Washington's Crossing by Fischer
Ref: David Fischer (2004). Washington’s Crossing. Oxford University Press.
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Summary
Free Americans in 1776 were a restless, striving, entrepreneurial people, who routinely assumed risk for the sake of profit. They were a practical people who judged actions by results and were highly instrumental in their way of thinking about the world. When they went to war, Americans carried this culture with them. Their attitudes toward fighting were different from those of Europe’s feudal and aristocratic elites, who thought of war as a nobleman’s vocation and a pursuit of honor. Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.
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US Revolutionary War
The US & UK had different tests of success. The UK had to conquer; the Americans needed only to survive.
Commanders worried mainly about two offenses: desertion and mutiny.
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British Forces
Between 1755 & 1764, the British army fought on five continents and defeated every power that stood against it.
Whether by peace or by war, their policy was to “enable the Loyalists to recapture control of American affairs.” The Howes had been told that the rebellion was the work of a few “hot-headed designing men.” General James Robertson, who had served 20y in the colonies and was thought to be an expert, declared that two-thirds of the Americans were loyal to the Crown. PA Tory Joseph Galloway estimated that the true proportion of Loyalists was closer to four-fifths.
The British brought 23K British Regulars, plus 10K German troops, many civilian workers, and several thousand women of the army. Another 13K troops were sent to Canada.
Altogether British regiments used 170 drum signals, and soldiers were drilled to move instantly on hearing them. They also learned to “lock” their formation, so that “the front rank knelt down, the second rank shifted slightly to the right, and the third moved a half-pace” to the right. The object was to concentrate the largest volume of fire on the smallest possible front.
British officers had little reputation to gain by victory, and much to lose if something went wrong. Not much glory could be won by defeating a rabble of “skulking peasants.” But all reputation could be lost if the peasants won, and they were dangerously unpredictable.
British Strategies
Total Warfare: Relentlessly seek out and completely destroy the rebel army (Gen. Henry Clinton).
Decisive Action: Greatly reinforce the British army in America. With the navy, it should seize and hold NYC and make it a major base of operations. A smaller force should be sent to Canada with orders to move south, and the two forces should take control of the Hudson Valley; the key was speed and skillful maneuver- “the army at the opening of the campaign, being in force, would probably by rapid movements bring the rebels to an action upon equal terms, before they could cover themselves by works of any significance.” The object was to catch them off balance and win a series of actions without the heavy losses of a pounding match. He wrote hopefully of “a decisive action, then which nothing is more to be desired or sought for by us, as the most effectual means to terminate this expensive war (Howe Brothers).”
Divide & Conquer: Seize and hold major corridors and river lines, especially the line of the Hudson River. British leaders believed that New England was the seat of the rebellion. If the Hudson could be held, that incendiary region could be separated from the rest of the colonies, and the rebellion could be defeated in detail. This method of divide and conquer looked very promising to the Howe brothers. It made the best use of limited resources and allowed them to concentrate their strength against a divided enemy (several British officers).
Shrecklichkeit (German): The deliberate use of extreme violence and terror to break the American will to resist.
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American Forces
America’s greatest advantage was the moral strength of a just cause. They were fighting on their own ground, in defense of homes and families, for ideas of liberty and freedom.
The American ambush outraged British officers as an atrocity that was forbidden by the laws of war.
Franklin observed that any solution acceptable in America would require Parliament to stop taxing the colonies without their consent and allow Americans to manage their own affairs.
Throughout the war, Washington’s strategic purposes were constant: win independence by maintaining American resolve to continue the war, preserve an American army in being, and raise the cost of the war to the enemy.
American Strategies
Defensive Warfare: Match strategy to the soldiers. Washington observed that American troops were not willing to die for honor or duty. “The honor of making a brave defense does not seem to be a sufficient stimulus, when the success is very doubtful, and the falling into the enemy’s hands probable.” Washington concluded that “on our side the war should be defensive”; “we should on all occasions avoid a general action or put anything to the risqué unless compelled by necessity.” It would be a “retreating army,” defending what it could, yielding when it must, keeping the field and watching for an opportunity when “a brilliant stroke could be made with any probability of success.”
Keep a strong Continental army and navy in being and attack wherever an opportunity presented itself, while offering no opening to an enemy. Canada and the northern frontier offered one opportunity. The West Indies were another. Centers of Tory strength were a third. This approach combined the tactical and operational offensive with a strategic defensive. George Washington thought well of it.
