Conceived in Liberty (239 page)

A British force of 10,000 began the attack on the fort on November 14, surrounded it, and secured its inevitable surrender. The Americans lost over 150 men in casualties and more than 2,800 captured, a staggering total loss of nearly 3,000 men. Three days later, the British crossed the Hudson and took Fort Lee, which Greene had to evacuate hastily without securing or destroying its provisions. At the two forts the British seized several thousand guns and muskets, large amounts of ammunition and flour, and hundreds of tents.

Typically, Washington allowed Greene to bear the brunt of criticism for the defeat, without acknowledging his own grave responsibility. To Lee, the disaster at Fort Washington was the last straw; the incompetence
of Washington could be brooked no longer. It was clear to him—and to many other Americans as well—that he would do far better as commander-in-chief, and that, at the least, Washington’s superior rank must not be allowed to impose fatal blunders upon Lee.

Washington had encamped at Hackensack, New Jersey, northwest of Fort Lee, and Greene’s forces joined him there after almost being cut off and encircled by General Cornwallis at Fort Lee. The American forces, totalling 14,000 effectives, were now split into three parts; Washington and Greene in Hackensack with 5,400 men, Heath at Peekskill with 3,200, and Lee at North Castle with 5,500. Hackensack, on a flat plain, was not defensible, and Washington, with only 3,000 men, retreated southwest toward Newark; this was the beginning of his full-scale retreat across New Jersey. To him and to his discouraged and broken army, it seemed that destruction was imminent, and he contemplated a retreat all the way to Virginia and even west beyond the Alleghenies. As he retreated, rapidly losing militia whose terms of enlistment had expired, Cornwallis followed hard on his heels; Washington fled toward Pennsylvania to safety on the other side of the Delaware River. Cornwallis was on the point of catching and destroying the American army at New Brunswick in early December, but at the crucial moment, Howe ordered him to halt at the Raritan River for four days, to wait for him to come up with his army. Washington was thereby allowed to escape to the Delaware. At the same time, in a useless and wasteful move, Howe dispatched Clinton with 6,000 men to seize Rhode Island, where the British were to linger around Newport for several years. Washington thereby escaped to Trenton, on the Delaware. When he got there, however, he uncertainly and with no clear goal or purpose turned back. When he learned that Howe had reached Cornwallis and that the two were again pushing forward, he fled across the Delaware on December 6. The British posted their men at Trenton and in the surrounding area and dug in contentedly for the winter.

Meanwhile, Washington was repeatedly and frantically urging Lee to join him in New Jersey, but Lee refused; he carefully waited to clear upper Westchester of Tories and to call up more Connecticut and Massachusetts militia to guard against any invasion of New England. Crossing the Hudson in early December, Lee decided that it would be better to remain in the western hills of New Jersey. Stationing his army at Morristown on December 8, he quickly realized, as Washington did not, that Howe was not about to fall on Philadelphia that winter; therefore, he would be better employed in harassing and disrupting the British communication and supply lines from New York to Trenton.

Lee was forming a new and brilliant conception of the proper mode of waging revolutionary warfare. Washington, interested first and foremost
in keeping his army intact, was willing to abandon New Jersey to the British—with the result that Tories began to sprout and multiply, and Tory militia to emerge and round up rebels. Lee saw that a revolution depends above all on the support and enthusiasm of the populace; the army is, in a sense, the superstructure of mass support. He saw that the people’s militia was the last line of local defense and that this militia must remain active if the entire population were not to succumb to collaboration with the enemy. But the fragmented and untrained militia would only fight, especially in the early stages, if supported by Continental troops nearby. While Washington was denouncing short-term militia and calling for long-service volunteers, Lee urged increased emphasis on local militia, which would create “zones of resistance that could deny General Howe the fruits of his recent victories.”
*
Lee, in short, had set out to “reconquer... the Jerseys” and he wrote Washington that “the militia in this part of the provinces seem sanguine. If they could be assured of an army remaining amongst them, I believe they would raise a considerable number.”

