The Longest Odds
While the framers of the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia did battle with words and ideas, soldiers in the field fought with powder and lead. Politician and militiaman alike were well aware that, if King George earnestly willed it, if he sent to America everything lie had, the colonies would, in all likelihood, be defeated. But during the early years of the war, Britain was surprisingly slow to take the offensive.
Siege of Boston
Most of the “Lobsterbacks” (as the colonials called the red-coated British troops) were bottled up in Boston, to which Washington’s forces laid siege. Try as they might, the British were unable to break out of their entrenchments. Then, when Washington arrayed his artillery on Dorchester Heights, British commanders gave the order to evacuate by sea in March 1776, reestablishing their headquarters at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Down South
While His Majesty’s forces were being humiliated in New England, Sir Henry Clinton sailed with his troops along the southern coast. His purpose was to rally property-rich Loyalists against the upstart, ragtag rabble of the newly established “American” governments in the Carolinas and Georgia. As he prepared to disembark at Cape Fear, North Carolina, Clinton received news that a Loyalist uprising had been squelched by Patriot forces at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge near Wilmington, North Carolina, on February 27, 1776, Clinton pressed southward, reaching Charleston Harbor. Seeking to establish a base for Loyalist resistance, Clinton bombarded Charleston’s harbor fortifications, but Patriot forces drove off the British by June 28, 1776. It was a valuable triumph, which stalled British activity in the South for more than two years.
A Pale Flush of Victory
The first 12 months of the war had gone far better than any self-respecting oddsmaker would have predicted. The British had been forced out of New England and the South. However, a key American hope had also been dashed. The Patriots had tried to persuade the French citizens of Quebec to make common cause with them against the British. American strategists understood that, as long as the British conducted the war from far-off London, the Patriot cause would enjoy a great advantage. However, if the British should begin to use nearby Canada as the staging area for an invasion of the colonies, that advantage would evaporate. Unfortunately, the French Canadians were unwilling to initiate any action themselves. But, fortified by successes in defending against the British in New England and the South, the Americans decided to take the offensive.
An army under General Richard Montgomery marched from upper New York and captured Montreal on November 10, 1775. Simultaneously, troops commanded by Colonel Benedict Arnold advanced through the wilderness of Maine to unite with Montgomery’s units in an attack on the walled city of Quebec. The invaders were beaten back, and Montgomery was killed on December 30. American forces maintained a blockade of the Canadian capital through May 1776, but the offensive in Canada had petered out, and Americans would stay out of the region for the rest of the war.
The British Lion Roars
There was worse, much worse, to come.
Beginning in the summer of 1776, British forces wrested the initiative from the Americans. British general Guy Carleton, the very able governor of Quebec, was ordered to chase the Americans out of Canada and down through the region of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. This action would sever the far northern tier of colonies from the southern. Simultaneously, a much larger army led by General William Howe (who had replaced Gage as supreme commander of Britain’s North American forces) was assigned to capture New York City and its strategically vital harbor.
Carleton succeeded handily in driving the remaining Americans out of Canada, but, plagued by supply problems and the approach of winter, was unable to pursue them back below the border. This setback, however, did not stop Howe, who hurled against New York City the largest single force the British would ever field in the Revolution: 32,000 troops, 400 transports, 73 warships (commanded by his vice-admiral brother, Richard Howe, with whom he shared the American supreme command), It was all too apparent to General Washington that, militarily, the situation in New York was hopeless. In the course of the war, the American commander would prove highly skilled at the art of the strategic withdrawal, pulling back in a manner that cost the attacker and yet left his own forces intact to fight another day. This is precisely what he wanted to do in the case of New York, but Congress, fearing that the loss of a major city would dispirit Patriots throughout the colonies, ordered him to defend the position. Washington met with defeat on Long Island on August 27, 1776.
If Washington and the Continental Congress had weighed the odds more soberly, perhaps they would have raised the white flag. But Washington did not surrender. Instead, he fought a series of brilliant rearguard actions against Howe on Manhattan Island, which cost the British time, money, and energy. It took Howe from August to November to clear Washington’s forces from New York City and its environs. Then, instead of moving inland via the Hudson, Howe simply pushed Washington across New Jersey. If he had hoped to corner and fight the Continental Army to a standstill, Howe was mistaken. The Americans escaped across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania on December 7, 1776.
Recrossing the Delaware
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine had written just two years earlier. The present times transformed Washington’s men into a determined and disciplined army, even in the depths of the war’s first vicious winter. Washington, as General Howe saw the situation, was defeated, crushed. Certainly, he had no business striking back, especially not in this inclement season. Howe was a competent European general. In Europe, the proper times of year for fighting were spring, summer, and fall. In Europe, armies did not fight in winter. But Washington understood: This was not Europe. Collecting his scattered regulars and militiamen, General Washington reorganized his army and led it back across the Delaware River, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
On December 26, 1776, Washington surprised and overran a garrison of Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, New Jersey, then went on to an even bigger victory at Princeton on January 3, 1777. The triumphs were a sharp slap in General Howe’s face. Fortified by these miraculous victories, Congress rejected the peace terms the Howe brothers, in their capacity as peace commissioners, proposed. The fight for independence would continue.
Saratoga Morning
Wearily, the British laid out plans for a new assault on the northern colonies. Major General Burgoyne was in charge of Britain’s Canadian-based army, but he and Howe failed to work out a plan for coordinating their two forces. Burgoyne led his army down the customary Lake Champlain-Hudson River route, while Howe was stalled by indecision. Finally, he decided not to support Burgoyne’s offensive but to leave a garrison under Sir Henry Clinton in New York City and to transport the bulk of his army by sea to attack Philadelphia. It was a fatal blunder.