Part 3 (1/2)

It was now apparent that only immediate victory could save Philadelphia from the grasp of the British general whose situation gave him the option of either taking possession of that place or endeavoring to bring on another engagement. If, therefore, a battle must certainly be risked to save the capital it would be necessary to attack the enemy.

Public opinion, which a military chief finds too much difficulty in resisting, and the opinion of Congress, required a battle; but, on a temperate consideration of circ.u.mstances, Was.h.i.+ngton came to the wise decision of avoiding one for the present.

His reasons for this decision were conclusive. Wayne and Smallwood had not yet joined the army. The Continental troops ordered from Peekskill, who had been detained for a time by an incursion from New York, were approaching, and a reinforcement of Jersey militia, under General d.i.c.kenson, was also expected.

To these powerful motives against risking an engagement, other considerations of great weight were added, founded on the condition of his soldiers. An army, maneuvering in an open country, in the face of a very superior enemy, is unavoidably exposed to excessive fatigue and extreme hards.h.i.+p. The effect of these hards.h.i.+ps was much increased by the privations under which the American troops suffered. While in almost continual motion, wading deep rivers, and encountering every vicissitude of the seasons, they were without tents, newly without shoes, or winter clothes, and often without food.

A council of war concurred in the opinion Was.h.i.+ngton had formed, not to march against the enemy, but to allow his hara.s.sed troops a few days for repose and to remain on his present ground until the expected reinforcements should arrive.

Immediately after the battle of Brandywine, the distressed situation of the army had been represented to Congress, who had recommended the executive of Pennsylvania to seize the cloths and other military stores in the warehouses of Philadelphia, and, after granting certificates expressing their value, to convey them to a place of safety. The executive, being unwilling to encounter the odium of this strong measure, advised that the extraordinary powers of the Commander-in-Chief should be used on the occasion. Lieut. Col. Alexander Hamilton, one of the General's aides, already in high estimation for his talents and zeal, was employed on this delicate business. ”Your own prudence,” said the General, in a letter to him while in Philadelphia, ”will point out the least exceptionable means to be pursued; but remember, delicacy and a strict adherence to the ordinary mode of application must give place to our necessities. We must, if possible, accommodate the soldiers with such articles as they stand in need of or we shall have just reason to apprehend the most injurious and alarming consequences from the approaching season.”

All the efforts, however, of this very active officer could not obtain a supply in any degree adequate to the pressing and increasing wants of the army.

Colonel Hamilton was also directed to cause the military stores which had been previously collected to a large amount in Philadelphia, and the vessels which were lying at the wharves, to be removed up the Delaware.

This duty was executed with so much vigilance that very little public property fell, with the city, into the hands of the British general, who entered it on the 26th of September (1777). The members of Congress separated on the 18th, in the evening, and rea.s.sembled at Lancaster on the 27th of the same month. From thence they subsequently adjourned to Yorktown, where they remained eight months, till Philadelphia was evacuated by the British.

From the 25th of August, when the British army landed at the head of Elk, until the 26th of September, when it entered Philadelphia, the campaign had been active, and the duties of the American general uncommonly arduous.

Some English writers bestow high encomiums on Sir William Howe for his military skill and masterly movements during this period. At Brandywine especially, Was.h.i.+ngton is supposed to have been ”out-generaled, more out-generaled than in any action during the war.” If all the operations of this trying period be examined, and the means in possession of both be considered, the American chief will appear in no respect inferior to his adversary, or unworthy of the high place a.s.signed to him in the opinions of his countrymen. With an army decidedly inferior, not only in numbers, but in every military requisite except courage, in an open country, he employed his enemy near thirty days in advancing about sixty miles. In this time he fought one general action, and, though defeated, was able to rea.s.semble the same undisciplined, unclothed, and almost unfed army; and, the fifth day afterward, again to offer battle. When the armies were separated by a storm which involved him in the most distressing circ.u.mstances, he extricated himself from them, and still maintained a respectable and imposing countenance.

The only advantage he is supposed to have given was at the battle of Brandywine, and that was produced by the contrariety and uncertainty of the intelligence received. A general must be governed by his intelligence, and must regulate his measures by his information. It is his duty to obtain correct information, and among the most valuable traits of a military character is the skill to select those means which will obtain it. Yet the best-selected means are not always successful; and, in a new army, where military talent has not been well tried by the standard of experience, the general is peculiarly exposed to the chance of employing not the best instruments. In a country, too, which is covered with wood precise information of the numbers composing different columns is to be gained with difficulty.

