US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0014/00148.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00148}
$Pretitle{11}
$Title{Our Country:  Volume 3
Chapter LXVIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{british
washington
army
new
island
troops
general
howe
york
city}
$Volume{Vol. 3}
$Date{1905}
$Log{}
Book:        Our Country:  Volume 3
Author:      Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.
Volume:      Vol. 3
Date:        1905

Chapter LXVIII

     Reception of the Declaration of Independence - State Governments Formed -
Arrival of British Forces Before New York - Peace Commissioners Foiled - Lord
Howe, and Washington and Franklin - The Belligerent Armies - Preparations for
a Conflict - The Battle on Long Island - The Retreat of the Americans from
Brooklyn - Peace Commissioners Again Foiled - Internal Perils of the Army -
Evacuation of New York by the Americans - Its Possession by the British.

     THE far-reaching results of the Declaration of Independence were not
appreciated, at the time, by the great body of the people.  There was general
joy, because there was a vague idea in the public mind that something
beneficial might immediately ensue.  A Whig newspaper in the city of New York
announced the great act of the Congress "on Thursday last," without a word of
comment, and in only six lines.  But there were seers and sages in every
community whose discernment penetrated the veil of the future, and beheld
glorious visions beyond of a great and free nation on the soil of America.

     These were the men who led in public demonstrations of joy all over the
country on that occasion.  When the Declaration was read in public from
Rittenhouse's Observatory on the Walnut-street front of the State-house in
Philadelphia, on the 8th of July, it was greeted with loud huzzas by the
people.  These thoughtful men testified their belief that the great act had
ended royal rule in the United States, by taking down the king's arms that
were over the seat of justice in the State-house, and burning them in the
street, with other symbols of royalty.  The same kind of men, with similar
prescience, after the Declaration had been read to the republican army in New
York, toward the evening of the 9th of July, led the excited populace,
composed of citizens and soldiers, at early twilight, to the Bowling Green at
the foot of Broadway, where stood aloft an equestrian statue of the reigning
monarch, which had been set up by grateful Americans after the repeal of the
Stamp Act, ten years before.  They put ropes around the necks of the man and
horse, pulled them from the pedestal, and broke them in pieces.  The statue
was made of lead, and gilded.  The pieces were carried away and the metal was
cast into forty thousand bullets by patriotic women wherewith to fight the
royal troops.  So," said a contemporary writer, "they had melted majesty
hurled at them."  Everywhere in America multitudes of men and women perceived
the full significance of the act, and these led in chanting the great song of
deliverance that filled the hearts of republicans and found expression from
their lips.  In Europe the act gave hope to tens of thousands of aspirants for
freedom, and thrones began to tremble.

     Meanwhile the resolution of Congress adopted in May, recommending the
colonies to form State governments, had been acted upon by several of them.
New Hampshire had prepared for a State government, in January, 1776.  The
royal charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were considered sufficiently
democratic and that of the latter remained the fundamental law of the State
until 1842.  New Jersey adopted a State constitution on the 2nd of July;
Virginia adopted one on the 5th, and Pennsylvania on the 15th.  On the 14th of
August, Maryland followed their example; Delaware on the 20th of September,
and North Carolina on the 18th of December.  Georgia adopted a State
constitution on the 5th of February, 1777, and New York on the 20th of April
following; but South Carolina did not follow the example until the 19th of
March, 1778.  Massachusetts, the most eager champion for local self-
government, deferred the important measure that secured it, until the 2nd of
March, 1780.  Within a year after the Declaration of Independence was made,
most of the States had organized settled governments, but no national
government was established until the armed struggle had been going on for six
years, as we shall observe hereafter.

