The Glorious Cause, page 46
Within two months the army had dwindled to such a size that it could not have harassed anyone. Those troops—probably around a thousand in all—who had accepted a ten-dollar bounty at Trenton in return for six weeks’ service included some who did not keep the bargain once the enthusiasm of victory wore off. Others went home in early February, and by March the army numbered less than three thousand men. As usual, recruiting proved a difficult business even though Congress had authorized the raising of eighty-eight battalions hard on the heels of the disaster on Long Island the previous August. In December it had added eleven battalions of infantry to the authorization besides supporting artillery, engineers, and 3000 cavalry.2
An army-on-paper is rather ineffective in the field. Getting the men into camp taxed the army recruiters’ skill, especially since the bounties they could pay frequently were exceeded by those of the states raising militia. Washington tried persuasion on those states, explaining the effects of their practices on his army, and when that failed resorted to threats—as, for example, when he told the governor of Rhode Island that if his state did not reduce the pay it offered, it should not count on any “extraordinary attention” from the Continental army. Persuasion and the threats paid off: by early May, as the hills around Morristown turned green, the battalions Congress had authorized began to take form. Before the end of the month the army had reached almost 9000 effectives—forty-three battalions—and they could be armed, for muskets, powder, and clothing had arrived from a France still cautiously watching the struggle and surreptitiously giving aid to the Americans.3
Military operations picked up in May as the British broke from their hibernation. British supplies were low and they sent out an increasing number of foraging parties. Advance units of Washington’s army struck them and so did the irregulars in New Jersey. Howe disliked these savage little encounters. What he wanted was a general action which might destroy his enemy, and in mid-June he set about to lure Washington into fighting a major battle. On June 17, he moved a large force from Staten Island into New Jersey and marched them about nine miles along the road to Philadelphia. Washington was willing to have light units skirmish with the enemy but, though he feared that Howe meant to take the city, refused battle. A week later Howe again marched out, then pulled back, and when Washington followed, turned about and drove at him. Washington avoided the trap just in time, and Howe then pulled out of New Jersey completely, leaving the entire state in rebel control.4
II
If Howe had failed to trap Washington, he had succeeded in confusing him about British intentions. What the British were up to was a question that had been much discussed at the American headquarters in the early summer. The purpose of the forays out into the Jersey countryside in June seemed obvious enough, but what did the evacuation of New Jersey mean? In July, watchers duly reported the British going aboard ships in the New York harbor. As the fleet grew so did American uncertainty.
By this time Howe had at last decided what he was about. He was going to Philadelphia by sea. During his voyage he would change his mind about a landing place, a decision of great importance. He had decided on an attack on Philadelphia without consulting the ministry, although he had informed it of his plan—or plans, rather, for he had changed his mind during the spring about how best to get Philadelphia. For most of the winter of 1776–77, he seems to have thought of a march across New Jersey to the city. However, by April he had swung his thinking to an invasion by sea, presumably out from New York to the south and up the Delaware.5
In England the ministry, with the approval of the king, had also decided on a strategy for the campaign of 1777. The problem for these centers of strategic thought was in making their plans somehow meet, but neither the ministry nor Howe really knew what the other intended, and the plans they made remained uncoordinated. The ministry did learn early in the winter that Howe hoped to take Philadelphia. What it did not learn until much too late was that he had switched from an expedition by land to one by sea.
