Washington: A Life (50 page)

Colonel George Weedon says that Washington grew so distraught that “he struck several officers in their flight.”
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It is extraordinary to think of Washington flogging officers amid a battle—a measure of his impotent frustration and shattered nerves. Finally he was stranded alone on the battlefield with his aides, his troops having fled in fright. Most astonishingly, Washington on horseback stared frozen as fifty British soldiers started to dash toward him from eighty yards away. Seeing his strangely catatonic state, his aides rode up beside him, grabbed the reins of his horse, and hustled him out of danger. In this bizarre conduct, Nathanael Greene saw a suicidal impulse, contending that Washington was “so vexed at the infamous conduct of his troops that he sought death rather than life.”
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Weedon added the compelling detail that only with difficulty did Washington’s colleagues “get him to quit the field, so great was his emotions.”
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It was a moment unlike any other in Washington’s career, a fleeting emotional breakdown amid battle.

Once again General Howe tardily pursued the Americans, enabling Washington to evacuate almost all of his men safely to Harlem Heights. Nonetheless Howe had bagged a great prize, a city that would serve as a perfect British headquarters for the duration of the war. For all his valor, Washington had again been caught off guard and he smarted from the bitter defeat. He would spend the rest of the war trying to avenge the loss of New York and dreaming of its recapture. Moreover, the day had provided fresh proof of how skittish his men were, officers and infantry alike.

The next day Washington’s spirits were lifted by a skirmish in the Harlem woods as a corps of rangers under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton probed British positions. At one point, as these rangers retreated, the British soldiers taunted them, blowing a bugle with a sound used in foxhunting to signify the end of the chase. “I never felt such a sensation before,” wrote Joseph Reed. “It seemed to crown our disgrace.”
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It was a clever, if cruel, way to jangle the nerves of the squire of Mount Vernon. Reed, who could be unfairly critical of Washington, claimed that the commander was still sunk in a terrible funk from the day before, his will paralyzed, and had to be “prevailed upon” to capitalize upon the situation.
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In fact, Washington reacted to the British provocation with fighting spirit. His honor insulted, he sent into the fray Virginia riflemen and Knowlton’s rangers, 1,800 men in all, who chased the British troops from the field in what became known as the Battle of Harlem Heights. Although both sides counted about 150 casualties, Washington scored a small but timely victory that buoyed his downtrodden men, and his aide Tench Tilghman said that the American troops “gave a hurra[h] and left the field in good order.”
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While congratulating his revived troops, Washington couldn’t resist taking a swipe at their less glorious conduct at Kip’s Bay: “The behavior of yesterday was such a contrast to that of some troops the day before as must show what may be done where officers and soldiers will exert themselves.”
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It was his way of stressing courage in warfare. Washington oscillated between severity and mercy toward his men. When a Connecticut soldier, Ebenezer Leffingwell, was found guilty of cowardice at Harlem Heights—he had fled and tried to shoot Joseph Reed, who tried to restrain him—Washington allowed the execution to proceed almost to the final moment. Leffingwell was already on his knees, waiting to die, when Washington decided that his army had gotten the message and pardoned him. Lest anyone misunderstand, Washington reiterated that soldiers who fled in battle “shall be instantly shot down, and all good officers are hereby authorized and required to see this done.”
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Dismayed by his officers’ behavior, Washington scouted for new talent and was impressed by the proficiency of a young artillery captain named Alexander Hamilton as the latter superintended earthworks construction at Harlem Heights. Washington “entered into conversation with him, invited him to his tent, and received an impression of his military talent,” wrote Hamilton’s son.
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On the windy night of September 20, a mysterious fire started around midnight at the southern tip of Manhattan and burned until dawn, consuming most of the town between Broadway and the Hudson River. Trinity Church caught fire and collapsed in a thunderous crash. St. Paul’s Chapel was spared only by the timely action of brave citizens on the roof, who smothered glowing embers blown there. Even at Harlem Heights, more than ten miles away, Washington saw the billowing smoke and huge showers of sparks, which surrounded the city with a luminous glow. “Providence, or some good honest fellow, has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves,” he responded.
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The raging conflagration created pandemonium in the city. “The shrieks and cries of the women and children … made this one of the most tremendous and affecting scenes I ever beheld,” said an eyewitness.
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By the next morning the fire had destroyed five hundred houses, a good quarter of the town. In relating this incident to Lord Germain, William Tryon noted that no fire bells rang that night and that “many circumstances lead to conjecture that Mr. Washington was privy to this villainous act as he sent all the bells of the churches out of town under pretense of casting them into cannon.”
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The British never found convincing proof to corroborate their suspicion of patriotic involvement. However, they detained more than a hundred suspects, including Nathan Hale, who was hanged as a spy the next day.

