The Great Republic by the Master Historians The Capture of Long Island and New York byBancroft, Hubert H.
[Shortly after the evacuation of Boston, Washington led his army to New York,
which he feared might be assailed. Sir Henry Clinton soon after appeared off
Sandy Hook with his fleet, but, finding the place guarded, he sailed south,
where he met Sir Peter Parker with a large fleet. The conjoined fleets now
sailed to Charleston, the entrance to whose harbor was defended by Fort
Sullivan, a rudely-built log fortification, which General Lee declared to be a
mere "slaughter-pen," and which he was anxious to have abandoned. But the
Carolinians boldly determined to hold it. On the 28th of June the British ships
opened a terrible fire upon it. But the porous, spongy palmetto logs received
the balls without injury, while the fire of the fort riddled the ships and swept
their decks. Early in the battle the flag was struck down by a ball which
severed the shaft. In a moment Sergeant Jasper leaped over the breast-works,
seized the flag, which had fallen on the ground outside, tied it to a sponge-
shaft, and hoisted it again to its place. The battle ended in the fleet's being
so shattered that it was forced to withdraw. The colonists were overjoyed at the
result of this their first encounter with the "mistress of the seas." The
gallantly-defended fort was re-named Fort Moultrie, in honor of its brave
commander.
The defeated fleet sailed north, and met at Staten Island the fleet of General
Howe from Halifax and that of Admiral Howe from England. They had on board a
large army, partly made up of Hessian mercenaries, who had been bargained for by
the British ministry and handed over as slaves by their impecunious rulers to
aid in subduing the revolted colonies. It was designed, with this fleet and
army, to assail and capture New York.
We select a description of the succeeding events from Dr. J. D. Steele's
condensed but attractively-written work entitled "Barnes's Popular History of
the United States."]
After the evacuation of Boston, Washington thought that probably the British
would next try to seize New York, both on account of its commercial importance
and the strong tory element in that vicinity. He therefore, soon after, came to
that city. The most vigorous preparations were made to complete the
fortifications, already begun by General Charles Lee. Troops were enlisted for
three years, and a bounty of ten dollars offered to encourage recruiting. About
twenty-seven thousand men were finally collected. Little over half of these were
fit for duty. One regiment, we read, had only ninety-seven fire-locks and seven
bayonets. The officers, many of whom were grossly incompetent, wrangled about
precedence. The soldiers mistook insubordination for independence. Sectional
jealousies prevailed to such a degree that a letter of that time reports that
the Pennsylvania and New England troops were quite as ready to fight each other
as the enemy.
The 1st of July, General Howe arrived at Staten Island from Halifax. Soon after,
he was joined by his brother, Admiral Howe, from England, and Clinton, from the
defeat of Fort Moultrie. They had thirty thousand men, admirably disciplined and
equipped; among them about eight thousand of the dreaded Hessians. The fleet,
consisting of ten ships-of-the-line, twenty frigates, and four hundred ships and
transports, was moored in the bay, ready to co-operate. Parliament had
authorized the Howes to treat with the insurgents. By proclamation they
accordingly offered pardon for all who would return to their allegiance. This
document was published by direction of Congress, that the people might see what
England demanded. An officer was then sent to the American camp with a letter
addressed to "George Washington, Esq." Washington refused to receive it. The
address was afterwards changed to "George Washington, &c. &c." The messenger
endeavored to show that this bore any meaning which might be desired. But
Washington utterly refused any communication which did not distinctly recognize
his position as commander-in-chief of the American army. Lord Howe was evidently
desirous of a restoration of peace. He solicited an interview with Franklin, an
old time friend; but events had gone too far. England would not grant
independence, and the colonies would accept nothing less. War must settle the
question.
It was not till the last of August that Clinton crossed over the Narrows to Long
Island. Brooklyn was fortified by a series of intrenchments and forts extending
from Gowanus Bay to Wallabout. Here was stationed about nine thousand men, under
Generals Sullivan and Stirling. About two and a half miles south was a range of
wooded heights traversed by three roads along which the British could advance;
one leading up directly from the Narrows and Gravesend to Gowanus Bay, a second
from Flatbush, and a third, the Jamaica road, cutting through the hills by the
Bedford and the Jamaica passes. General Greene, who was intimately acquainted
with the ground, being unfortunately sick, General Putnam was hastily sent over
to take charge of the defence. General Stirling and General Sullivan occupied
the heights, but, by a fatal oversight, the Jamaica road was unguarded. The
English were not slow to take advantage of the opportunity.