Lee was increasingly acting independently of Washington; indeed, the New York Council of Safety tried to persuade Gates, who was leading a column from upstate New York to aid Washington, to disobey orders and join Lee instead. Gates, less of a military rebel than Lee, refused the plea. Furthermore, the New York militia under General George Clinton was getting ready to join Lee’s army. Against his better judgment, Lee finally yielded to Washington’s pleas and marched slowly southwestward. On December 13, a chance British raiding party captured Lee and spirited him to the British lines. Americans everywhere, from the ladies of Boston to Washington and Greene to Robert Morris, Hancock, and the Adamses lamented the sudden grievous blow. They had lost their “palladin of American liberty,” as Lee was widely called. The British, on the other hand, rejoiced wildly, from the redcoated soldiery to General Howe and the officers to the public houses in England. Lieutenant Colonel William Harcourt, head of the raiding party, rejoiced at the imminent end of the war and received the personal thanks of King George for his exploit.

Never had American morale been lower. Ill, barely clothed or sheltered, Washington’s 5,000 men on the west bank of the Delaware could have been crushed by a determined British attack and Philadelphia easily captured. But the Howes were still primarily concerned with making peace, and they issued a proclamation of a full and general pardon to all Americans who would take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Conservative New Jersey responded with enthusiasm, 5,000 quickly taking the oath; citizens fled the exposed capital city of Philadelphia in droves. The eminent and wealthy Allen brothers, of the old Proprietary Party of
Philadelphia, fled to join the British at Trenton, as did Joseph Galloway. Congress hastily turned over all military direction to Washington, and on December 12 adjourned to Baltimore amid the jeers of Philadelphia’s Tories.

With his brilliant sense of timing, Tom Paine now published his pamphlet
The Crisis.
Paine had joined Greene’s forces at Fort Lee as a humble volunteer, and shared the lot of Washington’s soldiers.
The Crisis
was a stirring call for a redoubling of hope and effort. It opened:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it
now,
deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

The Crisis
spread like wildfire through all the towns of America, and among the soldiers in the Continental Army. Everywhere morale was raised, even in New Jersey, where widespread and indiscriminate rapine and plunder by British and Hessian troops in the north alienated many Tories. But the biggest boost to morale was Howe’s decision, over the objections of his officers,
not
to cut through Washington’s forces and take Philadelphia, but instead to withdraw the his army to winter quarters in New York. Philadelphia and the Continental Army were now safe. Heartened by this disastrous British decision, Washington began to take on, for a while, the accoutrements of a guerrilla leader. With the British tied down, somnolent, passive, and withdrawing, why not a swift attack across the Delaware? In this aim, Washington was reinforced by Lee’s second in command, General Sullivan, who arrived across the Delaware with 2,000 troops; and Gates came from the north with another 500. All in all, Washington had 6,000 effectives by Christmas of 1776.

In this situation, he happily decided on a swift strike across the river. On late Christmas night, through a driving snow, Washington ferried 2,400 men across the ice-laden waters of the Delaware. Most remarkable was the feat of Col. Henry Knox in transporting across the river eighteen field cannon, a proportion of cannon to foot soldiers about three times the usual amount in the eighteenth century. The cannon were particularly useful on a snowy night, for the muskets of that day could not fire unless completely dry. In a perfectly executed maneuver, Washington and his men were able to surround the brigade of Hessians stationed at Trenton; they took them, sodden with the celebrating of Christmas, completely by surprise. Washington’s troops had read
The Crisis
before embarking on the raid, and now they fell upon the Hessians crying, “This is the time to
try men’s souls!” In an hour, the overconfident Hessian commander, Gen. Johann Rall, had been killed and the Hessians had surrendered. The Hessians suffered 30 casualties and over 900 men had been taken prisoner. In contrast, the Americans suffered only three casualties. George Washington had won his first real military victory, and it was indeed a brilliant one. It was also the first battle he conducted in a quasi-guerrilla manner. With the confusion engendered in the enemy troops, Greene and other officers urged Washington to press his advantage and attack the Hessian units stationed to the south in Burlington, but he lacked the imagination to grasp the dimensions of his own victory, and he cautiously withdrew back across the Delaware.

