Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783
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which it protected, and passed up the Hudson. But he was overpersuaded by the advice of Greene, the preference
of Congress, and the confidence of the garrison's commander. He believed until it was too late that the garrison
could be withdrawn across the river at any time. Howe's preparations were thorough and unhurried. No memory of
Bunker Hill deterred him. No misdirected leniency deflected the blow. British and Hessians stormed through the
outworks, and the inner fort surrendered. For 440 casualties Howe had taken a fortress which the Americans
believed impregnable. Three thousand prisoners fell into his hands. There and in Fort Lee, which the enemy
precipitately abandoned, he took 146 cannon, 12,000 shot and shell, 2,800 muskets, 400,000 rounds of ball; tents,
entrenching tools, and a mass of other equipment. The material and moral loss to the rebels was immense.
From Fort Lee a corps under Cornwallis drove forward into New Jersey. Washington summoned Lee from White
Plains to his help; but the response was slow, and to save his army he could do nothing but fall back. Cornwallis
raced forward to the Raritan, where his half-starved troops found the bridges broken. Here he stopped as he had
been ordered, seeing no prospect of catching Washington. But Howe joined him at New Brunswick on 6 December
and resumed the advance. At Princeton he was only an hour behind Washington; but here he halted for seventeen
hours, and reached the Delaware just as the last American boat grounded on the further bank. The pursuit was
over. Washington had swept up every boat, and Pennsylvania remained inviolate behind the river.
In the meantime another corps under Clinton had taken Rhode Island, which was occupied without opposition at
the beginning of December. The harbour there was wanted by the Admiral, for the ice-bound rivers of New York
offered no shelter to his larger ships in the winter. Rhode Island had a deep and defensible harbour for the fleet;
and with the anchorage at Gardiner's Bay on the eastern end of Long Island it could close the seaward end of Long
Island Sound and bottle up all the shipping of Connecticut.
5
The Arrested Offensive
So ended Howe's advance, far beyond New York, yet on the Delaware instead of the Upper Hudson. The direction
of Washington's retreat caused some comment, for he had been expected to take refuge in New England. If his
army survived the winter, its position to the south-west might cramp the British plan to crush New England when
the campaign was resumed. But in any case a British junction on the Hudson was still far off. For while Howe had
turned away to the southward, the northern army of Carleton had closed its operations without unlocking the
northern gates of the rebel colonies.
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Carleton had proved a cool and resolute commander in adversity; but he had still to prove his vigour in exploiting
advantage. When the relieving ships reached Quebec at the beginning of May, the garrison already outnumbered
the diseased and starving rabble which beleaguered it. Carleton sallied forth from the walls when the relief
appeared, and the Americans abandoned their stores and fled. He did not press them far, for he knew that the main
reinforcement under Burgoyne was on the way. At Sorel the Americans were met by a strong reinforcement; and
with the quick recovery of the offensive spirit they so often showed after extreme adversity, they rallied and
counter-attacked. Blundering forward through forest and swamp against, as they supposed, 800 regulars and
Canadians, they ran into the main body of Burgoyne's force. Repulsed, pursued, and cut off by river-borne forces,
they lost a general and four hundred men. The demoralisation of the American army in Canada was complete.
Starving, ravaged by smallpox, their reinforcements cut to pieces, they fled for the frontier.
Carleton now had the 10,000 men for which he had asked; and the arrival of the second Brunswick contingent in
the middle of September was to bring his force to nearly 13,000. He had wanted the troops in order to drive into
New England, and there were high expectations at home of what he might achieve.
The British fleet was at Sorel within an hour of the last rebel's departure up the Richelieu. The wind was
favourable, and had Carleton pressed on up the St Lawrence to Longueuil, opposite Montreal, it was suggested that
he might have marched across the neck of land to the Richelieu and cut off the enemy. There would then have
been nothing to oppose him on the Lakes. But instead he halted at Sorel to organise a body to advance up the
Richelieu, and before the rest of his force reached Longueuil the wind in the St Lawrence changed and checked
them. The moment was lost, and Arnold and the survivors of the American army escaped to fight again.1
It was now necessary to fight for the Lakes. Long weeks had to be spent in dragging past the Richelieu rapids the
prefabricated sections of gunboats from England, and heavier ships which had been dismantled for the portage.
