The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn Part 7

With him there were Nixon, who was severely wounded, Ward, Little, Sargent, and not a few of the officers and men who were here in the present campaign. Many of them were representative citizens. Little, of Newburyport, whose name we have seen a.s.sociated with the defences of Long Island, had been surveyor of the king's lands, owned large tracts in his own right, and was widely known as a man of character and influence. As an officer he was distinguished for his judgment and great self-possession in the field. His lieutenant-colonel, William Henshaw, of Leicester, belonged to the line of Henshaws whose ancestor had fallen in the English Revolution in defence of popular rights and privileges. A man of the old type, with c.o.c.ked hat and provincial dress, modest and brave, he writes home to his wife one day that he finds it difficult to stop profanity among the troops; another day he hopes his children are improving in all the graces; and then he is heard of in the heat of some engagement. He was the first adjutant-general of the provincial army around Boston in 1775, and served in that capacity with the rank of colonel until relieved by General Gates. The services rendered by Colonel and afterwards General Glover in this as well as in other campaigns is a well-known record.

Learned and Nixon became Continental brigadiers. Shepherd, Brooks, Jackson, Winthrop Sargent, and many other officers from this State, distinguished themselves in the later years of the Revolution. But perhaps no man proved his worth more in this campaign than Colonel Rufus Putnam, of Brookfield, Washington's chief engineer. He succeeded Colonel Gridley at Boston; and at New York, where engineering skill of a high order was demanded in the planning and construction of the works, he showed himself equal to the occasion. That Washington put a high estimate on his services, appears from more than one of his letters.[87]

[Footnote 87: Doc.u.ment 43, Part II., contains interesting and important extracts from Colonel Putnam's Journal, now published for the first time.]

Rhode Island at this time had two regiments in the field. In 1775 they were around Boston; in 1776 they were here again with the army--Varnum's Ninth and Hitchc.o.c.k's Eleventh Continentals. A third regiment from this State, under Colonel Lippett, did not join the army until September. Varnum and Hitchc.o.c.k were rising young lawyers of Providence, the former a graduate of Brown University, the latter of Yale. Hitchc.o.c.k's lieutenant-colonel was Ezekiel Cornell, of Scituate, who subsequently served in Congress and became commissary-general of the army. Greene, Varnum, Hitchc.o.c.k, and Cornell were among those Rhode Islanders who early resisted the pretensions of the British Ministry. In the discipline and soldierly bearing of these two regiments Greene took special pride, and not a few of their officers subsequently earned an honorable reputation. Varnum was created a brigadier; Hitchc.o.c.k, as will be seen, closed his career as a sacrifice to the cause; Colonels Crary and Angell and the Olneys served with the highest credit; and the men of the regiments, many of them, fought through the war to the Yorktown surrender.

In proportion to her population, no State contributed more men to the army in 1776 than Connecticut, nor were all ranks of society more fully represented. Fortunately the State had in Trumbull, its governor, just the executive officer which the times demanded. A man of character and ability, greatly respected, prompt, zealous, ardent in the cause, his words and calls upon the people were seldom unheeded; and the people were generally as patriotic as their governor. In the present crisis Connecticut sent to New York six Continental battalions, seven of "new levies," and twelve of militia.

Her Continentals were commanded by Colonels Samuel Holden Parsons,[88]