During the winter the ministry, or, more exactly, the American Secretary, Lord George Germain, whose responsibility it was to develop a strategy to crush the rebellion, listened to an ambitious scheme laid out by General John Burgoyne which called for an invasion from Canada. Burgoyne had returned to England from Canada after the failure of Sir Guy Carleton’s attempt in summer 1776 to drive down Lake Champlain. Burgoyne had accompanied Carleton but had escaped the blame for the failure, and back in England he pleaded the wisdom of a second similar expedition—this one under more aggressive leadership, which he himself would provide. The king liked the idea, especially when Burgoyne explained that the purpose of the move was to separate New England from the rest of the colonies. By slicing down Lake Champlain and then through the Hudson Valley to Albany, the Burgoyne expedition would neatly isolate the center of the rebellion. To give his drive even more strength, he proposed that a second force under Lt. Colonel Barry St. Leger push out from Oswego down the Mohawk, a tributary of the Hudson. The two rivers joined near Albany, and so presumably would the two prongs of the invading army.6
Burgoyne did not insist that an expedition come up the Hudson to meet him. Clearly, he was thinking of his own role as the leading one, and only as an afterthought did he suggest that at Albany he would place himself under Howe’s command. He did not propose that Howe meet him or have an army in Albany prepared to give him aid or join his force to itself. Nor did he explain what he would do in Albany or how in fact marching there would effectively isolate New England.
Germain did not ask for explanations; nor did he suggest that grand though it was, the Burgoyne plan might be difficult to execute. He did, however, sense that perhaps Burgoyne’s and Howe’s planning ought to be coordinated. But he did not act on this perception, which was hardly more than a vague hunch, until it was too late.
Sir Henry Clinton was in England while Burgoyne was persuading Germain and the king that a fresh try from Canada was just what the war needed. Clinton saw the dangers of independent attacks by Burgoyne and Howe, but he no more than the others in England knew at that time that Howe would take to the sea in search of Philadelphia. So, though Clinton detested Howe, he could not warn of the folly in the offing. Besides, he wanted the command of the expedition from Canada, and he knew that it was his for the asking if he could bring himself to ask, for he was Burgoyne’s senior in rank. Asking for himself proved impossible for Clinton; then and later his “diffidence,” his inability to exert himself to get what he really wanted, kept him silent. The command was given to Burgoyne in March; Clinton received the red ribbon of the Bath and orders to return to America as second in command to Howe. Both Clinton and Burgoyne had already sailed—Burgoyne for Canada, Clinton for New York—when Howe’s final plan for the capture of Philadelphia reached England.7
Howe had written Germain on April 2 that since he would not be receiving the reinforcements he had requested, he would pull his forward posts out of New Jersey, give up all idea of a march overland, and embark his forces against Philadelphia. Earlier in the year Howe had conceived of an attack by both land and sea; then he had proposed to move only by land; but now in April, with the dismal news about reinforcements, he altered his strategy once more in favor of an invasion by sea.8
Why he made this decision is not clear. In the dispatch he wrote on April 2 informing Germain of his intention to transport his forces by sea from New York to the Delaware, he stated that he no longer expected to end the war that year. Deprived of reinforcements, he apparently had decided against risking the army (which numbered around 21,000) in a march across the Jerseys. A move by sea, of course, would eliminate his army as a factor in the northern campaign—at least while the army was on ships, and in fact for a time afterward—for it would be far from the Hudson Valley.9
Howe seemed not to care, seemed oblivious even about what was being undertaken from Canada. He may not have been obsessed with Philadelphia, as some believed then and today, but he was thinking along lines that had appeared so clear to him in the New York campaign of the previous year. The thing to do at that time was to smash Washington’s army, and, failing that, to seize a major American center, cut off sea-going trade and dominate the surrounding countryside, and encourage those colonists still loyal to the king to show themselves. Capture of Philadelphia and the Delaware offered a similar opportunity: the area had important business, its farms were productive suppliers, and eastern Pennsylvania was filled with loyalists awaiting the protection of his majesty’s forces to make themselves known.10
If strategy of this sort was not an obsession, it was a preoccupation which carried Howe’s mind far from Canadian problems. The responsibility to force him to consider the war and the current campaign together lay in England, most directly with Lord George Germain, the American secretary. Germain failed to do more than make Howe vaguely aware that something was brewing in the north. Between March 3, when the decision to give command of the northern expedition to Burgoyne was virtually certain, and April 19, Germain wrote Howe eight times and neglected in each letter to tell him of Burgoyne’s mission. Germain did write Carleton in Canada that Burgoyne would lead the invasion, and he sent a copy of this letter to Howe. But no explanation of strategy accompanied this letter—and no orders to Howe to coordinate his efforts with Burgoyne’s. Instead, Germain contented himself with letters to Howe of approval and reassurance to the effect that the Philadelphia campaign appeared sound and that contrary to Howe’s gloomy expectations would lead to the conclusion of the war.
