The First American Army (28 page)
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Authors: Bruce Chadwick
The Arduous Journey of Sergeant Ebenezer Wild, Nineteen
The War
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ngland’s most flamboyant General, “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne— fashion plate, gambler, playwright, dancer, raconteur, much-in-demand London dinner guest, and daring military leader—was given command of the large force gathered in Canada in the summer of 1777 and ordered to travel south to New York. He was to sail down Lake Champlain and capture Fort Ticonderoga and any other American garrisons he passed, sink any American ships he found, and then move south to smash the Continental force’s northern army, headquartered at Albany. Generals Howe and Clinton would then travel north up the Hudson River to meet him, and with their combined army would split the colonies in two, using part of their force to render New England helpless to the north and another part to chase and destroy George Washington’s main army to the south. If all went well, the American Revolution would be over before Christmas.
General Horatio Gates planned on halting the march of Burgoyne’s army somewhere along the western banks of the Hudson River, using the farms and hills of the area, plus earthworks his men would build, to form a defensive line. To stop Burgoyne, aided by several thousand Hessians, Gates knew he had to bring in more men. He also had to deal with the obstinate Benedict Arnold, now one of his commanders.
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benezer Wild’s journey to Saratoga had been a difficult one. No soldier in his regiment, the First Massachusetts, was happier to pitch his tent in a field that overlooked headquarters at Bemis Heights, a plateau south of the village of Saratoga, than the nineteen-year-old sergeant when he arrived with the rest of the men just after 5 p.m. on July 31, 1777.
Wild had left his home in Braintree, Massachusetts, to rejoin the Continental Army in Boston on April 9 following a furlough. His commander, Colonel Joseph Vose, let his men spend an enjoyable afternoon drinking at the Punch Bowl Tavern, the crowded, raucous, popular Boston bar, before they began marching southwest to meet up with the northern army commanded by General Gates. An overweight, ruddyfaced, former British officer who wore thick glasses, he was called “Granny Gates” by some of his men.
Congress awarded Gates the command in mid-August, replacing General Philip Schuyler after some nasty army infighting and the loss of Ticonderoga. Gates claimed that Schuyler was not capable of commanding a large army. Schuyler, though, said that Gates had engaged in an underhanded scheme to replace him.
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Gates’s scheming would soon result in nearly tragic consequences for the army when he would become connected to a duplicitous plan to supplant Washington as commander in chief. Gates moved swiftly to enlarge the size of his forces and to improve morale upon assuming command. He issued general orders for more and better training, increased cleanliness, and pushed officers to persuade their men to work harder. He told his soldiers that they had to build “confidence in themselves.”
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It was a long and arduous trip to Saratoga for Wild’s company. The men sometimes marched as much as twenty miles in a single day in hot weather and in rainstorms. They rose before seven on most mornings to march and sometimes traveled at night, stumbling along darkened dirt highways before halting to make camp in nearby fields for the evening. They slept wherever they could. Wild and the others found themselves spending the nights in private homes, barns, and, if no shelter was available, open meadows. When they reached Litchfield, Connecticut, the state capital, the regiment slept in the rooms and halls of the statehouse.
On April 27, an express rider handed Colonel Vose orders to proceed with as much speed as possible to Bedford, New York; the British army was supposed to be camped near the town. The Redcoats had just raided Danbury, Connecticut, and destroyed a large quantity of supplies. After a forced march, the army discovered, as it often did, that the reported British arrival in Bedford was yet another rumor. It was in Bedford that Wild became seriously ill. He wrote, “I felt so sick that I was obliged to stop and lodged in a barn about three miles to the rear of the party.” His condition did not improve the next day and he had great difficulty trying to keep up with the regiment. He remarked, “I traveled as fast as I could, but was obliged to stop every little ways.”
He never revealed his ailment in his journal, but Wild fell so sick that he remained in the care of the Tomkins family in the Bedford area for nine weeks as the regiment remained in Westchester County. He rejoined the army on July 24 to find that arrangements had been made to put all of the troops in his company on a sloop so that they could sail up the Hudson and save some time in their journey to Saratoga. The ship was overcrowded—the soldiers filling every room and the cargo hold below the decks—so Wild was told to sleep on the open deck of the vessel, exposed to the night wind on the waters of the Hudson, a blessing in the heat.
Finally, on July 29, the First Massachusetts disembarked and began a long march north up the western shoreline of the Hudson toward Saratoga. Wild was struck by the beauty of the Hudson River valley, the creeks that flowed into it, the gently rolling hills that ran parallel to the waterway, the thick green forests of trees, deep valleys, ravines, jagged rock formations, and wide ponds.
The majestic beauty of America touched the hearts of all the soldiers. In hundreds of journals and letters, that love of the land is described frequently. The war sometimes carried them into hell, but it also brought the soldiers through the gorgeous bounty of the United States. The vistas they saw, often for the first time in their lives—Lake Champlain, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the Hudson River valley, the waterfalls of Maine, the low country of South Carolina—reminded them of the extraordinary country for which they fought.
