Author: David Price

41. Native Narrative I
By Categories: American Indians in the Revolution

The role of the American Indian nations in our war for independence—largely neglected by historians for so long—has gained more historiographic attention over time, and deservedly so as it had important implications for the Revolutionary contest. What is commonly unappreciated among the general public is the extent to which the interrelationships among the native nations (Cherokee, Delaware, Iroquois, Mingo, Ottawa, Shawnee, and Wyandot ), Great Britain, and the North American colonists played a significant role in precipitating the War of Independence.

What Really Happened

The British ministry resolved in 1762 to maintain a force of ten thousand troops in North America even after the then-ongoing but nearly concluded French and Indian War (known as the “Seven Years’ War” in Europe) ended, in order to protect the colonies from the Indians and vice versa—as well as to guard against possible designs by the Spanish who occupied the provinces of East and West Florida. Britain’s national debt had doubled during the war, and the King’s ministers refrained from imposing the cost of supporting this troop presence in America on their already overburdened constituents, then among the most heavily taxed in Europe. This policy decision, along with Parliament’s effort to crack down on rampant smuggling among colonial merchants that deprived Britain of significant revenue from items imported into the colonies, had significant repercussions for Anglo-American relations as they deteriorated in the mid-to-late 1760’s and the early 1770’s. The majority in Parliament thought it eminently reasonable to tax Americans in order to pay for the presence of British soldiers whose ostensible purpose was to protect the colonists. However, the latter regarded these soldiers as an unwanted force who embodied a policy of restricting the colonists’ access to western land occupied by the native nations and whose deployment was to be paid for by taxes imposed by a legislative body in which Americans were not represented.

Parliament’s Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited colonists from moving westward into land populated by Native American tribes was impracticable because there were simply not enough British soldiers on the continent to enforce this edict; and by 1774, some fifty thousand settlers resided beyond the proclamation line. Notwithstanding that reality, this policy represented a sharp departure from Britain’s previously understated approach to colonial oversight and and was widely perceived among Americans as an overbearing intrusion into their sovereignty.

In his new and highly recommended book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 2021), Woody Holton cites an observation by an anonymous newspaper writer that “not even a second Chinese Wall, unless guarded by a million of soldiers,” could prevent settlers from moving into the lands from which they were officially excluded by the Proclamation Line of 1763. Moreover, as he points out, the colonists facilitated even further encroachment beyond that line by refusing to pay for British troops stationed on their frontier. Once Parliament repealed the Stamp Act of 1765 in response to widespread American opposition to its tax on legal documents, newspapers, licenses, pamphlets, and bills of lading, and to the concerns of British merchants over how the colonists’ willingness to boycott British goods in response would impact Anglo-American trade, the Crown’s ministers decided to reduce British expenses in the New World by abandoning all but the most vital western forts that their soldiers had been garrisoning. As Holton puts it, “Now it was simpler than ever to glide across the home government’s imaginary boundary.”

What Does All This Mean?

Parliament’s effort to restrict the colonists’ movement into Native American lands was firmly opposed by prospective settlers who wanted to start a new life on the frontier and by speculators who dreamed of making significant profits from land holdings beyond the proclamation line—among the latter, for example, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. This obviously contributed to the ill will that came to dominate Anglo-American relations and propelled the opposing sides toward an armed confrontation. At the same time, many among the native nations clearly perceived a threat to their way of life from the specter of colonial intruders, and this would influence their decision as to which side they should back when war erupted—more often than not, the British, as they represented the indigenous people’s best hope of restraining the invasion of their lands by white homesteaders.

More about this in the next post.

 

40. Why Britain Lost
By Categories: Geopolitical Factors

The above image from the painting Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumbull, on display in the US Capitol Rotunda, depicts the capitulation of the British army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781. This engagement ended the last major campaign of the Revolutionary War.

What Factors Contributed to Great Britain’s Failure to Subdue the American Rebellion?

— His Majesty’s forces lacked the military capacity to conquer and control the vast geographic expanse encompassed by Britain’s North American colonies without receiving more support from the Loyalist population (commonly referred to as “Tories” by those opposing them) than the latter were able or willing to provide.

