Читать книгу General Richard Montgomery and the American Revolution - Hal T. Shelton - Страница 9

Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,—

His mourners were two hosts—his friends and foes;

And fitly may the stranger, lingering here

Pray for his gallant spirit’s bright repose;

For he was Freedom’s champion, one of those,

The few in number, who had not o’erstept

The charter to chastise which she bestows

On such as wield her weapon; he had kept

The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept¹

At 3 A.M. on December 31, 1775, a band of desperate men stumbled forward in the middle of a dark night and during the worst of a Canadian winter storm. In the midst of gale-driven snow and sleet, the men’s labored breathing soon covered their faces with ice. The torturous weather caused physical pain and a numbness of the senses. They trudged along a narrow, jumbled path that followed the river lying below. A careless step could plunge a hapless individual onto the frozen stream that lay to one side of the slippery trail. Any rational being would have sought immediate relief from the hostile elements, but the leader to whom this group was committed exhorted them beyond individual concerns for comfort or safety.²

A mixture of New Yorkers and New Englanders, the members of this command joined the Continental army with short-term enlistments, many of which were due to expire in less than twenty-four hours. Although the military expedition had captured Fort Chambly, Fort St. Johns, and Montreal in recent encounters, rapid personnel turnover caused the unit to remain largely unseasoned. Most of the soldiers maintained a cavalier attitude toward military duty, disdaining martial discipline and regimen. They were also sectionalists, highly distrustful of anyone who came from outside their home region. This situation presented a great challenge to their leader. He most recently resided in New York but was an Irishman by birth and had served in the British Army. Through personal example on the battlefield, however, he was able to inspire this ragtag army and form it into an effective fighting force. The men respected his military experience and admired his brave and dauntless demeanor.

Therefore, these American patriots were grudgingly willing to endure the present hardship with the hope that the same storm that ravaged them would also provide a measure of protection. They trusted that the severe weather and darkness would conceal their presence from the enemy and thereby aid in their enterprise. Thus, there would be no turning back. The men covered the firing locks of their muskets with the lappets of their coats to protect them in firing order, leaned against the raging blizzard, and advanced toward the fortress-city of Quebec, where the British army awaited.³

After several more hours of struggle, the Continental soldiers reached the outskirts of Quebec and prepared to launch a planned, coordinated attack to seize the city. American military leaders considered Quebec a critical prize, since they believed it to be the key to the conquest of Canada. In September 1775, George Washington, the newly appointed commander in chief of the American army, expressed his thoughts on the significance of the capture of Quebec and the Canadian invasion when he stated that the operation was “of the utmost importance to the interest and liberties of America.”⁴

By 5 A.M., the American force initiated its assault. The commander of the attacking troops positioned himself in the front of his men, as was his custom during battle. Raising his sword in the air, he spurred the cold, wearied soldiers forward to follow his lead. After surmounting two unmanned defensive barricades, the American troops encountered yet another obstacle. This time, the British were waiting in ambush. Cannon grapeshot and musket fire rained upon the attackers from well-concealed positions within a blockhouse. The patriot leader crumpled to the ground. Gen. Richard Montgomery was dead of three grapeshot wounds fired at point-blank range.⁵

A member of Montgomery’s party reported that “the fatal stroke of losing our general, threw our troops into confusion.”⁶ The remaining Americans could not regain the offensive. Those attackers who survived the violent rebuff from the enemy retreated or were captured. Guy Carleton, the British commander of Quebec, summarized the operation by asserting that the attack “was soon repulsed with slaughter.”⁷ Without Montgomery’s leadership, the American offensive against Quebec turned into a disastrous failure.

