American Crisis Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Plate Section

  Acknowledgments

  Maps

  Notes

  Footnote

  Bibliography

  Appendix 1. Newburgh Address

  Appendix 2. A Circular Letter

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Imprint

  To the staff of Snell Library at Northeastern University. My partners in teaching and scholarship.

  Introduction

  On the morning of January 6, 1783, the doors of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia opened to admit Major General Alexander McDougall, Colonel John Brooks, and Colonel Matthias Ogden. These officers bore an urgent message from the American army encamped at Newburgh, New York. The army, they warned, was on the verge of mutiny. The members were thunderstruck. After eight years of bloody war the army that had brought the nation so close to victory now stood as a threat to the very principles for which it had fought. How could this have happened?

  Most Americans in 1783, and many today, believe that the surrender of the British army under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, marked the end of the American Revolution. Even British leaders of the time shared this view. Lord North, for example, the king’s first minister, upon hearing the news of Yorktown, exclaimed, “O God it is all over.” However, Yorktown did not end the American Revolution. The war for independence was not over, and no one understood this better than the American commander in chief.

  George Washington had cause to worry. Even after the victory at Yorktown, the British still held Charleston, Savannah, and New York City. The distant northern posts of Oswego, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Niagara remained in their hands as well, and the Royal Navy, despite the setback in the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes during the Yorktown campaign, continued to dominate the seas. Nor was the stubborn King George III ready to admit defeat.

  Enemy intentions and the king’s attitude were not Washington’s only concerns. Six years of war had put a heavy strain on the new nation. The “Spirit of ’76” had waned, and he feared that the good news of victory would work to further weaken American resolve. To Virginia’s governor, Thomas Nelson, Washington wrote anxiously that “instead of exciting our exertions,” the victory at Yorktown might “produce such a relaxation in the prosecution of the War, as will prolong the calamities of it.”1

  Washington had cause to fret about American firmness. Congress was nearly bankrupt. The states could not agree on a plan for national revenue, and the fabric of the union, never strong, was fraying as Congress divided into bickering factions. In the meantime the French, having financed the war, were balking at providing additional loans while making plans to withdraw their forces from North America. The American army with Washington at its head was the only viable national institution, but it too was under stress as the alarming news from McDougall, Brooks, and Ogden demonstrated dramatically.

  With Congress broke and unable to act, some in the body saw opportunity in the crisis. They conspired to use the army as a lever to advance an agenda aimed at strengthening the national government. If not an actual coup d’état, their machinations certainly rose to the level of a plot to challenge civilian authority over the military. Had these men succeeded in their aims, they would have forever broken the trust between the armed forces of the United States and its citizens. That they did not succeed was due to one man, George Washington, who on March 15, 1783, stood before the officers of his army “single and alone” and prevented a mutiny that would have altered the course of American history. This is the story of these “dangerous years” and the commander who, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”2

  Chapter One

  It was five in the afternoon on October 9, 1781, the seventh year of the American Revolution. All eyes were on the American commander in chief as he approached the line of cannon, their muzzles aimed toward the British entrenchments at Yorktown. A gunner handed Washington a lit match. The general’s hand moved slowly toward the touch hole, the cannon roared and leaped back on its carriage as hundreds of other guns, American and French, followed with a thunderous barrage. General Charles Cornwallis, the British commander who five years before, while pursuing Washington across New Jersey, had boasted that he would “bag the American fox,” was himself brought to ground.

  The Revolution had not gone well for the British. Initially a colonial rebellion, by 1778 it had spilled into a world war with the entry of the French as American allies. Forced to defend their possessions on a global scale, the British ministers abandoned any hope of subduing the northern and middle colonies and instead concentrated their forces on retaking the southern colonies, where they anticipated a surge of loyalist support.1 In 1780, while retaining New York City as his principal American base, the British commander in chief Sir Henry Clinton struck south, taking Charleston, South Carolina. After securing the city he returned to New York, leaving General Cornwallis in charge. Soon Cornwallis managed to move beyond the city and secured a good portion of South Carolina and Georgia.

  Had Cornwallis been more cautious and less ambitious, he might well have been satisfied with what he had captured. But after inflicting a humiliating defeat on an American army commanded by General Horatio Gates at Camden, South Carolina, on August 16, 1780, Cornwallis elected to forge north toward North Carolina and Virginia.2 These colonies, he boasted, “would fall without much resistance and be retained without much difficulty.”3

  Unfortunately for the British, Cornwallis’s march into the interior proved costly. He had not taken into account the sapping of his strength by constant attacks from southern partisans like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter; nor did he appreciate the brilliance of Nathanael Greene, the American commander who replaced General Gates. Described by the British military historian Sir John Fortescue as “a general of patience, resolution, and profound common sense,” Greene took Cornwallis on a wild chase through the interior of North Carolina in a campaign dubbed “the Country Dance.” Although he never defeated Cornwallis, Greene so weakened and frustrated his enemy that Cornwallis gave up chasing him down and marched his army into Virginia, to search for a secure coastal location where he might either be resupplied or be evacuated by Clinton. Cornwallis eventually chose Yorktown, a small port town on the banks of the York River close by the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. By the end of August 1781 he had assembled his entire army there to await word from General Clinton.4

