Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence (21 page)

Given the tense standoff around New York City, Washington had doubts about diverting part of his army to deal with the elusive natives.
But by February 1779, Congressional representatives from New York and Pennsylvania were screaming for action. Congress passed orders to Washington, who began to plan an expedition for the “chastisement of the savages.”

This was not to be a raid but a major military operation carried out by experienced Continental soldiers and backed by artillery. The men would plunge into the largely unexplored territory with two objectives. One was to replicate the ruin the Indians and loyalists had visited on patriot settlers. The country was to be not “merely
overrun
but
destroyed,
” Washington ordered.
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The other was to abduct a large number of prisoners and hold them as hostages for the natives’ good behavior. As a bonus, Washington hoped his soldiers could capture the fort at Niagara, cutting the Indians’ source of supplies and putting an end to British incitement. Military protocol dictated that Washington offer this important command to Horatio Gates, his highest ranking subordinate. Gates begged off, claiming he lacked the “youth and strength” for a wilderness venture. John Sullivan was next in line. His assignment, Washington informed him, was to terrorize the Indians and “to carry the war vigorously into their own country.”
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Sullivan had the qualifications that might have made him an effective officer. Intelligent, educated, and principled, the thirty-nine-year-old New Hampshire lawyer had dedicated four years of his life to the American cause, all at the highest level of command. Nathanael Greene had once called him “sensible, active, ambitious, brave, and persevering in his temper.”
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Yet the knack of leadership eluded Sullivan. Lapses in judgment combined with sheer bad luck to plague him at nearly every step. He had failed in his effort to reinforce the wavering American army in Canada. Commanding the line on Long Island, he had allowed the enemy to rout his men and take him prisoner. At Brandywine Creek outside Philadelphia, he had again fallen short as the British turned his flank and nearly destroyed the Continental Army.

At the end of 1778, Sullivan had commanded an effort to retake Newport, Rhode Island, the nation’s fifth-largest city, which had been snapped up by the British two years earlier. He was to cooperate with French general Charles d’Estaing, who commanded a powerful fleet and an army of 4,500 men. This was the first French-American joint operation. But when a British armada was spotted nearby, d’Estaing hurried away to give battle. An intervening tempest scattered both fleets and d’Estaing did not return. Sullivan’s men, abandoned by their allies, were forced to retreat. Then, to the annoyance of George Washington and Congress, Sullivan lambasted
the French and insulted d’Estaing in a manner that threatened to overturn the alliance entirely.

As a young man, Sullivan, whose parents had come from Ireland as indentured servants, had purchased mortgages at a discount and dunned the debtors for payments. He had so enraged his neighbors that they fired musket balls into his home. His manner of defending himself during the controversy over the Newport campaign prompted Nathanael Greene to comment, “General Sullivan I find has turnd Lawyer again.”
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The qualities of a lawyer—exacting, contentious, and blameful—may have worked to Sullivan’s advantage at times, but they cramped his mind and kept him from coming into his own as a warrior.

Ten months after the Rhode Island disappointment, he found himself in command of fully one third of the Continental Army. He was about to set off on one of the most extensive offensive operations of the war. The responsibility would rest entirely on him. Once he trekked into the wilderness, he would pass beyond the possibility of advice, reinforcement, or resupply.

Washington and his staff had grown increasingly skilled at intelligence and planning. They gathered facts about the terrain and the forces Sullivan might encounter. To keep the enemy off balance, American forces would approach Indian territory from three directions. Sullivan would lead the main force up the Wyoming Valley from the south. General James Clinton would bring a smaller corps from the Mohawk Valley down the Susquehanna to meet him. Another war party, under Colonel Daniel Brodhead, would venture from Pittsburgh and ascend the Allegheny River.

Washington needed to be sure that the British would not withdraw Canadian troops to counter Sullivan. He ordered Colonel Moses Hazen to begin building a military road through Vermont for an invasion of Canada. Even Hazen did not know that this effort was a stratagem—no invasion was planned. But the road had the intended effect, and British troops in Canada stayed put.

Sullivan’s expedition entailed plenty of risks. If he were to be ambushed deep in the wilderness, the whole of the frontier would become vulnerable and Washington could lose some of his best troops. By detaching such a large force, the commander was leaving his remaining troops vulnerable if British general Henry Clinton decided to seize the Hudson Highlands. Washington sweated over the preparations, then placed his faith in the luckless John Sullivan.

Sullivan studied the intelligence and the plans. The commander in chief had assigned him reliable Continental regiments under seasoned
officers like Saratoga veterans Enoch Poor and Henry Dearborn. As the forces gathered, Washington gave Sullivan detailed instructions: travel light; move fast; do not listen to peace proposals from the Indians until you’ve destroyed their villages; if the opportunity arises, drive the British from Fort Niagara.

Weeks passed—Sullivan remained at his base in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “in his usual pother.”
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Finally, his main force marched to the Wyoming Valley, the edge of Indian territory. Again they waited—for boats, supplies, arms, more men. Washington knew firsthand how baggage could slow a wilderness expedition and was impatient for Sullivan to get moving. Nathanael Greene thought that Sullivan was oversupplied. “I hope his success,” he noted, “will be equal to the preparation.”
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For another month, the force marked time at Wyoming. To pass the midsummer hours, Sullivan debated theology with his officers. A deist and even an atheist earlier his life, the general had become a believer “by fair and impartial reasoning.” He was inspired to write a lawyerly thirty-page treatise “to prove the existence of a Supreme Being.”
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Meanwhile, his troops consumed the provisions intended to sustain them in the wilderness and time slipped by.

