HE STOOD six feet three in his black boots with their pointed toes. Wide-shouldered, deep-chested, and big-bottomed, he held himself as erect as an Indian and walked majestically. His legs and arms were long. His shapely head seemed small in proportion to his height and weight. Set far apart in his long face and divided by a heavy nose were steely blue-gray eyes. Because his false teeth bothered him, he kept his lips pressed together. A cocked hat topped his powdered brown hair, and he was uniformed in a blue coat, golden epaulets, and buff-colored breeches.
Well groomed most of the time, George Washington was dust-flecked the afternoon of April 13, 1776, when he rode his horse into New York City at the head of five regiments. These soldiers reinforced troops sent here earlier from Boston. No British forces were left in New York. Governor William Tryon and his redcoats had abandoned the fort and taken refuge on the Duchess of Gordon, which lay in the harbor. For a time this ship became the colony’s floating capital.
During Washington’s first days in New York he stayed in a private house on lower Broadway. When his wife joined him, they moved into a mansion abandoned by Abraham Mortier, former paymaster general of British military forces in America. This grand house lay in Lispenard’s meadows at the present corner of Varick and Charlton streets. To help make her husband comfortable, Martha Washington bought a feather bed, bolsters, pillows, bed-curtains, crockery, glassware, and other household items.
In 1776 New York had a population of 20,000 and extended about a mile north of the Battery. The province ranked seventh in population among the thirteen colonies. However, because of the city’s geographic position and fine harbor, Washington considered it of “infinite importance.” As he wrote Congress, he had transferred his army here from Boston because he considered New York the key to the coming campaign. If the British seized the city, they could control the Hudson River, and then, as Washington put it, “stop the intercourse between the northern and southern colonies, upon which depends the safety of America.”
This view was shared by General William Howe, the new commanding officer of the king’s forces in North America. Except for dark eyes and more pointed features than Washington’s, Howe looked surprisingly like the American. Howe’s brother, thick-lipped swarthy Admiral Richard Howe, headed all naval operations in America and now was leading a British fleet in this direction. With superior land and sea forces the Howe brothers were exceedingly mobile and could control America’s waterways. But where would they strike first?
When General Howe left Boston the month before, most colonists expected him to head straight for New York. Instead, he took loyal Bostonians to Halifax, picked up more troops, and then set sail again. Not long after Washington had reached New York, another British fleet, under Admiral Peter Parker, attacked Charleston, South Carolina, only to be driven off. Anxious New Yorkers expected any day now to see the masts of one or more English fleets standing off Sandy Hook.
The work of fortifying the city had begun before Washington arrived; now he redoubled the effort. Manhattan would be difficult to defend because it was surrounded by water and America had no real navy. Therefore, Washington threw up defenses to hamper the landing of an invasion force. An elaborate system of forts, redoubts, batteries, barricades, and trenches was constructed along Manhattan’s shores and on Brooklyn Heights, commanding the Upper Bay.
Lacking cavalry, the American army was a badly balanced force of infantry and artillery. More than 200 cannons were trundled into position by sweating soldiers. The men panted as they stamped shovels into the earth. They swore as they swung picks at solid rock. Munition carts thudded over cobblestones. The old Battery fort was partly demolished, and a barricade arose 200 yards north on Broadway. Drums snarled, flags fluttered, and more and more volunteers tramped into the city until Washington had 20,000 men.
Many Tories, expecting persecution by patriots, had fled. Patriots, too, had left for fear of bombardment by British warships. Despite the reduced population, it was difficult to find quarters for all the soldiers. At first they lodged in barracks and private houses; later they all went into tents, except for one regiment that lacked canvas. This was truly becoming an American army, rather than a collection of Colonial militia.
For the first time masses of men from the thirteen colonies came together and noted in surprise how different they were. Lean frontiersmen, many more than six feet tall, wore leather leggings and moccasins, Indian style. Marylanders favored green hunting shirts. Pennsylvania regiments sported all colors of the rainbow. Pious Connecticut troops regarded New Yorkers as a wicked lot. Aristocratic Virginians were shocked to see New England officers and enlisted men fraternizing. Rhode Islanders stared at New Jersey riflemen clad in short red coats and striped trousers.
