Washington estimated that 2200 or 2300 men had made the second crossing to Jersey with him, and he calculated now that the bounty had been accepted by half of those whose time expired on the thirty-first. As nearly as he could compute, those who remained were between 1500 and 1600. He could not expect the immediate arrival of any reenforcements other than perhaps a few more from Pennsylvania, which already had responded largely.
The British in Jersey numbered between five and six thousand men, chiefly at New Brunswick and Princeton. Report was that General Howe had landed at Amboy an additional one thousand soldiers who were moving forward. Was Howe making ready to advance, or was he going into winter quarters? Washington put first the defensive concentration of his regiments, in belief that the Redcoats were almost certain to attack. He could not repel assault with the force he had at Trenton, but if he retreated he would discourage Jersey militia. The position at Trenton was by no means ideal, but it included a road that led to Princeton as well as the one that followed the course of the river. If the enemy decided to move on Philadelphia was it more likely that the adversary would move via Princeton and Trenton or via Crosswicks and, say, Burlington? Washington chose to gamble on the route by Trenton. This had to do with a defensive. If an opportunity were presented of attacking the enemy, Washington would try to strike one or more of the enemy’s posts in Jersey.
Without hesitation, therefore, Washington on the thirty-first ordered Cadwalader to move to Trenton and sent similar instructions to Mifflin. Washington knew that many hours would elapse before these troops could take position by the side of the Continentals. Meantime it was prudent to post a reliable body of veterans on the line of the enemy’s most probable advance, the road from Princeton. Fermoy’s brigade, Hand’s regiment, the German Battalion, Scott’s Virginia Regiment and a detachment with two cannon of Forrest’s battery were stationed on Five Mile Run, about halfway between Trenton and Princeton.
New Year’s Day Cadwalader’s men began to arrive, though some of them did not reach the encampment until the second. Before that time, Washington received word that the British were on the march from Princeton to Trenton. To retard the advance of the British and ascertain their strength, Washington directed the troops on Five Mile Run to hold back the enemy as long as possible. Reports from the front indicated that delaying action, though brisk, was not costly. For a reason he did not explain, Gen. M. A. de Roche Fermoy had left his troops and come back to Trenton, but this helped rather than hurt because it put the detachment under Colonel Hand. That veteran employed time and cover with much skill. His fire and a brief pursuit of an incautious advance guard of Redcoats were so effective that the British thought the Americans intended to make a stand. The enemy formed line of battle, brought up artillery and poured fire into the woods, with little injury to Hand’s troops. His men checked the British for two hours and then withdrew in good order towards Trenton.
North of the town a ravine offered a defensive line, where the Americans next undertook to face the British. Both sides employed artillery as well as musketry in this clash, which Washington urged the Americans to prolong, because he did not wish to leave the British daylight hours for a general assault. Obediently, the Continentals held out for a short time, and when they had to give ground, they did so stubbornly.
He scarcely could have asked for a better delaying action than now was ending. Zeal, discipline and intelligent leadership had been shown. When, in the late afternoon, a vigorous cannonade began, Henry Knox’s artillerists handled their guns, some thirty or forty in number, with skill and steadfastness. A “feeble and unsupported effort” by British troops to storm the bridge to Trenton was beaten off easily.
At nightfall the firing ceased, but to some of Washington’s officers and men his position seemed desperate. In Washington’s eyes the controlling realities of the situation were that the British were in greatly superior force and that they planned to surround and destroy his Army. He did not believe he should risk a battle where he stood, but if he was not to fight on the bank of the Delaware, what was he to do? The alternative to battle was a retreat, but that could not be completed in a single night directly across the river and would destroy hopes raised by defeat of the Hessians. If battle might be ruinous and retreat full of hazards, was there an alternative? The Army might move by its right flank, cross Assunpink creek beyond the British left and then march to Princeton and New Brunswick, where the enemy was believed to have large supplies. Instead of a defensive if, by using roads more or less familiar to numerous officers and men, the Army could reach a crossing called the Quaker Bridge unobserved and unopposed, it then could proceed almost due north to Princeton about six miles from the bridge.
The chief obstacle to an advance on Princeton was the condition of the roads, which thaw had transformed into deep mud. When details had been resolved and Washington had sent orders for a start at midnight in complete silence, he had a pleasant surprise: In the course of a few hours the weather had changed and the roads were beginning to freeze. Midnight found arrangements complete, and the Army ready to move. Five hundred remained to guard the Assunpink bridge at Trenton, feed the fires temporarily, and use pick and shovel as if they were constructing earthworks; all the other troops stole quietly off to the right and soon were moving eastward. By 2 A.M. of January 3, 1777, the mud was gone, and the ground was hard frozen.
As the regiments plodded on in the darkness, it was a cruel ordeal even for those who had crossed the Delaware in the first advance to Trenton. If there was any mercy under the black canopy of the heavens, it was the absence of sleet or snow. When, at last, there was a cast of gray in the east, the troops were approaching a stream known as Stony Brook which at that point forms a bow to the south as if to protect the town of Princeton. In another hour Washington began to pass his column over the stream. Ahead was an extension of Quaker Road that followed roughly the course of Stony Brook until it joined the Post Road from Princeton to Trenton. The main Post Road ran from the creek to Princeton. Another, nameless, led from the vicinity of the meeting house to the town. This route could be used advantageously in the execution of the simple plan Washington had formulated. The greater part of the American force was to pass from the Quaker Road into the back road and advance into Princeton. The defences of the town were designed to resist attack up the Post Road and could be turned almost completely from the back road. While the main body of Washington’s troops was undertaking this, approximately 350 men were to proceed under General Mercer along the creek to the Post Road. At that point, close on Mercer’s left, would be Worth’s Mill and the Post Road bridge over Stony Brook. Mercer was to destroy this crossing and thereby make it impossible for any British from Trenton to reach Princeton quickly by the main highway.
All the preliminaries accorded with the plan. Everything was moving smoothly when Washington received unexpected news: The British had been found on the Post Road, down which their troops had been marching in considerable number on the way to Trenton. These Redcoats turned and started back at a rapid pace towards Princeton. Mercer’s men began to run from the road along the creek. They climbed a little hill in the direction of Princeton and then descended on the opposite slope as if they were making their way towards the back road. As these men were passing through an orchard a small British force fired on them, whereupon the Americans changed front and dislodged the British who had delivered the first fire from the shelter of a fence. Mercer formed his line along this fence and was preparing to contest the advance of the British, who left the Post Road in considerable numbers and turned on him. Close to the enemy, Capt. John Fleming of the First Virginia shouted, “Gentlemen, dress before you make ready.” The British heard him, and answered, “Damn you, we will dress you,” and opened fire. The Virginians stood the blast and delivered so effective a volley “that the enemy screamed as if many devils had got hold of them.”
Washington probably saw just enough of this clash to make him realize that Mercer must have support. Cadwalader’s militia were soon coming over a low hill—only to find Mercer’s men falling back from the orchard and being pursued. The British advance reached a fence not more than a hundred yards from the Americans; the whole scene appeared to be a prologue to ruin. Then, from the hill over which Cadwalader’s column had been moving, two American field pieces began to bark as if they had been awaiting a rescue signal. Their fire forced the British behind the fence to run back to the main body. The British answered with their brace of field cannon and brought into play, also, the pair Mercer had been forced to abandon; but these did not silence the guns on the hill. Exposed to this fire, the British hesitated to attack. While they waited, Washington and his companions did their utmost to rally survivors of the fight in the orchard and halt the retreat of the Pennsylvania militia.
Now there was encouragement. Col. Daniel Hitchcock’s Brigade was coming up. Its veterans could be trusted to deliver hard blows. Washington ordered Hitchcock to the right and placed Hand’s riflemen beyond the right of Hitchcock. Then Washington rode among the militia, whom Cadwalader was striving to put into line. “Parade with us, my brave fellows,” Washington cried, “there is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly!” He did not appeal in vain. In a surprisingly short time they were ready. Washington placed himself at their head and ordered a general advance. Forward the men moved. Even when British bullets began to whine, the line did not break. Steadily the Americans approached the unflinching Redcoats. At thirty yards Washington drew rein, shouted “Halt,” and gave the command to fire. The volley was delivered and answered in an instant; smoke enveloped everything; when it cleared, Washington still was on his horse, unscathed.
The British realized now that they must quit the field. As the red line broke and fell back, officers undertook to rally it and check the advance of the Americans. It could not be done. A few minutes later the enemy was in flight. Washington had for the first time an opportunity of chasing an adversary across an open field, and he could not, would not, restrain himself.
When he returned, he found that his Generals had become alarmed by his absence. His reappearance was occasion for a double rejoicing, first because he was safe and, second, because his men had occupied Princeton with ease. After the troops in front of Washington had been defeated, the King’s men on the hill had hurried to Princeton and joined a regiment left there as a garrison. Together, these soldiers had moved out to the edge of a ravine south of the town, but they offered no more than perfunctory resistance there. Then some of them fled to the college building. When the Americans brought up artillery, those who had taken shelter in the college surrendered. The remainder disappeared in the direction of New Brunswick.
Within two hours, Washington received word that a British column was advancing up the Post Road and was close to the bridge at Worth’s Mill. Experienced men had been at work on the demolition of that crossing, and well-placed artillery were covering them; but if the British were the troops who had occupied Trenton no time should be lost in eluding so strong a force. Washington’s Army was too weary to give battle even if the General had been willing to do so. He had no intention of hazarding a general engagement and hoped he might seize some other British post that was not held by a garrison too large to be challenged. New Brunswick would be the great prize; but perhaps the most that Washington could hope to do with his weary men would be to seize Somerset Court House where 1300 hostile troops were supposed to be stationed. The long roll was beaten; the men fell in; the captured guns were left behind; the column got under way and cleared the town before the van of the British reached Princeton. From Princeton, Washington’s route was to Kingston, where the right fork of the road led to New Brunswick and the left to Somerset Court House. At the crossroads the final decision had to be made on the cherished plan of capturing New Brunswick. It was negative. Washington was regretful but convinced. He set it down, however, that “six or eight hundred fresh troops upon a forced march” could have taken Brunswick, its stores and military chest, and could have “put an end to the war.”
From Kingston the Army staggered on to Somerset Court House, with no other hindrance than the presence across the Millstone River of a body of horse that finally disappeared. Some of the American troops reached the Court House at dusk but the belongings of the British encountered at Princeton had left there under a small escort a bare hour previously. Not one command in Washington’s Army had strength left to organize pursuit. The next day, the fourth, the troops moved to Pluckamin. To the men the village was a paradise, because there, in the language of young Capt. John Clinton’s diary, “we got plenty of beef, pork, &c., which we had been starving for a day or two, not having time to draw and dress victuals.” On January 5 and 6 the march was to Morristown where Washington hoped to get shelter and rest for his men.
