Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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with enfilading fire from the right flank before they too lost their unity

and were in their turn routed. In eighteenth-century warfare balance

and timing, control and order, were critical.

The “corporate” tactics of European warfare in the eighteenth

century were emulated by patriot America during the course of the

war. The “individualized” tactics of the militia at the beginning of the

conflict gave way to the corporate tactics of the Continentals (strongly

influenced by the militarily most corporate of all European armies—

Prussia—via Friedrich von Steuben’s drill). This transition away from

the individualistic and discrete toward the centralized and unified was

true in both the military and the civil sphere. Washington, among others,

saw it clearly and promoted it vigorously. If independence came from

the muzzle of a musket, the weapon’s own deficiencies in a profound

way helped shape the nature of the independent state itself.

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Much has been written about the long gun, the famed rifle of the

American frontier sometimes known as the Pennsylvania-Kentucky

rifle (though very few were made in Kentucky). Among the Scotch-

Irish frontiersmen of North Carolina, it was known as the “Deckhard”

rifle, after the Pennsylvania gunsmith Jacob Dickert of Lancaster, but

it is not within the scope of this book to deal with the complex history

of the American rifle. Very briefly, it was a refinement of the hunting

rifle introduced to America by German and Swiss immigrants to

Pennsylvania around 1710, and a weapon of considerable elegance,

handcrafted to exacting specifications. Its spiral-grooved barrel bore

was of a smaller caliber (0.55–0.60 inch) than the musket, though the

octagonal barrel was somewhat longer than its smoothbore counterpart.

Although about ten feet of muzzle velocity is gained for every extra

inch of barrel length, the same can be achieved by adding more powder,

so there was no particular ballistic benefit to the longer barrel; thirty

inches would have delivered an equal perfomance. Fashion, balance,

and convenience of loading when the butt was grounded seem to have

been the governing factors.

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Its great advantage over the musket was range and accuracy. The

rifle, in the hands of a skilled marksman, was accurate at over 300 yards,

about three times the distance of the effective range of the musket. In

1775 six companies of riflemen drawn from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and

Virginia were the first troops Congress sent up to George Washington

at Boston. The process of selecting the riflemen was competitive and

illustrates the impressive accuracy of the weapon and the skill of their

owners. John Harrower, an indentured servant, watched just such a

competition in Virginia. The captain of the company

took a board of a foot square and with chalk drew the shape of

a moderate nose in the center and nailed it up to a tree at one

hundred and fifty yards distance, and those who came nighest the

mark with a single ball was to go. But by the first forty or fifty that

fired, the nose was all blown out of the board, and by the time his

company was up, the board shared the same fate.

For any British soldier, being the object of a rifleman’s attention

could be unnerving, to put it mildly, especially for officers, who were

particularly sought out. At the battle of Brooklyn a British officer sought

refuge in a house declaring “he’d be d——d if he was going to expose

himself to that fire, that the d——d rascals picked out all the officers.”

Major George Hanger, himself one of the most accomplished marksmen

in the British army, was reconnoitering with Banastre Tarleton (he was

Tarleton’s second-in-command), when a rifleman fired at them.

Colonel, now General Tarleton, and myself were standing a

few yards out of a wood, observing the situation of a part of the

enemy which we intended to attack . . . our orderly bugler stood

behind us about three yards . . . A [American] rifleman passed over

the milldam . . . and laid himself down on his belly; for in such

positions, they always lie, to take a good shot at a long distance.

He took a deliberate and cool shot at my friend, at me, and at the

bugle-horn man. Now observe how well this fellow shot. It was in

the month of August, and not a breath of wind was stirring. Colonel

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Tarleton’s horse and mine, I am certain, were not anything like two

feet apart; for we were in close consultation . . . a rifle-ball passed

between him and me . . . I directly said to my friend, “I think we

had better move, or we shall have two or three of these gentlemen

shortly amusing themselves at our expense.” The words were hardly

out of my mouth when the bugle-horn man behind me, and directly

central, jumped off his horse and said, “Sir, my horse is shot.” The

horse staggered, fell down, and died . . . I can positively assert that

the distance he fired from at us was full 400 yards.

