Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (27 page)

The battle at Birmingham Hill was soon heard at Chadd’s Ford by the British and the Germans commanded by Knyphausen. This part of Howe’s army now crossed the Brandywine, where they ran into Anthony Wayne and William Maxwell. The Americans fought with spirit for a time but were soon pushed back by the large enemy force. A German officer later remarked on the bloody hue the Brandywine took on as his soldiers wading across were shot down. They could not be stopped for long, however, and the retreat of the Americans along the creek soon merged into the larger flow on their right flank.

An exhausted Washington almost fell into bed at about midnight that night. He had helped rather than led the disorganized men who fled the field. Part of those hours of pulling men in retreat together occurred in the hands of Nathanael Greene and his subordinates, who managed to retain unit integrity. The darkness of the night gave cover, but it also made it more difficult to reestablish company and regimental organization. Had the British troops not been exhausted, they surely would have killed more of their enemy and made the retreat even more disorderly than it was.

Though he was near exhaustion, Washington told his staff as he prepared to go to bed that he must report something about the battle to Congress. The task fell to his staff—in this case Colonel Timothy Pickering—to write the dispatch. As in almost every other instance, Washington read what was written and added a word of his own. Pickering had not disguised the defeat, saying that it left “the enemy masters of the field,” but Washington felt that he had not conveyed anything about the morale of the army, and therefore added, “Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am happy to find the troops in good spirits: and I hope another time we shall compensate for the losses now sustained.”
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It was an important addition, though it probably described his own feelings better than those of his soldiers. In any case, there was no way of accurately assessing how the defeated felt. Washington himself knew that his troops had taken a pounding; he knew also that he had not performed with brilliance—or success. But at least he was between the British and Philadelphia, which was their objective, he now realized with certainty. Keeping them from Philadelphia would not be easy, and none of his commanders had clear ideas about how to hold them off.

The immediate task for the army was to collect its stragglers and equip itself for further fighting. In the days that followed, Washington organized both efforts while attempting to block Howe’s army from Philadelphia. He did not know whether Howe would pursue him; the British had not suffered the casualties that the Americans had taken, but their army had marched seventeen miles in order to bring on the battle, and they had fought all afternoon just as the Americans had. Howe rested his troops for three days and took care of his wounded.

Washington took advantage of this respite from fighting to summon
regulars under Major General Alexander McDougall at Peekskill and militia located in nearby New Jersey. His strategic aim of defending Philadelphia and defeating Howe required, he thought, that he keep his army between Howe and the city. Howe, he believed, would attempt to cross the Schuylkill at Swedes’ Ford, about twenty miles above Philadelphia. To make certain that some other ford not be used, he established outposts at several of the most likely places. But he could not make effective preparations on the Delaware River below the city, and if Howe took the city, American fortifications below might choke off the line of supplies the river offered.

The first task was to keep Howe out. On its face, given the condition of the American army, this assignment looked almost impossible. The army remained fragile, with stragglers only slowly returning, and those remaining in camp were in miserable circumstances—as many as a thousand lacked shoes, and almost all needed fresh clothing, blankets, and tents. At least its generals had accumulated valuable seasoning at Brandywine, though one, John Sullivan, seemed on his way out. Congress was dissatisfied with his performance, both on a raid against Staten Island in August and at Brandywine on September 11, where, the delegates believed, he had failed to protect the right flank of the army stretched out along the creek. Congress, in an act of imperfect timing, demanded that Sullivan be recalled from Washington’s army in order to answer its questions about his performance and his bravery. When the demand came to Washington to produce Sullivan, he wrote back that he understood the summons by Congress but refused to comply with it, saying that Sullivan was needed for the next great battle. Congress, out of respect for Washington, backed down.
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That battle, satirically called “The Battle of the Clouds,” was not the one Washington expected to fight. It occurred as the two armies approached each other near Goshen on September 16. Howe’s army had renewed itself after the strain of Brandywine, and now, with Cornwallis leading one column and Knyphausen another, it marched toward the Goshen meetinghouse fully expecting to find its enemy awaiting. Small units of Americans on reconnaissance did await the British, but Washington had pulled the main body out before any major collision could occur. Rain began falling heavily as the two sides closed in, and American troops soon discovered that their powder could not be kept dry. Ordinarily an American infantryman, equipped with a pouch or
cartouche for carrying powder and shot, could keep his powder dry, but this rainfall proved too much for the usual equipment. The estimates at the time held that around 400,000 cartridges were ruined, and the Americans were effectively disarmed by nature.

The rain, a sustained torrent, impressed officers in both armies, and no one among the Americans complained when, late in the storm, Washington ordered a retreat. The rainfall may have done him a service: His army had not fully recovered from Brandywine, and the additions of McDougall’s Continentals and Dickinson’s militia had not brought it up to a fighting standard. There were too many men without shoes, too many dressed in clothing hardly better than rags, too many sick or weakened by illness, and undoubtedly too many who were simply tired out by the almost constant marching. And when they rested, too many found no shelter in tents, and too many slept uncovered by blankets.
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Washington led this tattered lot to Yellow Springs, then to Warwick Furnace, and finally on September 18 to Reading Furnace, where they set up camp. They were there only long enough to clean their weapons and to replace powder and cartridges. The next day they resumed their march, in a vain effort to keep the British out of Philadelphia. The rain three days earlier had taken them out of any useful blocking position, and Howe seemed bent on turning the American right; virtually every move he made suggested to Washington that his enemy aimed to execute a tactic most recently employed at Brandywine. In response to British moves, he took his army to the northwest, intending to prevent a grand flanking operation but actually opening the way behind (or under) the Americans to the city. Howe crossed the Schuylkill on September 23, and rode into Philadelphia on the twenty-sixth. Congress, warned days before, fled for Lancaster, and Washington now hoped to trap Howe by cutting off his supplies coming up the Delaware.

