Army might have changed their minds about his proposals for a peaceful end to the rebellion. Like his brother, if not more so, Richard Howe’s fondest hope was for diplomatic reconciliation rather than military victory, and at this fateful moment that was where his fullest attentions were focused.

  The gods smiled on the American escape one final time on the morning of August 30. The last troops to evacuate were most at risk, in part because no one remained in the rear to cover their retreat, in part because they would have to sneak out in broad daylight. Major Tallmadge remembered it well many years later:

  As the dawn of the next day approached, those of us who remained in the trenches became very anxious for our own safety.… At this time a very dense fog began to rise, and it seemed to settle in a peculiar manner over both encampments. I recollect this peculiar providential occurrence perfectly well; and so very dense was the atmosphere that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards’ distance.… In the history of warfare I do not recollect a more fortunate retreat.36

  As Tallmadge was being rowed across, he looked back to see Washington stepping into the last boat to leave Long Island. It was the stuff of legend. In all nearly 10,000 men were safely ferried to Manhattan with only three stragglers lost. The planning had to be precise, the officers and men needed to behave with uncommon courage, the winds and river currents had to be properly aligned, the Royal Navy had to be negligent, and, finally, a dense fog had to make a providential appearance at the end. And all these ingredients had to come together in the proper sequence. Although successful retreats seldom win wars, in this instance the evacuation of Long Island meant that the Continental Army would live to fight another day. One could be forgiven for believing that “The Cause” could never die.

  The initial response on the British side was utter disbelief that Washington had somehow managed to extract his entire army without being noticed. The Americans, so it seemed to several British officers, had shown themselves to be wholly inadequate on the field of battle, but brilliant in their talent at running away.

  The prevailing British impression, beyond astonishment, was that the spirit of the Continental Army had been broken on Long Island, the utter futility of confronting the British army and navy had been convincingly demonstrated, and it had been achieved with relatively few British casualties. In short, all of General Howe’s campaign goals had been met. As one British general, Lord Hugh Percy, put it: “I may venture to assert that they will never again stand before us in the field. Everything seems to be over with them, and I flatter myself that this campaign will put a total end to the war.”37

  There were, however, dissenting voices. Captain George Collier, commander of the warship Rainbow, thought that each of the Howe brothers had missed an opportunity to destroy or capture the entire American army on Long Island. General Howe’s decision to halt the British assault on the forts at Brooklyn Heights looked less convincing now that Washington had escaped the trap. And Admiral Howe’s failure to throw the British fleet into the East River, which Collier claimed “we have been in constant expectation of being ordered to do,” struck Collier as inexplicable, since only a few British frigates would have meant that “not a man would have escaped from Long Island.” Whether such opportunities would come again no one could say. “Now, I foresee,” Collier lamented, “they [the Americans] will give us trouble enough, and protract the war, Heaven knows how long.”38

  NEWS OF THE American defeat slowly dribbled into the Continental Congress, in part because Washington was too exhausted to file a report. “For Forty Eight Hours,” he explained to Hancock, “I had hardly been off my Horse and never closed my Eyes, so that I was quite unfit to write or dictate.” His eventual report emphasized the successful evacuation from Long Island, played down the debacle on Gowanus Heights, and provided an inflated estimate of British casualties, thereby conveniently obscuring the full scope of the military disaster and the dispirited condition of the Continental Army. Gossip mills at Washington’s headquarters on Manhattan began to circulate the opinion that Greene’s unfortunate absence was the primary cause of the defeat: that if Greene had been commanding on Long Island, the whole battle would have gone differently.39

  The General Orders for August 31 sustained the same patriotic rhetoric as before the battle, suggesting that nothing had really changed: “From the justice of our cause, America can only expect success,” it read. “Now is the time for every man to exert himself, and make our Country glorious, or it will become contemptible.” In order to set an example, Washington deliberately chose to expose himself to British artillery fire from the Long Island shore. After two rounds missed overhead, and having made his point, Washington allowed his staff to lead him away.40

  By any detached measure, the Continental Army had suffered a humiliating defeat. And according to General Howe’s strategic calibrations, the political and psychological consequences of that crushing experience should have shocked the leadership of the American rebellion into the realization that their glorious cause was, in truth, a hopeless waste of blood and treasure. Washington’s initial management of the after-action reports undercut Howe’s strategy by concealing the depth of the disaster, a justifiable distortion from his perspective in order to reduce the sudden impact that the military debacle might have on popular opinion. If he had failed to control the movement of his troops on the battlefield, he would attempt to control the perception of the battle’s consequences in that larger battle for popular opinion.