It scarcely was possible to exaggerate the effect of the operations at Trenton and Princeton on the self-confidence of the Army, the spirit of New Jersey, the policy of Congress and the faith of all the States in the attainment of independence. A dying cause was revivified; timid men who had been afraid to participate in what the British termed “rebellion” now came cheerfully to camp. Metaphorically, the situation might have been described with accuracy in an entry Capt. Thomas Rodney had made in his diary: “. . . the sun rose as we passed over Stony Brook.”
Now that he was at Morristown, Washington could hope that, after he had refreshed his men, he could renew his effort to drive the British out of Jersey, but soon he faced discouragements of a familiar sort. By January 7 he had to write the President of Congress:
The severity of the season has made our troops, especially the militia, extremely impatient, and has reduced the number very considerably. Every day more or less leave us. Their complaints and the great fatigues they have undergone induced me to come to this place, as the best calculated of any in this quarter to accommodate and refresh them. The situation is by no means favorable to our views, and as soon as the purposes are answered for which we came, I think to remove, though I confess I do not know how we shall procure covering for our men elsewhere.
An Army that had thrown the winning card in the last hours of a months-long adverse gamble could not be blamed if, by the fire in winter quarters, it spoke boastfully of the manner in which it had worsted a wily opponent at Trenton and Princeton. Nor was it unnatural that British who had driven the Americans on Long Island and herded hundreds of prisoners at Fort Washington should make the utmost of the fact that before the third of January ended, Princeton again was in the keeping of the King’s men.
Later in January soldiers had a new subject of debate: How far should the United States go in reprisal if it were true, as reported, that General Lee would be tried as a British deserter. In the narrower circle of the better informed, the argument was whether Congress was right in twice deciding it would not comply with Lee’s repeated application for the appointment of a committee to confer with him on an undisclosed question of importance. Washington conducted the correspondence on reprisal and confessed he could see no valid reason for denying Lee a conference with members of Congress; but to these and other developments he could give no more of his hurrying minutes than duty and courtesy exacted. Most of the dangers that had threatened his Army continued. Some of them grew worse.
Incredibly, too, an Army that had thought it had endured all the woes of a military existence and all the plagues of politics found itself beset by new miseries and challenged by unfamiliar perplexities. Early in the new year Washington had the task of holding a sufficient number of militia to give the semblance of an army to a force of Continentals that once again was vanishing. Of the one thousand to twelve hundred who had agreed to stay in return for the bounty of ten dollars offered on December 30-31, 1776, only about eight hundred remained on January 19. Although the return of the main Army showed a paper strength of 17,812, Washington’s actual numbers were so few he confessed to Jack Custis his doubts concerning the future: “How we shall be able to rub along till the new Army is raised, I know not.”
Washington was in a position that both humiliated and crippled him. His troops were too few to attack or even to accept battle in open country. The Commander-in-Chief reasoned that the best practicable services by his shadow regiments were to destroy or remove the grain, provender and livestock near the hostile camps and harass constantly the parties sent farther afield to get supplies that could not readily be brought to New Brunswick by ship. Attacks on the British foraging parties had to be made persistently by courageous soldiers under skillful, cool-headed leaders, but these affairs must never be pushed so far that an inferior American force would be compelled to fight. The perseverance of American advance parties compelled the British to employ more and more men in foraging parties. Thereby the ill-fed horses were worn down progressively.
Washington could not believe the British were ignorant of his numerical weakness and undertook to reduce the adverse odds by prevailing on General Heath to make so heavy a demonstration around King’s Bridge that Howe would send reenforcements to New York and give the troops at Morristown opportunity of striking the Redcoats left at New Brunswick. Washington’s hope rose the day he heard at Headquarters the sound of firing from the direction of King’s Bridge; but Heath did no more than move close to Fort Independence, demand its surrender, waste some gunpowder and march away to the accompaniment of mocking British laughter. This failure deepened the apprehension that Howe was gaining, not losing strength, and, when his preparations were complete, probably would advance overland towards Philadelphia.
Until the Army of 1777 was at his command, Washington would continue to harass the British in Jersey, but he put first in all his planning and correspondence the completion of recruiting for his Army and, in particular, for sixteen new regiments authorized by Congress. Lack of money hampered everything. Recruiting an army in the presence of the enemy never was easy, and now it might be harder than ever. About the date of the departure of some of the New England troops who had accepted the bounty at Trenton the time of a large part of the Pennsylvania militia expired. The cavalry of Morris County, New Jersey, were decamping before January was half spent. Two infantry regiments from that state could not be held beyond February. Whether officers had fresh enthusiasm or the disillusionment of experience, they encountered still other obstacles of many sorts—rival enlistment for state forces, state and local bounties for men who would enter the old regiments, unanticipated shortage of arms, paucity of funds, discontent of men who were not to receive the bounty, fear of sickness that would take men to the notoriously bad Army hospitals, and suspicion that some venal officers were putting on the rolls the names of fictitious recruits, pocketing the bounty and then pretending that these non-existent volunteers had deserted.
After surveying these maddening difficulties Washington had to reconcile himself once again to seeking from nearby States militia who would take the place, numerically, of the departing troops and would remain until the recruits for the Army of 1777 arrived. “My situation with respect to numbers,” said Washington on January 20, “is more distressing than it has ever been yet. . . .” and it was rendered still worse by an extensive renewal of desertion. Unless the people gave notice of the presence of deserters in their neighborhood, “we shall be obliged,” Washington warned Congress, “to detach one half of the Army to bring back the other.”
Part of this loss might be reduced by saving the lives of some of the sick and wounded sent to hospitals and thereby condemned, all too frequently, to death in those wretched charnel houses. The main contribution that Congress could make to the welfare of the Army in the winter of 1776-77 was the promise of a better system. In recognition of many protests against the hardships the patients had been called upon to endure needlessly, the Delegates on January 9 voted to dismiss Dr. John Morgan, Director General of the Hospitals, and Dr. Samuel Stringer, Director of the Northern Department. At Washington’s request, Dr. William Shippen, Jr., and Dr. John Cochran drew up a plan of reorganization which the General forwarded to Congress with the reminder that, while the expense of establishing and operating the proposed hospitals would be “very great,” ultimately the new arrangement would “not only be a saving to the public, but the only possible method of keeping an Army afoot.”
Another device that Washington selected as a means of strengthening his shadowy forces was to publish January 25 a proclamation in which he called on those who had accepted the Howe brothers’ offer of “protection” to surrender it and to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. Otherwise, within thirty days, they must go into the British lines or be “deemed adherents to the King of Great Britain and treated as common enemies of the American States.” Issuance of this proclamation was one of the rare instances in which Washington made use of emergency powers granted him by Congress in December 1776, and it did not fail to raise an immediate question of authority, which two of the New Jersey Delegates, Abraham Clark and Jonathan Sergeant, presented to Congress. This was a fine bone over which to growl. A committee was named at once to examine the proclamation and give its opinion whether the contention of the Jersey-men had meat and marrow. On February 27 it presented a report that probably was drafted by John Adams: “. . . General Washington’s proclamation . . . does not interfere with the laws or civil government of any State; but considering the situation of the Army was prudent and necessary.”
One gain was the strengthening of the staff at Headquarters. Tench Tilghman of Pennsylvania, a former Captain of the Flying Camp, had joined the staff as an unpaid volunteer in August 1776 and had performed usefully many difficult tasks. John Fitzgerald, a Major of the Third Virginia, had become Aide-de-Camp in October. George Baylor, Samuel Webb and William Grayson had left Washington’s “family” at the beginning of 1777 to accept regimental command—a trio of transfers that hampered the work of the office, particularly at a time when the post of Adjutant General was unoccupied, Joseph Reed having resigned. George Johnston joined the staff as aide about January 20, John Walker took a like position in February, and Capt. Alexander Hamilton, already distinguished as an officer of New York Artillery, and Richard K. Meade did so in March. The vacancy in the Adjutant General’s office was continued for almost five months, in part because Washington hoped Congress might prevail on Horatio Gates to resume the duties. Washington wanted Gates’s skilled service at Headquarters, but he felt that the choice should be left to Gates. His own wishes and convenience should not be put above those of the former head of the Northern Department, who might, said Washington, regard the place as in some sense a “degredation.” There the matter stood until circumstance called for Gates’s employment elsewhere. The only other man considered for immediate assignment as Adjutant General was Maj. Appolos Morris, but he was suspected of hesitating in allegiance to America. When Morris was eliminated, Congress was favorable to Col. William Raymond Lee. That officer generously stood aside for Col. Timothy Pickering, who was prevailed upon to accept.
There sometimes had been a surplus of militia officers and the applicants for rank as junior officers exceeded vacancies and new positions; but it was difficult to find competent field officers, establish a seniority system, advance able men, and get rid of those who lacked courage or enterprise. Because qualified colonels were few, Congress had difficulty in finding ten whom conscientious Delegates could promote to brigadier in partial fulfillment of Washington’s request that the total number of officers of that rank be raised to thirty. Congress elected five additional Major Generals as well as the ten Brigadiers. Lord Stirling, Thomas Mifflin, Arthur St. Clair and Benjamin Lincoln were made Major Generals; Enoch Poor, John Glover, John Paterson, Anthony Wayne, James M. Varnum, John P. DeHaas, George Weedon, Peter Muhlenberg, John Cadwalader and William Woodford, all of them Colonels, were promoted to brigade command; but these choices disappointed more officers than they gratified. Instead of getting relief, Washington had to spend hours smoothing down Brigadiers Benedict Arnold and Andrew Lewis, who thought they should have been promoted. In the end, Cadwalader declined, John Armstrong and Andrew Lewis resigned. Washington had repeatedly to point out the needs of the troops before he could prevail on Congress to name three additional Brigadiers—Edward Hand, Charles Scott and Ebenezer Learned—to fill vacancies, and even then he felt a continuing lack of generals of that rank. The one solace of this vexatious upstir was the application of Artemas Ward for relief from command in Massachusetts. This permitted Washington to oblige Heath, who wished service in his own state, and made possible a change of command in the highlands.
Accumulation of woes shook even the strong nervous system of Washington, made him irritable, and contributed to an illness that sent him to bed at the end of the first week in March. His staff kept from him all business that did not call for his personal decision, but, as Hamilton wrote, the General was “much pestered with things that [could] not be avoided.” By the fifteenth, when Washington was able again to carry his full burden, Jersey “three-months’ men,” the militia of Cecil County, Maryland, and the Virginia volunteers began to stir in their quarters. On April 1 their time would expire. The flow of incoming new soldiers had ceased temporarily. Nathanael Greene, who had continued to develop the art of dealing with men, must go to Philadelphia, whither Congress now had returned from Baltimore, and must report on the condition of the Army.
