Washington: A Life (48 page)

A subdued Washington knew the stage was set for a major confrontation. “An attack is now therefore to be expected,” he wrote, “which will probably decide the fate of America.”
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His army of only 10,500 men, 3,000 of them ailing, was sadly outnumbered and outgunned. Even though he tried to put on a brave face, he approached the impending confrontation with dread. “When I compare” the British Army “with that which we have to oppose them, I cannot help feeling very anxious apprehensions,” he confided to Brigadier General William Livingston.
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As more militiamen streamed into New York, Washington’s army expanded to 23,000 soldiers, but many were callow youths grabbed from shops and farms who would soon confront a highly professional military force. Washington’s pronouncements acquired a darker tinge, as if he intuited the many deaths that lay ahead. “We must resolve to conquer or die,” he intoned in general orders. “With this resolution and the blessing of heaven, victory and success certainly will attend us.”
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The night of August 21, almost the eve of battle, witnessed an electrical storm of such portentous grandeur that it might have been conjured up by Shakespeare. Major Abner Benedict, posted on the elevated portion of Long Island known as Brooklyn Heights, which towered over the East River and housed the main American fortification, left this graphic description of the celestial pyrotechnics whizzing through the sky: “In a few minutes the entire heavens became black as ink, and from horizon to horizon the whole empyrean was ablaze with lightning … The lightning fell in masses and sheets of fire to earth, and seemed to strike incessantly and on every side.”
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The Howe brothers postponed an invasion to give the Hessian troops a week to recuperate from their transatlantic journey and to see if their feeble peace overtures bore fruit. Baffled by the delay, Washington found “something exceedingly mysterious in the conduct” of these brothers, who spouted catchphrases of peace amid a huge military buildup.
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The paramount question was whether the enemy would land on Manhattan or on Long Island, prompting Washington to hedge his bets by dividing his forces. This strategy, if seemingly prudent, ran the grave risk of having British ships storm up the East River, snapping links between the army’s two wings. To avert this possibility, Washington sank wrecks in the channels of Upper New York Bay—one could see masts of submerged ships poking up from the water—and seeded the East River with spiked obstacles to thwart vessels.

As storm clouds dispersed the next morning, British light infantry and grenadiers began trickling ashore at Gravesend Bay, at the southwestern corner of Long Island. By day’s end, 15,000 redcoats had established a solid beachhead in the kind of well-drilled maneuver at which European armies excelled. This main invading force would soon number 22,000 soldiers, but Washington, deceived by faulty intelligence, estimated it in the neighborhood of 8,000 or 9,000 men. The miscalculation led him to misconstrue the landing as a diversion from the main event in Manhattan—“a feint upon Long island to draw our forces into that quarter.”
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He was further led astray when British forces came to a dead halt at Flatbush, three miles from American lines. Retaining the majority of his men in Manhattan, Washington transferred ten battalions to Brooklyn, bringing total troop strength there to a paltry 6,000 men. In retrospect, it is hard to see how Washington’s strategic vision could have been so clouded as ninety British ships conducted a grand-scale movement in the Narrows.

On August 23, after touring his Long Island defenses with General Sullivan, Washington decided to deploy 3,000 men farther south in a wooded, hilly area called the Heights of Guana (or Gowanus Heights), which ran roughly east-west and could cut off any northward thrusts by the enemy. With his men about to clash with superior forces, Washington suggested that courage could outweigh sheer numbers and implored them to show “what a few brave men, contending in their own land and in the best of causes, can do against base hirelings and mercenaries.”
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Just in case noble principles didn’t work, Washington reiterated that any cowards who fled would be shot. His own jitters became palpable when he promoted Israel Putnam over Sullivan, a panicky rotation of generals that exposed the flimsy command structure of the Continental Army. So murky was the situation that nobody quite knew how many American soldiers were based on Long Island. George Washington, age forty-four, was betraying his inexperience in guiding such a large army.

