The Strategy of Victory by Thomas Fleming

Author:Thomas Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLES of Springfield and Connecticut Farms reminded many in the American army of the fighting that had convulsed Massachusetts in April 1775. The rush of militia to the battle from all parts of New Jersey made one man exclaim, “It was Lexington repeated!”62 Others did not view the outcome—the two British retreats—as victories. Hotheaded aide Alexander Hamilton was in despair. “Would you believe it,” he wrote to a friend, “a German baron at the head of 5000 men, in the month of June insulted and defied the main American army with the Commander in Chief at their head with impunity and made them tremble for the safety of their magazines forty miles in the country.”63

Colonel Ebenezer Huntington of Connecticut wrote to his father even more vehemently about the weakness of the Continental Army, denouncing his “cowardly countrymen who flinch at the very time when their exertions are wanted.… I despise my country. I wish I was not born in America.”

George Washington took a larger view of the failed invasion. In his general orders he praised the regulars and militia extravagantly. He told the president of Congress that the militia particularly “deserve everything that can be said. They flew to arms universally and acted with a spirit equal to any thing I have seen in the course of the war.”64 He could have added—but was wary of boasting—that they had given dramatic proof that militia would fight hard if supported by an army to look the enemy in the face.

Looking back on the battle of Springfield, which is barely mentioned in most histories of the Revolution, it is easy to see why some writers have romanticized the militia. From young plowboys to substantial farmers like Sylvanus Seeley and Nathaniel FitzRandolph, they raced from peaceful homes to bullet-filled fields. We tend to forget Washington’s bitter, hungry, ragged Continentals, who stood up to the British Sunday punches while the militiamen jabbed on the enemy’s flanks. The devotion of these regulars is much harder to understand than the response of the militia, who were fighting virtually on their own doorsteps to protect their wives and children, farms and houses. Only those who saw what the regulars endured could really appreciate them. “I cherish those dear ragged Continentals, whose patience will be the admiration of future ages and glory in blooding with them,” wrote one of Washington’s aides.65

The war was far from over, but peace settled over most of New Jersey after the battle of Springfield. The enemy still conducted numerous raids along the shore but left the men and women of the interior mostly untroubled. A line from the diary of Sylvanus Seeley gives us a glimpse of this lovely quiet—and the way it was preserved. On July 12 his younger brother, Lieutenant Samuel Seeley, declared himself recovered from the wound he had received at Connecticut Farms. He was ready to return to the harsh life of the Continental soldier once more. Militia Colonel Sylvanus Seeley wrote in his diary, “Samal Seeley went for camp.

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