During the time that Greene was in Philadelphia, Washington had bad news. Shortly before Heath left his post on the Hudson, General Wooster withdrew his Connecticut militia from New Rochelle and did not succeed in getting them to return. This provoked from Washington a rebuke and an order to Wooster to advance towards King’s Bridge and do what he could to confine the British to Manhattan Island. Further intelligence from the Hudson led Washington to suspect in mid-March that the British might be planning to move their Canadian forces by sea to join Howe in an overwhelming attack on Philadelphia. It then seemed best to the American commander to concentrate at Peekskill the New England part of the sixteen new regiments. Troops could be moved easily from Peekskill in any direction. While Washington still was exerting himself to get fighting men to that station, he learned on March 25 that a British force had gone ashore there two days previously. Gen. Alexander McDougall was at Peek-skill, but his infantry were so few that he could do no more than burn some of his stores and evacuate the village. This might be the first in a series of British expeditions to seize the forts and passes of the Hudson. Several days passed without any report from McDougall. So long as uncertainty prevailed, Washington continued to plead for help from Governor Trumbull, and he directed most insistently that Heath forward to Peekskill or to Ticonderoga the troops recruited in Massachusetts for the Continental Army.
It was in the course of this effort to strengthen the northern forces that Washington received his second budget of bad news during the time Greene was in Philadelphia: Recruitment was progressing so slowly that it might be termed a failure, not to say a scandal. As Washington cited figures in explaining why more troops had not reached Peekskill, he grew almost sarcastic:
. . . sorry I am to observe, the militia have got tired, and . . . the Colonels of the Continental Regiments have been greatly deceived themselves, have greatly deceived me, or the most unheard of desertions or most scandalous peculations have prevailed, among the officers who have been employed in recruiting; for Regiments, reported two or three months ago to be half completed are, upon the Colonels being called upon in positive terms for a just state of them, found to contain less than 100 men; and this is not the case of a single Regiment only, but of many.
There were black clouds in the spring sky when Greene returned, but some bright spots could be seen. The brig Sally had arrived in the Delaware with 6800 muskets, 1500 gunlocks and other ordnance stores. An express brought word on the twenty-ninth that the French ship Mercury had anchored safely March 17 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with nearly twelve thousand firelocks, one thousand barrels of powder, forty-eight bales of woolens and many scarce articles.
Other wants were not relieved by anything that Greene had been able to accomplish in Philadelphia, though many of the Army’s problems had been explained to Delegates who were disposed to assist as best they could under their awkward system of administration by committee. Greene brought back much news of appointments, reproofs and suspension. Gates was to proceed to Ticonderoga and to take command there in place of Schuyler; Congress on receipt of charges against the senior naval officer, Commodore Esek Hopkins, had suspended him from command; the position of commandant of the forts in the New York highlands had been created and George Clinton had been named to it.
Washington digested Greene’s report and turned again to his task of confining Howe, clinging to restive militia, trying to expedite recruiting, and arousing officers from their lassitude. In particular, Washington sought to improve his system of intelligence so that he could discover quickly and accurately the direction of the enemy’s advance. The test was certain to come, he thought, long before the Army was large enough to meet it victoriously. That raid on Peekskill might mean that Howe was planning to ascend the Hudson. Now, on the last day of March, an American captain of a “tobacco ship” who had escaped from New York reported at Headquarters. About three thousand troops, he stated, had embarked there and apparently were ready to sail. “It was generally said,” Washington wrote after the examination of the captain, “they had in contemplation an expedition to Chesapeake Bay, and to make a descent on the Eastern Shore.” Further, “there were some who conjectured, they mean to go up the North River and to take the highland fortifications if possible.”
The first days of April brought no confirmation of the report by the captain but the news, whether correct or erroneous, heightened the pitch of the argument at Morristown over the perennial question, where would the British strike? Washington’s opinion was that Howe’s army was about to move up the Hudson or to Philadelphia, with the probability in favor of the Quaker City. Congress was so nearly convinced the enemy was to descend on Philadelphia that it adopted measures to safeguard the approaches and remove the more valuable stores. Defence of the city had to be fitted into Washington’s broader strategical plan, which, as in the past, was to avoid a general engagement and, at the same time, prevent the severance of the New England States from those to the south. General Carleton was expected to make the utmost of controlling Lake Champlain. He or General Burgoyne would be able to invest, or at least approach, Ticonderoga without effective challenge. Washington considered it essential to hold Ticonderoga and the highland passes at any price short of removing his own Army from in front of Howe. All the while, too, he had to keep an eye on Rhode Island and on the British fleet.
“In short,” Washington wrote one of his Brigadiers April 3, “the campaign is opening, and we have no men for the field.” It was incredible, but substantially true: By the middle of April the weakness of the Army was more ominous than it had been in late winter. Even in that plight Washington refused to fall back on the policy of short-term enlistments. He had to fight; he confessed, to “keep the life and soul of this Army together,” but he retained the confidence of most of his men and he did not weaken in determination. Three times in March he had been compelled to give warning that the debacle might not be far distant unless the Army was recruited heavily and at once with dependable troops. April 12 he set down the statement, “I wish I could see any prospect of an Army, fit to make proper opposition, formed anywhere,” and nearly two weeks later he told Schuyler that the Army already had “a much longer indulgence” at the hands of the enemy than Americans “had any right to expect.”
Many men were disaffected and the incidence of desertion was alarming. Washington believed the cure for military disorder was prompt pay, good provisions and the general improvement of discipline. “. . . Nothing,” he said, “can be more hurtful to the service than the neglect of discipline, for . . . discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.” Sound discipline of this sort was not inculcated easily. The long tedium of the spring had inevitably its demoralizing effect on some of the officers. In spite of everything, Washington tried to hold each officer to the highest standard the individual could attain, but so long as men with commissions did not fall below the minimal requirements of their rank, he did not expect of the dullest and least lettered what he demanded of the ablest and best schooled. He counselled those he found within his reach and in need of admonition or assistance; but in this hard labor of training soldiers, he needed more help than he had.
Snow disappeared from the hills around Morristown; spring came to the fields of New Jersey; roads mysteriously seemed to find bottoms that had been lost in mud. Once only, in the whole of April, however, did the British attempt to do more than protect their foraging parties and then in only a small affair at an outpost at Bound Brook, seven miles upstream from New Brunswick on the Raritan. The Redcoats wasted little time after they found their quarry gone and Bound Brook almost without stores. As soon as the British satisfied themselves they could get no booty, they left the village and returned as they had come. The episode led Washington to reduce the number of posts, in order that the forces might be less exposed to surprise and more readily assembled in event the enemy made the expected major thrust.
The General had very soon to justify in the eyes of Connecticut the application of this policy of maintaining the minimum of posts. At 3 A.M. of April 28 Washington was awakened to receive a dispatch in which General McDougall forwarded reports that a British force had landed on the coast of Connecticut and started inland towards Danbury. That town had become an extensive base, because it was supposed to be safe from raiders and was convenient to Peekskill, where stores were exposed to attack from the Hudson. The morning of the thirtieth Washington received a further report from McDougall: the British had reached Danbury unopposed and burned the stores and some private buildings; on their withdrawal, April 28. they had been assailed by a small body whom General Wooster had scraped together. Another column was organized by Gen. Gold S. Silliman, who yielded command to Benedict Arnold when that officer arrived. Wooster assailed the British rear; Arnold threw his force across the road by which the King’s men were retiring, and, when pushed aside, continued to harass flank and rear. Wooster was mortally wounded, approximately twenty Americans were killed. British casualties were estimated at figures as high as “500 or 600” and in reality ran to the substantial total of about 154 killed and wounded.
Materially, one loss was more serious than all the others combined. Tents to the number of almost seventeen hundred had been sent to Danbury for safe-keeping and were destroyed there. These were irreplaceable otherwise than by importation. Another result of the raid was increasing reluctance on the part of Connecticut authorities to send their militia to Peekskill, lest another raid be made on their state, though the raid had shown that Connecticut and the country immediately east of the Hudson were strategically one defensive area.
Washington somehow endured the confinement of his work. Thanks to his habit of early rising, he usually dispatched his routine business by dinner time, when, if conditions permitted, the senior officers and brigade majors of the day were his guests. As a hostess, Martha now presided. She had come to Morristown in mid-March and was to remain until nearly the end of May. It was a relief to him to ride with interesting women; and it was a physical stimulation, when the afternoon was free, to catch ball with some of his juniors. Riding and sports were part of the life for which he yearned.
After Washington had sent General Putnam to the vicinity of New York, in the command vacated by Heath, the Commander-in-Chief had to spend time on letters designed to coax Putnam into an attack on King’s Bridge or, at the least, into a demonstration against that post. Ticonderoga demanded attention. Washington did his utmost to get the New England States to complete the recruiting of the additional regiments and to hurry them to Ticonderoga, where Gates was given the service of the alert Arthur St. Clair. Schuyler had won vindication at the hands of Congress, had worked usefully for some weeks in Philadelphia, and soon was to have again the command of a redefined Northern Department, in which Gates was to serve under him or else resume duty as Adjutant General. In May, as in every month after Gates had left Headquarters, Washington could have used the experience and reasoning power of that officer, because perplexities continued to multiply. It was impossible for Washington to know all that was happening in his Army. He found it particularly difficult to get trustworthy estimates or prompt action from Commissary General Joseph Trumbull, who remained in New England, and from recruiting officers, scattered everywhere.
A case of large possibilities of injustice concerned Arnold and his dissatisfaction over the outcome of his political campaign to recover his “rights” to promotion. A resolve of Congress made him a Major General but it did not restore him to the seniority he had when he was among the Brigadiers. Arnold came to Headquarters on May 12 with the statement that he wished to go to Philadelphia for a settlement of his accounts and an examination of charges made against his integrity. In explaining this Arnold probably asked for a letter to the President of Congress in order to assure a hearing. Washington wrote such a paper, in which he concluded: “These considerations are not without their weight, though I pretend not to judge what motives may have influenced the conduct of Congress upon this occasion. It is needless to say anything of this gentleman’s military character. It is universally known that he has always distinguished himself as a judicious, brave officer of great activity, enterprise and perseverance.”
Through the early months of 1777 the policy of Congress had been to discourage foreign officers from coming to America, but not to discredit Silas Deane, agent in Paris, or to offend the Comte d’Argoud of Martinique, an enthusiastic supporter of the American cause and the sponsor of numerous applicants for commission. The feeling had been confirmed that most foreign officers arriving in 1775-76 were adventurers who had been given rank beyond their merit. There was agreement, also, that officers who did not understand English should not be commissioned; but exceptions were frequent. The broad exception in this policy concerned engineers and artillerists.
On May 8, a French officer of approximately Washington’s own age arrived at Headquarters and introduced himself in English as Col. Thomas Conway of the Army of His Most Christian Majesty. Conway explained his name and his knowledge of English by saying that he was Irish-born, though educated in France. He spoke of some of the French officers who had come with him to America aboard a ship that brought a much-desired cargo of cannon, but he may not have told of a controversy with an engineer who had tried to dismiss him before their ship left France. Washington formed a good first opinion of Conway and sent him to Philadelphia with a letter more commendatory than the General usually wrote of a stranger. Congress received the Frenchman enthusiastically, accepted at face value all that Deane wrote of him in a letter of introduction and elected him a Brigadier General. Hearing of this, American colonels of long service might have pondered alternatives: They themselves must be exceedingly poor officers or else Conway must be superlative.
