Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence Read online

  The less patriotic and more prosaic reality was that relations between the troops and the residents were tense, often violent and abusive, much in the manner of an unwelcome occupying army. The toxic social chemistry was rendered more poisonous by the presence of the largest brothel in North America, in a neighborhood sardonically named the Holy Ground, populated by a veritable army of prostitutes eager to share their charms and venereal diseases with virile young men lacking families or futures. Most of the prostitutes were tough-minded loyalists, and when two soldiers were murdered and castrated, then stuffed in a barrel, their regiment retaliated the next day by pulling down two houses of ill repute where the suspected killers plied their trade. Washington condemned the regiment’s behavior as a conspicuous violation of regulations, ignoring the real source of the problem.30

  Finally, to make matters worse, the Continental Congress ordered Washington to release six of his regiments to bolster an ill-conceived campaign to capture Quebec, part of a bold initiative that Washington had earlier endorsed to deny Great Britain a safe base from which to spread mischief among the Six Nations, the Native American confederation already leaning toward an alliance with the redcoats. Washington somewhat reluctantly agreed, apprising Hancock that although New York had become “the Grand Magazine of America,” at this rate there would be no one left to oppose the imminent British invasion.31

  Assurances from the congress took the form of guarantees that militia units from New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey were already placed on alert and poised to move as soon as the British fleet was sighted on the horizon, adding about 15,000 troops to Washington’s New York garrison. From a patriotic perspective, this was splendid news, confirmation that America’s minutemen were ready to live up to their name. From a more professional perspective, however, this arrangement had an almost comical character, since none of the militia units had been given designated areas of responsibility on either Manhattan or Long Island, had not been integrated into the regimen of the Continental Army, and were presumably expected to make a difference just by showing up.

  By late May, Washington had seen enough to recognize the strategic and political precariousness of his position and had begun to adopt a fatalistic posture toward the looming calamity. “We expect a very bloody Summer of it at New York,” he wrote his brother, “as it is here I expect the grand efforts of the Enemy will be aim’d; and I am sorry to say that we are not either in Men, or Arms, prepared for it.” But for several unspoken reasons—all that work on all those forts, the sense that he had bested Howe before and could do it again, and the near unanimity of his civilian superiors in the congress that New York must not be abandoned—he never gave serious consideration to doing what Howe presumed he would do and abandon New York for more defensible terrain inland. Since all the tangible signs were bad, he took final refuge in the intangible potency of “The Cause” itself: “If our cause is just, as I do most religiously believe it to be, the same Providence which has in so many Instances appeared for us, will still go on to afford its aid.” He was counting on a miracle.32

  THE LAST OPPORTUNITY to rethink the New York commitment occurred in late May and early June, when Washington was called to Philadelphia to confer with the delegates of the Continental Congress about overall American strategy. It was the first such session ever, but for several reasons the gravity of the military situation in New York never received the concerted attention it deserved. Washington brought along his wife, Martha, so that she might undergo inoculation, and given the risky character of the procedure, a part of Washington’s mind was preoccupied with her recovery. News of the complete debacle suffered by American troops at Quebec also arrived during this time, casting a pall over the deliberations because it was the first unmitigated American defeat in the war and was wholly unexpected, but it was explained away on the grounds—not wholly unfounded—that the American troops were riddled with smallpox. A delegation of Native American chiefs being cultivated as prospective allies added to the confusion by insisting that they would remain in attendance only if assured that they would be provided with sufficient amounts of alcohol during the negotiations.33

  But the big distraction came in the form of a resolution passed on May 15 by the Virginia legislature that arrived in Philadelphia just before Washington and his entourage. For obvious reasons, it immediately dominated the agenda of the Continental Congress because it proposed “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” In effect, the summit on military strategy was coinciding with the climactic political moment when the long-delayed discussion on American independence finally came before the congress. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved the resolution on June 7, and the congress immediately appointed a five-member committee to draft a document implementing Lee’s resolution. The crucial military and political decisions were cresting simultaneously.34

  Washington kept an elaborate account of all his expenses for the trip to and residence in Philadelphia but made no record of the all-important deliberations about the defense of New York. Part of his own attention was diverted by the looming vote on independence, which he was not sure would carry because of the lingering reluctance of moderate delegates like John Dickinson to face the inevitable. “Members of Congress, in short, the representation of whole Provinces,” he wrote his brother, “are still feeding themselves on the dainty food of reconciliation.” The recent arrival of news from London that the British ministry was sending peace commissioners to negotiate a political solution to the conflict struck Washington as an obvious ploy designed to enhance the futile hopes of the moderate faction in the congress, a tactic he could only deplore as blatant manipulation.35

