03:07 PM EDT on Thursday, June 8, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

It's said that a general's education is paid for in blood. For Nathanael Greene, the tuition came due on Manhattan Island at a place called Fort Washington. And the price was high.

The fort stood on a bluff named Mount Washington that quickly rose from the Hudson River to a height of 230 feet. From the river's edge, the fort looked unconquerable.

Journal graphic / Tom Murphy

Washington's forces leave Manhattan after the battle of Harlem Heights. The British move troops up the East River to Long Island Sound and then march overland to White Plains where the armies clash again. They break off pursuit of the Americans and head south to capture their last strong holds, Fort Washington and Fort Lee on the Hudson. Washington and his battered army flee south to Trenton.

On the morning of Nov. 15, 1776 -- a day of fair, mild weather, a British drummer beat a roll at the foot of Mount Washington, a signal that the British wanted to make a proposal. The proposal, from Col. James Patterson to the American commander of Fort Washington, was basically: Surrender, or die.

The American commander was a Pennsylvania rifleman named Col. Robert Magaw, a backcountry lawyer before the war.

Magaw sent a message across the Hudson to Nathanael Greene, his commanding general at Fort Lee on the Jersey shore. Patterson "waits for an answer," Magaw wrote. "I shall send a proper one."

Magaw's answer to the British summons ended: "actuated by the most glorious cause that mankind ever fought in I am determined to defend the post to the very last extremity."

Greene concurred with the decision. At 4 p.m. he sent a letter to Washington, encamped 6 miles away in Hackensack: I have directed Col. Magaw to defend the place until he hears from me. Greene also sent reinforcements, swelling the number of men at Fort Washington to 2,900 regulars; in retrospect, that was a big mistake.

Dawn, Nov. 16, brought the roar of cannon reverberating through the Hudson River valley. British batteries opened up on Fort Washington.

Later that morning, 8,000 British and Hessian soldiers, schooled in using the bayonet, began a methodical climb up the steep slopes of Mount Washington.

On the north side of the mountain, 4,000 Hessian soldiers dressed in yellow breeches and blue coats met stiff resistance; they fell by the dozens yet they continued to climb, pulling themselves up a near vertical slope by grabbing the roots of beech trees, scrabbling through a hail of shot.

Washington had ridden in from Hackensack to confer with Greene and two other generals, Israel Putnam and Hugh Mercer, an excellent general who might have overshadowed Greene but for his death early in the war at Princeton.

From Fort Lee, the four generals could see and hear the British assault on Fort Washington; they decided to row over for a better look. They landed and soon found themselves between an advancing party of Scottish Highlanders and an attacking party of Hessians.

There we all stood in a very awkward situation, Greene wrote. We all urged his Excellency to come off. I offerd to stay. General Putnam did the same, and so did General Mercer, but his Excellency thought it best for all of us to come off together, which we did about half an hour before the Enemy surrounded the fort.

In a reckless maneuver, the four generals stepped into one skiff and were rowed back to the Jersey shore, avoiding what would have been a disastrous capture.

What they saw from Fort Lee was depressing; legend has it that Washington watched with tears in his eyes. The Hessians on the north side gained the top of the hill; then, with oboes blowing a spirited tune, they drove American defenders toward the fort's earthen walls.

All around Mount Washington the scene was the same: Americans retreating inside the walls till they were packed in there so thickly they could not even raise their muskets in defense.

Around 4 p.m. the American flag flying over Fort Washington dropped; a white flag of surrender took its place. Fort Washington was soon rechristened Fort Knyphausen, named for the Hessian commander who led the attack on the north slope.

All of the 2,837 Americans holding that fort were killed or captured. Hessian soldiers, enraged at the deaths of 58 comrades, wanted to slaughter every American with the bayonet, but commanders would not let them. It might have been more humane to have killed them on the spot.

The survivors streamed out of the fort between two lines of jeering Hessians and laid their arms in a pile.