     We left Washington and his main army in and around the city of New York,
in the summer of 1776.  General Howe arrived at Sandy Hook from Halifax at the
close of June, and on the 8th of July - four days after independence was
declared - he landed nine thousand men on Staten Island, that lies between New
York harbor and the sea.  There he awaited the arrival of his brother, Admiral
Howe, with his fleet bearing British regulars and German hirelings. These, and
the broken forces of Clinton and Parker from the Carolinas, soon joined
General Howe; and by the middle of August, the British, land and naval.,
numbering almost thirty thousand men, prepared to fall upon the American
forces.  With this great force the British commanders, who counted largely
upon the moral strength of the Tories in favor of the crown, felt confident
that they would soon bring the rebellion to an end, either by negotiations or
by crushing it under the heel of military power.  Lord Howe had said, at
Halifax, Peace will be made within ten days after my arrival."  Like the
ministry who sent them, the commissioners were profoundly ignorant of the
spirit of the people they were to deal with.  The powers with which they were
vested were very limited.  They could grant pardons to individuals on their
return to allegiance, and grant amnesty to insurgent communities which should
lay down their arms and dissolve their governments.  They might converse with
individuals in America on the public grievances and report their opinions, but
they might not be judges of their complaints nor promise redress; and they
were not allowed to treat with any Congress, either provincial or continental,
nor with any civil or military officer commissioned by such bodies.

     The brothers entered upon their narrow diplomatic mission immediately
after the arrival of the admiral.  They sought first to open communication
with Washington.  For this purpose they sent a note to him by a flag,
inclosing a copy of a declaration of the royal clemency, and the willingness
of the king to grant a free pardon to all penitents.  The superscription of
the letter did not bear the official title of the commander-in-chief - only
"George Washington, Esq." - and he refused to receive it.  Another was sent by
the hand of Major Paterson, General Howe's adjutant, less marked by omissions,
but it was not received.  Wishing to make some arrangement about an exchange
of prisoners, Washington permitted the major to visit the American camp.  When
the adjutant was about to depart, the latter expressed the hope that his visit
would be accepted as the first advance of the commissioners toward
reconciliation.  He assured the general that they had large powers.  "From
what appears," said Washington, "they have power only to grant pardons -
having committed no fault, we need no pardon we are only defending what we
deem to be our indisputable rights."  The admiral addressed a friendly letter
to Dr. Franklin in a similar manner, and received from the statesman a reply,
courteous in tone, but in no wise soothing to his feelings as a soldier or a
Briton.  Franklin concluded his letter by saying: "This war against us is both
unjust and unwise; posterity will condemn to infamy those who advised it; and
even success will not save from some degree of dishonor those who voluntarily
engage to conduct it."  The brothers suspected Franklin uttered the sentiments
of the Congress with whom they were not permitted to treat; and that the words
of Washington were in accordance with the views of the same body.  The
generous and noble-hearted admiral was grievously disappointed by these
rebuffs.  He saw that he was powerless as a minister of peace that he had been
deceived, and that he was placed by a sense of duty to his king in a position
most distasteful to him, and repugnant to his convictions of right.  War, and
not peace, now occupied the attention of the brothers for awhile.

     August had now arrived.  A large army and navy were threatening the city
of New York and its vicinity.  Already ships-of-war had run up the Hudson
River past American batteries, and were menacing the country in the rear of
Manhattan Island, with the intention of keeping open a free communication with
Carleton then on Lake Champlain, and furnishing arms to the Tories in
Westchester county.  In the city of New York, a majority of the influential
inhabitants were active or passive Tories.  The provincial authorities were
yet acting timidly.  It was even proposed by Jay to lay Long Island waste,
burn the city of New York, and retire to the rugged fastnesses of the
Highlands.  Washington's whole effective force, for manning batteries,
securing passes, and occupying posts, some of them fifteen miles apart, did
not then exceed eleven thousand men; the most of them were militia coming and
going and poorly armed, and a regiment of artillery without skilled gunners
and furnished with old iron field-pieces.  Sectional jealousies were dividing
the troops.  Gates was already showing his jealousy of Washington, and an
itching to take his place and faction in his favor was breeding in the
Congress, from which came frequent resolutions that interfered with the well-
laid plains of the commander-in-chief and the efficient General Schuyler in
Northern New York.  Yet Washington was hopeful.  An appeal to the country was
nobly responded to at that hour of imminent danger.  From the farms of
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, where ripening
harvests needed them, came patriotic yeomanry, and swelled the American army
to seventeen thousand effective men.  The whole number, sick and well, was
almost equal to that of the British.

