Conceived in Liberty (240 page)

Howe, however, confused the situation completely by submitting three completely different strategic plans in succession—each one worse than the one before. To begin with, he no longer saw any prospect of winning the war in 1777, neither, as Gruber puts it, “did his subsequent performance endanger the fulfillment of his prediction.”
*

His first plan, made while Washington was in the flood of retreat across Jersey, was sound and similar to Burgoyne’s. The key was that Howe would take 10,000 troops up the Hudson to join Burgoyne in Albany; Rhode Island would then be used as a base to strike at New England; and then they would march southward to victory. Soon after, even before Trenton when the military situation had not yet changed, he submitted a radically different and much poorer plan: to take the bulk of his army to capture Philadelphia. Only 3,000 troops would be stationed in the lower Hudson Valley to assist Burgoyne. Philadelphia, at this stage, was a needless diversion and distraction, accomplishing little, disastrously splitting the British forces, and putting virtually the entire burden on Burgoyne’s Canadian force. Apart from his political views (which were probably treasonable), Howe was bemused by the chimera of innumerable Pennsylvania Tories arriving to greet him—a chimera fostered in all good faith by Galloway, the Aliens, and the other eager Tory emigrés in the British camp. In April, he submitted a third and even worse plan; now there would not even be 3,000 men to assist Burgoyne. Moreover, Howe would put his army to sea to invade Philadelphia by the circuitous route of the Chesapeake Bay. In this plan, his troops would be completely cut off from the possibility of helping Burgoyne in case of trouble. He did promise to raise 3,000 Tories under Governor Tryon to operate out of New York City and up the Hudson, but he never bothered to do so.

If Howe made the principal errors of strategy, Germain erred in not cracking down on Howe, while “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne, a wit and
poseur
full of fustian, was supremely overconfident. Hence, neither Germain nor Burgoyne realized the disaster that Howe’s strategy would open up for the British.

In addition to Sir William’s plans for 1777, the Howes’ true outlook may be gauged by Lord Howe’s disobeying the crown’s orders to blockade the coast of the United States. Instead, he directed his captains to allow subsistence fishing, to “cultivate... [the] good will and confidence of the Americans,” and to “grant them every other indulgence” legally possible. The aim was to conciliate the “friendly dispositions” of the Americans. Moreover, the British sea captains were prohibited from raiding the American coast and the American ports. Howe persisted in this course despite the vigorous objections of his superiors in England, and Germain bitterly charged that, as a result of Howe’s indulgence, the waters of Great Britain were teeming with American privateers.

At the end of May, Washington had moved his camp southward to Middlebrook, in the hills above New Brunswick. General Howe made no attempt to seize Philadelphia quickly and then return to aid Burgoyne, but instead, he spent most of June trying to lure him down in to open combat, once almost succeeding. Finally giving up, Howe evacuated New Jersey altogether at the end of June and moved his men to New York. The astute General Clinton as well as most of the other top British officers, pleaded with him to change his mind and adopt the sound first plan to march north up the Hudson, but he proved adamant. On July 23, his armada of over 260 ships, carrying 15,000 troops, set sail from New York toward Philadelphia. The enraged Clinton was left in New York City with 7,000 men, of whom half were American Tories, a force barely large enough to defend the city, let alone move north to aid Burgoyne’s army in the north. Burgoyne was left to fend for himself.

*
Ira D. Gruber, “Lord Howe and Lord George Germain,” p. 241.

While Burgoyne was preparing his fateful expedition, the oppressed tenants of Livingston Manor, in upstate New York, decided to take a hand in the struggle. To the downtrodden victims of the New York landed oligarchy, the issues of the war seemed remote; the important issue was gaining ownership of the land they had tilled and brought into productive use. If their landlords happened to be Whigs—as were the Livingstons, leaders of the conservative rebel faction—then the tenants naturally and understandably became Tories. For them, only victory of British arms might bring the ownership of their lands. Certainly there was no hope for them in a Livingston victory.

Livingston Manor occupied the east bank of the Hudson, south of Albany (now Columbia County). From the outbreak of the Revolution, tenant unrest, which had erupted during the general tenants’ rebellion of 1766, was renewed throughout the 160,000 acres of Livingston Manor. As leaders of revolutionary New York, the Livingstons kept a tight control over the Manor Committee of Safety; like parish vestries in the south, the manor committee was a self-perpetuating oligarchy, despite formal adherence to democratic regulations such as annual elections by the inhabitants of the manor. By the fall of 1776, unrest on the manor was becoming grave, and was being aggravated by conscription into militia preparing to fight in their landlord’s battles against Burgoyne. Indeed, Henry Livingston, commander of the regiment of manor militia, refused to march north against Burgoyne; for most of the men would simply refuse to march, and the order would probably provoke an uprising against the manor committee. Many tenants were reported hiding in the woods; and one magnificently
independent tenant, Jury Wheeler, warned the manor committee “that if [he had] to go to the army, the first person he would shoot would be his captain.”