The Rebel prisoners were in general but very indifferently clothed , British Lt. Mackenzie noted in his diary; few of them appeared to have a Second shirt, nor did they appear to have washed themselves during the Campaign. A great many of them were lads under fifteen, and old men: and few of them had the appearance of Soldiers. Their odd figures frequently excited the laughter of our Soldiers.

This dirty, poorly clothed flock of boys and old men was herded down to Manhattan, where most were locked up in squalid warehouses or in dank prison ships rotting at anchor in New York Harbor. Nearly 2,000 of the men captured at Fort Washington eventually died of disease on the ships and in prisons.

Besides the loss of 90 officers and nearly 2,800 soldiers, the Americans left in Fort Washington 34 cannon, two howitzers, scarce ammunition and enough food to feed thousands for a fortnight. This was the second-largest loss of men and material in the entire war, behind only the later fall of Charleston, S.C., and many laid the blame on Washington's young general, Nathanael Greene.

From across the river at Fort Lee, Greene wrote to Henry Knox: I feel mad, vext, sick, and sorry. Never did I need the consoling voice of a friend more than now. Happy should I be to see you. This is a most terrible event. Its consequences are justly to be dreaded.

Now, Fort Lee

After losing Fort Washington with all its men and material, Nathanael Greene had no time to lick his wounds. He still held Fort Lee, perched on a bluff across from Mount Washington on the Jersey side of the Hudson, but he now knew that this post was also indefensible.

Washington ordered Fort Lee's evacuation, an order easier written than executed.

Greene had been so optimistic about holding Forts Washington and Lee that he'd laid in enormous amount of stores on the Jersey side of the river. He'd planned to feed and equip 2,000 men at Fort Lee for five months; now he had to move most of his 3,100 barrels of flour, 3,100 barrels of pork, 300 tons of hay and 10,000 bushels of grain, lest it all fall into the enemy's hands.

On Nov. 18, 1776, two days after the fall of Fort Washington, Greene wrote to Washington: I am sending off the Stores as fast as I can get Waggons. The Stores here are large, and the transportation by land will be almost endless.

Greene had been optimistic about holding the two forts, but he had also been realistic: while making plans to hold the forts for five months he'd also been making a plan to feed the Army in case of a forced retreat across New Jersey. To this end he had stocked a chain of supply depots stretching from the northeast corner of New Jersey southwest to Trenton.

With the fall of Forts Washington and Lee, the Americans had lost, in just four days, more than 3,000 soldiers, 46 cannon, 8,000 cannon shot, 400,000 cartridges and 2,800 muskets. They had also left behind almost all their tools, making it impossible for them to dig even a trench while fleeing from advancing British troops across the flat plains of New Jersey.

The British Lt. Frederick Mackenzie wrote in his dairy: This is now the time to push these rascals, and if we do, and not give them time to recover themselves, we may depend upon it they will never make head again."

The British did indeed push the American "rascals," a wet, dirty, and dispirited bunch. From The Winter Soldiers by Richard Ketchum comes this observation from a New Jersey resident in November 1776: "The night was cold, dark, and rainy, but I had a fair view of Greene's troops from the light of the windows as they passed on our side of the street. They marched two abreast, looked ragged, some without a shoe to their feet and most of them wrapped in their blankets."

At Newark, the Americans burned their few remaining tents to keep them from falling into the hands of the British bearing down on them. At night everyone slept, or tried to, in the cold November rain, wrapped in wet blankets, many without coats or shoes. By day they slogged along muddy roads toward Philadelphia.

Along the route Greene's aide-de-camp, Thomas Paine, author of the widely read pamphlet "Common Sense," began drafting his next pamphlet. Tradition has it that he wrote some of it by firelight on a drum head: "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. . . ."

Paine wrote from experience; at Newark he saw two brigades announce that their enlistments had expired and they were going home. Notwithstanding the Enemy were within two hours march and coming on, Greene wrote on Dec. 4, 1776. When we left Brunswick we had not 3,000 men, a very pitiful army to trust the Liberties of America upon.

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources used for today's installment:

Boatner III, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1994.

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

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

Kuklik, Bruce, ed. Thomas Paine Political Writings. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

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

A continuing series.