     Both parties made preparations for an inevitable conflict.  Hulks of
vessels were sunken in the channel of the Hudson River opposite the heights on
which Fort Washington was built.  Fort Lee was erected on the Palisades
beyond. Batteries were constructed at various points on Manhattan Island, and
a considerable body of troops were sent over to take post and cast up
fortifications on Long Island, hack of Brooklyn, under the command of General
Greene.  That officer was soon prostrated by bilious fever and resigned the
leadership to General Sullivan, who had lately come from Lake Champlain.  A
small detachment was placed on Governor's Island near the city another was
sent over to Paulus's Hook, where Jersey City now stands, and a body of New
York militia, under General James Clinton, took post in Westchester county to
oppose the landing of the British from vessels on Long Island Sound. Parsons'
brigade took post on the East River, at Kipp's Bay (now foot of Thirty-fourth
street), to watch British vessels if they should enter those waters.  Sullivan
placed guards at several passes through a range of hills on Long Island, which
extend from the Narrows to Jamaica; and late in August he had a line of
defenses extending from the vicinity of Greenwood Cemetery to the Navy Yard, a
distance of a mile and a half.  These were armed with twenty cannon, and there
was a redoubt of seven guns on Brooklyn Heights.

     The British army moved on the morning of the 22nd of August.  About
fifteen thousand troops were landed on the west end of Long Island on that
day. Washington sent reinforcements to Sullivan and the idea that the American
troops were about to evacuate the city, and leave it exposed to the shells of
the British shipping in the Bay, greatly terrified the inhabitants.  Many Whig
families fled to the country and did not return until the close of the war.

     General Putnam now took the chief command on Long Island, with particular
instructions from Washington to guard the passes through the wooded hills.
Regiments of Germans under General De Heister followed the British troops, and
on the 26th, the combined forces of the enemy composed a most perfect army in
experience and discipline.  Its chief leaders were Generals Clinton and
Cornwallis, accompanied by General Howe, and it was supported by over four
hundred ships and transports.  Among the former were ten ships-of-the-line,
twenty frigates, and some bomb-ketches.  On the evening of the 26th, the
number of effective American troops on Long Island did not exceed eight
thousand men.  Between this weak force of republicans and the strong army of
the king now stretched the densely wooded hills, with their steep sides and
narrow passes, from the flat lands to the Brooklyn ferry.  One of these was
south of the present Greenwood Cemetery; another in Prospect Park (now marked
by an inscription); a third near the village of Bedford, and a fourth toward
Jamaica.  About twenty-five hundred Americans were set to guard these passes,
not so much to prevent the British pressing through them (for this Washington
did not expect to do), but to harass and confuse them in their march.  When
Washington left the camp at Brooklyn on the evening of the 26th, it was
obvious that the British intended to gain the rear of the Americans by the
Bedford and Jamaica passes, and he gave strict orders for them to be closely
watched and strongly guarded.

     At three o'clock on the morning of the 27th of August (1776), General
Putnam was told that his pickets at the lower pass (south of Greenwood) had
been driven in.  He ordered Brigadier General Lord Stirling, with some
Delaware and Maryland troops, to march and "repulse the enemy."  Stirling
instantly obeyed, and was followed by General Parsons with some Connecticut
troops. They all crossed the marsh-bordered Gowanus Creek over a causeway and
bridge at some tide-mills on the creek, when Stirling soon found himself
confronted by an overwhelming division of the British army under General
Grant, with Howe's ships-of-war in the Bay, on his right flank, for they had
come up in a menacing attitude toward the city, and lay not far from
Governor's Island. Stirling placed his only two cannon on the side of a wooded
height (now known as Battle Hill, in Greenwood), so as to command the road.
This formed t]ne left of his line.  His right was nearly on the Bay, and the
troops of Colonels At Lee and Kiechlein, which had been guarding the pass,
formed his centre.