As usual, the army attracted prostitutes, gamblers, and saloonkeepers. North of the city, near the present Washington Square, there was a squatters’ camp of huts and tents housing loose women and lusty men. Cynics dubbed it the Holy Ground. “The whores,” a shocked New England colonel wrote his wife, “continue their employ which is become very lucrative. . . . I was never within the doors nor ’changed a word with any of them except in the execution of my duty as officer of the day in going the grand round with my guard of escort, have broke up the knots of men and women fighting, pulling caps, swearing, crying ‘murder!’” Drunken soldiers actually had their heads and arms and legs cut off.
Some of the Tories left in town were stripped, tarred and feathered, and ridden through the streets on rails. This rough treatment resulted as much from fear as from resentment, and there really were grounds for such fear. From his floating refuge in the harbor Governor Tryon directed a conspiracy of British officials and hundreds of loyalists to end the war by murdering or capturing American leaders, by inciting American troops to mutiny, and by seizing or destroying local army supplies. Two of Washington’s own bodyguards were bribed. A third, who pretended to accede, revealed the plot.
The Tory mayor, David Matthews, was arrested and charged with “dangerous designs and treasonable conspiracies against the rights and liberties” of Americans. One ringleader, a member of Washington’s bodyguard, was Private Thomas Hickey, a deserter from the British army. He tried to poison the general by stirring Paris green in a dish of peas. Hickey was put on trial. Refusing to name any conspirators, he defended himself so weakly that he was sentenced to be hanged. Stripped of his uniform, the disgraced private was led to a field near Bowery Lane, where 20,000 persons watched him dangle at the end of a rope. This was the first military execution of the Revolution and the first in the history of the American army. Although no other defendant was convicted, Washington kept Mayor Matthews in jail, being convinced that he too was involved in the plot.
At daybreak on June 29 an American, named Daniel McCurtin, glanced out of his waterfront home and stiffened with shock. The harbor was a forest of British masts. General Howe had arrived from Halifax with more than 100 vessels. In the next few days more and more ships heaved into sight. Admiral Richard Howe brought an entire army from England in a second fleet. Then Admiral Peter Parker arrived from Charleston with his fleet. Ships of the line, frigates, transports, and other vessels—nearly 500 in all—rocked at anchor on the very threshold of New York. It was the greatest expeditionary force ever mounted by England.
Included in this army of 32,000 soldiers were 9,000 German mercenaries. In 1776 perhaps 1,000,000 men of fighting age lived in Britain, but the American war was so unpopular there that the government couldn’t recruit or impress enough fighting men at home. King George tried unsuccessfully to hire soldiers from Russia and Holland. At last he got mercenaries from petty German princes, among them the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. American patriots wrongly called all of them Hessians and regarded them with corrosive hatred.
During this awesome buildup of British strength in New York Bay the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of Independence. Washington ordered the document read aloud to all his soldiers on July 9, 1776. Here and there in New York regiments were drawn up on parade grounds, the men spick-and-span in their uniforms, bayonets fixed on heavy muskets. One hollow square was formed in front of the present City Hall, and Washington sat astride his horse within this square as an officer began reading aloud, “When in the course of human events—” That evening, as bells clanged and men cheered, a mob spilled down Broadway to Bowling Green and pulled to earth the statue of George III. Washington later reprimanded the few soldiers who took part in this affair, but he was glad that the statue’s 2 tons of lead melted down into 42,088 bullets for his army.
Meantime, 10,000 British and German soldiers had landed on Staten Island, where they set up camp, tore down fences for firewood, swilled Jersey applejack, and roamed drunkenly through the thickets. A British officer wrote that “a girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most immediate risk of being ravished.”
Time passed, and still there was no British attack. Both General Howe and Admiral Howe genuinely liked Americans and, before leaving England, had been named by the king to act as peace commissioners. So, before both sides locked in combat, the Howe brothers put out peace feelers. Under a flag of truce a British officer landed in Manhattan with a letter for “Mr. Washington.” This envoy was received by an American officer who said, “Sir, we have no person here in our army with that address.” Of course, there was a General Washington. After the proper form of address had been resolved, Washington met with a British lieutenant colonel, who reported that the Howe brothers wanted to settle the unhappy differences with America. Suspicious of this olive branch and unsure of the Howes’ authority, Washington refused to treat with the British high command.
Now the English attacked. At dawn on August 22, 1776, a vanguard of troops shoved off from Staten Island near the western end of what today is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Under a bright sun and on calm water the redcoats ferried across the Narrows in 88 craft specially built for this amphibious operation. They were in a carefree mood. When their boats grounded on the flat beach of Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn, they jumped out, splashed ashore, ran to nearby apple trees, shinnied up, and threw apples at one another. No American force opposed this invasion. Back and forth across the mile-wide Narrows the landing craft plied, until by noon 15,000 British had been transferred to Long Island. Three days later they were reinforced by 5,000 Hessians.