Behind Conway came the man who had wished to get rid of him in advance, Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray. This gentleman, the most extravagant acquisition of Deane, had no less than eighteen other officers and ten sergeants in attendance on him. He had stopped May 14 in Boston where he had expressed much contempt for the British who let themselves be driven from so strong a position. Du Coudray put the highest valuation on his professional standing, his connections and his writings on military subjects. He did not tell Washington precisely what he expected to do, but he dropped hints to other officers that led to the belief he had a contract with Deane under which he was to be vested with the chief command of the artillery.
Washington prepared a letter to the President of Congress in a determination to have the dangers of such an appointment plain. “General Knox,” wrote Washington, “. . . has deservedly acquired the character of one of the most valuable officers in the service, and . . . combatting the almost innumerable difficulties in the department he fills, has placed the. artillery upon a footing that does him the greatest honor.” Were he superseded, Knox “would not think himself at liberty to continue in the service.” In that event, Washington gave warning, the artillery would be convulsed and unhinged. Would it not be possible to satisfy du Coudray by appointing him to some other position? Du Coudray hurried to Philadelphia and presented to amazed members of Congress articles of agreement between him and Deane. These carried a variety of financial guarantees for du Coudray, prefaced by the statement that he was to have the title of General of Artillery and Ordnance with the rank of Major General. His was to be “the direction of whatever relates to the Artillery and Corps of Engineers, under the order and control only of the Congress of the United Colonies, their Committee of War, or the Commander-in-Chief for the time being.” The agent had no authority to make such a contract. Were it accepted, it would give du Coudray and his French artillerymen seniority over all American officers of like rank who had been recommissioned January 1, 1777.
These vexations were among the worst Washington had to endure in the endless task of finding intelligent officers, training those who gave promise and putting incompetents where they could do least harm if they could not be dismissed. Lesser troubles with American officers were presented, solved, compromised or deferred; the Frenchmen remained a continuing enigma when Washington should have been free to devote a mind otherwise untroubled to what might prove the decisive test of the year.
Howe manifestly was to move soon; but there was as much doubt as ever in Washington’s mind regarding the objective of the enemy, except that it probably was one that required the use of both the transports and the fleet. All the probabilities and the few known facts led Washington to decide that he should move closer to New Brunswick and into a strong position, whence he could follow quickly any British advance, whether towards the eastern States or toward Philadelphia. He selected as the most advantageous position a well-protected valley at Middle Brook, on the left bank of the Raritan, seven miles northwest of New Brunswick, and moved Headquarters to the new encampment on the evening of May 28. The greater part of the Army followed May 31.
Washington took advantage of warm weather and field encampment to discipline the men, drill the officers in military etiquette and watch the enemy. Prior to June 7 nothing of importance was reported concerning Howe’s plans. It was known that troops had left Rhode Island, but their destination had not been established. Troops from New York had joined Howe. On the seventh word was received that “many vessels” at New York were being fitted out for horses. Three uneventful days followed. Then, on June 10, Col. David Forman reported he had seen much activity in shipping off Sandy Hook, Amboy and Prince’s Bay. In the belief the next express might bring news that would set every wheel turning, Washington ordered all baggage loaded, except the tents. June 12 brought intelligence of the arrival of additional regiments from Europe, the ferrying of British troops from Staten Island to Amboy and the gathering of British shipping in Prince’s Bay.
What, then, was afoot? Was Howe about to proceed by land, by sea, or by both a voyage and a march along the coastal plain? Washington, weighing reports and probabilities, believed that the British were reenforcing New Brunswick heavily and that they were aiming at the destruction of the American main Army or were preparing an expedition to capture Philadelphia. The Hudson seemed the less probable objective. The advice of the council was that all troops in excess of one thousand be called from Peek-skill. Morristown was to be held lightly; Sullivan should move from Princeton to Millstone River, where his flank could not be turned by the enemy though he would be free to maneuver.
Two days later American Headquarters learned that Howe had started his movement: the British advance was at Somerset Court House. As far as the Continentals could ascertain, the enemy was occupying New Brunswick still. Washington was ready. Mifflin had been directed to collect boats on the upper Delaware; Congress had ordered Arnold to proceed to Trenton and take command there; Washington dispatched a call for the New Jersey militia and expected news that the enemy was headed for the Delaware or for a general attack along the upper Raritan.
Howe did neither. He merely stayed where he was. The American General waited in vain with tents struck, wagons loaded and horses harnessed and hitched to the vehicles. So little happened that Washington found the hour in which to write a letter that restored full, friendly relations with Joseph Reed, to whom he vainly had offered command of the cavalry. With Charles Lee no longer talking freely and writing carelessly from American Headquarters, reconciliation was easy. It would have been gratifying if at that very hour, Reed had been present to add his suggestions for ascertaining what the British were to do next and how they could be checkmated. American outposts were commanded to keep on the alert; Sullivan was told to get beyond the right flank of the Redcoats by moving to Flemington. Were he to remain on the left of the British he might be separated from the main Army. To their surprise, both Washington and Sullivan received a steady flow of militia.
The British continued work on redoubts but made no move. Early June 19 Washington had a report that puzzled him: The British were withdrawing to New Brunswick. They had started during the night and as they had so short a march, they could not be overtaken or injured. Why had they gone back without making a single attack? From the fact that the King’s men had been working the previous day on their redoubts, Washington concluded that the decision to end the watch on the Raritan was reached suddenly. He assumed that the British had found it difficult to assault the advantageous ground the Americans had strengthened at Middle Brook, and he reasoned that Howe perhaps had been discouraged by the extent to which militia had flocked to the American camp.
Had Howe let down his guard? Washington did not yield to the temptation to strike. He followed the retreat but did not attack. At the end of the twenty-second the Redcoats were concentrated in Amboy. Washington moved up at six o’clock the next morning to take a look at the British defences. The enemy’s position appeared unassailable by such a force as Washington could throw against it. Howe’s flanks rested on waterways; strong redoubts ran across the neck on which Amboy stood. Army Headquarters consequently were opened about five miles north of New Brunswick at Quibble Town.
In the face of reports that many of the British troops had been sent to Staten Island, Washington was notified June 26 that the British had sallied from Amboy in greater strength than ever and were advancing several columns as if they intended to do one or more of three things—to cut off Stirling at Metuchen Meeting House, bring the main Army to battle, or occupy the high ground in the vicinity of Middle Brook. The march of the British was said to be rapid, as if they hoped to overwhelm Stirling or get to elevated positions before Washington could. This was not a fisherman’s cast at which Washington would snap. His forces at Quibble Town he put on the march for Middle Brook, and he doubtless directed Stirling to disengage himself from troops who already were assailing the position at Metuchen. The British columns pursued as far as Westfield and halted there, and on the twenty-eighth returned to Amboy. On July 1 the jubilant word brought to Middle Brook was that the enemy the previous day had evacuated Amboy completely and reestablished themselves on Staten Island.
It was true. The operation that began November 20 when Cornwallis crossed the Hudson and moved against Fort Lee had now ended in withdrawal from New Jersey of all large bodies of British. A cause that had been close to complete ruin seven months previously was not yet assured of victory; but it had recovered to a vigor justifying John Hancock’s statement that the British evacuation of Jersey “will be the most explicit declaration to the whole world that the conquest of America is not only a very distant but an unattainable object.”
Washington himself was not elated; he knew the deficiencies of his Army and the immensity of the advantage Howe still enjoyed. “Our situation,” Washington told Gov. John Rutledge of South Carolina, “is truly delicate and perplexing and makes us sensibly feel now, as we have often done before, the great advantage they derive from their Navy.” Always, too, Washington had to ask himself whether the scanty American forces were balanced strategically between New Jersey and the Hudson, or whether the danger of having Carleton and Burgoyne sever New England from the rest of the country was greater than the risk that Howe, if confronted with too few, might subdue the middle States.
Before Washington could measure the improvement in his military situation or even give himself rest from strain, his Army was involved anew in troubles as baffling as those he had to face in the winter of 1776-77. On July 3 he withdrew his troops to his former station at Morristown, whence he could move swiftly to the Hudson or Philadelphia as Howe’s next maneuver might require. Washington had no convincing intelligence reports on British preparations but the probabilities seemed decisively on the side of an advance by Howe to form a junction with Burgoyne when the latter assailed Ticonderoga. A more immediate danger was that of a surprise attack by Howe on the highland defences. Putnam was invoked to watch vigilantly for the coming of the enemy and keep his forces concentrated. Gen. George Clinton was asked to cooperate and call out the New York militia. Sullivan’s Division was moved to Pompton, sixteen miles northeast of Morristown and about twenty miles west of the Hudson. From that point, if necessary, Sullivan could hasten to the support of Putnam in balking an attack on the forts of the highlands, “the thing of all others,” Washington wrote Schuyler, “most fatal to our interests,” because “the possession of the Highlands [by the British] would effectually bar all mutual assistance of our two Armies.”
The Commander-in-Chief could not devote himself exclusively to study of the defence of the Hudson. He had to give it his prime thought, but he had to deliberate also on other conditions that were exasperating in themselves and full of danger to the Army. One of these was the violent resentment Greene, Knox and Sullivan were showing because of the pretensions the Frenchman, du Coudray, was making. Another cause of uneasiness was a murmur that Washington was devoting too much to the defence of the Hudson and disregarding the danger of an attack on Philadelphia. Quartermaster General Mifflin had been among the first to voice such complaint and was becoming progressively alienated on this account from Washington.
A more acute concern was the plight of the Commissary. Washington had felt that Carpenter Wharton, Deputy Commissary General at Headquarters, was incompetent and that Joseph Trumbull, head of the department, should come to Morristown and remain there. Trumbull was in Connecticut and was not in accord with Washington’s view that the balancing of his books was less important than personal supervision of the feeding of the main Army. Congress was cognizant of Wharton’s derelictions and the smell of scandal. Trumbull first was urged, then commanded, to come to Philadelphia and set right the muddled affairs of his subordinates. He arrived April 22, reassured Congress regarding provisions immediately available and dismissed Wharton; but he did not silence other complaints. A crisis came at the end of May when Washington told Trumbull that he must visit Morristown and procure sufficient supplies or see the Army disperse for lack of food. These circumstances and the loss at Danbury prompted prolonged debate in Congress, during the course of which some of Trumbull’s assistants quit and some became demoralized. On June 10 Congress adopted new regulations for the commissariat and on June 18 fixed the pay and named the men to direct a complicated organization. Trumbull looked with some favor on the plan of the new service, though he had felt that its success and his labor for it depended on the compensation allowed him, the nature of the regulations and the character of the man in charge of the department. The organization provided no longer for one inclusive category of commissaries, but for two classes, one to have charge of purchase and the other to control issue. Trumbull resigned his old post and agreed with reluctance to act temporarily as Commissary General of Purchases.