Taking into view the whole series of operations, from the landing of Howe at the Head of Elk to his entering Philadelphia, the superior generals.h.i.+p of Was.h.i.+ngton is clearly manifest. Howe, with his numerous and well-appointed army, performed a certain amount of routine work and finally gained the immediate object which he had in view--the possession of Philadelphia--when, by every military rule, he should have gone up the Hudson to cooperate with Burgoyne. Was.h.i.+ngton, with his army, composed almost entirely of raw recruits and militia, kept his adversary out of Philadelphia a month, still menaced him with an imposing front in his new position, and subsequently held him in check there while Gates was defeating and capturing Burgoyne.

We shall see, in the ensuing chapter, that although Howe had attained his first object in gaining possession of Philadelphia, he had still many new difficulties and dangers to encounter at the hands of his daring and persevering opponent before he could comfortably establish himself in winter quarters.

1. Footnote: About this time the Royalists in the counties of Somerset and Worcester, in the province of Maryland, became so formidable that an insurrection was dreaded. And it was feared that the insurgents would, in such a case, be joined by a number of disaffected persons in the county of Suss.e.x, in the Delaware State. Congress, to prevent this evil, recommended the apprehension and removal of all persons of influence, or of desperate characters, within the counties of Suss.e.x, Worcester, and Somerset, who manifested a disaffection to the American cause, to some remote place within their respective States, there to be secured. From appearances, Congress had also reason to believe that the Loyalists in the New England governments and New York State, had likewise concerted an insurrection. See Gordon's ”History of the American Revolution,” vol.

II, pp. 461, 462. By the same authority we are informed that General Gates wrote to General Fellowes for a strong military force, for the prevention of plots and insurrection in the provinces of New England and New York.

2. Footnote: Congress voted a monument to his memory.

3. Footnote: Stedman, the British historian of the Revolution, acknowledges a loss of 200, including 10 officers.

4. Footnote: Lieutenant-Colonel Palfrey, formerly an aide-de-camp to General Was.h.i.+ngton, and now paymaster-general, wrote to his friend: ”I was at Brunswick just after the enemy had left it. Never let the British troops upbraid the Americans with want of cleanliness, for such dog-kennels as their huts were my eyes never beheld. Mr. Burton's house, where Lord Cornwallis resided, stunk so I could not bear to enter it.

The houses were torn to pieces, and the inhabitants as well as the soldiers have suffered greatly for want of provisions.”--Gordon, ”History of the American Revolution.”

5. Footnote: Eulogy on Lafayette. See ”Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions,” by Edward Everett, vol. I, p. 462.

6. Footnote: Deborre's brigade broke first; and, on an inquiry into his conduct being directed, he resigned. A misunderstanding existed between him and Sullivan, on whose right he was stationed.

7. Footnote: All English writers do not concur in this view of the matter. The British historian, Stedman, gives the following sharp criticism on Howe's conduct in the affair of the Brandywine:

”The victory does not seem to have been improved in the degree which circ.u.mstances appeared to have admitted. When the left column of the British had turned Was.h.i.+ngton's right flank, his whole army was hemmed in:--General Knyphausen and the Brandywine in front; Sir William Howe and Lord Cornwallis on his right; the Delaware in his rear; and the Christiana river on his left. He was obliged to retreat twenty-three miles to Philadelphia, when the British lay within eighteen miles of it. Had the Commander-in-Chief detached General Knyphausen's column in pursuit early next morning, General Was.h.i.+ngton might with ease have been intercepted, either at the Heights of Crum Creek, nine miles; at Derby, fourteen; or at Philadelphia, eighteen miles, from the British camp; or, the Schuylkill might have been pa.s.sed at Gray's Ferry, only seventy yards over, and Philadelphia, with the American magazines, taken, had not the pontoons been improvidently left at New York as useless. Any one of these movements, it was thought, might have been attended with the total destruction of the American army. For some reason, however, which it is impossible to divine, the Commander-in-Chief employed himself for several days in making slight movements which could not by any possibility produce any important benefits to the British cause.”

CHAPTER XI.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON HOLDS HOWE IN CHECK. 1777.