Washington hadn’t known whether the first enemy thrust would come at Manhattan or Brooklyn. He realized that to hold New York City, he must hold Brooklyn Heights, but this meant splitting his 19,000 effectives between the two places. Long before the British landed on Long Island, the Americans had thrown up forts and earthworks from Gowanus Bay on the south to Wallabout Bay (later the Brooklyn Navy Yard) on the north. These strongholds were protected on the eastern inland side by thickly wooded hills. Stretching southwest to northeast, the hills were almost impassable except where they were cut by four roads. The enemy now lay on the flat-lands to the south.
On each of the two days after the British landing Washington left his New York headquarters and ferried across the East River to reconnoiter. Convinced that the big British push was being made against Brooklyn, he rushed over reinforcements until 7,000 Americans faced 20,000 Englishmen and Germans. Unfortunately, two-thirds of Washington’s men on Long Island were militia. Some had been under arms less than two weeks, and none had ever faced an enemy in battle. Discipline was so lax that some wandered miles beyond their fixed posts.
Worst of all, Washington and his generals neglected one of the four passes cut through the hills. This was the Jamaica Pass, just west of the present intersection of Fulton Street and Broadway in Brooklyn. Only five young militia officers were left to guard it.
The Battle of Long Island was fought on August 27, 1776. That morning the sun rose “with a red and angry glare.” Later the day turned clear, cool, and pleasant. About 8 A.M. Washington once more arrived from Manhattan, this time to lead his troops in action. Despite his service in the Seven Years’ War and at the siege of Boston, never before had he directed a stand-up battle. It also marked the first time that Americans and British clashed in formal battle array in the open field.
Superior in numbers, weapons, experience, discipline, and strategy, the British pushed north. Most of the important action took place within the 526 acres now constituting Prospect Park. Perhaps the most dramatic and gallant episode occurred near Third and Eighth streets just west of Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue. There a Maryland battalion tried to hold off the enemy long enough for retreating Americans to scamper into the forts. The price they paid was 684 casualties. Standing on a hilltop and watching this action through field-glasses, Washington groaned, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!”
By early afternoon most Americans who had not been shot, bayoneted, captured, drowned, or driven panic-stricken from the field were cooped up within forts and redoubts on Brooklyn Heights. They were frightened. They were bloody and tired. They sweated out the danger of a British frontal attack. They nibbled biscuits “hard enough to break the teeth of a rat,” as one private expressed it. But General Howe was not willing to risk a headlong charge on these strongholds. His caution won a battle and helped lose a war. With a little more daring Howe might have captured George Washington and the entire Long Island army and put an end to the revolution then and there.
Up at four o’clock the next morning, Washington saw that the British still lay on their arms and that the wind kept enemy warships from closing in to bombard his position. He ordered even more Americans across the East River to reinforce his beleaguered men. The afternoon came and went with still no British attack. Toward evening a cold rain began and developed into a downpour that made it impossible for the Americans to build cooking fires. Their ammunition became wet and useless. In some trenches men stood waist-deep in water. All that night the northeasterly wind blew.
The second day after the battle Washington was hard at work by 4:30 A.M., writing Congress about the “engagement between a detachment of our men and the enemy” on August 27. This chore done, he sent orders to Manhattan to gather all available boats and assemble them by dark on the west side of the East River. Next, he held a war council with his seven generals in the Brooklyn forts. Beset by a superior land force and in peril of being cut off from escape by the British fleet, the Americans agreed to evacuate.
Soon after dusk the first boats from Manhattan nosed into the Brooklyn shore at what today is the eastern end of the Brooklyn Bridge. The northeasterly wind still kept enemy warships from closing in for the kill. Now a fog fell like a white pillow on the area. Besides blurring vision, it muffled sound. Speaking in whispers, groping through blackness, and squashing along muddy paths, American soldiers filed down to the evacuation point. A few panicked and tried to rush the boats and crawl over comrades’ heads to get a seat. But most of the shivering miserable men behaved well and stepped in orderly fashion into scows, barges, and rowboats; anything that floated had been brought to the scene. The craft were manned by seafaring New Englanders, who rowed with aching muscles from the east shore to the west and back again, all that fog-shrouded night. The last man to pick his way down slippery steps into a boat was George Washington.
