The Lfe & Work of George Washington. Вашингтон Ирвинг
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of Orleans. It was numerically increased to upwards of two thousand men, but several hundred were unfit for service. The small-pox had made great ravages. They had inoculated each other. In their sick and debilitated state they were without barracks, and almost without medicine. A portion, whose term of enlistment had expired, refused to do duty, and clamored for their discharge. The winter was over, the river was breaking up, reinforcements to the garrison might immediately be expected, and then the case would be desperate. Observing that the river about Quebec was clear of ice, General Thomas determined on a bold effort. It was to send up a fire-ship with the flood, and, while the ships in the harbor were in flames, and the town in confusion, to scale the walls.
Accordingly, on the 3d of May the troops turned out with scaling ladders; the fire-ship came up the river under easy sail, and arrived near the shipping before it was discovered. It was fired into. The crew applied a slow match to the train and pulled off. The ship was soon in a blaze, but the flames caught and consumed the sails; her way was checked, and she drifted off harmlessly with the ebbing tide. The rest of the plan was, of course, abandoned.
Nothing now remained but to retreat before the enemy should be reinforced. Preparations were made in all haste to embark the sick and the military stores. While this was taking place, five ships made their way into the harbor, on the 6th of May, and began to land troops. Thus reinforced, General Carleton sallied forth with eight hundred or a thousand men. The Americans were in no condition to withstand the attack. They had no intrenchments, and could not muster three hundred men at any point. A precipitate retreat was the consequence, in which baggage, artillery, everything was abandoned. Even the sick were left behind; many of whom crawled away from the camp hospitals, and took refuge in the woods, or among the Canadian peasantry.
General Thomas came to a halt at point Deschambault, about sixty miles above Quebec, and called a council of war to consider what was to be done. The enemy's ships were hastening up the St. Lawrence; some were already but two or three leagues distant. The camp was without cannon; powder, forwarded by General Schuyler, had fallen into the enemy's hands; there were not provisions enough to subsist the army for more than two or three days; the men-of-war, too, might run up the river, intercept all their resources, and reduce them to the same extremity they had experienced before Quebec. It was resolved, therefore, to ascend the river still further. General Thomas, however, determined to send forward the invalids, but to remain at Point Deschambault, with about five hundred men, until he should receive orders from Montreal and learn whether such supplies could be forwarded immediately as would enable him to defend his position.
The despatches of General Thomas, setting forth the disastrous state of affairs, had a disheartening effect on Schuyler, who feared the army would be obliged to abandon Canada. Washington, on the contrary, spoke cheeringly on the subject. He regretted that the troops had not been able to make a stand at Point Deschambault, but hoped they would maintain a post as far down the river as possible.
[The reverses in Canada, which spread consternation through the New England frontier, now laid open to invasion, strengthened the ill-will and prejudice that prevailed in the Eastern States against General Schuyler. He was stigmatized as the cause of the late reverses, and was even accused of being untrue to his country. Committees, which the alarming state of affairs had caused to be organized in various counties, addressed Washington on the subject, which, reviling Schuyler, he at once demanded a court of inquiry. It is proper to add that the committees in question, after investigating the evidence, acknowledged to Washington that their suspicions had been wholly groundless.]
As the reverses in Canada would affect the fortunes of the Revolution elsewhere, Washington sent General Gates to lay the despatches concerning them before Congress. Scarce had Gates departed on his mission (May 19th), when Washington himself received a summons to Philadelphia, to advise with Congress concerning the opening campaign. He was informed also that Gates, on the 16th of May, had been promoted to the rank of major-general, and Mifflen to that of brigadier-general, and a wish was intimated that they might take the command of Boston.
Washington prepared to proceed to Philadelphia. In his parting instructions to Putnam, who, as the oldest major-general in the city, would have the command during his absence, Washington informed him of the intention of the Provincial Congress of New York to seize the principal tories and disaffected persons in the city and the surrounding country, especially on Long Island, and authorized him to afford military aid, if required, to carry the same into execution. He was also to send Lord Stirling, Colonel Putnam the engineer, and Colonel Knox, if he could be spared, up to the Highlands, to examine the state of the forts and garrisons, and report what was necessary to put them in a posture of defence.
The general, accompanied by Mrs. Washington, departed from New York on the 21st of May, and they were invited by Mr. Hancock, the President of Congress, to be his guests during their sojourn at Philadelphia.
Washington, in his conferences with Congress, roundly expressed his conviction that no accommodation could be effected with Great Britain on acceptable terms. Ministerialists had declared in Parliament that, the sword being drawn, the most coercive measures would be persevered in until there was complete submission. The recent subsidizing of foreign troops was a part of this policy, and indicated unsparing hostility. A protracted war, therefore, was inevitable; but it would be impossible to carry it on successfully with the scanty force actually embodied, and with transient enlistments of militia.
In consequence of his representations, resolutions were passed in Congress that soldiers should be enlisted for three years, with a bounty of ten dollars for each recruit; that the army at New York should be reinforced until the 1st of December with thirteen thousand eight hundred militia; that gondolas and fire-rafts should be built to prevent the men-of-war and enemy's ships from coming into New York Bay, or the Narrows; and that a flying camp of ten thousand militia, furnished by Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, and likewise engaged until the 1st of December, should be stationed in the Jerseys for the defence of the Middle colonies. Washington was, moreover, empowered, in case of emergency, to call on the neighboring colonies for temporary aid with their militia.
Another important result of his conferences with Congress was the establishment of a war office. Military affairs had hitherto been referred in Congress to committees casually appointed, and had consequently been subject to great irregularity and neglect. Henceforth a permanent committee, entitled the Board of War and Ordnance, was to take cognizance of them. The first board was composed of five members—John Adams, Colonel Benjamin Harrison, Roger Sherman, James Wilson, and Edward Rutledge; with Richard Peters as secretary. It went into operation on the 12th of June.
While at Philadelphia, Washington had frequent consultations with George Clinton, one of the delegates from New York, concerning the interior defences of that province, especially those connected with the security of the Highlands of the Hudson, where part of the regiment of Colonel James Clinton, the brother of the delegate, was stationed. He was gratified, also, by procuring the appointment of his late secretary, Joseph Reed, to the post of adjutant-general, vacated by the promotion of General Gates, thus placing him once more by his side.
[Despatches from Canada continued to be disastrous. A post stationed at the Cedars, forty miles above Montreal consisting of about four hundred men, had been intimidated into a surrender by a body of Canadians and Indians. A force of one hundred men, sent to the relief of the post, was also captured. The enemy was pursued by Arnold, and overtaken near St. Anns, above the rapids of the St. Lawrence. The prisoners captured at the Cedars were threatened with massacre if Arnold should attack; and this led to negotiations which resulted in their exchange. While these events were occurring mischief was brewing in another quarter.
Colonel Guy Johnson, with Brant and the Butlers, had been holding councils with the Indians, and were threatening a maraud on the Mohawk country. A correspondence was carried on between Guy Johnson and his cousin, Sir John Johnson, who was said to be preparing to co-operate with his Scotch dependents. Schuyler considered this a breach of Sir John's parole, and sent Colonel Dayton to apprehend him. Sir John, with a number of his tenants, retreated for refuge among the Indians. Shortly after this came intelligence that Sir John, with his Scotch warriors and Indian allies, was actually coming down the valley of the Mohawk, bent on revenge, and prepared to lay everything to waste. Schuyler immediately collected a force at Albany to