The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (95 page)

Cooperation between Sullivan and Estaing did not flow easily. Sullivan, the son of indentured servants from Ireland, brought an Irishman's hatred of the English to the war and much more -- enthusiasm and at times an indiscreet tongue. He now used his mouth incautiously, giving orders to Estaing -- he of the French nobility, tender skin, and a higher military rank than Sullivan's. It is conceivable that Estaing might have ignored Sullivan's tactlessness had it not been coupled to what Estaing evidently took to be a lack of ability. And French unease about their American colleagues was not lessened by the discovery that their own chart of Narragansett Bay was better than Sullivan's.
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The two sides worked out a plan for attacking Newport despite French suspicions. Sullivan was to come down from Providence, ferry to the island of Rhode Island from Tiverton, and attack Pigot on the northeast side of the island. Estaing would deliver a simultaneous attack from the west. The British saw the danger from Estaing at once and attempted to run five frigates down the middle passage, between Conanicut and Rhode Island, into Newport harbor. All five ran aground and had to be burned by their crews. In an attempt to bar the French from the harbor, Pigot ordered several transports scuttled there. These sinkings seemed to clear the way for Estaing. The attack was set for August 10. On the morning of the 9th, however, Sullivan sent his troops across to Rhode Island. He had discovered that Pigot had retired toward Newport and decided that an unopposed landing was too good to pass up. Estaing interpreted this action as further evidence of American unreliability. That afternoon Estaing received a second suprise: Howe, now reinforced by ships from Byron's fleet, appeared with twenty vessels carrying almost 100 guns more than the French had.

Estaing could have proceeded with his part of the attack. He had some 4000 troops to put ashore, and he might have debarked them before Howe entered the bay. Indeed, in confined waters the French would have been difficult to attack. Estaing, however, kept his troops aboard and took advantage of a favorable wind to sail out for battle. For the next two days the two fleets maneuvered cautiously with Estaing holding the weather advantage -- the wind at his back -- and Howe striving

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to get it. Two days later a gale ended the maneuvers, blowing the two fleets out of their formations, dismasting several ships, and generally doing more damage than guns did in most engagements.

Undiscouraged, Sullivan attacked on the 14th but failed to break through. He then sat down in a half-siege to await Estaing's return. The French ships straggled in over the next few days but Estaing had seen enough, and he heard that Howe would receive even more reinforcements soon. Despite Sullivan's plea that he stay and fight for two days, Estaing set out for Boston, and repairs, on August 21. In effect, the siege of Newport was over. Sullivan's problem was now how to escape -his militia evaporated when the French took off, and Pigot was now prepared to do some attacking on his own. What Sullivan did not know was that Clinton had loaded 4000 regulars on transports and was on the way with the intention of trapping him on Rhode Island. Unfavorable winds slowed the troopships, and on the last day of August Sullivan pulled free. Clinton arrived the next day.

Events of the rest of the year gave neither side cause to rejoice. Admiral Howe, with Byron on the scene at last, went home late in September. He was a brilliant sailor and an able commander, the last naval chief in America to whom these words apply and the last Clinton met on good terms. Early in November, Clinton finally detached 5000 troops under Major General James Grant for the attack on St. Lucia in the West Indies, an attack which would capture the island in December. The Carlisle Commission departed New York about the same time, its mission unfulfilled and its spirit in tatters. Estaing also set out in November, his spirit and his pride intact and his mission unfinished. He sailed without bothering to tell Washington his destination.

The meaning of these events of 1778 seemed clear to the pessimists in the ministry and in Parliament: concentration on the colonies would no longer be possible, and consequently the war in America was lost. The fact that the government somehow had to deal with was that its forces were stretched thin over the rim of the Atlantic. The government had not distinguished itself in the brilliance of its strategic thinking when faced by a colonial rebellion. What could be expected of it when it confronted war in Europe as well as in America?

One of its early decisions -- to husband carefully the home fleet in the expectation of a French invasion -- paid off in a limited sense in the summer of 1778. The French under Admiral Orvilliers sailed from

Brest on July 10, not with orders to invade England but simply to cruise for a month. On July 23 Orvilliers sighted the English fleet, Admiral Augustus Keppel in command, about seventy miles west of Ushant. The French maintained position with the weather gauge but did not close. The lack of firm orders to strike the enemy may have inhibited Orvilliers, and he did not fight until he was forced to by a change of the wind that enabled Keppel to drive against his rear. Orvilliers turned to face his enemy, and the two fleets sailed past one another firing as they went. Orvilliers, with twenty-seven ships against Keppel's thirty, was outgunned and, understandably, wished to avoid a prolonged engagement which would see his ships pounded to pieces by heavier metal. Outweighed, he chose to fire langrage into the British sails and rigging -a tactic that paid off. The langrage -- cast-shot loaded with iron pieces of irregular shape -- shattered masts and tore rigging and sails, thus reducing English maneuverability. But the British fire, directed into' hulls and decks, was effective too, and French casualties were almost twice those of the British. Orvilliers found one day of battle enough and drew away. While not exactly English, the Channel would not be used for an invasion in 1778.
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An old delusion, born of the wishful thinking that so often follows frustration, now reappeared and made itself felt in British strategy. Before the fighting at Lexington, British ministers had persuaded themselves. that their troubles in America were inspired by a conspiracy of the few, that most colonists loved Parliament and the king. Not even the fighting dislodged this conviction from many heads, including the king's own, and it no doubt was a comfort to discouraged ministers who shared the responsibility for military failure.