  Though no record of the committee’s deliberations was kept, correspondence over the ensuing weeks and subsequent reports of the congress made it clear that the committee made two decisions. First, it created a new Board of War and Ordnance to coordinate all military strategy and to be chaired by John Adams, making him the de facto secretary of war. Adams accepted the new post reluctantly, echoing Washington’s statement, almost exactly a year earlier, that he was unqualified for the job. “It is a great Mortification to me I confess,” he confided to Greene, “and I fear it will too often be a Misfortune to our Country, that I am called to the Discharge of a Trust to which I feel myself so unequal, and in the Execution of which I can derive no assistance from my Education or former Course of Life.” He began asking friends in Boston to scour the Harvard library for books on how to run an army. An array of amateur soldiers and officers was now to be supervised by a civilian with no military experience whatsoever.36

  Second, the question of New York’s defense received extended attention, but the focus was on the additional resources Washington believed he needed to stop the looming invasion, not on whether New York should be defended at all. The latter, of course, was the most crucial and consequential consideration, the most elemental strategic issue of all, but it was never faced or even raised. Though it is always intellectually awkward to explain a nonevent, in this case the effort seems justified, knowing as we do that the entire cascade of battlefield horrors about to befall Washington and his inexperienced troops followed inevitably from this basic strategic blunder.

  Context helps explain what is otherwise bafflingly inexplicable. It helps to recall the relentless outpouring of praise for Washington and his troops in the wake of the British evacuation of Boston. As noted earlier, though there was never a real battle, the British retreat was portrayed as a monumental victory for the Continental Army. Most if not all the delegates in the Continental Congress, Adams included, harbored an inflated opinion of the military prowess of Washington’s raw recruits, as well as an ill-informed and wholly unrealistic estimate of the militia as a dependable fighting force. Greene once tried, albeit gently and diplomatically, to disabuse Adams about all this. “You think the present army assisted by the militia is sufficient to oppose the force of Great Britain,” he warned.
“I can assure you it is necessary to make great allowances in the calculation of our strength … or else you’ll be greatly deceived.” Adams was, in fact, convinced that Washington would repeat in New York the same splendid outcome over Howe’s army that he had delivered in Boston.37

  Washington himself knew better, but he found it impossible to tell his civilian superior that the florid praise they were passing out so freely was misplaced and that the confidence in both him and his army was equally excessive. He appeared to take refuge in the quasi-spiritual power of “The Cause” and in the possibility of multiple repetitions of the Bunker Hill carnage on Long Island and Manhattan. “If our troops will behave well,” he confided to Hancock, Howe’s troops “will have to wade through much blood & Slaughter before they can carry any part of our Works, If they carry ’em at all.… May the sacredness of our cause Inspire our Soldiery with sentiments of Heroism, and lead ’em to the performance of noblest exploits.”38

  It also made a difference that Howe’s army was likely to arrive at the same moment that the question of American independence would be decided. How would it look if just as the political climax to years of debate finally occurred, the military embodiment of that glorious cause fled New York for the security of the Connecticut hills and allowed Howe to occupy the city without a fight? The mounting political momentum for independence also buoyed confidence in the military commitment to defend New York. The Americans had profound political reasons to avoid appearing militarily weak and vulnerable at this propitious moment when, at last, independence was about to be declared.

  Of course, someone could have asked how it would look if precisely when the celebrations of American independence were ringing in the air, news arrived from New York that the Continental Army had just been annihilated. Even to pose such a question seemed almost unpatriotic in this overheated moment, and no one did.

  While in Philadelphia, Washington was promised a major injection of new militia from New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, raising his troop strength to slightly over 25,000, more than half of whom were militia. He was authorized to round up and arrest the known loyalists on Long Island, thus ending the pretense that they could not be touched until a formal declaration of independence had been made. He was directed to construct “as many fire rafts, row gallies, armed boats, and floating batteries as may be necessary,” a final gesture at impeding British naval access up the Hudson and East rivers.39

  On the day Washington arrived back in New York, his aides apprised him that many of the incoming militia lacked muskets. The next day, headquarters issued an order that these men be equipped with spears. This was an ominous sign.40

  3

  Dogs That Did Not Bark

  We are in the very midst of a Revolution, the most compleat, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the History of Nations.

  —JOHN ADAMS TO WILLIAM CUSHING, June 9, 1776

  The British invasion was choreographed by Lord Germain and his minions at Whitehall much like a transatlantic race. First off in early June were General William Howe and his 9,000 veterans of the Boston Siege, sailing out of Halifax, Betsy Loring’s blond hair blowing in the wind alongside the dapper if paunchy Howe, whose only worry was that Washington would refuse to make a stand in New York. Coming up from the South Carolina coast was a smaller fleet with 2,900 troops under the command of General Henry Clinton, who had just failed to capture Charlestown and was eager to avenge that setback in New York, where he had been born and raised as the son of the royal governor.1

  Last off the mark was Admiral Richard Howe with by far the largest fleet, more than 150 ships with 20,000 troops and a six-month supply of food and munitions, by itself the largest armada to cross the Atlantic before the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. Lacking any semblance of modern communications technology, Germain had somehow managed to defy the insuperable obstacles of space and distance to coordinate this three-pronged assault so that it converged on Staten Island, if not simultaneously, at least within a matter of weeks. No transatlantic military operation of this scale and scope had ever been tried before, and the deftness with which it was carried off was eloquent testimony to the matchless prowess of the Royal Navy.

