The American Chronicle 1 - Burr (11 page)

I have never known New York so gay—despite the British fleet which materialised in the harbour June 29. The Battery was regularly subjected to bombardments that did no damage. The girls, however, enjoyed squealing with excitement and rushing for protection to our strong arms.

On July 3, the British army under General Howe disembarked on Staten Island, a Tory stronghold. Although our position was perilous, everyone had confidence in Washington. A confidence that was to evaporate when presently he contrived to lose both Long Island and New York City.

As I have already noted, Washington had had very little experience of actual war before 1776. Years before he had been involved in a few disastrous skirmishes with the French and their Indian allies on the Ohio. His first fame was the result of a despatch he sent to the Virginia governor in which he referred to the sound of the bullets that whistled past his head as “charming.” Strange word. Strange young man.

In my view had Gates or Lee been placed in command of the army the war would have ended at least three years sooner. Each was brilliant. Each understood the enemy (Lee, in fact, knew personally the British commanders). Each won true victories in the field against the British, something Washington was never able to do. But though Washington could not defeat the enemy in battle, he had a fine talent for defeating rival generals in the Congress. At the end he alone was at the pinnacle, as he intended from the beginning.

Washington did have a most unexpected
penchant
for espionage. Our intelligence was almost always better than that of the British. Unfortunately Washington’s judgement sometimes disallowed facts. For instance, despite every possible warning, he never believed that the British would attack New York Island when and where they did. Yet he must be given credit for tenacity. Although the war dragged on year after year due to his eerie incompetence, I suspect that the kind of victory he did achieve could only have been the work of a man who combined resolute courage with a total absence of imagination.

I fear that I did not properly appreciate being an aide to Washington. I did not enjoy copying out letters asking Congress for money that was seldom forthcoming: the American soldier was as mercenary as any Hessian. No money, no battle. Nor did I much enjoy listening to the worshipful talk of the other aides who flattered Washington monstrously, to his obvious pleasure. I, on the other hand, was prone to question his judgement although I had been advised by everyone that independence of mind was not a quality he demanded of subordinates. We were happy to be rid of one another.

I was to have a better time of it with my good, old General Israel Putnam whose headquarters I joined in July 1776 at the corner of the Battery and the Broad Way. A former tavern-keeper, Putnam had the amiability of that class as well as a good if crude intelligence. His only fault was a tendency to repeat himself. Whenever the enemy drew close, he would invariably instruct the men not to shoot “till you see the whites of their eyes!” Having made the line famous at Bunker Hill, he tended to plagiarize himself, to the amusement of everyone except those officers who thought the firing ought to begin long
before
the whites became apparent to some of our myopic riflemen.

On July 9, I took the salute at General Putnam’s side in the Bowling Green. Then at the request of the Continental Congress, our adjutant read aloud to the troops a document newly received from Philadelphia.

I confess to not having listened to a word of the Declaration of Independence. At the time I barely knew the name of the author of this sublime document. I do remember hearing someone comment that since Mr. Jefferson had seen fit to pledge so eloquently our lives to the cause of independence, he might at least join us in the army. But wise Tom preferred the safety of Virginia and the excitement of local politics to the discomforts and dangers of war.

Living at Putnam’s house was a pretty girl of about thirteen whom I have been accused of having seduced. Margaret Moncrieffe was the daughter of a major with the British army; she was also a cousin of General Montgomery (how tangled our personal relationships were in those days!). Since her father had been a friend of Putnam, the General took her in. If nothing else, the girl had spirit. I was present when she baited General Washington himself at Putnam’s table.

As dinner ended, a toast was proposed to liberty or victory or some such sentiment. All drank but Margaret.

“You do not drink your wine.” Washington gave the child that cold dull serpent’s glance he usually reserved for those private soldiers who were about to be flogged on The Horse (“Discipline is the soul of an army” was his favourite maxim). A disagreeable child, Margaret was not without courage. She raised her glass. “The toast is—the British Commander General Howe.”