By seven o’clock on the morning of August 30 the last of his 10,000 men were back on Manhattan. They brought all their food, equipment, and arms, leaving behind only a few heavy and rusted cannon. A British military critic later wrote that “this retreat should hold a high place among military transactions.” Howe’s victory at the Battle of Long Island was indecisive because he let the American army regroup. England had lost its golden opportunity.
On September 7, 1776, for the first time in history, a submarine made an underwater attack on a warship. A Yale graduate, named David Bushnell, designed this submarine and managed to present his idea to Washington, who gave the thirty-four-year-old inventor all the money and men he needed to construct his strange craft.
Bushnell’s submarine was made of huge oak timbers, scooped out and fitted together in the shape of a clam. Because of its appearance it was called Bushnell’s Turtle. The oak timbers were bound with iron bands, the seams were calked, and everything was tarred to make the vessel watertight. The Turtle was big enough for one man to stand inside. Seven hundred pounds of lead stored in the bottom kept it upright. Two foot-operated pumps enabled the operator to dive or ascend. The submarine’s forward movement was provided by a hand crank that turned a two-bladed wooden screw propellor.
Bushnell and Washington planned to use the crude submarine to blow up one of the British warships anchored in New York Harbor. Sergeant Ezra Lee, of Lyme, Connecticut, was chosen to operate the Turtle. One night a whaleboat towed the submarine to the foot of Whitehall Street at the Battery. An egg-shaped magazine, containing 130 pounds of gunpowder, was attached by a screw to the back of the submarine. The Americans hoped that the magazine could be detached from the Turtle and fastened to the underside of a British man-of-war. A timing device would give Lee 30 minutes in which to escape.
Bushnell, Washington, and a group of American officers gathered at the Battery at midnight on September 7 to watch Lee depart on his historic mission. The night was so dark that the enemy on nearby Governors Island could not see what was going on. After the sergeant had submerged, he steered his craft by a compass set near decayed phosphorescent wood, called foxwood. This eerie glow was his only light. Busily working his controls, Lee glided through the black and silent water of the harbor out toward Admiral Howe’s flagship, the sixty-four-gun Eagle, anchored off Staten Island.
As planned, the submarine came up under the keel of the Eagle. Protruding from the top of the submarine and operated from inside was a drill. Lee tried to force this screw into first one spot and then another on the Eagle but was thwarted by iron plates reinforcing her copper sheathing. He worked hard and long until dawn began creeping over the harbor. Lee realized that he had to make a getaway, but to his dismay he discovered that his compass wasn’t working. Time after time he had to surface to get a visual fix on the Battery.
The Turtle was spotted by red-coated British soldiers and blue-clad Hessian mercenaries standing on the parapets of Governors Island. Puzzled by the craft’s odd shape, some of them climbed into a barge and pushed off to investigate. Having failed to blow up the flagship, Lee now decided to try to destroy the barge. He disengaged the magazine holding the gunpowder. It floated free of the Turtle. The men in the barge hastily rowed back toward Governors Island.
The tide was flowing shoreward. The dangerous egg-shaped magazine swirled into the East River, where it exploded thunderously but did no harm. Water, wood, and iron flew high into the air. Lee painfully cranked his way back to the Battery, where Washington and the others were waiting for him. There the weary sergeant climbed out of the Turtle to receive congratulations for his daring. Although he had not managed to accomplish his mission, he had thrown a scare into the enemy. One British officer wrote that “the ingenuity of these people is singular in their secret modes of mischief.”
In the Battle of Long Island the Americans had suffered some 1,500 casualties, while the British had lost only about 400 men. King George was so pleased that he conferred the Order of the Bath on General Howe. The Tories thought that the war was almost over. Howe felt that the Americans now might be willing to talk peace, and he arranged a conference with their representatives. Congress chose John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Benjamin Franklin to learn the British intentions. On September 11 they met in a stone mansion in the southwestern corner of Staten Island, across from Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
With every courtesy, Howe received the American delegates in a large room, decorated with a moss carpet and green sprigs. Including dinner—consisting of excellent claret; cold ham, tongue, and mutton; and delicious bread—the meeting lasted three hours. Howe did most of the talking, saying that he had a brotherly feeling for Americans. Despite his every appeal, the committee reported to Congress that Howe seemed to have no authority except to grant pardons if America gave in. If it did so, there was no certainty that its grievances would be redressed. The war went on.
