What Manner Of Men: Forgotten Heroes Of The American Revolution

What Manner of Men FORGOTTEN HEROES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION BY

Fred

J.

Cook

WILLIAM MORROW

NEW YORK

&

COMPANY 1959

Copyright

1959

by Fred

J.

Cook

All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in the Dominion of

Canada by George

J.

McLeod

Limited, Toronto.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Catalog Card

Number

59-11702

41, /I

r

*

Frederick?. Cook

II,

whose help in research made this book possible

Contents THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN

II

ALLAN MCLANE

21

III.

TIMOTHY MURPHY

87

IV.

MARINUS WILLETT

143

PETER FRANCISCO

179

WOMEN WARRIORS

217

THE CAPTAIN AND THE LIEUTENANT

247

WHALEBOAT GUERRILLAS

275

JONATHAN HARADEN

305

I.

II.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

WHAT MANNER

OF

MEN

CHAPTER

The

I

Divine Right of

MEN WHO DO the

Man

the fighting and The heroes dying are almost universally overlooked in history. in our history books are usually the generals and admirals, not

THE

"LITTLE"

dirty

work of

the lowly cavalry captains, not the privates in the ranks. Great for ness, the kind of greatness that preserves a man's name too often the by-product of fortuitousness, the posterity, is all fusion of that lucky combination of personal ability with the command. Yet the little men sweepstakes chance of a spotlight whose fate it is to remain lost and forgotten often possess the of greatness for which only the great are noted. Fre qualities a courage and devotion, either to their quently, they exhibit

cause or to their comrades caught in the luckless straits of battle, that for purity of motive can't be matched by the gen eral

bedecked with medals, eyes fixed on immortality. This,

book dedicated to the memory of some of the little men who were truly great men in the first and most desperate then,

is

a

of our wars, the Revolution.

and to them we owe both the existence and the preservation of our nation. Yet

Every war produces

its

unsung 11

heroes,

WHAT MANNER

12

OF

MEN

was a unique quality. an amateur's war. The was Revolution For one thing, the or no with it Thirteen Colonies plunged into professional army Point West a in tactics at navy; with no commanders perfected about the

men

of the Revolution there

or an Annapolis; with no drilled rank-and-file, nothing more than a raw militia yet to hear shots fired in anger; without even the esprit de corps that comes from a bright tradition of battle

and success.

came from farm and

The commanders tation,

from a

of the patriots plan bookseller's shop, an apothecary's cubicle, a

smith's forge; the troops they

commanded were men

like

themselves clerks, farmers, artisans, riflemen from the exposed frontier. Both the leaders and the led were novices pitted of their day, an army and a against the greatest military power in the almost ceaseless succession of Europe's battle-tested navy and a navy that stood at a pinnacle of power, wars; an

army

even opposition crushed, colonial possessions.

all

Cold reason patriots

in

made an

mighty France stripped of her

said that, against

such overwhelming force, the

homespun stood not the slightest chance

all-out effort.

And England

did.

if

England

She met rebellion

with a massive flexing of muscle. One of the least appreciated facts of the Revolution today is the sheer magnitude of Great Britain's endeavor.

Few realize

that the invasion fleets she sent

American coast in the spring of 1776 were the largest the world had ever seen. They dwarfed both in numbers and power the one hundred twenty sails that had comprised the famed Spanish Armada. A mere recital of the day-by-day massing of warships, troop ships, and supply ships off Staten Island for the invasion of to the

New

York conveys a vivid impression of the overwhelming the odds patriots faced. In one day, forty-five ships hove into

eighty-two more were counted. Soon one hundred thirty ships of war and transports were disembarking ninety-three hundred soldiers on Staten Island, and this was sight; in another,

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN

13

only the advance force. Day by day, the sails of other fleets grew large above the eastern horizon until finally "five hun dred dark hulls" clustered off the Staten Island shore, and

and disciplined professional soldiers, fully armed, equipped and supplied, were ready to march against the rebels. It was the greatest fighting force that Great Britain had ever sent to sea, and in the years that fol loweddespite the French alliance and renewed war in Europe huge convoys comparable for their day and age to those of thousand

thirty-two

trained

World War

II continued across the Atlantic, bringing more more British regiments, more equipment and supplies. Such was the power with which, for eight seemingly endless