Economic Warfare: Make economic and maritime war on Britain, mainly through privateers. American privateers took to the seas in growing numbers. They captured twice as many British ships as were in the Howes’ New York armada and inflicted millions of pounds in losses on British merchants.
Fabian Defense: Americans should avoid a big battle, retreat into the interior, even to the Appalachian Mountains, and wear down the European armies by slow attrition. This idea had the merit of clarity, but it failed the test of politics and public opinion (Horatio Gates).
The strategy is named after Fabius Cunctator, the Roman general who fought a delaying campaign against the Carthaginians.
Irregular Warfare: Avoid a major battle against British Regulars and suggested that smaller forces should resist by fighting an irregular war, which could take a steady toll of British and German strength and do fatal injury to a regular army; not a partisan war or a guerrilla war, but a war of small, highly mobile forces under independent command of officers such as Lee himself (Gen. Charles Lee).
War of Posts: A defensive idea, in which the enemy would be invited to attack strong positions. The object was to avoid a general action on open ground where everything could be lost in an afternoon. It promised the same results as Bunker Hill but required an obliging enemy (George Washington).
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Prussian Forces
Of 13,988 Hessian soldiers who survived the war, 3,194 (23%) chose to remain in America.
In America the Hessians shared a deep contempt for the Rebeller, as they called their opponents. They despised the American language of liberty and freedom as the cant of cowards, traitors, and poltroons. They were skilled professional officers, proud to serve in the Hessian army.
By savage discipline and endless drill, the Hessian army developed the dark art of training men to a condition of instinctive and unquestioning obedience.
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Quarter
Quarter: The privilege of being allowed to surrender and to become a prisoner.
By custom and tradition, soldiers in Europe believed that they had a right to extend quarter or deny it. If a city resisted a siege, then the attackers had the “right” to kill all its inhabitants. If a fort refused to surrender when closely invested, then the defenders could be put to the sword. In the ethics of European war, quarter was granted to some people and refused to others, according to their conduct and the will of the winner. In these “laws of war,” no captive had an inalienable right to be taken prisoner, or even to life itself. This idea of selective quarter appeared among British troops at the battle of Long Island and the siege of Fort Washington. It was demonstrated again on the battlefield at Princeton, where wounded Americans were denied quarter and murdered by British infantry, with their officers looking on. In the Forage War it happened again. British troops often allowed Americans to surrender and treated them decently, but sometimes they denied quarter and killed captives, and on occasion were ordered to do so. Examples were recorded by Hessian Captain Johann Ewald and British Sergeant Thomas Sullivan. American attitudes were very different. With some exceptions, American leaders believed that quarter should be extended to all combatants as a matter of right. Sometimes in the heat of battle this was not done, but not in any known action by the American army during the New Jersey campaign. George Washington and high commanders never threatened to deny quarter to an enemy. This difference persisted through the war, with some exceptions in the southern campaign. Americans were outraged when quarter was denied to their soldiers, as often happened in New York and New Jersey. One of the most notorious incidents occurred during the Forage War at the battle of Drake’s Farm. Charles Scott’s Virginia infantry was fighting a British force in an open field. At one stage the Americans were driven back and left seven wounded men on the field. The ranking American, Lieutenant William Kelly, was severely wounded in the thigh and attempted to surrender with the other men. British troops refused quarter and murdered them all. They “dashed out their brains with their muskets and ran them through with their bayonets, made them like sieves.” As the Americans lay dying, the British troops brutally plundered their bodies with great violence. The Americans recovered the mutilated corpses and were shocked by what they had found, all the more as it had happened again and again on other fields.
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People
George Washington
Washington lived by a creed of Self-government, discipline, virtue, reason, and restraint.
Washington urged his officers always to be the drivers of events and never allow themselves to be “drove.”
Washington lived by a philosophy of moral striving through virtuous action and right conduct, by powerful men who believed that their duty was to lead others in a changing world. Most of all, it was a way of combining power with responsibility, and liberty with discipline.
The only fear that George Washington ever acknowledged in his life was a fear that his actions would “reflect eternal dishonor upon me.”
