Conceived in Liberty (222 page)

Soon after his arrival, Lee learned of Clinton’s projected invasion of North Carolina from captured documents and swiftly organized defenses and armed forces in the South. The Tories having been crushed in North Carolina, it was clear to him that Clinton would soon strike in force, either at South Carolina or Virginia. When Clinton appeared off North Carolina in early May, Lee moved his 1,300 Virginia troops south to New Bern —slowly, so as not to be committed erroneously to a South Carolina theater of war while neglecting Virginia. By the beginning of June, Lee had learned that the British were probably sailing to Charleston, and he rushed down to the defense of that city in a battle that would decide the fate of the South for several years at the least. Both the Americans and the British fleet arrived at Charleston in early June 1776.

Lee found the defenses at Charleston hopelessly inadequate. President John Rutledge of South Carolina’s rebel government, in charge of the
South Carolina militia, refused to abandon Fort Sullivan on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbor, which Lee found to be in an exposed and unsound position. Fortunately, however, bad weather and harbor conditions delayed the British attack for several weeks, allowing Lee to shore up the defenses of the fort and Charleston Harbor with great energy. On June 28, the British fleet attacked, but clumsy piloting ran several of their frigates aground. The gallant band at the fort under Col. William Moultrie were almost miraculously able to outgun and batter the vaunted British fleet, even though they were badly short of ammunition, and there were very few American casualties. After a few weeks of hesitation, the British abandoned their plans and sailed north. Lee, Moultrie, and their heroic men at Fort Sullivan had saved Charleston, and with it much of the South.
*

*
Paul Smith, in opposition to other historians, makes a quite unconvincing case for deprecating the importance of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island. Paul H. Smith,
Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 18–31.

The securing of the South was not the only decisive military victory gained by the American revolutionaries in first half of 1776; another was the forced evacuation of Boston by the British. It is true that the British were contemplating an eventual shift of their base from Boston to New York, where Tories and provisions would be plentiful and the inner parts of the colonies accessible to attack. But the British were driven out much sooner than they had planned.

The idle siege army in front of Boston had its troubles, and the end of 1775 saw a huge turnover, as enlistment terms were up and new enlistments were secured. It was clear to the Americans that Boston could only be taken if the great guns that had been captured at Ticonderoga could be brought to bear. But how to transport them overland across the ice and the steep New England hills?

The answer was supplied by a young Boston bookseller and amateur student of military engineering, Col. Henry Knox, head of the American army artillery. Asking Washington to be sent to transport the guns, Knox arrived at Ticonderoga in early December. He conceived a fantastically ambitious plan of dragging sixteen big cannon, howitzers, and mortars, weighing over one hundred and twenty tons in all, on forty-three sledges over three hundred miles of snow and ice. The sledges had to be constructed and then dragged by eight yoke of oxen, slowly driven by whips. Whenever a big cannon broke through and sank beneath the ice, it was laboriously hauled up again. Knox finally completed the journey of his wondrous caravan in early February. It was a remarkable
achievement, “a feat at which soldiers and engineers still marvel.”
*

Now that the Continental Army had the guns, Washington, ever eager for military glory in the classical European manner, and drastically underestimating the number of British troops, proposed a direct frontal assault upon Boston. On three previous occasions—without the guns—he had impatiently urged such an attack, and each time had been opposed by a unanimous war council of his generals. The council of war again demurred, and General Ward sagely proposed to place the guns upon the unaccountably still-unoccupied Dorchester Heights commanding Boston to the south, just as Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill commanded it to the north. Washington grudgingly accepted the plan, which was agreed to by all the generals. The American army, given something sensible to do for the first time since Bunker Hill, worked with renewed enthusiasm.