Carleton had sent home a naval lieutenant at the time of the American invasion, to ask Germain for the means of
crossing Lake Champlain. He wanted boats, materials and artificers. But all he received were the fourteen
gunboats, capable of carrying one gun apiece, and ten 'flat-bottomed boats', the landing craft of the period,
Artificers were sent, but few and late. There
1 A. L. Burt suggests that even though Carleton had lost the wind for Longueuil, he could have marched
across the peninsula from Varennes to cut off the Americans. He believes that Carleton deliberately
refrained from pressing the enemy to avoid pushing the 'deluded people of the colonies' over the brink into
irreconcilable war.
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can be little question that Germain had done what he could. The pressure on the dockyards and skilled labour
during the winter must have made it almost impossible to conjure up a lake fleet and ship it to Canada. And Howe
had the first claim on amphibious equipment, just as Carleton had had priority of reinforcements. The Atlantic
army had no useful foothold in America, and the large fleet of landing craft which Howe was sent was essential if
he was to force a landing at New York. But in consequence Carleton's difficulties were severe. The resources of
Canada had been won back; but it had been impossible to make any preparations while he was besieged in Quebec,
and now the country had been swept of much that was useful by the rebels. He had not a boat for the Lakes, except
the few from England and twenty-five longboats borrowed from the transports. There were no materials or
workmen ready to build more. Amid the confusion of an exhausted province he had to assemble axemen and fell
the timber for his shipyards.1
Delay was inevitable. Yet there were those who felt that Carleton settled down too stoically to build his fleet, and
without regard to the urgency of the situation or the enemy's difficulties. So desperate were the Americans that at
the beginning of July a conference at Ticonderoga almost resolved to abandon the frontier and withdraw to Albany.
Only Arnold prevented it. There were two sloops and two schooners on Lake Champlain; and he argued that if they
disputed Carleton's passage the British would lose the rest of the year in building a fleet. He was given command
of the flotilla; and under immense difficulties he began to build an auxiliary fleet to support it.
Carleton did nothing to reconnoitre or harass the enemy's preparations. The troops lay in cantonments, the Indians
were sent home till the spring, and during the whole period of ship-building the only military operation was an
ambush by four soldiers and six Indians. Not even a reconnaissance party seems to have been sent to see what the
rebels were doing. A staff officer painted a curious picture of Carleton at this time, and although, for reasons
which will appear, he was violently hostile to the General, it may have some semblance of truth.2 Absorbed within
himself, saying little and giving answers to few, Carleton followed a plan which none could grasp; handling every
detail himself; spreading confusion and embarrassment.
A dozen gunboats and 560 flat-bottomed boats were built on the Lake, and 120 more flat-bottomed boats in other
parts of Canada. But something more
1 Carleton described his difficulties to Germain in CO 42/36, ff. 99103.
2 Sackville, II, 456. For the writer, Colonel Christie, see below, p. 105. Carleton's reserve is confirmed by
another officer (Valentine, 184).
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formidable than this was needed to blast aside the fleet which Arnold was gathering. By the end of August when
Carleton returned from re-establishing civil government at Quebec, he had assembled a capital fleet of two
schooners of twelve and fourteen guns, which had been taken apart and carried past the Richelieu rapids; a huge
radeau with sixteen heavy guns; and a six-gun 'gondola' captured from the rebels: altogether forty-eight guns, with
another twenty-four in the gunboats.1 The fleet was manned by 700 officers and men from the warships and
transports at Quebec. But still Carleton was not satisfied. A square-rigged three-master called the Inflexible
mounting eighteen guns was knocked down and brought up from the St Lawrence. In twenty-eight days from the
relaying of her keel she was ready. It was a remarkable feat, but the time lost was fatal.