On a sleepless night after the Battle of Harlem Heights, Washington renewed his pleas to John Hancock for long-term enlistments, saying that the unceasing turnover of men, reliance on unseasoned militia, and lack of discipline kept his mind “constantly upon the stretch.”
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Without decent pay for officers and men alike, nothing could be accomplished. Everything remained in scandalously short supply—tents, kettles, blankets, clothing. When visited by a congressional delegation, Washington snapped that he “never had officers, except in a few instances, worth the bread they eat.”
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No less than Washington, Henry Knox believed that only a standing army could defeat the British and that the current army had become “a receptacle for ragamuffins.”
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Prodded by Washington, Congress agreed to give twenty dollars and one hundred acres of land to anyone who signed up for the duration of the war. For Washington, the benefit was partly nullified by a decision to continue to allow state politicians to appoint officers for their own regiments, wresting power from his hands and making officers of men “not fit to be shoeblacks.”
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As September ended, George Washington—stubborn, angry, indignant, and sleep deprived—was steeped in misery. His worst nightmare had materialized: he was doomed to fail because he hadn’t been given adequate means to succeed. He needed a confidant, and Lund Washington remained the recipient of choice for his jeremiads: “In short, such is my situation, that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings … In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.”
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Mount Vernon again offered sustenance for his weary mind, and he pictured the new room under construction there. “The chimney in the new room should be exactly in the middle of it, the doors and everything else to be exactly answerable and uniform,” he advised Lund. “In short, I would have the whole executed in a masterly manner.”
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ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 12 General Howe applied renewed pressure on the Continental Army as 150 British ships sailed up the East River, slipping through pea-soup fog, and deposited four thousand men on the boggy turf of Throg’s Neck, a peninsula on the Westchester shore. This marshy spot lay due east of Harlem Heights, and Washington again brooded that the wily British might entrap his embattled army as part of “their former scheme of getting to our rear.”
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While the intervening ground had numerous stone fences to deflect British advances, Washington couldn’t take any chances. In this dismal season of defeats, he marched his endangered men eighteen miles north to the village of White Plains. He would long recall the hardships suffered by sick soldiers forced to limp along or be carried, so critical was the wagon shortage. The least fortunate were discharged as unfit for service and left behind as common vagrants to beg by the wayside on the road home. The plight of these pauperized soldiers, marooned on country lanes, only compounded the difficulties of recruitment.

On this northward march, the battle-weary soldiers found comfort in gallows humor. Joseph Plumb Martin told of a sojourn on Valentine’s Hill, “where we continued some days, keeping up the old system of starving.” When the soldiers resumed their march toward White Plains, they left behind a weighty iron kettle. “I told my mess-mates that I
could not
carry our kettle any further. They said they
would
not carry it any further. Of what use was it? They had nothing to cook and did not want anything to cook with.”
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Behind the macabre humor lay the somber reality of starving men having to swipe food from farmers’ fields to survive. Deprived of tents and blankets, soldiers burrowed beneath heaps of autumn leaves to stay warm on cool nights.