Hessians,

years, the patriots had to contend. Looking back, it is amazing that they could have withstood the odds for a week, a month,

or a year. That they could have stuck it out for the full, gruel ing course seems incredible, especially when one realizes that the rebelling Colonies were far from united in their own cause. Most historians today estimate that the Colonists were

divided into three distinct classes: one-third militant patriots; one-third equally staunch Tories; one-third fence-sitters. This last

contingent was motivated

wind up on

a single passion, the desire to the winning side; and throughout the long course

by

of the war, as a major battle or enveloping campaign would appear to have been decisive, the fence-sitters were at times lured into premature decision. This led to much hopping off the fence, much scrambling back again, much hopping off in the opposite direction. Literally thousands changed sides more

than once.

Such

selfish

and

fickle adherents, of course, did

not decide

The war was won in the end by the dedicated one-third who, in defiance of all common sense, of all logistics, held stubbornly steadfast to the cause to which they had com the outcome.

mitted themselves.

It

does not detract from their accomplish stupidities and blunders

ment to say that without the repeated

of British generalship they could not possibly have won.

The

WHAT MANNER

14

miracle

is

that, despite

OF

MEN

the almost astronomical odds for which stood the gaff; they

the blunders barely compensated, they remained dedicated to a cause that seemed, even to them, in a constant repetition of dark hours, the most hopeless of forlorn who live in an age when massive force, when the causes. of men and materiel and industrial production sheer

We

weight

determines the fate of battles, are inevitably led to wonder: What manner of men were these?

men who were

guided They were, if I read their story right, fired by a personal dedication to a a by special inspiration, cause in which they passionately believed. They were fighting for something new in the world. They had glimpsed a new dimension of freedom, and they were determined to possess and make it eternally their own. In Europe, for centuries, monarchies had ruled the destinies

it

of men. The Colonies had been settled in large part by religious and political rebels, by men who had broken with the au tocracies of Church and State. They had sought escape, and in a hostile wilderness, they had escaped. They had learned to their neighbors; they had per rely largely on themselves and fected their own rough rural democracy; and when England demanded that they help bear the burdens of empire without

any voice in its direction, they rebelled. This

is

not to say that

all

of their motives were pure and

at the outset at least, by lofty. The Revolution was supported, many men of essentially conservative cast who were primarily

concerned in striking off the business and commercial shackles by which Britain kept the Colonies in the dependent status of

poor relations. Ideals at times were less important than money. But the ideals were there, deep in the channel of a mainstream

composed of many currents. Perhaps the simplest way to phrase it is to say that the cen turies-old tradition of the divine right of kings was being chal a new of the divine of man. It was an lenged by concept right

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN age of

new and

15

revolutionary political thought. In France and

England, philosophical cults had been built up about what we today would consider the myth of an overriding Natural Law.

new philosophy held that Nature, in a perfect wisdom her own, had created all men to equal, with equal rights and the social in to and, justice liberty inevitably, participation This

all

and

political

order that would realize these

ideals.

In Europe,

the worship of Nature and Nature's way was at first little more than a drawing-room fad; but in America, where the harsh experiences of frontier life had proved a great leveler between the idea of social and political equality struck a

man and man,

responsive chord. It

found expression in the

philippics of

Samuel Adams, the

agitator who made the Revolution possible. Adams, in a propa

ganda effort that lasted for years and in the end proved persua sive throughout the Colonies, pictured the mother country as attempting to reduce the Colonists to a state of "slavery, pov erty, and misery," and he harped constantly on the theme that

England in

so doing

was

violating the inherent rights of

man.

He held that "the natural liberty of man is to be free from any and not to be under the will or legis authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for

superior lative

power on

earth,

his rule."

