I generally rise with or a little before the sun and immediately, with part of the regiment attend prayers, sing a psalm or read a chapter [of the Bible]. I dispatch a considerable deal of business before breakfast. From breakfast to dinner I am boiling in a sun hot enough to roast an egg. Indeed, my dear Lucy, I never suffered so much from fatigue in my life.
On August 1, a swarm of forty-five ships carrying Generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis and some 3,000 troops were sighted off Sandy Hook, newly returned from South Carolina and making “a very fine appearance,” in the eyes of the exultant British.
To the Americans the ships and Clinton’s army were as unexpected as “if they had dropped from the clouds.”
And still ships kept coming.
On August 4, Nathanael Greene reported that another twenty-one had been counted on the horizon, the whole of Lord Howe’s fleet. And as if to underscore the ambiguity of the admiral’s mission, transports loaded with troops bore such names as Good Intent, Friendship, Amity’s Admonition, and Father’s Good Will.
“We have had so many arrivals of late,” wrote a nearly giddy Ambrose Serle, “that the rebel commanders, we learn, give out to their people that we send ships down in the night, which come up in the course of the next day, as a maneuver to intimidate them.”
Joseph Reed, writing to a friend, said that no fewer than a hundred ships had arrived within ten days, and as yet only part of the “foreign” (Hessian) troops had come in. Reed, it appears, was indeed intimidated. For the first time he expressed great misgivings over the wisdom of even trying to defend New York against such a force. “It is a mere point of honor that keeps us here now.” He had a different strategy in mind.
“My opinion is,” he wrote, “we should make it a war of posts, prolong, procrastinate, avoid any general action, or indeed any action, unless we have great advantages.”
As things were, he saw no advantages. To what degree he was pressing such views on his commander by this time is not known.
Even stalwart, optimistic Henry Knox suffered his own private anguish. “I shrink and tremble at the importance of our present conduct—the weight absolute without alleviation of perhaps posterity on the shoulders of the present army, an army, I am sorry to say, [that] is not sufficiently numerous to resist the formidable attacks which will probably be made,” he told his brother in a letter of August 5.
Washington remained determined to make a stand, convinced still that the city must be defended.
On August 12 the sea beyond the Narrows was filled with yet another one hundred ships or more bearing down on New York, a fleet so large that it took all day for them to come up the harbor under full canvas, colors flying, guns saluting, sailors and soldiers on the ships and on shore cheering themselves hoarse.
In addition, another 3,000 British troops and more than 8,000 Hessians had arrived after an arduous three months at sea.
Nothing like it had ever been seen in New York. Housetops were covered with “gazers”; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people. The total British armada now at anchor in a “long, thick cluster” off Staten Island numbered nearly four hundred ships large and small, seventy-three warships, including eight ships of the line, each mounting 50 guns or more. As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact, it was the largest expeditionary force of the eighteenth century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth from Britain or any nation.
But it was also true that as big as the biggest ships were—and to Americans who had never seen anything like them, they were colossal—they could have been bigger still. Even theAsia andEagle were small compared to other ships in the British fleet. HMSVictory, for example, mounted fully 98 guns. Concerned about the difficulties of clearing the shallows of Sandy Hook and negotiating the East River and the Hudson, Admiral Lord Howe had wisely chosen speed and maneuverability over size and more massive firepower.
Still, by the scale of things in the American colonies of 1776, it was a display of military might past imagining. All told, 32,000 troops had landed on Staten Island, a well-armed, well-equipped, trained force more numerous than the entire population of New York or even Philadelphia, which, with a population of about 30,000, was the largest city in America.
Joseph Reed, writing to his wife, expressed what many felt:
When I look down and see the prodigious fleet they have collected, the preparations they have made, and consider the vast expenses incurred, I cannot help being astonished that a people should come 3,000 miles at such risk, trouble and expense to rob, plunder and destroy another people because they will not lay their lives and fortunes at their feet.
***
IN THE TENT ENCAMPMENTS dotting Staten Island the redcoats were in holiday spirits. But so it was, also, on the American side, among such veterans of the Boston campaign as Jabez Fitch in camp in New York, and Joseph Hodgkins, on Long Island, who had no doubt the troops would give a good account of themselves, whatever was to come.
Their confidence was bolstered in large degree by distorted notions of their own strength. It was true enough that the enemy was “coming in almost every day,” wrote Hodgkins to his wife, and they might number as many as 25,000. Yet she need not worry, “for we have 42,000 men now and they are coming in every day.” One newspaper said the American army numbered 70,000.
