George Washington Read online

  Unlike his American opponents, General Henry Clinton was thoroughly familiar with New York City and its surroundings. The son of a former royal governor of the colony, he had spent his boyhood there before joining the British Army and seeing distinguished service against the French during the Seven Years’ War’s German campaigns as aide-de-camp to the celebrated Prince Charles of Brunswick. The straggling American position on the Heights of Guana tempted Clinton to devise an ambitious plan. Exploiting his local knowledge and also what he’d learned of the sophisticated war of maneuver waged in “High Germany,” it aimed to turn both of the enemy’s flanks. When William Howe proved skeptical of its complexity, Clinton persuaded him to adopt a modified version: while the rebels were preoccupied by fake attacks, or “demonstrations,” to the right and center of their position, a powerful force would make a stealthy approach to the undefended Jamaica Pass under cover of darkness and then swing around the Americans’ left.20

  Late on the evening of August 26, the assault troops were ready. Major General James Grant, the bluff and portly Highlander who had been captured by the French and Indians outside Fort Duquesne in 1758 during Forbes’s campaign, was deployed on the extreme left of the British line, facing the American right. The outspoken Grant had made himself a hate figure for the revolutionaries by mocking their fighting spirit and boasting in Parliament that he would march from one end of the colonies to the other with 5,000 men;21 the same number were under his command that night. Lieutenant General Philip von Heister and 4,000 of his blue-coated Hessians held the British center at Flatbush. Meanwhile, Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis, and another 9,000 men were preparing for their long night march. At dawn on August 27, this flanking force had reached Jamaica Pass without incident. By then both Grant and Heister were already engaging the Americans strung along the Heights to their fronts. These units—New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, and men from Delaware—were commanded by Sullivan and Lord Stirling. In a series of fierce, isolated actions, the Continental troops fought coolly enough against what appeared to be genuine and determined assaults, offering “battle in the true English taste,” as one of the Marylanders described it, and standing firm despite the incoming shot and shell that was “now and then taking off a head.”22 They were congratulating themselves on holding back the redcoats and Hessians from sunrise until noon when the unsuspected British flanking column struck suddenly from behind.

  Surprise was total. Faced with the prospect of being cut off from the refuge of Brooklyn’s fortifications and now attacked from the front in earnest, the weary and bloodied men of Sullivan’s command quickly crumpled, scattering in flight across the intervening marshes. Lord Stirling’s southern regiments fought harder, staging several stubborn stands “with more than Roman virtue,” but the redcoats pushed on briskly with the bayonet, and they too were broken. Many ran fast enough to find safety within the Brooklyn lines, but about 1,500 were not so fortunate; perhaps 200 died—drowned in tidal Gowanus Creek or shot, clubbed, or bayoneted by their pursuers—the rest were rounded up as prisoners. At a cost of 370 casualties, Howe had inflicted a crushing defeat, eliminating some 40 percent of the Heights’ defenders. Major General Grant crowed: “If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.”23

  Washington had played no direct role in the grim fight for the Heights. Instead, he was among the general officers who looked on helplessly from a “high hill” within the Brooklyn defenses, viewing the rout through their telescopes. The same Maryland soldier who had fought all morning before escaping across Gowanus Creek later heard that “general Washington wrung his hands, and cried out, good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!” Washington was seemingly bewildered by the swift and devastating British attack, which had made him and his generals look like bungling amateurs.

  Reinforced by fresh regiments ferried across from Manhattan during the morning, 7,000 or so Americans were now hemmed within the fortifications of Brooklyn, their backs to the East River. To the chagrin of many of his officers, Howe refused to administer a coup de grâce to the shocked and demoralized rebels by ordering an immediate assault upon their redoubts and trenches. Howe didn’t doubt that his men could have stormed them. But, as he informed Lord George Germain, it was pointless to incur unnecessary casualties when the same results could be achieved by more methodical and far less costly siege operations. Yet Henry Clinton, the chief architect of the stunning victory on Long Island, was not alone in maintaining that the enemy was too shaken to resist a bold attack and that a prime opportunity to destroy much of the Continental Army and perhaps snuff out the rebellion itself had been squandered.24