By October 1776, a number of discontented tenants had gathered in the southeast corner of Livingston Manor, and several signed a “King’s Book,” pledging that they would fight for King George. Tenants were also restive on other estates of Whig landed monopolists. In the late autumn of 1776, 400 tenants rose in arms against the lord of Rensselaerwyck. By April of 1777, a great increase of Toryism around Albany led to massive desertions of militia, and an attack on the Albany jail by 700 men to free captured deserters.

The intelligent path for the rebellious tenants would have been to hold off any uprising until Burgoyne had reached the area of Albany, i.e. until the fall of 1777. If they had waited, they might well have turned the tide. But in those days information was particularly faulty. They acted in May 1777 on the false belief that British troops were already in the vicinity. Consequently, the tenants made two fatal mistakes: They rose much too early, and once having risen they failed to bring their full force to bear, expecting as they did British help at any moment. In addition, in their spontaneous action they lacked the leadership necessary to guide and give intelligent direction to their uprising.

Even so, the underground tenant organization was skilled and elaborate. Almost every tenant was included in the conspiracy, which was centered in the eastern part of the manor. Active in the rebellion were 400 tenants of Livingston Manor, 60 tenants of the Lower Manor (to the south) and 50 nontenant farmers and militiamen of the manor. Their goal was ownership of the land, which they believed rightfully theirs. Their arms were either homemade and improvised, or stolen from patriot stores or Livingston mill.

The Livingston tenant rebellion, taking place during the first week of May, was precipitated by the arrival of outside militia escorting tenant prisoners. A series of tenant skirmishes ensued. Several hundred militiamen from outside, headed by landed oligarchs John P. Livingston and Robert Van Rensselaer, were brought in to suppress the tenants and viciously ordered to “fire upon every man fleeing before them.” On May 5, the hapless tenants, facing superior arms, offered to surrender in exchange for a guarantee against retribution. The offer was brusquely spurned, and the tenant uprising ruthlessly suppressed. Six tenants were killed in the fighting, and perhaps a dozen tenants were executed for their part in the rising. Over 300 tenant prisoners were dispersed outside the manor. A few were held hostage, while the suitably penitent were set free after swearing a loyalty oath to the Revolution. This uncharacteristically gentle treatment of the rebels was due to shock and bewilderment among
the Livingstons, who were afraid of further uprisings, especially with Burgoyne drawing near.

There were, it is true, no further uprisings among the tenantry; but their sullen Toryism (or rather, anti-Whiggery) continued. By the fall, the tenants were already repudiating the oaths of loyalty they had been forced to take in May, and nearly seventy Livingston tenants left to join Burgoyne’s army. Even after Burgoyne’s defeat, widespread desertions and draft-dodging continued on Livingston Manor. The tenants were not able to win their land, but they did accomplish one thing by their uprising: never again would they be treated like cattle by their landlords, and never would their votes be simply taken for granted.
*

*
For the story of this until recently forgotten uprising, see Staughton Lynd, “The Tenant Rising at Livingston Manor, May 1777,”
The New York Historical Society Quarterly
(April 1964), pp. 163–77.

General Burgoyne arrived back in Quebec from England on May 6; by mid-June he had assembled a force of 9,500, including 7,200 British and German regulars, and Tory and Indian auxiliaries, and a mighty fleet to sail down the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain. On June 14, he set sail from Fort St. John’s in Canada. At the same time, Col. Barry St. Leger set off for Fort Oswego and the Mohawk Valley to Albany with a force of 1,700, including 1,000 Indians under the brilliant Mohawk war chief, Joseph Brant. Burgoyne accompanied his launching with a flamboyant and preposterous proclamation to the Americans and his Indian allies, denouncing the Americans and proclaiming that Britain was fighting for the “general privileges of mankind.” Even in an age accustomed to high-flown rhetoric, this bombast was a ready subject for satire and ridicule. Numerous parodies appeared, and in England, Lord North laughed heartily at Burgoyne’s rodomontade. Burke ridiculed it, and the Whig writer Horace Walpole denounced “the vaporing Burgoyne,” that “Pomposo” and “Hurlothrumbo.”