At the moment the question was whether the troops could be provisioned to the end of the month, or even to the close of the next week. Trumbull sent one of his deputies to Washington July 9 with a letter in which he said that the bearer, Maj. Robert Hoops, had found it impossible to act because of the “difficulties arising from the strictness of Congress’ new regulations.” Trumbull wrote earnestly: “I really fear the Army will suffer if not be disbanded soon if some effectual measures for my relief are not taken.” He proposed that Congress be requested to send a committee to Morristown as soon as possible in order that members might see the danger and recommend corrective measures. Washington forwarded this to Congress with the warning that unless something was “done in aid of Mr. Trumbull immediately, this Army must be disbanded.” Washington went on to say that the Army might be obliged to move within a few hours and might have more to dread from the disorder of the Commissary than from the acts of the enemy.
This, then, was the situation: a ragged citizen Army too small for the task assigned it and under dissatisfied officers, might be compelled to scatter in order to keep from starvation at a time when every regiment should be ready to move swiftly if it was to continue maneuver against a powerful professional force able to strike anywhere on deep water. Washington’s greatest need was for a prolongation of quiet in order that provisions might be collected and distributed. Instead, the express who arrived on the morning of July 10 brought a dispatch from Schuyler, dated July 7, to this effect: a report had been forwarded that St. Clair had evacuated Ticonderoga; it was feared the greater part of the garrison had been captured.
The movement Washington previously had dreaded—a British advance on Philadelphia—now appeared the lesser of evils. If Howe’s army were embarked, prompt notice of its departure for the Delaware would give Washington time to reach Philadelphia ahead of the foe; and if Howe started overland toward Pennsylvania, the Americans could outstrip him. Every consideration of strategy seemed to indicate that instead of doing either of these things, Howe would proceed up the Hudson to a junction with the northern army as soon as he confirmed the report that Burgoyne had reached Ticonderoga. On like grounds of military logic, Washington believed that Burgoyne would not proceed farther southward until he knew Howe’s drums had sounded the advance up the river. The three essential and immediate tasks were to move the main Army closer to the highlands of the Hudson, assure utmost vigilance at posts the enemy would pass or assail in moving to cooperate with Burgoyne and prevail on the eastern States to send their militia to strengthen Schuyler. Temporary troops assembled to resist the advance of the enemy from the New York lakes should be placed under some aggressive man. Orders must be prepared for Continental brigades to start northward. Their unannounced objective was Pompton Plains, eighteen miles from Morristown. Thence Washington intended to proceed through Smith’s Clove to the vicinity of West Point and await word of what was happening up the Hudson.
Neither the news nor the march was pleasant. En route to Pompton, during the evening of July 11, Washington received verification of the evacuation of Ticonderoga. Although details were lacking, he had to accept the event, which he put “among the most unfortunate that could have befallen us.” The disaster might be worse than reported, because Washington did not yet know what had happened to St. Clair’s garrison after it had abandoned Ticonderoga on the sixth. Washington advanced most of his small Army to a point eleven miles in the Clove, Orange County, New York, and there he halted July 22 until he could clarify reports he had received of the presence of British ships up the sound, in North River, off Sandy Hook, and at sea on voyages to unascertained anchorage. On the twenty-fourth, Washington felt sure the British fleet had left Sandy Hook. Philadelphia seemed its most probable destination, but he had to admit that the descent of the King’s ships might be on New England. Once more he paid tribute to sea power when he said simply: “The amazing advantage the enemy derive from their ships and the command of the water keeps us in a state of constant perplexity and the most anxious conjecture.”
The imperative task was placing the Continental brigades where they would have the shortest distance to cover when the plan of the enemy was disclosed. The light horse should proceed towards Philadelphia; the best disposition of the main Army probably would be at the crossings of the Delaware, on either side of Trenton, whence the march to Philadelphia or North River would not put too heavy a strain on the men. Washington moved southward the larger part of his Army. On July 27 he received word that seventy sail of the British fleet had been sighted off Egg Harbor. He felt it more probable than ever that the destination of Howe was Philadelphia, but he was not quite convinced. “Howe’s in a manner abandoning General Burgoyne,” Washington said, “is so unaccountable a matter that till I am fully assured it is so, I cannot help casting my eyes continually behind me.”
The British fleet appeared off the capes of Delaware Bay on the thirtieth, and presumably was making ready to enter. It was an easy matter to start a movement that had been anticipated. Orders were prepared and circulated; instructions were sent Sullivan to march for Philadelphia by the shortest route; Washington hoped his leading division would reach the city August 1. He hurried on in advance with his staff towards Philadelphia. His first task, after his arrival, was to ride through the environs of the city in order to ascertain where the troops could best be placed. He was at Chester on this mission the night of August 1 when up from Cape May rode an express: The fleet had sailed off on the thirty-first. Two hundred and twenty-eight sail had been counted off the capes—manifestly the entire fleet. If its objective had not been Philadelphia, why had it entered those waters; and if Howe had designed to attack the city, what had deterred him? Was the voyage to the Delaware a feint to draw the Continental Army to that region? Had the British slipped away to land in New England or ascend North River while the American column toiled through New Jersey again?
Military common sense directed that Washington start his troops back to the middle ground of the Delaware Valley and that Sullivan and two brigades that had been summoned from Putnam’s Army proceed to Peekskill. Orders were issued accordingly. Joint action by Burgoyne and Howe appeared to Washington to be “so probable and of such importance” that he would, he said, “with difficulty give into a contrary belief” until the evidence demanded it. Pending that, he would halt the Army at a convenient place and wait.
Washington remained in Philadelphia until August 5 and found time to attend at least one dinner. It was interesting because of the presence of a young Frenchman, not yet twenty, to whom Congress had voted the rank of Major General, though with the implied understanding the commission was honorary and without compensation. As Washington had been taxed to find some accommodation between ambitious foreigners of excessive rank and American officers jealous of their high position in the Army, the Commander-in-Chief could have been pardoned some misgiving when the young man was introduced as Major General the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette appeared to be modest, tactful, admiring and not at all inclined to tell the Americans how to manage their affairs. He made a deliberate effort to win the good will of Washington, and Washington invited him to visit the camp and took the young soldier with a party that made examination of the water defences of Philadelphia.
Washington had to treat half-a-score, more or less, of administrative ills. Some of these problems of August 1777 had been a torture from the time he had assumed command; others represented friction or weakness that had developed while the Army was on the march. The new organization of the Commissary was ill. As many complaints of neglect and mismanagement had been made, Congress adopted the greater part of the suggestions made somewhat tardily by the committee that had been to Headquarters. Meantime, Trumbull was relieved and William Buchanan named Commissary General of Purchases. Clothing was another subject of inquiry by the committee of Congress. In humiliating contrast to their adversaries, the men of the American Army had been in tatters at the opening of spring. Clothier General James Mease gave the fullest effort to the discharge of his duties, but the continuing demand was beyond the resources of the country. The committee included in its report recommendations for ascertaining what clothing the Army would need during the winter. This was to be imported or provided by each state for its own men at Continental cost. Needless to say, this arrangement disregarded the tightening of the British blockade, the frequent inability of the Board of Treasury to provide even the depreciated Continental currency and the general carelessness that seemed to be spreading from the office of the Quartermaster General.
Almost as vexatious to Washington was a problem represented by two words that had made some Americans flush with anger whenever they were uttered—”foreign officers.” Violent rivalries developed between du Coudray and additional French engineers employed by Deane. Three of these had arrived in Philadelphia during the last week of June and had let it be known that they would not take orders from du Coudray. Congress commissioned the senior, Louis le Beque Duportail, a Colonel and gave his two subordinates, Bailleul la Radiere and Obry Gouvion, the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and Major respectively. Two weeks later Congress settled some of the rivalries by voting that Duportail should “take rank and command of all engineers previously appointed.” Washington was alarmed by the preference shown Duportail and even more by the knowledge that Greene, Sullivan and Knox had been angered and humiliated that du Coudray would have seniority over them. Knox, in particular, was outraged by what he considered an inexcusable slight. Greene, Sullivan and Knox addressed individual, but conditional, resignations to the President of Congress. Washington was quickly directed by Hancock to let the three Generals know that Congress regarded their letters as “an attempt to influence its decision”; if the officers were “unwilling to serve their country under the authority of Congress, they shall be at liberty to resign their commissions and retire.” To all Washington’s burdens and perplexities now was added this vehement rebuke of three of his best officers, because they protested against the apparent grant of seniority to a French soldier who had not marched a mile in America or faced even one bullet in the battle for independence! Washington acknowledged Hancock’s letter, stated that he had transmitted the resolves of Congress to Greene, Knox and Sullivan—and for the moment, said no more. Congress finally decided to give du Coudray staff, instead of line appointment, at the promised rank of Major General, and to make him Inspector General of Ordnance and Military Manufactories—a compromise that proved acceptable to Greene, Sullivan and the officer most directly concerned, Knox.
Washington had good opinion of one or two of the younger Frenchmen who had come to America, and he welcomed to Headquarters the young Lafayette who had come to learn, not to teach; but it soon was apparent that Lafayette wished to share and not merely observe the Army’s hardships, marches and battles. Washington had to inquire of Benjamin Harrison whether he correctly had understood Congressmen to say that Lafayette’s commission was nominal only and did not cover, even prospectively, the direction of troops at the rank voted him. The young Frenchman, said Harrison, “could not have obtained the commission on any other terms.”
Washington at the moment could give little time to foreigners because maddening doubt with respect to Howe’s objective once again absorbed his hours and shaped his action. In the absence of all news of the fleet, Washington guessed that the British commander was bound for Charleston, South Carolina. Perhaps the British intended to block the harbors in that region, garrison the important coastal towns and then come north again. As it was impossible to move overland and confront Howe at so great a distance, Washington and his council decided on August 21 that the Continental troops should break camp in Bucks County and march against Burgoyne. This involved exposure of Philadelphia to possible attack, for which reason Washington thought he should ask Congress’ approval of his proposed move. Colonel Hamilton was hurried off to Philadelphia with a statement of Washington’s plans and with an inquiry concerning the control of operations in event Washington entered the Northern Department which, said the Commander-in-Chief, “has been all along considered as separate and in some measure distinct.” The Delegates endorsed the plan and affirmed that “General Washington was to act as circumstances may require.”
Within a few hours the prospect of a long northward advance was forgotten. A messenger arrived from John Page, member of the Council of Virginia, who announced that a British fleet had appeared off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay August 14 and that it seemed to be standing in. Washington scarcely could credit the reports. Had Howe intended to sail into Chesapeake Bay, he certainly would have arrived there before now. The next day indisputable reports, reaching camp at sunset, showed Howe far up the Chesapeake. The British General evidently was putting into operation a variant of a plan that had” been credited to him during the winter and early spring. Instead of attempting to capture Philadelphia overland from the north or by the Delaware, the British were to land at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay and proceed northward about fifty-five miles, as the roads ran, to the city that probably had been their objective all the while. American marching orders were reversed; .regiments must turn about and concentrate at Chester. General Putnam must convince the New England States that Howe could do them no harm and that they should put every musket in line to destroy Burgoyne.