The operation began on the night of March 2, 1776, with three nights of cannonading from the northwest, diverting British attention from Dorchester Heights. On the night of March 4, under cover of the bombardment, Gen. John Thomas took 2,000 men and 360 carts, and with splendid efficiency constructed two forts on Dorchester Heights. The Americans could perform this remarkable feat of constructing the entire works in one night by using a novel plan suggested by Col. Rufus Putnam, employing frames on top of the ground that required little digging in the frozen earth.

The British awoke on the morning of March 5 to look up in amazement at the American heavy guns on the heights. General Howe sadly remarked that “the rebels have done more in one night than my whole army could do in months.” As at Bunker, he decided on March 7 to give up and evacuate, for it was not safe for the British fleet to remain in the harbor under the guns of Dorchester. He had planned to
move
at his own will to New York, but was now forced to move to Halifax, a military base unquestionably safe for the British, to await the arrival of supplies.

The understandably fearful citizens of Boston soon obtained a promise from Howe that he would not burn the city if the Americans would allow his troops to embark in peace and without bombardment. Washington took no official notice of the promise when it was conveyed to him, but he abided by its terms, and Boston was spared much devastation and bloodshed. Finally, Howe and the British troops, carrying with them no fewer than one thousand Tories in flight, embarked on March 17 in a mighty armada of over one hundred and seventy ships, soon setting sail for Halifax.

It was truly a great victory; Boston, the spearhead of the Revolution, the focal point of British military oppression, had at last been liberated. And in their hasty flight, the British had been forced to leave behind them an enormous amount of supplies and military equipment. As the Duke of Manchester was soon to declare in the House of Lords: “Let this transaction be dressed in what garb you please, the fact remains that the army which was sent to reduce the province of Massachusetts Bay has been driven from the capital, and... the standard of the provincial army now waves in triumph over the walls of Boston.”

*
North Callahan, “Henry Knox: American Artillerist,” in Billias, ed.,
George Washington’s Generals,
p. 241.

It was clear to all that, militarily, the Americans were most vulnerable at sea, where Britain ruled the waves and no American population lived to support armed operations. We have seen how Lord Dunmore was able to use the ocean with impunity as his base from which to raid and plunder the American coast, and the entire coastline lay open to raids of this sort. Soon after the outbreak of war, the separate colonies began to try to defend themselves at sea. The first to react was Rhode Island, which chartered two vessels in June 1775 to try to save Newport and the coast from the depredations of the British fleet. Massachusetts and Connecticut soon followed with two ships each; and in mid-July, Congress correctly but not very hopefully urged each colony to defend its coastal areas.

It soon became evident that American ships might accomplish more by taking the offensive, particularly in harassing the British supply lines to the army at Boston. At the end of June Rhode Island again took the lead; its radical governor, Nicholas Cooke, urged just one swift armed ship to seize arms and supplies. Washington took the hint, and despite lack of congressional authorization, appointed shipmaster Nicholas Broughton a captain in the “army,” and presented him with a schooner for that purpose. Broughton’s successes led to more of the same, and soon Congress began to give its tentative support. By the end of October, the Continental fleet consisted of six schooners, which acquitted themselves ably against the British. Particularly successful was Capt. John Manley, of the
Lee,
who cheered the Americans greatly by capturing several military ships filled with supplies and ammunition. In addition to the schooners, the Americans around Boston organized a fleet of 300 private whaleboats, which
conducted guerrilla-type night raids on the British lighthouses and other installations in Boston harbor.

Nettled by his utter inability to cope with the American schooners and night raiders, Adm. Samuel Graves, commander of the British fleet at Boston, decided to punish the Americans collectively in their ports and harbors. In early October 1775, Graves sent out Capt. Henry Mowat with two schooners and nearly two hundred men on a savage terror raid of the coast north of Boston. He was ordered to “burn, destroy, and lay waste” every seaport town north to Maine, and to destroy all the shipping at their harbors. Specifically, he was to concentrate on burning to the ground the two port towns of Gloucester and Falmouth (now Portland, Maine), whose people, according to Admiral Lord Howe, were distinguished for their “opposition to government.” Finding it impractical to destroy Gloucester, Mowat entered Falmouth on the October 16. Giving the townspeople one day to evacuate, he shelled and fired the town until its over two hundred houses, eleven ships, and wharves and warehouses were completely burned.

