Unfortunately, it became clear that not all the men would cross safely before the sun rose. No matter . . . a dense fog suddenly descended upon the East River so that the British could see nothing when the morning came. Every last man was evacuated. The General took the last boat, and the British, by now understanding what was happening, fired through the fog, their bullets whizzing by the General and our boat. I tried to follow the General’s example and remain standing in the boat, but I was frightened and relieved when we reached the center of the river and I could sit down without appearing too cowardly. Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge told me it was one of the General’s most brilliant decisions of the war; the General’s critics said it was pure luck.
As our barge approached the shores of Manhattan through the remaining wisps of fog, I pondered for the first time a question that haunted me the whole war. What would the General do if he were captured? This increasingly became the British aim, as they rightly believed the General’s capture would stomp out the rebellion. The General often spoke admiringly of his hero, the Roman counsel Cato, for committing suicide to vindicate liberty rather than accept a life under tyranny. Still, the General loved his family and life so much that it was hard to imagine such an outcome. Would he ask me to write melodramatic letters to Martha and his stepchildren about honor and duty? We all took the idea of British plots to capture the General much more seriously after the summer of 1776. First an anonymous letter exposed the General’s housekeeper, Mary Smith, as a British spy, and she fled to England; then, another letter attributed a poison plot to the British governor in New York, William Tryon; and finally, several of the General’s own private guards confessed to a plot to spirit the General away. These incidents rattled headquarters, but the General told his aides to keep the information secret, as he was afraid public disclosure might encourage violence by citizens against loyalists and distract from the war effort. The General, as I said, was never one to be distracted from the greater task at hand.
I reflected on the possibility of my own capture and recognized that, while I thought little of this at the beginning of the war, my views had started to evolve. Slowly wasting away from untreated illness or lack of food and water on one of those ships off New York where the British had started to keep prisoners seemed a most unromantic way to die. Forsaking the return to the family merchant house to work with a father who believed me unfit was one thing; forsaking a recent fiancée who would not bear my children was another. As the war wore on, I found myself thinking less of heroic death from combat or imprisonment and more of Prescilla.
What followed our escape across the East River was the saddest part of the war and raised great doubts about the General’s ability. Even I, his aide, who had admired his generalship in Boston, was ready to join the critical chorus, although I never said so to the General. We again did not know where the British would strike next, and so the General kept his forces concentrated to the north on Manhattan Island.
On September 15, when the British and their Hessian allies landed smartly near what is now Thirty-Fourth Street on the East River, our limited forces—there is no other way to put this—ran for their lives. The General rode down from Harlem to see his officers and men fleeing. I have said the General was a calculating man, but in that moment calculation gave way to spontaneous anger. He struck several officers in an unavailing effort to stem the flight. I thought for a moment he was going to charge right into the British lines. I was a hundred yards to the rear and saw several officers grab his reins and persuade him to withdraw.
The British could have pursued our troops up Manhattan, but for some reason—perhaps because they wanted to await the landing of more troops—General Howe chose not to. I have read that this was just another example of how bad British generalship made the General look good. In any event, many of the General’s advisors advocated setting fire to the city that night. The General, believing the recapture of the city was impossible given British control of the waters surrounding it, and also believing New York to be infested with loyalists, was reluctantly inclined to agree. An order from Congress solved the General’s dilemma, arriving with explicit instructions not to destroy New York. Fires started in the city soon afterward, probably set by rebels angry at the British and their loyalist friends, and most of lower Manhattan burned anyway.
As the British troops finally moved northward, our troops performed with more discipline, firing and retreating before overwhelming numbers in an orderly manner. There then took place one of those strange events that always left one wondering whether the General had behaved irrationally or with strategic genius. As the British advanced, their bugles blew as if they were chasing foxes. This was, to say the least, insulting to our men, and the General, who had stationed some of his best Virginia, Connecticut, and Maryland troops in a brush-covered ravine, ordered an attack as the British started across an open field. Our men fired from behind trees, stone walls, and fences, the bugles stopped blowing, and the British beat a hasty retreat, leaving many of their dead behind. The victory was small, but after the previous days of disorganization, the news spread quickly and lifted morale.
Morale was further reinforced when the British tried to land behind the General at the north end of Manhattan. They could have captured the General and destroyed the main American army, but again, for reasons known only to the Almighty, they chose to land at the marsh at Throgs Neck. While they labored across the marsh, Pennsylvanian riflemen decimated their ranks, forcing a withdrawal. The General then withdrew our forces across the Harlem River to the Bronx while another fortuitous change in the weather brought storms that delayed a further British attack.