* * *

While Sullivan prepared, British general Henry Clinton saw an opportunity. He sent troops sailing up the Hudson, where they captured two posts on opposite sides of the river. Stony Point and Verplank’s Point, barely a thousand yards apart, were the terminals of King’s Ferry, an important link between New England and the rest of the colonies. Loss of the ferry required a five-day detour to cross the river. The seizure deflated patriot morale and added to Washington’s anxiety.

With a large portion of his army committed to the Sullivan venture, the American commander worried that Clinton might be preparing for an attack on the key fortress at West Point, fifteen miles north of King’s Ferry. He was not about to let the move stand. To lead the counterattack, he turned to Anthony Wayne, a national hero for his performance at Monmouth Courthouse the year before.

A revamping of military command had created a conflict between two of Washington’s most aggressive natural warriors, Wayne and Daniel Morgan. Washington had decided to phase out Morgan’s original rifle corps and establish an elite light infantry brigade of sixteen rifle companies manned by veterans picked from across the army. Morgan wanted to lead this unit and was a natural for the position. But because of its size, it
required a brigadier general and Morgan was still only a colonel. Given the politics of rank, a promotion was not possible.

Anthony Wayne, already a general, also wanted command of the new unit. Washington handed him the assignment. Morgan, who had fought superbly for four years, could not accept being passed over. The Old Wagoner resigned his commission and returned to his farm in Virginia.

After two weeks of intense drills, General Wayne declared his 1,400 men ready. His plan was to surprise the enemy with a night attack. On the afternoon of July 15, Wayne’s men began a march through the rugged Highlands, circling well west of the river. By eight o’clock, they gathered a little over a mile from their objective.

Stony Point was aptly named, a rocky prominence separated from the mainland by a tidal marsh, with access along a narrow causeway. The British had labored to make the position impervious to an attack. They had constructed two rows of abatis—stacks of felled trees, their sharpened branches pointing outward. They had also built three strongpoints armed with cannon. They felt safe.

To emphasize the audacity of his assault, Wayne forbade his men to load their muskets. They would attack with bayonets only, just as British general Grey’s troops had swarmed Wayne’s men at Paoli two years earlier. Wayne was serious—when a nervous infantryman stopped and insisted on loading his musket, his officer killed him with a sword thrust. The only exception was a detachment of North Carolina troops who would advance up the causeway, shooting noisily to draw the defenders’ attention.

Wayne himself led the main advance to the south of the peninsula, wading waist-deep through the marsh. In the early hours of July 16, the North Carolina troops fired their muskets. Wayne and his men were able to get around the end of the first abatis. They charged through the dark, and scrambled up the steep, rocky slope, taking the British by surprise.

American axemen slashed an opening through the second abatis. A musket ball struck Anthony Wayne in the forehead. He dropped down bleeding. Witnessing his fall, his men surged vehemently into the ranks of British. In less than half an hour, the patriots had overrun the enemy, and the British soldiers had called for quarter. Wayne recovered quickly from what proved to be a blow by a spent bullet. The attack on Stony Point had been a brilliant coup. The troops had fought, Wayne declared, “like men who are determined to be free.”
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The Americans had no hope of holding onto the position in the face of British naval power. They demolished the fort, removed the guns, and left. Two days later, George Washington appeared to shake hands with
every man who had joined the assault and survived—one hundred Americans had fallen.

“Our streets . . . rang with nothing but the name of General Wayne,” a Philadelphian reported.
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Patriot morale soared. Officers praised Wayne’s operation as a military classic. The child in him exulted.

* * *

John Sullivan continued to delay. July came and went. The first week in August, he proceeded to the rendezvous point at Tioga, just below the border between New York and Pennsylvania. While he waited for James Clinton’s force to come down the Susquehanna, his own men marched a few miles up the Chemung River to an Indian village of thirty homes and turned it into a “glorious bonfire,” killing fifty of the enemy. A lieutenant went looking for dead Indians and “skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs.”
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When Clinton arrived, the combined force of 3,600 men finally headed into the unknown. They took eleven large cannon and twenty-seven days’ provisions. Three days later, several hundred Indians and loyalists made a stand along Sullivan’s route. They erected log breastworks and enticed his men forward so that a group hidden on a hill could descend on the Americans’ flank. The ambush failed and the Indians fled. To lighten his load, Sullivan sent most of his artillery back. With his men, he plunged onward.

Most of the Americans viewed Indians as savage barbarians. They were blind to the complex culture of America’s native tribes, knew nothing of their deep spirituality, and gave them little credit for their innate honesty, generosity, and courage. They imagined that the Iroquois lived a primitive life within a primeval forest. What they saw as they invaded the Iroquois homeland startled them.

In the century and a half since making contact with Europeans, the material lives of Indians had changed dramatically. They had grown accustomed to a steady stream of manufactured goods—pots, muskets, cloth, and rum. Their homes, as the invaders soon found, were not traditional bark-covered long houses but “were larger than common, and built of square & round logs & frame work,” some with brick chimneys and glass windows.
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They were as fine as or finer than the homes of most whites.

And situated in finer lands. The territory beyond the mountains was blessed with wonderfully fertile loam. Iroquois women planted vast fields of corn, which in places grew sixteen feet high. They raised squash and beans and cultivated ancient orchards that yielded apples, plums, and peaches. The lush crops astounded the inhabitants of the rocky, hardscrabble hills of New England.