Washington felt relief both because the mystery at last was resolved and because the British debarkation would be far enough from Philadelphia for him to interpose his Army between the Redcoats and their goal. The prospect was brightened, too, by fine news from the north. A strong detachment of British and German troops had proceeded from Burgoyne’s main army towards the village of Bennington, in the New Hampshire Grants, presumably to seize provisions and horses. The enemy had been met on the sixteenth by an American force of two thousand, most of them militia, under John Stark. In confused fighting, the raiders had lost thirty two officers and staff and about seven hundred prisoners. British and Hessian dead were reckoned at two hundred; American casualties were put at seventy or eighty.
While the soldiers were in the confident mood this news stimulated, some of Washington’s officers urged him to march his brigades through Philadelphia en route to Chesapeake Bay. They maintained that the appearance of so many armed men might impress Tory sympathizers and those who had been awed by reports of British superiority. Washington agreed and, as his troops still lacked uniforms, directed that clothes be washed, arms burnished and every soldier’s hat dressed with a “green sprig, emblem of hope.” On August 24, the march of the Continentals through the Quaker City was a gallant and, at the same time, pathetic two-hour display of what the troops were and were not. John Adams wrote later in the day: “The Army . . . I find to be extremely well armed, pretty well clothed, and tolerably disciplined . . . Much remains yet to be done. Our soldiers have not yet quite the air of soldiers. They don’t step exactly in time. They don’t hold up their heads quite erect, nor turn out their toes exactly as they ought. They don’t all of them cock their hats; and such as do, don’t all wear them the same way.”
Washington probably was satisfied with the showing his men made. He believed in discipline as firmly as in the justice of his cause, but he knew that the real test went beyond the manner in which the soldiers turned out their toes and cocked their hats. Now, as he marched south, he had more evidences of unsuccessful leadership than of unselfish spirit. Sullivan had attempted to deliver a surprise attack on Staten Island August 22 but had failed. In withdrawing, the Americans had lost perhaps 150 men and had a score wounded.
Leadership had become involved almost simultaneously in rivalry between Gates and Schuyler. After Schuyler had been restored to full command of the Northern Department, Gates had proceeded to defend himself and assailed his critics with angry demands. When Congress found the time and temper for considering the proper employment of a man who manifestly had lost his head, it voted that he repair to Headquarters “and follow the directions of General Washington.” The Commander-in-Chief decided, at length, that the best employment of a senior officer unwilling to resume his old duties of Adjutant General would be to assign him Lincoln’s Division during the absence of that officer. Then came the evacuation of Ticonderoga which was blamed in part on Schuyler. Delegates who questioned Schuyler’s ability made common cause with those who felt he should be replaced because he did not have the good will of the New England militia. Gates’s friends proclaimed anew his military excellencies. The result of a long debate was a decision by Congress on August 1 to call Schuyler to Headquarters and direct Washington to name “such general officer as he shall think proper” in Schuyler’s place—a task from which the embarrassed friend of both men asked at once to be excused. Congress appreciated Washington’s feelings and itself chose Gates as head of the Northern Department. Washington forthwith issued the orders and wished his comrade success; but the circumstances of this appointment were among the reasons why he asked Congress on August 21 to define his responsibility for operations in the department that included the upper Hudson and the adjacent lakes. The day after the march through Philadelphia, Washington was assured “that Congress never intended by any commission heretofore granted by them, or by the establishment of any Department whatever to supersede or circumscribe the power of General Washington as Commander-in-Chief of all the continental land forces within the United States.”
At the beginning of the last week in August reports were that Howe soon would disembark at Head of Elk. Washington continued mindful of the imperative need of strengthening the water defences of Philadelphia and did all he could to draw militia to him; but he hurried on to Wilmington, put his entire force on the alert, reconnoitered with considerable risk and small success on the twenty-sixth, and then moved up his Army so that he could resist any effort Howe might make to clear the road to Philadelphia. Strategy demanded that he advance his most mobile forces, keep them close to the British and harass the foe without exhausting his own men. The main Army should remain perhaps as far as eight or ten miles from the enemy, but the American light horse and some of the small parties of foot could drive off cattle and remove supplies and provisions from the reach of the enemy.
The British covered their front skillfully, kept inquisitive cavalry at a distance and contrived to mystify Washington almost as completely as when the Royal Army had been at sea. Nothing of importance occurred until, on September 5, the British appeared to be ready to start their offensive. The fleet began to drop down the Chesapeake and on the eighth was so far south that Washington was convinced the ships of war were to be used against Philadelphia, via the Delaware. An assault by water was to be simultaneous with an advance by land. The British forces took the road towards Christiana, on the creek of the same name which flows into the Brandywine close to Wilmington. The American commander suspected that Howe would attempt to turn the flank of the Continentals and to get between them and Philadelphia. To prevent this, Washington put the Brandywine Creek between his men and Howe’s and took position near one of the principal crossings of that stream, Chad’s Ford. If Howe was advancing in full strength, Washington would attempt no more than a continuance of skirmishing and harassment; but he would have satisfaction, of a sort, when he knew precisely where the British were and what they were trying to do.
Unless the enemy were held on the Brandywine, he scarcely could be stopped until he reached the Schuylkill. Once on that stream, he might maneuver without great difficulty into Philadelphia. As a defensive barrier the Brandywine had no particular value other than that it was of sufficient depth to require troops to use the fords. The position taken by the Americans at Chad’s Ford appeared to be about as good as any for an Army that wished to be free to maneuver and avoid or accept the enemy’s attack as the contingencies of the hour might dictate.
Early September 11 word reached Washington that the enemy was advancing to Chad’s Ford. If Howe offered battle there and tried to cross the creek under fire, Washington scarcely could hope to engage his adversary in circumstances more advantageous, except for a thick fog for several hours after dawn. About eight o’clock British troops filed into position on the high ground in rear of the ford and challenged Gen. William Maxwell of Lincoln’s Division with musketry and, a little later, with artillery. Maxwell found that a fresh brigade came up in rear of the enemy so he gave the order to withdraw. This was followed by the skillful, partly concealed advance of more British troops to the sheltered ground on the left bank of the Brandywine opposite Chad’s Ford. Howe’s guns soon were roaring across the stream; Washington answered them in kind. Howe appeared to be disinclined to attack. Washington saw no opening.
As minutes passed without the slightest effort by the enemy to cross the Brandywine, Washington and his officers began to suspect that Howe was trying to amuse them at Chad’s Ford while he made his crossing elsewhere. Washington consequently could not have been surprised when reports began to reach Headquarters of a British column marching from Howe’s left upstream, parallel to the Brandywine. Col. Moses Hazen, who was guarding Jones’s Ford, sent word by Maj. Lewis Morris, Aide-de-Camp to Sullivan, that these British were proceeding to the forks of the creek. Washington directed Stirling and Stephen to move their Divisions to a site that commanded the road over which the British were most apt to advance from the upper fords of the Brandywine. Confirmation of Hazen’s report and the wisdom of this shift was forthcoming almost immediately in a dispatch from Lt. Col. James Ross of the Eighth Pennsylvania, who with seventy men had been patrolling the Great Valley Road on the right bank of the creek. Ross wrote at 11 A.M. and said that “from every account five thousand with sixteen or eighteen field pieces, marched along this road just now.”
If Howe had started five thousand men upstream, comparatively few troops could have been left at the position first occupied that morning by the British. Washington’s opportunity of striking with superior force might be at hand: The Continentals at Chad’s Ford and the one directly above it, where Sullivan had his station, must cross the Brandywine and attack and destroy the men left there. The troops were prepared, almost, to plunge into the water when Sullivan forwarded this dispatch:
Since I sent you the message by Major Morris I saw some of the Militia who came in this morning from a tavern called Martins on the forks of the Brandywine. The one who told me, said he had come from thence to Welches Tavern and heard nothing of the Enemy above the forks of the Brandywine and is Confident that [sic] are not in that Quarters. So that Colonel Hazen’s Information must be wrong. I have sent to that Quarter to know whether there is any foundation for the Report and shall be glad to give your Ex’y the earliest information.
Was Hazen mistaken? Was Ross or were the militiamen correct? The individual who gave Sullivan the information in this new dispatch proved to be Major Spear, a militia officer sent out the previous day to reconnoiter. Washington concluded that where there was an unresolved conflict of intelligence reports, it would be rash to assume the offensive.
Early in the afternoon a farmer rode up to Headquarters. He blurted out, in much excitement, that the Army must move immediately; otherwise it would be surrounded; the enemy was coming down the eastern side of the creek and was near at hand. Washington could not believe it. The farmer insisted he was relating facts of his own observation and spoke with so much positiveness that the General decided to see for himself whether the man possibly could be correct. Washington probably had started for the right when messages from Col. Theodorick Bland and Sullivan confirmed the farmer’s report.
The enemy in the rear—the same maneuver against the man who had been outflanked on Long Island a year previously! Ross and Hazen had been correct. A great opportunity had been lost by not attacking the force that Howe had left to hold Chad’s Ford. Sullivan must march at once to meet the column advancing on his rear. Stephen’s and Stirling’s divisions must proceed at a trot to Birmingham Meeting House. Sullivan, as senior Major General “of the right” wing, should direct the fighting. Washington himself should remain at Chad’s Ford, where he could keep his hand on all the troops.
About 4:30 straining ears at Chad’s Ford heard cannon-fire. Soon the stammer of uneven volleys was audible, and then the spiteful bark of rifles. It was difficult for Washington to restrain himself and stay at Headquarters while a battle of uncertain issue was raging within two miles; but he noticed that the artillery fire from across Chad’s Ford was quickening, as if an infantry attack were in preparation. Soon Washington’s concern got the better of his consideration for Sullivan’s natural wish to fight an independent battle. The commander of the right wing should have help. Greene still was in reserve. He must move at once to the right. Washington would go with him. Lincoln’s Division must remain at Chad’s Ford and repulse any attempt of the enemy to cross there.
Off went Washington with his staff and a guide. Behind the General, Greene’s men half ran, half walked towards the sound of the firing. Washington had to ascertain what was happening as a result of a confused struggle around a plowed hill southwest of the Birmingham Meeting House. Stirling and Stephen had reached that elevation and had found the enemy approaching in greater strength than reports had indicated. They had occupied strong ground and almost had completed their dispositions when Sullivan, who had not been on that part of the field before, found his advance guard an eighth of a mile from an oncoming British column. Sullivan was to the left and almost half-a-mile in front of Stephen and Stirling. He ordered their divisions to extend to the right to give him space to form. The change was made disadvantageously. While Sullivan’s men were being shifted they were attacked and thrown into some confusion.