He indecisively waited several days to become aggressive once more, and the delay almost proved fatal. He plunged back across the icy Delaware on December 31 with 5,000 men and reoccupied Trenton. By this time, however, Lord Cornwallis, who had been about to set sail for England, had rushed back to Jersey and was advancing upon Trenton with 6,000 troops. Retreating just southward as Cornwallis entered Trenton on January 2, Washington was in grave peril, for the British were too close to allow the Americans to recross the river. Knox’s guns held off the British advance in the Second Battle of Trenton and Cornwallis, against the advice of Gen. Sir William Erskine, overconfidently decided to wait until morning to deliver the
coup de grâce.
Perhaps at the suggestion of Brig. Gen. Arthur St. Clair, Washington silently moved east during the night, taking a neglected old road to slip around Cornwallis’ lines and move north. At Princeton in the morning, Washington encountered a British brigade under Col. Charles Mawhood, and after a furious battle sustained by Knox’s guns, the Americans routed the British force. If the American troops had been fresh, they might have sped on to capture New Brunswick and isolate Cornwallis in southern New Jersey. Instead, Washington promptly took his exhausted but happy men northwest to winter quarters in Morristown. The angry British were obliged to evacuate all of New Jersey except New Brunswick and Perth Amboy on the Raritan River.

Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton served to bolster and restore American morale. As one young Englishman noted about the Americans: “A few days ago they had given up the cause for lost. Their late successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty mad again....” This turnabout of morale was eminently justified. Professor Alden estimates, with good reason, that Trenton, and not the victory at Saratoga the following year, was the true turning point of the Revolution.
*
Certainly,
American fortunes were at their lowest ebb on the Jersey retreat in November and December; by the 1777 campaign, American forces were stronger and the British never as confident again.

As optimism returned, the Continental Congress moved back to Philadelphia. Despite difficulties in obtaining food, clothing, and recruits to replace deserters and short-term enlistees, by spring new continental regiments arrived at Morristown. Washington used dictatorial powers that had been granted him by Congress to commandeer food from the inhabitants of New Jersey, but the ravages and depredations of the British and Hessians had transformed the previously lukewarm Jersey populace into ardent patriots. As a result, the 14,000 British troops stationed at Perth Amboy and New Brunswick were virtually under siege; any British foraging parties were subjected to devastating attacks by Washington’s forces or by Jersey militia, all aided by the intelligence work of the Jersey citizenry.

*
John Shy, “Charles Lee: The Soldier as Radical,” in
Ibid.,
pp. 37–38.

*
Alden,
The American Revolution,
p. 116.

Howe’s next objective was Philadelphia; but instead of taking it as he could at any time, he dawdled in New York through winter and early spring, while Washington’s army grew stronger. Several sporadic forays took place during the spring. In March, the British burned the American port at Peekskill. The following month, they sent New York Governor Tryon with 2,000 men to burn and destroy the large quantity of American military stores at Danbury, Connecticut. After successfully accomplishing their mission unopposed, the British were neatly harried on the way back by impromptu militia led by Gen. Benedict Arnold. Arnold had been at home in Connecticut, all but resigned from the army. The fiery Arnold had made many enemies, and had been passed over by Congress for promotion, in favor of a brace of inferior generals. After his exploit near Danbury, Congress gave Arnold a belated promotion, and he was persuaded to rejoin the northern army.

British planning for the campaign of 1777 was in the hands of three men: Lord George Germain in London, General Howe, and Gen. John Burgoyne. All three of them were to share responsibility for the British disaster of that year, but the greatest share must fall upon the bizarre strategy and tactics of Howe. Burgoyne had been put in charge of the British army in Canada, replacing General Carleton; Carleton was one of the best of the British generals, but he had become personally repugnant to the colonial secretary. Burgoyne’s idea was that he would descend from Canada down Lake Champlain, a smaller force would cut through Fort Oswego and the Mohawk Valley eastward, and General Howe would bring his massive army up the Hudson Valley—the three to meet triumphantly
in Albany. The colonies would be cut in two, and the combined British forces could proceed to capture New England, and then to turn upon the South. Given the rising American strength in 1777 and the nature of popular revolutionary warfare, the British might well not have succeeded in securing territory they had militarily captured, but at least such a plan had a good prospect of success. A greater emphasis on Howe’s strike north than on a move southward from Canada would have been an improvement, however, for the terrain of Canada and northern New York was not well suited for an unpopular invading army.