Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence Read online

  Finally, there was the problematic character of New York itself as the site for a stand. Unquestionably, New York enjoyed enormous strategic significance. As Adams had already apprised Washington, it was “the nexus of the Northern and Southern colonies … the key to the whole Continent, as it is a Passage to Canada, to the Great Lakes, and to all the Indian Nations.” Sent south to reconnoiter the terrain because of his experienced eye, Charles Lee confirmed Adams’s assessment, agreeing that “the consequences of the Enemy’s possessing themselves of New York have appeard’d to us so terrible that I have scarce been able to speak.” But Lee then went on to conclude that New York was indefensible. “What to do with this city, I own puzzles me,” Lee wrote, “it is so encircled with deep navigable water, that whoever commands the sea commands the town.”15

  There was no question as to who commanded the sea. The Royal Navy ruled the waves like no other navy in modern history. And one look at a map confirmed that the city of New York consisted of three islands—Staten Island, Long Island, and Manhattan—and that the shorelines of all were accessible to amphibious landings in multiple locations via Long Island Sound and the Hudson and East rivers. There was no such thing as a Continental navy, only a small flotilla of privateers capable of harassing smaller British vessels off the New England coast. Total naval supremacy gave the British Army floating platforms of artillery at any point of attack and the tactical agility to move troops wherever and whenever they wished. This was not to mention that New York contained the highest percentage of loyalists of any colony in North America.16

  And so, as the spring flowers bloomed and the grasses greened along the road to New York, the honeymoon phase of the American Revolution was coming to an end. The victorious insurgency was about to become a full-scale war. The multiple toasts to Washington in the towns and villages through which he and the army passed echoed the patriotic chords of a hymn to “The Cause,” which was simultaneously glorious and invincible. A more detached assessment would have produced a more ominous tune, with lyrics about a quasi-army of marginal misfits, led by a team of overconfident amateurs, marching to defend a strategically significant city that, truth be known, was indefensible.

  AS THE MAKESHIFT AMERICAN ARMY trudged south and the Continental Congress waited for popular opinion on independence to congeal, the British war machine was gearing up at lightning speed. In a nearly miraculous burst of logistical energy, Great Britain assembled a fleet of 427 ships equipped with 1,200 cannons to transport 32,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors across the Atlantic. It was the largest amphibious operation ever attempted by any European power, with an attack force larger than the population of Philadelphia, the biggest city in America. Having concluded that nothing less was at stake than retention of all its American colonies, the top echelon of the government at Whitehall had decided to show the imperious face of the British Empire.17

  The man most responsible for this logistical legerdemain was Lord George Germain, whose appointment as secretary of state for the American colonies signaled the commitment of the British ministry to an aggressive policy designed to smash the American rebellion with one massive blow. Germain had made his own convictions clear soon after the stunning report of the bloodletting at Bunker Hill reached London. “As there is no common sense in protracting a war of this sort,” Lord George wrote, apparently unaware of his echo of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “I should be for exerting the utmost force of this Kingdom to finish the rebellion in one campaign.” The enormous armada assembling at several English ports—nearly half the British fleet—plus the 18,000 mercenaries eventually recruited from several German principalities at considerable cost, all represented Germain’s commitment to the projection of Britain’s full military might in order to ensure a decisive outcome.18

  All historical assessments of Germain are clouded by the vilification that befell him in the wake of the eventual American victory, when he was described as “probably the most incompetent official that ever held an important post at a critical moment.” This retrospective description made perfect sense, since the loss of its entire North American empire was beyond much doubt the biggest blunder in the history of British statecraft, and Germain more than anyone else shaped the ill-fated British policy. And once this interpretive angle was established, Germain’s belligerent tendencies fell into line as the inevitable excesses of a man whose military reputation had been tarnished by accusations of cowardice and incompetence at the Battle of Minden (1759), which he then spent the rest of his career trying to redeem with conspicuously aggressive policies.19

  But in this case, hindsight tends to obscure rather than clarify our understanding of a highly dramatic and consequential historical moment. For Germain grasped instinctively the seriousness and depth of the threat represented by the American rebellion. He dismissed as blatant idiocy the condescending confidence of several retired British generals, one of whom claimed that he could march across the American colonies with 5,000 men and subdue the rebellion in a month. Germain knew that he was up against a formidable force that defied conventional measures of military effectiveness, and he worried that in a protracted war, space and time would be on the side of the rebels. The vast size of the American theater, plus the latent energies of a proud people, numerous and armed, would gradually wear down the British resolve unless the rebellion was quashed before these larger forces could be brought to bear.

  Moreover, Germain had a military strategy that reflected his keen sense of political urgency. For all the reasons John Adams had listed, New York was the preferred target. But then, once subdued and occupied as the base of operations for the British army and navy, Germain envisioned mounting a campaign up the Hudson corridor that would meet a British army coming down from Canada, thereby sealing New England off from the middle and southern colonies. Once joined, these two British armies would march through western New England toward Boston, destroying the cradle of the American rebellion as they went, while the British navy wreaked havoc on all the coastal cities and towns.