The Howes had believed that they would find swarms of loyalists, and the march to Trenton in 1776 only partially disabused them. Sir William Howe may even then have believed the most popular form of the myth of the loyal Americans -- that those in the southern colonies were especially numerous and more warmly loyal than those in the North. Sir Henry Clinton had sailed to Charleston in June 1776 in the expectation that he would provide a center to which loyal Carolinians would flock. The Carolinians flocked -- not to Clinton but to Charles Lee, who headed the city's defense. Though Clinton was joined by an expedition brought from Britain by Admiral Peter Parker, he failed both in taking Charleston and in rallying loyalists.

William Howe retained his faith that the loyalists in the southern colonies only awaited a chance to come out and put down the rebels. In the autumn of 1776 he proposed to attack South Carolina and Georgia during the following winter. But George Washington managed to take his mind off the South, and Howe also began to develop suspicions of Americans wherever he found them. His chief, Lord George Germain,

removed from the disappointments of experience by 3000 miles, continued to believe that most Americans were loyal. And by summer 1777, loyalists from the Carolinas had arrived in England and had gained Germain's ear. Reassured by what he heard from them, Germain urged Howe to proceed to the South. By that time Howe had learned to beware of professions of loyalty delivered at a distance -- or close up in Pennsylvania -- and since he was short of troops he refused to consider undertaking another expedition.
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Germain now had an idea of how the war might be won -- tap the loyalist support in the South and further its spread northward. From the beginning of Clinton's assumption of command, Germain had tried to push him into a new expedition. The entrance of France into the war diverted even Germain, but the order to dispatch troops from Philadelphia to Florida in March 1778 helped keep alive the possibility of a campaign in the southern colonies. By November, Clinton was prepared for a first effort. On the 27th he dispatched Lt. Colonel Archibald Campbell with the 71st Regiment, two regiments of Hessians, four Tory battalions, and a small contingent of artillery -- altogether about 3500 rank-and-file on an invasion of Georgia. Two days before Christmas, Campbell arrived off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, some fifteen miles below the town of Savannah.
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The American commander in Georgia, Robert Howe, rushed to the town's defense from Sunbury, a distance of thirty miles. He was badly outnumbered, however, and his force -- 700 Continentals, 150 militia was soon outflanked when Campbell was guided by a slave through a swamp to a vulnerable point in the not very formidable American defenses. The battle that ensued on December 29 resembled many in the war: the Americans collapsed and fled, leaving almost 100 dead and 453 prisoners. The British lost three dead and ten wounded. In the next month, Campbell with the support of Prevost, who came up from Florida, took control of Georgia.
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The great prize in the South lay north of Georgia, the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Almost all of 1779 passed before Clinton made a move to take it. That year saw few great events in America, or in Britain for that matter, but it was nevertheless a momentous year in the Revolu-

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tion. In America, with Clinton feeling himself increasingly thwarted, some new way out, some feasible way of ending the war, seemed now to lie in the South. And the year-long pause in the war, the delay in turning to the southern colonies, saw a crisis slowly build in Britain that reinforced the ministry's old fantasy that the war might be won there.

The crisis of 1779 within Britain had its origins in political maneuvering, as did almost every ministerial crisis of the eighteenth century. The old question of what are you going to do with Noodle was very much on Noodle's mind, and on North's. There were always several Noodles, and at this time the chief among them was possessed not merely of ordinary ambitions but also of a feeling that he had been betrayed. This Noodle was Alexander Wedderhurn, the solicitor general who in 1774 had abused Benjamin Franklin in the cockpit. Wedderburn had lost none of his odious qualities, among them a greed for high office which he indulged to the point of political blackmail. He now claimed that he had been promised the chief justiceship, a post that was not vacant, but which he wanted nonetheless. Wedderburn did not much care how North delivered it, but deliver it he must.
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Suffolk, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, died in March and the opportunity of replacing him inflamed the hopes of many. The composition of the ministry had been an issue ever since news arrived of the disaster at Saratoga, and now, in view of the events of 1778, in particular the evacuation of Philadelphia, the ministry's prospects had taken on a bleak look. North, Germain, and Sandwich all shared responsibility for the conduct of the war in America, and all received lashings in the newspapers. When Lord Carlisle and William Eden arrived home and their failure became known, the attackers of the ministry had further cause. Eden threw in with Wedderburn in pushing North, who soon was made to realize that appointing Hillsborough to Suffolk's vacant post would not be popular.