Now a scorched-earth policy was discussed by Congress, Washington, his generals, and other influential men. Should New York be burned to the ground? It was of no use to the Americans because the British controlled the city’s waterways. Most inhabitants had fled, and two-thirds of all local property was owned by loyalists. By destroying the city, the Americans would deprive the British officers of a headquarters and the loyalists of housing. Washington couldn’t make up his mind, but when Congress finally decided against razing New York, he concurred.
Washington now disposed his troops for the Battle of New York City. He left 5,000 men in the city itself near the Battery. He posted 5 brigades along the East River, chiefly near Kip’s Bay, at East 34th Street and at Turtle Bay, at East 45th Street. Then he withdrew the bulk of his army to the high ground between 125th Street and the northern tip of Manhattan. For his new headquarters Washington chose the vacant house of Colonel Roger Morris, a Tory refugee in England. This house, later called the Jumel Mansion, still stands at Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street. Washington now had his troops strung out the 13-mile length of Manhattan. The two ends were fairly strong, but the center consisted of green militia.
Howe struck at the center. Having kept his men idle since August 27, he launched an attack the hot Sunday of September 15. About 11 A.M. British warships, which had sailed up the East River, opened fire with 80 guns against American entrenchments near East Thirty-fourth Street. For 2 hours this heavy bombardment pinned the Americans in their lines. Then, as the last shell slammed to earth and the smoke drifted away, the first wave of British and Germans crossed the East River in 84 flatboats. The clustered redcoats looked to one observer like “a clover field in full bloom.” The invaders jumped ashore at Kip’s Bay. Washington’s raw recruits, stunned by artillery fire and frightened by glinting sunlight on bayonets, broke and ran without firing a shot. The British captured 20 American officers and about 300 men.
Washington was three miles to the north when the bombardment began. He vaulted into the saddle and galloped to the scene of action. When he arrived at the present intersection of Lexington Avenue and Forty-second Street, he saw some of his men throwing away coats, hats, knapsacks, and even muskets in a wild scramble for safety. “Take to the cornfield!” Washington roared. “Take to the wall!” But most of the frenzied militia ignored him and kept running. Washington crimsoned with rage. Dashing his hat on the ground, he bellowed, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” Still on horseback, he yanked his sword from its scabbard. The blade flashed as he laid its broad side on the shoulders of the men nearest him—privates, a colonel, and even a brigadier general.
Whack! Damn ye! Whack! Sixty to seventy Hessians trotted toward Washington, hoping to capture the American commander in chief. He was so blinded by rage that he took no notice of them. But his terrified foot soldiers bolted in every direction, leaving the general and his aides to face the attackers without a single musket. Fortunately, a young officer seized the bridle of Washington’s horse and pulled him away. Sputtering and cursing, he was hustled north toward Harlem and safety.
The main body of British troops now pushed farther inland, spreading as far north as Murray Hill, rearing between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets, Third Avenue, and Broadway. There they were halted by General Howe. His objective for the day had been to capture Murray Hill. Now he wished to rest his men and wait for reinforcements. The British and German soldiers grounded their arms in meadows stretching south from the present Grand Central Station.
Murray Hill was named for Robert Murray, whose mansion stood at the corner of what is now Park Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street. According to legend, his wife beguiled General Howe and his staff into dallying in her home so that the Americans might escape. This isn’t quite true. That sweltering day Mrs. Murray did send a servant to invite Howe to stop for refreshments, and he accepted her hospitality. Far from being a femme fatale, however, she was a middle-aged Quaker lady with twelve children. Besides, as we know, Howe had already decided to pause.
Meantime, American troops left in the toe of Manhattan learned that most roads leading north were held by the British. At first they thought that they would have to cut their way through the enemy to join Washington’s force in Harlem. But Aaron Burr declared that he could lead them to safety without a fight and without detection. The Americans began sneaking up a road on the west side of Manhattan. About the same time a British column started pushing up the Boston Post Road on the east side of the island. Separating the two hostile columns by only about two miles were a tangle of swamps and trees and low hills, constituting the present Central Park. It was a silent and secret race along parallel roads, for neither force knew about the other. Burr won, bringing 5,000 American soldiers into Washington’s camp.
The western end of the present West 125th Street was then a valley, called the Hollow Way. The American army lay on the hills to the north. Advance posts of the British lay on the hills to the south. Their front lines were less than two miles apart.
