The First American Army (50 page)

Seely was relieved; the court-martial had worried him for weeks. He wrote, “Cannot help remarking that I felt very heavy when I was called to answer guilty or not guilty although I knew my innocence.” He was relieved, too, that his friend Governor Livingston had written the special proclamation. The governor and the militia leader had become friends during the war, sometimes dining together, and the governor knew that at some point the New Jersey militia might be instrumental in defending the state.

That day came sooner than Livingston anticipated.

The month of May did not bring much happiness to the troops camped at Morristown. There was not much of a harvest following the dreadful winter. Farmland had been ruined by the cold and snow, fruit trees were destroyed, and corn fields frozen. Hundreds of cattle died from a lack of fodder. Food supplies were short and the soldiers complained continuously. In addition to the lack of food, there was a lack of money since many of the soldiers had not been paid in months. At the same time, soldiers talked bitterly about the profits being earned by the thousands of men working as sailors for the privateers that preyed on British merchant ships while the soldiers at Jockey Hollow starved.

The enlisted men were just as angry with black market entrepreneurs who purchased salt for $15 a bushel in south Jersey and sold it in Morristown for $35 a bushel. The lower-ranking officers, some of whom had risen from the ranks of enlisted men, were bitter about problems with promotion. The states had consolidated lowly enrolled companies and regiments into new regiments. Captains and lieutenants were then forced into the consolidated companies at the lowest rank. Officers who had been prisoners, and there were many, were told that their time imprisoned in warehouses or ships would not count toward their time in the army; they fumed as men with less time in service than they were promoted ahead of them. All starved.

“The men were now exasperated beyond endurance; they could not stand it any longer,” wrote Private Joseph Martin.
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Their anger boiled over on May 25, a rather pleasant day, and exploded in a mutiny, the very event that George Washington feared the most. That evening, a hungry Connecticut soldier complained about some orders to a sergeant. The sergeant called him “a mutinous rascal.” The soldier slammed the butt of his musket into the ground. “Who will parade with me?” he yelled. His entire regiment, including Private Martin, rushed to his side, shouting at the sergeant that they would all join him, march out of camp, and go home. Another regiment joined them. Someone said that many other regiments would join and that they should take a band with them as they left for home.

There were several versions of what happened next. According to most, a popular officer, Colonel Return Meigs, was accidentally wounded by a bayonet. That prompted an officer to order other officers to put down the mutiny. They approached the group and one officer apparently seized a man. Another officer shouted that the men should not move. Instead, the Connecticut men turned on the officers, brandishing their bayonets, and pushed them back.

A Pennsylvania officer quickly brought up a regiment of his men, armed with their muskets, to put down the mutiny but many of the troops thought they had been brought up to join it. Their officers then ordered them back to their quarters. Confusion reigned.

Finally, according to Martin, the Connecticut soldiers quieted down and broke into small groups to argue their grievances, still uncertain what action to take. They were “venting our spleen at our country and government, then at our officers and then at ourselves for our imbecility in staying there and starving in detail for an ungrateful people.”
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The soldiers abandoned the mutiny and returned to their huts after Colonel Walter Stewart wrote down their complaints and promised to take them to General Washington. The commander was angry, but fully understood the reasons why the men revolted. He could not bring himself to have all of the mutineers executed, or even the instigators. He chose one of the leaders and had him shot. The rest were eventually forgiven. The mutiny, which followed a few smaller ones in other posts, deeply disturbed Washington.

News of the dissension in the ranks, a feeling that the Americans were too hungry to fight, plus an assessment that the members of the local militia were not skilled and would not turn out for a battle, prompted the British to launch an invasion of New Jersey that they believed could smash the American army. A victory over Washington’s force, coupled with the capture of Charleston, would surely force the Continental Congress to surrender and end the war.

G
eneral Wilhelm Knyphausen was left in charge of the eightthousand-man British force in New York when Sir Henry Clinton sailed south to take Charleston. The veteran Prussian general, in charge of all Hessian troops since January 1777 and second in command of British forces to Clinton, was a slender man who walked and sat ramrod straight. The sharp-featured Prussian was a gentleman and esteemed by his men. In the beginning of June, Knyphausen decided to attack the Americans at Morristown by landing at DeHart’s Point, Elizabethtown, and then marching west through Connecticut Farms (now Union) and then Springfield. He would surprise the Americans by landing at night, overcome what he believed to be a skeleton lookout force in the area, and then march to Morristown the next morning with five thousand troops. The attack surprised no one. Washington expected such a campaign and had carefully prepared for it. His beacon fire towers and alarm guns had been manned twenty-four hours a day for more than a week when the British landed on June 7. Couriers were ready to ride to militia leaders to alert them to the attack. The number of lookouts had been increased. On June 2, Washington had asked Governor Livingston to call out the entire state militia and have them march to the Morristown area.
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Elizabethtown
was
protected by Continentals under Colonel Elias Dayton.
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Knyphausen was also wrong about the loyalty of the militia. They responded immediately upon hearing the alarm guns. Militia leaders rode as quickly as they could to mobilization points and waited for their men, who arrived soon after, in force and eager to take on the Redcoats.
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The British moved over the water from Staten Island on the evening of June 6 and arrived at Elizabethtown about 3 a.m., expecting no resistance. They were surprised by Dayton’s men. The Americans, realizing that they were engaged with a very large army, held back the British the best they could in a brief skirmish and then began an orderly retreat toward Connecticut Farms, firing at the British as they went. This harassment slowed the British force considerably. By the time they arrived at Connecticut Farms, the Americans there had time to assemble enough men to do battle. General William Maxwell’s brigade formed a line near the Presbyterian meetinghouse and held off the British for several hours as more Americans arrived. The British finally pushed the Continentals back and out of the village. The Redcoats then set fire to a dozen buildings in the village, including the meetinghouse, and, in the melee, it was charged that a British soldier shot and killed Hannah Caldwell, the wife of Rev. James Caldwell, a beloved local minister and patriot. The British denied one of their soldiers had shot Mrs. Caldwell.

