Chapter 25

OUTBREAK OF WAR: WASHINGTON'S MOVEMENTS

[1775]

By the spring of 1775 Massachusetts was practically in rebellion. Every village green was a drill-ground, every church a town arsenal. General Gage occupied Boston with 3,000 British regulars. The flames were smouldering; at the slightest puff they would flash out into open war.

On the night of April 18th people along the road from Boston to Concord were roused from sleep by the cry of flying couriers--"To arms! The redcoats are coming!" When the British advance reached Lexington at early dawn, it found sixty or seventy minute-men drawn up on the green. "Disperse, ye rebels!" shouted the British officer. A volley was fired, and seven Americans fell dead. The king's troops, with a shout, pushed on to Concord. Most of the military stores, however, which they had come to destroy had been removed. A British detachment advanced to Concord Bridge, and in the skirmish here the Americans returned the British fire.

Washington found that the army around Boston consisted of about 14,500 men fit for duty. He estimated the British forces at 11,000. All the fall and winter he was obliged to lie inactive for want of powder. Meantime he distressed the British as much as possible by a close siege. In the spring, having got more powder, he fortified Dorchester Heights. The city was now untenable, and on March 17, 1776, all the British troops, under command of Howe who had succeeded Gage, sailed out of Boston harbor, never again to set foot on Massachusetts soil.

Cornwallis, with 7,000 men, hurried from Princeton to attack the American army. But Washington, on the night of January 2, 1777, leaving his camp-fires burning, slipped around the British army, routed the regiments left at Princeton, and pushing on northward went into winter quarters at Morristown.

The next campaign opened late. It was the last of August when Howe, with 17,000 men, sailed from New York into Chesapeake Bay, and advanced toward Philadelphia. Washington flung himself in his path at Brandywine, September 11th, but was beaten back with heavy loss. September 26th the British army marched into Philadelphia, whence Congress had fled. October 4th, Washington attacked the British camp at Germantown. Victory was almost his when two of the attacking parties, mistaking each other, in the fog, for British, threw the movement into confusion, and Washington had to fall back, with a loss of 1,000 men.

In December the American commander led his ragged army into winter quarters at Valley Forge, twenty-one miles from Philadelphia. It was a period of deep gloom. The war had been waged now for more than two years, and less than nothing seemed to have been accomplished. Distrust of Washington's ability sprang up in some minds. "Heaven grant us one great soul!" exclaimed John Adams after Brandywine. Certain officers, envious of Washington, began to intrigue for his place.

Meanwhile the army was shivering in its log huts at Valley Forge. Nearly three thousand were barefoot. Many had to sit by the fires all night to keep from freezing. One day there was a dinner of officers to which none were admitted who had whole trousers. For days together there was no bread in camp. The death-rate increased thirty-three per cent from week to week.

Just now, however, amid this terrible Winter at Valley Forge, Baron Steuben, a trained German soldier, who had been a pupil of Frederick the Great, joined our army. Washington made him inspector-general, and his rigorous daily drill vastly improved the discipline and the spirits of the American troops. When they left camp in the spring, spite of the hardships past, they formed a military force on which Washington could reckon with certainty for efficient work.

The British, after a gay winter in Philadelphia, startled by the news that a French fleet was on its way to America, marched for New York, June 18,1778. The American army overtook them at Monmouth on the 28th; General Charles Lee--a traitor as we now know, and as Washington then suspected, forced into high place by influence in Congress--General Lee led the party intended to attack, but he delayed so long that the British attacked him instead.

The Americans were retreating through a narrow defile when Washington came upon the field, and his Herculean efforts, brilliantly seconded by Wayne, stayed the rout. A stout stand was made, and the British were held at bay till evening, when they retired and continued their march to New York. Washington followed and took up his station at White Plains.