  William Howe’s stance was clearly influenced by personal experience of the bloodbath at Bunker Hill and the overriding need to conserve his precious manpower, but others factors also came into play. According to Charles Stedman, a Loyalist and British Army commissary who wrote a perceptive history of the American Revolutionary War, Howe considered he had already done enough to destroy his enemies’ resolve to fight and had “no desire to shed the blood of a people so nearly allied to that source from whence he derived all his authority and power.”25 In addition, like his brother Richard, General Howe was also a peace commissioner: as events soon demonstrated, their conciliatory stance—which so woefully misjudged the determined mood of the revolutionaries—hinged upon more than just a broad sense of Anglo-American kinship.

  Howe’s failure to push on and storm the Brooklyn lines on August 27 gave Washington the chance to save his army and, with it, American independence. Over the next two days, heavy rain fell, further dampening the morale of Washington’s dispirited men but also hampering the work of the redcoat sappers digging snaking trenches to within easy striking distance of Brooklyn’s earthworks. It seemed as if Washington and the troops still with him must fight to the death or ignominiously surrender. Then, on the night of August 29–30, the blustery weather subsided and dense fog descended. Under its cover, in a stealthy and skillfully managed operation conducted by Colonel John Glover’s versatile Continental regiment of Marblehead mariners, Brooklyn’s defenders were ferried back to Manhattan. The British never realized what was happening until they were gone.

  Reporting next day to John Hancock, Washington told how the retreat had been made without loss of men or ammunition and in better order than he would have expected; all the stores and cannon were evacuated, save for some heavy guns that got bogged down in the soggy ground. Washington also reported that the Howe brothers were still seeking a negotiated settlement: Major General Sullivan, who had been captured along with Lord Stirling during the desperate fighting on Long Island and released on parole, maintained that Lord Howe remained “extremely desirous of seeing some of the members of Congress.” Washington had allowed Sullivan to travel to Philadelphia so that he could brief the delegates in person.26

  Two days later, Washington wrote again to Hancock in an understandably pessimistic mood. “Our situation is truly distressing,” he confessed. Since the setback on August 27, many of the troops had become dispirited, apprehensive, and despairing. Rather than steeling themselves to meet the emergency, the militiamen were deserting in droves. Their example was contagious, likewise their insubordination, to the extent that Washington was now obliged to admit his “want of confidence in the generality of the troops.” Militia and short-service soldiers were inadequate to the gravity of the situation. There was but one remedy, a cure that any liberty-loving American patriot would find hard to swallow—“a permanent standing army.” Washington was “fully convinced” that without such a force, “competent almost to every exigency . . . our liberties must of necessity be greatly hazarded, if not entirely lost. . . .” It was the old argument that he had voiced so often as colonel of the Virginia Regiment twenty years before, but now given added urgency. Whatever aid the militia might contribute was “nearly counterbalanced by the disorder, irregularity and confusion they occasion.”27
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  If his troops could be relied upon, Washington assured Hancock, he would be confident of defending New York City. Regrettably, he could give no such guarantee. This was a harsh judgment, particularly as the recent crushing defeat stemmed from Washington’s poor generalship rather than any obvious lack of spirit among his men; he had been totally outclassed, while they’d fought as well as anyone could have expected, with hundreds paying the supreme price. At that very time, as Lord Howe’s secretary, Ambrose Serle, discovered, the woods near Brooklyn were strictly off-limits, being “noisome with the stench of the dead bodies of the rebels, whom the Hessians and the Highlanders followed thither and destroyed.”28

  Lacking confidence in his men, Washington now raised the possibility of abandoning New York City. In that case, he asked Hancock, should it be destroyed, or instead left intact to provide snug winter quarters for the British? By simply posing the question, Washington left no doubt of his readiness to torch the city. To Nathanael Greene, the continuing focus on New York City obscured a far graver danger, as the enemy had it in their power to land higher up on Manhattan, trapping all the Americans below. Greene not only favored burning the city and its suburbs, but also evacuating Manhattan Island without delay. Writing to Washington on September 5, he urged that “a general and speedy” retreat was “the only eligible plan to oppose the enemy successfully and secure ourselves from disgrace.” Greene believed they now had “no object on this side” of King’s Bridge—the only viable land exit from Manhattan.29