     The Germans under De Heister and Knyphausen were moving at the same time
to force their way through the pass at Prospect Mount (now Prospect Park),
while Howe, with the main body of the British army led by Sir Henry Clinton
and Lord Cornwallis, was moving toward the Bedford and Jamaica passes, to gain
the rear of the Americans.  Putnam had utterly neglected to place a competent
guard at the latter pass, as Washington had ordered him to do; and when he was
told of the movement of the British in that direction, instead of informing
the commander-in-chief of the imminent danger, or directing Stirling to
retreat from almost certain destruction, he allowed Sullivan to go out with a
few troops, and take command of New Jersey and other forces on Mount Prospect.
When, at eight o'clock in the morning, the British had reached the Bedford and
Jamaica passes, not more than four thousand Americans were out of the lines at
Brooklyn - a handful to oppose five times that number, then stretched along a
line more than five miles in extent.  The Americans on the left did not
perceive their danger until the British had gained their flank and began the
attack.  The incapacity of Putnam for such important service had allowed a
surprise.

     The British attack was severe and persistent.  The troops composing the
American extreme left fled in confusion, and with fearful loss to the lines at
Brooklyn; and some Connecticut fugitives, unmindful of the safety of those
behind them, burned the bridge over the Gowanus Creek, thereby cutting off the
retreat of their fellow-soldiers by that way.  Meanwhile the Germans had
attacked Sullivan, on the site of Prospect Park, and a desperate fight ensued.
While it was going on, Clinton unexpectedly appeared, endeavoring to gain
Sullivan's rear.  As soon as the latter saw his peril, he ordered a retreat to
the Brooklyn lines.  It was too late.  Clinton drove him back upon the German
bayonets.  After a sharp hand-to-hand conflict, and seeing no chance for
success, Sullivan ordered his men to shift for themselves. Some fought their
way through the cordon of soldiers, some hid in the woods, and Sullivan,
concealed in a field of corn, was made prisoner by some German grenadiers.

     Stirling and his party were now the only Americans in the field with
unbroken ranks.  They fought the enemy with great spirit four hours, when,
hopeless of receiving reinforcements, and seeing the main body of the British
army rapidly approaching his flank and rear, Stirling ordered a retreat.  The
bridge was in flames, and the tide was rising.  There was no alternative but
to wade the morass and the creek, and that passage was about to be cut off by
Cornwallis, who was rapidly descending the Port Road with grenadiers arid
Highlanders.  What was to he done?  Could any be saved?  Stirling's valor
quickly answered the questions.  He ordered the Delaware troops and one-half
of the Marylanders to cross the mud and water with some German prisoners which
they had taken, while he and the rest of the Marylanders should keep
Cornwallis in check.  The order was obeyed.  The five Maryland companies that
remained fought with desperate valor while the whole of their companions-
in-arms crossed the water in safety, excepting seven who were drowned.  This
movement was seen by Washington from the redoubt on Brooklyn.  Heights.  He
was sorely grieved by the disasters of the day.  And now the final one
occurred.  Stirling, having saved a majority of his troops, could no longer
resist the pressure of overwhelming numbers on his front, flank and rear, and
he surrendered.  He would not yield up his sword to a British commander, but
sought De Heister, to whom he delivered it.  The Germans were the principal
victors on that day.  They received the surrender of Sullivan, Stirling, and
more than half the prisoners.  The loss of the Americans did not, probably,
exceed one thousand, of whom one-half were prisoners; more than half the loss
fell upon Stirling's command.  Many of the prisoners were afterward sufferers
in the loathsome British prisons in the city of New York and the prison-ships
near by.

     The victors encamped before the American lines on the night succeeding
the battle, and prepared to besiege the works of their foe.  Washington was
anxiously watching every movement, for there was no one on whose judgment and
vigilance he might implicitly rely.  For forty-eight hours he did not sleep.
Fortunately for the republicans, Howe was very indolent and sluggish in
thought and movement.  A devotee of sensual pleasures and impatient when
business interfered with them, he allowed opportunities for achieving grand
results to slip.  Had Clinton been in command at that time, he would,
doubtless, have captured the whole American army and its munitions of war, on
the morning of the 28th.  Howe dallied in the lap of enjoyment, and allowed
them to escape.  During two days after the battle the rain fell almost
incessantly.  Mifflin had come down from the north end of Manhattan Island
with a thousand troops, but with these reinforcements the republican army was
too weak to cope with the strong enemy.  Washington clearly perceived this and
resolved to retreat.  Early on the 29th, he sent an order to General Heath to
forward from Kingsbridge "every flat-bottomed boat and other craft," at his
post, fit for transporting troops; and a similar order was sent to the
assistant quarter-master-general at New York.  Late in the afternoon he
revealed his plans to a council of war at the house of Philip Livingston, on
Brooklyn Heights, and they were approved.