The disadvantages of the rifle as far as eighteenth-century warfare

was concerned were several. It took longer to load than the musket and

left the rifleman vulnerable to an attacking enemy during the extended

loading period. The problem with loading was, ironically, a by-product

of the rifle’s accuracy. The ball had to be thumped down with a rammer

against the spiral grooves inside the bore, and it was the grooving that

imparted to the ball the spin that made it more accurate. The rifleman

did not have recourse to the preprepared cartridge. He took a pinch of

powder and primed the pan. He then took a powder horn and poured

some powder down the barrel. From a recessed compartment in the

butt of the rifle (the “patch box,” which was closed with a movable

plate, usually of brass) he took a greased patch of linen or paper,

centered it over the mouth of the barrel and placed a ball on it, and then

rammed patch and ball down against the grooving. The greased patch

helped ease the passage of the one-half-ounce lead ball and reduced the

windage (because there was less escape of explosive gases, a rifle ball

exited at 1,800–2,000 feet per second, compared with about 900 feet per

second for the musket),

but it took time, and in that time the rifleman

was vulnerable to counterattack. Another disadvantage was the lack of

a bayonet, either for defense or for pressing the attack.

The main tactical problem faced by riflemen was, then, something

they shared with musketmen: timing. Reload time was the Achilles’ heel.

The Hessian colonel Von Heeringen described the patriot rifleman’s

dilemma at the battle of Brooklyn in 1776: “These terrible men deserve

more pity than fear—they want nearly fifteen minutes for loading

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their pieces, and during that time they feel our balls and bayonets.”

Major George Hanger described the tactic his friend Colonel Sir Robert

Abercrombie had used against Morgan’s riflemen in Pennsylvania:

“They [the riflemen] marched to attack our light infantry . . . The

moment they appeared before him he ordered his light troops to charge

them with the bayonet; not a man out of four had time to fire, and

those that did had no time given them to load again.”

Morgan himself

recognized their vulnerability. At the battles of Saratoga, he said, “My

Riflemen would have been of little service if we had not always had a line

of Musquet and Bayonette men to support us, it is this that gives them

confidence. They know if the enemy charges them they have a place to

retreat to.”

Another way of dealing with the problem was to double up

so that the man reloading was covered by another who was ready to fire.

At Cowpens, American riflemen were ordered to have every third man

fire while two were kept in reserve.

At the small but bloody battle of

Oriskany (6 August 1777), the militia commander Nicholas Herkimer,

ambushed by Indians and Loyalists while on his way to relieve Fort

Stanwix in northwestern New York State, ordered his men to double

up—one firing, the other ready to dispatch the Indians who rushed in

expecting to make a kill during reloading.

The frontier rifleman held, and still does hold, a special place in

the history of the war. Even solid and respectable historians can become

misty-eyed: “Out of the west came tall men,” says one, as though John

Wayne clones were striding out of the setting sun. George Washington

was not so enamored. He detested their individuality, their resistance

to discipline, their irrelevance to the formalized warfare he wanted

to adopt. They may have been useful as skirmishers and snipers, but

Washington and Congress wanted dense formations of muskets. They

believed fervently that it would be mass that would win the war, not

individual marksmen. When the Maryland assembly proposed sending

a corps of riflemen to Washington’s army outside of Philadelphia in

1776, Congress gave it the cold shoulder.

If muskets were given them instead of rifles the service would be

more benefitted, as there is a superabundance of riflemen in the

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Army. Were it in the power of Congress to supply muskets they

would speedily reduce the number of rifles and replace them with

the former, as they are more easily kept in order, can be fired oftener

and have the advantage of Bayonetts.

It was a view that found sympathetic echo among many field

commanders. General Peter Muhlenberg wrote to Washington on 23

February 1777: “The whole regiment consists at present of riflemen;

and the campaign we have made to the southward last summer fully

convinced me that on the march, where soldiers are without tents, and

their arms continually exposed to the weather, rifles are of little use. I

would therefore request your Excellency to convert my regiment into

musketry.”

Washington agreed. In 1778 General Anthony Wayne left

no doubt whatsoever about his choice of firearm.

I don’t like rifles—I would almost as soon face an Enemy with

a good Musket and Bayonet without ammunition—as with

ammunition without a Bayonet; for altho’ there are not many

instances of bloody bayonets yet I am Confident that one bayonet

keeps off an Other . . . The enemy knowing the Defenseless state

of our Riflemen rush on—they fly—mix with or pass thro’ the

Other Troops and communicate fears that is ever Incident to a

retiring Corps—this Would not be the Case if the Riflemen had

bayonets—but it would be still better if good muskets and bayonets

were put in the hands of good Marksmen and rifles entirely laid

aside. For my own part, I never wish to see one—at least without

a bayonet.

Riflemen did not fit the standardized mold of a national army.

General John Thomas wrote of them from Boston in 1775: “as Indifferent

men as I ever served with, their Privates mutinous and often Deserting

to the Enemy, unwilling for Duty of any kind, exceedingly vitious and

I think the army here would be as well without them as with them.”

They seemed to invite trouble. Israel Trask, a cook and messenger,

recorded a fracas at the Cambridge camp in the fall of 1775.

