Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

by Joseph J. Ellis

  Indeed, the deplorable situation was sufficiently obvious to his own troops that some deserters were already going over to the British Army. One British officer, Frederick MacKenzie, claimed that they were arriving at the rate of eighty a day. And as Washington predicted, loyalists from Long Island and lower Manhattan were volunteering in company-size units to join Howe’s army. Meanwhile, over in New Jersey, a civil war seemed to be brewing, as nearly three thousand citizens, including one signer of the Declaration of Independence, took up Lord Howe’s offer of amnesty and signed an oath of allegiance to George III.11

  These defections could plausibly be regarded as the first cracks in the edifice of American independence and therefore as early indications that the Howe strategy was working. Several British officers expressed confusion when General Howe let weeks pass without taking any action against Harlem Heights. They presumed, as Captain MacKenzie put it, that “the grand point in view is certainly to beat and disperse this principal army, which, if once effected, little more will remain to be done.” But Howe, in fact, did not share that presumption. Having delivered a series of devastating blows to the Continental Army, he was waiting for the aftershock to take effect. He felt no need to destroy the Continental Army, since he believed it was going to disintegrate on its own. And no less a witness than Washington himself feared that, as he had told Hancock, his army “is upon the eve of its political dissolution.”12

  IN ORDER FOR the Howe strategy to succeed, the epidemic of fear and disillusionment had to spread beyond New York and New Jersey. Pro-American press coverage limited the contagion, but Washington worried that deserting troops would carry the infection back to their respective states and the unattractive reality would begin to settle in; namely, that it was going to be a long war, and that the Continental Army as currently constituted was ill equipped to fight it.

  The leadership in the Continental Congress had demonstrated its wholehearted support for Washington and provided a united front on the nonnegotiable status of American independence. Even though they could not deliver on their promises about a “New Establishment,” the political gesture itself was important as a statement of commitment during this vulnerable moment. The delegates in Philadelphia had to demonstrate that they were immune to the infection.

  Adams, for example, used his position as head of the Board of War and Ordnance to reassure officers who were having doubts about the dispirited condition of the Continental Army. “I am extremely sorry to learn that the troops have been disheartened,” he wrote to one officer. “But the despondency of spirit was the natural Effect of the Retreats you have made one after the other.” After the defeats on Long Island and at Kip’s Bay, Adams observed, “the finest Army in the world would have been seized, in similar circumstances, with more or less of a Panick. But your Men will soon recover their Spirits in a short Time.”13

  Franklin took a different tack, preferring in his ever-agile way to use the deplorable condition of the Continental Army as leverage to extract money and supplies from the French. In his instructions to Silas Deane, the new American minister to France, he urged complete candor about the sad state of the army: “Upon the whole our Army near New York are not sufficiently strong to Cope with General Howe in the open Field.… They want better Arms, better Tents and more Clothing than they now have, or is in our power now to Supply them with, consequently we cannot recruit or increase that Army under these discouragements.” Nothing less than immediate French assistance could save the day.14

  Among several delegates, at yet another, somewhat deeper level, the need to immunize themselves from doubt prompted a variety of ingenious and often counterintuitive arguments, all designed to serve as flying buttresses that reinforced the interior architecture of their revolutionary confidence. Like Thomas Aquinas’s five proofs of God’s existence, these were rational attempts to justify a belief that ultimately rested on faith, which in this case was the conviction that the military defeats in New York were meaningless because the American cause was destiny’s child.

