Captain enlisted in the Continental Army not long after the battles at Lexington and Concord. He was commissioned as a Captain and immediately put to work capturing British ships.
One of the more surprising things about the battle between the USS Franklin is not so much the victorious outcome, which was starting to feel a little bit of a foregone conclusion at this point, or that the ships moving in on the Franklin at first pretended to be friendly Bostonians, since that was actually a common tactic.
It was the fact that his birth date and death date are the same calendar day. Mugford was born in 1789, and died in 1776, on May 19. That seems like the sort of coincidence that might get a little more attention.
Artemas Ward was the man left in charge of things when Washington made his trek to New York, so you know that this was a man that Washington trusted. As a result they corresponded with one another frequently.
So it only makes sense that once in a while, the two would write to one another on the same day, and this was one of those days. Washington wrote to Ward his concern that the British would return to Boston and therefore the city should be fortified to protect against such an event, and Ward wrote to Washington about a pair of ships that had been captured in the Bay just a couple of days earlier.
For what it’s worth: Ward Circle, where the statue from today’s cover art is located, is in the middle of a peculiar looking traffic circle on Massachusetts Ave NW. There are no pedestrian crossings that will get you close to it, so if you do choose to make that particular pilgrimage, stop off at the National Cathedral first and ask for divine intervention, ’cause the traffic can easily make that a nightmare to cross.
George Washington was good at what he did because he’d studied military discipline, among other things. He read a lot about tactics and famous battles, and the importance of a well-trained army, and then he would meet with veterans and engage with them to learn what they thought.
During the Seven Years’ War he asked to use some of those techniques with the men under his command. Sometimes, but by no means all the time, was he able to enact some of his ideas.
So when Washington took over the Continental Army in July of 1775, he had some ideas about what that army should look like. And he had generally good counsel coming from other people who’d been through much of the same things as him.
But the problem was that the recruits of the early days of the Revolution weren’t committed to anything more than a single year. They didn’t get much time to learn the things they should have, and as a result they left before they could learn everything they should have, or they did learn what was needed and left anyway. And those who were left behind were still pretty new, and had little sense of military discipline.
So Washington decided he needed to get a little tougher.
It was called the Bayley Hazen Road, named after the two engineers who worked on it, and it was an attempt to make it easier for troops and equipment to get from New England to Canada.
Prior attempts to move materiel were fraught with sickness and the need to navigate various forms of terrain, including waterways and deep mud, which made the journey so much longer that it wasn’t practical anymore.
Bayley proposed creating a road that would not only make it easier to move things, it would cut the overall trip by about a third. What a great idea! thought George Washington. Get on it right away!
In the span of six weeks, they had almost a third of the road completed. And then they realized there was an important tactical problem with the Bayley Hazen Road: like every other road, it runs in two directions.
Horatio Gates did move up quickly through the ranks, and partially because he knew George Washington well, but it was also because he had a pretty good handle on getting things done.
As an Adjutant General, Gates was the man who ran the administrative side of the Continental Army, and is now thought of as the US Army’s first Adjutant General. He handled a lot of the logistics of keeping records and ordering supplies, and offered Washington wise counsel when it came to the Siege of Boston. In that respect it appears that he prevented Washington from acting rashly now and then.
But Gates was anxious to get a field position, and just a few weeks after this date, he was assigned to the Canadian Department with the new rank of Major General. Some intramural disputes followed as the Continental Army began to retreat from Canada, but were quickly settled.
Unfortunately Gates’ ambition got the better of him, and as the year wore on, he left his troops to attempt to talk the Congress into having him replace Washington as Commander in Chief.
Later, Horatio Gates was present when General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. He tried to parlay this into political gain, but his status began to falter for the rest of the war, to the point where he was nearly court-martialed. Shortly thereafter he retired and lived in Virginia, and then New York City, until his death in 1806. He was buried in the Trinity Church graveyard in lower Manhattan, but the exact site of his grave is unknown.
When Henry Knox wrote to George Washington apologizing for getting to Noweich,Connecicut so late, he had a pretty good excuse: he spent a bunch of money on hiring people to move materials down; and those people had trouble getting the job done.
