08:22 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 7, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

On Sept. 20, 1776, New York City suffered a conflagration that rivals 9/11 as the worst in its history.

Congress had expressly forbidden retreating American troops to burn New York, but a group of rebels torched it anyway. Flames ripped through churches and consumed 600 houses; enraged British soldiers grabbed men they held responsible for setting the fires and threw them into burning houses.

Journal graphic / Tom Murphy

After a narrow escape from New York City, the American army engaged the British again at Harlem Heights. Washington then retreats further north, leaving For Lee and Fort Washington in the capable hands of General Greene.

"It is almost impossible to conceive a Scene of more horror and distress," wrote British Lt. Frederick Mackenzie. "The terror was encreased by the horrid noise of the burning and falling houses . . . the rattling of above 100 wagons, sent in from the Army. . . .The confused voices of so many men, the Shrieks and cries of the Women and children. . . ."

Nathanael Greene watched the conflagration from the safety of a fort high above the Hudson River in New Jersey. Washington had sent Greene there to take command of Fort Lee, set on a bluff 300 feet above the river on the Jersey side.

Fort Lee was designed to work in concert with Fort Washington, built atop a similar cliff directly across the river in New York. American soldiers raised those two forts on high hills at a narrows in the river in hopes of shelling British shipping in the Hudson below.

A private stationed in Fort Lee noted that when Greene took over, "There was immediately a great change with respect to the discipline of the troops which before was very lax."

Greene was tired of trying to form good, disciplined soldiers out of militia men who came and went on short-term enlistments. From his fort he wrote to his brother, Jacob, The policy of Congress has been the most absurd and ridiculous imaginable, pouring in militia men who come and go every month. A military force established upon such principles defeats itself. People coming from home with all the tender feelings of domestic life are not sufficiently fortified with natural courage to stand the shocking scenes of war. To march over dead men, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded, I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride.

Besides lacking the nerve to march over dead friends, militia men fresh from their farms were just too fickle -- they deserted in droves. "Great numbers of the Rebels desert to us daily," Mackenzie wrote in his diary. "Near 80 deserters came in one day recently. . . . By the most authentic accounts which we receive of the State of their Army in this neighbourhood, it is extremely sickly, and many desert."

One of those deserters, Ensign William Demont, sneaked out of Fort Washington on the night of Nov. 2, a cold night with a fresh wind blowing down the river. He crossed into the British lines, carrying detailed plans of the fort on New York Island.

"I sacrificed all I was in the world, and brought with [me] the plans for Fort Washington," Demont later said. "I may with justice affirm, from my knowledge of the works I saved the lives of many of his Majesty's subjects."

Demont's treachery might have saved some of his majesty's subjects, but it led to the capture of 2,800 American soldiers, one of the greatest losses in the eight years of the American Revolution. And the loss of that fort, with its 2,800 men, was laid squarely at the feet of Maj.-Gen. Nathanael Greene.

ON THE NIGHT of Nov. 5, 1776, three British ships set their sails up the Hudson River, passing through the narrows between forts Washington and Lee. The guns of the two forts opened with a thunder that shook the valley.

In a letter to Washington, Greene boasted that the ships were prodigiously shatterd from the fire of our Cannon.

The ships were indeed damaged, but they were not stopped -- they successfully ran past those forts up the Hudson.

While reading Greene's letter, Washington had a sudden flash of insight: Fort Washington was not worth protecting.

The 1,200 men then inside that fort were the last American soldiers still on New York Island. The rest had either retreated with Washington to White Plains or were with Greene across the river in Fort Lee.

For Washington, the important news in Greene's letter was not that the ships had been damaged, but that they had passed the forts intact. If Fort Washington was not able to stop British shipping, he reasoned, then why risk a defense of that garrison? On Nov. 8, 1776, Washington put this question to Greene, his youngest general but one of his most trusted:

"The late passage of the 3 Vessells up the North River (which we have just received advice of) is so plain a Proof of the inefficacy of all the obstructions we have thrown into it that I cannot but think it will fully Justify a Change in the Disposition which has been made [to defend the fort.] If we cannot prevent Vessells passing up, and the Enemy are possessed of the surrounding Country, what valuable purpose can it answer to attempt to hold a post from which the expected Benefit cannot be had. I am therefore inclined to think it will not be prudent to hazard the Men and Stores on Mount Washington, but as you are on the Spot, leave it to you to give such Orders as to evacuating Mount Washington as you judge best. . . ."

Washington, 70 miles north of Greene, placed a lot of responsibility on his young general. To be fair to Greene, his first instinct had been to pull every last soldier and cannon off Manhattan Island as soon as Long Island fell in September.

Now in November, Greene was more sanguine about American prospects in Fort Washington, America's last holdout on New York. On Nov. 9 he wrote to Washington:

Upon the whole I cannot help thinking the Garrison is of advantage, and I cannot conceive the Garrison to be in any great danger. The men can be brought off at any time. . . . .

For the rest of his life those words would haunt Nathanael Greene.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources for today's installment:

Diary of Frederick Mackenzie, Vol. 1. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1930.

Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soliders. Copyright 1973. Henry Holt and Company: New York. Owl Books Edition, 1999.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. I. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1976.

A continuing series.