Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (21 page)

The tactics they used allowed them to widen the road so that wagons and fieldpieces might be drawn along. Sawing down trees that blocked their movement would make less noise than troops pushing over ground with trees and brush, they believed, and they did not wish to be discovered until they had trapped the American army.
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They need not have worried. Sullivan’s forces collapsed soon after Heister’s gunners began the work of holding the Americans in place. The process of disintegration accelerated as Howe’s troops struck their flank and Stirling’s regiments—principally William Smallwood’s Marylanders and John Haslet’s Delaware Continentals. Raw and untried as they were, these American soldiers fought bravely. They had never fought anyone before; they could not have learned much
about the terrain, having been boated over only the day before, but they held their places under severe fire for two hours. Stirling did not deploy them behind trees and rocks, but stood them up in the open and had them fight in European fashion. By late morning they were almost surrounded. Stirling then sent most of his command across the Gowanus Creek, through the “impassable” marshes into Brooklyn. To cover the rear, he held a part of Smallwood’s Maryland regiment in place and stayed with these soldiers himself. Just before noon, with Cornwallis at his rear and left flank, Stirling—with the Marylanders, 250 strong—attacked, assaulting Cornwallis’s grenadiers six times until he and his men were finally broken by overwhelming British fire. By noon it was all over. The British had cleared the Heights of Guan and pressed the shattered Americans back into their lines at Brooklyn Heights.
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Washington watched part of the action on the American right, but he did not insert himself into the fighting. Remaining out of it was hard for him, but he was wise in keeping his distance in order to gain understanding of the battle. Riding to that sector of the battlefield would have not brought him there in time to affect the action. Because of the rough ground and a wooded ridge, he did not recognize until it was far too late what had happened to that part of his army outside of Brooklyn. It is not known when he discovered that he had been outflanked; but as his soldiers streamed off the ridge and ran into Brooklyn, he saw that what might be considered the first phase of the defense of Long Island had ended in defeat.

There was not to be a second phase. The next two days, August 28 and 29, he brought three more regiments over from New York Island in an attempt to brace for an all-out British assault. It did not come on either day, as Howe, more than respectful of his enemy’s ability to fight from fixed positions, abandoned any idea of an assault with bayonets carried by massed infantry. Instead he began “regular approaches,” as construction of trenches and breastworks toward enemy lines was called. By August 29 the British were about 150 yards from an American fort. Rain fell that day and the next.
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Washington knew that his army’s situation was desperate, and so did his senior commanders who met with him in a formal “Council of War” during the day of August 29. These generals could not avoid the conclusion that their soldiers were so dispirited as likely to be overrun
when British infantry dug their trenches a few yards closer. The Americans’ morale lifted at least for a few hours in the two days after their flight, when they held their own in skirmishes provoked by light British probing. But these feelings of hope were not widely shared and soon passed as the rain continued and the British advanced their trenches inexorably. The council of generals voted unanimously in favor of abandoning their hold on Long Island. For the record, they admitted that their troops had lost their spirit, and rations and tentage were in short supply. They also conceded that their Brooklyn lines were not as strong as they might have been had a serious effort to dig in been made. Washington, ever the realist, put down whatever he retained of the impulse to fight and ordered the retreat.
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That day—August 29—he rarely dismounted from his horse; he reported later that he had not slept for two days. Instead he spent those hours in the saddle, supervising preparations for removal of men and supplies to New York Island. There was much to take across the river—fieldpieces, provisions, gunpowder, and lead for muskets, to name the principal items. There were also horses, a few tents, blankets, and medical supplies to be saved. During the night of August 29, the troops moved carefully out of their trenches and into the formations for entering the boats that Washington had ordered for their use. There were few mishaps, and their skill and care allowed the move to be made without discovery. Howe’s troops found their enemy gone early in the morning; the Americans had left behind little except their pride and several heavy cannon that had sunk into the mud up to their hubs. Howe revealed little disappointment that he had failed to overrun his enemy. Far from such feeling, he probably secretly felt relief, for even an overpowering assault on Washington’s fortification would have been bloody.

Washington took the army off Long Island in good order, but as soon as it landed on New York Island, it fell into shambles. Climbing into boats and sailing across the river had entailed a certain degree of order, as men and weapons were confined and static; ashore, freedom of movement prevailed, and Washington’s army was one that valued freedom and movement. Its soldiers were soon in motion, mostly outward, bolting from camp and going home. The militia, most of whom had only
recently arrived, were the major deserters. Washington reported that “Great numbers of them have gone off; in some Instances, almost by whole Regiments—by half Ones & by Companies at a time.” Others who remained refused orders, and wandered about as they chose, in defiance of their officers in some cases, and in others the officers took themselves off, as eager as their troops to leave the army.
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Recruitment of an army had preoccupied Washington for months, indeed since the move from Boston. The defeat on Long Island made this task even more difficult, and he despaired of succeeding as long as short-term enlisted militia made up the bulk of his force. He needed men for the duration of the war; six-month or six-week militia could not meet the requirements of the stable and disciplined force he needed if he were to hold off the British. Moreover, the militiamen were a negative influence on the discipline of the regulars. An appalled Washington wrote Hancock that the militia “have infected another part of the Army. Their want of discipline and refusal of almost every kind of restraint & Government, have produced a like Conduct.” It was a sad confession he made in this letter to Hancock: “I am obliged to confess my want of confidence in the Generality of the Troops.”
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None of this could have surprised Hancock. Both the style and the substance of the comment had marked Washington’s reports since he assumed command in Cambridge in the summer of 1775.