The British force did not ascertain Montgomery’s death until the next day. The British sent out a party to survey the American dead at that time. With the cooperation of a captured Continental officer, the detail found and identified Montgomery’s body where he fell the day before. About three feet of accumulated snow partially obscured the solidly frozen remains, but his raised arm remained visible above the snow. The party also discovered his sword lying beside the body. Violent death had reduced this imposing figure of a military leader in life—tall, straight, lean, vibrant—to a grotesque, distorted form with knees drawn up toward the head.⁸

The British were almost as regretful of Montgomery’s death as the Americans. Gov. Guy Carleton and other British officers who defended Quebec against Montgomery’s attack had served with him earlier during the Seven Years’ War. Montgomery saw duty in the British army from 1756 to 1773, rising to the rank of captain before he sold his commission. He subsequently settled in New York, married Janet Livingston of the prominent Robert R. Livingston, Sr., family, and in 1775 took up arms against his former country when offered a brigadier general’s commission in the Continental army. Even though Montgomery changed allegiances, his former military acquaintances still respected his personal character and military leadership ability.⁹ Guy Carleton ordered Montgomery’s body decently buried within Quebec.¹⁰

Soon after his death, Edmund Burke, an opposition statesman, delivered an eloquent and moving eulogy of Montgomery in the British Parliament. Prime Minister Lord Frederick North, however, became agitated by this discourse and replied: “I cannot join in lamenting the death of Montgomery as a public loss. A curse on his virtues! They’ve undone this country. He was brave, he was noble, he was humane, he was generous: but still he was only a brave, able, humane, and generous rebel.” Charles James Fox, another liberal member of Parliament, retorted, “The term of rebel is no certain mark of disgrace. The great asserters of liberty, the saviors of their country, the benefactors of mankind in all ages, have all been called rebels.”¹¹

Americans were even more profuse in their praise of the fallen general. Benedict Arnold served under Montgomery at Quebec. Arnold, who could be a harsh critic, paid his superior officer sincere tribute and maintained that had not Montgomery “received the fatal shot . . . the town would have been ours.”¹² Gen. Philip Schuyler, Montgomery’s commanding officer during the Canadian operation, grieved: “My amiable and gallant General Montgomery is no more. . . . My feelings on this unhappy occasion are too poignant to admit of expression. May Heaven avert any further evils.”¹³

Mourning Montgomery’s untimely death was not confined to those closely associated with him. He was the first American general officer killed in the War for American Independence. Joseph Warren, whom the Continental Congress had appointed major general but had not yet confirmed his commission, died at Bunker Hill six months earlier. Montgomery’s heroic deed eclipsed that of Warren, and the Americans quickly elevated him to martyrdom in their struggle for independence. During the critical time when the colonists debated the issue of armed revolt, revolutionary Americans touted Montgomery’s sacrifice to evoke patriotic spirit toward continuing the war.

In 1776, a patriot pamphlet appeared in Philadelphia under the title A Dialogue between the Ghost of General Montgomery and an American Delegate in a Wood Near Philadelphia. This work is generally attributed to Thomas Paine, revolutionary America’s most influential pamphleteer.¹⁴ In 1777, Hugh Henry Brackenridge published a heroic tragedy, The Death of General Montgomery. It was a dramatic poem clearly intended to arouse colonial sentiments against the British.¹⁵

The hapless fortune of the day is sunk!

Montgomery slain, and wither’d every hope!

Mysterious Providence, thy ways are just,

And we submit in deep humility.

But O let fire or pestilence from Heaven,

Avenge the butchery; let Englishmen,

The cause and agents in this horrid war,

In tenfold amplitude, meet gloomy death.¹⁶

The Continental Congress played an important role in advancing Montgomery’s contribution to the patriot cause. After learning of the general’s death, Congress issued a proclamation stating “their grateful remembrance, respect, and high veneration; and desiring to transmit to future ages a truly worthy example of patriotism, conduct, boldness of enterprise, insuperable perseverance, and contempt of danger and death.”¹⁷

On January 22, 1776, Congress appointed a committee, which included Benjamin Franklin, to “consider a proper method of paying a just tribute of gratitude to the memory of General Montgomery.”¹⁸ Three days later, the committee recommended that a memorial be obtained from Paris, “with an inscription, sacred to his [Montgomery’s] memory, and expressive of his amiable character and heroick achievements.”¹⁹ Congress approved the recommendation, and Benjamin Franklin made the necessary arrangements for a stone marker to be made. In the following year, Franklin described the completed monument as “plain, but elegant, being done by one of the best artists in Paris.”²⁰

