America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (4 page)

Too weak in numbers to challenge Clinton in New York, Washington dispatched part of his force to Rhode Island. There, under the command of Major General John Sullivan, they were to conduct a joint operation with French troops against British-held Newport. The French soldiers had been transported in ships commanded by the Comte d’Estaing. However, the arrival of a British fleet caused the French admiral to withdraw. A storm then damaged his vessels, and seeking repairs, he sailed away. Sullivan subsequently attacked on his own, but failed to dislodge the British.

He had greater success against Native Americans. In 1779 Washington asked Sullivan to lead an expedition into western Pennsylvania and New York, where Native Americans, in addition to siding with the British, had themselves conducted savage attacks on white settlers. Sullivan accepted the assignment and, with four thousand soldiers, set out to punish the Indians. This he accomplished. Villages were destroyed, food was seized and warriors killed, in part as retaliation for the massacres the Native Americans had committed at Wilkes-Barre and Cherry Hill. The enemy—and that is what Washington considered them to be—was dealt a serious blow.

Throughout the war state militia, Continental regulars, and ordinary farmers battled Native Americans in the colonies’ Western frontiers. There was much bloodletting, and savagery was in evidence on both sides. The outcome was predictable. The resources of the Native Americans, both human and material, were substantially depleted.

One campaign in the West did not center around the native population. In 1778 and 1779 the Virginian George Rogers Clark led a small band of militia into what is now Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. His goal was to capture British outposts at Kaskaskia and Vincennes, which, after enduring much hardship, he did. Though small in size, Clark’s victories were significant when four years later in Paris the boundaries of a new nation were drawn.

During 1779 three events of note took place: one at sea, one on land, and one far from the thirteen colonies. In June, in Madrid, Spain declared war against England, further enlarging the conflict. Britain, thereafter, had to fight two European powers in addition to contesting the American colonies. In September, French and American troops failed to seize Savannah, losing more than eight hundred men in the attempt, including Count Pulaski. In October, John Paul Jones, aboard the
Bonhomme Richard
, made himself legendary when in the middle of a bloody sea fight he responded to the British captain’s call to surrender by proclaiming, “I have not yet begun to fight.”

The battle at Monmouth Court House was the last major engagement in the North. Thereafter the focus of the conflict, from today’s perspective, shifted to the South, except for one historic occurrence. That was the defection to the British of Benedict Arnold, one of the Americans’ better known senior commanders. Totally unexpected, Arnold’s action sent shock waves throughout the rebel cause. People everywhere were in disbelief. Why did he do it? The answer seems to be that he was in debt and angry over a perceived lack of recognition. He also may have thought the British were going to win. They rewarded him both with money and a commission in His Majesty’s army. He then took command of loyalist troops and raided communities in Virginia, including Richmond. Arnold, of course, achieved immortality, but not of the kind he sought.

The year 1780 saw the fortunes of the Americans again become extremely low. Few battles had been won. Supplies for the armies were insufficient. The Continental currency was worthless. There were mutinies in Washington’s army. Moreover, the winter of 1779–1780 was terrible, worse than at Valley Forge the previous year. And Arnold’s treason took place that summer. But two battles in the South were of even greater impact, suggesting to the British that at last victory was within reach.

In May 1780 Major General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered Charleston to a large force led by Sir Henry Clinton, who had sailed from New York to South Carolina. The British wanted the town as a base of operations in the South, an area they expected to be supportive of the Crown. Lincoln lost not only the town, he also turned over five thousand men, practically the entire army of the Southern Department. To make matters worse a company of Virginia militia moving north after the surrender were cornered at Waxhaw, close to the border with North Carolina. After a brief fight, the Americans asked for quarter—that is, they surrendered. Quarter, however, was denied. Banastre Tarleton, the British commander, had his men kill all of the rebels.

The Waxhaw Massacre reflected the brutality of the war in the South, where the conflict was as much a civil war among Americans as it was a conflict against the British. Tarleton’s men were American loyalists.