Early in October the fleet put out on the Lake and felt its way cautiously southwards. On the 11th it met the enemy,
lying in wait behind Valcour Island. Arnold had three eight-gun schooners, a ten-gun sloop, three galleys and a
number of gondolas. Carleton's fleet could discharge almost twice the weight of metal, and the result of the battle
was certain. Without bringing his radeau and gondola into action, Carleton won a crushing victory. Arnold
abandoned Crown Point and the way to Ticonderoga was open.
But now the weather broke. Ticonderoga lay in the army's path, formidable in appearance with its fortifications
strengthened by Kosciousko; and the cruel northern winter was coming on. Yet the fort was held by defeated men,
so demoralised that a British party drove off 150 head of cattle under their eyes. General Phillips and other officers
thought it was worth while to push forward and try to frighten the enemy out of the fort. But there was 'neither
reconnoitring post nor scout sent forward, but as the whim of a drunken Indian prevails'. Instead, even Crown Point
was abandoned. Its barracks had been burnt and its defences were crumbling; and deciding that it was too late in
the year to fortify it or provide winter shelter for a garrison, Carleton withdrew his advanced force to the bottom of
the Lake. The army dispersed into winter quarters in Canada. So much had Arnold's show of a fleet accomplished.
'If we could have begun our last expedition four weeks earlier', the Brunswick General Riedesel was to write in
1777, 'I am satisfied that everything would have ended this year.' Four weeks was exactly the time it had taken to
build the Inflexible.2
1 CO 42/35, f. 176; James, The British Navy in Adversity, 429.
2 Ward, The War of the Revolution, 385, 393, 473; Riedesel, Memoirs, I, 7983; Hutchinson Diaries, II, 117;
Fonblanque, Burgoyne, 218 (quoting General Phillips) Jane Clark has used letters from Burgoyne in CL,
Clinton (Canadian Historical Review, 1929). The most unfavourable interpretation of Carleton's conduct of the
campaign is to be found in a ministerial précis in CO 5/253, ff. 2130.
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6
Gains and Losses: The Failure of the Blockade
When Carleton closed his operations, he had done no more than press the enemy back to the point from which they
had launched their offensive, and the northern advance to the Hudson had still to begin. At that time Howe's
southern army was still flailing the enemy; and by the middle of December resounding successes had been won.
Washington's army had been hustled, shaken, thinned by casualties and desertions, and at last driven back almost
to the doors of Congress. During the pursuit across New Jersey the Howes issued a fresh proclamation promising
pardon for submission within sixty days. The effect was striking. All New Jersey appeared to submit or intend to,
and many important Pennsylvanians came in. The Middle Colonies seemed on the point of collapse; and the next
effort promised success against New England. At New York and Rhode Island firm bases were held for thrusts
against the heart of the rebellion. Only Washington's position to the southward was unexpected; but his soldiers'
time would expire at the New Year, and his army was not likely to remain much longer in being.
The position which the British had acquired at New York was to dominate the strategy of the American campaigns
to their end. To the British army it was of course a heavy defensive liability, for though Manhattan island was
defensible against assault if the Harlem heights were fortified and the surrounding waters commanded by the navy,
the town and harbour could soon be made unusable and local supplies cut off unless a larger area was controlled.
Long Island, Staten Island, and Paulus Hook on the Jersey shore had therefore to be held. The safety and mutual
support of all these posts depended on commanding the intervening waters, and the freezing of the river or the
appearance of a hostile fleet could place them in peril.