  Benjamin Rush, who would later be celebrated as the founder of American psychiatry, told his wife that the recent British victories were, in truth, a godsend. “I think we stood in need of a frown from heaven,” he wrote. “It is, you know, through difficulties & trials that states as well as individuals are trained up to glory & happiness. My faith is now stronger than ever.” Indeed, Rush claimed that “for a long time I not only expected, but wished that General Howe might gain possession of New York.” For now all the loyalists from adjacent states would flee to New York, “where they will ripen as the Tories of Boston did for banishment & destruction.” The rest of the country would then “be purged of those rascals whose idleness or perfidy have brought most of our calamities upon us.” All of America’s rotten eggs would now be gathered into one basket.15

  William Williams, a delegate from Connecticut, took a more theological route to reach a similar conclusion. His preferred interpretive framework was the Puritan jeremiad, which transformed the British victories on Long Island and Kip’s Bay into acts of divine retribution for a sinful American people. “God has blunted the weapons of our warfare,” Williams intoned, “and made us flee before our Enemies, and given them possession of our strongholds.” In Williams’s moral universe, the issue was not the relative weakness of the Continental Army but the depravity of the entire American population: “A thorough Repentance & Reformation … will appease the Anger of a holy & just God, avert these amazing Calamities, secure Liberty & Happiness to this and all succeeding Ages & eternal Felicity & Glory to all the Subjects of it.” The obvious solution was not better officers, better equipment, or aid from France. All those items would be forthcoming after American patriots fasted, did penance, and prayed for their providential redemption.16

  Adams discovered assurance in Greek and Roman history, chiefly the lessons learned in the Peloponnesian and Punic wars. When Henry Knox expressed concern about the impact of the series of defeats on the morale of the Continental Army, Adams told him to stop worrying: “It is very true that a Silly Panic has been spread in your Army, and from there come to Philadelphia.” But Hannibal had inflicted an equivalent panic on the Roman army yet could never manage to take advantage of it and eventually lost the war. Howe was likely to prove the Hannibal of the American Revolution.17

  For, like Hannibal, Howe would discover that winning battles was not synonymous with winning wars: “Conquests were easily made, because We atchieve them with our whole force—they are retained with difficulty because We defend them with only a part of our forces.” In Howe’s case, the occupation of Long Island and Manhattan would stretch his resources to the breaking point. “After such a division and distribution of his forces,” Adams predicted, “I think he has nearly reached the end of his tether for this Year.” The greater Howe’s victories, the greater his difficulties. Howe was destined to win his way to defeat.18

  Moreover, Adams explained, the Americans had the example of Thebes in the Peloponnesian War to guide them. After some initial defeats akin to the American losses in New York, the Thebans realized that they could not win a conventional war against Sparta and adopted a defensive strategy that rendered it “rash to hazard a decisive Battle against the best troops in Greece.” Instead, they chose “to harass the Spartans with frequent Skirmishes … whilst they gained Experience, Confidence, and Courage by daily Encounters.” The humiliations in New York were really a marvelous learning experience that taught the Americans the lessons the Thebans had learned two thousand years before. For the British, like the Spartans, had to win the war. And the Americans, like the Thebans, had only not to lose it. That seminal insight had been learned the hard way in New York but would now guide the American side to ultimate victory.19

  The Adams analysis would prove prescient as the war dragged on, though it would take a herculean effort on Washington’s part to embrace a defensive, or Theban, strategy, partly because of his own aggressive instincts, partly because he was w
orried that superior British financial resources would win out in a protracted war. But in the crucible of that moment, what stands out is the multiple arguments the leading members of the Continental Congress were able to construct in order to dismiss the military disasters at New York. Whether it was demographically, divinely, or historically sanctioned, they regarded the fate of American independence as foreordained. Even if the specific arguments were specious, the underlying faith on which they rested was unshakable. The Howes had badly miscalculated the depth of that faith.

  BY EARLY OCTOBER, Washington had come to the realization that General Howe was not going to take him up on his invitation to attack the fortress at Harlem Heights. About the same time, Howe was coming to the realization that the campaign season was drawing to a close and that he needed to stage another evocative demonstration of British military supremacy—in effect, to deliver another shock to the dazed and dwindling Continental Army.