  Washington and General Rochambeau, commander of French forces in North America, had been watching Cornwallis’s march north with great interest.5 Having shut himself up in Yorktown, thus putting his back to the river, the general, they knew, was in a vulnerable spot. Salvation for the British depended upon control of the seas. Only by sea could Clinton reenforce or remove the trapped army. Although Clinton did have a naval squadron at New York, and a sizable army, he hesitated to act, fearing that if he should weaken his own position to rescue Cornwallis, the allies might take the opportunity to attack New York City.

  As both sides pondered their options, grand news arrived for the allies
: the French West Indian fleet under Admiral François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse was sailing north to escape the hurricane season and would be stationed near the Chesapeake Capes until mid-October. Might his fleet, the admiral queried, be usefully employed? Instantly Washington and Rochambeau saw the opportunity for an allied concentration of naval and military forces aimed at Cornwallis.

  With impressive speed and coordination the two generals, Washington from the Hudson Valley, Rochambeau from Rhode Island, put their troops on the move toward Virginia, while summoning de Grasse to join them. Clinton was caught unawares. Not until September 2 did he realize the peril of the situation, and by that time the allied armies and the French fleet were both closing on Yorktown. Desperate to prevent the French fleet from rendezvousing with Rochambeau and Washington, Clinton ordered his admirals to take whatever force they could assemble at New York and sail to intercept de Grasse. Six days after clearing Sandy Hook, the British sighted the French. For three days the two fleets tacked about with intermittent engagements. While neither side could gain a decisive advantage, the British finally elected to withdraw, leaving command of the sea to the French. Cornwallis’s fate was sealed. By late September the combined armies, with de Grasse standing off shore, had assembled and taken up positions surrounding Yorktown. It was a classic eighteenth-century siege. The besiegers formed a semicircle facing the enemy, French on the left, Americans on the right. Engineers went to work laying out and digging zigzagging trenches. By the ninth all was in readiness as Washington fired the first American shot.

  Each day four hundred allied guns fired more than seventeen hundred rounds onto the enemy. The British response was pitiful. At about nine on the morning of October 17, 1781, American sentries caught sight of a young British drummer boy clutching for a hold as he struggled to reach the top of an earthen parapet. His soiled red uniform bespoke days of huddling in damp shelters while iron shot rained down. Unarmed except for a bulky side drum and two sticks, he finally reached the top. For the moment this boy had the most dangerous job in America. Amid the dense and acrid smoke left behind by musket and cannon shot, he beat the “parley.” General Cornwallis wished to discuss terms of surrender with Generals Rochambeau and Washington.6

  Captain Ebenezer Denny of the First Pennsylvania Regiment was among the first to spot the drummer boy. “He might have beaten away til Doomsday if he had not been sighted by the men in the front lines,” Denny later recalled. “The constant firing was too much for the sound of the single drum; but when the firing ceased, I thought I had never heard a drum equal to it—the most delightful music to all.”7 Quickly, soldiers passed the order “cease fire.” The guns fell silent, and the drummer boy advanced toward the American position. Behind him walked a hatless officer waving a white handkerchief above his head. Together, to the rhythm of the “parley,” the soldier and the boy marched slowly across the no-mans-land toward the allied positions. As soon as the party passed safely through the lines, the guns resumed their pounding. While the cannon belched iron, Washington read Cornwallis’s message:

  To His Excellency General Washington.

  Sir, I propose a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, and that two officers may be appointed by each side, to meet at Mr. Moore’s house, to settle terms for the surrender of the posts at York and Gloucester.8

  Toward evening the guns stood down again as the drummer boy and the officer returned through the British lines carrying Washington’s reply.

  Sir, I have received your Favor of this Morning. Regard to humanity induces me to agree to a suspension of hostilities for two hours that your Lordship may propose the Terms on which you choose to surrender.9

  For the British it was all over. Cornwallis understood his fate. His only hope was to extract concessions. Washington was unwilling to grant any.

  Cornwallis responded to Washington with his terms. Although he had no intention of agreeing to all of Cornwallis’s requests, Washington agreed to send commissioners to meet the next day at the Moore House, a spacious home situated near the river about one mile east of the British lines. In the meantime the guns remained silent.

  In the morning British Highland pipers called soldiers to duty with the wailing of bagpipes. In answer, the Royal Deux-Ponts regimental band struck up a lively tune. Across the scarred battlefield soldiers and officers, victors and vanquished, stood at the crest of their fortifications, barely a few hundred feet apart, gazing anxiously at one another.

  Brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas and Cornwallis’s aide-de-camp, Major Alexander Ross, were the first to arrive at the Moore House. They were soon joined by Colonel John Laurens, aide-de-camp to General Washington, and Second Colonel Viscount de Noailles of the Regiment Soissonois, the Marquis de Lafayette’s brother-in-law. After exchanging pleasantries, the officers took seats in the main room to work out the details. The meeting lasted more than eight long and unpleasant hours.10

  Washington stood firm. He refused the enemy any honors of war. The British regiments had to march out with colors cased and their bands playing an English or German tune. Although officers might be paroled (that is, allowed to return home to England or Germany), rank and file would be held in America as prisoners of war. Loyalists and deserters who trembled at being left to the tender mercies of the rebels had begged Cornwallis to protect them. To answer their pleas, Cornwallis asked that no one be punished “on account of having joined the British army.”11 Washington refused. However, while he understood that feelings were riding high against those who had taken up arms for the king, the commander in chief had little taste for convening endless courts-martial and ordering multiple executions. To avoid such bloody retribution, Washington declared that the fate of the loyalists was a civil matter to be decided at a later date. As for deserters, he agreed to an oblique solution granting Cornwallis’s request to permit the sloop Bonetta to sail from Yorktown to New York without inspection. The vessel had ample room for any passengers who might wish to leave Yorktown in a hurry. Bonetta’s departure with its cargo gave relief to both sides. After wrapping up a few more details, the officers concluded their work, saluted, and each returned to his general.12

  Numerous accounts of the surrender ceremony have survived. The Yankee doctor James Thacher of Plymouth, Massachusetts, who had spent six years in the field with the Continental army, relished the chance “to receive as captives that vindictive, haughty commander, and that victorious army, who by their robberies and murders, has so long been a scourge to our brethren of the southern states.” From horseback he had a perfect view. He reported that at noon units of American light infantry and French grenadiers occupied the British lines, while the main body marched from camp to form up in a gauntletlike position lining the road leading out of Yorktown. With Americans on the right facing the French, the line extended more than mile. “Mounted on his noble courser,” Washington took his station on the right. To his left “was the excellent Count Rochambeau.”13 Behind both lines civilian spectators pressed for a view of this historic occasion.

  Not even the soldiers called to attention could resist glancing down the road as a mounted figure emerged from the British lines. Like Thacher, they craned their necks to see Cornwallis humbled. All were disappointed. At the head of the column rode Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, Cornwallis’s second in command. General Cornwallis, O’Hara explained, was “indisposed.” Thacher was disgusted. “Tis no display of magnanimity when a great commander shrinks from the inevitable misfortunes of war.” He had given “himself up entirely to vexation and despair.”14 Cornwallis’s pusillanimous behavior disappointed the allies, while insulting the brave soldiers he had led.

  As O’Hara neared the end of the line he reined his horse toward Rochambeau, intending to offer his sword to an officer whom he deemed to be of equal rank. To his dismay the French general gestured to the allied commander in chief. As O’Hara approached he was diverted a second time. Washington motioned him to deliver his sword to General Benjamin Lincoln,
a subordinate of equal rank to O’Hara.15 Upon accepting the sword, Lincoln paused and then returned it to O’Hara while gesturing to a nearby field. There French hussars had formed a great circle within which, Lincoln ordered, the British were to lay down their arms.

  “Ground arms” was the bellowing command. In a “sullen temper” some soldiers threw their muskets to the ground, hoping to smash the locks and render them useless. Lincoln put a quick stop to that behavior. When the last musket was added to the pile the disarmed soldiers returned to their camp. That evening General O’Hara dined with Washington and Rochambeau.

  On Sunday October 21 the American army gathered for divine services conducted by the Reverend Israel Evans of New Hampshire. Evans began by “offering to the Lord of hosts, the God of battles, grateful homage” for the blessings of victory “with which Divine Providence has seen fit to crown our efforts.”16 While one army gathered to give thanks, at a distance the vanquished formed up under guard to begin their march inland to prison camps at Winchester, Virginia, and Frederick, Maryland.

  Washington skipped the service. He was aboard the Ville de Paris, Admiral de Grasse’s flagship. With Lafayette by his side Washington paid his respects to the admiral and made a request. Would the French fleet assist him in an attack on Wilmington, North Carolina? The Americans could provide two thousand troops under Lafayette’s command, but they needed transports and a naval escort. Seeing “endless obstacles” to the proposal, particularly the king’s orders to return to the West Indies and join the Spanish in an assault on the British islands, the admiral declined politely. Strategically, any prospect of picking off a few rich British sugar islands trumped liberating the Carolinas. Disappointed, but hardly surprised, Washington wished his ally well.17

  Word of the British defeat at Yorktown spread quickly. As soon as he had reliable information, Clinton dispatched the fast sloop Rattlesnake to London with the “most melancholy news Great Britain ever received.”18 A few days later he received Cornwallis’s official report. “Sir, I have the mortification to inform your excellency, that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester, and to surrender the troops under my command.”19 Having conveyed that dismal news, Cornwallis continued with a long explanation as to why this disaster befell him. In sum, he blamed Clinton.