of Lyme; Jedediah Huntington, of Lebanon; Samuel Wyllys, of Hartford; Charles Webb, of Stamford; John Durkee, of Bean Hill, near Norwich; and Andrew Ward,[89] of Guilford. The "levies" were the troops raised in answer to the last call of Congress, and were commanded by Colonels Gold Selleck Silliman, of Fairfield; Phillip Burr Bradley, of Ridgefield; William Douglas, of Northford; Fisher Gay, of Farmington; Samuel Selden, of Hadlyme; John Chester, of Wethersfield; and Comfort Sage, of Middletown. Among these names will be recognized many which represented some of the oldest and best families in the State. Wyllys was a descendant of one of the founders of Hartford. His father held the office of Secretary of State for sixty-one years; his grandfather had held it before that, and after the Revolution the honor fell to the colonel himself. The three held the office in succession for ninety-eight years. Three members of this family, which is now extinct, were in the army during this campaign, and two served with honor through the war. From Lebanon came Colonel Jedediah Huntington and his two brothers, Captains Joshua and Ebenezer. They were sons of Jabez Huntington, who like Trumbull was a type of the patriotic citizen of the Revolution. Although his business and property, as a West India merchant, would be greatly endangered if not ruined by the war, he and his family cheerfully ignored their personal interests in their devotion to the common cause. The three brothers and their brother-in-law, Colonel John Chester, served through the present campaign as they had in the previous one, and two of them, Jedediah and Ebenezer, fought to the end of the struggle. Parsons, who subsequently rose to the rank of a Continental major-general, Wyllys and Webb, were among those who pledged their individual credit to carry out the successful enterprise against Ticonderoga in 1775. In his section of the State few men were more influential than Colonel Silliman, of Fairfield, where, before the war, he had held the office of king's attorney. After the present campaign, in the course of which he was more than once engaged with the enemy, he was appointed a State brigadier, rendered further service during the British forays into Connecticut, and marched with troops to the Hudson Highlands upon Burgoyne's approach from Canada. Colonel Douglas, of Northford, engaged heart and hand in the struggle. Joining Montgomery's command in 1775, he served in the flotilla on Lake Champlain, and was subsequently appointed commodore by Congress; but accepting a colonelcy of Connecticut levies he marched to New York in 1776, after first advancing the funds to equip his regiment. With Silliman he enjoyed the confidence and good opinion of the commander-in-chief, and both were appointed to command regiments to be raised for the Connecticut Continental Line. Another of those citizen-soldiers who came from the substantial element in the population was Colonel Selden. A descendant of the Seldens who were among the first settlers in the Connecticut Valley, fifty years of age, possessing a large estate, incapacitated for severe military duty, the father of twelve children, he nevertheless answered the governor's call for troops, and joined the army at New York, from which he was destined not to return.

Durkee, Knowlton, Hull, Sherman, Grosvenor, Bradley, afterwards a Continental colonel, and many others, were men from Connecticut, who gave the country their best services. The militia regiments from this State turned out at the governor's call upon the arrival of the enemy.

Of the fourteen he designated to march, twelve reported at New York before August 27th, each averaging three hundred and fifty men, with Oliver Wolcott as their brigadier-general,[90] than whom no man in Connecticut had done more to further the public interests of both the State and the nation. Signing the Declaration in 1776, he was to be found in the following year fighting Burgoyne in the field, and afterwards constantly active in a military or civil capacity until the success of the cause was a.s.sured.

[Footnote 88: On his promotion to a brigadier-generalship in August, Parsons was succeeded by his lieutenant-colonel, John Tyler.]

[Footnote 89: This was the same officer who came down with Lee in the spring. When his regiment returned home he was put in command of another raised on the continental basis. He joined the army in August, but did not cross to Long Island.]

[Footnote 90: The original letter from Trumbull to Wolcott, among the latter's papers, informing him of his appointment, states that the fourteen regiments had been called out upon "the most pressing application of General Washington." The governor adds: "Having formed raised expectations of your disposition and ability to serve your country in this most important crisis, on which the fate of America seems so much to depend, I trust you will cheerfully undertake the service," etc. General Wolcott proceeded at once to New York, and was with the militia in the city during the fighting on Long Island, and for some time after. As to the number of the regiments that came down, see Colonel Douglas' letter of August 23d (Doc.u.ment 22), where he says twelve were on the parade the day before.]

Pa.s.s these men in review, and we have before us not a small proportion of those "fathers" of the Revolution, to whose exertions and sacrifices America owes her independence. It was a crude, unmilitary host, strong only as a body of volunteers determined to resist an invasion of their soil. Here and there was an officer or soldier who had served in previous wars, but the great ma.s.s knew nothing of war.