But then Henry Knox also tells the story of leaving the caravan briefly to look at Newport RI and determine whether it’s defensible. Imagine how he felt when, after he spent two days figuring out the five best places to stand when defending Newport, he has to explain why he lost those two days afterward. But he did take the time to frame it as an activity that surely would make the Commander-in-Chief look better.
One of the things I really appreciate about reading documents from this era is just how polite they were; George Washington’s letter to the NY Committee of Safety, when you read between the lines is an admonition wondering if that august body had lost their damn minds.
One of the best examples of this is the Declaration of Independence itself. As Aaron Sorkin describes it in an episode of The West Wing:
[N]ever has a war been so courteously declared. It was on parchment with calligraphy, and “Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philadelphia to bite me, if you please.”
However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves; that doesn’t happen for another couple of months (and not when you think!).
At any rate, Washington was correct in his assessment that it didn’t make a ton of sense for New York to supply the British while at the same time opposing them. At the same time he didn’t accuse them directly; he played it very cool and suggested that the NY Committee of Safety could get a lot of credit if they’d do as he suggested.
When George Washington arrives in New York, things aren’t quite the way he’d like them to be, but he doesn’t really have time to worry about that.
Construction of Fort Defiance had already begun, and before long the building of Fort Stirling would commence. Even though they were outmanned and outgunned, Washington was going to make sure that if a British victory were to happen in New York, it was going to be a Pyrrhic victory.
About Fort Stirling: like Fort Defiance, nothing remains of the original structure. When the British evacuated the city in 1783, the locals destroyed whatever remained of the fort. It was originally named Fort Half-Moon because of its shape but it was renamed in honor of William Alexander, who was also known as Lord Stirling.
There remains a historical marker in the ground for this fort, at the intersection of Clark Street and Columbia Heights; when traveling west on Clark Street it will be on your right, protected by an iron fence (it’s right behind the fence and easy to see). When the park was created and dedicated in 1925, the Fort Greene Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution donated the granite tablet that marks the fort’s site.
The construction of Fort Defiance in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn made perfect sense. That part of the peninsula sticks out into New York Harbor and provides an excellent view of anything that might be sailing in or out.
Red Hook comes from the Dutch Roode Hoek, “hoek” translating to “point”, which can still be seen in modern-day maps. The whole area, what we now call Red Hook and Gowanus, was settled by the Dutch in the 1630s.
Red Hook was some swampy land when the Dutch moved in. But the Dutch know something about swampy land, and they got straight to work, filling in lakes and re-channeling waterways. They began farming the land, including orchards of fruit trees.
After the war broke out and the Continental Army drove the British from Boston, George Washington sent Brigadier General William Alexander to Brooklyn to see what could be done defensively. A plan was developed to build two forts along the Brooklyn Heights, about a mile and a half apart. Fort Greene would be the furthest east, Fort Defiance would be the furthest west. Across the channel on Governor’s Island, another fort would be built, so that British ships could be fired on from both sides.
Now, when we say “fort,” we’re not talking about something made of wood or stone. Plenty of those did exist, but not here. This was more like a breastworks built of earth and stone, which had a few cannons near the top. There were three of these breastworks connected by trenches, and they took up most of the island on which they stood. (Incidentally, Mike was correct about the island not existing anymore; the space was filled in and is now part of the larger land.) This took only a few days to put together; the fort at Governor’s Island was more like what one would expect to see.
By the time the British arrived, the Continental Army was quite ready from a defensive standpoint. But the British were much larger in number and had a Navy besides. Stay tuned; it’s going to be an exciting summer.
The war was less than a year old, but heroes were already beginning to emerge, as we learn from contemporary writings. The arrival of George Washington in Providence, RI, was considered a big event each time he came through.
In fact, it was such a big deal that the website for Stephen Hopkins’ house in Providence notes that “George Washington was a guest here. Twice.”
I suppose they could have hung up two “George Washington Slept Here” signs but nobody would get it. Then again, “George Washington Slept Here” isn’t quite the trope it used to be. Leave me alone, I’m old. And get off my lawn.
Hopkins, for what it’s worth, was an important person in his own right, having been central to the development of the colony and then the early days of the state. If you visit the house, though, be forewarned that it’s not in the same place it was when Hopkins lived there; it’s been moved twice since he was there. Although, to be fair, it’s always been on that street.
