CHAP. Colonel Reed's advice, thus forced upon the general, prevailed, and occasioned the call of a council of war, (Ibid. 226). V. 1776. That this story would lead to the inference that Washington was a most August incompetent general, and a very weak man, and utterly unfit for his place, 27-30. must not bias the mind of the historical inquirer. It is the office of the historian to find out the truth and to tell it, even though it should convict Washington of imbecility, while placing Colonel Reed among the saviours of the country. The main authority of the biographer for his statement is a paper purporting to be a letter from an old man of eighty-four, just three days before his death, when he was too ill to write a letter, or to sign his name, or even to make his mark, and professing to detail the substance of conversations held by the moribund fifty-six years before, with Colonel Grayson of Virginia, ten or eleven years after the retreat from Long Island, to which the conversations referred. The eyes of the witness closed too soon to admit of his being cross-examined, but nature comes in with its protest: his story turns on a change of wind, which he represents as having taken place before the council of war was called; now no such change of wind took place before the council of war met, as appears from their unanimous written testimony at the time. Proceedings of a council of war held August 29, 1776, at head-quarters in Brooklyn, printed by Onderdonk, 161, and in Force's Archives, fifth series, i. 1246. The lifting of the fog and consequent sight of the British fleet which the biographer dwells upon is, as far as I know, supported by no witness at all; and this little bit of romance, which forms the pivot of the biographer's attribution of special merit to Colonel Reed, is refuted by positive testimony. The sea-fog, following the change of wind did not take place till after the retreat began. The accounts of contemporaries all agree that the fog did not rise till the morning of the thirtieth. Account in the Boston Independent Chronicle of September 19, 1776: “ At sunrise" on the thirtieth. Benjamin Tallmadge's Memoirs, 10, 11: "As the dawn of the day approached, a very dense fog began to rise." Gordon's History of the American Revolution, ii. 314, English edition of 1788: "A thick fog about two o'clock in the morning." Gordon wrote from the letters of Glover, and from the information of persons who were present. Note to the Thanksgiving sermon of Dr. John Rogers of New York, delivered in New York, December 11, 1783, and printed in 1784: "Not long after day broke, a heavy fog rose." Graydon makes his first mention of the fog in his account of what happened in the morning of the thirtieth. Some of these authorities are cited in the accurate and judicious work of Henry Onderdonk, Jr.: Revolutionary Incidents in Suffolk and King's Counties, 158, 162. V. Graydon, who is cited by Reed's biographer as a corroborative witness, CHAP. leaves Mifflin out of the number of those who spoke with Reed in favor of a retreat. Littell's edition of Graydon's Memoirs, 166. The biographer of Reed seems not to have borne in mind the wonderful power of secrecy of Washington, in which he excelled even Franklin; for Franklin sometimes left the impression that he knew more than he was willing to utter, but Washington always seemed to have said all that the occasion required. The perfect unity and method of the retreat prove the controlling mind of one master. Washington's order given to Heath, who was stationed at Kingsbridge, to provide boats for transportation, may be found in Force, (American Archives, fifth series, i. 1211); how Heath understood and executed it is told by Heath himself, (Heath's Memoirs, 57). Of the precise hour in which Washington's order to Heath was issued or received I have found no minute; but that it must have been issued soon after daylight on the twenty-ninth appears from this: the messenger who bore it had to cross the East river against a strong headwind, and to travel about fifteen miles by land; and Heath received the order in season to execute it thoroughly well, and he makes no complaint of any want of time or necessity for hurry. The council of war was not held till “late in the day," as we know from a member of the council itself, writing within a few days of the event. Brigadier-General John Morin Scott to John Jay, September 6, 1776. It follows, therefore, if Reed during the day was ignorant of Washington's design to retreat from Long Island, that Washington kept it as much a secret from him as he did from others. I have met with no evidence that Washington, before noon, communicated his intentions to more than two persons on Long Island, namely, to Mifflin, through whom the order was sent to Heath, and to Colonel Joseph Trumbull, the commissary-general through whom a message was transmitted to Hugh Hughes, the acting quartermaster-general in New York. Memorial of Hugh Hughes, 32, &c. All the orders relating to the retreat were veiled under the appearance of a movement against the enemy. Why Washington decided to retreat from Long Island is rightly told in what remains of a letter written on the thirtieth of August, 1776, by Joseph Reed to William Livingston of New Jersey, and printed in Sedgwick's Life of Livingston, 201. That Washington was deliberately resolved "to avoid a general action," and put as little as possible to risk, we have under his own hand. Sparks's Washington, iv. 81. 