— The rebels did not necessarily have to win battles in order to succeed, but only needed to persevere until the British Parliament exhausted its willingness to expend the mother country’s blood and treasure in this cause, as it did in the wake of the Yorktown disaster.

— Foreign assistance, especially from France but also Spain and the Netherlands—ranging from covert aid in the beginning of the conflict to more conspicuous intervention later on—sustained the American war effort and eventually drew Britain into a global struggle that diverted military and naval resources from its efforts to suppress America’s bid for independence..

Geography as Destiny

I want to amplify the geographic constraints that militated against the possibility of British success. The Crown’s forces never demonstrated an ability to seize and dominate the immensity and wilderness of the territory that comprised the thirteen provinces along the Atlantic coast. Their base was always the Atlantic Ocean and the navigable rivers stretching upcountry from it. British naval assets were essentially useless in the American interior where the crown’s military ambitions were thwarted by rebel opposition and the difficult terrain and hardships of moving an army about, which the letters of General William Howe (commander of the British army in America from 1775 to 1778) to Lord George Germain (Britain’s principal war strategist) and others in London often cited. Moreover, the nature of that terrain was especially problematic for the Crown’s military designs as its predominantly hilly and forested expanse was very different from the Low Countries where most British officers had their formative military experience and was naturally advantageous to those fighting a defensive action, who were usually rebel soldiers.

Finally, Britain’s effort to defeat the colonial insurrection faced the very formidable challenge of an enormous ocean. Each item utilized by the British expeditionary force had to travel three thousand miles across the Atlantic in sluggish transports. And the distances involved were problematic from the standpoint of communications. Even a swift vessel carrying urgent messages rarely made the voyage from England in much less than two months, while some dispatches took anywhere from three to seven months to reach their intended recipient.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Great Britain’s failure to subdue the American rebellion may well have been the worst calamity ever suffered by its empire, a defeat that at the time constituted a stunning and humiliating setback for the eighteenth century’s most vaunted global power. But history offers numerous examples of a militarily superior force being frustrated by the stubborn reality of geographic expanse and an uninviting terrain. So Napoleon and Hitler learned when they assailed Russia, as did America in Vietnam—and the forces of “Mad Vlad” are, as we speak (or type), contending with in their barbarous enterprise against a free people.

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39. The Most Unappreciated Event of the Revolution
By Categories: Ten Crucial Days

Please Note: The images of a brutish and needless conflict instigated without provocation and orchestrated by a murderous and delusional bully, which have splashed across our screens the last few days, made me somewhat hesitant to publish a blog post about any type of military engagement at this point, even though I realize one has nothing to do with the other—except perhaps to remind us yet again that, as General William T. Sherman once observed, “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.” And more so today than ever before.

But notwithstanding all that, here goes . . .

The Battle of Assunpink Creek, also known as the Second Battle of Trenton, on January 2, 1777 (imaginatively depicted in the nineteenth-century print above) was the second of three military engagements during the Continental Army’s triumphant winter campaign from December 25, 1776 through January 3, 1777—what historians commonly refer to as the “Ten Crucial Days.” (For the Patriot cause, these might also be termed the “Tense Crucial Days.”) The desire to correct its neglect in our collective historical memory was the genesis of my second book, The Road to Assunpink Creek: Liberty’s Desperate Hour and the Ten Crucial Days of the American Revolution. I contended there and have since that this affair—largely ignored by historians until David Hackett Fischer’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington’s Crossing (Oxford, 2004)—was arguably the most pivotal military engagement of the war for independence.

Why Did it Matter?

Traditional accounts of this period in the Revolutionary War have treated the clash at Assunpink Creek as the “Rodney Dangerfield” of military encounters, emphasizing instead the first battle at Trenton on December 26, 1776, in which Washington’s army overcame the Hessian brigade occupying the town after the legendary Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River, and the battle at Princeton on January 3, 1777 that provided the Continentals with the capstone victory of their winter offensive (very offensive if you were British).

But consider this  .  .  .