The potency

of the theme was best illustrated

by

the en

thusiastic reception accorded that strange mixture of logic and It was the passion that was Thomas Paine's "Common Sense."

most explosive document of its age; its circulation was tre mendous; and the phrases that leaped from its pages spread through the Colonies with the rapidity of a gale-fanned fire, Paine saw government as "a necessary evil," its only justifica tion lying in the need to curb lawless impulse, and he attacked the entire concept of monarchy. "One of the strongest natural he wrote, proofs of the f oUy of the hereditary right of kings," "is that

nature disapproves

it,

otherwise she

would not

so fre-

WHAT MANNER

16

quently turn

it

into ridicule

by

OF

MEN

an ass for a giving mankind

lion."

Paine called for the formation of a republic as the least re strictive form of government, he called for the severance of

with England, and he proclaimed: "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province or a kingdom; but of a continent of at of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the con least all ties

one-eighth part cern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time by the proceedings now." And he closed on a high note of exhortation, writing words that once read or heard were

ye that love mankind! Ye that dare forth! Every oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom the of spot hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long her like a stranger, and England expelled her. Europe regards hath given her warning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and

"O

forever memorable:

"

prepare in time an asylum for mankind! This, then, was the vision and the dream.

Not all men who saw had the the Revolution were not

all

month

enlistment, got a quick bellyful and simply deserted. Others still, switched to

must prove the winning

side.

Not all men saw it.

strength to act. The warriors of heroes. Many served their six-

Even

went home. Others what they thought

the steadfast, beaten

down

hammer

strokes of a never-ceasing sequence of by misfortunes, despaired of victory, and for them Thomas Paine again was the oracle who wrote in The American Crisis the at times

the

unforgettable

lines:

"These are the times that try men's

souls:

The summer soldier and the

sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it

Now,

deserves the love and thanks of

Tyranny,

like hell,

consolation with us, ous the triumph."

man and woman.

not easily conquered; yet we have this that the harder the conflict the more glori is

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN This book

is

about those

largely forgotten. citizens' war, the

It

it and who have been men and women, for in this

stood

includes both

women

and Indian scouts and spired yet in

who

also fought. It includes

sea fighters.

different motives, driven

by

17

many respects they were

They were by

alike.

cavalrymen

individuals in

different compulsions;

They were

novices and

amateurs in the business of war, reacting with a mixture of

and desperation to the demands of their day. were volunteers all. There was no draft, no hard in They escapable summons to compel them to go out and risk and die. They could have quit at any time. But they stuck it out, the best of them, through the cruel winter of Valley Forge with its bloody footprints on the snow and, after Valley Forge, through the ordeal of Morristown, a winter less-publicized but idealism, instinct

actually just as bad.

They

defied a succession of perils, they

bounced back from repeated wounds, and of their own free will, they joined up again and fought once more. They ignored the fact that they were the underdogs, perhaps simply because they had to ignore it if they were to hope at all, and they made almost a fetish of attempting the superhuman and the seemingly impossible. If they had not, almost certainly this nation never would have been created. From the crucible of great perils and terrible tensions there came astounding individual performances. Some of the feats of these forgotten men of the Revolution, defying the land of odds that we have been taught to respect, may seem almost un believable to our

more cynical modern

eyes.

An

age that,

is

preoccupied with the looming horror of intercontinental ballis tic missiles capable of obliterating entire cities is an age that is preoccupied with man in the mass, not man the individual In the Revolution, fortunately for us, the reverse was true. The fate of an entire army might rest on the incessant activity of

an Allan

McLane

riding the forward lines; the safety of an on the woodland skill of a Timothy

entire frontier could hinge

Murphy. The times were not yet

so complex that

man

as

an

18

WHAT MANNER

OF

MEN

individual had lost

all control of his fate; indeed, they called to exert himself, they challenged him with the need of supreme effort to save himself and his fellows. What follows

on him

some who heeded the call, who met the and who, in the process, performed some almost in challenge are the stories of

credible exploits.

The cavalrymen

of the Revolution 'were an especially hard-riding and dashing breed. Yet, peculiarly enough, 'when the war began, the patriots had virtually no cavalry. The men 'who fought at Lex

ington and Concord 'were farmers who fired at the redcoats from the shelter of rock fences, and the early battles were waged almost

by an amateur infantry. Even among the officers there were few who had any conception

exclusively

of the vital role an alert cavalry could play as the eyes and ears of an army. Most of those who had had training in warfare had fought on the frontiers, and they were more familiar with the technique of Indian fighting than they were with the large-scale

maneuvering of armies in the open field. George Washington himself had been a frontier hero, and he was handicapped at the outset by the limitations of his own knowledge and experience.