1776. August 27-30. CHAP. VI. CHAPTER VI. THE PROGRESS OF THE HOWES. AUGUST 30-SEPTEMBER 15, 1776. CARE sat heavily on the brow of the young people, who were to be formed to fortitude by 1776. tribulation, and endeared to after ages by familiarity August 30. with sorrows. After the disaster of Long Island, Lord Howe received Sullivan on board of the "Eagle" with hospitable courtesy, approved his immediate exchange for General Prescott, who was at Philadelphia, and then spoke so strongly of his own difficulty in recognising congress as a legal body, of the prevailing misconception respecting his authority to enter into any discussion of griev ances, and yet of his ample powers to open a way for their redress, that the American general proposed to visit Philadelphia as a go-between, and undeceive those who entertained so confined an opinion. His indiscretion was without bounds; volunteering to act as a messenger from an enemy of his country to its government, he took no VI. 1776. August 30. minute of the offer which he was to bear, relying CHAP. only on his recollection of desultory conversations. A few hours after the troops got over from Long Island, he followed on parole. The American commander-in-chief disapproved his mission; but deemed it not right to prohibit by military authority an appeal to the civil power. For the time, Washington could only hope to 30, 31. keep at bay the great army opposed to him. The dilatoriness of his antagonist left him leisure to withdraw the garrison from Governor's island, where Prescott ran almost as great a risk of captivity as at Bunker Hill; but the inhabitants of Long Island were left at the mercy of the English, and some from choice, some to escape the prison-ship and ruin from confiscation, took the engagement of allegiance. Yet the delay caused by the defence Sept. of Brooklyn had done much towards preventing a junction with Carleton. Of this the thought was now abandoned for the season; and in a letter to Germain, the British general frankly announced the necessity of another campaign. His report of the events on Long Island hid his chagrin at the escape of Washington's army under boastful exaggerations, magnifying the force which he encountered two or three times, the killed and wounded. eight or ten times, and enlarging the number of his prisoners. His own loss he somewhat diminished. Conscious that congress were expecting impossibilities, Washington saw the necessity of setting forth to them plainly the condition of his army. He reminded them of his frequent representation, 2. VI. 1776. Sept. 2. CHAP. that the public safety required enlistments for the war; the defeat on Long Island had impaired the confidence of the troops in their officers and in one another; the militia, dismayed, intractable, and impatient, went off by half-companies, by companies, and almost by whole regiments at a time; their example impaired all subordination, and forced him to confess his "want of confidence in the generality of the troops;" the city of New York must be abandoned; and the necessity for doing it was so imminent, that the question whether its houses should be left to stand as winter-quarters for the enemy would "admit of but little time for deliberation." His judgment was right; Rufus Putnam, his ablest engineer, reported that the enemy, from their command of the water, could land where they pleased at any point between the bay and Frog's neck; while Greene advised a general retreat, and that the city and its suburbs should be burned. When, on the second of September, Sullivan was introduced to the congress, John Adams broke out to the member who sat next him: "Oh, the decoyduck; would that the first bullet from the enemy in the defeat on Long Island had passed through his brain!" In delivering his message, the emissary went so far as to affirm that Lord Howe said he was ever against taxing us; that he was very sure America could not be conquered; that he would set aside the acts of parliament for taxing the colonies and changing the charter of Massachusetts." Congress directed Sullivan to reduce his communication to writing. He did so, 66 |