— Had Washington been defeated at Assunpink Creek, his victory at Trenton on December 26 would have been a historical footnote that did nothing to alter the strategic dynamic of the contest and there would have been no victory at Princeton on January 3 because in all likelihood there would have been no American Army to march there.

— The second battle involved the largest number of soldiers of the three engagements fought during the 1776-1777 winter campaign, particularly if one includes both the fighting between the Anglo-German army as it approached Trenton and the skirmishers under Colonel Edward Hand resisting its advance and the follow-up confrontation when the Crown’s forces attempted to cross the Trenton bridge spanning the creek.

— If we compare the three battles, this was the only one in which the enemy had a numerical advantage. It was also the only one in which Washington’s army fought both British and Hessian troops, and in which the enemy forces were led by a British general (Charles Lord Cornwallis, probably the most competent and energetic field commander in the King’s army). Moreover, it was the only one in which the geographic position of the American troops was such that they were in danger of being trapped between two waterways—the creek in their front and the Delaware River at their back—with no means of escape if they were outflanked and pushed up against the river.

— This was the longest battle of the “Ten Crucial Days” if one counts as a single encounter the resistance offered by Colonel  Hand’s contingent during their fighting withdrawal from Maidenhead (Lawrence Township today) to Trenton and the clash at the creek immediately following the delaying action.

— January 2, 1777 was the first time the Continental Army repulsed an attack by British troops during a truly significant battle. Had the rebel army failed to stop their adversary’s advance at Assunpink Creek, the result would probably have been the destruction of that army and possibly the cause of American independence. And in that scenario, Washington would most likely have met his end on the battlefield or suspended from a British rope.

— The recollections of those present attest to the gravity of this moment: Major James Wilkinson—“If there ever was a crisis in the affairs of the Revolution, this was the moment”; Ensign Robert Beale of Virginia—“This was the most awful crisis”; Captain Stephen Olney of Rhode Island—“It appeared to me then that our army was in the most desperate situation I had ever known it”; and Private John Howland of Rhode Island—“Had the army of Cornwallis…crossed the bridge, or forded the creek, unless a miracle intervened, there would have been an end of the American army.”

— In Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (Viking, 2016), Nathaniel Philbrick opines that if Cornwallis’s effort to cross the Trenton bridge and overrun the rebel army had succeeded, “the war was as good as finished” for the capital city of Philadelphia “would surely [have fallen] that winter, and the Continental Congress in Baltimore might very well [have decided] that a negotiated settlement was in the country’s best interests.” Washington’s decision to fight here, he writes, created “the make-or-break moment” of the Revolutionary struggle.

Bottom Line

I’ll rest my case with the following excerpt from The Road to Assunpink Creek (the author says it better than I can):

Historians of the Revolution never mention Assunpink Creek in the same breath as Saratoga or Yorktown—the most recognized and significant battles in that struggle, with the former in 1777 leading to France’s crucial intervention in the contest and the latter in 1781 breaking the back of England’s will to fight against the colonials—but those later engagements might very well have never occurred if January 2, 1777 had turned out differently for Washington’s army. The events of that day, including the delaying action by Colonel Hand’s men and the fighting at the creek, plausibly created a deciding moment of as great consequence for the cause of American independence as the far better-known confrontations that occurred later in the war. Perhaps no military action in our country’s history is more paradoxical than the one on the road to Assunpink Creek, and at the bridge that crossed it, in the sense that its obscurity in the public mind and neglect by many historians is so disproportionate to its impact on the course of a conflict with global implications.

In other words, if things had gone differently that day, the quest for American independence may very well have been (ahem) up the creek.

38. New Books
By Categories: American Revolution

I thought I’d take a brief respite from working on my next opus to suggest a few new Revolution-related books for your consideration. These are based on my own reading, listening to author talks, or in one case an author interview.

In no particular order  .  .  .

Surviving the Winters: Housing Washington’s Army during the American Revolution, Steven Elliott (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021) — The author has crafted a detailed narrative and penetrating analysis of how the Continental Army housed its units and camp followers, which explains how the construction and operation of these camps was important to the success of the Patriot cause. When you consider that the army spent a great deal more time in these settings than it did on the battlefield, this is a significant contribution to the literature of the Revolution.

Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, Woody Holton (Simon & Schuster, 2021) — The author offers a new and refreshing look at our struggle for independence that incorporates the story of marginalized  Americans—black people, women, Indians, and religious dissenters—into the mainstream of Revolution-related historiography in a way that general histories of the period have not done until now, while considering other overlooked aspects of the war that factored into its outcome.

The Revolutionary World of a Free Black Man: Jacob Francis, 1754-1836, William L. “Larry” Kidder (S.P., 2021) — This story of a free black man’s struggles with the systemic racism that accompanied enslavement in early America chronicles his youth as an indentured servant, his service in the Continental Army and Hunterdon County militia, and his post-war life as a husband, father, and farmer, as well as his youngest son’s efforts in the abolitionist cause. (BTW see my blog post no. 27, “Jacob’s Ladder,” to read the author’s comments about his work.)

These Distinguished Corps: British Grenadier and Light Infantry Battalions in the American Revolution, Don Hagist (Helion & Company, 2021) — For the authentic military history buff, this should be a real treat to read, being the product of a noted authority on the eighteenth-century British army who is also managing editor of the Journal of the American Revolution. The reader is provided with a thorough and well-written analysis of the role played by British light infantry and grenadier battalions during the Revolutionary War that relies predominantly on a vast array of primary source material.

Happy Reading.

37. The Bayonet
By Categories: Weaponry

As you may recall, I strongly hinted in a previous post that I would be writing about the use of bayonets in the Revolution. So let’s get right to the point (in a manner of speaking).

What Was It?

The socket bayonet was invented in the late seventeenth century by the noted French military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), who was engaged in the service of Louis XIV for more than fifty years and in the process revolutionized the art of siege warfare and defensive fortifications. Vauban’s pointed triangular blade came with a flat side facing the muzzle of a musket and two outer fluted sides that were about fifteen inches long. It attached to the muzzle by a collar that slipped around the barrel.

How Was It Used?

Notwithstanding its limited firing range, British troops relied on the same Brown Bess musket that was carried by American soldiers in units that were not rifle companies, because (unlike the long rifle) it facilitated the redcoats’ use of their favorite tactic—the bayonet charge. The sight of cold steel could have a fearsome effect on an enemy soldier, no matter how experienced he might be, and often struck terror in the hearts of inexperienced citizen-soldiers among the Continental Army’s rank-and-file. The latter were all-too aware of the lethal repercussions from a well-aimed bayonet thrust. With the full force of a lunging soldier’s body behind it, the blade could lacerate tissue, arteries, and bones in a most injurious and painful manner. The swiftness, energy, and furor of a redcoat bayonet assault was often enough by itself to unnerve all but the best American units. (The British military worked hard to educate its soldiery in the advantages of bayonet usage in order to overcome one’s natural reluctance to slay an opponent up-close rather than at a distance where killing is more impersonal.)

The bayonet’s salient role in British infantry tactics—having primacy over firepower—was predicated on the belief that well-disciplined soldiers could outrun the range of a musket during the time required for their adversary to reload. British musket fire on Revolutionary War battlefields most commonly took the form of general volleys followed immediately by a bayonet charge. His Majesty’s troops typically sought to close with the Americans as rapidly as possible, absorbing casualties until they could launch their dreaded charge. Bayonets probably accounted for most of the combat deaths among Patriot soldiers during the conflict. Because musket fire was largely inaccurate and inflicted relatively few casualties, even when used against dense formations of troops advancing at a deliberate pace, the bayonet charge made good tactical sense in open-field combat against an opponent who was not well-entrenched. Typically the British advance over an open field would accelerate from a trot or jog into a run, and the onrushing redcoats would cheer repeatedly and menacingly to intimidate a wavering enemy. For most of the war, they made their attacks in this manner.

