CHAPTER XXXIII.

LONG ISLAND IN POSSESSION OF THE ENEMY—DISTRESSED SITUATION OF THE AMERICAN ARMY AT NEW YORK—QUESTION OF ABANDONING THE CITY—LETTERS FROM EITHER CAMP—ENEMY’S SHIPS IN THE SOUND—REMOVAL OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN FROM THE CITY—YEARNING FOR HOME AMONG THE MILITIA—TOLERANT IDEAS OF WASHINGTON AND GREENE—FORT CONSTITUTION—CONFERENCE OF LORD HOWE WITH A COMMITTEE FROM CONGRESS.

The enemy had now possession of Long Island. British and Hessian troops garrisoned the works at Brooklyn, or were distributed at Bushwick, Newtown, Hell Gate and Flushing. Admiral Howe came up with the main body of the fleet, and anchored close to Governor’s Island, within cannon shot of the city.

“Our situation is truly distressing,” writes Washington to the President of Congress, on the 2d of September. “The check our detachment sustained on the 27th ultimo, has dispirited too great a proportion of our troops, and filled their minds with apprehension and despair. The militia, instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order to repair our losses, are dismayed, intractable, and impatient to return. Great numbers of them have gone off; in some instances almost by whole regiments, by half ones, and by companies, at a time. * * * * With the deepest concern, I am obliged to confess my want of confidence in the generality of the troops. * * * Our number of men at present fit for duty is under twenty thousand. I have ordered General Mercer to send the men intended for the flying camp to this place, about a thousand in number, and to try with the militia, if practicable, to make a diversion upon Staten Island. Till of late, I had no doubt in my own mind of defending this place; nor should I have yet, if the men would do their duty, but this I despair of.

“If we should be obliged to abandon the town, ought it to stand as winter quarters for the enemy? They would derive great conveniences from it, on the one hand, and much property would be destroyed on the other. It is an important question, but will admit of but little time for deliberation. At present, I dare say the enemy mean to preserve it if they can. If Congress, therefore, should resolve upon the destruction of it, the resolution should be a profound secret, as the knowledge will make a capital change in their plans.”

Colonel Reed, writing on the same day to his wife, says, “I have only time to say I am alive and well; as to spirits, but middling. * * * * My country will, I trust, yet be free, whatever may be our fate who are cooped up, or are in danger of so being, on this tongue of land, where we ought never to have been.”[103]

We turn to cite letters of the very same date from British officers on Long Island, full of rumors and surmises. “I have just heard,” writes an English field-officer, “there has been a most dreadful fray in the town of New York. The New Englanders insisted on setting the town on fire and retreating. This was opposed by the New Yorkers, who were joined by the Pennsylvanians, and a battle has been the consequence, in which many have lost their lives. By the steps our general is taking, I imagine he will effectually cut off their retreat at King’s Bridge, by which the island of New York is joined to the continent.”

An English officer of the guards, writing from camp on the same day, varies the rumor. The Pennsylvanians, according to his version, joined with the New Englanders in the project to set fire to the town; both had a battle with the New Yorkers on the subject, and then withdrew themselves from the city—which, “with other favorable circumstances,” gave the latter writer a lively “hope that this distressful business would soon be brought to a happy issue.”

Another letter gives a different version. “In the night of the 2d instant, three persons escaped from the city in a canoe and informed our general that Mr. Washington had ordered three battalions of New York Provincials to leave New York, and that they should be replaced by an equal number of Connecticut troops; but the former, assured that the Connecticutians would burn and destroy all the houses, peremptorily refused to give up their city, declaring that no cause of exigency whatever should induce them to intrust the defence of it to any other than her own inhabitants. This spirited and stubborn resolution prevailed over the order of their commander, and the New Yorkers continue snugly in possession of the place.”[104]

“Matters go on swimmingly,” writes another officer. “I don’t doubt the next news we send you, is, that New York is ours, though in ashes, for the rebel troops have vowed to put it in flames if the tory troops get over.”

An American officer writes to an absent New Yorker, in a different tone. “I fear we shall evacuate your poor city. The very thought gives me the horrors!” Still he indulges a vague hope of succor from General Lee, who was returning, all glorious, from his successes at the South. “General Lee,” writes he, “is hourly expected, as if from heaven,—with a legion of flaming swordsmen.” It was, however, what Lee himself would have termed a mere _brutum fulmen_.