Burgoyne overran Crown Point on June 27 and then advanced upon Fort Ticonderoga, that “American Gibraltar,” where the American army was supposed to make its decisive stand. The condition of the American army at Ticonderoga had deteriorated considerably from the previous autumn. Not only had the northern army dwindled away during the winter to only 5,000 men, of whom half were militia; but the problem of command was acute. Gates and Schuyler had both lobbied in Congress for the post of commander of the army, and Congress had taken the worst course by vacillating between the two of them. In March 1777, overall
command was given by Congress to Gates, but was handed back to Schuyler in May. The quarrel between the two exacerbated the friction between New England and New York soldiers in the northern army, the radical Yankees admiring Gates and hating Schuyler, and the Yorkers loyal to their leader. When Burgoyne appeared before Ticonderoga on June 30, 1777, the northern American army was split in two. In command of the Fort was Brig. Gen. Arthur St. Clair with 3,200 men, while Schuyler maintained a force of 2,000 to the south.

Ticonderoga was surrounded by three steep hills, and St. Clair’s troops were not sufficiently numerous to garrison them. The major American error was to leave Mt. Defiance, southwest of the fort, unfortified. Gates, seeing the danger of the peak’s falling to the British, had repeatedly urged its fortification during 1776, but Schuyler paid no heed. During his two months’ tenure in command in 1777, Gates and the brilliant Polish engineer, Col. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who had come to America to fight for the revolutionary cause, prepared to fortify Mt. Defiance. But Gates was replaced in May before he could get the project under way. Even after May, he continued to pepper Schuyler with warnings, but Schuyler again paid no attention. Seeing the possibilities, the British seized two of the three hills at once, and by July 5, British Gen. William Phillips had transported several cannon to the top of Mt. Defiance.

Now directly under the big guns, St. Clair decided on immediate withdrawal; and in dead of night, the Americans sped out of the fort, fleeing down the opposite shore. In pursuit, the British seized, in rapid succession: Ticonderoga and its hills, Hubbardton and Castleton across the lake in Vermont, Skenesboro (near Whitehall, New York), and Fort Anne. Colonel Seth Warner and a rear guard carelessly dawdled, and the British caught up to them on July 7, resulting in a slashing defeat and about 400 casualties for the American forces. The British also suffered heavy casualties, totalling 200. Warner, leader of the American rearguard, fled with the rest of his men to the Vermont mountains; the rest of the American army met and regrouped at Fort Edward, on the east bank of the Hudson River. Meanwhile, Burgoyne’s navy had destroyed and captured over 200 boats on Lake Champlain, and he had seized an enormous supply of arms and ammunition, including powder and more than 100 cannon, which the fleeing Americans had left behind at Ticonderoga. To Americans and British alike, it seemed that a complete victory for Burgoyne was inevitable; Albany was only seventy miles away. King George exclaimed: “I have beat the Americans,” and John Adams talked angrily of making an example of a general leaving his post by having him shot. Actually, this was unfair to St. Clair, who did well considering the position he was in; his retreat was skillfully executed and saved his army. The common soldiers were better at pinning the blame where it truly belonged, and desertions
multiplied as many men refused any longer to serve under General Schuyler.

On the brink of victory once again, the British stopped to rest at Skenesboro instead of pressing their advantage to a swift conclusion. In drawing up his plans for the campaign, Burgoyne had specifically rejected the route from Skenesboro to Fort Edward because it led through dense forests and marshlands. Instead, he planned to return to Ticonderoga and sail to Fort Edward down Lake George, even though that route, including the captured Fort George, was now used only for transportation of supplies. His enormous blunder in finally choosing the land route was made at the advice of the Tory Maj. Philip Skene. Skene had obtained an arbitrary grant of over 30,000 acres in this region, and was the owner of the Skenesboro colony on that land. Now he was eager to have Burgoyne cut a road from Skenesboro to the Hudson, as this would greatly raise the value of his property after the war. By going to Ft. Edward by land (through the Skenesboro-Ft. Anne area), instead of sailing down Lake George, and by dragging over fifty guns with him on the march, Burgoyne greatly slowed his own advance. Schuyler astutely delayed him further by diverting creek water with boulders and by sending axemen to fell thousands of trees across the line of march. Burgoyne took twenty days to traverse 20 miles to Ft. Edward which he captured on July 29, the Americans retreating before him. He proceeded another seven miles down the east bank of the Hudson, stopping at Fort Miller at the Batten Kill. Schuyler established American positions at Stillwater, twenty-five miles to the south on the Hudson River.