Many of the new arrivals looked the way soldiers were supposed to, in smart uniforms and well armed, and they marched into town full of pride. Delaware, the smallest colony, had sent the largest battalion in the army, “the Delaware Blues,” a force of 800 turned out in handsome red-trimmed blue coats, white waistcoats, buckskin breeches, white woolen stockings, and carrying fine, “lately imported” English muskets. The proud Maryland battalion commanded by General William Smallwood was composed of “men of honor, family, and fortune,” and, if anything, they were even better armed and more dazzling in scarlet coats lined with buff. Colonel John Glover’s tough Massachusetts fishermen wore the blue jackets of sailors, white shirts, white breeches and caps, while their short, stocky, red-haired commander had silver lace trim on his blue broadcloth coat and carried a brace of silver pistols.
But while the incoming stream of reinforcements had become a daily spectacle, desertions were increasing by the day, and signing up new recruits was proving ever more difficult, in part because that summer of 1776 was a bumper year on American farms and men could rightly claim to be needed at home. “Their complaints are without number,” the colonel of a Connecticut regiment wrote.
Some have got ten or twelve loads of hay cut, and not a man left to take it up. Some have got a great quantity of grass to cut. Some have not finished hoeing corn. Some, if not all, have got their ploughing to do, for sowing their winter grain. Some have all their families sick, and not a person left to take care of them.
In the oppressive summer heat in New York and on Long Island, camp fever had become epidemic. When Lieutenant Hodgkins allowed to his wife Sarah that “a good many of our people are poorly,” that was hardly the half of it. (Hodgkins was worried sick over his youngest child, a two-year-old son and namesake, who, he had learned, was deathly ill at home, and he was no doubt trying to spare her still more worry.) In the regiment in which Jabez Fitch served, 180 men, nearly two-thirds of the regiment, including the commanding officer, Colonel Jedediah Huntington, were too sick for duty. “Sickness prevails greatly in camp,” recorded a regimental surgeon, Albigence Waldo, adding that in other camps conditions were worse.
“The vile water here sickens us all,” wrote the New Jersey chaplain Philip Fithian, who was himself ill.
One died this morning in our hospital of a dysentery…. Two died yesterday in the New England hospital of a dysentery, and thirty more are confined with it and other putrid disorders.
Many also through the camp are much unwell but will not go to [the] hospital. Poor Mr. Donaldson, my old neighbor, is among these. Yesterday he went to the
hospital, but crawled back to his tent this morning, and resolves there to die rather than return.
As they had so often at Boston, Washington and his generals insisted on all possible cleanliness. Nathanael Greene, in particular, gave repeated orders that the camp be kept clean, that the vaults—as latrines were known—were covered with fresh earth daily, and new vaults dug weekly.
The general also forbids in the most positive terms [Greene had written in his orders of July 28] the troops easing themselves in the ditches of the fortifications, a practice that is disgraceful to the last degree. If these matters are not attended to, the stench arising from such places will soon breed a pestilence in the camp.
It was thought that anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 men were sick. “The numbers of his [Washington’s] men are daily diminishing,” wrote an English visitor who had recently “escaped from the provincials” at New York.
They desert in large bodies, are sickly, filthy, divided, and unruly. Putrid disorders, the small pox in particular, have carried off great numbers. When I left the city there were six thousand in their hospitals, to which use they have converted King’s College.
General Heath would later estimate that 10,000 of the army were ill. “In almost every barn, stable, shed, and even under the fences and bushes, were the sick to be seen, whose countenances were but an index of the dejection of spirit and the distress they endured.” And those who had not yet been “taken down” lived with the constant dread that their turn could be next.
“These things are melancholy, but they are nevertheless true,” Washington reported to John Hancock. “I hope for better.”
Under every disadvantage my utmost exertions shall be employed to bring about the great end we have in view, and so far as I can judge from the professions and apparent disposition of my troops, I shall have their support. The superiority of the enemy and the expected attack do not seem to have depressed their spirits.
It had been a long time waiting. By mid-August it had been more than four months since the army had set off from Boston for New York, and hurry was the order of the day. The British had not arrived until the end of June and then, instead of attacking at once, as Washington expected, they had kept him watching and waiting week after week, as still more of their navy and more troops arrived. Whatever their plans or however little time remained in the “season for action,” they seemed, inexplicably, in no hurry whatever.
Washington’s quandary over where the British would strike, and how to apportion the strength he had, was no less extreme now than it had been at the start. Greene and Reed, whose judgment he valued most, were certain the enemy would attack Long Island, both because of the numbers of Loyalists there and the broad accessible beaches where troops could readily land under the protection of British ships.
But Washington worried that a landing on Long Island might be a diversion in advance of a full assault on New York. And with no way of knowing, he felt compelled now to violate one of the oldest, most fundamental rules of battle, never to divide your strength when faced by a superior force. He split his army in roughly equal parts on the theory that he could move men one way or the other over the East River according to how events unfolded.
