All the King’s Men, page 28
British losses were fewer than 400 killed and wounded – among the dead was the young and recently promoted Sergeant Jeffrey Grimes of the 23rd Fusiliers – and Howe rightly considered the operation an unmitigated success. Yet he had held back an immediate pursuit with the intention of putting the main rebel position at Brooklyn under siege, trusting that time would deliver him both the Heights and New York City. It did, but only after Washington had used the cover of a storm and fog on the night of 29 August to remove his entire force from Long Island to Manhattan. Although New York was now within range of Howe’s guns, and the first part of his strategy had been achieved sooner and with less cost than he had expected, he had still missed a great opportunity to destroy a large part of the Continental Army – and his critics, Clinton among them, were not impressed. ‘Had our Troops followed them close up, they must have thrown down their arms and surrendered,’ wrote one officer. ‘Or had our Ships attacked the Batteries, which we have been in constant Expectation of being ordered to do, not a Man could have escaped from Long Island.’29
There were signs, however, that Howe’s strategy was working. Spies and deserters brought word that the rebel army was in disarray, that thousands had voted with their feet, and that the rest were fearful of being trapped between the British on Long Island and the troops advancing from Canada. There was much truth in this: the Connecticut Militia had suffered the most casualties on Long Island and, after the evacuation, 6,000 of its disgusted soldiers returned to their homes; this was the start of the colony’s gradual alienation from the rebel cause, which would culminate, by the end of the war, with its coastal area freely providing the British Army with forage and supplies.
It now seemed to some of Howe’s brigadiers that the capture of Manhattan might even end the war. James Grant did ‘not look for another campaign’; Lord Cornwallis thought that ‘in a short time their army will disperse and the war will be over’; and Lord Percy was convinced ‘this business is pretty near over.’ Howe was more circumspect, as was his brother, Admiral Howe, who was keen to discover if the victory of 27 August had made the rebels any more desirous of peace. The admiral was in a quandary: he knew that he did not have the authority to discuss a plan of reconciliation until the rebels had surrendered; yet he also knew that the rebels would never surrender before all of America had been conquered unless he could find an unofficial way of letting them know what terms they might expect.
After the battle Admiral Howe invited two captured rebel generals, John Sullivan and Lord Stirling, to dine with him aboard his warship Eagle. During the meal he assured his guests that his peace commission had been misunderstood, and that his authority was not limited to issuing pardons and receiving surrender. Rather, he had received assurances from the government that Parliament would ratify whatever agreements he made. He went on to stress his family’s connection with New England, his belief that Parliament had no right to tax the colonists or manage their domestic affairs, and his doubts that Britain could ever conquer America.30
So convincing was he that Sullivan agreed to go to Philadelphia as his emissary and propose that Congress send several of its delegates to an unofficial peace conference. Washington was happy to cooperate, and by 2 September Sullivan was briefing members of Congress on all Howe had told him. The following day he put the main points in writing: Howe had full power to make an equitable peace; he wished to treat unofficially with some members of Congress before the war took a decisive turn; and he thought Congress’s authority should be recognized and many concessions granted before a final settlement was made. The radical majority were highly suspicious, with some complaining that Sullivan had been sent to ‘seduce us into a renunciation of our independence’ and to divert their efforts to win the war. Unwilling to alienate the moderates, however, they agreed on a compromise. A committee of three – two radicals, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, and a moderate, Edward Rutledge – would meet with Howe to ask if he was able to negotiate officially with Congress, and to learn exactly what powers he did possess. This tactic, the radicals were convinced, would ‘unmask’ Howe, who could not negotiate with Congress without recognizing American independence, and who would never be able to offer terms as attractive as Sullivan had suggested.
