Victory at Yorktown (27 page)

8

PREPARE TO HEAR THE WORST

In the normal course
of events General Sir Henry Clinton might have been content with his lot. Here he was, commander in chief of British forces in America, surrounded by sycophants, cosseted by his mistress, safe and secure in New York with his army, watched over by a powerful naval force under Admiral Thomas Graves. But these were not normal times, and Clinton was desperately unhappy about the deteriorating situation in the Chesapeake.

He was no man to admit guilt, but he bore a considerable responsibility for the total breakdown in the meeting of minds between himself and Charles, Earl Cornwallis. In fact, both men were equally to blame, but Clinton was, after all, in command and should have made clear to his subordinate exactly what he was to do and when. But he had not. And Cornwallis, who was energetic, ambitious, and strong-willed, had taken advantage of Clinton's lapses and indecision and followed his own path from South Carolina to Virginia.

After defeating the Americans at Camden in 1780, Cornwallis decided that the backcountry was sufficiently secure that he could leave Charleston and march north. Clinton had recommended that he take the coastal route, but Cornwallis, observing that that was too unhealthy, headed for the highlands of North Carolina. It was a costly mistake. Leaving the coast meant leaving the navy behind, so he was constantly short of supplies. Because of that, he could not remain in one place long enough to encourage loyalists to join him, he could hold no territory, and he was unable to engage the rebels in a decisive battle.

Lacking insight into Clinton's plans for Virginia, Cornwallis assumed that the troops sent there by his superior were his to command—an illusion enforced when the soldiers under General Leslie arrived and he promptly summoned them to join him in the Carolinas. From this moment on, relations between the two generals worsened to the point where they barely existed. Cornwallis was capable of great charm, but he had frequent episodes of the sulks and bad temper, which showed in his letters to Clinton, who did not understand them and laid them to ulterior motives on the earl's part.

Clinton was certain that Cornwallis was undermining his authority by writing directly to the ministry in London (which he was), going over Clinton's head and influencing military policy in America. For almost four months between January and late April of 1781, no direct word from Cornwallis reached Clinton, leaving the latter to guess what was going on in the South while making decisions concerning the Chesapeake. Then came a letter from Cornwallis written on April 10, beginning, “I have a chance of sending a few lines to New York,” summarizing the battle at Guilford Courthouse and saying that he had been obliged to rest his army—a third of which had been sick and wounded, many without shoes and exhausted—but he had been doing his best to put his men in shape to take the field. Reinforcements would be essential, as would be a return to the high country, to avoid “the fatal sickness which so nearly ruined the army last autumn.”

Now he was “very anxious to receive Your Excellency's commands,” since he was “totally in the dark as to the intended operations of the summer.” The Chesapeake, he added, ought to be the seat of war—even at the expense of abandoning New York. Meantime he was dispatching an aide to London with news of his latest campaign and would send copies to Clinton.

Two weeks later Cornwallis was writing again, angrily this time, to say how disagreeable it was to decide upon vital matters “without an opportunity of procuring Your Excellency's directions or approbation.” The delay of conveying letters and not receiving answers had become intolerable, and his present undertaking (whatever that might be, Clinton may have wondered) “sits heavy on my mind.” The situation he had left behind in South Carolina was grave, yet he had had to act precipitately since no reinforcements were forthcoming from Europe and the impending return of General Greene to North Carolina would put a junction with Major General William Phillips out of his power.

In one letter, Cornwallis informed Clinton that he had been “uniformly successful” in the Carolinas, ignoring the fact that he had lost three-quarters of his army. His march to the north was made because a return to Charleston had the appearance of defeat, so, leaving behind a garrison to defend itself in South Carolina, he headed for Virginia, which, he told Clinton, should be the focus of their activity.

His letters to Germain and Phillips at this time conveyed his fears for South Carolina and Lord Rawdon, in whose care he had left the post with precious few troops to defend it—an action that smacked of incompetence or very poor judgment. Before Clinton had a chance to stop him, he headed north and reached Virginia by May.

