Revolutionary by Robert L. O'Connell

Author:Robert L. O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Out in the Cold

1

Having taken several substantial bites out of his tormentors, the fox was in his lair for the winter. “Washington has since taken post at Morris Town—where We can not get at Him,” General James Grant wrote a friend back in England. “And as He can move a Force from thence to any given Point we have been obliged to Contract our Cantonments…in short it is the most unpleasing situation I ever was in.”1 That pretty much summed it up from a British perspective.

But from Washington’s it was also a respite during which he could begin to develop the army he thought was necessary to challenge and defeat the invaders. Just before the year turned Congress had granted GW the extraordinary—a number said “dictatorial”—powers he had requested at the height of the emergency.2 While they were temporary and Washington was hardly enthusiastic about assuming them (“desperate diseases, require desperate remedies”), his bottom line for the Continental Army was replacing the yearly recruitment cycle with “a permanent standing army.”3 Because the states continued to supply the manpower, and their bounties and terms of service inevitably varied, it never exactly came to pass. But he did get authorization to appoint all officers below brigadier general, along with the right to raise sixteen new infantry and three more artillery regiments, three thousand cavalry, and a dedicated corps of engineers. Perhaps most important, enlistments would begin to last for three years or the duration of the war.4 Washington had at least the building blocks for the force he wanted.

The process of change began at Morristown. But it had to be done on the fly, because the British were continually venturing out from their now-centralized garrisons in search of extra food, wood to burn, and especially fodder for their horses. Washington used the opportunity to try a new approach, exposing his regulars to small doses of combat to continue building their confidence under fire, not to mention a growing expertise at raiding.5 Back and forth they crossed New Jersey the winter of 1777, carving a pattern of near-daily skirmishes—the British and Germans in cumbersome multi-regimental units for protection, and the Yankees in packs of Continentals and militia, removing everything they could, and then laying ambushes for those seeking to take the rest. Not “a stick of wood, a spear of grass, or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it,” reported Loyalist Thomas Jones. “Every foraging party was attacked.”6

As usual the redcoats and Hessians cut a swath of bad behavior wherever they went—looting, burning, and mistreating just about everybody they met up with, in their eyes all potential rebels.7 “Ravages in the Jerseys’ exceeded all description,” wrote Nathanael Greene. “Many hundred women ravished.”8 Greene also heard a report that British soldiers had murdered “two of the Inhabitants…because they did not assist them with their Waggons to carry off their dead.”9 Redcoated corpses stacked like cordwood in carts were an increasing product of these hunting

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