Washington’s face went red in blotches. “You mock us, Miss Moncrieffe ...” Washington began and then stopped, unable as usual to organize a sentence that contained a new thought.

The good Putnam came to everyone’s aid. “What a child says, General, should amuse not offend us.”

Washington regained his usual serenity of expression. With an elephantine attempt at gallantry, he said, “Well, Miss, I will overlook your indiscretion on condition that you drink my health or General Putnam’s when you next dine with Sir William Howe, on the other side of the water.”

I did not like the girl at all. Thought her precocious and sly. When I discovered that she spent hours on the roof with a telescope, looking across to the British encampment, I cautioned General Putnam but he took no notice. She then began a series of flower paintings to be sent as presents to her father. Watching the girl at work one day, I said, “Do you believe there is such a thing as a language of flowers?”

Margaret blushed prettily (she was full-bosomed at thirteen) and stammered. “Yes. I mean no. Not really.” Suddenly I was aware of a true alarm that had nothing of the flirtatious in it. Obviously the language of flowers could communicate troop positions. The girl was a spy.

With some effort, I convinced General Putnam that she would be safer and happier farther removed from the potential line of battle (I suspect the good general of having
known
the child best of all).

Margaret was removed to Kingsbridge. Later she was returned to the British. Her subsequent life has been romantic and untidy. She lives now in London. For some years she was the paramour of the King’s minister Charles James Fox. I am told she gives to me the honour of having been the first to take her virginity. But I do not think that would have been possible.

By the end of August 1776, General Howe had assembled on Staten Island some 34,000 men. It was his intention to seize New York City, take command of the Hudson and split the colonies in two. May I say, what he intended to do, he proceeded easily to do.

Immediately after the arrival of the British, I was sent by Putnam to every one of our outposts from the Brooklyn Heights to the Haarlem Heights. I had never seen men less prepared for a battle with anyone, much less with fresh modern European troops. Junior though I was to the great commanders, I took seriously my task which was to assess our situation as accurately as I could. My gloomy written report to General Putnam was sent on to the commanding general.

Two days later I encountered His Excellency on the Battery. A sulphurous New York August day. Tempers were short. Sweat mixed with the chalk the General used to powder his hair trickled down cheeks fiery from heat and bad temper. His mood was not improved by the sight of the British fleet making complicated manoeuvres just opposite us, cannon beautifully polished, white sails pretty beneath a leaden sky.

“What, Sir, do you think the result will be should the enemy begin an assault?” I was taken by surprise: Washington seldom asked such questions of senior officers; never of junior officers.

“Why, Sir, we shall be routed,” I said with stupid honesty.

“Never!” The “never” was from a permanent member of the chorus of worshippers that was to follow Washington throughout the Revolution ... nay, throughout his long life, even to the grave! No man was ever so much praised and fortified by those about him.

I continued. “It is my belief, Sir, that the wisest course would be the one you have so far pursued with such success since Cambridge.” Yes, I was a courtier, too.

“What, Sir, do you think that to be?” Our suspicious war-lord suspected even then that I was not entirely in thrall to his legend which, quite mysteriously, continued to grow from month to month no matter whether he won or lost or, as was more usual, did nothing.

“To imitate Fabius Cunctator. To avoid meeting head-on a superior enemy. To draw him away from his supplies. To draw him deeper and deeper into the continent where the advantage is ours not his. Sir, I would abandon New York City today. Give General Howe the sea-coast. He will take it anyway. But by withdrawing now, we keep intact the army, such as it is ...”

I had gone too far. One of the aides reprimanded me. “The best troops of the colonies are here, Major Burr. The best commanders ...”

“You under-estimate us, Major.” Washington was unexpectedly mild. With a lace handkerchief, he mopped his chalk-streaked face; the pits from the small pox were particularly deep about the mouth.

“You have asked for my report, Sir.”

