The First American Army (44 page)

Sergeant Greenman and the others who worked with the black troops fighting for their own freedom as well as America’s did their job well. The black soldiers not only took great pride in their desire to fight like soldiers, but to look like the best of them, too. A French diplomat who saw the black Rhode Islanders later in the war wrote that “they are strong, robust men and those I saw made a very good appearance.” An aide to French General Rochambeau noted that “the regiment is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.”
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The First Rhode Island became one of the Continental Army’s best regiments, and quickly, because in August of their first year in arms they were ordered to Newport as part of a massive land and sea invasion to recapture the state capital. They would meet fierce opposition from both British regulars and Hessians firmly entrenched in the seaport city.

Liberating Newport would not only be a military success but a significant public relations coup. The British had evacuated Philadelphia on June 15, 1778, and were forced to retire from Monmouth when Washington’s army attacked them there on June 28. That battle, plus the freeing of Newport, would not only rally the Americans to the cause but add fuel to the growing fire against the war among many residents of England, who would read about it in the increasingly antiwar British press.

Washington ordered an all-out campaign against the three-thousandman army under General Robert Pigot in Newport. The French fleet, under Admiral Charles d’Estaing, had just arrived and was sent to Newport for a sea attack. Washington sent three thousand men under Nathanael Greene and the Marquis de Lafayette to Rhode Island to join John Sullivan and the black regiment in Providence and move against Newport. John Hancock was asked to gather six thousand militia to assist them. It appeared that with a combined force of ten thousand, a three-to-one advantage, and a naval bombardment, that the Americans could not lose.

Other generals were even jealous that Sullivan, as the commander of the attack, had such an opportunity for glory. “You are the most happy man in the world,” Nathanael Greene wrote to Sullivan. “What a child of fortune. The expedition you are going on against Newport I think cannot fail to succeed.” Lafayette begged Sullivan to share the glory. “For God’s sake, my dear friend,” he wrote in a nearly giddy letter, “don’t begin anything before we arrive.”
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Sullivan was happy to be there. At fifty-five, the former New Hampshire lawyer was one of Washington’s most trusted generals. He was also ambitious but, friends said, rather narrow-minded and had a great need to be admired.

The plan was complicated and relied on timing. Newport sat on the largest of several islands in Narragansett Bay, which was connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The smaller part of the French fleet would attack Newport from the east, moving up a channel there on August 5. The larger part of the fleet would sail into a channel to the west of Newport on August 8 and 9 and land men at the same time that Sullivan’s army attacked from the northern end of the city. English general Pigot would not be able to fight the allies off on two fronts. Personalities and plans began to clash, however, and the operation slowly went awry.

The temperamental d’Estaing, a veteran naval officer, was held in low esteem by the Americans for his continued reluctance to battle the British fleet in New York, Halifax, and in the Caribbean. Nor did he get along with the cantankerous Sullivan, whom he claimed treated him as an inferior. He especially did not enjoy Sullivan’s dispatches, which gave him orders and not suggestions. The admiral thought little of the Continental Army troops under Lafayette and Greene and much less of the New England militia.

Back in Providence, some forty miles north, Jeremiah Greenman and his company marched out of town with the rest of Sullivan’s army and the First Rhode Island black regiment on August 6 and proceeded south to Tiverton, a town opposite Newport. All day long on August 8 they heard the sounds of the guns from the French ships pounding Newport from a position in the channel to the west of the city. “A very brisk cannonading to the west of Rhode Island and something set on fire but we don’t hear what it is,” he wrote. The next day, August 9, they ferried across the eastern channel to the island where Newport was located.

“Marched up on the island about a mile and made a halt near one of the enemy’s forts and formed a line,” Greenman wrote. Several hours elapsed and they moved once more. “We marched about a quarter of a mile and formed a line again where we lay all night.”

