1781

 

__________

 

“I have the Honor to inform Congress, that a reduction of the British Army under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily affected.”

 

General George Washington

__________

 

 

AS THE CALENDAR TURNS, we find General Washington tormented by lack of funds to supply his army.

 

He cannot know that by fall, the tables will have turned.

Rochambeau and French troops helped pin the British in at Yorktown.

 

* 

January 1: The failure of Congress to come up with money to supply the needs of the troops is chronic. 

On this night, “the whole Pennsylvania Line, comprising 2400 men, over one-fourth of the entire army, broke out in open mutiny as a protest against Congress’ failure to provide them with food, clothing or pay.” This mutiny was only suppressed by careful negotiations.

 

* 

“To request from the individual states such funds.” 

In their history of the war, Lancaster and Plumb explain: 

To be sure, Congress was authorized to request from the individual states such funds as were needed for the common good, but it had not the least semblance of power to enforce compliance. The states considered each request and were free under law to meet them fully, in grudging part, or to ignore them with bland irresponsibility. A good share of the trouble lay in the fact that each state was apt to think of itself as being in temporary wartime alliance with its twelve fellow states.

 

…

 

States tended to conduct private wars with England, maintaining what amounted to their own navies and armies, like the New Hampshire force that smashed Baum and Breymann at Bennington. They even sent their own agents abroad to compete with national appointees such as Franklin, Deane, John Adams, and Arthur Lee, much to the embarrassment and harassment of the latter group. And every step taken by a state on its own drew away urgently needed strength from the central government. (48/266)

 

 

Some financial help could be had from the hands of Haym Salomon, who landed in New York City in 1772, and built a reputation as a money broker whose word was always good. When Washington evacuated the city, he stayed behind. People

 

who envied him muttered back of their hands that it was quite in character, that to him money was money and there was an end of it. When Salomon was suddenly arrested by the British on a charge of spying, held in close confinement, and then grudgingly released, it led to talk of bribery, of money passed in high British circles. The year 1778 again found Salomon in jail, but this time hints of golden keys to jail doors died as a court-martial pronounced the death sentence on him, once again for spying for the Americans.

 

Somehow Salomon managed to escape, fled to Philadelphia, and, quietly resumed his brokerage business, rapidly recouping his fortunes. Many people were surprised when inquiries from members of Congress brought a quick, unstinting response from Salomon coffers and sound money flowed out in time of great need. Individuals in tight places sought him and were given relief, and the Salomon ledgers carried the names of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Randolph. Never showy, Haym Salomon built a reputation for deep integrity as well as financial shrewdness. When Dutch and French subsidies began to flow into America, they passed through Salomon’s [hands] and he was also formally appointed paymaster to Rochambeau’s French Expeditionary force in 1781. (48/269-270)

 

*

 

WITH HORATIO GATES disgraced in the wake of his disastrous defeat and retreat at Camden, Washington sent Gen. Nathaniel Greene to the Carolinas, to see if he could recoup the situation. Says Andrews, “he had long been Washington’s right-hand man.” 

 

Son of a Rhode Island Quaker, bred a blacksmith, ill-educated save by private study, which in mathematics, history, and law he had carried far, he was in 1770 elected to the legislature of his colony. Zeal to fight England for colonial liberty lost him his place in the Friends’ Society. (2/110)

 

 

January 17: The Battle of Cowpens proves critical: Here Gen. Daniel Morgan has placed his American forces in three lines. The first line of sharpshooters picked off British officers and many of the feared dragoons. The second line of militia got off one or two shots, as Morgan had directed, and then retreated. The British pressed forward, confident of victory; but Morgan had his militia regroup behind his third line of Continental veterans – and then he launched his own charge. According to Andrews,

 

The British, riddled by a terrible cross-fire from Morgan’s unerring riflemen, followed up by a bayonet charge, fled, and were for twenty-four miles pursued by cavalry. The American loss was trifling. Tarleton lost 300 in killed and wounded, and 500 prisoners, besides 100 horses, 35 wagons, and 800 muskets.