     The embarkation in boats, managed by Glover's regiment of Essex county
fishermen, took place at the Brooklyn ferry after midnight, when the storm had
ceased.  The full moon was obscured by clouds.  Silently the troops moved from
the works to the river; and before dawn a heavy fog covered them from view.
Before six o'clock in the morning of the 30th of August, nine thousand
American soldiers, with their baggage and munitions of war excepting some
heavy artillery, had safely passed over the East River to New York.  The whole
movement was unsuspected by the British leaders on land and water until it was
too late to pursue.  A negro servant had been sent by a Tory woman near the
ferry to give notice of the flight, but he fell into the hands of a German
sentinel, who could not understand a word that was uttered.  When the
astonished Howe found that his expected prey had escaped, he "swore a big
oath," and then took possession of the abandoned American works.  Leaving
garrisons in them, he encamped the main body of his army eastward of Brooklyn
as far as Flushing, and then prepared for the capture of the city of New York,
with the American troops in it.  The admiral moved his vessels up within
cannon-shot of the city, for the same purpose.  Because of this victory,
General Howe (who was uncle to the king) was created a baronet - Sir William
Howe.

     Admiral Howe thought the discomfiture of the Americans on Long Island a
propitious time for the exercise of his functions as a peace commissioner.
Generals Sullivan and Stirling were prisoners on board his flagship, and he
paroled the former, and sent him with a verbal message to the Congress asking
that body to designate some person with whom he might hold an informal
conference.  They appointed Dr. Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge, a
Committee to meet his lordship; and the house of a loyalist, Colonel Billop,
on the western side of Staten Island, was chosen to be the place for the
conference.  In that house they met on the 11th of September.  The utmost
courtesy was observed.  Lord Howe told the Committee that he could not
recognize them as members of Congress, but as private gentlemen, and that the
independence of the colonies lately declared could not be considered for a
moment.  You may call us what you please," said the Committee we are,
nevertheless, the representatives of a free and independent people, and will
entertain no proposition which does not recognize our independence."  The gulf
between them was evidently impassable, and the conference was soon terminated.
Howe accompanied the Committee back to Amboy in his barge in which they had
been brought over to Staten Island; and with the expression of hopes that
reconciliation might speedily heal all dissensions, he bade them a courteous
adieu.

     Washington's army had escaped the perils of war from without, but greater
perils existed within its own bosom.  At no time during the long years of
conflict that ensued was the usually serene and hopeful mind of the
commander-in-chief more seriously clouded with doubts than in the month of
September, 1776.  That army seemed to contain all of the elements of
dissolution - lack of permanency, unity of feeling and unalloyed patriotism,
with sectional jealousies, insubordination, disrespect for superiors, and a
lack of that moral stamina so essential to success in every undertaking.
Contemporary writers give a sad picture of the army at that time.  Among some
of the subordinate officers, greed overshadowed patriotism.  Officers were
elected, not because of their merits, but by a compliance with the condition
that they should throw their pay and rations into a joint stock for the
benefit of a company surgeons sold recommendations for furloughs for able-
bodied men, at sixpence each, and a captain was cashiered for stealing
blankets from his soldiers.  Men went out in squads to plunder from friend and
foe; drunkenness was a common vice, and licentiousness poisoned the regiments.
With such an army subjected to the temptations of a city, before such an enemy
as confronted it, how dark must have appeared the future to the
commander-in-chief?  That enemy was evidently preparing to strike a crushing
blow.  His navy occupied the Bay and the rivers on each side of Manhattan
Island, and swarms of loyalists were ready to receive him with open arms in
Westchester county, where he might cut off the supplies and the retreat of the
Americans, and compel them to surrender.