On the eve of the 26th, General Clinton, with Percy and Cornwallis, crossed the
narrow causeway called Shoemaker's Bridge, over a marsh near New Lots,--where,
it is said, a single regiment could have barred the way,--and before daylight
had seized the Bedford and Jamaica passes, while the Americans were yet
unconscious of his having left Flatlands. Meanwhile General Grant moved forward
along the coast, on the direct road, from the Narrows up to the hills at present
embraced in Greenwood Cemetery. Here there was considerable skirmishing, but
Stirling held him in check. Clinton, pushing down from the hills, now fell upon
the American left, at Bedford. The sound of cannon in their rear filled the
Americans with dismay. At that moment De Heister, with the Hessians, who had
already begun to skirmish on the Flatbush road, stormed Sullivan's position.
Retreat was the patriots' only hope. It was, however, too late. Caught between
the Hessians and the British, they were driven to and fro, cut down by the
dragoons, or bayoneted without mercy by the Hessians and the Highlanders, who
listened to no plea for quarter. Some took to the rocks and trees and sold their
lives as dearly as they could; some broke through and escaped, pursued by the
grenadiers to the American lines at Fort Putnam; the rest were captured.
Cornwallis hurried on with his corps to close in upon General Stirling, who was
yet unaware of the disaster upon his left, at the same time firing two guns as a
signal for Grant to attack the front. Stirling, with a part of Smallwood's
regiment, composed of the sons of the best families of Maryland, turned upon
this unexpected foe in his rear, determined by a heroic sacrifice to give the
rest a chance for escape. He accomplished his design; all his companions crossed
Gowanus Creek in safety; but he himself was captured, and two hundred and fifty-
nine of the Marylanders lay dead on the field. Washington beheld the fight from
a neighboring hill, and, wringing his hands in agony, exclaimed, "What brave
fellows I must lose this day!"
It was a sad augury for the Republic which had just issued its Declaration of
Independence. The British loss was but four hundred, and the American nearly two
thousand. Of the latter, one thousand, who were with Generals Sullivan and
Stirling, were prisoners. The higher officers were soon exchanged, but the hard
lot of the privates and lower officers made the fate of those who perished in
battle to be envied. Numbers were confined in the sugar-house and the old hulks
at Wallabout, where afterwards so many other American prisoners suffered untold
agonies. Here, festering with disease, perishing with famine, and loathsome with
filth, deprived of fresh air, water, and every necessary of life, eleven
thousand Americans, it is said, found an untimely grave ere the war was over.
Had Howe attacked the works at Brooklyn immediately, the Americans would
probably have been utterly destroyed. Fortunately, he delayed for the fleet to
cooperate; but an adverse wind prevented. For two days the patriots lay
helpless, awaiting the assault. On the second night after the battle there was a
dense fog on the Brooklyn side, while in New York the weather was clear. A
little before midnight, the Americans moved silently down to the shore and
commenced to cross the river, near what is now the Fulton Ferry. Everything was
planned with Washington's peculiar precision. The guards, sentinels, and outer
lines were ordered to remain quietly at their posts till the very last, that the
enemy might suspect no movement. The stifled murmur of the camp, as each man
took his place in silence for the march to the riverside, gradually died away in
the distance. Suddenly the roar of a cannon burst upon the night-air. "The
effect," says an American who was present, "was at once alarming and sublime. If
the explosion was within our own lines, the gun was probably discharged in the
act of spiking it, and could have been no less a matter of speculation to the
enemy than to ourselves." The mystery of that midnight gun remains still
unexplained. Fortunately, it failed to rouse the British camp. Started by this
unexpected contre-temps, the men reached the shore. Washington, feeling the
urgent necessity for despatch, sent one of his aides-de-camp to hurry up the
troops in march. By mistake he gave the order to all who had been left behind.
In the midst of embarrassment and confusion at the ferry, caused by the change
of tide and of wind, which beat back the sail-boats, the whole rear-guard
arrived. "Good God, General Mifflin!" cried Washington, "I fear you have ruined
us by so unseasonably withdrawing the troops from the advance lines." Mifflin
somewhat warmly explained that he had only followed orders. "It is a dreadful
mistake," exclaimed Washington; "and unless you can regain the picket-lines
before your absence is discovered, the most disastrous consequences may follow."
Mifflin hastened back, but again the dense fog and Providence had favored them,
so that, though nearly an hour had intervened, the desertion of their posts had
not been noticed by the enemy. At length their own time came, and the last boat
pulled from the shore. The strain of the night was over, and the army was saved.