The British, meanwhile, made quick moves that thwarted the Americans at every turn. Pigot ordered the British ships in the eastern channel scuttled so that they blocked the movement of the French fleet. When Sullivan landed on time, he had no cover from French guns. The French troops never landed. Then, on August 9, as the invasion was underway and Greenman’s company moved toward Newport, and the rest of the French fleet had sailed halfway up the western channel for the scheduled assault, Lord Richard Howe’s British fleet arrived—unannounced.

The British ships were seen south of Newport just as the French reached the halfway mark toward their destination on the western side of the city, firing cannon at the island and its defenders. The French admiral and his captains, nervous about the presence of Lord Howe’s ships, anchored in the channel that night as the weather in the region began to change for the worse. “We lay all night in the rain without tents close to another of the enemy’s forts,” wrote Greenman.

In the morning, d’Estaing’s fleet turned and sailed out to attack the British fleet, two-thirds its size, but there was little action all day except for a few cannon exchanges, as the two fleets maneuvered for position. On land, American commanders did not know what was going on throughout the day and many thought the town was under attack, not realizing a sea battle had started. “Very heavy firing toward the town, the shipping against the batteries. We hear that shipping has gone out and further hear that there is a fleet off but don’t hear what it is,” wrote Greenman, as perplexed as everyone else.

A ferocious storm hit the Rhode Island coast that night and strong winds and heaving seas battered the ships on both sides. Several ships lost part of the rigging for their sails and all suffered damage as waves whipped up by the winds tossed the ships about in the Newport channel like tiny boxes. The storm continued throughout the evening and into early morning, preventing most of the sailors on them from getting any sleep. Crews had to constantly clear the decks of debris and battle the rough seas.

Sergeant Greenman and his company were lashed by the same storm. It was one of the worst he had ever seen. He noted, “Continued raining and blowing very hard indeed all day. We continued . . . drawing cartridges and fixing our guns for they was in very bad order by the storm blowing down almost all of our tents.” The British ships had been pounded just as severely as the French and most of them sailed away in the following days. Howe left only a few ships in case they were needed to protect the British troops on the island.

Two entire days had been lost in the sea battle, delaying the American assault. The Americans finally moved into position to attack on August 15, north of Newport. “Pitched our tents in sight of the enemy about a mile and a half from their lines. Turned out a large picket and a large body of fatigue men, ordered to lay on our arms,” Greenman wrote.

The Rhode Islanders, black and white, laid on their arms for quite awhile.

Over the next few days, the Americans sat as British pickets and some artillery fired at them. Greenman told his men that the enemy would attack at any hour. He did not realize that d’Estaing, his ships in dire need of repair, had decided to leave the waters of Rhode Island and sail to Boston. There would be no French gunships to cover the American attack and no French troops landing on the western part of the city as reinforcements. They did see ships on the horizon, but they were British. The news of the French fleet’s departure caused panic among the New England militia troops and many deserted.

“It ruined all our operations,” wrote Nathanael Greene to George Washington.
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Greene wrote to General William Heath that if the French navy had not deserted the Americans, “we might have succeeded with great ease.”
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“The French fleet is leaving us,” Greenman wrote tersely in his diary, feeling just as abandoned by the French as other Americans would say long after the war ended.

Sullivan’s army, stranded now, found that the British had far stronger defensive earthworks on Newport than his spies and scouts had reported. He spent August 25, 26, and 27 rallying his troops, but on August 28 decided that an attack would fail and began a general evacuation.

At 7 p.m., orders came to strike tents as quietly as possible and wait. That done, the integrated Rhode Island regiment moved out with others. Shortly after 9 p.m., under the cover of darkness, they began to march northward to the tip of the island. They did not fool the British. The men were fired upon as they departed by two British ships in the channel. Several companies of Hessians were seen following them toward a small fort on Butt’s Hill.