For his part, Clinton was all the more determined to defend New York, where he expected to be attacked in force. In desperation he had written to Germain in late April asking to be allowed to resign if Arbuthnot was not recalled. The admiral, “who from age, temper, and inconsistency of conduct is really so little to be depended on that, was I to continue to serve with him, I should be constantly under the most distressing apprehensions of the miscarriage of … enterprises we might be engaged in.” Fortunately for Clinton's peace of mind on that count, Arbuthnot finally departed in June. Meanwhile, to forestall an attack on New York, Sir Henry thought of striking at Philadelphia, employing Cornwallis's force in a pincers movement, but the earl was having none of that and said so. Then Clinton thought to have the two armies integrated in the defense of New York, with Cornwallis to remain in Chesapeake Bay while sending most of his troops to Manhattan, and the general ordered the earl to do this in what was a decidedly peremptory tone. Clinton's instructions so infuriated Cornwallis that he marched his army to Portsmouth to sail for New York while asking that he be given permission to return to South Carolina. Clinton, dumbfounded, countermanded the order to move the troops and subsequently ordered Cornwallis to select a post and fortify it.

The letters traveling back and forth between the two generals over which town Cornwallis was to use as his base can only be described as bickering. The earl was against York, saying it “far exceeds our power, consistent with your plans, to make safe defensive posts there and at Gloucester.” He favored Portsmouth. Back came a retort from Clinton stating that he and Admiral Graves considered Hampton Roads “the fittest station for all ships” and that York would provide security for Old Point Comfort and Hampton Roads. “You will,” he added, “without loss of time examine Old Point Comfort and fortify it.…” Clinton went on to tell the earl that “until the season for recommencing operation in the Chesapeake shall return” (whenever that might be), Cornwallis must be content with a defensive posture and not retain any more troops than he considered absolutely essential for that purpose.

The thinly veiled animosity between the two threatened to bubble to the surface, with Clinton's messages becoming ever more complicated and contradictory, Cornwallis's resentful, until neither understood what the other was saying or doing. As an example of Clinton's baffling instructions, while he debated whether to take some of Cornwallis's troops to defend New York or attack Philadelphia, he successively ordered the earl to send some of his men to the latter city, then to New York, then told him to set up a post in York and later in Old Point Comfort, and called for reinforcements to New York at the same time, adding that Cornwallis could keep them in Virginia if necessary.

Meantime, of course, both officers were writing to Lord George Germain; each gave his version of what was transpiring, in letters highly critical of the other. Clinton complained that Cornwallis had frustrated his plan to capture rebel stores in Philadelphia by refusing to send him troops, and went on to remind the secretary of state for the colonies of Cornwallis's statement that subduing Virginia was a top priority, with which Clinton agreed, while saying that “Conquest alone will be of little moment unless we can retain what we conquer, which … cannot be done in so large and populous a province as Virginia unless the inhabitants themselves are disposed to join us—which we cannot hope for there, as they are, I believe, almost universally hostile.” Sir Henry's plan was to secure a post that would provide a respectable naval station at the entrance of the Chesapeake, commanding access to the bay. And back came Germain's enthusiastic response: “It is with the most unfeigned pleasure I obey His Majesty's commands in expressing to you
his royal approbation of the plan you have adopted
for prosecuting the war in the provinces south of the Delaware.…” And so it went between the two generals until the war's end, Clinton whining, Cornwallis complaining irritably, each convinced that he was right and that everything would have been fine had the other only listened to him.

It was late July before Cornwallis made the ultimate decision. Dutifully, he considered Old Point Comfort but determined with his engineers that it was unsuitable. Instead, he reluctantly chose York, about eleven miles from the mouth of the York River, and put his entire army to work digging trenches. The little town had sixty or seventy houses spread out along the main street and several cross streets, all on a high stony bluff that ran parallel to the river. Under the cliff were landings and various commercial establishments. From a distance, the most conspicuous landmarks were a church steeple and two imposing brick houses—both owned by people named Nelson.

