Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence (9 page)

Cannonballs could break through stone and reduce wooden structures to explosions of splinters. Knox’s short-barreled, high-angled mortars lobbed hollow cast-iron “shells” filled with gunpowder. He taught his gunners to fashion a fuse that delayed the explosion. When the shell came near the enemy, the vessel burst with a spray of lethal fragments and an eruption of flame capable of setting a building on fire.

The mistakes of inexperienced gunners and the fragile condition of some of the Ticonderoga barrels contributed to the explosion of three mortars during the barrage. When a barrel failed, the gun itself became a bomb, blasting metal and flames that lacerated the crew.

The British were astonished at the bombardment—the rebels had always been parsimonious in their expenditure of powder, and General Howe knew nothing of Knox’s cavalcade. His own guns in Boston, on Bunker Hill, and on ships fired back. The night sky churned. A British officer wrote, “Their shells were thrown in an excellent direction. . . . Our lines were raked from the new battery they had made and tho’ we returned shot and shell, I am very, very sorry to say with not quite so much judgment.”
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It was a high compliment to Knox and his novice gunners.

For the citizens cowering in cellars the bombardment was not spectacle but terror: the helpless, maddening wait for diabolical chance to determine life or death. An American observer noted that “the cries of poor women and children frequently reached our ears.” Knox was raining destruction on the landscape of his own boyhood. He knew the buildings, the streets, the homes, the people. A shell that exploded with a sound “like a window frame being smashed” might kill a friend or a teacher. Might set fire to his own shop. Might drop onto members of Lucy’s family.

Yet he hurried to fulfill his duty. The guns thumped on until dawn. They commenced again the next evening. The two nights of sound and fury were only a prelude to the bombardment of March 4, when the Americans began their seizure of Dorchester Heights. Abigail Adams was kept awake by “the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house.” Under the cover of the continuous roar, American general John Thomas, a doctor from Plymouth, marched three thousand men out Dorchester Neck and onto the high ground. A covering force of eight hundred riflemen took positions along the Dorchester shore. The others began a frenzy of work.

For once, everything favored the rebels. The night was mild and bright under a full moon. A low mist obscured the view from Boston. An easterly wind carried the sound of the bustle and hammering away from the city. The men worked feverishly. They put up the wooden frames and picked out frozen dirt on the heights to fill the gabbions. Knox directed the gunners and teamsters who, with the help of four hundred oxen, hauled the big guns up the hills.

Around ten o’clock, word reached a British general that “rebels were at work on Dorchester Heights.” Occupied with the intense bombardment, he chose to ignore the intelligence, perhaps imagining he would have time to deal with the matter the next day.

At three in the morning, three thousand fresh troops relieved the exhausted work crews. General Washington rode among the men,
encouraging them. He noted that March 5 was the sixth anniversary of the Massacre that Knox had witnessed on the streets of Boston. “Avenge the death of your brethren,” he urged.

In return, an observer noted, his men “manifest their joy, and express a warm desire for the approach of the enemy.”
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By dawn, twenty cannon were in place on the heights, shielded by the prefabricated forts.

All this activity was preparation for the colossal battle that Washington and his officers were convinced would come that very day. Howe had no choice but to challenge the rebels’ possession of Dorchester, as he had challenged their occupation of Bunker Hill nine months earlier. But during those months, Washington had shaped the men whom Charles Lee had called “the worst of all creatures” into the Continental Army.

When the British attacked, Washington was prepared to launch an immediate counterstrike. He positioned Generals Greene, Putnam, and Sullivan at the head of four thousand men on the north shore of the bay, ready to assault the city the moment Howe made a move toward Dorchester. The ice gone, they would have to attack from small boats. All knew that an amphibious landing against regular troops manning a fortified position would be a bloody affair.

Before the operation got under way, Washington had emphasized its serious nature, insisting that each man “should prepare his mind, as well as everything necessary for it. It is a noble cause we are engaged in.” Any man who would “skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy,” he declared, would be “
instantly shot down
.”
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In the hospitals, workers prepared thousands of bandages and beds for the anticipated casualties. A call went out for nurses to tend the wounded.