At the moment of Washington’s arrival, the left was beginning to break, and the whole of the line was sagging under pressure by the British. A rout of the Army’s staunchest veterans appeared imminent. So long as mounted officers shouted and threatened close to the front, they were able to hold part of the line together. When they rode back from a position then within about two hundred yards of the foe, many of the men ran off, but good handling of the brigade in the last hour of daylight forced the weary British to abandon pursuit.
At Chad’s Ford the enemy had thrown himself vigorously after the departure of Washington. The troops of Gen. Anthony Wayne and of Maxwell put up the best defence they could, but they had to retreat and lost their artillery. The militia on their left, unassailed, made an easy withdrawal. So tangled were the troops along the road to Chester, that Washington did not get them in order until nearly midnight. Fears that casualties included many prisoners were relieved somewhat the next day by the emergence of men who had lost their way or had spent the night in the woods for fear of running into an enemy patrol if they went out to the road. Hundreds, however, did not come back. American wounded had been left on the field where Howe was so little able to provide care that he invited Washington to send surgeons to attend them. These bleeding men, together with the dead and the uninjured prisoners, were estimated at twelve or thirteen hundred.
Washington had lost the field, the lives of hundreds of men, and a considerable part of his artillery. The reasons were plain. There was on the part of the Americans a most discreditable ignorance of the ground. Little or no reconnaissance was undertaken. Neither Washington nor any of his staff or division commanders or colonels of cavalry appears to have known the location of the fords. The Commander-in-Chief has to be charged with being less careful than usual in his dispositions. He was tired or temporarily overconfident or else the instance was one, familiar if not frequent, in which an able man for some unascertainable reason fails to grasp the realities of a problem he normally would master without prolonged effort.
The other reason for the defeat on the Brandywine was an aspect of the poor reconnaissance and lack of knowledge of the ground. “A contrariety of intelligence, in a critical and important point,” Washington wrote about a fortnight later, “contributed greatly, if it did not entirely bring on the misfortunes of that day.” His reference was more specific in one of his letters to Sullivan: “. . . I ascribed the misfortune which happened to us on the 11th of September principally to the information of Major Spear, transmitted to me by you. . . .” but Washington did not permit himself to finish the sentence without making it plain that he did not blame Sullivan for “conveying that intelligence.” In fact, the importance of what Spear had to tell the commanders was misinterpreted by them because of their unfamiliarity with the region. If the American commanders had examined the ground or had questioned informed residents of the area around the East Branch, they could have learned that the absence of British on the road they knew of was no guarantee the enemy was not moving to the right on another road and in the manner both Colonel Hazen and Colonel Ross reported.
Opinion might and did vary concerning the responsibility of Sullivan for the defeat and for the misinterpretation of intelligence that contributed to the loss of the day, but the heaviest judgment that could be imposed on Sullivan would not exculpate his Commander-in-Chief. Washington conducted the Brandywine operation as if he had been in a daze. The General who always had stressed the necessity of procuring fullest intelligence and of analyzing it correctly had failed to do either or to employ his light horse adequately when the price of error might be the loss of Philadelphia.
Explain the Battle of the Brandywine as one might, it was a defeat that called for an immediate deep withdrawal. From Chester, Washington moved the greater part of his Army to the Schuylkill and over it to German-town, where he had the stragglers collected and the lost detachments sent back to their regiments. All the troops were given rest and such food as the feeble and disorganized Commissary could provide. In shaping his strategy anew, Washington’s deep caution reasserted itself. Speedy reenforcement of the Army was essential if even the semblance of resistance to an advance on Philadelphia was to be maintained. Trained men could come in number from one source only, Putnam’s command. In full appreciation of the risks involved in reducing the force on North River and the highlands of New York, Washington decided first that he must draw to him fifteen hundred men whom Congress had ordered Putnam to send to New Jersey. Then the Commander-in-Chief concluded that another one thousand men could be spared by ’Old Put” without excessive risk.
Washington’s plan was to harass the British with regiments still south of the Schuylkill and then, when the other Continentals had recovered from the shock of battle, leave the militia on guard at the fords towards which the British were heading. With the veteran organization, he would recross the Schuylkill and watch the enemy. This maneuver was exacting but it was attended by no widespread demoralization of the troops or of American supporters in Philadelphia. The rally was firmer and faster than Washington had thought it would be. Almost everywhere the result of the Battle of the Brandywine was accepted without flinching and in the spirit of “better next time.”
Congress’ sole openly voiced resentment, as respected the battle, was against Sullivan, who was blamed by some for the loss of the field. Washington already had been directed to hold a court of inquiry on Sullivan’s handling of the expedition against Staten Island and now was informed that Congress had recalled that officer from command until the inquiry should be completed. At Sullivan’s instance Washington attested that in all he had seen at Brandywine the accused General had behaved well. Washington asked and Congress reluctantly consented to let the Major General continue temporarily in service because Washington had so few officers of that rank.
On September 15 Washington called his still-weary soldiers to pass southward over the Schuylkill once again in an effort to prevent the entry of the British into Philadelphia or, at least, make them pay heavily for the town. On the sixteenth reports indicated that swift maneuver might give the Americans an opportunity that seldom had been theirs—the opportunity of delivering a sudden blow against the enemy while his column was in motion. Washington saw his opening near Warren Tavern, on the road from Lancaster to Philadelphia, and prepared to strike. His prospect was of the fairest when, of a sudden, he encountered something he never before had faced on like scale. The wind rose to a gale from the northeast and brought a rain that did not relent for a second. Washington’s Continentals had learned to defy the worst northeasters that swept in from the North Atlantic, but this time they were caught with forty rounds of ammunition in their cartridge boxes. The better containers turned the rain; the others proved worthless against a long-continued, searching deluge. Before the day ended, Washington was told that tens of thousands of rounds had been ruined and that many regiments could not fire a shot. It was the first time in his experience as Commander-in-Chief that “the whole safety of the Army,” as Washington later wrote the Board of War, depended in action on the “goodness” of a simple and familiar accouterment. There was no immediate hope of drying any of this ammunition, because the rain continued all night and most of the next day. Washington’s men had no shelter and little food; no less than one thousand of them were barefooted. Opposite the dripping, woebegone American columns the British, moreover, maneuvered as if they intended to envelop both flanks and gained such definite superiority of position that on the nineteenth, though the day was lovely and the wind from the northwest, Washington again decided to recross the Schuylkill by way of Parker’s Ford. He left on the British side of the stream the Brigade of Smallwood and the Division of Wayne, who then were separated but were to make common cause in harassing the enemy’s flank and rear and especially in trying to cut off the British baggage.
On the evening of September 20 Wayne encamped his small Division near Paoli, about twelve miles from Philadelphia. During the night three British regiments made a skillful approach, attacked furiously and, in a short time, scattered the division. Wayne lost at least 150 killed, captured or wounded.
The disaster to Wayne cost the Army experienced troops and accelerated the disappearance of militia who, as always, quickly yielded to fear. Washington felt that he must be wary of every move of the British. In the eyes of Nathanael Greene, the Commander-in-Chief seemed to be drifting back into the hesitation of mind that had plagued him before the fall of Fort Washington. A newcomer, Gen. Johann Kalb—the Baron de Kalb he styled himself—wrote:
Washington is the most amiable, kind-hearted and upright of men; but as a General he is too slow, too indolent and far too weak; besides, he has a tinge of vanity in his composition, and overestimates himself. In my opinion, whatever success he may have will be owing to good luck and to the blunders of his adversaries, rather than to his abilities. I may even say that he does not know how to improve upon the grossest blunders of the enemy. He has not yet overcome his old prejudice against the French.
The concern of Kalb and Greene doubtless was shared by other ranking officers not quite so self-confident, but actually at this time Washington was almost as hopeful as he was cautious and apparently of doubtful mind. He believed that time would bring him reenforcements with which to meet the British, even if the enemy occupied Philadelphia. He successfully resisted an effort of Congress to take troops from him and use them in the construction of defences on Delaware River. He sought to hasten the 2500 men called from Putnam and to draw to him other contingents. Until reenforcements assembled Washington could do no more than keep vigilant, render difficult the British passage of the nearby watercourses and repair, as far as time permitted, the manifest weaknesses of his command.
The worst and most pressing of these was in the light horse. Washington had hoped that Joseph Reed would accept the command of the mounted arm, for which he had shown aptitude; but after Reed had declined in June, Washington deferred action. He gradually became convinced that if the cavalry were brought together and employed as a unit they might prove a powerful instrument. This decision had been due, in considerable measure, to the persistence of Count Casimir de Pulaski, a Polish officer who had come to Headquarters with letters from the American Commissioners in France. When Pulaski described how he had used cavalry in a Polish uprising, the American commander had concluded that the leadership of the American troopers might make that officer “extremely useful.” A letter to that effect had been written Congress in August. Pulaski most unwisely had imperiously sought rank subordinate only to that of Washington and of Lafayette. This had created a prejudice against him, but September 15 Congress created the post of “Commander of the Horse,” with rank of Brigadier, and elected Pulaski to it. If Pulaski succeeded in winning the support of the cavalry colonels, the light horse might strike many a stout blow to aid the infantry when—or did Washington have to say “if”—the footmen could find shoes for bad roads and clothing for wintry bivouacs.
That dark contingency was deepened almost immediately. The danger to Philadelphia had compelled the removal to magazines in less exposed towns all stores not immediately required in the city. Ten days after the Battle of the Brandywine the Americans concluded not only that Howe had heard of this transfer but also that he knew the particular value of supplies deposited in Reading. A march begun on the twenty-first seemed to be directed straight at that new base. Washington shifted his right in the same direction, whereupon the British reversed their march, slipped back down the river and on September 26, unopposed, moved into Philadelphia with the easy air of proprietorship. The American commander had been out-maneuvered so easily that the sole immediate question became that of where he should place and how he should employ his troops now that he had lost the largest American city in a manner more humiliating, if possible, than that of his forced abandonment of New York.
As he waited about six miles north of Parker’s Ford on the Schuylkill for reenforcements, Washington and his senior officers had an astonishing experience: they found that British capture of the city meant little compared with what they had feared in the autumn of 1776 the fall of Philadelphia would involve. Now that the calamity had fallen, it was manifest that the course of the campaign had lessened the importance of Philadelphia. The British found there virtually no public property of value. The city was a shell. To some it might be a symbol, but it no longer contained the living organism of independence. Washington’s soldiers had come to regard the fall of Philadelphia as inevitable and they did not permit it to dampen a spirit that was rising again now that tired men were rested. A weightier reason was the joyous certainty that the darkest cloud of the war was losing its blackness. The strategical danger that Washington had dreaded most was being dissipated. On September 19, at Freeman’s Farm, north of Albany, Gates had worsted his opponent so thoroughly that the Commander-in-Chief felt the Americans could “count on the total ruin of Burgoyne.” Unless there was an incredible reversal of fortune, the Hudson no longer would have to be shielded, hourly and vigilantly, as the jugular of America, the severance of which meant death.
