He was already a Brigadier General in Massachusetts before Lexington & Concord, and as the siege in Boston started, he worked at training the troops. When the Continental Army officially formed, he retained his title and was promoted to Major General in August 1776.
Unfortunately (as Mike notes), George Washington didn’t think much of him and kept him largely sidelined. And the one time Washington did ask him to do something important, it didn’t go well at all.
…but the situation was not excellent, for the American side, anyway.
George Washington got a wake-up call in the form of a letter from Congress. In that letter he was told that it was not a good idea to burn down New York City; what’s more, they weren’t quite so invested in his holding the City as he thought they were. This was a good news/bad news situation for him, since he knew that strategically, the British occupying New York had the potential to be a huge problem, especially if they were able to take the entire Hudson Valley.
But even if they didn’t, having one of our biggest and busiest ports was going to create a lot of headaches, regardless of what was supposed to be moving in or out of the city.
Meanwhile, we have Ezra Lee making his first attempt at genuinely deploying the Turtle submersible. The currents plus the darkness made maneuvering very difficult, and while he did get close enough to Admiral Howe’s ship to stick the explosive charge to it, the spear he used couldn’t penetrate the hull enough to stick. In recent years it’s thought that he tried to pierce the hull near the rudder, which had an iron plate on it; another theory involved the recent use of copper on ships’ bottoms, but this copper was quite thin and would have been easily pierced.
Lee made one more attempt with the Turtle, on October 6, but that try also failed. The Turtle was lost less than a week later when the sloop serving as her tender was sunk by British ships. Who knows? Maybe there are still pieces of her in the Hudson River.
The American Army has evacuated Brooklyn. Reports are coming in from all over that the Loyalists are being rather sore winners over the event. Refugees are coming into Connecticut from across the Long Island Sound. George Washington, literally the last man out of Brooklyn, is trying to figure out his next move, and that of the British.
Nathanael Greene, who missed the Battle of Long Island because he’d been seriously ill, finally returns to duty. At last, some good news for General Washington! And maybe some sage advice regarding what should be done next to preserve New York City!
And Greene tells him to get out of town. There’s no way that you can hold a place like New York City if you can’t control the shoreline across the East River, no more than a few hundred feet away.
Washington doesn’t think this is a good idea, partially because he thinks New York is more important to the Continental Congress than it actually is. But Greene has another idea, which we’ll get into in a couple of days.
Washington wrote two letters today: one to General William Heath, and the other to Congress.
To Heath, he basically gave a little bit of an “attaboy” in agreeing with Heath’s assessment regarding the British Army’s next move. So he recommended that chevaux de frise be sunk in the waters nearby the next likely target (Huntspoint), to thwart the British ships moving in. Other than that, some reinforcements are on their way, so until the British arrive, just hurry up and wait.
Now, a cheval de frise (“chevaux” is plural) was tough for me to explain during the show, but picture a sawhorse with long spikes protruding from it. That’s a basic cheval de frise. (The one in the picture is from the Civil War.) But they’re not limited to this specific design; some stone walls had broken glass, or sharp rocks embedded in their tops to make it tougher to climb over them; those are also considered to be a cheval de frise. The ones that Heath were expected to sink in the East River looked more like boxes with angled spears pointed in the direction the ships were likely to be coming from.
Washington’s other letter, to the Continental Congress, wasn’t so much to inform them of his loss on Long Island as it was to assure them that he was alive and well, and that most of his troops had gotten away despite the magnitude of the loss. It would be several months before Washington could truly notch one in the “Win” column against the British.
Even though George Washington was in charge of the whole Continental Army, he still had people to answer to. Most directly that would be the Continental Congress and that will happen very soon, but in the meantime there were also some local officials he had to placate.
Which brings us to today’s episode, in which Washington wrote to the New York Convention, which was the name at that time for the body of state’s representatives. He’d kept them up to date on everything that was going on so far, so it only made sense that he’d send them another note to let them know why the troops had bailed on Brooklyn. There were lots of good reasons, but the one he didn’t write about was the fact that his army was getting shellacked and it was either get killed outright, or run away to fight another day.
The Battle of Long Island was one of our largest engagements with the British, and it was also the first one after the Declaration of Independence.
And it was a rout; the Americans got their heads handed to them. The British took New York and they occupied it for the rest of the war. After so many smaller victories, we finally got the lessons that A) this was going to be a long and bloody war, and B) there really isn’t any such thing as an easy victory.
As a result, New York City became a focal point for espionage and intelligence-gathering. If you’ve ever seen the AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies, you’ll get an idea of some of the things that went on. (The series as a whole isn’t bad, but there are definitely instances of dramatic license that went on. For instance, you can’t row across the Long Island Sound and back overnight. In fact, I’m not sure you can row across the Sound safely at all.)