The Continental or established regiments formed much less than half the army, and some of these were without experience or discipline; very few had been tested under fire. As to arms, they carried all sorts--old flint-locks, fowling-pieces, rifles, and occasionally good English muskets captured by privateers from the enemy's transports.

Not all had bayonets or equipments. Uniforms were the exception; even many of the Continentals were dressed in citizens' clothes.[91] The militiamen, hurriedly leaving their farms and affairs, came down in homespun, while some of the State troops raised earlier in the spring appeared in marked contrast to them, both in dress and discipline.

Smallwood's Marylanders attracted attention with their showy scarlet and buff coats. The Delawares, with their blue uniform, were so nearly like the Hessians as to be mistaken for them in the field. Miles'

Pennsylvanians wore black hunting shirts; and Lasher's New York battalion perhaps appeared, in the various uniforms of gray, blue and green worn by the independent companies. The general and regimental officers in the army were distinguished by different-colored c.o.c.kades and sashes. For regimental colors, each battalion appears to have carried those of its own design. One of the flags captured by the Hessians on Long Island was reported by a Hessian officer to have been a red damask standard, bearing the word "Liberty" in its centre.

Colonel Joseph Read's Ma.s.sachusetts Continentals carried a flag with a light buff ground, on which there was the device of a pine-tree and Indian-corn, emblematical of New-England fields. Two officers were represented in the uniform of the regiment, one of whom, with blood streaming from a wound in his breast, pointed to children under the pine, with the words, "For posterity I bleed."[92]

[Footnote 91: When it was proposed to put the Boston army on the new Continental basis on January 1st, 1776, Washington evidently hoped to have it all uniformed. Thus his orders of December 11th, 1775, read: "As uniformity and decency in dress are essentially necessary in the appearance and regularity of an army, his Excellency recommends it earnestly to the officers to put themselves in a proper uniform....

The general by no means recommends or desires officers to run into costly or expensive regimentals; no matter how plain or coa.r.s.e, so that they are but uniform in their color, cut, and fashion. The officers belonging to those regiments whose uniforms are not yet fixed upon had better delay making their regimentals until they are." The orders of January 5th, 1776, say: "The regimentals, which have been made up, and drawn for, may be delivered to the respective Colonels, by the Quartermaster-General, to the order of those Colonels, who drew them at such prices as they have cost the continent, which is much cheaper than could otherwise be obtained. As nothing adds more to the appearance of a man than dress, and a proper degree of cleanliness in his person, the General hopes and expects that each regiment will contend for the most soldierlike appearance." These "regimentals" were of a brown color. That Little's and Hitchc.o.c.k's men, or most of them, were in uniform when they came to New York, appears from General Greene's Providence order of April 4th (_ante_, p. 62). A description of the colors of Colonel Joseph Read's Ma.s.sachusetts Continental regiment refers to the "uniform of the regiment;" so doubtless most of the Boston army was in uniform. But whether they were kept supplied with uniforms may be doubted. The men wore out their clothes fast while throwing up the works, and Washington speaks of the "difficulty and expense" of providing new ones. (Orders, July 24th, 1776.) At this date he does not insist on uniforms, but recommends the adoption of the hunting shirt and breeches as a cheap and convenient dress, and as one which might have its terrors for the enemy, who imagined that every rebel so dressed was "a complete marksman." A valuable article on "The Uniforms of the American Army" may be found in the _Magazine of American History_, for August, 1877, by Professor Asa Bird Gardner, of the West Point Military Academy.]

[Footnote 92: _Force_, 5th Series, vol. ii., p. 244.]

Had this force acquired the discipline and been hardened by the service which made Washington's troops later in the war a most trusty and effective body, the campaign of 1776 would have shown another record. But not the less are we to respect it, with all its failings and defeats. If not all the men were "patriots;" if some lost faith in the cause; if others deserted it entirely and joined the enemy; if some entered the army from mercenary motives and proved cravens in the field; if still others who were honest enough in their intentions were found to be wretched material for the making of good soldiers--this was only the common experience of all popular struggles. As a body, it fairly represented the colonists in arms; and as an army, it did its share in bringing about the final grand result.