Night attacks were particularly well-suited to the use of bayonets, as they entailed stealthy maneuvers designed to maintain silence and the element of surprise—difficult to do if one were relying on the use of firearms. In addition, deploying bayonets rather than shooting at the enemy reduced the risk of so-called friendly fire where one encountered poor visibility or lacked situational awareness on the battlefield. (I’m still not sure what’s friendly about “friendly fire” – would prefer the term “misdirected fire.”)

Over time, the Continental Army became more proficient in the use of bayonets and better equipped so that enough of its soldiers had them to be a factor in combat. However, I think it’s fair to say that the story of this weapon in the war for independence was written largely by the British infantryman. (It was, you might say, thrust into prominence by the latter.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

36. Commemorating the Battle of Princeton
By Categories: Ten Crucial Days

Attention all Rev War buffs and history enthusiasts!

Check out this link to the Princeton Battlefield Society’s website, where you’ll find information about an exciting event on January 2, 2022 that will celebrate the 245th anniversary of the third and final engagement fought during the Revolution’s “Ten Crucial Days.”

All the best!

dp

P.S. The image above depicts General Washington leading the climactic charge at Princeton on January 3, 1777.

35. Who said What about the “Ten Crucial Days”
By Categories: Ten Crucial Days, Uncategorized

Rev War buffs are about to commemorate the 245th anniversary of the “Ten Crucial Days” campaign—from December 25, 1776 through January 3, 1777, perhaps the ten most remarkable days in American history—that reversed the momentum of the war for independence just when the Revolutionary enterprise seemed on the verge of final defeat, The battles at Trenton and Princeton—the first significant victories for Washington’s army—altered not only the course of the conflict but the public image of the Continental Army’s commander-in-chief as well.

In this season of remembrance, I thought it timely to recall some observations about these events here:

SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, British Historian—It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world. (Source: The American Revolution in six volumes, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 1899-1907)

FREDERICK II, King of Prussia, 1740-1786 (Frederick the Great)—The achievements of Washington and his little band of compatriots between the 25th of December and the 4th of January, a space of ten days, were the most brilliant of any recorded in the annals of military achievements. (Source: The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, William S. Stryker, 1898)

THOMAS PAINE, Author and pamphleteer—The conquest of the Hessians at Trenton by the remains of a retreating army…is an instance of heroic perseverance very seldom to be met with. And the victory over the British troops at Princeton, by a harrassed and wearied party, who had been engaged the day before and marched all night without refreshment, is attended with such a scene of circumstances and superiority of Generalship, as will ever give it a place on the first line in the history of great actions. (Source: The American Crisis, Number V, Thomas Paine, March 21, 1778, in Thomas Paine, Collected Writings, 1955)

JAMES WILKINSON, Major, Continental Army—The joy diffused throughout the union by the successful attack against Trenton, reanimated the timid friends of the revolution, and invigorated the confidence of the resolute. Perils and sufferings still in prospect, were considered the price of independence, and every faithful citizen was willing to make the sacrifice. Success had triumphed over despondency, and the heedless, headlong enthusiasm, which led the colonists to arms, had settled down into a sober sense of their condition, and a deliberate resolution to maintain the contest at every hazard, and under every privation. (Source: Memoirs of My Own Times, James Wilkinson, 1816)

MERCY OTIS WARREN, American poet, dramatist, and historian—Perhaps there are no people on earth, in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily enkindled, and burns so remarkably conspicuous, as among the Americans….The energetic operation of this sanguine temper, was never more remarkably exhibited, than in the change instantaneously wrought in the minds of men, by the capture of Trenton at so unexpected a moment. (Source: History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren, 1805)

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, Captain, Continental Army—After escaping the grasp of a disciplined and victorious enemy, this little band of patriots were seen skillfully avoiding an engagement until they could contend with advantage and then by the masterly enterprises of Trenton and Princeton, cutting them up in detachments, rallying the scattered energies of the country, infusing terror into the breasts of their invaders and changing the whole tide and fortunes of the war. (Source: The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, William S. Stryker, 1898)