In 1765 a Scottish officer, Lord Adam Gordon, had left the West Indies and landed in Florida, where he began a sightseeing journey that was to take him all the way up the coast to Quebec. On his way he visited York, which he thought one of the pleasantest situations he ever saw. Located on the beautiful River York, he said, it “commands a full view of the river down towards the Bay of Chesapeake, and a pretty land view across to Gloucester town and country, which contains some of the best lowlands in the country.” He admired the timber, saw great numbers of tulip trees not less than twenty feet in circumference and ninety feet tall, and noted the beauty of the local honeysuckle and how well European fruits, roots, and “garden stuff” did there. But within a single generation all that had changed, thanks largely to the British occupation.

Here the river was relatively narrow—less than a mile between the steep bluffs along the edge of the river and Gloucester, directly to the north, an arrow-shaped point that protruded into the York where it joined Chesapeake Bay. As Lafayette described the place, York was surrounded by “the river and a morass.” The site chosen by Cornwallis was clearly vulnerable to an amphibious operation since it could be surrounded by an approaching army while naval supremacy kept it from being provisioned or relieved from the sea.

*   *   *

BEFORE THE CRUCIAL
naval engagement between de Grasse and Graves took place, Cornwallis was leisurely fortifying his position at Yorktown,
*
knowing that Lafayette might try to coop him up on land, but confident that he could break through at any time or, failing that, the navy would extricate his army if the occasion warranted. On August 22 he wrote Clinton an assuasive letter, reporting that his engineer had finished a study of the grounds and had a plan for fortifying them which the earl had approved. Six weeks should be time enough for the construction work, he told Clinton; after that he would be able to spare one or two thousand men if Sir Henry needed them in the offensive he was planning in the Chesapeake.

At the time, Clinton was corresponding with Admiral Graves, who had made the incredible request that if it was not necessary to keep his squadron together, he would like to send individual vessels on cruise. But Sir Henry tactfully warned him to be ready to meet the French if they appeared. Graves wrote in response that he was willing to put his ships at risk whenever Clinton “thought it advisable to risk the army,” and, reassuring him further, “as early as it is possible to determine upon the day, the squadron will be fit to act.…” Meantime, a letter arrived from Admiral Hood, telling Clinton he was off Cape Henry and would look in on the Chesapeake to detect any sign of de Grasse's presence.

On August 27 Clinton was still fussing about the possibility that Washington might take action against New York, but he had concluded that the General was marching toward his old defensive post at Morristown, from which “he may detach to the southward.” Clinton informed Cornwallis that he might as well retain the troops he had on hand, that Clinton would send him some recruits and convalescents as a temporary reinforcement since he figured that Washington's present move was a feint. Surely, de Grasse would “not approve any water movements till … the effects of the equinox are over,” he conjectured, at which time Clinton planned to reinforce Cornwallis with all the troops he could spare—consistent, of course, “with the security of this important post.”

Then came a letter headed “Yorktown, Virginia, August 31, 1781,” which shattered the complacency in New York headquarters. A French ship of the line, two frigates, and the
Loyalist
—a prize taken by the French—lay near the mouth of the York River, and Cornwallis had received a report that between thirty and forty sail were within the capes, mostly ships of war and “some of them very large.” Another report, written two days later, brought more bad news: “Comte de Grasse's fleet is within the Capes of the Chesapeake. Forty boats with troops went up James River yesterday, and four ships lie at the entrance to this river.” On that very day Clinton had written a letter to Cornwallis that crossed one of the earl's in the mail, stating that Washington was moving an army “to the southward with an appearance of haste” and was letting it be known that he expected to cooperate with a considerable French fleet. If that proved to be the case, Clinton went on, he would “endeavor” to reinforce Cornwallis “by all means within the compass of my power, or make every possible diversion in Your Lordship's favor.” How reassuring this temporizing message was to the earl is impossible to say, but Clinton wrote again, promising that he would relieve him as soon as possible with about four thousand men, who were already embarked on board transports. As soon as he received the admiral's approval, they would sail. And, to hearten him further, he said accounts from Europe indicated that Rear Admiral Robert Digby with a number of capital ships could be expected hourly.