He

did not realize at once

how

essential it

was to have a mobile

cavalry screen riding the forward lines to feel out the movements of the enemy and to guard against surprise. The result was that

time and again in the early going the British struck where they least expected and inflicted defeats that would have crushed

were a

less resilient

and determined army. 19

WHAT MANNER

20

OF

MEN

It was not until the patriots had delphia^ not until the grim winter of 1777-78 had clamped its icy hand on the mow-shrouded misery of Valley Forge, that Wash ington began to employ cavalry as it should be used. Then one of

lost their capital city of Phila

the most dashing figures of the

war became, almost

overnight, the

hero of the army.

He was Allan McLane, lution.

Though he

the

first

great cavalryman of the

Revo

and to "fade Allan McJLane was

ivas destined to suffer cruel eclipse

virtually forgotten -from the pages of history?

r

the kind of man ewhose fire and fervor still stir the pulses. He fwas one of those rarities in any time, a dedicated idealist a man so enwrapped in a cause that he sacrificed to it both personal -for tune tend personal glory. In Allan McLane were all the qualities of the crusader, passionate hatred mingling with passionate belief. The combination ewas a double-edged sword. The -fervor of con viction spurred the man to incessant action. He rode the -forward lines with such relentless purpose that it seemed he never rested, t

he never slept. The British, penned up in Philadelphia, quickly found it was almost impossible to stick their heads outside the city without encountering the rough riders of Allan McLane. Yet the same fervor that made McLane an incomparable commander in the field was destined, with a kind of preordained inevitability, to bring him into conflict with those among his own comrades who were less possessed by ideals than he. In Allan McLane, the seed of triionph and the seed of personal tragedy were the same seed

own impassioned and incorruptible fervor. It is much as the flaming quality of his deeds, that McLane today seem a unique and challenging figure.

the seed of his this perhaps, as

makes Allan

CHAPTER

*

*

MCLANE WAS

*

McLane

Allan

CAPT. ALLAN

II

a

handsome man of medium

height,

lithe, agile, intense. In the winter of Valley Forge, he had earned his reputation as the crack cavalryman of the Conti

nental

Army.

Incessantly

on the move, he had roamed the

countryside around the patriots' conquered capital of Phila delphia; he had swooped down upon British foraging parties, snatching from them the supplies they had so carefully gath

had developed a spy network that kept George Wash informed of events inside the city, where the British ington dined and danced and wenched as the patriots froze, sickened, starved. It was now the spring of 1778, and rumors spread that the British were about to evacuate Philadelphia and return to their major base at New York. The rumors spurred Allan McLane to keep the forward lines by day, by night, driving men and horses to the brittle edge of exhaustion. Information was what he sought, and on the morning of June 16, 1778, he rode to a prearranged rendezvous and to what he well recog nized might be a carefully laid British trap. The plot had begun to develop the previous day. In a journal ered; he

21

WHAT MANNER

22

OF

MEN

recorded some of his more exciting adven himself in the third person as was tures, McLane, writing of

in

which he

later

his habit, described the preliminaries.

of a Citizen residing in the City 5th the Daughter would meet him at ... the her father the Capt. that

"On the informed

1

Horse House near the Rising Sun Tavern between daybreak and sunrise in the morning of the i6th and give him intelligence of importance," It is

pected

McLane wrote.

obvious from the tenor of the journal that McLane sus the possibility of treachery. His activities had marked

would want his dangerous man, the British naturally a lured he was and by tempting promise. Informa being scalp, tion was being dangled before his nose, and he must ride alone him

as a

All the possibilities of a trap were there, and McLane, better not go unprepared. recognizing this, decided that he had to get

it.

Turning out

his entire

troop,

he

left the vicinity of

Chestnut

Hill in that darkest

hour before the dawn. As he rode toward

the rendezvous, he

made

his

dispositions.

He

kept just two

dragoons near him, ordering the rest of the troop to follow at a distance and to halt out of sight in the rear of the Rising Sun, a tavern located in the countryside near Germantown.