When dawn broke, the British soldiers in Boston saw the black mouths of guns gaping at them from forts that had not been there the night before. They could not believe their eyes. The structures had been put up “with an expedition equal to that of the genie belonging to Aladdin’s wonderful lamp.”

“My God,” Howe was said to have marveled, “these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”
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He faced a dilemma. If he allowed the rebel move to stand, it would leave him with “the necessity either of exposing the army to the greatest distresses by remaining in Boston, or of withdrawing from it under such straitened circumstances.”
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Against the advice of many of his officers, the man who had led the storming of Bunker Hill chose to attack. The climactic battle that Washington had hoped for was on. British captain Archibald Robertson thought
it “the most serious step ever an army of this strength in such a situation took.” He was sure “the fate of America” was at stake.

The attack had to come quickly. The rebels were still working, their position on the heights growing stronger by the hour. The Americans, for their part, eagerly awaited the action. As at Bunker Hill, it was the British who would have to march uphill into fire. This time, a serious array of artillery would await them. “We were in high spirits,” one of the defenders noted, “well prepared to receive the threatened attack.”
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The British troops remembered the June slaughter. As they marched to the wharfs to board the transports that would carry them against Dorchester, they appeared “pale and dejected.”

“The hills and elevations in this vicinity are covered with spectators to witness deeds of horror in the expected conflict,” one observer noted.
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A full-scale battle was the event of a lifetime, not to be missed.

Then circumstances took over. The fine weather changed abruptly. A southeast wind kicked up in the faces of the British vessels. It turned into a fierce storm, “driving the ships foul of each other, and from their anchors in utter confusion.”

No landing was possible in such weather. The gale blew all night, pelting the defenders and tossing the miserable attackers around the harbor. The tempest, Howe wrote later, “gave the enemy time to improve their works.” He called off the attack. Boston was lost.

As a teenager, Henry Knox had watched British troops march into Boston eight years earlier. Now, the frustrating, fruitless occupation ended quite suddenly. Howe sent a message under a flag of truce saying that if his men were not fired upon while leaving, he would not burn the town. Washington agreed. The victory gave the rebels “unspeakable satisfaction,” their first real thrill of the war.

The redcoats looted with abandon while they waited for sufficient ships to gather in the harbor. Many loyalists chose to endure exile rather than remain under the rebels. Few had ever lived anywhere but Boston, and they did not know where they were headed now. They would have to leave almost everything behind. John Lovell, who had taught young Henry Knox at the Boston Latin School, joined the exiles. So did Lucy’s mother, Hannah Flucker. Her father had departed earlier. As she had feared, Lucy would never see her family again. One gentleman reported that passengers on the transports were “obliged to pig together on the floor” in steerage.
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Hundreds of ships carried 9,000 British soldiers and their families and 1,100 loyalists out of Boston.

On March 17, a boy ran across the isthmus of Boston Neck with the news. The last of the redcoats were gone. Americans crept up to the
British lines on Charlestown peninsula, only to discover “the Centinels to be images dressed in the Soldiers Habit.” The congenial inscription on the mannequins read, “Welcome Brother Jonathan,” using the familiar nickname for a New Englander.
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“The more I think of [it], the more amazed I am,” wrote Abigail Adams, who had expected that regaining Boston would cost the lives of many of her countrymen. John Hancock praised Washington for forging “an undisciplined band of husband men” into soldiers. Even the modest Washington could not help crowing in private, “No man perhaps since the first institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult circumstances than I have done.”
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Harvard awarded an honorary degree to the man who had never attended college.

Washington had won his first victory as commander since the fifteen-minute battle of Jumonville Glen almost twenty-two years earlier. That he had prevailed through maneuver, imagination, and inspired leadership rather than bloody fighting made the success even more commendable. That this result had emerged from the desperate predicament of the winter months seemed miraculous.

Henry Knox, who had just lived through his first real military action, basked in glory. With ingenuity, perseverance, and muscle, he had defeated an enemy even more formidable than the British army: the rugged mountains and bad roads of inland America. When Washington rode victorious into Boston, the young gunner was at his side. He would remain there until the war’s end.