Another engagement in the South exemplifies this internal aspect of the conflict. At King’s Mountain in western Carolina a British officer, Patrick Ferguson, and his nine hundred men found themselves surrounded and outnumbered by an American force of backwoodsmen. When the October battle concluded, Ferguson and two hundred of his men were dead. Many others were wounded and seven hundred were prisoners. Notably, except for Ferguson and a few of his officers, everyone who participated in the battle were Americans. No British redcoats were there.

The second event in 1780 favorable to the king’s cause occurred at Camden, South Carolina, in mid-August. Two months before, the Continental Congress had appointed Horatio Gates in command of the army in the South. Much was expected of this hero of Saratoga. Gates, confident to a fault, rushed into battle. The result was a crushing defeat, with the American general scampering three miles to personal safety. Gates thus destroyed his reputation as well as his army.

With Gates in disgrace, a new commander of the Southern Department was needed. The choice lay with the Congress in Philadelphia, and it selected Washington’s quartermaster general, Nathanael Greene. A better selection could not have been made. Somehow Greene rebuilt the army and then engaged the British in several battles. That he won none of these did not matter. He fought well, kept his army intact, and wore down the enemy. They were now commanded by Lord Cornwallis, Clinton having returned to New York.

Nathanael Greene rode into Charlotte, North Carolina, then a town of some twenty houses and two main streets, late in December 1780. The army he commanded numbered approximately fifteen hundred men. About one-third of these were reliable Continentals, the rest militia. One of his first steps was to divide his force in two, an action contrary to standard military doctrine. He remained in command of one element. The other he gave to Daniel Morgan.

Morgan was a rugged frontiersman who had fought well at Quebec and Saratoga. Now a brigadier general, he took his small force to western Carolina, to a spot where stray cows often assembled. Chasing him was Banastre Tarleton. Morgan devised unconventional tactics, placing his militia troops in the front line with his Continentals well to the rear. This was risky as militia in the past had run from bayonet-equipped redcoats. Morgan asked his militiamen to fire but twice and then retire. He placed a few sharpshooters among them and awaited Tarleton’s arrival. He expected Tarleton to attack, suffer some initial losses, then, smelling victory, rush after the retreating militia headlong into the volleys of Morgan’s Continental regulars. Essentially, that is what happened. The American victory at Cowpens—it took place on January 19, 1781—cost Morgan twelve dead and sixty wounded. In defeat Tarleton had thirty-nine officers killed, more than twice that number of men slain, and some six hundred soldiers taken prisoner. It could have been worse. Morgan forbade his men to take “Tarleton’s quarter” as some wished to do.

Morgan’s victory at Cowpens is considered a minor military classic. His plan took advantage of the enemy’s likely behavior and negated the weakness of his own troops. Its execution was near perfect and its impact, if not decisive, was significant. Its effect was to raise the flagging morale of those in America striving for independence, and conversely, it damped the enthusiasm of those contemplating support for the Crown. As importantly, Cowpens meant that Cornwallis’s small army was smaller still.

Regardless, the British general held firm to his goal, which was to bring Greene into battle, defeat his forces, and thereby secure for the Crown the three most southern colonies. However, Cornwallis faced several problems: he was short of supplies, the local population was providing less assistance than expected, and Greene was devilishly difficult to engage.

They met finally at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina, on March 15, 1781. By then Greene’s forces actually outnumbered those of Cornwallis. Showing the courage typical of British redcoats, the English attacked. At one point the outcome looked to favor the Americans. But Cornwallis trained his artillery on where the battle was most fierce, killing both the enemy and some of his own men. This proved decisive. The British carried the day and Greene retired, though in good order. Nathanael Greene would fight again, at Hobkirk’s Hill and Eutaw Springs. There, once more, the king’s soldiers would win, but Greene and his army would survive. The British would hold the field of battle but little else.

Cornwallis meanwhile had gone north into Virginia, contrary to orders from General Clinton. He reasoned that his little army—once thirty-five hundred, now reduced to one thousand—could not succeed in the Carolinas. So in April 1781 he chose to rendezvous with the British troops in Virginia, hoping with a larger force to draw the Americans into a major battle. If he could win it, and he expected to, he could put an end to the rebellion. Once in Virginia he needed to be able to be supplied from the sea. To encamp, Cornwallis chose the town of York, a small community on a river that fed into the Chesapeake Bay.