"What with the greatness of the stake, the darkness of the night, the
uncertainty of the design, and the extreme hazard of the issue," says one, "it
would be difficult to conceive a more deeply solemn scene than had transpired."
This timely deliverance moved every pious American heart to profoundest
gratitude, for if once the English fleet had moved up the East River and cut off
communication between New York and Brooklyn, nothing could have saved the army
from capture. Howe, not supposing an escape possible, had taken no precautions
against such an event. It is said that a tory woman sent her negro servant to
inform the British of the movements of the patriot army, but he fell into the
hands of the Hessians, who, not understanding a word of English, kept him until
morning. After daybreak, and the fog had lifted, a British captain, with a
handful of men, stealthily crept down through the fallen trees, and, crawling
over the intrenchments, found them deserted. A troop of horse hurried to the
river and captured the last boat, manned by three vagabonds who had stayed
behind for plunder.
[Washington, conscious of his weakness, wished to evacuate the city, but
Congress would not consent. During the interval Captain Nathan Hale, of
Connecticut, visited the English camp as a spy, and was arrested on his way back
by a tory relative, and handed over to Howe, who executed him the next morning.]
Having occupied Buchanan's and Montressor's Islands, now Ward's and Randall's,
Clinton, with a heavy body of troops, crossed the East River under the fire of
the fleet early Sunday morning, September 15, and landed at Kip's Bay, at the
foot of the present Thirty-Fourth Street. The American troops at this point fled
from the intrenchments. It was all-important that the position should be held,
as Putnam was in the city below with four thousand men, and time must be gained
for them to escape. Washington came galloping among the fugitives and rallied
them. But when two- or three-score red-coats came in sight, they broke again
without firing a shot, and scattered in the wildest terror. Losing all self-
command at the sight of such cowardice, Washington dashed forward towards the
enemy, exclaiming, "Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?" General
Greene writes of this scene, that the poltroons "left his Excellency on the
ground, within eighty yards of the enemy, so vexed at the infamous conduct of
his troops that he sought death rather than life." He might, indeed, have fallen
into the hands of the British, so overcome was he by the dastardly conduct of
his soldiers, had not an aide-de-camp seized his horse by the bridle and hurried
him away. Rallying his self-possession, Washington hastened to look after the
safety of the rest of his army. It was a moment of extreme peril. Fortunately,
on landing, Howe, Clinton, and some others called at the house of Robert Murray
for refreshments. The owner, who was a Quaker, was absent, but his wife, a
stanch whig, regaled them with such an abundance of cake and wine, and listened
with such admirable attention to their humorous descriptions of her countrymen's
panic, that their appetite and vanity got the better of their judgment and kept
them long at her delightful entertainment. Meanwhile, Putnam was hurrying his
men along the Bloomingdale road, not a mile distant, under a burning sun,
through clouds of dust, and liable at any moment to be raked by the fire of the
English ships anchored in the Hudson. Thanks to the wit of the good Mrs. Murray,
the British troops came up only in time to send a few parting shots at their
rear-guard. Washington collected his army on Harlem Heights.
That night the wearied troops lay on the open ground, in the midst of a cold,
driving rain, without tent or shelter. Anxious to encourage his disheartened
men, Washington, the same evening, ordered Silas Talbot, in charge of a fireship
in the Hudson, to make a descent upon the English fleet. Accordingly, this brave
captain, dropping down with the tide, steered his vessel alongside the Renomme.
Stopping to grapple his antagonist surely, and to make certain of firing the
trains of powder, he was himself fearfully burned before he could drop into the
water. It was an awful scene. The British ships poured their broadsides upon his
little boat as he was rapidly rowed away, while huge billows of flame bursting
out from the fireship lighted up the fleet and the harbor with terrible
distinctness. From every side boats put off to the rescue of the endangered
vessel, which was finally brought safely away. But the entire British fleet
slipped their moorings and quitted the stream.
[Shortly after the entrance of the British into New York a fire broke out which
destroyed five hundred houses and reduced their hopes of warm winter-quarters.
Washington fortified himself on Harlem Heights. But his army was in a deplorable
state, and on the verge of dissolution, the term of service of the men being
nearly expired, while they were so disheartened as to desert by hundreds, whole
regiments returning home. Howe made an effort to get into the rear of the
Americans, which his watchful foe negatived by a hasty retreat to White Plains.
Here the British made an attack, resulting in a minor advantage. Soon afterwards
Washington retreated to the heights of North Castle, and after a short interval
crossed with his main body to the Highlands, being apprehensive that the British
might invade New Jersey and perhaps seek to capture Philadelphia.]