They were right. At the meeting on Staten Island on 11 September, Admiral Howe told them that they could be received only as private gentlemen, rather than as representatives of Congress, and that if the colonies returned to their allegiance, he could declare them at peace, grant pardons and recommend changes in the imperial system to satisfy their grievances. When they asked him to be more specific, he was deliberately evasive. He did have the power to suspend the Prohibitory Act (which denied the colonists the right to trade), and also to replace parliamentary taxation with fixed colonial contributions to imperial defence, but he was under strict instructions to mention neither until the rebels had surrendered. The committee of three was unimpressed with vague promises of satisfactory terms upon surrender, not least because Congress had no intention of making peace until North’s government had recognized American independence. And this, they knew, it would never do by choice. So the talks ended in failure. ‘They met, they talked, they parted,’ commented one British official. ‘And now nothing remains but to fight it out.’31
General Howe, meanwhile, had been planning the capture of New York City. On 2 September he and Clinton had reconnoitred the shores of Manhattan and Westchester at the entrance to Long Island Sound. Clinton urged Howe to move the army to Westchester so that it could advance to the high ground to the north and sever all land communications to the rebel army on Manhattan. Howe refused, preferring instead to land at Kip’s Bay on the lower-east side of Manhattan. Again it was a cautious plan that would force the rebels to give up New York without the need for a major engagement. All Clinton’s protests – that a landing at Kip’s Bay would simply drive the rebels to stronger positions at the north end of Manhattan, and that a landing at Westchester would trap the entire Continental Army – were in vain.
The assault at Kip’s Bay finally took place on 15 September, after the negotiations had failed. But by then Washington, aware of the danger, had moved the bulk of his troops further north (including a detachment at Kingsbridge, to cover his retreat into Westchester), leaving fewer than 5,000 men to defend lower Manhattan and Kip’s Bay itself. Among the assaulting troops was Lord Rawdon, the lieutenant in the 5th Foot who had fought so heroically at Bunker Hill. He recalled:
As we approached [Kip’s Bay] we saw the breastwork filled with men and two or three large columns marching down in great parade to support them … The ships had not as yet fired a shot but upon a signal from us they began the most tremendous peal I ever heard. The breastworks were blown to pieces in a few minutes, and those who were to have defended them were happy to escape as quick as possible through the ravines. The columns broke instantly, and betook themselves to the nearest woods for shelter. We pressed to shore, landed, and formed without losing a single man. As we were without artillery, upon an island where the enemy might attack us with five times our number … it was necessary to attain some post where we might maintain ourselves till we were reinforced … We accordingly attacked and forced a party of the rebels from the Inchenberg, a very commanding height, taking from them a new brass howitzer, some wagons of ammunition, and the tents of three or four battalions who were encamped on it.32
Around 300 rebels were taken prisoner, but the remainder of the force in New York City escaped up the east side of the island to Washington’s new defensive position on Harlem Heights. More than once that day, Clinton had appealed to Howe to let him march his 1st Division to the Hudson, a distance of barely 2 miles, to sever the rebels’ line of retreat. But Howe refused. The underlying reason may have been his brother’s determination to renew negotiations once New York was in British hands. On 19 September the Howes issued a joint declaration, inviting all colonists to discuss with them the means of restoring peace and reuniting the empire, but also insisting that George III was prepared to revise any objectionable Acts of Parliament. Though it, too, fell on deaf ears, the Howes seemed unconcerned that they were missing repeated opportunities to win a decisive victory. ‘Temporarily,’ writes Ira Gruber, ‘they were willing to subordinate all else to their hopes of finding a permanent reconciliation – to their dreams of a triumphal return to England as the saviours of the Empire.’33
On 21 September, five days after Howe’s men had first entered New York City to the delight of cheering loyalists, a deserter from the 23rd Fusiliers was caught and handed over to the provost for trial. His name was Private Thomas Watson, a former miner and ladies’ man who had left his unit at Boston in early March 1775. He was suspected of having served in the rebel army, an offence for which the penalty was death by hanging.