  Down in Philadelphia, Adams was having similar thoughts. He had originally intended to return to Braintree and his family. But a premonition that the news from New York might be bad convinced him to remain at his station: “Indeed, if the Decision should be unfortunate…, perhaps I may be as well calculated to Sustain such a Shock, as Some others.” He worried most about the psychological effect of Howe’s victory on the faint of heart in the congress and on the so-called half-Tories out there in the countryside. “The Panic may seize whom it will,” he confided to Abigail, “it shall not sieze me. I will stay here until the public Countenance is better, or much worse. It must and will be better.”41

  Adams’s first instinct was to minimize the damage by claiming that matters could have been much worse. If the Howe brothers had failed in New York, he argued somewhat dubiously, they would have attacked Boston, and its loss would have been more devastating. Then he argued that the very enormity of the British victory would prove to be a military liability. “If they get Possession of New York, Long Island, and Staten Island,” he observed, “these are more Territory than their whole Army can defend.” According to this line of thought, which was at best counterintuitive, every British military victory only increased the burden of occupation, implying that the best way to win the war was to lose every battle. Arguments like this suggest that Adams could not acknowledge any possibility of an American military defea
t leading to British victory in the war.

  The truth was that the amateur status of the Continental Army had been exposed in no uncertain terms on Long Island, and all the platitudinous incantations about the moral superiority of the American cause had fallen victim to the military superiority of a professional army. These were uncomfortable facts that Adams, like Washington, needed to obscure, even to himself.42

  If all Americans were like his beloved Abigail, Adams would not have faced a political problem. Like her husband, Abigail was resolute. “We seem to be kept in total Ignorance of affairs at [New] York,” she observed, insisting that “if our Army is in ever so critical a state, I wish to know it, and the worst of it.” She was prepared to know the unvarnished truth because she was beyond compromise. “But if we should be defeated” she insisted, “I think we shall not be conquered.” In response to her request for a candid assessment of the American performance on Long Island, Adams was elegantly succinct: “In general, our Generals were out generalled.”43

  Adams was particularly attuned to gauging sudden shifts in the political weather. The preceding spring, he had watched with a combination of admiration and amazement as popular opinion shifted quite dramatically toward independence in response to George III’s decision to impose a military solution on the American rebellion. Now he sensed a shift in the other direction in response to the disaster on Long Island: “The Successes of Howe have given a strange Spring of Toryism,” as another delegate put it. “Men who have hitherto lurked in silence and neutrality seem willing to take a side in opposition to the liberties of their Country.” Washington had even been heard to predict that more American volunteers in New York and New Jersey were likely to join Howe than enlist in the Continental Army.44

  The correspondence of other delegates to the Continental Congress suggests that Adams was not alone in attempting to manage the political momentum. Although Benjamin Rush confessed to his wife that the setback in New York had transformed the political climate and that matters were likely to get worse rather than better, in letters to others he put the best face on the current crisis. “I can therefore from authority assure you,” he wrote a French friend, “that a fixed determination still prevails in that body [the Continental Army] to establish the liberties of America or to perish in their ruins. No difficulties discourage us, no losses depress us.”45

  Franklin joined the chorus, though in his case there was no need to stretch the truth, since he remained confident that Howe’s victory was merely a minor setback, a brief chapter in the eventual and inevitable story of American triumph. He acknowledged that British troops “have been rather too Strong for our people to cope with, and consequently have succeeded in their interprizes, which have not been of the importance that they will probably seem to the World.” Franklin held firm to his elemental conviction that the British military mission in America was impossible, and nothing about the recent British success had changed his mind: “For what have they done?” he asked rhetorically. “They have got possession of three small islands on the coast of America…, and yet if every Acre of American territory is contested in the same Proportion, the Conquest would ruin all Europe.”46

  In the spectrum of political opinion within the Continental Congress, Adams and Franklin were among the most resolute in believing that, having crossed the line toward independence, there could be no turning back, regardless of what happened to Washington’s army in New York. Then, in the first week of September, a dramatic event galvanized opinion among the other delegates within the congress around a nonnegotiable strategy.47

  The event was General John Sullivan’s arrival in Philadelphia. Recall that Sullivan, along with Stirling, had dined with Lord Howe on board the Eagle the night that Washington’s army escaped across the East River. During the dinner, Lord Richard managed to persuade the earnest Sullivan that his peace commission empowered him to offer generous terms that would allow the Americans to end this senseless and unnecessary war with their honor intact. Howe had then offered to send Sullivan on parole to apprise the congress of these terms.