The two

dragoons, he posted as vedettes on a road linking the Frankfort Road and the Old York Road, and he ordered them to fire their pistols one after the other as a signal to the waiting troop at the first sign of the enemy. Then, having guarded as

well as he could against surprise, his rendezvous.

McLane rode on

alone to

A furtive-acting man was waiting, and McLane began talk ing to

him

inside the gate of the yard. They a patrol of thirteen British horse rode just

met when from the south,

circled

a small

hill

had hardly

up quietly

and a patch of woods, and

then launched themselves at a gallop straight at the two

men in

the horse pen.

McLane's informant whether a patriot or tool of the British,

M

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WHAT MANNER

24

OF

MEN

the Captain never did discover-looked at the galloping patrol " and cried out: "The enemy!

"Save yourself,"

McLane told him.

informant scuttled away; the cavalryman leaped to his horse. Instead of trying to escape, he put spurs to his mount toward which the at the and launched himself

The

gate

straight

were charging. The leading trooper had dismounted and started to open the gate when McLane's horse reared above

British

into the man's him, and McLane, bending down, fired a pistol startled face.

As

his horse carried

his saddle

him

and shouted to

clear of the yard, his

own men,

McLane

rose in

hidden behind the

Rising Sun.

"Charge, men!" he cried. "Close, close,

make them

dis

mount."

The sequel is best told in McLane's own words. "At die instant the Captain fired his pistol," McLane wrote, "the [American] horsemen appeared in the

Enemy's rear,

fired

and advanced upon them. They became alarmed and ran in Grate Confusion down the roads and through the fields toward the British picket near the

Globe Mill.

"They by a body

British-like) they'd

reported (a

lie,

been ambuscaded

of horse and infantry and cut their way through them without a loss but one dragoon wounded slightly."

McLane

how he

could possibly have known their superiors, but it was told dragoons fervent patriot and fierce hater that he

did not explain

what story the

British

typical of the

man

should contemptuously describe it as a "lie, British-like." The incident sheds revealing light on the personality of the fighter whose active career embraced the of battle experienced by Washington's

whole broad sweep

Army. Allan McLane

He

got into the war at its very outset, and he stayed to the end. was one of the rare heroes in the disastrous Battle of Long Island that sealed the downfall of

scout whose intelligence

New York; he was a master

more than once saved an army; he was

ALLAN MC LANE

25

who passed through the British lines before the bloody Monmouth and who gathered the information that led to the midnight bayonet charge at Stony Point. And finally, a spy

battle of

most importantly, he was the secret agent who, on a longforgotten mission, carried the dispatches and advanced the clinching arguments that determined the strategy of Yorktown.

Few men played a greater role in the events leading to the climactic surrender of Cornwallis and American independence yet the very name of Allan McLane has been consigned to almost total oblivion. It is a fate that McLane foresaw, a fate against which he bitterly and futilely rebelled. For the man who had no doubts that the dragoons fleeing from the horse yard of the Rising Sun had told "a lie, Britishlike"

was

a

man who had

all

the defects of his virtues.

He was

one of those rare and priceless and difficult individuals who are too dedicated. He was a zealot in the cause of liberty and democracy. As well as fighting like a madman for the cause he believed in so passionately, he sacrificed his considerable private it and impoverished his family. Almost inevitably, he was embittered by repeated discoveries that not all his brothers-in-arms, not all the leaders of the rebellion, were so he clashed re selfless or so loftily inspired. In disillusionment,

fortune to

could not peatedly with the glory-hunters, though he himself refrain from bitterness at being deprived of his just share of

he worshiped glory; he despised the self-serving politicians; only Washington and even Washington, he sometimes com the end, having made himself plained, was duped and misled. In as famous among his comrades for his acerbic disposition as he

was among the enemy for his hard-riding valor in battle, he wrote on his retirement from the army that he had "Received nothing but abuse and Insults from the people then in power as a reward for his sacrifices and faithful services from 1775." run through Self-pity and resentment of personal injustices the disconnected writings of Allan McLane. Strong emotion he sometimes committed to paper with such an angry slash of

WHAT MANNER

2