These letters show the state of feeling in the opposite camps, at this watchful moment, when matters seemed hurrying to a crisis.

On the night of Monday (Sept. 2d), a forty gun ship, taking advantage of a favorable wind and tide, passed between Governor’s Island and Long Island, swept unharmed by the batteries which opened upon her, and anchored in Turtle Bay, above the city. In the morning, Washington dispatched Major Crane of the artillery, with two twelve-pounders and a howitzer to annoy her from the New York shore. They hulled her several times, and obliged her to take shelter behind Blackwell’s Island. Several other ships of war, with transports and store-ships, had made their appearance in the upper part of the Sound, having gone round Long Island.

As the city might speedily be attacked, Washington caused all the sick and wounded to be conveyed to Orangetown, in the Jerseys, and such military stores and baggage as were not immediately needed, to be removed, as fast as conveyances could be procured, to a post partially fortified at Dobbs’ Ferry, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, about twenty-two miles above the city.

Reed, in his letters to his wife, talks of the dark and mysterious motions of the enemy, and the equally dark and intricate councils of Congress, by which the army were disheartened and perplexed. “We are still here,” writes he on the 6th, “in a posture somewhat awkward; we think (at least I do) that we cannot stay, and yet we do not know how to go, so that we may be properly said to be between hawk and buzzard.”

The “shameful and scandalous desertions,” as Washington termed them, continued. In a few days the Connecticut militia dwindled down from six to less than two thousand. “The impulse for going home was so irresistible,” writes he, “that it answered no purpose to oppose it. Though I would not discharge them, I have been obliged to acquiesce.”

Still his considerate mind was tolerant of their defection. “Men,” said he, “accustomed to unbounded freedom, cannot brook the restraint which is indispensably necessary to the good order and government of an army.” And again, “Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill (which is followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to troops regularly trained, superior in knowledge, and superior in arms), are timid and ready to fly from their own shadows. Besides, the sudden change in their manner of living, brings on an unconquerable desire to return to their homes.”

Greene, also, who coincided so much with Washington in opinions and sentiments, observes: “People coming from home with all the tender feelings of domestic life, are not sufficiently fortified with natural courage to stand the shocking scenes of war. To march over dead men, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded—I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride.”

Nor was this ill-timed yearning for home confined to the yeomanry of Connecticut, who might well look back to their humble farms, where they had left the plough standing in the furrow, and where every thing might go to ruin, and their family to want, in their absence. Some of the gentlemen volunteers from beyond the Delaware, who had made themselves merry at the expense of the rustic soldiery of New England, were likewise among the first to feel the homeward impulse. “When I look around,” said Reed, the adjutant-general, “and see how few of the numbers who talked so loudly of death and honor are around me, I am lost in wonder and surprise. Some of our Philadelphia gentlemen who came over on visits, upon the first cannon, went off in a most violent hurry. Your noisy sons of liberty, are, I find, the quietest on the field.”[105]

Present experience induced Washington to reiterate the opinion he had repeatedly expressed to Congress, that little reliance was to be placed on militia enlisted for short periods. The only means of protecting the national liberties from great hazard, if not utter loss, was, he said, an army enlisted for the war.

The thousand men ordered from the flying camp were furnished by General Mercer. They were Maryland troops under Colonels Griffith and Richardson, and were a seasonable addition to his effective forces; but the ammunition carried off by the disbanding militia, was a serious loss at this critical juncture.

A work had been commenced on the Jersey shore, opposite Fort Washington, to aid in protecting Putnam’s chevaux-de-frise which had been sunk between them. This work had received the name of Fort Constitution (a name already borne by one of the forts in the Highlands.) Troops were drawn from the flying camp to make a strong encampment in the vicinity of the fort, with an able officer to command it and a skilful engineer to strengthen the works. It was hoped, by the co-operation of these opposite forts and the chevaux-de-frise, to command the Hudson, and prevent the passing and repassing of hostile ships.