At his court martial in early October, Watson insisted that he had been kidnapped by a colleague in the 23rd and his brother, a civilian living near Boston, and had tried many times to return to his battalion without success. But his story began to unravel when a Mary Smith, the daughter-in-law of a New York loyalist who had given Watson refuge, told the court that she had seen him in rebel uniform. Under cross-examination by Watson himself, she said that he had told her after the British had entered New York that, if he were to be returned to his unit, he wished immediately ‘to be engaged with the rebels that he might have satisfaction of them’. She and other witnesses could not confirm that they had ever seen him armed, a crucial distinction that would have triggered the death sentence. But they testified to his desertion from the rebel army when it evacuated New York, and to his attempts since to rejoin the British Army.34
He was found guilty of desertion and joining the rebel army, but not of bearing arms against his own side, and was therefore spared the gallows. Instead he received a sentence of 700 lashes. But such punishments were rarely inflicted in full in America, and it is likely he escaped with only a partial chastisement. Clearly Watson did not learn his lesson because in early 1778 he would again desert the 23rd, and this time evade recapture. The motivation on both occasions – and hinted at during his court martial – was almost certainly a relationship with a local woman. It was a problem not confined to the 23rd Fusiliers and would ultimately cost the British Army in America the services of hundreds of men.35
Howe resumed his offensive in early October. His plan was to complete the conquest of Manhattan before turning his attention to Rhode Island; a junction with Burgoyne’s Canadian Army on the Hudson and an incursion into New Jersey would have to wait until the New Year. While his goals had become more modest, his overall strategy had not altered. Occupying territory was still his priority, and to that end his plan for capturing upper Manhattan was designed to minimize casualties. A covering force would be left in front of the rebel position at Harlem Heights, while the rest of the army crossed to Westchester, thus turning Washington’s flank and threatening his communications with New England. The rebels’ only option would be to withdraw up the Hudson, leaving Manhattan in British hands. Much to Clinton’s fury, it was still not Howe’s intention to cut off the rebels’ route of escape.
The first landing at Throgs Neck was accomplished with the loss of just one boat on 12 October, though for a time thick fog had threatened disaster. But the rebels were found in possession of the narrow causeway that linked the neck to the mainland, and it was thought advisable to reland the troops further up the Long Island Sound. Delayed by bad weather and the need to reprovision, this new landing at Pell’s Point took place on the 18th. This gave Washington time to construct a series of defensive positions on the high ground from Kingsbridge in the south to White Plains in the north, with his front protected by the deep and swift-flowing Bronx River.
Howe’s next move was to march his 13,000 men – half of them Hessians – to New Rochelle, a settlement north of Pell’s Point, where he waited for a newly arrived division of 8,000 Hessians to join him. During this pause, he received intelligence that Washington intended to evacuate all of Manhattan except Fort Washington, a strongly fortified position on the Hudson north of Harlem. He was now convinced that Washington would flee north without risking a battle, and so intended to follow him as far as White Plains, where the road from Manhattan became two separate routes to New England. On 25 October, by which time the Hessian reinforcements had arrived, he marched to within 4 miles of White Plains and again halted to give Washington the opportunity to escape.