LORD GEORGE GERMAIN, British Secretary of State for North America—All our hopes were blasted by that unhappy affair at Trenton. (Source: Remarks by George Germain, May 3, 1779, in The Parliamentary Register: Or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons during the Fifth Session of the Fourteenth Parliament of Great Britain, Volume XI, John Stockdale, 1802)

HENRY KNOX, Brigadier General, Continental Army—I look up to heaven and most devoutly thank the great Governor of the Universe for producing this turn in our affairs. (Source: Letter to Lucy Flucker Knox, January 7, 1777, in The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, William S. Stryker, 1898)

SAMUEL DeFOREST, Connecticut militiaman—The events of two weeks appears to have rolled on a pivot which has sealed and gave a stamp to the destiny of America. (Source: Samuel DeForest, Military Pension Application Narrative, in The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence, John C. Dann, ed., 1980)

NICHOLAS CRESSWELL, English diarist who travelled throughout the American colonies from 1774 to 1777—The minds of the people are much altered. A few days ago they had given up the cause for lost. Their late successes have turned the scale and now they are all liberty mad again. (Source: Nicholas Cresswell: Journal, January 5-17, 1777, in The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence, 1775-1783, John Rhodehamel, ed., 2001)

WILLIAM HARCOURT, Colonel, British Army—Though it was once the fashion of this army to treat [the American soldiers] in the most contemptible light, they are now become a formidable enemy. (Source: Letter to his father, Earl Harcourt, March 17, 1777, in The Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., 1967)

CHARLES EARL CORNWALLIS, Lieutenant General, British Army (reportedly responding to a toast at a dinner for British, French, and American officers hosted by George Washington after Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781)—And when the illustrious part that your excellency has borne in this long and arduous contest becomes a matter of history, fame will gather your brightest laurels from the banks of the Delaware than from those of the Chesapeake. (Source: The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, William S. Stryker, 1898)

The final quote below is not generally cited in this context but is far better known than the others and VERY MUCH on point.

LAWRENCE PETER “YOGI” BERRA, Professional baseball player, coach, manager, and philosopher—It ain’t over till it’s over. (Source: Attributed to Berra as manager of the New York Mets during the 1973 season and quoted in The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said, Yogi Berra, 1998)

There, now I’ve covered all the bases (so to speak).

Dear Reader:

Please be advised that I anticipate diminished blog production for a period of time (a slowdown, not a complete stop), owing to my immersion in another literary project—a book about the Battle of Harlem Heights in 1776 as part of Westholme Publishing’s Small Battles series.

I hope to return to a more regular blogging schedule in the not-too-distant future and extend my sincere thanks to those who have subscribed. To other readers, I hope you’ll consider signing up – it’s free and easy to do in the footer on any page.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Don’t go away. I’ll be back.

Best regards,

dp

SEASON’S GREETINGS, EVERYONE—STAY SAFE AND HEALTHY!!!

34. An Obscure Event
By Categories: New York Campaign

For anyone who’s interested, I wanted to pass along a link to a recent article of mine in the Journal of the American Revolution, which is essentially an adaptation of a chapter in my last book, John Haslet’s World, about one of the least-known military engagements of the War of Independence. The Battle of Mamaroneck on October 22, 1776—or the “Skirmish of Heathcote Hill” as termed by some of the few who know of it—was a rare and, to be sure, very limited victory for the Patriot cause during what was otherwise a dismal New York campaign waged by the Continental Army that fall.

This encounter occurred at night, and one of the men who was there—Dr. James Tilton, the surgeon with the Delaware Continental Regiment that was led by Colonel Haslet and known as the “Delaware Blues” from the color of their uniforms—wrote: “I must confess this the most terrible instance of War I have seen; so much is the horror of this terrible business increased by darkness.” Perhaps it’s fitting that the battle or skirmish occurred at night as so many are, well, in the dark about it.