  Howe’s tactic of choice was almost always a flanking movement, so after consulting his brother about navigation options and obstacles in the East River, he chose to launch an invasion at Throg’s Neck (also called Frog’s Neck), nine miles northeast of Harlem Heights, near present-day Fort Schuyler in the Bronx.

  In keeping with his measured strategy, Howe’s objective was not to block Washington’s escape from Manhattan but, just the opposite, to threaten encirclement in order to force the Continental Army to evacuate the island, then fight an open-field battle in which the superiority of the British Army would once again prove decisive. As he later put it to Germain, his goal was not to trap Washington on Manhattan but to draw him out of his Harlem Heights fortress “and if possible to bring him to action.”20

  The movement of British ships and men up the East River immediately caught Washington’s attention. “I have reason to believe,” he wrote Hancock on October 11, “that the greatest part of their Army has moved upward, or is about to do it, pursuing their original plan of getting in our rear & cutting off our communications with the Country.” Washington plausibly presumed that Howe intended to seal the trap, when in fact he intended to open the door.21

  Washington conducted a personal survey of the shoreline northeast of Manhattan, including the terrain at Throg’s Neck. It revealed that the isthmus was really an island at high tide, connected to the mainland by a causeway and bridge. He ordered an undersize regiment of Pennsylvania Continentals to block this prospective landing spot. Under the command of Colonel Edward Hand, the exit off the island was destroyed, and when the advance wave of 4,000 British troops under Henry Clinton landed on October 12, they found themselves marooned in a mosquito-infested swamp. Throg’s Neck, it turned out, was the worst possible place to launch an invasion.22

  Events then moved at lightning speed on both sides. Washington convened a council of war on October 16 that voted almost unanimously—there was one dissenter—to evacuate Manhattan and move the army eighteen miles to the high ground of White Plains, which would provide a natural defensive refuge akin to Harlem Heights. The goal was to get there before Howe blocked the route.

  The council of war also voted to leave 2,000 troops at Fort Washington. This made no strategic sense, since leaving “a castle in the rear” violated every conventional principle of warfare and since it was already abundantly clear that British warships could sail up the Hudson past Fort Washington with impunity, which undermined the core mission of the garrison. But the commitment made perfect sense psychologically, as a statement of American resolve to defend New York, even as Washington was ordering an evacuation. It was simultaneously an indefensible military decision, a heartfelt act of honor, and Washington’s worst tactical blunder of the entire war.23

  Present for the council of war was none other than Charles Lee, recently arrived from his victorious campaign in South Carolina. Despite his irreverent and erratic mannerisms, his beaked nose, disheveled appearance, and ever-present pack of dogs, Lee was second-in-command only to Washington. His presence bolstered the confidence of several officers, including Joseph Reed, who had been murmuring about Washington’s apparent confusion and indecisiveness ever since the brilliant escape from Long Island.

  One can detect the early symptoms of rivalry between the two commanders, most glaringly when Lee suggested that Washington offer his resignation to the Continental Congress for the recent failures on the battlefield, an offer allegedly designed to extract a vote of confidence from his civilian superiors. Washington ignored the suggestion; further, he did not interpret Lee’s advice as a hostile act. Indeed, he renamed Fort Constitution, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, Fort Lee to commemorate Lee’s return. And the decision to evacuate Manhattan was an implicit endorsement of Lee’s judgment, since he had always thought that New York was indefensible.24

  On October 18, the same day that the Continental Army began its evacuation, the Howe brothers transported Clinton’s troops off Throg’s Neck, added two regiments of recently arrived Hessians to the invasion force, and landed at Pell’s Point, a few miles up Long Island Sound in present-day Pelham. The complicated amphibious maneuvers went like clockwork, the landing site was on the mainland rather than on a quasi-island, and the landing was initially unopposed.