Nevertheless the possession of New York was a great strategic asset. Militarily it was the only vital city in the rebel
colonies, for it dominated the communications. The bight of sea at whose apex it stands channelled the direct roads
between New England and the Middle Colonies into a coastal defile. Its possession gave the British army an
interior position, and pushed Washington's lateral communications back to the Hudson crossing at King's Ferry
between Stony Point and Verplanck's Point, some thirty miles north of the British lines. Thus a body of American
troops marching from Princeton towards lower Connecticut had to make a long detour behind the Watchung
Mountains to Pompton, proceeding thence by the Ramapo Valley to Suffern and Haverstraw. The Stony Point
crossing was guarded by two forts, but if these were taken and the crossing severed, the American communications
would be pushed back behind the Highlands to the crossing near Fishkill. To reach the Fishkill crossing at
Newburgh meant leaving the
7
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Stony Point road at Pompton or Suffern and marching by a road constructed during the war through the deep upper
valley of the Ramapo called 'the Clove' to pass to the west and rear of the Highlands.1
As the war developed, Washington's normal posts astride the Hudson from which his army watched New York
were at White Plains on the east side of the river, and on the west some strong position such as Morristown or
Middlebrook in northern New Jersey. But since the British could sail up the Lower Hudson at any time, his main
depots were collected at Fishkill behind the barrier of the Highlands. The importance of the Highlands, already
appreciated by the rebels, was driven home to them by the events of 1776, and in May 1777 Nathanael Greene and
three brigadiers made a further examination of the fortifications and reported that if the river at Fort Montgomery
could be obstructed by a boom and covered by row-galleys and batteries, it would be impossible for shipping to
penetrate. They were confident that the British would not attempt to operate by land owing to the difficulty of the
passes.2 The forts and batteries guarding the Highlands became the key to the rebel's position, as New York was to
that of the British. They were sited first at Fort Montgomery near the present Bear Mountain bridge, and later
further up the river at West Point, where a sharp bend in the river covered the chain-boom. The validity of the
British plan to penetrate the Hudson valley is confirmed by the concern of the Americans from the outset, and their
rage after several years of war when Arnold attempted to betray the West Point position.
The most serious failure of the year had been at sea. Much depended on denying munitions from Europe to the
rebels. But hitherto the navy's achievement had been disappointing. Though the fleet exercised unchallenged
command of American waters, cargoes continued to run the blockade from the Bay of Biscay and the neutral ports
of the West Indies. Thus the rebel armies were equipped with the arms and munitions they could not
1 In detail, the three chief routes between New Jersey and Connecticut were:
(i) The main peacetime road, roughly the present U.S. Route I: Trenton Princeton New York Kingsbridge
New Rochelle New Haven, where the road to Providence diverged from that to Hartford Springfield Boston
(ii) The upper road by the Stony Point crossing: Princeton Millstone (then called Somerset Court House)
Whippany Pompton Ramapo Valley to Suffern Stony Point Verplanck's Point Northcastle (the present Mt
Kisco) Ridgebury Waterbury Farmington Hartford. This (in reverse) was Rochambeau's route from Rhode
Island to Yorktown in 1781.
(iii) The Fishkill crossing: Princeton . . . Pompton The Clove Newburgh Fishkill crossing Fishkill Bulls
Bridge Litchfield Farmington Hartford.
2 Harvard, Sparks MSS. 52, Vol. III.
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produce in sufficient quantities at home; and American shipping continued to export the goods to pay for them.
Nine-tenths of the powder available to the rebels up to the end of 1777 was imported by sea.1 If these supplies had
been stopped, the rebellion would have withered away.