The liberation of Boston was a crucial juncture in a conflict that would see many turning points. But the fighting was far from over. Howe took his army to Halifax to regroup. Everyone knew that the British were going to hit back. They assumed that the blow would be a massive one and they guessed exactly where it would fall.

Washington wrote to his brother Jack, “We expect a very bloody Summer of it at New York.”
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Six

Sudden and Violent

1776

“Whoever commands the Sea must command the town,” Major General Charles Lee wrote Washington from New York.
1
The British commanded the sea—the guns of the warship
Asia
already glowered at the city from the harbor. With more ships, the enemy could pulverize defenses and land troops at will. “Should they get that town and Command of the North River,” Washington worried, “they can Stop the intercourse between the Northern & Southern Colonies upon which depends the Safety of America.”
2

Last autumn’s Canada expedition had aimed to secure the northern end of the critical Hudson-Champlain corridor. The prospects of victory there were now dashed. New York City, Washington declared, was “the place that we must use every endeavor to keep from them.” To assess the situation, he sent Lee, whom he valued as “the first officer in Military knowledge and experience we have in the whole army.”
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A commercial hub ever since the Dutch merchant Peter Minuit established a trading post there for the West India Company in 1626, New York City occupied a cramped square mile at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The spindle-shanked General Lee recognized the dilemma: New York must be held; New York could not be held. The loss of the colonies’ second largest city and major commercial port would strike the rebellion a critical blow; defending an island without naval superiority was futile. The best he could advise was to erect fortifications that would make it “expensive” for the British to prevail. He quickly laid out plans for gun
batteries on the East River and the Hudson, also known as the North River. Barricades would block the ends of the streets and forts would guard key locations around Manhattan and adjacent Long Island.

The work had to be done quickly. Spring was coming and British regulars were certainly on the way from England. They would be accompanied, rumor had it, by legions of professional soldiers hired from the principalities of King George’s relatives in Germany.

Just as Lee began to organize work parties, he discovered that General Henry Clinton had left Boston and was headed toward the southern colonies, intent on establishing a base of operations in Virginia or the Carolinas. Three thousand additional troops from Ireland commanded by Lord Cornwallis would join him. Together, they would open a new front in a poorly defended territory that was rife with loyalists.

Congress turned frantically to General Lee. “We want you at N. York—We want you at Cambridge—We want you in Virginia,” John Adams wrote.
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With work under way in New York, the South took precedence. Lee rode off to shore up the defenses of cities there. He handed over command to an inexperienced local officer who was almost as eccentric as Lee himself.

* * *

William Alexander had grown up in New York. His father, a Scottish immigrant, had prospered as a lawyer and investor. His Dutch mother, an astute businesswoman, had amassed her own fortune. The doting parents had given young Billie a first-rate education. His aptitude for science impressed his teachers. His marriage to Sarah Livingston cemented his connection to one of New York’s most influential clans—Sarah’s cousin Janet was the widow of the martyred Richard Montgomery.

The French and Indian War broke out when Alexander was in his late twenties. He served briefly as secretary to a family friend, William Shirley, the provincial commander who replaced General Braddock. Having botched the early phase of the war, Shirley was called to London to explain himself. Alexander decided to go along in order to defend his mentor and to garner payment for some of his own cash outlays.

He had planned to visit England for a few months. His stay stretched to five years. The reason: William Alexander had fallen in love with British aristocracy. He could not get enough of lords and ladies, of elegant conversation, country estates, and riding after hares and hounds. He lived on fatted geese and fortified wine. He came to know bluebloods like Lord Shelburne, the Duke of Argyle, and Lord Bute, who would become prime minister under George III. Styling himself an expert in colonial affairs, he murmured advice into the ears of the ruling class.

Then one day it dawned on him that he was just as worthy as the worthies. A bit of digging in the archives would surely prove his connection to that distant Alexander whom King James I had dubbed the Earl of Stirling in Shakespeare’s day. The title would give him a claim on the American lands the king had promised to the bygone earl: ten million acres across Canada, Maine, and Long Island, enough to support a lavish life. One of his friends laughed when Alexander revealed his plan, thinking it a joke.