  But unluckily for the Howes, they had chosen a location that was guarded by John Glover and his Marblehead regiment, perhaps the most disciplined troops in the Continental Army. Glover later remembered looking through his telescope and seeing two hundred British ships approaching his position: “Oh! The anxiety of mind I was in then for the fate of the day.… I would have given a thousand worlds to have had General Lee … present to direct or at least approve what I had done.”25

  Acting on his own initiative, Glover moved his 750 men into position behind a series of stone walls and, though outnumbered more than five to one, invited an attack. As the British advanced, one row of Glover’s troops rose up to fire, then retreated, and as the British charged forward with bayonets at the ready, the next row rose up to deliver another withering salvo, and so on from wall to wall. In a little more than a hour, the British lost more men at Pell’s Point than they had in the entire Long Island campaign. (Glover later claimed that his men remained as calm throughout the engagement “as if shooting ducks.”) By one estimate, the British suffered over 300 dead and wounded, the Americans only 20.26

  Howe was sufficiently stunned by the unexpected fighting prowess of American troops to order a halt in the British advance. The next day he moved cautiously inland toward New Rochelle, where he decided to wait for 8,000 newly arrived Hessians to come up from Long Island. Glover’s troops had, in fact, retreated to join Washington’s army, so there were only a handful of militia to contest Howe’s march toward White Plains. But Howe did not move.

  The Continental Army did move, though ever so slowly, advancing less than three miles a day. Fully a quarter of the 13,000 troops were sick or wounded; there were not enough horses to pull the wagons and cannons, which had to be hauled by hand; and food supplies were nonexistent, forcing troops to scavenge whatever they could find along the route. Joseph Plumb Martin remembered, with irony, that he was required to carry an iron cooking kettle, which was never used because there was nothing to cook. The troops were in no condition to fight, but that was not necessary, because Howe made no effort to block their path. It was almost as if he wished them to escape.27

  Whatever Howe’s motives, the final stragglers in the Continental Army reached the safety of the hills at White Plains on October 24, at last out of the trap. The strategic decision to defend New York had always been a fundamental mistake that created the potential for an American catastrophe; now, thanks to the diplomatic priorities of the Howes, it had been averted. True to form, William Howe waited four more days to launch an attack on White Plains, enough time for Washington to prepare his defenses.

  IT WAS THE END of the beginning for the American side, meaning that its army had managed to survive what proved to be the most vulnerable moment of the war. Washington, fro
m lessons learned at New York, would never again allow the survival of the Continental Army to be put at risk. Though it ran counter to all his instincts, he now realized that his goal was not to win the war but rather not to lose it.

  It was the beginning of the end for the British side, meaning that the Howe brothers, despite their tactical brilliance, had failed to deliver the decisive blow that killed the rebellion at its moment of birth. Indeed, they had deliberately decided not to do so. What might have happened if they had acted otherwise will always remain one of the most intriguing and unanswerable questions in American history.

  But several other intriguing questions had, in fact, been answered during America’s revolutionary summer, and the answers largely defined the parameters of the war that would ensue. They cut in two different directions, one making the prospects for a British victory remote in the extreme, the other making any outright American military triumph equally unlikely. Taken together, they defined the terms of the protracted conflict that would play out over the next five years and end with the British decision after Yorktown that the war was unwinnable.

  On the one hand, it was now clear that the Continental Congress was immune to any British proposal for reconciliation. Commitment to “The Cause” was creedal in character, impervious to the calamities on Long Island and Manhattan, which were dismissed as temporary setbacks and then folded into the providential sense of American independence. This was not a wholly rational mentality, for it ruled as inadmissible any evidence that challenged that core conviction. It turned out that Jefferson’s lyrical rendering of the revolutionary pledge—“our lives, our futures, and our sacred honor”—was much more than a rhetorical gesture. It accurately reflected the bottomless level of commitment in the Continental Congress, which had now been tested to the limit and never wavered. The central assumption on which the Howes had based their military strategy, namely that support for the rebellion was soft and shallow, was exposed as misguided. Whatever subsequent disappointments and disasters might befall “The Cause” out there in the vast American theater, the center would always hold.