BTW the image above is from a watercolor by Charles M. Lefferts from c.1910—in the collection of the New York Historical Society (NYHS)—entitled Private, Haslet’s Delaware Regiment, 1776. It was originally created for the artist’s study of uniforms in the Revolution and published by NYHS in 1926. According to traditional accounts, the Delaware soldiers wore mitred caps as seen here in 1776, although military historians differ on this. If the Blues did wear such head gear, perhaps they should have carried writing instruments instead of bayonets because, after all, the pen is mitre than the sword (eeesh). In that case, the regiment would have switched to black cocked hats before the end of the year as its soldiers wore those for the remainder of the war.

33. The Long Rifle
By Categories: Weaponry

This is a follow-up to blog post no. 31 that discussed the Brown Bess musket, wherein I suggested the need for a post focusing on its counterpart, the long rifle used by rifle units in the Continental Army, and the advantages and disadvantages of that weapon relative to muskets. So I’m taking this opportunity to do that, lest anyone (ahem) be up in arms if I did not.

What Was It?

The deadly rifle used by units such as the 1st Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment became a source of terror to the British and Hessians early in the Revolutionary War. These backcountry soldiers were noteworthy for their utility, as they could operate effectively in a variety of tactical circumstances—as snipers, on scouting patrols, in joint operations with regular troops, and in the same manner as light infantry in European armies.

The singular nature of this instrument was recognized by the Continental Congress when it established the Continental Army in June 1775 in support of New England’s uprising against the British troops in Boston. Rifles were in scant supply in the colonies, popular in the more rural areas but largely unknown around Boston. John Adams was clearly enthused about them, informing his wife Abigail that his fellow congressmen were “really in earnest in defending the Country. They have voted ten companies of Rifle Men to be sent from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, to join the Army before Boston. These are an excellent Species of Light Infantry.” He explained that they “use a peculiar kind of Musket call’d a Rifle” that “carries a Ball, with great Exactness to great Distances,” and hailed these sharpshooters as “the most accurate Marksmen in the World.”

The 1st Pennsylvania sharpshooters initially demonstrated during the 1776 New York campaign what their long rifles could do in the face of a much larger enemy force. On October 12, General Howe landed four thousand troops at Throg’s Neck above Manhattan in an effort to trap Washington’s army on the New York island by cutting off the main route to the mainland. A small detachment of the Pennsylvanians held off the British while another 1,500 American infantry hurried to their support, Historian Christopher Ward described how the riflemen tore up the planking of the bridge connecting Throg’s Neck to the mainland and hid behind a long pile of cord wood near its western end, then turned back the enemy advance with “a sudden, well-aimed fire blazed in their faces.” As he put it, some twenty-five “American riflemen behind a wood-pile had stopped the British army.” Their resistance forced the redcoats to look for a better place to land, which they did at Pell’s Point a few days later but too late to prevent Washington’s escape from Manhattan.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Anecdotal information about the rifle’s accuracy spread widely throughout the colonies before and in the very early stages of the war. American riflemen loved to give demonstrations, in which they took aim at a small mark the size of a man’s eye or the tip of his nose, and hit it repeatedly from 250 yards away. A British spy with the Continental Army outside Boston in the summer of 1775 reported to General William Howe, the British Army’s commander, on the threat posed by rifle companies from Pennsylvania and Virginia, advising that there was “scarcely a regiment in Camp but can produce men that can best them at shooting.” These formidable weapons were made mostly in Pennsylvania and used there and in the Chesapeake colonies by men who hunted for much of their fresh meat. Their distinctive long barrel was etched or “rifled” with seven or eight internal grooves, unlike the smooth-bore muskets, and the effect was to make it accurate at a range of about two hundred and perhaps even three hundred yards, i.e., several times that of a musket.

Despite the rifle’s far greater range over the musket, there were certain disadvantages to its use. It took longer to reload than the latter because the shot had to be forcefully rammed into the barrel for a snug fit. Furthermore, the rifle was designed for hunting rather than fighting and as such had no bayonet mount, which rendered a rifleman defenseless in close-quarter combat. Hence riflemen had to be escorted by soldiers with muskets; and, notwithstanding the increased role played by the rifle throughout the war, the musket remained the small-arms workhorse of the American soldier.