The British, in the mean time, forbore to press further hostilities. Lord Howe was really desirous of a peaceful adjustment of the strife between the colonies and the mother country, and supposed this a propitious moment for a new attempt at pacification. He accordingly sent off General Sullivan on parole, charged with an overture to Congress. In this he declared himself empowered and disposed to compromise the dispute between Great Britain and America, on the most favorable terms, and though he could not treat with Congress as a legally organized body, he was desirous of a conference with some of its members. These, for the time, he should consider only as private gentlemen, but if in the conference any probable scheme of accommodation should be agreed upon, the authority of Congress would after wards be acknowledged, to render the compact complete.[106]

The message caused some embarrassment in Congress. To accede to the interview might seem to waive the question of independence; to decline it was to shut the door on all hope of conciliation, and might alienate the co-operation of some worthy whigs who still clung to that hope. After much debate, Congress, on the 5th September, replied, that, being the representatives of the free and independent States of America, they could not send any members to confer with his lordship in their private characters, but that, ever desirous of establishing peace on reasonable terms, they would send a committee of their body to ascertain what authority he had to treat with persons authorized by Congress, and what propositions he had to offer.

A committee was chosen on the 6th of September, composed of John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Doctor Franklin. The latter, in the preceding year, during his residence in England, had become acquainted with Lord Howe, at the house of his lordship’s sister, the Honorable Mrs. Howe, and they had held frequent conversations on the subject of American affairs, in the course of which, his lordship had intimated the possibility of his being sent commissioner to settle the differences in America.

Franklin had recently adverted to this in a letter to Lord Howe. “Your lordship may possibly remember the tears of joy that wet my cheek, when, at your good sister’s in London, you gave me expectations that a reconciliation might soon take place. I had the misfortune to find those expectations disappointed.

* * * * *

“The well-founded esteem, and, permit me to say, affection, which I shall always have for your lordship, makes it painful for me to see you engaged in conducting a war, the great ground of which, as expressed in your letter, is ’the necessity of preventing the American trade from passing into foreign channels.’ * * * I know your great motive in coming hither, was the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation; and I believe that when you find _that_ impossible on any terms given to you to propose, you will relinquish so odious a command, and return to a more honorable private station.”

“I can have no difficulty to acknowledge,” replied Lord Howe, “that the powers I am invested with were never calculated to negotiate a reunion with America, under any other description than as subject to the crown of Great Britain. But I do esteem these powers competent, not only to confer and negotiate with any gentlemen of influence in the colonies upon the terms, but also to effect a lasting peace and reunion between the two countries, were the tempers of the colonies such as professed in the last petition of Congress to the king.”[107]

A hope of the kind lingered in the breast of his lordship when he sought the proposed conference. It was to take place on the 11th, at a house on Staten Island, opposite to Amboy; at which latter place the veteran Mercer was stationed with his flying camp. At Amboy, the committee found Lord Howe’s barge waiting to receive them; with a British officer of rank, who was to remain within the American lines during their absence, as a hostage. This guarantee of safety was promptly declined, and the parties crossed together to Staten Island. The admiral met them on their landing, and conducted them through his guards to his house.

On opening the conference, his lordship again intimated that he could not treat with them as a committee of Congress, but only confer with them as private gentlemen of influence in the colonies, on the means of restoring peace between the two countries.

The commissioners replied that, as their business was to hear, he might consider them in what light he pleased; but that they should consider themselves in no other character than that in which they were placed by order of Congress.

Lord Howe then entered into a discourse of considerable length, but made no explicit proposition of peace, nor promise of redress of grievances, excepting on condition that the colonies should return to their allegiance.

This, the commissioners replied, was not now to be expected. Their repeated humble petitions to the king and parliament having been treated with contempt, and answered by additional injuries, and war having been declared against them, the colonies had declared their independence, and it was not in the power of Congress to agree for them that they should return to their former dependent state.[108]

His lordship expressed his sorrow that no accommodation was likely to take place; and, on breaking up the conference, assured his old friend, Dr. Franklin, that he should suffer great pain in being obliged to distress those for whom he had so much regard.

“I feel thankful to your lordship for your regard,” replied Franklin good-humoredly; “the Americans, on their part, will endeavor to lessen the pain you may feel, by taking good care of themselves.”

The result of this conference had a beneficial effect. It showed that his lordship had no power but what was given by the act of Parliament; and put an end to the popular notion that he was vested with secret powers to negotiate an adjustment of grievances.