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A rifle corps came into camp from Virginia, made up from recruits

from the backwoods and mountains of that state, in a uniform dress

totally different from that of the regiments raised on the seaboard

and interior of New England. Their white linen frocks, ruffled and

fringed, excited the curiosity of the whole army, particularly to the

Marblehead regiment [Rhode Island] . . . Their first manifestations

were ridicule and derision, which the riflemen bore with more

patience than was their wont, but resort being made to snow, which

then covered the ground, these soft missives were interchanged

but a few minutes before both parties closed, and a fierce struggle

commenced with biting and gouging on the one part, and knockdown

on the other part with as much deadly fury as the most deadly enmity

could create. Reinforced by their friends in less than five minutes

more than a thousand combatants were on the field.

Apart from the German jäger rifle corps, the British army put its faith

in massed muskets. But one British innovation is interesting: Major

Patrick Ferguson’s breech-loading rifle. Although breech-loading and

repeating firearms had been known, and manufactured, in America

and Britain since the late seventeenth century,

they were intricate and

therefore very expensive to make. Ferguson’s invention was simpler and

more efficient and seems to have been the only breech-loader to have

been made in any quantity, or any rifle to have a bayonet. Ferguson

himself demonstrated it at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich on 1 June

1776 in a performance that “astonished all beholders.”

Notwithstanding a heavy rain and the high wind, he fired during

the space of four or five minutes at the rate of four shots per minute,

at a target two hundred yards distance. He next fired six shots in

one minute, and also fired (while advancing at the rate of four

miles an hour) four times in a minute. He then poured a bottle of

water into the pan and barrel . . . and in less than half a minute he

fired with it as well as ever . . . Lastly, he hit the bull’s eye lying

on his back . . . He only missed the target three times during the

whole course of the experiments.

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Only 200 or so of the rifles were issued, and although they had little

impact on British tactics at the time, they were “the first standard military

weapon capable of delivering accurate, aimed fire.

Sturdier and more

powerful than the Pennsylvania-Kentucky rifle, they had the considerable

additional advantages of being made of standardized parts and being

able to carry a bayonet. The reasons that Ferguson’s rifle did not become

standard issue were several: at £4 it was twice as expensive as a Brown

Bess to manufacture; there was weakness in the stock where it had to be

cut away to accommodate part of the specialized mechanism; it could

not take a regulation cartridge; and it required operating skills beyond

those of standardized training. Nevertheless, it would point the way to the

future of infantry warfare. Ironically, Ferguson, no longer in command of

his rifle corps and not armed with his own rifle, was cut down at Kings

Mountain on 7 October 1780, riddled with balls from patriot rifles.

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Whether it was musket or rifle, each depended on gunpowder. It was as

precious as gold and, for the patriot cause, almost as rare. Gunpowder is

the mixture of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal, and sulfur (in the

ratio 75:15:10). Potassium nitrate is a by-product of the bacterial decay

of organic matter, particularly dung and urine. A sixteenth-century

treatise particularly approved of urine. Especially “of those persons

whiche drink either wyne or strong beers. Then Dong specially of those

of horses, which be fed with oates, and be always kept in the stables.”

It was fitting that even puissant Mars had his feet firmly planted in the

ripe ordure of the eighteenth century.

Saltpeter forms naturally in warm climates that have a regular dry

season that evaporates the solution (usually rainwater) in which the nitrate

has been suspended and turns it into salts deposited on the soil surface.

America, although having some of the climatic preconditions,

especially in the South, did not have a developed gunpowder industry

and relied almost entirely on imports, either from Europe or from the

French and Dutch West Indies, particularly Martinique, Santo Domingo,

and St. Eustatius. The stocks of powder available to Washington at the

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start of the war were so neglible (about one half pound per man) that,

according to Brigadier General John Sullivan, when the commander in

chief discovered the state of affairs “he did not utter a word for half an

hour.” By the end of 1775 he was still troubled by their “want of powder

[which] is inconceivable. A daily waste and no supply administers a

gloomy prospect.” By the end of January 1776 the army was practically

without powder. Had Howe known, “he could have marched out to

Cambridge and crushed the newly recruited colonial army.”

British troops were supplied with sixty cartridges per man, and to

match that, Washington would have needed four hundred barrels of

powder. He had thirty-eight barrels, or fifteen to twenty rounds per man.

John Adams was acutely aware of the crisis, writing to James Warren

in October 1775: “We must bend our attention to salt petre. We must

make it. While Britain is Mistress of the Sea and has so much influence

with foreign courts we cannot depend upon a supply from abroad. It is

certain it can be made here . . . A gentleman in Maryland made some last

June from tobacco house earth . . . that the process is so simple a child

can make it. It consists of nothing but making a lixivium from the earth

which is impregnated with it, and then evaporating the lixivium . . . I am

determined never to have salt petre out of mind, but to insert some stroke

or other about it in every letter for the future. It must be had.”