  On September 7, as Greene had recommended, Washington summoned a council of war to respond to a threat that both intelligence reports and direct observation suggested was now looming ever closer: that the British intended to corner his army on “the island of New York . . . by taking post in our rear, while the shipping effectually secure the front.” So positioned, the enemy could sever Washington’s communications, obliging him to fight on their terms or “surrender at discretion.” Facing “a choice of difficulties,” only exacerbated by the unreliability of the troops, everything—“history—our own experience—the advice of our ablest friends in Europe—the fears of the enemy, and even the declarations of Congress”—pointed to the wisdom of a cautious, defensive stance. Explaining his conundrum to Hancock on September 8, Washington gave a classic statement of what would come to be characterized as his “Fabian” strategy: “that we should on all occasions avoid a general action or put anything to the risk unless compelled by a necessity into which we ought never to be drawn.” Conforming to such a cautiously defensive “war of posts,” and always shying away from a potentially decisive battle, ran directly counter to Washington’s own far more aggressive instincts; it was soon clear that he was prepared to interpret this creed as flexibly as possible and even to ignore it completely.

  For the moment, however, the key question remained whether to defend New York. As Washington reported to Hancock, while some general officers at the council had favored “a total and immediate removal from the city,” thus keeping the enemy at bay and preserving the kernel of troops around which a new army could be built, they were overruled by others who were swayed by a belief that Congress expected the city “to be maintained at every hazard.” A compromise was reached, although it only delayed the inevitable: “that for the present a part of our force might be kept here and attempt to maintain the city a while longer.” In consequence, all save 5,000 men were shifted from Lower Manhattan: a strong force of 9,000 was moved to the vicinity of King’s Bridge, while the balance—another 5,000 or so—were strung between them to fend off a British strike against Manhattan’s eastern shoreline.30

  Given the obvious danger of being bottled up on Manhattan Island, Washington’s failure to not only quit New York City but evacuate his entire army to the mainland without delay testifies to the potentially baleful influence of the council of war and the consequences of his misguided belief that it was vested with the authority to dictate strategy. In addition, besides a desire to placate his civilian masters in Congress and an ingrained reluctance to surrender territory without a fight, it is also likely that Washington’s sense of urgency was blunted by his own exhaustion and the enemy’s inactivity.

  For nearly a fortnight following his easy victory on Long Island, William Howe had done little more than monitor the Americans’ positions. It took an ominous development on September 9, when the British occupied Montresor Island—a fine base for staging an amphibious landing midway up Manhattan Island—to convince Washington that he must withdraw the rest of his troops from New York City before it was too late. Urged on by six generals headed by Greene, he called another council of war on September 12 to reconsider the army’s “critical and dangerous” situation. This time, by a majority of ten votes to three, it was decided that the city at least should be abandoned forthwith. Significantly, the army was not yet quitting Manhattan: a substantial body of 8,000 men would be left at the northern end of the island, “for the defense of Mount Washington and its dependencies.” This description embraced the strongpoint known as Fort Washington, high on the east bank of the Hudson, and the fortified lines stretching south toward the rocky Harlem Heights.31 Given the stores to be transported, the evacuation of New York was easier said than done. So long delayed, the decision was now barely in time. This dithering warned against the danger of placing too much reliance upon the opinions of politicians in distant Philadelphia with little grasp of strategic realities. With time, Washington learned to assert himself decisively as the commander on the spot. Before he did, such deference to the wishes of Congress would cost the cause dear.