The Americans barely made it inside the fortification atop the hill when Pigot and his entire force appeared in front of them, spread out in a long line, on August 29. There was more to be feared. Out in the channel, Sergeant Greenman observed yet more British ships. Three days before, word had reached Newport that a second British fleet had left New York for Rhode Island with transports carrying several thousand men. He assumed the ships he saw were part of that fleet and that his army would soon be attacked by a British army of nearly ten thousand men.

Fortunately, he was wrong. The British fleet was still an entire day away from Newport on Long Island Sound. Their only enemy was right in front of them, and the enemy would not go away. General Pigot sensed victory and threw all of his British regulars at the middle of Sullivan’s army and ordered his well-trained Hessians to charge against the right wing, where the black First Rhode Island regiment was dug in. The Hessians waited until after a heavy bombardment from the British ships created havoc in the American lines as shells exploded all around the soldiers and smoke filled the air. Pigot then sent his Hessians against the black regiment’s side.

The Germans were surprised, though. Their assault was stopped cold and their lines shattered by the 125 black troops behind the earthworks. They met “a more stubborn resistance than expected” and had to pull back, suffering high casualties. The regulars attacked the center of the American line at the same time that the Hessian charge began, but they were repulsed too. Greenman had to be pleased as he looked to his right to see the troops in the black regiment that he had helped to train turn back the ferocious Hessian assault.

The German commander was not pleased, however, and after his men had been stopped, shot up, and turned back, he ordered them to attack yet again. He was confident that the black troops could not hold off his veteran soldiers any longer. His second attack failed, as did a third. The Hessians could not dislodge the black troops from their position on the right. After four solid hours of fighting, the Germans ended their charges. Pigot’s regulars fared no better, turned back again and again by Greenman’s Rhode Islanders and the main force commanded by Sullivan. The British attacks ended as night fell; the Americans moved a short distance to another hill.

The soldiers in the First Rhode Island felt both relief and pride at the end of the day. “Balls, like hail, were flying all around me. The man standing next to me was shot by my side,” said a Doctor Harris, reportedly one of the troops in the black regiment, whose brother was killed in the Revolution. “They attacked us with great fury, but were repulsed. They reinforced and attacked us again, with more vigor and determination, and were again repulsed. Again they reinforced, and attacked us the third time, with the most desperate courage and resolution, but a third time were repulsed. The contest was fearful. Our position was hotly disputed and hotly maintained.”
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The commanders at Butt’s Hill marveled at the courage of the white troops and especially the bravery of the black soldiers. The British encountered “chiefly wild looking men in their shirt sleeves, and among them many Negroes,” wrote one. Lafayette called the stand at Butt’s Hill “the best fought action of the war.” General Sullivan heaped praise upon his black troops and cited the entire regiment for honors in his report on the battle to George Washington. Nathanael Greene, who watched the black regiment up close, agreed. Discussing the men under him, including the blacks, he wrote to Washington, “We soon put the enemy to rout and I had the pleasure to see them run in worse disorder than they did at Monmouth.” He added that the troops fought with “great spirit” and “great honor” and “stood the fire of the enemy with great firmness.”
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A Rhode Island historian wrote later that “it was in repelling these furious onsets that the newly raised black regiment, under Col. Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor.”
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The Hessians, who suffered the most that day, agreed. “No regiment is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in abundance; among them are strong able bodied and brave fellows,” wrote one.
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The following day, August 30, the Americans evacuated, departing across the channel on small craft. They had suffered 211 casualties in the battle versus 260 for the British. There would have been far more if Sullivan had been trapped on the island or waited to evacuate; the British fleet arrived the following day with five thousand troops.
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Americans everywhere were relieved. “I never in general saw people more anxious than my acquaintances under the present suspense,” wrote Henry Laurens about the pullback.
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There was a sense of loss by some, such as congressional delegate James Smith, who wrote forlornly that perhaps a victory at Newport “would have put an end to the war.” The country’s top propagandists, such as Richard Henry Lee, dismissed naysayers like Smith and told one and all that the Americans at Newport had actually won the battle and had given the British “a drubbing.”
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