The Other Side

His Majesty’s army never adapted to the use of rifles in the war for independence. To the British command, the amount of time needed to load and fire a rifle and its failure to accommodate a bayonet were critical shortcomings. Reflecting the methods of warfare utilized by most European armies in the eighteenth century, in which regiments fired in blocks rather than aiming individually, many officers regarded rifles as an unnecessary and wasteful expense. Instead, the British relied on the same Brown Bess musket carried by American soldiers in units other than rifle companies.

Although the British eschewed the use of rifles, some among the German troops fighting with them did not; however, their firearm differed from the one used by American riflemen. The jägers were a numerically small but elite element among the Crown’s forces, perhaps about six hundred in total, who functioned in a manner similar to the British light infantry and were equipped with short, heavy, large-bore rifles that carried no bayonets. The jägers were recruited from hunters, gamekeepers, and other marksmen in their homeland and known for their skills as riflemen and skirmishers, as well as for discipline and bravery under difficult combat conditions.

What’s Next

Perhaps a post on bayonets? I’ll probably take a stab at it.

32. Britain’s Road to War
By Categories: The Road to War

In his masterful study of British colonial policy during the period from 1772 to 1775, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), English author Nick Bunker subjects the actions of Parliament and the Crown to a withering critique that illuminates how the Anglo-American conflict became inevitable.

Britain Meant Business

By the 1770s, according to Bunker, Great Britain had come to view itself as an essentially commercial nation, so that even people whose social or economic status was based on owning land agreed that commerce was its lifeblood. Or to paraphrase Calvin Coolidge’s observation about America in the 1920’s, they believed the business of Britain was business. In line with this mindset, Britons generally regarded the American colonies as having only one purpose and that was economic. As Bunker memorably puts it, “the British scarcely saw the colonists at all as anything more than a bundle of economic resources or a destination for convicts. Often the American people themselves remained almost invisible, mere accessories dotted about in a landscape where, in British eyes, the objects in the foreground were fields of tobacco, sacks of rice, and barrels of molasses.”

The author notes that to Lord North (prime minister from 1770 until near the end of our war for independence) and his colleagues, the colonists’ demands for liberty rang hollow. They appeared as merely a sham protest designed to obscure the Americans’ obsession with evading taxes levied by Parliament. The upshot of all this was that the United Kingdom’s devotion to trade often reflected a narrow materialism that limited the vision of policymakers in London, so that they came to view their overseas empire—in North America, the West Indies, and India—as nothing more than a vehicle for enhancing Britain’s wealth. These possessions were simply too valuable to surrender, as they constituted a profitable system of global trade.

Tea→War

The Boston Tea Party in December 1773—that is, the dumping of the East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor, which proved a seminal event on the road to war—was a reaction to British efforts to thwart the epidemic of colonial smuggling by allowing the company to sell tea at prices that undercut smugglers while propping up the struggling company and reasserting Britain’s right to impose taxes in America, in this case on tea. What the Crown’s ministers failed to grasp, Bunker argues, is that “the prevalence of smuggling was simply another side effect of a speculative empire, and of a fiscal system that relied too heavily on the taxation of commodities that lent themselves to illegal traffic.”

Over time, the New World customers and clients that were the bedrock of an empire based on maritime trade developed their own ambitions and reinterpreted political principles and ideas they had acquired from the mother country to suit their own circumstances. The inevitable clash that emerges from Bunker’s masterful analysis derived from the failure of British statesmen to accept that the economic and political aspirations of the American colonists were valid. By the 1770s, the political culture that extended from Charleston to Boston was radically different from Great Britain’s, and that divergence could not be reconciled. Parliament’s legislative reaction to the destruction of tea by Bostonians—known as the Coercive Acts in London and the Intolerable Acts here—was intended to punish, in the view of those lawmakers, sinful and disorderly mob rule while upholding British sovereignty and Parliament’s will on this side of the Atlantic. They had yet to realize neither could be enforced without war—and not even then. You might say their hopes of doing so were emptea (ouch).

P.S. For anyone who’s interested, my recent interview with Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution is available through one of the links posted here. In addition, a new article of mine is awaiting publication in the JAR, and I will pass along a link when it appears.