 

 

Plumb and Lancaster add one extra detail, I think important: Morgan’s personal touch with his troops.

 

The militia fired, fired again, and fell back, a move that was interpreted both by the watching Continentals and the British as the start of panic. Actually it was a prearranged movement, planned and explained by Morgan to every militia officer and man. Almost casually they peeled off, retiring in good order behind the hill where the Continentals were posted. (48/311)

 

 

The National Park Service also notes that Morgan did everything he could to boost the confidence of his troops. At one point he suggested a contest of courage between units from Georgia and South Carolina. By the time he was through, one soldier said the men were “in good spirits and very willing to fight”. As for Gen. Morgan, he hardly slept at all that night.

 

*

 

January 21: The New Jersey Line mutinied in the same way, as the Pennsylvania line earlier that month.

 

*

 

March 9: General Washington receives word that a large French fleet, carrying several thousand troops, is on the way to help.

 

*

 

Killing with “mechanical impartiality.”

 

March 15: Cornwallis moves north. “Green’s force was too weak to risk a battle. His soldiers were poorly clad, and most of them were without tents or shoes. He therefore skillfully retreated.”

 

But on March 15, re-enforced to about 4,000, the Quaker general offered battle to Cornwallis at Guilford Court-House, N.C. He drew up his forces on a wooded hill in three lines one behind the other. The first line, consisting of raw North Carolina militia, fled before the British bayonet charge, hardly firing a shot. The Virginia brigade constituting the second line made a brave resistance, but was soon driven back. On swept the British columns, flushed with victory, against the third line. Here Greek met Greek. The Continentals stood their ground like the veterans they were. After a long and bloody fight the British were driven back. (2/113-114)

 

 

At one point, the soldiers battled in a confused mass, and redcoat lines began to fray. Lord Cornwallis realized his troops might be swept from the field. Then, “seeing his own sudden peril, [he] took the hard but militarily justifiable course of turning his artillery on the confused struggle, killing Briton and American with mechanical impartiality. Gradually, the two swaying masses drew apart. (48/317 sing)

 

“Cornwallis, with his ‘victorious but ruined army,’ retreated to the south. Then, in April, he marched for Virginia.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: Writing in 1958, a little more than a decade after the end of World War II, Plumb and Lancaster paint a colorful picture of the fighting in this war. But the color of blood is lacking.

 

The ghastly damage to the human form is never mentioned. I believe teachers should always describe warfare in realistic fashion.

 

 

Meanwhile: “A ceaseless guerilla warfare was kept up, attended with many barbarities. Slave-stealing was a favorite pursuit on both sides. It is noteworthy that the followers of [Gen. Thomas] Sumter, fighting in the cause of freedom, were paid largely in slaves.”  (2/116)

 

We should also note that “slave-stealing” wasn’t much required of the British. Slaves often flocked to “enemy” lines, knowing that with the British, their days of servitude would be ended.

*

 

May: British forces occupy the home of Rebecca Motte and fortify it on the Congaree River in South Carolina. American troops surround the “Fort Motte” but are unable to dislodge the enemy – until a decision is made.

*

 

Command of the sea.

 

June 26: Lafayette, and Gen. Anthony Wayne move their 4,500 men closer to Williamsburg, Virginia. There is fighting when British troops move to capture an American supply dump nearby.

 

In his camps about Williamsburg and its mellow Georgian brick buildings, Cornwallis was apparently content to let time slip by. After all, he had very few worries. He had done great damage to Virginia, in addition to what [Gen. Benedict] Arnold and [William] Phillips had accomplished. He had a great advantage in numbers over Lafayette and Wayne, and even if they should be miraculously reinforced to a dangerous strength he had only to whistle up the Royal Navy, embark for some other theater, and leave his enemies wasting away in empty terrain, their services lost to the country for an indefinite period. That, Cornwallis could tell himself complacently, was what having command of the sea meant to a soldier skillful enough to take advantage of it. (48/338)

 

*

 

“Intended for action and not for show.”