A major part of his code of honor was an idea of courage. The men around young George Washington assumed that a gentleman would act with physical courage in the face of danger, pain, suffering, and death. They gave equal weight to moral courage in adversity, prosperity, trial, and temptation. For them, a vital part of leadership was the ability to persist in what one believed to be the right way. This form of courage was an idea of moral stamina, which Washington held all his life. Stamina in turn was about strength and endurance as both a moral and a physical idea.
It was typical of Washington’s style of leadership to present a promising proposal as someone else’s idea, rather than his own. It was his way of encouraging open discussion and constructive debate.
Washington’s maturing style of quiet, consultative leadership was uniting cantankerous Yankees, stubborn Pennsylvanians, autonomous Jerseymen, honor-bound Virginians, and independent backcountry men in a common cause.
Washington met with his soldiers frequently in councils of war and encouraged a free exchange of views. He also listened more than he talked and drew freely from the best ideas that were put before him.
In early councils Washington took a vote. Later he worked more skillfully by the construction of consensus. In that way he created a community of open discourse and a spirit of mutual forbearance. He encouraged his lieutenants to join freely in the common effort.
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Misc Quotes
“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 man and woman.”-Thomas Paine.
“America is never to be regained without making an absolute conquest of her, and given the nature and constitution of the Country, in which every man is, to a certain degree, a soldier, a victory . . . can seldom prove as decisive as it would be in Europe.”-Harcourt.
“No country can maintain an army as cheaply as the Americans do.”-John Ewald, Prussian Officer.
“Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity. We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.”-Dr. Benjamin Rush.
“Time will not admit nor Circumstance allow of a Reference to Congress. The Fate of War is so uncertain, dependent on so many Contingencies. A Day, nay an Hour is so important in the Crisis of public Affairs that it would be folly to wait for Relief from the deliberative Councils of Legislative Bodies.”
“He is as perfect in treachery as if he had been an American born. . . . They swallow their oaths of allegiance to the King and Congress alternately, with as much ease as your lordship does Poached eggs. . . . I think nothing but a total extirpation of the inhabitants of this country will ever make it a desirable object of any Prince or State.”-A British Officer on Lee.
Don’t Tread on Me: The Culpeper Minutemen mustered three hundred men with bucktails in their hats and tomahawks or scalping knives in their belts. One of its members wrote that they wore “strong brown linen hunting-shirts, dyed with leaves and the words ‘Liberty or Death,’ the dark image of a timber rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, and the words “Don’t Tread on Me.”
“Give an American army a wall to fight behind and they will fight forever.”
“I am determined to live free or die.”-John Stark on the US Revolutionary Cause.
“Selling one’s subjects to the English was like selling cattle to have their throats cut.”-Frederick the Great to Voltaire, Prussia.
“The worst slavery is to be in bondage to unbridled passion and not in full possession of himself.”-George Washington.
“Only a gentleman of independent means could be truly free.-George Washington.
“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.”-Washington (1757).
“A people unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove.”-George Washington.
“Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother’s Sword has been sheathed in a Brother’s Breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice? “
“One of the most common fallacies of military reasoning: preparing to fight the last battle.”
Rommel’s Law: Battles are won or lost by the quartermasters before the first shot is fired.
“The best force multiplier is good intelligence.”
“The guiding principles of the American Republic would always be the policy of humanity….I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this—Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won’t prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed.”-John Adams.
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Chronology
1784: ‘Shrapnel’ is invented by Revolutionary War Veteran Lt Henry Shrapnel.-Washington by Fischer.
1779: A musket firing test is made by a battalion of Norfolk militia; at 70yds distance, only 20% struck a target 8’ wide and 2’ high.-Washington by Fischer.
4 Jan- 24 Mar, 1777: The Forage War & Winter Quarters; Washington leads the continental army to winter quarters in Morristown, PA while small parties of Jersey militia take to the field and conduct petite guerre using hit and run tactics- attacking where they see an opening, killing a few British regulars, and disappearing into the countryside. The successful attacks emboldened patriots throughout the colonies and by the spring of 1777, the war was growing unpopular in the UK. A Press Act was soon be passed to maintain the army.-Washington by Fischer.
Dec, 1776: Newport, RI is captured by British General Howe.-Washington by Fischer.
3 Jul, 1776- Jan, 1777: The New York and New Jersey Campaign; The Howe brothers spread their forces across the Jersey countryside, maintaining order amongst loyalist populations and creating an extended chain of garrisons reaching from the Delaware River to the Hudson. In 12 weeks, Washington loses large parts of three states, and 90% of the army under his command. In occupied NJ, the Howes’ policy returned thousands of Americans to the Crown, including a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Many supporters of the Revolution gave way to panic and despair.-Washington by Fischer.