The Americans withdrew westward and set up another line. One of the keys to victory for the British was a small bridge that crossed the Rahway River, a narrow tributary only slightly wider than a brook. Dayton’s regiment, with a single cannon, defended the bridge. They were already in place as the British appeared. Ordered to assist them was the Morris militia under Seely, but to do so the men had to cross an open meadow as the British artillery was put in position.

Seely had been the head of the militia for four years by then and was an accomplished leader. Cursing as loudly as he could to get his men to move faster, the colonel led the militia into and across the meadow. They soon became targets of a heavy cannon and musket bombardment and scrambled for cover behind any large rock or thick tree trunk they could find. Ashbel Green, a seventeen-year-old volunteer who later became a minister, was caught in the middle of the shelling. He wrote later, “Cannonball and grape shot . . . swept over us like a storm of hail, the ground trembling under us at every step. No thunderstorm I have ever witnessed, either in loudness of sound or the shaking of the earth, equaled what I saw and felt in crossing that meadow.”
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Dayton’s Continentals and Seely’s militia held the bridge and the line that Greene had put together held off the entire British army during heavy skirmishing that lasted several hours. Late in the afternoon, Washington’s wing of the army arrived and the commander in chief aligned them in a north-south arc at the foot of the Watchung Mountains to await another British advance. There was none. Knyphausen knew he had been defeated and withdrew to Elizabethtown.

The Second Rhode Island saw little action that day, but did the next. Washington assumed that Knyphausen might be preparing to move northward, toward West Point, a target Washington always believed key for the Redcoats.

To protect himself, Washington sent a fifteen hundred man force under General Edward Hand, including the Second Rhode Island, to DeHart’s Point to harass the enemy. The Rhode Islanders walked directly into the five-thousand-man British and Hessian force. Greenman wrote, “Marched forward in this position to attack the enemy. Fired two rounds at them.”

Sylvanus Seely and the Morris militia stood right next to the Rhode Islanders. The several hundred militiamen had been ordered to join the Continental Army force and advanced as the center column. When they encountered fire, along with the Second Rhode Island, the militia, Seely wrote, “behaved exceedingly well.” Some men fell back after the shock of the first volley, but moved toward the enemy on Seely’s orders. The Morris County men took twenty British prisoners in that first engagement and, with the Rhode Islanders, moved forward into the woods in an effort to claim more. They were stopped cold. “The enemy opened up on us with a number of field pieces,” Seely wrote.

The Rhode Islanders and the local militia had no chance in face-toface combat against what Greenman labeled a “far superior” force and the enemy cannon; the Americans retreated back into the woods in an orderly manner and waited for the British to attack. The enemy, though, had no plans to do anything except leave. When he returned from the victory at Charleston on June 17, Sir Henry Clinton declared that the British were not finished with Springfield. Knyphausen’s plan had been solid. Clinton would try, too.

The Rhode Islanders had been expecting something would happen following the return of Clinton’s fleet. Washington had left them to guard the Springfield area and they heard numerous rumors that the British were about to attack again. They spotted seven large British ships in New York harbor. On the twentieth they were again told to be prepared. “ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to march at a moment’s warning.”

That same day a very nervous Baron von Steuben, hearing reports of a huge British force being assembled for an invasion, begged Governor Livingston for as many militia units as he could raise. Livingston had prepared for just such a situation. Within just twenty-four hours, he had armed troops on the highways headed north as fast as they could march. He wrote to a relieved von Steuben that morning, “The militia from the lower counties of this state are on their way in considerable numbers.”
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The situation became even more intense the next day. Early in the morning, Washington ordered Seely to draft as many men as necessary to swell his militia unit to its largest size ever, 1,248 men, and to get them into the service immediately. The commander took the main army and started toward West Point, fearful that the British fleet was getting ready to sail up the Hudson. Nathanael Greene assumed command of the twenty-fivehundred-man army in the Springfield area. On the twenty-second, more rumors flew and Greenman wrote that “this day a number of boats and small craft passing from New York to Elizabeth, which we imagine the enemy was reinforcing and their approach might be speedily expected.”

He was right. The British, now under Clinton, attacked the next morning, June 25, with a force of six thousand regulars and a long train of cannon against Greene’s far smaller army. The British had massed in Elizabethtown and at 5 a.m. again headed toward Springfield along two roads, Springfield and Vauxhall. The Second Rhode Island was at first ordered into the village of Springfield, with its fifty buildings, to defend a meetinghouse as part of Maxwell’s brigade. But then the Rhode Islanders were rushed back, over a bridge, into an orchard at a second bridge that crossed one of tributaries of the Rahway River—the scene of a hot fight during the June 8 invasion—to prevent the British from crossing and moving toward Morristown. The Second Rhode Island had only a single field piece for artillery. In the distance, they could hear cannonading coming from the British line and watched as shells hit several buildings in the area, setting them on fire. The Americans knew they were outnumbered by more than two to one.