In the early morning on September 16, Washington sent out a reconnoitering party of 150 Connecticut rangers, led by Major Thomas Knowlton. The general stood on a hill at 126th Street to watch them as best he could. Near 112th Street and Riverside Drive, Knowlton’s men ran into British pickets. They clashed. Then, with a skirl of bagpipes, kilted Black Watch warriors advanced to help the pickets. The outnumbered Americans soon broke off the engagement and retreated in orderly fashion two and one-half miles north.
Superior in force, the cocky British followed, descending into the Hollow Way. When the pursuers came within sight of the main American army, a British bugler blew a call—not the signal to attack, but the call of hunters who have killed a fox. At this insult Americans quivered with rage. Until then Washington had been undecided about what to do. Now he feinted at the advancing British as though to offer open battle, at the same time sending two columns of Americans by detours to fall on the enemy’s rear.
The outraged Americans did more than feint. Pouring down from the hills, they counterattacked in force. The very militiamen who had fled from Kip’s Bay the day before raced with ferocious yells toward the advancing scarlet lines. The affair developed into a general engagement, which raged for two hours. Then the redcoats faltered, stopped, broke, and retreated. Whooping with joy, the Americans pushed them back to a buckwheat field on the present site of Barnard College. Again the enemy fell back, this time to an orchard farther south. Twice more the British gave ground, retreating to what is now 103d Street. But Washington, realizing that he would be outnumbered in a major conflict, ordered his men to halt before British reserves could be thrown into action.
This Battle of Harlem Heights did not change the relative position of either army since no new ground was captured and held. Technically, though, it was an American victory. Various historians have reported different casualty figures, but all agree that American losses were far fewer than those of the British. Morally, too, it was a triumph for the Americans. They had proved that the British army was not invincible.
Four days later fire broke out in New York City. It started in a wooden tavern, called the Fighting Cocks, on a wharf near Whitehall Slip and was spread by a gale blowing from the south. The origin of the blaze remains a mystery, but the British and Tories called it a plot to destroy the city. Amid crackling flames and falling timbers, half-naked people staggered through the streets in terror. Ordinary people, aristocratic loyalists, and British soldiers and sailors tried in vain to fight the fire. Tories claimed that holes had been cut in fire buckets. People suspected of touching off the conflagration were spitted on bayonets, hanged, and even tossed alive into the flames. The city’s most prominent landmark, Trinity Church, crashed in ruins. One-fourth of the city was left a smoking blackened wasteland. Thousands of homeless people were reduced to beggary. All this was a major disaster to the British high command, which had chosen the city as its headquarters. Washington, who had considered and then rejected the idea of putting the city to the torch, commented, “Providence, or some good honest fellow, has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves.”
The day after the fire a twenty-four-year-old American, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a fair complexion, was brought to General Howe’s headquarters at East Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. He was not an arsonist, but a self-confessed spy. His name was Nathan Hale. Disguised as a teacher, he had penetrated enemy lines in and around the city to sketch fortifications and jot down other pertinent military facts. After his capture in Brooklyn he admitted to being a captain in Washington’s army and a spy. Howe questioned the handsome youth and turned him over to the British provost marshal, and on September 22, 1776, Nathan Hale was hanged—probably at Forty-fifth Street and First Avenue.
For several weeks the British let Washington occupy Harlem Heights. Rather than risk a bloody frontal attack, Howe finally decided to use his warships to land part of his army behind the Americans. The foggy night of October 12 a British force was put ashore on Throgs Neck, a slim peninsula jutting out from the Bronx into the East River. Washington had anticipated this move. His Pennsylvania riflemen, crouched behind a woodpile, threw back the enemy in confusion. Howe then made a second landing, three miles north in Westchester County. This jeopardized Washington’s army, and he pulled back to White Plains, which was then isolated country. The Battle of White Plains, fought on October 28, resulted in the defeat of 1,400 Americans by 4,000 British.
Washington still had 2,500 men left to defend the last bit of Manhattan held by the Americans. This was Fort Washington, perched on a rocky cliff 230 feet above the Hudson, at what is now the eastern end of the George Washington Bridge. Fort Lee stood on the Jersey Palisades just across the river. In a direct line between the two forts the Americans had sunk ships and lowered chevaux-defrise—heavy timbers studded with iron spikes. Congress had asked Washington to bottle up the Hudson to prevent the British from breaking through to the north. However, the sunken barriers proved ineffectual; enemy ships sailed over them without damage.