  AS BRITISH MILITARY POWER WAS converging, American political power was spreading out. The resolution passed by the Continental Congress on May 15 was a clarion call to force an up-or-down vote in the colonial legislatures on the question of independence. Several colonies insisted that the question be forwarded to local governments at the county or town level, thereby extending the debate beyond the colonial capitals to the countryside. Massachusetts, for example, requested and received fifty-eight responses from towns and counties in late May and June, all answering the question whether “said Inhabitants … solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to Support the [Continental] Congress in the Measure.”2

  In British history there had been several occasions when Parliament had issued petitions or declarations designed to limit or terminate monarchical power, most famously during the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. So the legal precedent for disposing of kings who had allegedly violated the covenant with their subjects was well established. Indeed, if you were a king and were shown a document that began with the word “Whereas,” you should expect a list of grievances to follow and realize that your reign was likely to be of short duration. But there was no precedent for the extensive and far-reaching mandate that the Continental Congress was now requesting, which had the appearance of a full-scale popular referendum, something resembling the approach of an unbridled democracy.3

  The British ministry and the Continental Congress were, in fact, looking at the crisis from different ends of the same telescope in ways that accurately reflected their contrasting political assumptions. The British approach was decisively imperial, top down from George III, through Lord Germain, to all those converging ships and men. The American approach was decidedly republican, bottom up, dependent upon broad-based popular consent from that enigmatic entity called “the people.” To repeat, nothing so sweepingly democratic had ever been attempted before, for the quite sound reason that a poll of the people was almost assured to produce a muffled or divided response or, worse, a chaotic cacophony.

  What seems most historically significant, at least in retrospect, is how true each side was to the core values it claimed to be fighting for. It was the coercive power of an empire against the consensual potency of a fledging republic. History seldom provides pure embodiments of such contrasting political alternatives, but in the summer of 1776 they were both on display, and the military projections of both perspectives were committed to a collision at the mouth of the Hudson.

  IF THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS WAS asking for a referendum on American independence, and it was, the answer came back in the form of a landslide. Massachusetts lived up to its reputation as the cradle of the rebellion by delivering a nearly unanimous verdict. The town of Ashby put it most succinctly: “That should the honorable Congress, for the safety of the Colonies, declare them independent of Great Britain, the inhabitants of Ashby will solemnly engage with their lives and fortunes to support them in the measure.”4

  Massachusetts had experienced the brunt of British military harassment over the past year and had also enjoyed the most long-standing tradition of robust participation at the town level, so it was not surprising that the turnout in the Bay Colony proved so huge and the verdict so resounding. Nevertheless, there is something almost elegiac about the picture of ordinary farmers, most accustomed to meeting for discussions about local property lines or regulations against roaming cows or pigs, gathering in the meetinghouse to debate the fate of America’s role in the British Empire.5

  The residents of Topsfield, for example, observed that it was “the greatest and most important question that ever came before this town.” They went on to explain that only a few years earlier “such a question would have put us into surprise, and we apprehend, would have been treated with the utmost conte
mpt.” But now the political landscape had changed dramatically: “She who was without any just cause, or injury done by these Colonies, has become their greatest Enemy. The unprovoked injuries these Colonies have received; the unjustifiable claims that have been made on the Colonies by the Court of Great Britain, to force us, and take away our substance from us, without our consent … have been cruel and unjust to the highest degree.”6

  Topsfield, in fact, was in tune with multiple resolutions throughout the colonies in describing their embrace of independence as a recent and reluctant development forced upon them by the policies of George III and his ministers over the past year. “The time was, sir,” said the good people of Malden, Massachusetts, “when we loved the King and the people of Great Britain with an affection truly filial … but our sentiments are now altered forever.” Boston, predictably, weighed in with the most defiant response, describing any thought of reconciliation “to be as dangerous as it is absurd,” and “loyalty to the worst of tyrants as treason to our country.” Elaborate constitutional arguments were laid aside in favor of more elemental pronouncements of lost affection for a father figure who was sending the flower of the British army and navy, along with a hired team of Germanic mercenaries, to murder them in cold blood.7

  This response validated the Adams strategy of delay while the fruits of independence ripened on the imperial vine. It was the accumulation of evidence about the belligerent intentions of George III and the British ministry that wore down old allegiances and made the decisive difference among ordinary Americans. The recruitment of foreign mercenaries was frequently mentioned as the ultimate stab in the back. Reading the resolutions that poured into the colonial legislatures and then the Continental Congress was like harvesting a political crop that had been planted and nourished by the king himself. A year earlier, independence had seemed some combination of impossible and improbable. Now it seemed inevitable.