Germain may have believed everything he wrote Howe, or if he doubted the wisdom of what Howe was about, he may have hesitated to challenge him directly. At this point in the history of the war, character and the accidents of personal relations assumed for a moment at least a decisive importance. The character that proved so important was Germain’s; the relations of persons were those entangled in English politics.
Among those ministers who advocated a stiff line in dealing with the Americans, none exceeded Germain in stiffness. One of the tough men in the ministry, he was in 1777 in his sixty-second year; he had replaced Dartmouth as American Secretary in November of the year of Concord and Lexington—and Bunker Hill. North and the king found him refreshingly certain about American matters: the Americans, he argued, should give way, acknowledge Parliament’s right to legislate in all cases whatsoever, and then, perhaps, grievances could be aired and complaints satisfied. These views resembled no one’s as much as the king’s. There is no real reason to suppose that they were not sincerely held, but it may well be that Germain hesitated to qualify them—that is, to soften them while the king maintained that the Americans must surrender—for Germain was a man always vulnerable to charges of weakness and even cowardice. His appointment to a major post in the government was a triumph of persistence and, more concretely, a strange consequence of the old feud between Leicester House, the center of the faction around the heir apparent, and the monarch, in this case George II, grandfather of George III. During the Seven Years War, Germain, then Lord George Sackville, had served on the continent with Prince Ferdinand. In the battle of Minden (1759) he had not brought the British cavalry forward fast enough to suit the prince, who brought charges against him of disobeying orders. Germain was tried before a court-martial, found guilty, and apparently relegated to disgrace and obscurity, with the stink of cowardice swirling around him. The case had attracted national attention, although only those who followed political intrigue realized that the government had pushed it so fiercely because Germain was a part of the Leicester House crowd.11
When the young George III assumed the throne, Germain was slowly rehabilitated through appointment to minor posts and service in Parliament. The American war was of course well under way when he joined North’s ministry. He proved his worth by his unyielding attitude toward colonial claims.
But Germain never felt quite at ease in the government and may have shrunk before the unpleasant business of giving the Howes direct orders. The Howes, after all, were well connected; they were favorites of the king. Taking a firm stand on colonial issues was one thing; ordering around William Howe—telling him that he must cooperate with Burgoyne coming from Canada—was another. Germain did not issue such orders.
III
The designer of a part of British strategy for 1777, General John Burgoyne, returned to America from a London winter on May 6. The HMS Apollo carrying him sailed into Quebec that day, a Quebec enjoying spring sunshine and, with the general’s arrival, the warmth of optimism. For Burgoyne, who always had dash, now had what he most craved: an independent command and, not incidentally, an opportunity to exercise it. He came to his army after a heady winter at home which included at least one horseback ride with the king in Hyde Park and meetings at which he convinced the king that a thrust from Canada down the Hudson would lead to the destruction of the rebellion.12
Sir Guy Carleton, still in command in Canada, met Burgoyne with at least surface cordiality and proceeded to give him all the cooperation he desired. The army was assembled in the next few weeks and moved to St. Johns on the Richelieu River. The army was a varied but formidable force—slightly more than 8300 men in total, composed of 3700 British regulars, 3000 Germans, mostly Brunswickers, 650 Tories and Canadians, and 400 Iroquois. Burgoyne also had a train of 138 howitzers and guns and around 600 artillerymen to service them. He could also look with confidence on his subordinates, in particular Major General William Phillips, his second in command, Brig. General Simon Fraser, who would lead an important striking force, and Baron Friedrich Adolph von Riedesel, who commanded the Germans. Baron von Riedesel, accompanied by his baroness, three daughters, and their two maids, was an especially able and energetic officer, quick to sense an enemy’s weakness on the battlefield and eager to take advantage of every opening. Good troops and fine senior commanders pleased Burgoyne, already pleased with himself and with what apparently lay ahead.13
Had Burgoyne known of the disarray of his enemy, he would have felt even more optimism. General Philip Schuyler commanded the Northern Department, but his hold was anything but secure and he knew it. Many of his troops were New Englanders and they despised him. Schuyler had not covered himself with glory in the earlier Canadian campaigns, and his men remembered his performance. They also disliked him for other reasons: Schuyler was a Dutch patroon, a proud man suspicious of what he took to be Yankee egalitarianism; his soldiers from New England resented his aristocratic bearing, his obvious distaste for them, and his remote manner.