 

August 14: Washington is pondering an attack on New York City, to drive Sir Henry Clinton and his troops away. Then comes exciting news! Comte Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse has left the French Indies with 28 ships of the line and transports full of fresh French troops.

 

Washington and Rochambeau tear up their plans and start over. They will march south with speed and attack Cornwallis instead. A rigid march schedule would be kept. Early on, a French officer noted that there were no stragglers, save for “ten love-sick” men from his regiment, “who wanted to return to see their sweethearts in Newport.” Sizing up their American colleagues, the French were also struck by the lack of a regulation uniform and by the great number of fringed hunting shirts, which they described as casaques avec des franges. They concluded that these “troops are intended for action and not for show.”

 

Another French officer found in American tents, “where three or four men live, not over forty pounds of baggage.” (48/343)

 

*

 

LATE SUMMER finds Washington and his troops marching south, in a column that stretched two miles.

 

By September 2nd, when the army arrived at Philadelphia, the soldiers, up to now in the dark, began to suspect where they were bound. The Americans marched right in, grimy and dirty from their long journey. An enthusiastic crowd greeted them, headed by Congress, who knew their destination and their plans.

 

On the following day the French arrived. With true Old World fastidiousness they had camped without the city to freshen up, to polish their arms and the harness of their horses. They marched into Philadelphia with bands playing and flags flying as though they had come fresh from their garrison. The contrast was striking.

 

The city had detained Rochambeau and his men overnight, that they might be properly welcomed and entertained. The Continental army had gone on to Chester where Washington learned that de Grasse and the French fleet were already in the Chesapeake. The news was too good and too important to keep, so the Commander himself rode back to Philadelphia to acquaint Congress and de Rochambeau with the favorable developments. Their plans were working as they had hoped. The combined armies, with the assistance of the fleet, might now be able to crush Cornwallis before Clinton in New York could come to his assistance.

 

Five days later the armies reached the head of the Chesapeake. Here they were placed aboard transports and set sail for Yorktown.

 

Washington, himself, decided to go by land. Homesick after an absence of six years, he set aside three days in which to visit his beloved Mount Vernon. With de Rochambeau he rode across Virginia, making sixty miles a day, and for three days he was able to slip back into his old role of Country Squire – the role he preferred above all others. (109/103)

 

* 

“Control of the seas.” 

September 5: DeGrasse enters Chesapeake Bay, with 28 warships and six frigates bearing 3,200 soldiers and 19,000 sailors, having chased away the fleet of Admiral Graves. Lafayette was already on the scene with 4,000 men, watching Cornwallis, with 7,600.

 

In the Battle of the Chesapeake, de Grasse’s fleet, with 24 ships in action, defeated a British fleet made up of 19 ships of the line. Two French warships were damaged, five British, with one scuttled. Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves drew off the British fleet from the fight.

 

He headed back to New York, to organize a greater relief effort, but did not head south again until two days after Cornwallis had surrendered.

 

Cornwallis himself wouldn’t know it for several days, but he was now effectively trapped.

 

That one sea action … unseen save by the relatively few participants, was actually the one decisive engagement of the war. It is ironic that not a single American soldier had taken part in the sudden climax of six years of bitter fighting. Yet there the record stands. The French had seized that one all important factor that America had lacked from the start, control of the seas, and had been able to hold it just long enough. (48/349)

 

*

 

September 8: In South Carolina, Greene strikes at British forces again in the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Although the enemy held the field, Greene “inflicted far more damage than he had suffered.”

 

The Rhode Islander had, between January and September, 1781, won a tremendous campaign, while never winning a battle. Always short of men, money, and supplies, he had calmly done what he could with what he had, utilizing resources to which many other generals would have been blind. The local forces of [Francis] Marion and others had been developed to the utmost, in the knowledge that he could not have existed without them or they without him. (48/325-326)

  

* 

October 9: The earthworks of the allies are “completed, the guns mounted, and at three o’clock in the afternoon Washington touched the match to the first gun. For eight days Cornwallis’ crumbling defenses were subjected to a continuous cannonade.”

 

* 

October 14: Allied forces capture the advanced earthworks of the British.