It was no joke. In Edinburgh, Alexander and a team of solicitors strained their eyes over ancient documents. Soon they compiled a tangled family tree that, yes, did seem to indicate that the young American was in line for the title. The Scottish Lords approved, but British peers, whose nod was needed to pursue the land claim, scoffed.

No matter. Homesick at last, Alexander returned to America, where he would ever after remain Lord Stirling. His wife was Lady Sarah, his daughters Lady Mary and Lady Kitty. They rode around in the most sumptuous, the most vulgar coach on the continent. In Basking Ridge, New Jersey, thirty-five miles west of New York, the new lord built himself an opulent country home. Famous for his hospitality, Lord Stirling tippled and dined as became a lord. He pursued his interest in science, publishing a paper on his observation of a transit of Venus across the sun. His spending so far outpaced his income that his lordship soon found himself bankrupt. He sponsored a lottery to raise money. It failed. Sheriffs began to sell his household possessions at auction. Then came the Revolution.

A debauched, forty-nine-year-old patrician born to privilege, a self-styled nobleman, Lord Stirling would seem to be the archetype of the American Tory, steadfast in his loyalty to the Crown. Instead, he wholeheartedly embraced the cause of the rebels. Some accused him of using the rebellion to slip out from under his debts, but any such relief could hardly be worth the enormous risk he ran in siding with treason. His motives were sincere—Lord Stirling, in spite of his fascination with aristocracy, was a child of the Enlightenment.

He energetically recruited New Jersey militiamen, boosting the cause in that wavering colony. In spite of his scanty military experience, he soon found himself in command of the entire body of troops raised there. Congress commended his “alertness, activity, and good conduct” after he led a raid on a British cargo ship in the harbor. The representatives made him a brigadier general in the Continental Army.

Stirling certainly looked the part. Red-faced and bald, he was “a man of noble presence,” who presented “the most martial Appearance of any general in the service.”
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General Lee summoned Stirling and his regiments to New York to help prepare the city’s defenses. Lee considered him
“a great acquisition” and on departing gave him command of the single most critical location in America.

Lord Stirling followed General Lee’s defensive plan to the letter. He enlisted a thousand citizens to help, including members of the patriotic gentry, who toiled so hard with their delicate hands that “the blood rushed out of their fingers.”
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By March 20, Stirling, who had described himself as a “young beginner” when he was appointed, could report that the effort was hurtling ahead. Ever optimistic, he thought it would be an “easy summer’s work” to secure the whole continent. He did not yet know that General Howe, now in the process of abandoning Boston, was determined to take New York.

* * *

George Washington arrived in the city in late April 1776. Looking over the situation, he wrote, “The plan of defence formed by General Lee is, from what little I know of the place, a very judicious one.”
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Command at New York had passed from Lord Stirling to Israel Putnam, one of the original major generals in the Continental Army. Putnam, whom a historian described as looking like a “cherubic bulldog,” wore the aura of a folk hero.
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As a young man, he had crawled into a cave to kill a dangerous wolf. He had fallen prisoner to Indians who nearly roasted him alive. During the French war, Putnam had held General Howe’s dying older brother George in his arms after the fighting near Fort Ticonderoga. Later, Putnam had survived a hurricane and a shipwreck in Havana.

The fifty-eight-year-old was still game. He declared martial law in New York and imposed a curfew. On his own initiative, he led a thousand militiamen to occupy Governor’s Island, at the mouth of the East River, a thrilling reprise of his seizure of Bunker Hill. When Washington arrived, Putnam became his second in command. The experienced Horatio Gates, another former British officer who had enlisted in the patriot cause, served as adjutant general, the army’s chief administrative officer.