  In his report, Sullivan described Lord Howe’s utter sincerity. Then he argued that by sending him to Philadelphia, Howe was implicitly recognizing the authority and legitimacy of the Continental Congress. More substantially, Howe had made clear his personal opinion “that Parliament had no right to tax America or meddle with her internal Polity,” and he was confident that George III and his ministers were now open to such an arrangement once hostilities ceased.48

  Sullivan’s report provoked a vigorous debate. Rush subsequently remembered that Adams leaned over during the debate “and whispered to me a wish that the first ball that had been fired on the day of the defeat of our army [on Long Island] had gone through his [Sullivan’s] head.” Adams then rose to protest the proceedings, calling Sullivan “a decoy duck whom Lord Howe has sent among us to seduce us into renunciation of our independence.”49

  The following day, September 5, John Witherspoon of New Jersey delivered the major speech denouncing Lord Howe’s proposals, and no one rose to challenge his conclusions. “It is plain,” Witherspoon argued, “that absolute submission is what they require us to agree to,” so that despite the appearance of generosity, Lord Howe “has uniformly avoided any circumstance that can imply that we are anything else but subjects of the king of Great Britain, in rebellion.” Once framed in that fashion, only an outright loyalist could embrace Howe’s terms, and no such creature could be found in the Continental Congress. Those delegates who had been shaken by events in New York and were harboring doubts had nowhere else to go.50

  The only controversy arose over how to reply to Lord Howe, if at all. Trusting Sullivan to deliver their answer was unacceptable, since his reputation, already tarnished by his conduct on Gowanus Heights, was now in deeper decline for his having been duped by Howe. But failure to respond might be perceived by lukewarm patriots as excessively defiant. Best not to risk losing them and to err on the side of diplomacy.

  Howe had offered to receive a delegation from the congress, but only in their capacity as private citizens, since his instructions prohibited him from recognizing the legitimacy of the Continental Congress. The delegates tossed this diplomatic problem back in his face with the following resolution: “Resolved that this body cannot with propriety send any of its members to confer with His Lordship in their private characters.” On the other hand, “ever desirous of establishing peace on reasonable terms, they will send a Committee of their body, to know whether he has any Authority to meet with persons authorized by Congress for that purpose in behalf of America.” Given his instructions, Howe either could refuse to meet with the American delegation, thereby assuming responsibility for the diplomatic impasse, or he could meet with but then acknowledge that he had no authority to negotiate with representatives of an American government. In either case, the peace initiative would be exposed as a diplomatic mirage.51

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, September 6, the congress chose Adams, Franklin, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina to meet with Lord Howe on Staten Island. The selection of Adams and Franklin ensured an interesting conversation that would end in failure, since Adams was high on the list of prominent American rebels scheduled for public hanging for treason if and when Howe’s peace terms were accepted. And Franklin, Howe’s former friend, had recently advised him that his military mission was hopeless and that continued service in this ill-fated cause would destroy his reputation forever.

  Even though the conclusion was foreordained, the meeting on September 11 was a dramatic occasion. Clearly, Howe held out the hope that the recent American catastrophe on Long Island might have generated second thoughts among the Americans about the prospects for an easy exit from the British Empire. Just as clearly, the American delegation came to the conference determined to dash that hope. Not quite so clearly, but most probably, a poll of the American population would have revealed a citizenry more politically divided and receptive to Howe’s terms than the Continenta
l Congress or its diplomatic representatives. Unfortunately for Howe, polls were not possible.

  Diplomatic etiquette on both sides was almost excessively correct. Howe had arranged to leave a British officer as a hostage at Perth Amboy, where the Americans disembarked, as a guarantee of their safety once in British hands. Adams insisted that no hostage was necessary, since Lord Howe’s word was a more-than-sufficient guarantee. “You make me a very high Compliment,” Howe observed, “and you may depend on it, I will consider it the most sacred of things.” An honor guard of resplendent British grenadiers ushered the Americans into the meeting place with all the ceremonial trappings. Inside, Howe had laid out a sumptuous spread of “good Claret, good Bread, Cold Ham, Tongues and Mutton.” The civilities were assiduously observed.52

  Howe began by pleading his sincerity as a famous friend of America. He explained that he had delayed his voyage for several weeks in order to acquire instructions as a peace commissioner, but that very delay had meant that he arrived just after passage of the Declaration of Independence. “Is there no way of treading back this step of Independence,” he asked, “and opening the door to a full discussion?”53

  Adams and Franklin led the American response, which was polite but wholly negative. If the British ministry had recognized American sovereignty over taxation and its own domestic affairs a year earlier, the conflict could almost certainly have been avoided. But that was then and this was now. Adams spelled out the British transgressions since the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, culminating in the very invasion force that Lord Howe now co-commanded. In response to this long string of abuses, the American states had voted unanimously for independence, and the Continental Congress had ratified that vote, which could not be undone. In fact, the American delegation was just as powerless to reverse that verdict as Howe was to recognize them as American citizens rather than as British subjects. When Howe explained that he preferred to regard his guests as fellow gentlemen, Adams replied that his Lordship was free to meet with them in any capacity he wished, “except that of British subjects.”54