  The prolonged lull in British operations, which gave Washington and his generals such a timely reprieve, was deliberate and intended to allow a fresh diplomatic initiative. On September 11, the day before Washington and his commanders finally decided to abandon New York City, the peace conference that Lord Howe had proposed via General Sullivan went ahead on Staten Island. It was attended by three congressmen—Lord Howe’s old friend Benjamin Franklin; another leading radical, John Adams; and the more moderate Edward Rutledge. The trio returned unimpressed by Howe’s statement that the colonists’ grievances could only be addressed after they had surrendered but struck by his explanation that his family’s ties with New England left him with a strong desire for peace. The precise nature and importance of this personal bond is underlined by the explicit testimony of Adams. In his autobiographical recollection of the Staten Island conference, Adams wrote:

  Lord Howe was profuse in his expressions of gratitude to the state of Massachusetts for erecting a marble monument in Westminster Abbey to his elder brother Lord Howe, who was killed in America in the last French war, saying, “he esteemed that honor to his family above all things in this world. That such was his gratitude and affection to this country, on that account, that he felt for America as for a brother, and, if America should fall, he should feel and lament it, like the loss of a brother.”

  At this, as Adams recalled, the worldly-wise and witty Franklin had quipped that they would do their utmost to save Howe “that mortification.”32

  The conference collapsed because the Howes lacked any authority to negotiate with independent states. As Benjamin Rush informed his wife, the three commissioners had reported that Lord Howe’s “powers extended no further than to confer with people of influence in America” upon their grievances: even that step depended upon the rebels first returning to their allegiance. Such backsliding was now unthinkable. Rush added: “When his Lordship asked in what capacity he was to receive them, Mr. Adams said, ‘In any capacity your Lordship pleases except in that of British subjects.’”33

  Despite his political naïvety, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lord Howe’s sentiments. During that crucial summer, therefore, the Howe brothers confronted their opponents with decidedly mixed feelings. If they’d been fighting the old enemy, France, as both of them demonstrated during the previous war and as “Black Dick” would prove many years later in combat w
ith the French Revolutionary regime, they would have shown no such restraint. In 1776, however, the Howes’ conflicting roles as military commanders and peacemakers compromised Britain’s war effort at a critical moment: their clear reluctance to land a knockout blow at New York, when Washington was willing to risk his unseasoned army in a stand-up fight, proved costly for the Mother Country; looking back, New Englanders may have considered the £250 voted for George Augustus Howe’s monument to be money very well spent.34

  The total failure of Lord Howe’s latest peace initiative was swiftly followed by a fresh British offensive. As anticipated, this fell on Manhattan’s eastern shore. On the evening of September 14, five frigates pushed up the East River and anchored off Kip’s Bay. The shoreline had been entrenched and lined with a breastwork defended by Connecticut militiamen. The next morning, September 15, they watched in trepidation as some 4,000 British and Hessian troops—crack grenadiers and light infantry commanded by Clinton—were embarked in rows of flat-bottomed boats for an amphibious assault. As one young British officer, Captain Francis Lord Rawdon, noted, the Germans, who were new to such water-borne operations, steadied their nerves by singing hymns. By contrast, the redcoats countered the tension in their own way, “by damning themselves and the enemy indiscriminately with wonderful fervency.”35

  Then, with a continuous, deafening roar that left even seasoned British observers awestruck, the frigates unleashed their broadsides against the shore defenses. Not surprisingly, this intensive bombardment was too much for the Yankee levies. They promptly abandoned their trenches, scattering in a blind panic that swiftly infected two brigades of Continentals sent to stiffen them. Alerted by the gunfire, Washington rode toward the scene from his new headquarters at Harlem Heights, only to meet the defenders already “retreating with the utmost precipitation” and “flying in every direction and in the greatest confusion.” Despite the best efforts of Washington and his staff, the fugitives could not be rallied until they were miles off. According to General George Weedon, Washington was “so exasperated that he struck several officers in their flight, three times dashed his hat on the ground, and at last exclaimed, ‘Good God, have I got such troops as those!’” Another senior officer, Nathanael Greene, reported that Washington was abandoned by his men “within eighty yards of the enemy, so vexed at the infamous conduct of the troops that he sought death rather than life.” It was only with difficulty that he could be persuaded to retreat.36