In tomorrow’s episode, Mike will tell you why it didn’t turn out worse for the American side and then we close out the week with the last chapter of the Battle of Long Island.
At this point, both George Washington and General William Howe know that they’re literally on the eve of battle, and they’re making their final preparations.
The British, along with the Hessians, were making plans to move along the Jamaica Pass (it’s the road just above the Acroasis logo in today’s art), which, while they didn’t know it, was relatively lightly guarded by the Continental Army.
Washington’s tactic was to hold on to the Heights of Guan (the ovals to the right of the episode title, representing hills) and fortify Brooklyn Heights (far left center, about where the Brooklyn Bridge is today). It wasn’t a bad idea, but it didn’t match the British plans. And that’s largely where things went wrong. We’ll be talking about that in greater detail tomorrow.
The day after the British landed on Long Island, George Washington was disheartened to learn that army provisioning wasn’t at the level he’d expected, despite his orders only a week earlier.
It was bad enough that he’d been caught a little flatfooted by both the magnitude and the direction of the British movement, now he discovers that troops he’d ordered to move had done so without proper provisions.
So, he took the time to create new orders regarding army provisioning and ensure that the General Commissary had the manpower to do what it needed to do. He also took the time to write an inspirational note to the troops, which we couldn’t do in a two-minute show, but which read thus:
The Enemy have now landed on Long Island, and the hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty—that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men: Remember how your Courage and Spirit have been dispised, and traduced by your cruel invaders; though they have found by dear experience at Boston, Charlestown and other places, what a few brave men contending in their own land, and in the best of causes can do, against base hirelings and mercenaries—Be cool, but determined; do not fire at a distance, but wait for orders from your officers—It is the General’s express orders that if any man attempt to skulk, lay down, or retreat without Orders he be instantly shot down as an example, he hopes no such Scoundrel will be found in this army; but on the contrary, every one for himself resolving to conquer, or die, and trusting to the smiles of heaven upon so just a cause, will behave with Bravery and Resolution: Those who are distinguished for their Gallantry, and good Conduct, may depend upon being honorably noticed, and suitably rewarded: And if this Army will but emulate, and imitate their brave Countrymen, in other parts of America, he has no doubt they will, by a glorious Victory, save their Country, and acquire to themselves immortal Honor.
Yes, I said that cowardice “will not be tolerated” in the episode; clearly I under-sold that one.
It’s been coming for at least two months, and the Battle of Long Island has finally begun.
As we’ve noted a few times the past couple of days, George Washington had to make a few educated guesses about what the British were planning to do, but this left his troops thinly spread throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan, which left the Continental Army at a big disadvantage.
While numerous skirmishes have broken out up and down the coast between the British and American militia forces from time to time, this was Washington’s first major tangle with the British Army. That it didn’t go so great wasn’t his fault; that it didn’t go as badly as it could have is entirely his doing, as we’ll learn in a few days.
The reason that this portrait—and most of the others—of Rufus Putnam is in profile is that, when he was a child, one of his eyes was disfigured in an accident, giving it a, “outward, oblique cast.”
Putnam joined the Revolutionary War effort the very first day, after the battle at Lexington and Concord. During the Siege of Boston, Putnam directed efforts to fortify Dorchester Heights. Part of what had the British so flummoxed about that wasn’t that he did a good job (though he did), it was that he managed to get it all up and in place so fast.
Rufus Putnam worked his way up through the ranks quickly, so that by the time he was in New York, he was a colonel and designated an engineer.
But in December 1776, when the Continental Congress rejected his proposition to establish a national corps of engineers, Putnam resigned his commission. His resignation was short-lived and he eventually joined the Continental Army and served under Major General Horatio Gates. Putnam commanded two regiments in the battle of Saratoga.
He continued to work on critical fortifications, including Fort Putnam at West Point in 1778. In 1779 Putnam served under Major General Anthony Wayne in the Corps of Light Infantry following the capture of Stony Point, commanding the 4th Regiment. Putnam’s remaining military career was less eventful. In January 1783 he was commissioned as brigadier general.
After the war, Putnam returned to Massachusetts and returned to his original work as a surveyor. But a few years later, in 1788, Putnam led a group of veterans to settle land in the west, where they established what we now call Marietta, Ohio, the first European-American permanent United States settlement in the Northwest Territory. Putnam was appointed to serve as one of three judges of the Northwest Territory after Samuel Holden Parsons died. Marietta was settled on land that the local natives considered theirs, and it took a couple of years for the Ohio Brigade (with Putnam in the lead) to beat them back.
As Ohio residents organized to write a constitution and be admitted as a state, in 1802 Putnam was elected a Washington county delegate to the Ohio Constitutional Convention.
Putnam died on May 4, 1824, and was buried at Mound Cemetery in Marietta, Ohio.