Since Fort Washington’s main function had been to guard the eastern end of the water barrier, there was no point now in trying to defend it against Howe’s gathering might. Major General Nathanael Greene commanded the fort. Unwisely, he elected to make a stand. His troops were jammed within a space barely large enough for 1,000 men. And since the fort lacked a well, water had to be scooped up in buckets from the Hudson far below.
At the head of 5,000 soldiers, Washington retreated across the Hudson, into New Jersey, and down to Hackensack to set up camp. On November 16 he was back at Fort Lee. From a distance of less than one mile he looked through field glasses across the river and saw his brave men being stabbed to death by Hessian bayonets. Helpless and forlorn, Washington sobbed at the grisly sight.
The fall of Fort Washington was one of the greatest American disasters of the war. Greene lost a staggering amount of precious armament and equipment, and hundreds of prisoners were marched down the length of Manhattan and herded into makeshift prisons in churches, sugarhouses, and ships. What’s more, the overall battle for New York City, from Long Island to Fort Washington, cost the Americans hundreds of lives and more than 4,400 prisoners.
Now the entire city was held by the British, who continued to occupy it for the next 7 years. Only about 3,000 civilians were left when the king’s troops took over, most people having fled. Now British and German soldiers swarmed in, along with Tories from the countryside and other colonies. They soon boosted the population to 33,000. One loyalist wrote that New York was “a most dirty, desolate and wretched place.” It had been dug up by the Americans for defense, shelled by British warships, and charred by fire. Slowly the city became the capital of Tory America, as well as Britain’s greatest military base. Business boomed.
There was a great housing shortage. A cluster of shanties and tents, known as Canvas Town, arose amid the blackened ruins of the city. On the front doors of houses left standing after the fire, officials painted G. R., for George Rex, meaning that they were commandeered in the king’s name. The families of British and German servicemen poured into town. Added to these was the usual horde of prostitutes. An Englishman visiting St. Paul’s Chapel, which survived the fire, wrote: “This is a very neat church and some of the handsomest and best-dressed ladies I have ever seen in America. I believe most of them are whores.” A trader, named Jackson, contracted to supply 3,500 women to entertain His Majesty’s troops in America and brought to New York doxies from England, as well as Negroes from the West Indies.
Rentals rose. Prices soared 800 percent. Food and firewood became dear. Profiteering, black-marketeering, smuggling, and graft flourished. Everyone cheated everyone else. Some greedy men made quick fortunes. In fact, even Tories felt that the British might have won the war had it not been for the colossal graft of barracks masters, quartermasters, the commissary of artillery, the commissary of cattle, the commissary of forage, and the commissary of prisoners.
The countryside for a radius of thirty miles around the city became a no-man’s-land, wherein irregulars from both armies raided and plundered and burned and killed. Because the slaughter of cattle was a common goal, the British marauders were called Cowboys, and the American guerrillas were known as Skinners.
Life’s uncertainty bred a feverish gaiety. Manners and morals relaxed. British officers promenaded in glittering uniforms, drank heavily, fought duels, frequented taverns, celebrated the king’s birthday, and promoted cricket matches, horse races, bullbaiting, boxing matches, and golf games. They escorted young ladies to dances, balls, teas, receptions, and dinners. On December 7, 1767, David Douglass had opened the city’s first real playhouse, the John Street Theatre, halfway between Broadway and Nassau Street. During their occupation of New York the British took over the theater, founded the Garrison Dramatic Club, and presented amateur theatricals. The social whirl reached its peak with the visit of seventeen-year-old Prince William Henry, the third son of George III, who later became King William IV. In New York he was saved from drowning while ice skating and met twenty-three-year-old Post Captain Horatio Nelson, destined for immortality as the hero of Trafalgar.
But the plight of the common people worsened, especially after another fire had consumed 300 more houses. Rich Tories and British officers held charity drives to alleviate the suffering, but almost no one worried about American soldiers cooped up in prisons around town. Given wretched food or none at all, they were jammed elbow to elbow and received no medical care. The worst of the makeshift jails were the prison ships. About 11,000 Americans, or more than the total killed by British muskets throughout the entire war, perished on these fetid vessels.
The Englishman in charge of the prisoners, Provost Marshal William Cunningham, was sadistic and greedy. As he lay dying in 1791, he confessed, “I shudder at the murders I have been accessory to, both with and without orders from the government, especially while in New York, during which time there were more than two thousand prisoners starved in the different churches, by stopping their rations, which I sold.”