Washington commanded nearly ten thousand men. To New Yorkers, the soldiers were rustics. “They have all the simplicity of ploughmen,” an urbanite observed. For their part, the New England militiamen were awestruck: “This city York exceeds all places that ever I saw,” one said.
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Across the East River, the western end of Long Island rose to form the modest highlands now known as Brooklyn Heights. Lee had seen the necessity of holding this ground and Lord Stirling had started building a four-sided citadel there. The cannon of Fort Stirling would threaten British ships in the river and protect the city from the east.

To lead the forces defending Long Island, Washington turned to another inexperienced officer. He saw something of himself in the young Nathanael Greene: a certain solidity, an attention to detail, a modest equanimity. Like Washington, Greene had missed the chance for a formal education, but also like Washington, he was a learner with a mind grounded in practicality.

On Long Island, Greene set his troops working to finish Lee’s defensive plan. In addition to Stirling’s citadel, he constructed a string of forts meant to seal off the area facing New York. Ditches and ramparts would join the strong points across the thick peninsula. The men erected a tangle of sharpened tree branches, a structure known as an abatis, the eighteenth-century equivalent of barbed wire. These veterans of the spade transformed Greene’s book knowledge into formidable defensive works.

Greene issued strict orders for the men to perform guard duty according to the book and to avoid wounding “the Modesty of female decency” when bathing nude in local ponds. Even coarse language he deemed “unmanly and unsoldier like.”
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Brooklyn was then a small hamlet in the agricultural expanse of Kings County. The word derived from
breuckelen,
Dutch for “broken land” or “marsh.” Large areas were drowned with salt water at high tide. Living in close quarters near swamps, surrounded by flies and mosquitos, the men soon began to fall to typhoid and typhus, known collectively as “putrid fever.”

“The air of the whole city seems infected,” wrote an American doctor. Many complained of “the stench that rose from the American camps.” Illness spread, killing some and leaving many groaning in barns and sheds. By July, every third man was laid low.

* * *

Washington’s senior officers, exercising the privileges of rank, tried to maintain a semblance of civilized life. They occupied the mansions of the city’s departed loyalists and visited each other’s headquarters for dinner. Washington had brought Martha to New York; Knox and Greene invited their wives, as well. The pretty, vivacious Caty Greene’s sharp wit and flirtatious nature at times unsettled her insecure husband. Caty enjoyed the excitement and formed a close relationship with the motherly Martha Washington, who had turned forty-five in June. Knox’s daughter, named Lucy after her mother, had been born during his wife’s trip from Boston in April. Henry doted on her, but he also fretted about the presence of the pink infant in an armed camp.

Knox had established his headquarters in a luxurious house abandoned by a loyalist at the southern tip of the city. He and Lucy liked to breakfast in the second-floor room where arched windows offered a panoramic view of the harbor. On Saturday, June 29, they caught sight of ships sailing into the lower bay. Ships and more ships. And still more. The white sails of forty-five warships and transports soon fluttered above the water.

The arrival of the British fleet sparked an uproar. American guns boomed warnings. Troops sprinted to their posts. Imagining Lucy and their baby in the line of fire, Knox nearly panicked. “My God, may I never experience the like feelings again!” he later wrote.
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To disguise his fear, he scolded Lucy “like a fury” for having stayed against his advice. Now she had to go, as did most of the remaining women and children in the city.

Knox hurried to make sure his guns were ready. He thought his large cannon would intimidate any invader, but he had not imagined a force like this one. Just five ships of the line, the massive battleships of the day, wielded more guns than Knox could muster to defend the entire city. The naval guns would be handled by experts; Knox had to entrust his pieces to inexperienced infantrymen drafted from the ranks. One neophyte subordinate was a twenty-one-year-old Kings College student named Alexander Hamilton, whom Knox assigned to the Battery at the south end of the island.

Within four days, 130 ships had anchored in the outer harbor, many of them troop transports. The redcoats of General Howe’s army were disembarking on Staten Island without opposition—the island’s militia had collectively gone over to the enemy. The British set up camp and waited for yet more troops. Rather than let the American rebellion smolder, King George’s ministers had decided to extinguish it with unanswerable power.

Washington, with Lee’s warning about command of the sea echoing in his mind, was dramatic in summing up what was at stake. “The fate of unborn millions,” he wrote, “will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.”