  Even in retrospect, it was an extremely sophisticated strategy that might well have worked if it had been implemented early in the war. It showed that Germain recognized from the start the great danger hovering over any military campaign against the Americans: namely, that the British Army—no matter how large and experienced—would dissipate its strength marching hither and yon across the vast American landscape in search of a strategic center of the rebellion that in fact did not exist. (This is eventually what happened.) Germain’s plan avoided that ill-fated prospect by insisting on a concentrated display of British military supremacy against a focused objective, an isolated New England, which he identified as the wellspring and soul of the American insurgency.20

  Finally, Germain handpicked the Howe brothers to lead the British naval and ground forces. Admiral Lord Richard Howe, nicknamed “Black Dick” for his congenital gravity, was at forty-nine near the peak of his powers as the ablest seaman in the greatest navy in the world. Like William, his younger brother, Lord Richard was connected by blood to the royal family, albeit in an awkward fashion: their grandmother had been the favorite mistress of George I. Both had attended Eton, the preferred gateway for the most privileged members of the British aristocracy, and both occupied secure seats in Parliament, where as good Whigs they had originally favored a diplomatic resolution of the Anglo-American conflict, at least in part because of their mutual affection for the citizenry of Massachusetts, who had raised 250 pounds for a monument in honor of their older brother, George Augustus Howe, killed at Ticonderoga in 1758. By 1776, however, both men had concluded that the ongoing war could be ended only by delivering a decisive blow that would bring their American cousins to their senses. Both relished the opportunity to deliver such a blow but relished even more the opportunity to then negotiate a peace that would end this misguided and unfortunate conflict promptly.21

  General William Howe, the younger but taller brother at forty-five and nearly six feet, had the more gl
amorous military record. And because his decisions during the battle for New York proved so consequential, his career merits a more extended pause.

  Much in the manner of Washington, the foundation of Howe’s military education was laid during the French and Indian War. And again like Washington, he had survived several actions without a scratch when all around him went down in heaps of blood and gore. As a young officer, Howe had led the “forlorn hope” assault (i.e., suicide mission) on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec, which proved to be the decisive action in the culminating battle of the war. In the middle years of his career, he developed a reputation for mastery of light infantry tactics that put a premium on speed of maneuver. After his conspicuous display of tactical agility at the Battle of Havana, he was generally regarded as the most brilliant regimental commander in the British Army.

  Howe’s role at Bunker Hill reinforced his reputation for personal courage but also added a new dimension of fatalism to his military mentality. He had led the first wave, accompanied by his staff and a servant carrying a silver tray with a decanter of wine. Obviously unimpressed with the fighting prowess of the militia, Howe had presumed the assault would be a waltz. But his entire staff, including the servant, was wiped out that day, along with nearly half the attacking force, more than 1,000 men. Howe never fully recovered from the trauma of the experience and internalized both a newfound respect for the fighting spirit of American troops and a nearly obsessive aversion to frontal assaults against entrenched positions.

  Something snapped in Howe after Bunker Hill. In one sense, his aristocratic style became even more flamboyant. While holed up in Boston, he spent more time at the card tables and consumed almost obscene amounts of food and drink. He threw caution to the wind and developed an openly scandalous relationship with Elizabeth Loring, the blond and beautiful twenty-four-year-old wife of a Boston loyalist, who acquiesced to the liaison, correctly presuming that Howe would reward him for his broad-mindedness. The Lorings accompanied Howe in the retreat to Halifax, where Mrs. Loring resumed her role as Cleopatra to Howe’s Marc Antony. While gaming by day and enjoying the company of Mrs. Loring at night, Howe received word of his appointment as commander of His Majesty’s ground forces in North America, as well as Germain’s orders to prepare for a campaign against New York.22

  Howe’s response to Germain conveyed a combination of weariness and wariness about his new mission. “The scene here at present wears a lowering aspect,” he confided to Germain, “there not being the least prospect of conciliating the continent unless its armies are roughly dealt with, and I confess my apprehension that such an event will readily be brought about.” In effect, Howe concurred with Germain’s strategic analysis that a decisive blow had to be delivered, and that any effort at reconciliation could only come after a military campaign of overwhelming force had shocked the rebels into recognizing the futility of their cause.

  While Howe harbored no doubts that a British army of the size Germain proposed could deliver such a blow, he worried that the Americans would refuse to cooperate by attempting to defend New York. “Knowing their advantages in having the whole country, as it were, at their disposal,” Howe predicted, “they will not readily be brought into a situation where the King’s troops can meet with them on equal terms.” The rebel army was likely to withdraw inland, away from the coast, where the British navy gave its army such a tactical and logistical advantage. “Their armies retiring a few miles back from the navigable rivers,” Howe concluded, “ours cannot follow them from the difficulties I expect to meet with in procuring land carriage.” Howe was already anticipating the kind of problems generals John Burgoyne and Charles Cornwallis would encounter once marooned inland without the protection of the British fleet. But his major point was that he seriously doubted the Americans would be so foolish as to fight a conventional battle against a numerically and professionally superior British force. And the last place they would choose to do so was New York, which he fully expected they would abandon and probably burn to the ground.23