The aptly named Joseph Barrell, who had made saltpeter, explained

its manufacture in November 1775.

Take the earth from under old houses, Barns, &c., & put it

lightly into a hogshead or Barrel; and then fill it with water, w

immediately forms a lie. This lie he then puts into an ashes leach

that has all the goodness extracted before, this being only as a

strainer. After it is run thro’ w

, he boils the Lie so clarified to

a certain Consistance, & then puts it to cool, when the saltpetre

forms, & is immediately fit for use; & from every Bushel of earth

he produces

¾ lb. of saltpeter.

Congress jump-started domestic production, particularly in the

southern states because the earth on the floors of tobacco warehouses

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was rich in nitrate, and by the fall of 1777 115,000 pounds had been

harvested, mostly between January and November 1776 when “hard

money” was still available and revolutionary passions still burned

bright. Despite these attempts to stimulate home-produced gunpowder,

imports still accounted for 90 percent of America’s needs (most of them

from France via the West Indies), and, as Adams implied, if the British

navy had managed to impose a truly effective blockade, the rebellion

may well have fizzled out.

Black powder was susceptible to damp, despite attempts to make

it damp-resistant. (The mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur was

moistened and formed into round cakes, dried, and stone-ground into

granules. The granules, in turn, were polished in tumblers together with

graphite, which gave them a slight water-resistant glaze.) And damp

powder played a major role in determining tactics. Torrential rain, for

example, forced Washington to give up on his plan of 16 September

1777 to attack the British converging on Philadelphia. Henry Knox

wrote to his wife: “We came in sight of the enemy, and drew up in order

of battle . . . but a most violent rain coming on obliged us to change our

position, in the course of which nearly all the musket cartridges of the

army that had been delivered to the men were damaged, consisting of

about 400,000. This was a most terrible stroke to us . . . This unfortunate

event forced us to retire.”

On the march, soldiers tried to protect the locks of their weapons

under the “lappets” (lapels) of their coats. Cartridges were protected

to some extent in leather-covered “cartouche” (cartridge) boxes that

contained wooden blocks with holes drilled out to receive the paper

cartridges (usually fifteen to twenty-four per box). A leather flap,

sometimes with an inner one as extra protection, closed the top of the

box and, in theory, kept out the rain. Cartridge boxes were crucial to the

soldier’s fighting capability, and Washington took them very seriously.

On 3 October 1777 he wrote to Congress:

With respect to Cartouch boxes, without which it is impossible

to act . . . I would advise that much care should be used in

choosing the Leather. None but the thickest and best is proper for

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the purpose, and each Box should have a small inner flap for the

greatest security of the Cartridges against rain and moist weather.

The Flaps in general, are too small and do not project sufficiently

over the ends or sides of the Boxes. I am convinced of the utility nay

necessity of these improvements.

This complaint would have found its echo in the British army.

Cartridge boxes were the responsibility of a regiment’s colonel, who,

with an eye to economy, would often buy inferior goods. Only half of

the 33rd Foot, for instance, had any cartridge boxes at all in 1775. The

42nd Foot fought the whole of the War of Independence with one issue,

which, by 1783, was “wore out on Actual Service.”

Sometimes the

holes in the blocks were too small to accommodate the cartridges, or the

leather was cheap and quickly rotted away. The box could not have held

all cartridges issued (the British, for example, regularly issued sixty per

man), and men would have to improvise. The American general John

Ashe described how his men carried their ammunition on their way to

the battle of Briar Creek, Georgia, in March 1779: “We immediately

beat to arms, forming the troops into two lines and served them with

cartridges, which they could not have prudently been served with sooner,

as they had several times received cartridges which had been destroyed

and lost for want of cartouche boxes. We marched out of lines to meet

the enemy, some carrying their cartridges under their arms, others in the

bosom of their shirts.”

Riflemen, ever individualists, were known to

carry lead balls in their mouths, as did Private James Collins on his way

to the battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina, in October 1780, “to

prevent thirst, [and] also to be in readiness to reload quick.”

The balls themselves were cast in individual molds made of brass,

iron, soapstone, or, occasionally, wood—one for approximately forty

soldiers. “Gang molds” that could produce multiple balls were preferred

by musketeers, although riflemen tended to have an individual mold

that best suited the exact gauge of their weapon. The process was

relatively crude. Molten lead was poured into the top of a hinged mold

and ran through small channels into a series of spherical cavities formed

when the two halves of the mold were brought together. When the mold