To recapitulate: Washington's army, at the opening of the campaign on August 27th, consisted of seventy-one regiments or parts of regiments, twenty-five of which were Continental, aggregating in round numbers twenty-eight thousand five hundred officers and men. Of these, Ma.s.sachusetts furnished seven thousand three hundred; Rhode Island, eight hundred; Connecticut, nine thousand seven hundred; New York, four thousand five hundred; New Jersey, one thousand five hundred; Pennsylvania, three thousand one hundred; Delaware, eight hundred; and Maryland, nine hundred. Between eight and nine thousand were on the sick-list or not available for duty, leaving on the rolls not far from nineteen thousand effectives, most of them levies and militia, on the day of the battle of Long Island.[93] As officered and brigaded at this date the army stood as follows:

[Footnote 93: The last official return of the army before the battle, published in _Force's Archives_, bears date of August 3d; the next about September 12th. The latter is the proper basis for making an estimate of the numbers for August 27th, as it includes all the regiments except Haslet's known to be then present, and no more. On September 12th the total of rank and file on the rolls, not including the absent sick, was 24,100. To these add 1800 commissioned officers and 2500 sergeants, drums and fifes, and the total strength is 28,400.

On the same date, rank and file, _fit for duty_, numbered 14,700. Add to these 1000 lost on Long Island and 3500 officers, sergeants, drums and fifes fit for duty, and we have, all told, between 19,000 and 20,000 effectives on August 27th; and these figures correspond with Washington's statement of September 2d: "Our number of men at present fit for duty is under 20,000." The army suffered greatly from sickness during August and September. General Heath writes in his _Memoirs_, under date of August 8th: "The number of sick amounted to near 10,000; nor was it possible to find proper hospitals or proper necessaries for them. In almost every farm, stable, shed, and even under the fences and bushes, were the sick to be seen, whose countenances were but an index of the dejection of spirit and the distress they endured." On the 4th of August, Colonel Parsons wrote to Colonel Little: "My Doctor and Mate are sick. I have near Two Hundred men sick in Camp; my neighbours are in very little better state." And he asks Little to consent to his surgeon's mate remaining with him until his own surgeons were better. [MS. letter in possession of Charles J. Little, Esq.]]

GEORGE WASHINGTON,

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

AIDES-DE-CAMP.

_Colonel_ William Grayson, of Virginia; _Lieutenant-Colonel_ Richard Cary, Jr., of Ma.s.sachusetts; _Lieutenant-Colonel_ Samuel B. Webb, of Connecticut; _Lieutenant_ Tench Tilghman, of Pennsylvania.

SECRETARY.

_Lieutenant-Colonel_ Robert Hanson Harrison, of Virginia.

ADJUTANT-GENERAL.

_Colonel_ Joseph Reed, of Philadelphia.

QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL.

_Colonel_ Stephen Moylan, of Pennsylvania.

COMMISSARY-GENERAL.

_Colonel_ Joseph Trumbull, of Connecticut.

PAYMASTER-GENERAL.

_Colonel_ William Palfrey, of Ma.s.sachusetts.

MUSTER-MASTER-GENERAL.

_Colonel_ Gunning Bedford, of Pennsylvania.

DIRECTOR OF THE GENERAL HOSPITAL.

_Doctor_ John Morgan, of Pennsylvania.

CHIEF ENGINEER.

_Colonel_ Rufus Putnam, of Ma.s.sachusetts.

PUTNAM'S DIVISION.

MAJOR-GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM.

AIDES-DE-CAMP.

Major Aaron Burr, Major ----.

CLINTON'S BRIGADE.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES CLINTON.[94]

Brigade-Major, David Henly.

Colonel Joseph Read, Ma.s.sachusetts 505[95]