But the American commander preferred to make a stand, hoping that the British would make a frontal attack on his formidable defensive position. It was a two-tier system: the first line of fortifications, commanded by Lord Stirling (lately exchanged for British prisoners), ran along the headwaters of the Bronx and Mamaroneck rivers; the second, much stronger line under Washington was on high ground to the rear. On 28 October, realizing the rebels were determined to fight, Howe ordered the bulk of his army to make a feint attack against the centre and left of the rebel front line, while his left wing attacked an isolated outpost called Chatterton Hill. An American officer remembered the attacking Hessians were ‘scattered like leaves in a whirlwind, and retreated so far’ that his own men had time to collect the arms and equipment of the men who had fallen, and to drink their rum, before the attack was resumed:
They advanced in solid columns … The scene was grand and solemn; all the adjacent hills smoked as if on fire, and bellowed and trembled with a perpetual cannonade and fire of field pieces, howitzers and mortars. 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 grapeshot, all around us.36
One defender from Connecticut was appalled by the carnage caused by a single British round-shot. It ‘first took off the head of Smith, a stout heavy man, and dashed it open,’ he noted, ‘then took Taylor across the bowels. It then struck Sergeant Garrett of our company on the hip [and] took off the point of the hip bone … he died the same day … Oh! What a sight it was to see within a distance of six rods those men with their legs and arms and guns and packs all in a heap.’37
Slowly but surely the British pressure on the hill began to tell. ‘The steadiness and intrepidity of our troops,’ noted the diarist Lieutenant Peebles, ‘beat them from their strong grounds where they had taken the advantage of fences and stone walls, and made them retire back on the remaining body that was posted on the hill, who immediately turned tail with the fugitives and ran off in the greatest confusion to their works on the other hill [in front of White Plains] … The Rebels suffered considerably both from our Cannon and Musketry and exhibited to our whole army (who were looking on) a recent proof of their inferiority in courage and discipline.’38
Next morning, having discovered that Washington had withdrawn all his troops to his more formidable second line, Howe again paused while his assault batteries were moved forward and more reinforcements arrived from Manhattan. On 1 November he was ready to attack, but heavy rain caused a 24-hour postponement. It was enough time for Washington to withdraw 5 miles across the Croton River to another strong position further north. Howe chose not to pursue. He had gained most of his limited strategic goals for 1776, and it only remained to capture Fort Washington, the last rebel stronghold on Manhattan, and Rhode Island. The former he achieved on 15 November by launching an attack from four separate directions that, for the loss of 350 men, gained him 2,800 prisoners and a huge store of guns and ammunition. Watching from Fort Lee across the Hudson, Washington was mortified. ‘I had given it as my opinion to General [Nathanael] Greene,’ he wrote, ‘under whose care it was, that it would be best to evacuate the place; but, as the order was discretionary, and his opinion differed from mine, it was unhappily delayed too long, to my great grief.’39
Emboldened by this success, and the unseasonably fine weather, Howe decided to capture Fort Lee in neighbouring New Jersey before sending an expedition to Newport on Rhode Island. Both were in his hands by the end of the year, and so successful had the former operation been that Howe authorized its commander, Lord Cornwallis, to continue his pursuit of Washington’s demoralized army through New Jersey as far as the Delaware River. On 6 December he joined Cornwallis at New Brunswick, and at once authorized him to keep up the chase with an advanced guard. Next day Cornwallis entered Princeton shortly after the rebel army had abandoned some of its weapons and marched for Trenton. On the 8th the British general reached Trenton as the rebels were leaving, and only narrowly failed to prevent Washington and his remaining 3,000 men from crossing the nearby Delaware into Pennsylvania. Cornwallis wanted to follow, but the rebels had removed all boats and placed cannon on the far bank.
Not that all of Washington’s troops were safely across the river. Having trekked south to protect Fort Lee, Washington had left General Charles Lee (for whom the fort had been named) in command of the force above New York. As Washington began his withdrawal through New Jersey, he ordered Lee to bring his 7,000 men across the Hudson and meet him at New Brunswick. But Lee dawdled. A former lieutenant-colonel in the British Army and veteran of the Seven Years War who later settled in America, Lee had never forgiven Washington for accepting the supreme command of the Continental Army in 1775, an appointment he felt should have been his. Yet Lee, for all his experience, was not an obvious choice as commander-in-chief. He was not American and his eccentricities – including a slovenly appearance, coarse language and an unwillingness to keep his opinions to himself – meant that he lacked the personal skills required of a supreme commander. Nor could he hide his professional jealousy of Washington, telling Brigadier-General Gates in a letter of 13 December that he deplored the ‘ingenious manoeuvre’ at Fort Washington, and that ‘a certain great man is damnably deficient.’40