3 Jan, 1777: The Battle of Princeton; American forces attack British forces along two lines of advance, one intended to draw attention while the other made the main assault from another direction.-Washington by Fischer.
26 Dec, 1776: The Battle of Trenton; American colonists conduct a night river crossing of the Delaware followed by a bold assault on the Hessian garrison and a fighting retreat. Professional observers judged that entire performance to be one of the most brilliant in military history.-Washington by Fischer.
24 Sep, 1776: Execution of American Colonist Capt. Nathan Hale, ordered to death by summary execution on the charge of espionage without trial by General Howe. Hale, an earnest young Yale graduate, volunteered to disguise himself as a Dutch schoolmaster and went into the enemy’s camp with great courage, but little skill at espionage. He incautiously revealed himself to Colonel Robert Rogers, who had been playing both sides, and Hale was betrayed to British leaders. Incriminating papers were found in his possession, and New England Tories (probably including his own cousin) confirmed his identity. Before his death Nathan Hale repeated part of a passage from Addison’s Cato, the great model for American Whigs: How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!-Washington by Fischer.
0100, 21 Sep, 1776: A fire breaks out in NYC after the Americans retreat from the city.-Washington by Fischer.
27 Aug, 1776: The Battle of Long Island; the British under Cornwallis conduct an amphibious assault on Long Island with light infantry, grenadiers, highland BNs, and Hessian Jägers. The Colonists flee.-Washington by Fischer.
15 Aug, 1776: Two large British military convoys and two convoys with ~8K Hessian troops arrive in New York.-Washington by Fischer.
1776: Flag Hoists are introduced by Lord Howe to his American Squadron as a new system for maneuvering fleets that allowed an admiral to “converse” with his captains; a “new era” of C2 at sea.-Washington by Fischer.
27 Feb, 1776: The Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, NC; A 1000 strong force of American revolutionaries under Col. Alexander Lillington and Richard Caswell defeat an ~1600 strong force comprised of Scottish Highlanders and NC Loyalists, partly thwarting a British Invasion of the Southern colonies. One American is killed while the British lose half their force (captured and/or killed) (Wiki).
1 Jan, 1776: Rebel- occupied Norfolk is destroyed by fire by retreating British forces under Dunmore (Wiki).
9 Dec, 1775: The Battle of Great Bridge in VA; Colonial VA militia forces under Col. William Woodford defeat British forces under Dunmore removing any remaining vestiges of British power over the VA colony (Wiki).
19 Apr, 1775- 17 Mar, 1776: The Siege of Boston; American militiamen contain British troops to Boston (Wiki).
Jun, 1775: The Battle of Bunker Hill (aka Breeds Hill); the first major battle of the American Revolution, fought in Charlestown, MA. Although the British won the battle, Bunker Hill encouraged thousands of Americans to join the Continental Army (Wiki).
10 May, 1775: The Battle of Ticonderoga; A small force of Green Mountain Boys under the command of Ethan Allen and Col. Benedict Arnold surprised and capture the British’ garrison of Fort Ticonderoga. The cannons and other armaments were transported to Boston by Col. Henry Knox and used to fortify Dorchester Heights to break the standoff at the siege of Boston (Wiki).
19 Apr, 1775: The Battles of Concord & Lexington ignite the American Revolutionary War. Acting on orders from London to suppress the rebellious colonists, General Thomas Gage orders his troops to seize the colonists’ military stores at Concord. Due to early warning by Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott (one if by land, two if by sea), the British force of 700 men under LTC Francis Smith was met on Lexington Green by 77 Local Minutemen who had been forewarned of the raid. It is unknown who fired the “shot heard round the world (Ralph Waldo Emerson)” however 8 American militiamen were killed to one British wounded. The militiamen withdrew to Concord. At the North Bridge in Concord, ~400 militiamen engaged ~100 British regulars who had broken into companies to search for supplies. The British companies fell back to their units and returned to Boston in a tactical withdraw under harassing fire after being reinforced by another 1000 British soldiers under Brigadier General Hugh Percy. The accumulating militias then blockaded the narrow land access to Charlestown and the siege of Boston begin (Wiki).
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