The attitude of the troops from New England would not have loosened Schuyler’s grip on his army had he not had a popular rival, a former officer in the British army, Horatio Gates, now a Virginian who owned a plantation and cultivated tobacco and Congressmen. Gates looked to be, and was, the polar opposite of Schuyler. Born to an English servant, Gates was a plain-looking, even homely, and comfortable man. Not a severe disciplinarian as Schuyler was, he did not conceal his admiration of the New England militia, a feeling it more than returned. Gates, moreover, was a veteran and a professional army officer who had fought with Braddock in the French and Indian War and had left the service as a major to settle in the Shenandoah Valley. His plainness and apparent lack of guile were deceptive, as George Washington, who was responsible for his appointment as brigadier general in the Continental army in 1775, came to recognize. For Gates had ambitions—in 1777, to head the northern department. Late in the winter he got his wish, after assiduous lobbying in Congress, only to have Congress once more place Schuyler in command. This change in command occurred in May, just as Burgoyne was beginning to gather himself for the plunge southward.14
Unaware of the divisions within his enemy’s camp, Burgoyne set his army in motion in a mood approaching cocksureness. He had moved his troops into position from Montreal in late May and early June. The soldiers shared their commander’s certainty that victory awaited them. As an officer remarked of the prevailing conviction, the army began the campaign convinced that it was “attended with every Appearance of Success.”15 A few days into the drive, delusions of grandeur would replace this conviction: “We had conceived the Idea of our being irresistable.”16 It was a beguiling idea and reinforced by Burgoyne himself, who on June 20 issued a proclamation replete with threats and false piety, alternately calling upon the Americans to greet his warriors with loving embraces and summoning up hellfire for them if they did not. His intentions were to “hold forth Security and Depredation to the Country.” He acted to restore “the Rights of the Constitution,” in contrast to the “unnatural Rebellion” which sought to establish “the compleated System of Tyranny.” Faced with this native-born oppression, the colonists must allow him and his army to protect them. The last thing they should do was to break up bridges and roads, and to hide their corn and cattle. But trust him, he who extended this invitation to join him “in consciousness of Christianity, my Royal Master’s Clemency and the honour of Soldiership. . . . And let not people be led to disregard it by considering their distance from the immediate situation of my Camp. I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands, to overtake the hardened enemies of Great Britain and America. I consider them the same wherever they may lurk. If not withstanding these endeavours, & sincere inclinations to effect them, the Phrenzy of hostility should remain, I trust I shall stand acquited in the Eyes of God and Men in denouncing the executing of the vengeance of the State against the willful outcasts—The Messengers of Justice and Wrath await them in the field; and devastation, famine and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way to their return.”17
Burgoyne could not have adopted a more inappropriate tone or issued a message more damaging to himself and his troops. His pretensions to constitutionality, patriotism, and Christianity coupled to the barbarism of threatening to unleash the Indians aroused anger and scorn. Like so many British leaders before him, he had a talent for creating opposition. His countrymen at home saw his blunder as soon as they read his bombast: to Horace Walpole, he of the viper’s tongue, Burgoyne was henceforth “vaporing Burgoyne,” “Pomposo,” and finally “Hurlothrumbo.”18 In America, Burgoyne drew disdain and bred a feeling more serious: a passion to stop him.