 

* 

October 16: Allied troops break a second enemy line, 200 yards nearer to the town. “Washington,” say Bacheller and Kates, “was always in the advanced lines, recklessly exposing himself to the enemy’s fire.” 

Cornwallis planned to have his men escape by night, using a fleet of barges; but “a terrific storm scattered the boats” and the trap remained closed. (109/105)

The Americans and French capture British and Hessian defenses.

 

* 

October 18: Cornwallis and his troops withstood siege for 21 days. Now a drummer appeared on the ramparts, waving a white flag, and “beating a parley.” There was jubilation in the American and French lines. Cornwallis signs articles of surrender.

 

* 

 October 19: The terms of surrender, 

gave to the Americans the land forces of between eight and nine thousand men with their guns and baggage, and to the French, the British craft with their supplies and about 800 seamen.

 

On October 19th, at twelve noon, thousands of spectators gathered to watch the formal ceremonies of surrender. The American troops with Washington at their head were drawn up on one side of the road. On the other side were the French, led by de Rochambeau. At two o’clock the British appeared. Up this road, lined for a mile with the troops of the victors, they marched in slow step, their colors cased, their feelings expressed by their band which played, “The World Turned Upside Down.” Cornwallis did not lead this march. The parley had been too much for his aristocratic stomach, and he was now ill in his tent. In his stead, gallant General O’Hara bore his Commander’s sword.

 

General Lincoln, who not so long before had experienced the chagrin of tendering his sword to Clinton at Charleston, was chosen by Washington to receive the surrender. After this each British soldier advanced to the center of a large field and placed his musket on a rapidly growing pile of weapons. No longer an army, but prisoners of war, the Redcoats marched back to Yorktown under guard. (109/107)

 

Jackie Custis, Washington’s stepson, died of camp fever in the trenches.

 

*

 

Washington then drafted a report to send to Philadelphia:

 

I have the Honor to inform Congress, that a reduction of the British Army under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily affected. The unremitting Ardor which actuated every Officer and Soldier in the combined Army in this Occasion, has principally led to this Important Event, at an earlier period than my most sanguine Hope had induced me to expect. (48/357)

 

He does not mention his own role.

 

*

 

McMaster writes of the surrender: 

Swift couriers carried the news to Philadelphia [a few days later], where, at the dead of night, the people were roused from sleep by the watchman crying in the street, “Past two o’clock and Cornwallis is taken.” In the morning Congress received the dispatches and went in solemn procession to a church to give thanks to God. (97/191)

 

When the British Prime Minister, Lord North, heard the news, he exclaimed, “All is over; all is over!” the king alone remained stubborn, and for a while insisted on holding Georgia, Charleston, and New York. (97/191-192)

 

*

 

Andrews says the American army at Yorktown was 16,000, including 7,000 French. When Cornwallis surrendered, he had 7,247 men.

 

The news of Cornwallis’s surrender flew like wild-fire over the country. Everywhere the victory was hailed as virtually ending the war. Bonfires and booming cannon told of the joy of the people. Congress assembled, and marching to church in a body, not as a mere form, we may well believe, gave thanks to the God of battles so propitious at last.  (2/122)

 

 

As for the failure of the two key British commanders to coordinate with each other, Andrews explains: “Clinton and Cornwallis hated each other.” (2/123)

 

Our enemies had now surrendered two entire armies, one at Saratoga, the other at Yorktown. “Practical men [in Britain] figured out that each year of hostilities cost more than the proposed tax [on tea, etc.] would have yielded in a century.” (2/124)

 

Had the Americans failed in this war, the future would have been dramatically altered. According to Andrews, “There still exists a map on which Spain’s minister had indicated what he wished to make our western bound. The line follows nearly the meridian of Pittsburgh.” (2/132)

 

*

 

Van Loon sums up the problem of the British, after six years of war: The Americans had proven much better fighters than their foes had expected. “French soldiers and German drill-masters and Polish volunteers and Dutch money, aided and abetted by our old friend General Distance, were gradually wearing out the veteran regiments of His Majesty, King George. (124/234)