In a long report to Washington dated August 15, Greene stressed a further cause for concern. The new troops coming over to Long Island, besides being undisciplined, inexperienced, poorly armed, and poorly equipped, were “strangers to the ground.” They had no familiarity with the lay of the land, a subject Greene considered of greatest importance. “They will not be so apt to support each other in time of action as those who have long been acquainted, and who are not only attached to each other but to the place.”
He confirmed that the troops were in “exceeding good spirits,” and that, like Washington, he took heart from this. Only at the conclusion did he acknowledge with regret that he was confined to his bed with a raging fever. Greene, the officer who had been the most concerned of all about the health of the troops, was himself stricken at the crucial hour.
***
AT MEETINGS of the British high command, General Henry Clinton had been making a case for an attack at the northern end of York Island, up the Hudson, but in one conference after another found he could get nowhere with William Howe, who had other plans.
On the morning of Sunday, August 18, taking advantage of a strong northeasterly wind, the Phoenix and the Rose “passed briskly” back down the Hudson to rejoin the fleet. At one point during their sojourn upriver, the Americans had sent a fireship—a ship set ablaze—against the Phoenix, but to no avail; and on the return passage, American guns had blasted away as before, “like incessant thunders,” and again without much effect.
If anyone among the American command saw the return of the two enemy ships from upriver as a sign of trouble, there is no record of it.
The day after, August 19, Washington had a number of old ships sunk at the mouth of the East River, between the Battery and Governor’s Island, in the hope they would stop the British fleet from any attempt at getting between New York and Brooklyn.
Captain William Tudor, the judge advocate, described the whole army as impatient for action. Spade and pick had been so well employed, wrote “Billy” Tudor, that there was “scarce a spot” left undefended. “From the advantage we now possess, I think General Howe must be repulsed whenever he attacks, but should he be able to carry the island, it must be with so prodigious a loss that victory will be ruin.” At the least, in other words, it would be Bunker Hill all over again.
On August 20, Washington learned that Nathanael Greene, upon whom he counted more than anyone, had taken a turn for the worse. Knox, in letters to his wife, reported that “poor General Greene” was “dangerously ill.”
“sick nearly to death.” Left no choice, Washington relieved Greene of command, and the stricken general was moved from Brooklyn Heights across the river to the “airy” safety of a house several miles above New York.
In Greene’s place, Washington put the headstrong John Sullivan, who had recently returned from Canada and who had nothing like Greene’s ability or judgment. Further, Sullivan was, in Greene’s expression, a complete “stranger to the ground” on Long Island.
Writing to John Hancock earlier, Washington had offered a candid appraisal of Sullivan as “spirited and zealously attached to the Cause,” but also a man touched with a “tincture of vanity” and too great a “desire of being popular.” Then, generously and realistically, Washington conceded that everyone in command of the army suffered from a greater, more serious failing, himself included. “His wants,” Washington said of Sullivan, “are common to us all; the want of experience to move upon a large scale.”
***
AT SOME POINT in the course of Wednesday, August 21, Washington scratched off a quick note to John Hancock to say only that he had “nothing special” to communicate.
That same day, at a country estate near Elizabethtown, New Jersey, General William Livingston, a former member of Congress and newly in command of the New Jersey militia, wrote in “utmost haste” to Washington that a spy he had sent to Staten Island had just returned to report that the British were about to attack, both on Long Island and up the Hudson, and that the attack could come any hour, “this night at farthest.”
The reply from Washington, written in Joseph Reed’s hand, said, “We have made no discovery of any movement here of any consequence.”
Chapter Five
Field of Battle
Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty.
—General George Washington
I
ON THE NIGHT OFAUGUST 21, 1776,a terrifying storm broke over New York, a storm as vicious as any in living memory, and for those who saw omens in such unleashed fury from the elements—those familiar with the writings of the Roman historian Livy, say, or the plays of Shakespeare, of whom there were many—a night so violent seemed filled with portent.
Chronicle
rs Philip Fithian, Ambrose Serle, and Pastor Ewald Shewkirk called it “a storm like a hurricane,” “a most terrible storm, ” “the most vehement I ever saw, ” “an uncommon…awful scene.” A Connecticut officer on Brooklyn Heights, Major Abner Benedict, would describe how, at seven o’clock, a monstrous thundercloud rose in the west. Looming higher and higher, “it was surcharged with electricity, for the lightning was constantly searching it from limit to limit,” he wrote. It began to rain. “Then followed a crash louder than a thousand cannon…. In a few minutes the entire heavens became black as ink, and from horizon to horizon the whole empyrean was ablaze with lightning.” The thunder did not follow in successive peals, but in one “continuous crash.”
The storm raged for three hours, yet strangely the cloud appeared to stand still, “and swing round and round,” over the city. “The lightning fell in masses and sheets of fire to the earth, and seemed to strike incessantly and on every side.”