In Newport, Rochambeau learned that a French fleet would arrive off the Chesapeake in August. He and Washington, who was keeping an eye on the British in New York, conceived a bold plan. Together, they would march south to the York peninsula and lay siege to Cornwallis. If the French fleet could hold off the Royal Navy, Cornwallis would be trapped.

On June 10, 1781, the first French troops left Newport. They and four thousand others would meet up with Washington’s army and march 756 miles, arriving at Williamsburg in September. The combined French-American force was large. It numbered about eighteen thousand men, far more than that of Cornwallis.

At first Cornwallis was not alarmed. True, he had his back to the sea, but his army would be reinforced and, if need be, evacuated by the navy. Did not Britain rule the waves? Had not the Royal Navy defeated French fleets whenever they met?

Two points of land, both in Virginia, define the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. They are Cape Charles to the north and Cape Henry to the south. The distance between them is small, approximately fourteen miles. On September 5, 1781, a naval engagement occurred offshore. Known as the Battle of the Capes, it receives scant attention in history books. Yet it ranks among the most important in history. On that day, the French fleet, still under the command of the Comte François Joseph Paul de Grasse, battled British ships commanded by Admiral Sir Thomas Graves. Graves was no Horatio Nelson. After two and a half hours of exchanging gunfire, he withdrew, sailing back to New York. Cornwallis was left to fend for himself.

There was not much the British general could do. Laying siege to York, French and American cannons bombarded the town. The town was soon wrecked, British casualties were growing in number, and (typically) supplies were short. Both the French and the Americans had men killed and wounded, but the outcome was never in doubt. On October 17 Cornwallis proposed a cessation of hostilities. Two days later the British marched out of town and threw down their muskets. More than seven thousand men surrendered. Like Burgoyne before him, Cornwallis had lost an entire army.

“Oh God! It is all over,” exclaimed Frederick Lord North upon learning of the events at York. Lord North was the king’s principal minister, in whose government Germain served. His remark was not far from the truth, as nearly everyone in Britain and America realized that Cornwallis’s surrender signaled the end of the war. By late 1781 the fighting was essentially over, despite the king still having thirty thousand redcoats in the colonies. Lord North’s government collapsed in November and peace negotiations began thereafter in Paris. The American side was led by Benjamin Franklin. However, these negotiations took a considerable amount of time, during which the armies in America kept careful watch on each other. Finally, in September 1783, a peace treaty, now called the Treaty of Paris, was signed. In it Britain recognized the United States as an independent nation, no longer subject to the Crown’s authority. The war was over.

Why did Britain lose?

She was, after all, a major European power, economically strong and mostly victorious in past military engagements. Yet she failed to quell the rebellion in America. Why did she fail? Several factors help explain the defeat.

At the top of the list is the fact that the British army was too small. Its paper strength was 48,647 men, although the actual number was far fewer. The number of men under arms was insufficient to meet the army’s obligations, which ranged beyond America, to Gibraltar, the West Indies, Canada, Ireland, India, and the home counties. Even with the addition of thirty thousand German mercenaries, the British lacked the necessary manpower. Nor was the army alone in its difficulty. The Royal Navy too was consistently short of sailors (hence the device of impressment to man the ships). The problem was fundamental. With a population of only some nine million, England simply could not field the military forces it required.

Moreover, once France entered the conflict, Britain had to focus its attention on her traditional cross-channel rival. After Saratoga, the American war, for the British, became a secondary concern. What was happening in the waters between France and England and in the Caribbean was of greater concern. Take 1779, for example, when a large combined French and Spanish fleet sailed up the Channel intent on invasion. Or, the year before, when the Royal Navy had to fight a major battle with the French off the French island of Ushant. Or, in 1780, when the British outpost at Gibraltar came under siege. All this occurred during the War for Independence. Of course, the British had their revenge. In 1781, soon after Yorktown, the Royal Navy crushed the fleet of Admiral de Grasse at the Battle of the Saints in the West Indies. Britain would continue to rule the waves, just not on the Chesapeake.