Washington’s Army was reenforced at the same time it was reanimated. McDougall’s Brigade arrived about September 27. Other troops were close at hand in numbers estimated to raise the total strength of the Army to eight thousand Continentals and three thousand militia. “I am in hopes,” Washington wrote Heath, “it will not be long before we are in a situation to repair the consequences of our late ill success. . . .” He moved forward to within about twelve miles of the British to await either an advantageous opening or additional men.
Opportunity outmarched militia. At the beginning of October Washington received two intercepted letters which mentioned the detachment of a British force to proceed against Billingsport to aid there in the attempt of the British navy to open the Delaware River. Other intelligence reports showed that the main army of Howe was encamped at and near German-town, a handsome, sprawling village five miles northwest of Philadelphia. When Washington communicated this information to his general officers, they were unanimous in advising attack at Germantown. The Commander-in-Chief now marched into Worcester Township and made camp.
This advance put the Army fifteen miles from Germantown—as close as Washington dared advance in daylight because he hoped to surprise the enemy by attacking at dawn over roads that seemed to form an ideal stage for surprise. The road from Reading and the Shippack Road ran parallel to each other until about four miles from the centre of Germantown. Then they met at Chestnut Hill and ran southward together as the “Main Street.” The course of the two roads would facilitate a deployment at Chestnut Hill or south of it. Moreover, northeast of the Shippack Road was the Lime Kiln Road which came into Germantown from the east. West and southwest of the Main Street and connected easily with it was the Manatawny Road. Washington could advance on three or even on four roads and assail simultaneously the front and flanks of the British.
Into a detailed battle order Washington put what appeared to be the essentials of coordinated attack. Once only before in his three years and more of command of the Army had Washington drafted and executed a General Order for offensive action by the whole of his infantry. That had been for the advance on Trenton December 25-26, 1776. This new order was more elaborate. Reading it, critics in the Army who sometimes accused Washington of overcaution must have been silenced for the moment: Trained reenforcements had not begun to arrive until September 27. One week later the “American Fabius” was to take the offensive.
The Army started its march on the evening of October 3. Probably to avert further criticism of Sullivan, the Commander-in-Chief decided to re main on the right with that officer and entrust management of the left wing to Greene. The longer road was Greene’s by as much as four miles, because a part of his route was circuitous. The night wore dismally on, but by 3 a.m. on the fourth Washington, riding near the head of Sullivan’s column, was inside the area covered by the British patrols. No alarm was audible; the troops continued quietly on their way towards the known picket posts of the enemy. Washington had given instructions that the pickets should be seized or bayonetted before they could make an outcry. The weather during the night had not been unpromising, but as morning approached the advance of the Army ran into fog, which limited vision, distorted the appearance of landmarks and confused every sound.
A bad setting did not balk a good beginning. Unchallenged, Sullivan’s men tramped down the main road; Conway’s Brigade shifted towards the right across the fields. About dawn, Washington heard the rattle of a few muskets, contrary to orders. Evidently the British pickets had been reached, but they had not been surprised altogether. After that, in less time than should have been required for these men to fall back on the first line, the roll of a British volley reached Washington’s ears. The pickets, Sullivan explained later, “were suddenly reenforced by all their Light Infantry,” who seemed to be drawn up in an orchard, unprotected by trenches or redoubts. Gen. Thomas Conway had to halt his flank march and form his brigade in line: soon Washington learned that the enemy was advancing.
Was this the first act of familiar tragedy all over again—a repulse and then a rout? The answer was reassuring for the moment: The British musketry was no nearer; the American line must be standing firm. Perhaps that fog drowned the sound of Greene’s advance. Nothing had come from him, neither a messenger nor the roll of a single volley: he might be succeeding so well that he did not have to use small arms, but it was possible that Greene had lost his way or had met some overpowering obstacle. Why did Gen. John Armstrong and his Pennsylvania militia on the extreme right withhold their fire? It looked as if Sullivan’s Division might have to fight the battle alone. Sullivan ordered Wayne to form on his left where Greene’s troops were to have taken position, started two regiments in the direction of Armstrong’s advance and dispatched Moylan’s light horse to aid the infantry. By these dispositions, Sullivan sought to secure his flanks as well as possible, though he might be compelled to pull both of them back.
About the time this was done the snatches of information that came to Washington indicated that the attack of the British light infantry had been beaten off. The initiative had passed to Sullivan, whose men began to push forward again across fields planted in buckwheat. Troops found this slow work and doubly dangerous, because they might encounter the enemy behind any fence or hedge and in the enclosure of any residence. Fog, now thick with mingled smoke, made the Americans’ pursuit a grope, but it blinded the British and at some points cut visibility to thirty yards. The fog was more protection to the troops on Main Street than they or their officers realized. When the Continentals drove the enemy from one fence line, they did not hesitate to run to the next and then to the next. Soon the troops were far in front of the Commander-in-Chief and were firing furiously. Verbal confirmation came from Sullivan of what the firing already told: the enemy was giving way, Sullivan said; Wayne should push on. Washington agreed. What was more, he ordered Gens. Maxwell and Francis Nash, leaders of the reserve brigades, to put their troops on the flanks of the advancing line.
As Maxwell’s Brigade moved up to support Sullivan it ran into considerable musketry from the windows of a large stone residence, which natives called the Chew House. From second-story windows, which had stout and heavy shutters, Redcoats delivered a sharp fire. An American battery was brought up, but the cannon were placed at an angle to the structure and struck only glancing blows. When the reserve was instructed to keep out of range of the Chew House and otherwise to disregard it, half an hour had been lost, but Sullivan apparently had not been hampered by the delay. His men were pressing gallantly on through blinding, choking smoke and fog. Wayne’s troops were equally aggressive in their resolution to get revenge for the slaughter at Paoli. It was in vain that officers tried to protect the British wounded or the occasional Redcoat who was captured unhurt. All these were bayonetted. Washington pressed so far to the front that Sullivan had to ask him to retire—a request he heeded for a few minutes but then forgot as his soldiers kept their pace.
All this time there had been intense concern over the lack of any news from Greene, but anxiety was relieved. Adam Stephen’s men appeared on the left of Wayne; from the countryside beyond came the bark of cannon and the rattle of small arms. Greene apparently was in position and driving the British. Victory appeared closer: Defeat of Howe when disaster was about to overwhelm Burgoyne might mean the end of the war! Washington was about to give the order for a general advance towards Philadelphia, when something happened. On the left, there was confused firing. Shouts were heard and were answered from a greater distance. On Sullivan’s front a loud volley shook the ground but provoked an uneven answer. Out of the fog men came back on the run, some frantic with fear, some able to gasp a few words—that the enemy was in the rear, that the flank had been turned, that friends had been mistaken for foes, that orders to retreat had been shouted. Presently the artillery galloped past and took the road to the rear. Officers swinging their swords and swearing or pleading, tried to stop what in the course of a few minutes became a mad panic. It was as if they were shouting to the fog to dissipate itself. By ten o’clock, incredibly, the action was over. Two hours and forty minutes had sufficed to see a victory won, as the Americans believed, and then thrown away. Washington could do no less than order the retreat continued till pursuit was shaken off. With intervals of rest for the men who remained together, the backward march dragged for twenty miles and more, until the Army was at Pennypacker’s Mill.
What had caused the panic? That was the question every one asked and none could answer to the satisfaction of his comrades. In the fog some of Wayne’s men and some of Stephen’s mistook a dim and distant line for the enemy and exchanged fire several times; the retreat had continued for some distance before the identity of Stephen’s right flank was understood by Wayne’s soldiers. Also, about that time the British cut off the Ninth Virginia and thereby disordered the left wing. The main cause of the retreat probably was that on the right the British advanced fresh troops with much vigor when Sullivan’s men were extended, half exhausted and almost without ammunition. Washington, Sullivan and most of the others believed that the halt at the Chew House, the exchange of fire on the left, and confusion created by the fog had given the beaten British troops time to rally.
Much was made of Greene’s failure to attack at the time General Orders directed. In most respects the reason was misfortune, not misconduct. Greene’s march was longer than had been reckoned; his troops had been formed at too great a distance from the enemy; certain of the troops had marching orders so complicated that even their guide lost his way. In spite of this, some of Greene’s men had pushed gallantly on but had encountered unexpected resistance. Greene’s retreat on the left had about the same justification—whether it be deemed full or partial—that Sullivan’s had on the American right. Apparently the most serious failure on the left was Stephen’s. He was alleged to have given the order to retreat, though he maintained he shouted to his men that they were running away from victory. The principal charge against Stephen was that, if not actually drunk, he had been drinking so heavily for so long that he was not able to discharge his duty with sound judgment.
Had the British been surprised? Did the speedy appearance of the light infantry indicate that they were under arms when the attack began? Washington was of opinion that surprise was achieved “so far as reaching their guards before they had notice of our coming.” General Howe insisted, on the other hand, that the only surprise was that of an attack by Washington so soon after the defeat in the Battle of the Brandywine. Patrols had learned at 3 A.M. of the approach of the American columns and had notified the British commander without letting the Continentals know their advance had been discovered. All the British regiments had then been put under arms promptly, but some of the senior officers had remained skeptical and thought the alarm had been created by a mere “flying party.”
Strangely, the details of the attempted simultaneous convergence of Washington’s columns received little analysis by the Americans. Washington scarcely could have demanded more of his officers than that they conduct their illshod troops in darkness over comparatively unfamiliar roads to distant positions, deploy and form them and have them ready to attack together at dawn. The American commander patiently studied the routes and timed the march of the separate columns by the condition of the various roads as well as by the distance to be covered; but he did not succeed in drafting orders that put every movement in simple, understandable language. The marvel is not that the left elements were late because the guide lost his way, but that they reached their objective at all.
The results—were they in keeping with the effort, or were they, too, a frustration? Perhaps the answer was given unwittingly by a Germantown diarist who wrote October 5: “Great numbers came out of town today to satisfy their curiosity as to the battle yesterday, and everyone spoke as they affected.” That was it: each man’s sympathy shaped his judgment. Washington’s faith in the fundamental rightness of his cause led him once again to assume the enemy’s losses must be larger than his own, though, actually, his gross casualties, including prisoners, were close to eleven hundred and those of the British about half that. The American commander shared, also, belief that the advance halted and panic began when Howe was about to retreat across the Schuylkill and perhaps even to Chester—a belief for which there is not a shadow of justification in Howe’s report to his government.
Heavy as were losses, mistaken as was the Commander-in-Chief regarding nearness of victory at the onset of panic, the undertone of army comment on the battle was even more optimistic than after the contest on the Brandywine. The struggle in the fog around Germantown yielded no ground to the Americans and imposed on the British no damage serious enough to hamper their efforts to open their line of supply up the Delaware River, but in spirit, losers were gainers. Thomas Paine reported to Franklin that the troops appeared “to be sensible of a disappointment, not a defeat.” Washington was distinctly of that mind. The most he conceded to adversity was: “Upon the whole, it may be said the day was rather unfortunate than injurious.”
MAP / 12
THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS, 1776-1783
