Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 25

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It was not all to be a nice balancing of the amenities, however. There was a war in progress. General Howe had landed in August, 1776, an army of 34,000 men on Staten Island, backed by a mighty fleet, all for the purpose of taking the City of New York. With New York as a military base, and with the fleet of His Majesty dominating the sea and the wide stretch of the Hudson River, it would be comparatively simple to cut the rebel Colonies neatly in twain.

To meet this peril Washington determined to hold the city at all costs. Yet he must have known that his position, with the men and armament at his disposal, was militarily indefensible. He was compelled to divide his already scanty forces. Long Island was open to the guns of the fleet and the attack of an overwhelming enemy. Let but Brooklyn Heights be seized, and low-lying Manhattan could be raked at will. With the frigates in possession of all the waterways, a defeat might speedily be converted into overwhelming disaster.

Others, better tacticians than he, saw this clearly. Young Aaron Burr, aide-de-camp to General Putnam, was one of these. Nay, he was the first to suggest that it would be sound and farseeing tactics to abandon the city to the British; first, however, setting fire to it, so that there would be no shelter or accommodations for their unwieldy host. A drastic measure, it is true, but militarily correct. After the retreat, General Nathanael Greene, and even John Jay, proposed like measures.^[87] It may be that the enterprising aide pressed his suggestion with more vehemence than discretion, and that the commanding General resented it.

However, the event was to prove the wisdom of Burr’s proposal. For Washington persisted in his attempts to hold the city. There were political repercussions and the matter of morale to be considered as well as abstract tactics. He fortified Brooklyn Heights, correctly seeing the strategic value of that rise of land, and there stationed the greater part of his too small forces. General Greene, chosen to command the Heights, took ill, and Generals Putnam and Sullivan were hurried over just as the British were about to attack.

By a clever flanking movement Howe turned the American left, under cover of a feigned frontal attack and the thunder of the ships’ guns, and, on August 27th, the Americans were utterly defeated. Stirling and Sullivan were captured together with a thousand men; the rest driven back to an intrenched camp. But Howe, instead of attacking the demoralized troops at once, preferred to commence slow siege tactics, and Washington availed himself of the respite, the darkness, the rain, and a strong northeast gale that kept the British ships out of the East River, to ferry his bedraggled and disheartened army across to Manhattan.

Major Burr had proceeded with General Putnam to Brooklyn, where he had been charged with the inspection of troops and outposts. His reports were caustic and biting; he found the raw levies lacking in morale and wholly innocent of military efficiency—reports that the events of the next few days were thoroughly to justify. He even advised that the Heights be abandoned without a battle. On that dreadful night of terror and confusion he watched with somber eyes the battalions load into the wind-blown boats, so eager to get away that “those in the rear were mounting on the shoulders and clambering over the heads of those before them.”^[88] He had predicted just such a debacle!

With Brooklyn Heights lost, and the fleet commanding all the surrounding waters of Manhattan Island, only Howe’s extreme and inexplicable dilatoriness prevented him from easily encompassing the capture of Washington’s entire force and the probable conclusion, then and there, of the American Revolution. Nor was Washington himself without fault here, as in the remainder of this most unmilitary campaign. It is true that he shifted half of his force to Kingsbridge, where the Westchester Hills were open to him for escape, but with the balance of his force he clung stubbornly to Manhattan, until Howe, girding himself at length and after two weeks’ delay, landed in Kip’s Bay, and drove the American troops before him in disgraceful rout, cutting off whole brigades, and harrying the remainder until they stopped, exhausted and breathless, on Harlem Heights.

It was during this disorderly retreat that Burr, singlehanded, and with the utmost coolness and daring, saved an entire brigade from destruction or capture by the pursuing British. Through some misapprehension, General Silliman’s Brigade had been left stranded in the vast and disastrous confusion of that 15th day of September, 1776. General Knox, temporarily in command, without orders and wholly cut off from the fleeing army, moved his troops to Bunker’s Hill, a small, crudely constructed fort at the juncture of what is now Grand and Mulberry Streets. There he determined to await the course of events.

While they huddled in increasing bewilderment, hearing the thunder of guns and the crash of musketry, Aaron Burr rode up and asked to know who commanded there. General Knox presented himself, whereupon Burr—a Major, it must be remembered, and twenty years old—demanded of the veteran General what he did there, and why he had not retreated with the rest of the army?

The General replied that retreat was impossible, that the enemy had already thrown a cordon across the upper island, and that he meant to defend himself in the fort. Burr laughed out loud. How can you defend this place, he inquired scornfully? You have no provisions, no water, no bombproof shelters. Why, he went on, with one mortar or a howitzer the British could take you within four hours. It is suicide to stay, General; you must retreat, and at once, to Harlem Heights.

Knox, however, was stubborn, and a bit addled by the rush of events. Besides, what did this little snip of an aide-de-camp mean by offering him advice in such assured, scornful tones! He would not attempt it, in spite of Burr’s excited urgings.

Whereupon the young aide, seeing all too clearly the consequences of the superior officer’s decision, determined on an act of the grossest insubordination. Turning from the obstinate General, he addressed himself directly to the frightened men and officers, who had crowded around, intent on the debate. Why, he exclaimed, if you remain here, men, before nightfall you will all be prisoners, crammed into a dungeon, or hung like dogs. Put yourselves under my command, he cried in ringing tones, and I’ll engage to lead you off. Better that half of you die fighting, than all be sacrificed in this cowardly manner. And, while Knox puffed and stormed, the men cheered and agreed to follow this young Major who had appeared out of nowhere.

Burr knew the terrain intimately. He led them along devious back roads, galloping up and down their flank, scouting for sight of the enemy. At about four miles from town they ran into some British and were fired upon. Burr pushed his horse recklessly toward the concealment from which the musket shots had come, hallooing to his men to follow him. Fortunately it proved to be only a company on guard, who broke and fled at once before the onslaught. Burr and his two mounted attendants pursued the fleeing men and killed several of them.

Meanwhile the head of his column had taken the wrong road. He galloped back, hurried them to the left, away from the main force of the British, into a wood, and rode continually up and down the straggling column, encouraging the men with cheerful words, until he had led them into the camp of the American forces on Harlem Heights. Only a few men had been lost in the entire exploit.^[89]

It was a gallant deed from inception to conclusion, rendered notable by a coolness and deliberation and envisioning of consequences unusual in a mere lad of twenty. Yet this rescue of an entire brigade was never mentioned in official dispatches. Perhaps the fuming General Knox had something to do with that. Perhaps General Washington still smarted under certain outspoken criticisms from the brash young aide that the event had proved only too overwhelmingly correct. And Burr would have been more than human not to have felt a certain resentment at the seeming slight.

The following day, on September 16, 1776, the panic-stricken troops rallied, defeated the combined British and Hessians in the battle of Harlem Heights, and with the respite thus achieved, were enabled to retire in good order.