Some admired the cities as well as the tiny villages through which they passed. Pennsylvanian McMichael remembered both in July of 1776, when he marched off to war following his commission. The troops paraded through Philadelphia—the largest city in the colonies, with thirty-four thousand residents—on the Fourth of July, and McMichael was awed by it. “This city for uniformity and a beautiful situation is equal to any I have ever seen,” he wrote. Four days later, his company reached New Brunswick, in the center of New Jersey. He was as impressed by the small river town as he was by the large city in Pennsylvania, calling New Brunswick “a pretty little town situated in a valley on the western bank of the Raritan River.”
Many soldiers were so struck with the beauty of the countryside that they asked for and obtained permission from their officers to climb to the tops of nearby mountains so they could have a view of the plain or forest through which they were marching.
Lieutenant Walter Finney guarded prisoners on a march through Orange County, New York, near the Hudson, and was enchanted by the serene ponds he passed along the way. He wrote, “The most remarkable objects were two ponds of water apparently on the highest ground in the settlement . . . [in the first] the water remarkably clear and sweet, the bottom a beautiful white gravel, no stream to supply it with water or any to carry it off . . . [the] second abounds with all sorts of freshwater fish, a small stream makes out of this pond.”
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Even the weary men on Arnold’s ill-fated expedition to Canada found the wilderness they crossed on their way through Maine and the lower section of Canada lovely. Many told friends back home about the roaring whitewater rapids and the deep, jagged rock gorges they traveled through, and they described in great detail the many cascading waterfalls they passed. One soldier remembered walking along the Chaudière River one chilly morning: “The marching this day better than we have had. The river grows wider and runs very quick, and some places very shallow. We passed this day several small islands—the weather this day exceedingly fine, clear and as warm as ever I saw it in New England.”
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Several of the men on General John Sullivan’s campaign against the Indians in 1779 remembered the quiet beauty of the lands where the Indians lived in western New York, recalling them lovingly to their friends when they returned home. “We crossed a large brook near the town, then entered into a most beautiful and extensive plain, which afforded an unbounded prospect; here was almost a perfect level and nothing to obstruct the sight but a few spreading oaks beautifully interspersed and plenty of grass that grew spontaneous on every part and full six feet high,” wrote Robert Parker of a meadow near Genesee, New York.
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Soldiers often braved bad weather to reach the tops of the mountains to gain a view. In the autumn of 1777, Dan Granger, fifteen, who had replaced his sick older brother in the army camp at Boston, led a group of soldiers to the top of Crow Mountain, a precipice that overlooked the Hudson near West Point.
We set out and accomplished the task. On the way up, oil nuts lay in the crevasses of the rocks in bushels, which had fallen from the trees growing on the declivity of the mountain. We feasted [on the nuts] and then went to the summit. While on the summit, there was a thundercloud of great volume and density that came over us, rushing over with the most tremendous lightening and rain. We had to stay and take it. We could see but a very short distance and were wet as rain could make us. The thunder was tremendous and lightening vivid about us, running along on the ground as attracted by the rocks. The dense cloud passed over and fell below the mountain and spread over the plain, covering it entirely from our view. The sun shining upon it, presented a spectacle truly sublime and terrific, not easily described.
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The soldiers saw architectural and mechanical wonders that amazed their young minds: the rapid construction of naval vessels to engage the British navy on Lake Champlain, the mammoth iron gates of Crown Point, the thick iron chain across the Hudson, army wagons turned into sleighs for winter attacks, canoes turned into gunships as blunderbusses were attached to their bows. Several soldiers who traveled through the Hudson River Valley with Wild remarked on an inventive farmer who had constructed a large wooden barn with a retractable roof.
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John Burgoyne was given his nickname of “Gentleman Johnny” by his troops, who admired him for treating them humanely in an era when British soldiers were treated badly by their officers and often flogged for minor offenses. The flashy Burgoyne, a graduate of Westminster, one of England’s finest schools, had eloped with the daughter of a wealthy lord. Upon his return to England and the army, Burgoyne earned a seat in Parliament and later rose quickly in the military ranks.
During a second term in Parliament, he was offered membership in several of London’s most fashionable clubs. There, in addition to witty conversation and political savvy, he became infamous as one of the city’s most notorious gamblers. Bored at times, he took up acting and starred in several plays. In 1774, two years after promotion to general, Gentleman Johnny even wrote a play that was staged at the well-known Drury Theater.
He had been frustrated in Boston, where he had spent nine months as second in command to Howe and idled the time away writing plays, including
The Siege of Boston
. The general had returned to England and convinced Lord Germain to let him lead an attack from Canada into New York that would smash the rebels and end the war in a matter of weeks. He took command of Guy Carleton’s army of 7,863 regulars plus Indians and Canadian volunteers. He also led three thousand Hessians, under the command of Baron Friederich von Riedesel, who was accompanied by his young, attractive wife, three children, and two servants. The army moved southward on June 21, 1777.
Burgoyne’s plan to sail down Lake Champlain, conquer all before him, and seize Albany seemed foolproof. At the same time, part of his army under Colonel Barry St. Leger would travel the Mohawk River valley to Albany. Nothing went according to plan, however. There was no American navy; Arnold never rebuilt the ships that Carleton had battered and sank the previous year. The Americans had evacuated Ticonderoga and left an empty fort.