Henry Knox (19 page)

As Washington, Knox, Greene, and Lord Stirling inspected the troops, the marquis was touched by their spirit and what he described as "a strange spectacle." The soldiers lined up in two rows with taller men in the second file. Their clothes were tattered and shredded. Some soldiers were almost naked; many were barefoot. There was no uniformity of dress among the enlisted men. Some wore hunting shirts, and others gray linen coats. Lafayette would later write of seeing the troops that day in his memoirs: "In spite of these disadvantages, the soldiers were fine, and the officers zealous; virtue stood in place of science." Washington, in a moment of self-consciousness, said, "We must feel embarrassed to exhibit ourselves before an officer who has just quitted French troops." Lafayette replied, "It is to learn, and not to teach, that I come hither.“
⁵

That same day, word arrived that the British fleet had turned away from the Delaware Capes and sailed out to sea at 8
A.M.
Washington thought that the armada was headed back to New York and that Howe's army would join Burgoyne's advance from Canada against the northern army of Continental troops. On Monday, August 4, Congress appointed General Horatio Gates to lead the 4,500 troops facing Burgoyne. Knox returned to the Delaware to continue construction of the river fortifications, not knowing if the fleet had merely feigned a departure and would return suddenly. A series of chevaux de frize, or sharp wooden spikes, designed to rake open the hulls of approaching ships, was sunk in the river. On Saturday, August 9, Henry sent his plan and recommendations on the Delaware Cape defenses and troop dispersals in its
series of forts to Washington, who wrote a lengthy note to Congress incorporating Knox's ideas.

The commander in chief was uncertain where to send his army and was frantically trying to obtain intelligence on the landing of Howe's fleet. On Sunday, the army had returned to Coryell's Ferry, about forty miles north of Philadelphia. Washington received word that Burgoyne had begun to cross the Hudson River in New York on Wednesday, August 13, and was heading for Saratoga. Knox wrote to Washington a week later that he believed Howe would not venture up the Delaware to Philadelphia and did not have the supplies to sail back to New York. Henry urged the commander to send the army to defeat Burgoyne and level a crushing blow to British hopes. He was especially concerned by recent attacks by American Indians engaged by the enemy in New York. "This power ought to be crushed at all hazards immediately—or the whole frontiers will be deluged in blood.“
⁶

At a council of generals on August 21, Knox stated these views, which were also held by Washington's other commanders, who were eager for battle. They believed that Howe could be targeting Charleston, South Carolina, 700 miles to the south. If so, the troops outside Philadelphia could offer little help, and a march in the muggy Carolinas would be unhealthy during the season when diseases spread through the waters. They were all in agreement; their army should march north to New York. But Washington had to wait for Congress to approve the mission since his command would supersede that of General Gates, who now headed the northern Continental troops.

While waiting for Congress's decision, Knox and Greene asked Washington if they could take a trip to Bethlehem, a day's ride from Philadelphia. Henry wanted to shop for gifts to send Lucy, who was recovering from an illness back in Boston. They set out at four o'clock on an excessively hot afternoon.

Lucy, meanwhile, had recovered and by Saturday, August 23, had the strength to write Henry, addressing him as "My dearest friend." He had asked her to relate the routine of her usual day. She would rise at 8
A.M.
and after breakfast would read and take a cup of tea. Then family matters needed attending to, and she would work until a solitary, lonely dinner at 2
P.M.
She reflected, "I used to sit at the window watching for my Harry, and when I saw him coming my heart would leap for joy when he was at my own side and never happy apart from me when the bare thought of six months absence would have shook him."

She took joy in watching her child grow yet regretted that Henry was not there. In the afternoon, she would take a carriage ride in the country or visit one of her few friends for tea. "But when I return home, how [to] describe my feelings to find myself entirely alone, to reflect that the only friend I have in the world is such an immense distance from me to think that he may be sick and I cannot assist him. My poor heart is ready to burst, you who know what a trifle would make me unhappy can conceive what I suffer now."