With Howe ensconced in Philadelphia, Washington made camp along Skippack Creek, twenty-five miles to the west. He had no intention of sitting quietly, however. The old desire for action worked within him, drawing strength from his conviction that his troops, young and inexperienced as they generally were, would fight well if given half a chance. By early October that chance had appeared. Howe had not found life in Philadelphia full of comfort and ease. The American forts on the Delaware River blocked all traffic and denied British ships the
opportunity to bring in supplies and reinforcements. In his isolated circumstances, Howe, not wanting to spread all his troops throughout Philadelphia in inns and houses, had bivouacked around nine thousand at Germantown, on the east side of the Schuylkill River five miles to the north. Another three thousand had been sent to protect the transport of supplies from Elkton, Maryland, which involved a slow move over land. Four battalions remained in Philadelphia, and two more had marched off to attack Billingsport, twelve miles below the city on the Delaware. Howe was now spread all over the map.
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When Washington learned of the scattered condition of the enemy, he decided to attack the largest concentration, at Germantown. His troops probably needed no persuasion to fight, but Washington felt compelled once more to review the reasons why they should. The preamble to his general orders to the army conveyed something of his own eagerness and, what is probably more important, just how far his understanding of the Revolution and of his army had proceeded. He now recognized that a professional pride existed in at least several of his regiments, and he appealed to it by reminding them that far to the north their comrades had delivered a heavy blow to Burgoyne at Freeman’s Farm. He coupled this reminder of the northern success with invocation of the cause of America:

This army—the main American army—will certainly not suffer itself to be out done by their northern Brethren; they will never endure such disgrace; but with an ambition becoming freemen, contending in the most righteous cause, rival the heroic spirit which swelled their bosoms, and which so nobly exerted, has procured them deathless renown.
Covet!
My Countrymen, and fellow soldiers!
Covet!
A share of the glory due to heroic deeds! Let it never be said, that in a day of action, you turned your backs on the foe; let the enemy no longer triumph.
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These appeals to pride, to heroism, to honor had been made before, but their linkage to a cause that was “righteous” as well as glorious, and that was shared by the “Country,” marked a subtle departure, a broadening understanding. Washington ended by bringing these grand concepts into conjunction with the immediate and personal interests of his troops. The enemy, he reminded them, “brand you with ignominious epithets. Will you patiently endure that reproach? Will you
suffer the wounds given to your Country to go unavenged?” These questions concerned his soldiers’ families, especially since a revolution that failed would undoubtedly be regarded as treason: “Will you resign your parents—wives—children and friends to be the wretched vassals of a proud, insulting foe? and your own necks to the halter?”
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Perhaps only in a revolutionary war do soldiers go into battle with a conception of a “righteous cause” competing with an image of their own necks in a halter. These men could have no doubts about what they were fighting for, though they may have blurred some of the fine distinctions in republican theology. What they had to understand was that their fight was for themselves, not for an overmighty lord and master.

The first task at Germantown was to surprise the British. Washington took care to give Howe no warning by taking a leisurely march to the village. Rather, he broke his camp twenty miles to the west and, by a forced march during the night of October 3, got into position. At 2:00
A.M.
, he stopped two miles away from the British pickets.
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Germantown, five miles northwest of Philadelphia, extended two miles on each side of Skippack Road, which ran between Philadelphia and Reading. All of the British there were east of the Schuylkill, as indeed was most of the town. Most of their camp lay at the south end of town, though of course they had placed pickets along its northern edge. The four roads that led into Germantown seemed to make an attack on a broad front possible, and Washington decided that his army should converge on Howe’s camp in overwhelming strength. Accordingly, he drew up a plan that provided that four prongs of the American army would push into Howe simultaneously at 5:00
A.M
. Major John Armstrong and his Pennsylvania militia would advance down the Manatawny Road on the American right and behind the British left. Sullivan, with his own and Wayne’s reinforced brigades, would deliver the main blow down the Skippack Road, which cut the town in two; Greene would lead his force, including Stephen’s division and McDougall’s brigade, along Limekiln Road, to the northeast of Skippack; and a mile farther to the left, Smallwood, with Maryland and New Jersey militia, would march down the Old York Road and if
all went well cut into the British right and into the rear of their main encampments.

On the map the plan looked brilliant, and it very nearly worked on the ground. Once the American troops had positioned themselves, at two o’clock in the morning, they moved forward to within a few hundred yards of the outposts, and at around five, in the early light, they struck. Washington’s order called for an assault by “bayonets without firing” along all four roads. Sullivan’s force, which Washington rode with, hit first at Mount Airy and drove over the pickets. There was firing, apparently from both sides—American fire discipline was almost never tight—and the British in confusion gave ground. A heavy fog that made seeing ahead more than fifty yards impossible created some of the confusion, especially about the size of the attacking force. Howe rode up through the fog to scout the ground for himself and immediately berated his light infantry for yielding. “Form! Form!” he called, and added that he was ashamed of his soldiers for running before only a scouting party.
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The scouting party turned out to be Sullivan’s infantry, accompanied by light artillery, which soon disabused Howe of the notion that only a probe was under way. The fog also confused Sullivan’s troops, who had trouble maintaining contact with one another. And within the first hour they experienced greater confusion when they ran into a strongpoint on Skippack Road. This point was the Chew House, a large, old house constructed of heavy stone, which Colonel Thomas Musgrave of the 40th Regiment occupied with six companies. After failing to take it, Sullivan sent his men on, but the delay had given the British time to form.