Was it negligence or design which caused the failure? When England next fought America she imposed a complete
blockade, and in 1813 American shipping scarcely moved. The contrast is no mystery: it was partly a matter of
sufficient ships, partly of the demands of General Howe's army. In 1813 England had a vast fleet in commission,
with a full complement of cruisers swelled by twenty years of war and eight of unchallenged supremacy. She had
only to redeploy a part of this force on the American coast to bring American trade to an end. The foreign
terminals of that trade were already closed: France was under rigorous blockade, Spain had been wrested from the
Bonapartes, the West Indian islands were throttled or in British hands. In December 1813 the Caribbean stations
had thirty-eight warships; and on the American station were a dozen ships of the line and fifty-six cruisers.2
Contrast the situation in 1776. The navy had been on a peace establishment with a low proportion of cruisers. The
ports of Europe and the West Indies were open to the rebels, and there were only ten British warships in the
Caribbean. In July 1775 when only New England was in armed rebellion, Palliser calculated that fifty warships
were needed on the American station: at that moment there were only thirty-three, and the rebellion was spreading
fast. With these Admiral Graves had to secure the army's movements and supply-lines against a swarm of
privateers; to support military operations; and to search for local provisions for the troops. There was little to spare
for commerce-destruction. Nor, however, did Graves satisfy the army. He failed it at Bunker Hill; he showed little
energy in finding supplies; he did not squeeze the rebels as he might. Sandwich warned him against quarrelling
with General Gage, and of the complaints coming in of his lackadaisical delicacy towards the rebels. At last in
September 1775 the First Lord yielded to pressure at home and recalled him.3
Graves resented his disgrace. He refused the command at Plymouth in 1777, and signed the memorial against the
trial of Admiral Keppel. Though he had shown little energy, there was some substance in his complaint of lack of
ships. 'Judge', he exhorted Sandwich two years later,4 'if the small leaky half-manned squadron under my
command did not as effectively
1 A calculation by O. W. Stephenson in Amer. Hist. Rev., XXX.
2 Adm. 8/100; Adm. 1/505, ff. 3202.
3 Sandwich, I, 60, 647, 734; II, 233; Abergavenny, 11.
4 Williams Transcripts, 22 Sept. 1777, Graves to Sandwich.
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serve their country and protect the trade as the numerous and well-appointed squadrons have done since I left
America.'
Here was a charge against Shuldham and Howe. By May 1776 there were fifty-nine substantial warships on the
station, besides eight small brigs and schooners. Yet not only did the Americans continue to sail: half a battalion of
Highlanders fell to them off Boston because no cruisers were there to meet them. Yet Shuldham's apparent strength
was deceptive. Of his fifty-nine ships, fifteen were on Atlantic convoy-duty or under orders for home, and eight
with the Charleston expedition; while of the remaining thirty-six stationed between Quebec and Florida, two were
in the St Lawrence and others with the army at Halifax. After Lord Howe's arrival the needs of the army expanded.
The flotilla on the Canadian lakes had to be manned. The great army in the Atlantic called endlessly for help as it
shifted from Boston to Halifax, from Halifax to New York; as it crept from island to island at the mouth of the
Hudson; as it spread its tentacles to New Jersey and Rhode Island. On the eve of the landing on Long Island,
twenty-three ships were concentrated off New York to support the army. Ten more were in the St Lawrence, and
three were coming up from South Carolina with Sir Peter Parker. This made a total of thirty-six warships engaged
in supporting the army; and others were needed to take home the empty supply ships. Only nine ships remained to
blockade the innumerable ports between Halifax and the eastern end of Long Island, compared with twenty-nine in
1814. To the southward, watching the Delaware, the Chesapeake, and the Carolinas, were six cruisers of fourteen
guns and upwards, and two eight-gun brigs; and four more were protecting East Florida and Bermuda. This
compares with sixty-eight ships between Rhode Island and New Orleans in 1814. And this slender chain of
cruisers had many difficulties. Off New England summer fogs and winter storms interrupted the watch, and the
numerous exits from Boston were difficult to seal. To the southward there were no bases, and the cruisers had to
quit their stations and return to New York for water, requiring a regular succession of wasteful reliefs. In spite of
these handicaps, an incomplete return of prizes taken between March and December shows 140 American vessels
taken and twenty-six British recovered. These figures were substantial, but they were not decisive.1
The burden of supporting the army was reduced in the winter, when New York had been taken and land operations
were over. In March 1777 there were twenty-six ships on the coasts of New England and Nova Scotia.2 'Prizes are
now brought in on every side', a letter to William Eden reported
1 Adm. 1/487, ff. 24, 55, 867, 104, 211, 254, 325, 338, 382, 401. The problem of blockading Boston was
never satisfactorily solved in the war of 1812.