New York was occupied longer and suffered more than any other great American city. Of the Revolution’s 308 battles and engagements, 92 took place in various parts of New York State, while 216 occurred in and around the other colonies. The war ended with the surrender of Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781.
Victorious American troops did not reoccupy New York City until November 25, 1783. For decades afterward this was celebrated as Evacuation Day. During the preceding weeks nearly 15,000 frightened Tories shipped out of here, and into the vacuum rushed Americans eager to buy loyalist property at bargain prices.
According to the timetable agreed to by British and American forces, the king’s men were to quit the city beginning at noon, November 25. Most people awakened early that historic day and noted with delight that the weather broke clear, if cold. A Mrs. Day who ran a boardinghouse on Murray Street near the Hudson River flew an American flag over her place. When this was reported to Provost Marshal Cunningham, he sent word that she was to take it down. She refused. About 9 A.M., while Mrs. Day was sweeping in front of her door, Cunningham himself appeared in a scarlet coat and powdered wig. He commanded her to haul down the rebel flag. Again she refused. He seized the halyards to do the job himself; whereupon Mrs. Day took her broom and clobbered him until powder rose in a white mist from his wig and gore gushed from his nose. With his “front as red as his back,” Cunningham retreated. This was the last conflict of the war.
An hour earlier, at 8 A.M., American light infantry reached Mc-Gowan’s Pass in upper Central Park and closed in so near the British rear guard that officers on both sides could chat with one another. Then the British gave way, and the Americans followed as far as a barrier thrown across the Bowery, where they broke ranks and lounged about to wait. Shortly after the noon deadline the redcoats headed for the East River, stepped into rowboats, and were ferried out to the waiting British fleet. Now the Americans pushed all the way south and occupied the Battery fort.
Everybody was eager to see General George Washington, the man who had held the American army together by sheer willpower. He had been waiting in Harlem. Now, escorted by a body of Westchester Light Horse, he rode down to the Bull’s Head Tavern on the Bowery between Bayard and Pump (now Canal) streets. There he was greeted by a whooping crowd of townspeople, some on horseback, some afoot. When he tugged his horse’s reins to start the final leg of his triumphal entry, they trooped along behind him. The procession wound up at Cape’s Tavern at Broadway and Thames Street, where a reception was held for the commander in chief.
A young woman who witnessed Evacuation Day wrote:
The troops just leaving us were as if equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms, made a brilliant display. The troops that marched in, on the contrary, were ill-clad and weather-beaten, and made a forlorn appearance. But then they were our troops, and as I looked at them, and thought upon all they had done and suffered for us, my heart and my eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more because they were weather-beaten and forlorn.
Now Washington was ready to say farewell to his officers before heading toward his Mount Vernon home. The chosen place was Fraunces Tavern at Pearl and Broad streets. The date was December 4, 1783, a lovely winter’s day. By noon the general’s officers packed the Long Room, named for the Indian term for a council lodge. A few minutes later Washington entered, looking tired. Everyone stood up to greet him. He acknowledged the tribute with a nod of his be-wigged head and moved over to a linen-draped table holding a buffet luncheon. Nobody ate much. The booted officers ached at the thought of parting with the man who not only had led them to victory but also had refused a crown. Swords clanking and spurs jangling, they drifted about aimlessly. Washington accepted a glass of wine; but his strong fingers shook, and his head hung low. The men filled their glasses and stared dully at the ruby-colored wine.
Finally, Washington began speaking: “With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take my leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.” Washington raised his glass to his lips and drank the wine. The officers emptied their glasses.
As Washington put down his drink, his eyes filled with tears, and his iron will almost broke. In a choking voice he said, “I cannot—” He stopped and gulped, and his face was ashen. “I cannot come to each of you, but I shall feel obliged if each of you will . . . will come and take me by the hand.”
There was a dead silence. All stood transfixed. Then a board creaked as 280-pound General Henry Knox, standing nearest Washington, swung his bulk toward his commander in chief. Knox’s eyes brimmed with tears. He grasped Washington’s hand. The two huge warriors stared deeply into each other’s eyes and then, engulfed by memories of their years together, hugged each other. Washington kissed Knox on the cheek. Both wept. Neither said a word. Later, when Washington stepped aboard a barge at the Whitehall Slip, his jaw muscles throbbed convulsively.