Before the month was out, he was to expand this analysis of his troubles in command and explain why something needed to be done before the army and the Revolution collapsed. Much of what he said in his appraisals of the militia also applied to enlisted men. They made up the army, of course, but they were not really soldiers. They were simply ordinary men who had reacted with irritation and “inflamed Passions” when the British had begun trampling on American rights. But, as Washington read the circumstance of such “emotions,” it was “foolish to expect … such People,” who composed “the bulk of the Army,” to be “influenced by any other principles than those of Interest.” In fact he concluded, on looking at common soldiers, that those who “act upon Principles of disinterestedness, are, comparitively [
sic
] speaking—no more than a drop in the ocean.” What was required to bring such men to the army “upon a Permanent establishment” was good pay and at least 100 or 150 acres of land, a suit of clothes, and a blanket.
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If there was no high regard for the mass of men in Washington’s assessment, there was not much more for the officers serving in New York. To recruit officers, good pay would have to be given, but it was not. Officers, whatever their pay, had to be of higher quality, Washington insisted. He had made this argument the year before, and in repeating it he stressed a familiar line: An officer differed from his men—he should be a man of good “character” and “Principles of honour.” The group then in the army had been chosen by the states for their ability to recruit; that was their “only merit.” Unfortunately, such officers differed from their soldiers in no other way, and their men treated the average officer as an “equal”—and regarded him as “no more than a broomstick.”
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Indeed, Washington at every opportunity made clear his preferences for gentlemen to make up the core of officers. They had to be of a different quality if they were to lead men—the difference enabled them to insist on what Washington almost always called “due subordination.” There was nothing romantic in Washington’s conception of an army in battle. Gentlemen made officers who were trained to lead men in action, and action might well result in deaths and wounds. Only men who recognized the superior quality of their leaders and who were willing to do as they were bidden could make an army an effective force.

The militia did not rise to the level of conduct necessary for an effective army. Those Washington observed in New York—especially in the defeats of August and September—were clearly, in his eyes, “a broken staff.” They did not consider themselves subject to the “Rules and Regulations of War.” They took liberties in defiance of good order, and they corrupted—Washington’s word was “infected”—others. He had little faith in them, and he, in the ruins of the battles and retreats of these late summer days, wondered if the war could be won.
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The despair in these ruminations he hid from his command, though he revealed much to Hancock at the beginning of September. Writing in this bleakness did not paralyze him, and, far from abandoning his responsibilities, he set about preparing for a British onslaught that would come from Long Island. He thought he had little time to get ready and, hence, he began immediately to pull his regiments together, seeking in his orders to clamp down on soldiers he suspected were almost out of control. This suspicion led him to remind colonels of
regiments to count their men, perhaps as often as three times a day. When men were out of camp, they sometimes plundered the civilians who lived on New York Island. He detested such practices, but he might have been placated by the knowledge that across the river Hessians, more often than British regulars, were doing the same thing to the people of Long Island.
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Troops who were out of control made getting regiments into proper defensive positions difficult, and defending New York Island was the immediate tactical problem. Washington did not wish to attempt to hold the island, but Congress gave him no real choice. Washington turned to recently promoted Colonel Rufus Putnam for advice and also talked the matter over with Nathanael Greene. He lacked the conviction present in Congress that New York Island could be held, but he believed that he could extract the enemies’ blood in their attempts to take it. More than anything he feared entrapments by British attacks in the north, at Kingsbridge or in its vicinity. The British would, according to his and Putnam’s anticipation, attack to the south to hold his army in place and then cut it off by a movement from the northwestern shores of Long Island. To contain such attacks—and to keep open a way to escape from the city—Washington broke his army into several parts: one, the smallest, near the base of New York Island; a second up the island around Kips Bay; and the third, with large contingents, at Kingsbridge and Fort Washington. A fourth part served as a reserve intended to provide support for any section of the line repelling the invaders from Long Island.

These dispositions were not tested until September 15, when in the morning the British placed five ships in the East River, about two hundred yards offshore from Kips Bay, to soften up the American defenses. They opened fire at about eleven o’clock in the morning with broadsides to, as Washington described it, “scour the Grounds and cover the landing of their Troops.”
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This they did to the dismay of the Connecticut militia there in trenches and earthworks. The Americans had never encountered such firepower and took to their heels almost immediately. Washington, who was with units to the north, rode down just in time to see the pell-mell flight of his soldiers. In a sense he should not have been surprised, given that he had complained for more than
a year about the lack of discipline. Perhaps it was disappointment, not surprise, that overtook him, but in any case he lost control of himself in his eagerness to hold his position and took to using his riding cane on the officers and men who were running away from the cannonade. British soldiers landed amid this confusion and might have captured him had one of Washington’s aides not grabbed the bridle of his horse and led him out of danger.
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General Henry Clinton led the troops landing on Kips Bay, a site he had recommended against. He now found the way open to cut across New York Island, trapping the American force to the south. But his orders from General Howe stifled whatever impulse he had to take advantage of his opportunity, for Howe’s instinctive caution had led him to restrain the landing force to the site.

The beneficiary of his enemy’s sluggishness (or addiction to following orders), Washington pulled his army from its vulnerability and retreated up the island to Harlem Heights. The heights, a plateau between the Hudson and the Harlem Rivers, was a part of the island still sparsely settled—rough, wooded ground that seemed made for the defense. Washington set up two lines about three-quarters of a mile apart and planned to establish a third. He had about ten thousand men on the heights; the remainder he soon placed at Kingsbridge, where the two rivers came together.