Around this time, Washington welcomed back General Charles Lee, who had acquired something of a halo after defeating a British expedition to South Carolina. Lee had prevailed upon Congress to compensate him for time lost to civilian pursuits, awarding him $30,000. In private, Lee repaid their generosity by reviling them as “cattle” and urging Washington to flout their orders.
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Lee’s popularity in Congress only stoked his vanity and encouraged the delusion that he was being groomed as Washington’s successor. Blind to this conceited rival, Washington renamed one of the twin forts on the Hudson—the one on the Jersey shore, opposite Fort Washington—Fort Lee.

Once at White Plains, the Continental Army found shelter on elevated ground above the Bronx River. The best it could manage for breastworks was to uproot cornstalks from local fields, then pile them high with freshly turned earth stuffed in between. On the morning of October 28 Washington surveyed Chatterton’s Hill, a steeply wooded bluff, threaded by streams and ravines that tumbled down to the river below. Belatedly recognizing its strategic importance, Washington decided to fortify it. While he was on this plateau, a breathless messenger raced up to him. “The British are on the camp, sir!” he reported to Washington, who at once told his generals, “Gentlemen, we have now other business than reconnoitering.”
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He assigned sixteen hundred men under General Alexander McDougall, entrenched behind stone walls, to hold the hill.

The Americans soon faced thirteen thousand British and Hessian soldiers who must have looked brilliantly invincible in autumn sunlight as they stepped forward in smart columns. As General Heath recalled, “The sun shone bright, their arms glittered, and perhaps troops never were shown to more advantage.” Amid this impressive display of force, British artillery fire began to darken the fine, crisp air. In the evocative words of a Pennsylvania soldier: “The air groaned with streams of cannon and musket shot; the hills smoked and echoed terribly with the bursting of shells; the fences and walls were knocked down and torn to pieces, and men’s legs, arms, and bodies mangled with cannon and grape shot all around us.”
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The bloodiest combat unfolded at Chatterton’s Hill. In the first wave of attacks, Captain Alexander Hamilton, positioned with two fieldpieces on a rocky ledge, sprayed the invading forces with deadly fire, driving them back. After regrouping, the British grenadiers and Hessian soldiers forded the Bronx River and bravely clambered up the wooded slope under a thick hail of bullets. Their artillery set fire to autumn leaves, creating a thick canopy of smoke. As they rushed through burning grass, the Hessians hoisted their cartridge boxes above their heads so as not to blow themselves up. In the end, enemy soldiers succeeded in dislodging the American forces as the militia lost heart and ran. Their fright was understandable as cannonballs flew thick and fast. One Connecticut soldier recalled how a cannonball “first took the head of Smith, a stout heavy man and dash[e]d it open, then it took off Chilson’s arm, which was amputated … it then took Taylor across the bowels, it then struck Serg[ean]t Garret of our company on the hip [and] took off the point of the hip bone … What a sight that was to see within a distance of six rods those men with their legs and arms and guns and packs all in a heap.”
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For all that, the British and the Hessians suffered 276 casualties, or twice as many as the Americans. Once again General Howe dawdled after victory and bungled a major opportunity. In later testimony before Parliament, he traced his sluggish behavior to an aversion to unnecessary combat losses but also cited unnamed “political reasons”—perhaps his preference for a negotiated solution rather than outright conquest of the Continental Army.

Both sides continued to place a premium on commanding the Hudson River. The twin American outposts of Fort Washington and Fort Lee, combined with obstructions sunk in the river, were supposed to bar British ships. This assumption represented a triumph of hope over experience. On October 9, with Washington on hand to witness it, the British tested American defenses by sending three warships up the river. While American guns blasted away from both shores, killing nine British sailors, the ships coasted by largely intact, their movement unimpeded by submarine obstacles and a boom flung across the river. “To our surprise and mortification,” Washington told Hancock, the ships passed “without receiving any apparent damage from our forts, though they kept up a heavy fire from both sides.”
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Nonetheless Congress refused to end reliance on this porous barrier and demanded that the river defenses be reinforced.