     At that gloomy moment Washington called a council of war (September 13),
when it was resolved to send the military stores to Dobb's Ferry, twenty-two
miles up the Hudson, to evacuate the city and to retreat to and fortify the
Heights of Harlem toward the northern end of the island, and so keep open a
communication with the country beyond.  It was a timely decision, for the next
day, the sixteenth anniversary of Wolfe's victory at Quebec, in which Howe
bore a conspicuous part, had been chosen by that commander as the time for
making a descent in force on New York.  On that morning the sick were taken
from the city into New Jersey, and under the direction of Colonel Glover the
removal of the stores by water was begun.  The main body of the army,
accompanied by a host of Whigs, moved toward Mount Washington, leaving a
rear-guard of four thousand troops under Putnam to hold the city as long as it
might seem safe.  The army marched slowly, watching with keen vision the
movements of the British; and on the 16th, they were on Harlem Heights, and
Washington had made his headquarters at the house of his companion-in-arms on
the field of the Monongahela, Colonel Roger Morris, which is yet standing.  He
had spent most of the 14th at the house of Robert Murray, on the Incleberg
(now Murray Hill), sending out his scouts toward various points on the East
River.  There he gave instructions to Captain Nathan Hale, who entered the
British camp as a spy, and whose sad fate we will consider presently.

     Howe, with his usual sluggishness, did not move at the time appointed,
though he had given out the significant parole of Quebec, and the countersign
of Wolfe.  The admiral sent more ships-of-war up the East River; and on the
morning of the 15th, others went up the Hudson as far as Blooming dale, and
put a stop to the removal of the American stores.  On the same day, toward
noon, those in the East River anchored a little below Blackwell's Island and
began a heavy cannonade, to cover a force, chiefly Germans, who, in eighty-
four boats, crossed the river and landed at Kip's Bay.  The rest of the
British army was stretched along the shore to Hell Gate, and over Ward's and
Randall's Islands.  Washington suspected the British would land near Harlem.
He was on Harlem Plains when he heard the cannonading.  Springing into the
saddle, he rode swiftly, with his staff in the direction of the din of battle.
He soon met fugitive Continentals flying in terror.  The guard at Kip's Bay
had fled at the first cannon-shot hurled against them, and the brigades of
Parsons and Fellows, that were to support them, panic-stricken, were
scattering in all directions, without firing a musket.  Their officers tried,
in vain, to check their flight.  Washington was alarmed and exasperated -
alarmed because Putnam must be captured if the British could not be kept back
for a few hours; exasperated because of the cowardice of his soldiers at that
moment of supreme necessity for sturdy valor.  He used every means in his
power to rally them.  He set a sublime example of bold courage by pressing
forward within eighty yards of the battle-line, when, finding himself without
followers, he wheeled his horse and gave judicious orders for the salvation of
Putnam and the security of his army on the Heights of Harlem.  He succeeded in
rallying the troops sufficiently to make an orderly retreat to Bloomingdale,
while the invaders moved forward, took possession of a redoubt, and halted on
the Incleberg, an eminence between Fifth and Sixth avenues and Thirty-fourth
and Thirty-eighth streets.

     Meanwhile Putnam had been apprised of his danger.  He struck the flag on
Fort George at the foot of Broadway, and retreated by the roads nearest the
Hudson River.  The fugitive Lord Dunmore, who was with the fleet, went ashore
and unfurled the red-cross of St. George over the fort, while Putnam was
marching speedily and stealthily along ways sheltered by the woods, to the
Bloomingdale road, which he reached at Sixtieth street.  At the same time,
Howe, with Clinton, Governor Tryon and other officers were enjoying
refreshments at the house of Mr. Murray, on the Incleberg.  Mrs. Murray was a
charming Quaker lady, and a warm Whig.  She adroitly concealed her politics,
and offered her guests her choicest wines and cakes.  With sprightly
conversation she captivated the warriors, and detained them and their troops
long enough to allow every follower of Putnam to pass safely by within a mile
of her house.  The British leader was soon apprised of the startling fact, and
ordered General Robertson to take possession of the deserted city with a
strong force.  For seven years, two months, and ten days thereafter, the
British held possession of the city of New York.  General Howe made the
spacious Beekman mansion, at Turtle Bay (demolished in 1874), his
headquarters.  Washington had left the Apthorp mansion (yet standing), at
Bloomingdale, only a few minutes before British light-infantry took possession
of it.  That night (September 15, 1776), the American army were encamped in a
line from the East River to the Hudson.  Harlem Plains lay between the two
armies.