She lamented the loss of her family to Britain and pored over Henry's letters looking for any invitation to join him. In fleeting moments of doubt, she wondered if she had lost him. "'Tis hard my Harry indeed it is. I love you with the tenderest the purest affection. I would undergo any hardship to be near you and you will not let me."

In her anxiety, she was plagued with thoughts that other women would test his fidelity: "I sometimes fear that a long absence the force of bad example may lead you to forget me at sometimes. To know that it ever gave you pleasure to be in company with the finest woman in the world, would be worse than death to me.“
⁷

When Knox and Greene arrived in Bethlehem at 9
A.M.
on Sunday, August 24, an express rider sent by Washington was waiting with orders to return immediately as the army was on the move south. The British fleet had bypassed the Delaware River fortifications and instead sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to Elk River, about twenty miles from Wilmington, Delaware. The two generals caught up with the army an hour after the troops had left the capital. They had ridden almost 100 miles in two days. Knox was disappointed that he had missed the march through town, he wrote in a letter the next day to Lucy.

Howe disembarked 15,000 men on Monday to begin a campaign against Philadelphia. His troops occupied a piece of high ground called Grey's Hill, about two miles past the city of Elkton. Knox and the rest of the Continental Army arrived in Wilmington on Tuesday and began to prepare for the long-awaited battle. Clouds gathered overhead, and steady rain began to fall, delaying action and heightening the tensions among the soldiers. The British also needed time to replace their horses, many of which had died, had starved, or had been injured during the six-week sea passage.

On Sunday, August 31, Knox was appointed as president of a court-martial that was to try a British lieutenant for recruiting soldiers for Howe's army in New Jersey. He then was off to set up an artillery park and drill his men. His gunners were to fire two field guns to sound the alarm for the troops
to rush to battle stations. The armies were nine miles apart, and skirmishes erupted daily between pickets and advance troops. But the main body of the British army remained idle. Deserters from Howe's army reported on Sunday, September 7, that the enemy had sent away its baggage, even tents, and troops carrying only blankets and light gear had begun to march from Kennett Square seven miles to the Brandywine Creek, a tributary of the Delaware. The next day the redcoats came within two miles of the American post at Newport on the right of the Continental line but did not attack. Knox and Washington's other generals thought this was only a diversion. As the commander in chief put it in a letter to Congress, it was "only meant to amuse us in front, while their real intent was to march by our right and by suddenly passing the Brandywine and gaining the heights on the north side of that River, get between us and Philadelphia and cut us off from that city.“
⁸
At 2
A.M.
on Tuesday, September 9, Washington ordered the army to march six miles to Chad's Ford on the banks of Brandywine Creek, where Knox set up his main artillery force. American troops were posted at the fords along the river. The British marched within three miles of the river on Wednesday.

Knox was up before dawn Thursday morning, checking the guns and directing his men. By eight o'clock he saw a large force of redcoats appear through the morning fog on the opposite side of the creek. British field guns were moved into position and began a cannonade. Knox shouted for his gunners to return fire. An explosion of thundering cannon blasts erupted, and smoke filled the air on both sides of the creek. Knox's men kept up hot fire, unsure exactly where the enemy was digging in or where their shots were landing, aiming merely into the haze of acrid clouds. For two hours the cannons kept up a deafening roar as British guns tried to match shot for shot. The American general William Maxwell crossed the creek with his light corps and attacked the advancing redcoats with a pelting line of musket shots. Thirty British soldiers fell on the spot where they were trying to erect a battery. A body of 300 Hessian troops charged forward, supported by British infantry, but their lines were shredded in the fire. The Americans saw about 300 enemy soldiers hit amid the shots and wafting smoke, along with 50 of their own. Hundreds of British soldiers rushed to the scene, and Maxwell pulled his men back and quickly recrossed the Brandywine.

