__________
“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)