When a favorable wind arose, Washington imagined that the British would squeeze the Americans with a pincerlike movement, with British soldiers on Long Island swarming up toward Brooklyn Heights while British ships moved en masse toward southern Manhattan. On August 25 he again scrutinized the Long Island troops and was enraged by what he saw—something more like a crazy carnival atmosphere than a tidy military camp. Men roamed around higgledy-piggledy and fired muskets at random. Frustrated, he gave a tongue-lashing to Israel Putnam: “The distinction between a well regulated army and a mob is the good order and discipline of the first, and the licentious and disorderly behavior of the latter.”
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In his writings, Old Put seemed scarcely literate, once telling “his Excelancy ginrol Washenton” that he had asked “each ginrol ofesor [each general officer]” to transmit to him his “opinon in riteng [opinion in writing].”
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Putnam’s shaky command of English highlighted the difficulties Washington encountered in forming a competent officer corps.

On August 26, after visiting the Heights of Guana, Washington still didn’t grasp the full scope of the threat. Though he surveyed the British troops through his spyglass and observed a sea of white tents stretching nearly five miles down to Gravesend Bay, he still kept more than half his men in Manhattan. Only when British ships retreated back down the Narrows did the uncomfortable truth dawn on him. As he informed Hancock, the enemy “mean to land the main body of their army on Long Island and to make their grand push there.”
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Incredibly, with the vast British expeditionary force set to pounce, Washington took time out to write to Lund Washington about selling a flour shipment in Hispaniola. He rambled on about chimney repairs and additions to the northern wing of the Mount Vernon mansion. Such incongruous thoughts confirm that Washington found a release from overwhelming pressure by daydreaming about his estate, his battlefield sedative. He confessed to Lund that being the top general was a joyless existence: “If I did not think our struggle just … sure I am that no pecuniary satisfaction upon earth can compensate the loss of all my domestic happiness and requite me for the load of business which constantly presses upon and deprives me of every enjoyment.”
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The British had devised an ingenious battle plan that envisioned a fantastic triple assault against American forces on Long Island. In the first prong, Scottish major general James Grant would lead his Highlanders up the Gowanus Road in a diversionary maneuver along the west coast of Brooklyn. In the second prong, Lieutenant General Leopold Philipp, Freiherr von Heister, would march his Hessians through Flatbush, then swerve northward through central Brooklyn to the Heights of Guana. The pièce de résistance, however, would be the third movement farther east. Generals Howe, Henry Clinton, and Charles Cornwallis would sweep around to the right and make a huge looping movement up through Flatlands. Once past Sullivan’s and Stirling’s men, they intended to make a bold sweep west along the Jamaica Pass, punching through a flagrant gap in the American defenses—a shocking oversight by Washington and his generals. With these defenses breached, the wide flanking movement would carry them straight to Brooklyn Heights and bring them behind Sullivan’s men, catching them in a lethal trap.

During the night of August 26 Washington was shaken from his sleep in Manhattan by news of General Grant’s move up the Gowanus Road. This clever British stratagem seemed to confirm Washington’s preconception that the enemy would favor this shore road, enabling the Royal Navy to provide cover. When Washington awoke again at sunrise, the British further fed his delusion by sending five warships, assisted by opportune winds and tides, toward the East River. Had the ships reached their destination, it might have been catastrophic for the American army, cutting it in half and threatening Brooklyn Heights from the rear. Luckily, the wind shifted direction, forcing the ships back down the harbor. At that point Washington and Joseph Reed took a small launch across the East River, joining Israel Putnam and four thousand Americans hunkered down inside the fort atop the Brooklyn bluff. Washington ordered more regiments to cross to Long Island as the center of gravity shifted irrevocably from Manhattan.

Riding among his troops, Washington transmitted conflicting messages. In the (possibly romanticized) memories of an old soldier, the commander issued blazing rhetoric: “Quit yourselves like men, like soldiers, for all that is worth living for is at stake!”
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He mingled this admonition with unalloyed threats: “If I see any man turn his back today, I will shoot him through. I have two pistols loaded. But I will not ask any man to go further than I do. I will fight as long as I have a leg or an arm.”
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Unlike other battles, where Washington rode at the head of his troops, at Brooklyn Heights he hung back in the rear, surveying the fighting to the south through his telescope.