Howe, meanwhile, rushed a 3,000-man column of British infantry, artillerists with sixteen field guns, and Hessians led by General Cornwallis to circle around the Continental line on its right. These men found Jeffrie's Ford, six miles up the creek at a fork in the Brandywine, unguarded. In the
confusion of the battle, Washington received contradictory and faulty reports from General Sullivan on the size of Cornwallis's column and possible fords along the river, and was uncertain of the enemy's destination until it had crossed the water and a dust cloud was visible. When the enemy's intentions were discovered at 2
P.M.
, Washington threw divisions led by generals Sullivan, Lord Stirling, and Stephen to race to stop the advance.

At 4
P.M.
, the two forces met halfway, about three miles from Chad's Ford with a hill between them. The redcoats fired on General Sullivan's men. Both columns tried to reach the high ground, and the soldiers came close enough to open fire on each other at point-blank range. For an hour and a half, the Americans and British kept up a desperate fight, with musket balls raining like hail. Hundreds of men were struck and lay in agony on the bloodstained field. The patriots soon realized they were running out of cartridges and could not keep up the fight much longer. An order was given to withdraw. Washington, who had galloped to the scene, sent back orders for General Greene's division and a brigade led by Francis Nash to pull out from the left side of the American line and provide cover for the troops, as the British field guns blasted shots in their direction.

"They formed and were of the utmost service in covering the retreat of the other divisions," Knox wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts Council, the upper body of its legislature.
⁹

Henry, meanwhile, was engaged in an artillery duel on the opposite side of the American line that began shortly before 5
P.M.
He pulled his horse up to the gun battery manned by Captain David Allen's company and found his gunners, several of whom were from Boston, wide-eyed. "They seemed in high spirits," Knox thought.
¹⁰

"The enemy opened a battery on the left of seven pieces of cannon opposite to one of ours of the same number," Knox recounted. "The enemy's batteries and ours kept up an incessant cannonade, and formed such a column of smoke that the British troops passed the creek unperceived on the right of the battery, on the ground, which was left unoccupied by the withdrawal of Nash's brigade.“
¹¹

American general Anthony Wayne's division raced to repulse the British momentum, and a gunfight erupted. The enemy troops were able to push to the top of a hill, which provided cover, and level their muskets at Wayne's men, who tried to cross the low ground to reach them. In unison, British muskets aimed and fired a whistling line of musket balls, cutting down the Americans. Wayne's men took cover and then rose to make a second charge. But
again the British unleashed overwhelming fire and pushed back the Americans, then charged to their line. Knox ordered his men to retreat, and they had to abandon ten precious field pieces, a British howitzer, and several munitions wagons as the British pushed forward. With night setting in, Washington ordered a retreat of his entire army to Chester. Howe's army was too crippled by the day's losses to pursue, and the British commander again paused and failed to capitalize on the victory and destroy the Continental Army. At midnight, Washington sent a hasty note to Congress, who waited just twenty-five miles away: "Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am happy to find the troops in good spirits." He said he believed the British had suffered greater losses than his army.
¹²

Knox estimated that as many as 800 Americans had been killed or wounded or were missing. The official total pegged the Continental Army loss at 780 and the British casualties at about 600.

The American army retreated north toward Philadelphia on Saturday, September 13, crossing the Schuylkill River, as the British remained near Dilworth Town to bury their dead and tend to their wounded. Knox found time that day to write Lucy: "My dear girl will be happy to hear of her Harry's safety; for, my Lucy, Heaven, who is our guide, has protected him in the day of battle. You will hear with this letter of the most severe action that has been fought this war between our army and the enemy. Our people behaved well, but Heaven frowned on us in a degree. We were obliged to retire after very considerable slaughter of the enemy: they dared not pursue a single step. If they advance, we shall fight them again before they get possession of Philadelphia; but of this they will be cautious. My corps did me great honor: they behaved like men contending for everything that's valuable.“
¹³

Knox and the rest of the American generals received word that General Gates's northern army was entrenching to meet the advancing British army under Burgoyne at Saratoga, New York. The two main American armies were now facing the two main bodies of British troops. It seemed that the war could be decided in days. Knox moved with the rest of Washington's force to the White Horse Tavern, about twenty miles west of Philadelphia, to guard the fords of the Schuylkill. British troops led by General Cornwallis followed.