“Yes.” Washington turned his back to the port and gazed at the sooty old fort that used to dominate what was still a small Dutch town with rose brick houses and slender church-spires. But then John Jacob Astor was still a butcher boy in Waldorf, Germany.

“We shall defend the city.” Washington’s mistakes were always proclaimed with the sort of finality that made one feel any criticism was to deface a tablet newly brought down from Sinai.

“Sir, I would burn the city to the ground tomorrow and withdraw into Jersey.”

“Thank you, Major. My compliments to General Putnam. Good day, Sir.”

In defence of Washington, I must note that at the time very few of us knew much about the powerful secret forces at work upon him. There is evidence that he would have liked to destroy the city but was stopped by the local merchants (to a man pro-British) and by the Congress at Philadelphia which, eventually,
ordered
him under no circumstances to fire the city. Yet it was his decision—and no one else’s—to confront the enemy with all his forces at Brooklyn in Long Island. This was to be Washington’s first set battle; it was very nearly the last. Even today’s hagiographers admit his sole responsibility for the disaster.

Right off, Washington split into two parts an army which, entire, was not capable at that time of stopping a British brigade. Then he chose personally to respond to a dazzling series of British and Hessian feints: in a matter of hours, he was out-manned and out-generaled.

Thrown back to his main line of defence, the Brooklyn Heights, Washington was faced with the loss of his entire army if he remained on Long Island or humiliating defeat if he chose to give up the Heights and withdraw to New York Island. He chose humiliation.

On the unseasonably cold and foggy night of August 29, I stood in a water-melon patch near the slip of the Brooklyn ferry and watched the evacuation of the army. All night boats went back and forth between New York and Brooklyn. Low dark shapes appearing and disappearing into a strange soft fog. The only sounds the soft moans of the wounded, the whispered commands of officers, the jangle of General Washington’s bridle as he presided over the
d
é
b
â
cle
he had devised for us.

On September 15, 1776, the British fleet appeared at Kip’s Bay about four miles north of the Battery. As usual, we were surprised. A powerful bombardment began at 11:00 a.m. Then the British and Hessians disembarked. Our troops promptly fled, despite the presence of Washington himself who shrieked at his own men like a man demented, broke his stick over a brigadier’s head, cut a sergeant with his sword—to no avail. Raging and weeping, he was dragged away to the sound of British bugles mocking him with the fox-hunter’s “View, halloo! Fox on the run!”

Washington retreated up the island to the Morris mansion on the Haarlem Heights (now the home of Colonel and Mrs. Aaron Burr
ci-devant Jumel
)
which was to be his headquarters for the rest of September. This must have been the lowest point of his career; worse, in some ways, than the winter at Valley Forge.

I sit now in what was his office, as I amend these notes, and think of him more than a half-century ago, scribbling those long, ungrammatical, disingenuous letters to the Congress, trying to explain how he managed at such cost to lose Long Island and New York City.

During this period I saw General Washington only once at the Morris mansion. It was September 22, and I had accompanied General Putnam to a meeting of the senior officers. There was a good deal to talk about. The previous night almost a third of New York City had gone up in flames.

“Someone has done us a good turn.” Washington stood at the foot of the stairs with his plump favourite young Colonel Knox. Before General Putnam could say anything, Washington turned to me and I received for the first and only time his bleak dark-toothed smile. “I would not, Sir, have put it past you to have done this thing.”

“Only at your order, Your Excellency.”

General Putnam and Colonel Knox had no idea what we were talking about.

CHARLIE, I SHALL BURROW into my trunks and find you more of these notes—assuming that you are not too much ennuied by such old matters.

The other night as I wooed Madame on those very same stairs, I thought of Washington. For an instant I could
see
him, just next to Madame, with his dark smile, and the inevitable sprinkle of hair-powder on the shoulders of his buff and blue uniform.

Oh, there are ghosts among us! But then what are memories but shadows of objects gone to dust? Or in this case a smile that is no doubt preserved not only in my vivid if failing memory but actually on display somewhere, in the grisly form of a set of false teeth stained black with Madeira.