The wanton destruction of Falmouth spurred Congress into action. By December, prodded by John Adams, it was ready to create officially a small marine corps and a continental fleet of four vessels, to name its officers, and to establish for its supervision what would become the Marine Committee. As commodore and commander of the little fleet, Congress selected the veteran general Ezek Hopkins, until then head of the armed forces of Rhode Island. By the following spring the Continental Navy was ready for offensive exploits in the British West Indies. Commodore Hopkins’ first operation was to raid Nassau on March 3, 1776, and to seize large stores of British gunpowder. Bermuda also proved a good source of enemy powder.

Such large-scale raids were exceptions, however, and usually the tiny Continental Navy was confined to forays by individual ships. As we have seen in the case of the whaleboats around Boston, the great many privateers were far more important than the governmental fleet. As their name implies, these ships were wholly private in ownership and operation. An old tradition of private armed merchantmen preying on enemy shipping during wars, privateering had reached a peak during the eighteenth century, and in America particularly during the Seven Years’ War. As the Revolutionary War began, many hundreds of ships took to seizing supplies and arms by capturing British vessels. New England (particularly Massachusetts), its fishing and carrying trades ruined by the war and by British control of the northern fishing banks, was an especially successful center of privateering, as were Philadelphia and Baltimore. The inlet of Little Egg Harbor on the New Jersey coast was a particularly attractive haven for privateer vessels. Privateering flourished especially during 1775
and 1776, and it has been estimated that as many as two thousand ships sailed against the British. During 1776 half the Jamaica fleet was captured by American privateers, along with large quantities of ammunition and military supplies. In that year, the British lost several hundred vessels to privateers, with ships and cargo worth over one million pounds sterling —a figure exclusive of government transports and store ships.

Privateering was not only a very effective means of naval warfare; it was a far less costly—and a far more libertarian—a method than building a government navy. Reliance on privateers saved enormous sums and the time necessary to build new ships, since existing merchant ships were used; Moreover, it saved the taxpayers (including “inflation-payers”) the expense of construction and operation. As in all private operations, the costs were borne only by those who assumed the risks, and their rewards were strictly proportionate to their successes. And the war effort also benefitted
pari passu
with the successes of the privateers. Even Washington saw this, and when he created his small fleet in the autumn of 1775, he tried to approximate privateering conditions by granting to the seamen on each ship one-third to one-half of the proceeds from the vessels they captured —about the same incentive pay received by the crews of privateers. Not the least important advantage of privateers was the fact that they automatically disappear with the arrival of peace, and convert to peaceful uses; the public would not then be saddled with the burdens, bureaucracy, potential tyranny, and the nuclei for the fomenting of future wars that are inherent in a governmental navy.

Where in all this was the vaunted British navy? Fortunately for the American cause the overconfident British did not bother to launch a serious naval effort against the rebels, and no attempt was made to blockade the American coast. In these critical first years of the war, only a few British warships were stationed in American waters, and the British did not bother to provide armed convoys to their merchant shipping on the Atlantic.
*

During 1775, the privateers proceeded happily, even though unauthorized by the governmental authority. In November, Massachusetts authorized the issue of official letters of marque and reprisal to privateers, and other colonies followed suit. The harsh British Prohibitory Act of late December 1775, denouncing the Americans as traitors and rebels, prohibiting all ships from trading with any part of the thirteen colonies, and subjecting all American and foreign ships trading with them to seizure and
confiscation, became known to the Americans by the end of February 1776. The Prohibitory Act spurred the Continental Congress to take further bold measures against Great Britain. In March, Congress officially authorized privateers, providing them with continental letters of marque and reprisal.