Finding a suitable location for the shrine was delayed until after the war. Eventually, New York City accepted the honor of receiving the nation’s approbation to the American patriot. In 1787, with proper ceremony, authorities erected the marker at St. Paul’s Church. It remains today as the first monument dedicated by the government to an American revolutionary hero. The memorial bears the following original inscription:

This Monument

is erected

By order of Congress, 25th January, 1776

To transmit to posterity

A Grateful Remembrance

of the

Patriotism, Conduct, Enterprize and Perseverance

of

Major General Richard Montgomery

who after a series of successes

Amidst the most discouraging difficulties,

Fell in the attack on Quebec,

31st December, 1775. Aged 37 years.²¹

In 1818, American officials reclaimed Montgomery’s remains from Quebec and reinterred them appropriately within his chosen country. The final resting place was located next to the original monument at St. Paul’s Church.

The Continental Congress also used Montgomery’s death as a justification for expanding state commitments to the revolutionary effort. On September 24, 1776, Congress sent resolves to the states, raising quotas and increasing enlistment time for troops to be provided for the Continental army. In a letter enclosed with the resolves, John Hancock stated: “The fall of the late Genl. Montgomery before Quebec is undoubtedly to be ascribed to the limited time for which the troops were engaged; whose impatience to return home compelled him to make the attack contrary to the conviction of his own judgment. This fact alone furnishes a striking argument of the danger and impropriety of sending troops into the field under any restrictions as to the time of their enlistment. The noblest enterprize may be left unfinished by troops in such a predicament, or abandoned at the very moment success must have crowned the attempt.”²²

It is somewhat ironic that Richard Montgomery, who was so well regarded by his contemporaries and whose death was so highly instrumental in forming general opinion during the Revolution, should now occupy such an obscure place in the historiography of that period. Of the twenty-nine major generals who served in the American Revolution, all but six have been treated as subjects of book-length biographies. Richard Montgomery remains one of the neglected few. The brief sketches that have been produced on his life hardly do him justice.²³

The paucity of biographical studies pertaining to Montgomery in the literature is even more perplexing, since Montgomery’s fame has endured with the passage of time. The lasting permeation of Montgomery’s life into the national consciousness is reflected by an examination of county-designation records within the nation. Traditionally, government officials select the name for a county from some well-known historical entity or personage. Excluding presidents and governors, Montgomery ranks fifth on the list of persons for whom the greatest number of counties have been named. Some sixteen counties throughout the nation were named after Montgomery.²⁴ One might expect that a county in New York would be designated for its adopted son and that some states on the East Coast where the Revolution predominantly raged would remember Montgomery; however, other far-flung counties across the country bear names to honor Montgomery’s memory.²⁵

Therefore, Montgomery not only had a significant impact on the American Revolution, but he remains an important historical figure. Although his life and military career were brief, Montgomery’s association with the American revolutionary army was unique. He was a former British officer who had settled in the colonies shortly before the Revolution. Subsequently, Congress called upon him to serve in the American patriot’s cause. Unlike other former professional soldiers in this situation, Montgomery did not solicit military appointment and responded reluctantly when urged to join the Continental army. During this crucial initial period of the Revolution, the patriot leadership was struggling with establishing and organizing an army to compete with the world-renowned British armed forces. Montgomery’s service in the fledgling Continental military offers an appreciation for the way these measures were undertaken. Montgomery was also well regarded by both the British and the Americans throughout the Revolution. How he reconciled his divided loyalties and fought against his former military comrades should add to the intellectual history of the time. How the British and Americans related to his experiences in the war should provide some critical insights into the revolutionary era. Thus, this study constitutes an effort to install Richard Montgomery in his rightful place in the scholarly conscience.