  THE CONTINENTAL ARMY, in fact, did not have a comprehensive strategy for the conduct of the war. During the Boston Siege, several of Washington’s senior officers, chiefly Charles Lee and Horatio Gates—both not so incidentally veterans of the British Army—had argued for a defensive strategy along just the lines that Howe had anticipated. Gates had even suggested taking the army west of the Alleghenies and daring the British Army to pursue them, while Lee seemed to favor a “war of posts” in which the Continental Army avoided any full-scale engagements except on the most favorable terms. On occasion Lee suggested dividing the army into several smaller units, then conducting quasi-guerrilla operations designed to harass and frustrate the British Army.24

  But these were merely conversations during councils of war outside Boston. Devising a comprehensive strategy for the conduct of the war required an established government with clearly delineated powers and designated decision makers charged with coordinating the quite monumental civil and military considerations. Both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army were still provisional improvisations, managing the imperial crisis as best they could, one step at a time. Indeed, at the moment, the question of military strategy had to be deferred until the all-important question of independence was resolved. A decisive presence like Lord Germain was unimaginable in an American context, because no political infrastructure or lines of authority had yet been devised, and until independence was decided, it was unclear that any would be needed.

  And so, when Washington arrived in New York on April 13, the question of whether New York should be defended had never even been raised. “The designs of the Enemy are too much behind the Curtain for me to form any accurate opinion of their Plan of operations,” Washington confided to Hancock, adding that “we are left to wander in the field of conjecture.” All such wanderings, however, led to the conclusion that “no place—all of its consequences considered—seemed of more Importance in execution of their Grand Plan than possessing themselves of Hudson’s River.”25

  Since no American version of a “Grand Plan” was in place to guide a decision, Washington was implicitly acknowledging that British strategy would dictate American strategy. In practice, this meant that wherever Howe (or Germain) chose to attack, Washington felt obliged to defend. Everyone on both sides seemed to agree that New York was the obvious target, which was why Washington was setting up his new headquarters in Manhattan by mid-April. The fact that Lee’s earlier reconnaissance of the terrain had concluded that New York was inherently indefensible had at least temporarily dropped out of the strategic equation.

  It dropped back in over the ensuing month as Washington’s own eyes surveyed the same terrain, now dotted with multiple forts, redoubts, trenches, and barricades, all being constructed by a small army of day laborers, soldiers, and slaves according to an engineering scheme Lee had devised to transform a vulnerable archipelago into something resembling an armed camp. Lee’s primary purpose had been to restrict British naval mobility at the entrances to the Hudson and East rivers and then to construct a series of defensive positions on Manhattan Island that would permit American troops to inflict heavy casualties on the British, then fall back to the next line. It was not so much a recipe for American victory as an attempt to create a series of Bunker Hills in which the probable British victory would come at a very high cost.26

  As this grim scenario began to settle in his mind, Washington decided that the best way to bolster his waning confidence was to redouble the forts and entrenchments on Manhattan and Long Island. He enlisted one of his brigadiers who had been born and raised in New York, General William Alexander, to oversee two full regiments, who proceeded to dig and build ten hours a day. (Alexander claimed descent from Scottish royalty, and though the House of Lords rejected his claim, he insisted on being called Lord Stirling, and everyone, including Washington, somewhat strangely complied.) As Long Island loomed larger in Washington’s mind as a likely invasion route, he assigned t
he construction of its defenses to Nathanael Greene, who, true to form, began to turn Brooklyn Heights into a honeycomb of connected forts, redoubts, and trenches, a kind of Bunker Hill on steroids.27

  But as the weather warmed, it became quite clear that New York resisted all comparisons with Boston. “The Fortifications in and about this City are exceedingly strong, and strengthening everyday,” Greene wrote his brother. “But the New England Colonies without the least fortification [are] easier defended than this Colony … owing to the different dispositions of the People. Tories here are as plenty as Whigs with you.”28

  Indeed, reports had it that most of the farmers on Long Island were loyalists, or at least British sympathizers, and that they were organizing a militia unit to join the British Army once it arrived in force. The governor of the colony, the mayor of New York City, and the majority of the wealthiest residents were all loyal to the crown and thereby lent considerable credibility to the British claim that any invasion and occupation of New York was less a hostile act than a much-welcomed liberation. And so, while the water-laced geography of New York made it strategically indefensible, probably the worst spot on the Atlantic Coast for the Americans to make a stand, the political architecture of the city and surrounding countryside made it the most hostile environment in all the American colonies to defend, because so many of the residents did not wish to be defended.

  As these depressing realizations continued to mount, Washington tried to take solace from all those new forts and artillery emplacements—defense mechanisms against his own growing skepticism as much as against the looming British leviathan. He also issued orders on an almost daily basis designed to project the impression that the Continental Army was a welcomed guest in the city and must conduct itself according to the highest standards of civility and manners. “The General flatters himself,” read one typical General Order, “that he shall hear no Complaints from the Citizens, of abuse, or ill treatment, in any respect whatsoever; but that every Officer, and Soldier, of every Rank and Denomination will pride themselves (as Men contending in the glorious Cause of Liberty ought to do) in an orderly, decent, and regular deportment.”29