2 Compared with fifteen in April 1814 (Adm. 1/506, f. 44).
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in the New Year; 'for since the island Manhattan was all cleared and our troops began to act in Jersey all the men
of war were sent out: the long stay of the ships in this harbour gave great openings to growlers, who would not
consider the good effects resulting from the good agreement and co-operation of the two services.'1 The growlers
must certainly have included naval officers. For there was a feeling in the service that Lord Howe's co-operation
with his brother showed a devotion altogether excessive, and educated the army to expect too much. Admiral
Gambier was to complain in the winter of 17789 that the Generals demanded protection and help for every trifling
movement; and in 1781 Thomas Graves lamented that it had never been possible to wean the army of this habit
contracted in the time of Lord Howe.2
Perhaps it was really impossible to combine major land operations with successful blockade. And yet a certain
doubt persists. For there were many at home who attributed the failure of the blockade to lukewarm officers.
Germain was among them, exasperated at the loss of the Highlanders off Boston, the prolonged neglect of
Dartmouth's orders to blockade the Delaware, and the removal of the two cruisers which were eventually sent
there.3 Lord Howe seemed so reluctant to distress the rebels, so lenient towards their trade. There was a story in
circulation that he had been asked for letters of marque against the small rebel craft plying between the Carolinas
and the French West Indies, and replied with heat: 'Good God! Will you never have done with teazing me? will
you leave no room for reconciliation?' It might, as he claimed, be wisdom to let the Americans use their fishing
boats, for fear of driving the fishermen into the privateers for a living. Yet his instructions when he sent
Commodore Hotham to blockade the southern colonies in December 1776 suggest a deliberate leniency with a
political motive. His captains were 'to . . . cultivate all amicable correspondence . . . and to grant them every other
indulgence which the necessary restrictions on their trade will admit, in order to conciliate their friendly
dispositions and detach them from the prejudices they have imbibed'. Necessary restrictions on their trade: it is not
the strict meaning of the words which makes one pause, but the whole tone of the instruction. Its ambivalence may
have been political wisdom; but it was unlikely to indoctrinate the captains with the idea of relentlessly suppressing
the rebels' means of continuing the struggle. 'Lord Howe', Germain was to write ironically in June
1 Add. MSS. 34413, f. 152.
2 Williams Transcripts; Sandwich, IV, 177. To the cynical the navy's motive for preferring commerce-
destruction to military operations was not far to seek, and it was suggested that they preferred to let a few rebel
ships through the net 'to encourage others to risk their property on the ocean' (Verulam, 129).
3 CL, Germain, 22 Aug. 1776 to Howe; CO 5/254, f. 44.
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1777, 'is the most disinterested man I know, in permitting the trade of Charleston to be carry'd on without
interruption, when he might avail himself of so many rich prizes.'1
The balance between conciliation and coercion was not easy to strike. In this and every respect a limited war was
being waged: limited by the nature of its object, by sentiments of race and language, and by the size of the forces
which Britain could raise and deploy. The factor which above all had caused the first campaign to fall short was
the length of the Atlantic communications and the transport problem to which it gave rise. Delays in fitting out
followed by bad weather at sea had caused the design against the Carolinas to misfire so completely; the shipping
shortage had postponed the evacuation of Boston and then caused it to take place in the most disadvantageous
manner; the miscarriage of supplies had delayed Howe at Halifax. It was the shipping shortage which had retarded
Howe's reinforcements from Europe, further delaying his offensive. It was very probably the pressure on the
dockyards which had prevented Carleton from being supplied early and adequately with the means of commanding
Lake Champlain. Perhaps the influence of the ocean was never again to appear in so visible a form during the
course of the war. But always the cold wastes of the Atlantic were to exert their invisible stranglehold on the
British operations.
1 Sackville, II, 68; Anderson, 1334, 313; G 2072; Knox, 131. In 1779 Germain felt that Commodore Collier
had done more to destroy rebel shipping with his small force than his predecessors with their great fleets
(CL, Germain, 27 Sept. 1779 to Clinton).
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