South of Gowanus Creek, the rotund, bibulous Lord Stirling led 1,600 men in fierce combat. With exceptional valor, the American troops fought for four hours until they were overwhelmed by more than 7,000 British and Hessian soldiers. In an unequal contest with a larger enemy force, the First Maryland Regiment under Colonel William Smallwood, experiencing battle for the first time, obstinately refused to surrender a small hill that ensured an escape path for Stirling’s men. Though they saved many retreating Americans, their casualties were frightful: of 400 men sent into the fray, only 144 survived. “Good God!” Washington reportedly said, wringing his hands as he watched this action. “What brave fellows I must this day lose!”
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General Sullivan dealt with an equally hellish situation as his 3,500 men tried to prevent any British advance beyond the densely wooded Heights of Guana. The Americans were stretched perilously thin along a defensive line that extended for miles. An enormous number of Hessian soldiers suddenly scrambled up the slope toward them. When Sullivan tried to retreat, he discovered that British soldiers had encircled his men amid ferocious blasts of gunfire. Thousands of terrified Americans, lacking bayonets to defend themselves, tried to straggle back toward Brooklyn Heights across a blood-drenched plain. The Hessians, reacting with slashing brutality, bayoneted many men to death and impaled some captives against trees. Of this outright butchery, one British officer commented: “We were greatly shocked by the massacres made by the Hessians and Highlanders after victory was decided.”
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This was the American bloodbath the British had long envisioned, in which colonial yokels were properly vanquished by their betters. Facing an orgy of retribution, American prisoners were turned into slave labor. “As long as we had no horses,” said one Hessian, “the prisoners were harnessed in front of the cannon.”
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The main reason for this slaughter was the success of the eastern flanking movement along the Jamaica Pass. Marching silently by night, Howe, Clinton, and Cornwallis led ten thousand men in a column two miles long through the gaping hole in patriot defenses. So egregious was the security lapse that the British encountered only five mounted militia officers at the pass, allowing them to sneak up behind the unsuspecting Stirling and Sullivan. The American death toll for the Battle of Brooklyn (or Battle of Long Island) was grim: three hundred killed and another thousand taken prisoner, including, temporarily, Generals Stirling and Sullivan. For Washington, it had been an unmitigated disaster. As Douglas Southall Freeman concluded, “The American Commander-in-Chief had appeared to be a tyro, a bungler as well as a beginner, in comparison with the English General.”
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John Adams summed up the case succinctly: “In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.”
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During this agonizing day, the commander in chief had been reduced to a helpless spectator of the carnage.

If George Washington stared into the abyss at any single moment of the war, it must have been as he contemplated the vast British force arrayed below him, poised to shatter his army forever. Luckily, General Howe didn’t press his advantage and withdrew his men from cannon range, even though his troops scented blood and “it required repeated orders to prevail on them to desist.”
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Howe feared that the casualties would have been too high to justify a charge against the American fortress. As he explained, if the troops had “been permitted to go on, it is my opinion they would have carried the redoubt, but … I would not risk the loss that might have been sustained in the assault.”
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The Howe brothers imagined that they could now deliver the coup de grâce to Washington by slipping warships behind him in the East River, catching him in a vise between royal sailors and soldiers. Once again the weather rescued Washington. On August 28 a chill drizzle descended steadily on Brooklyn, soaking already-soggy ground. Since many American soldiers lacked tents, they had difficulty keeping clothes and munitions dry. The next day grew even darker and wetter as Washington, riding among his men and peering through the mist, saw that British troops had inched forward overnight, digging trenches to within six hundred yards of his outermost position. His army was being slowly, insidiously, trapped by the enemy. He found his men sick, bedraggled, and badly demoralized, “dispirited by their incessant duty and watching.”
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The men assigned to trench duty stood waist-deep in pools of water—a sight that surely reminded Washington of Fort Necessity—and the mood was scarcely relieved by the incessant roar of British cannon pummeling American positions.