Читать книгу Palisades - Robert O. Binnewies - Страница 19

THOSE IN ATTENDANCE at Bear Mountain to celebrate the Harriman donations were on historic ground. In the eighteenth century, the highlands had been described as a “wild and shaggy wilderness, densely covered with forests of white pine and hemlock, the haunt of bears and wolves.” Native Americans of the Algonquin nation were known to have found good hunting in the highlands and had established campsites there, but almost all were gone, victims of conflict with their Iroquois enemies, smallpox, slowly advancing European settlement, and deadly entanglements in the struggle between Britain and France for control of the colonies and Canada. In their place, a few rustic cabins and a primitive tavern were clustered at the base of Dunderberg Mountain on the west bank of the Hudson. The tavern, known as Caldwell’s, named for the first family that settled in the tiny hamlet, was the “last oasis,” convenient for fortifying courage before sailors attempted upriver navigation against the current and winds of the most dangerous part of the Devil’s Horse Race. According to Rockland County, New York, historical records, it was at Caldwell’s in 1720 that a ship with alien rigging and lines arrived offshore.

From it landed a party of dark, bearded, fierce looking men. The landing party carried picks, shovels, and sacks, told no one of their business, and asked no questions. They started west along an old Indian trail that led through the pass between Bear Mountain and West Mountain and seemed to know where they were going. No one saw them during the summer, but in the fall, they came back, each staggering under a heavy load in his sack. Before boarding the ship, they stopped at Caldwell’s for some cheer, and one of them, in his cups, showed the contents of his sack, loaded with rich silver ore.

They made sail and disappeared down river. During the winter, hunters and trappers searched the woods and on the north slope of Black Mountain, found a rude log cabin. It was a two-room, saddle back affair, and the porch in the middle was oriented toward the summit of the mountain, as if the occupants had wanted to keep the heights under observation. Those who discovered the cabin suspected a mine, but further searching revealed not the slightest trace of any opening.

A year later, the Spaniards came back again in the same ship and made their way to Black Mountain. Their fierce appearance discouraged interference. They worked unmolested, again coming out in the fall to sail away, sacks full.

According to legend, the ship returned again a third year. Six of the mystery men disappeared into the highlands:

But in the fall, only two of the six came out and returned to their ship and sailed away, never to return. Soon after, a search party explored Black Mountain. They found the cabin and the bodies of two men inside. In the ribs of one was a Spanish dagger. The other had a broken skull. There was no sign of the other two. It was getting dark, but the searchers climbed higher on the mountain, looking for the opening of the shaft. Late the next day, the haggard and terror-stricken search party staggered into Caldwell’s with a fearful story. As they approached the summit of Black Mountain, they were met by the ghosts of two men, sheeted in a light of phosphorescence. When they tried to flee, they couldn’t move. They huddled under a great tree and shivered in fright until dawn, with the luminous ghosts whirling madly about. At the first light, the spirits disappeared, the searchers recovered command of their arms and legs and hurried down the mountain.

Hidden treasure in the highlands guarded by ghosts is legend, but the presence in July 1776 of Viscount Sir William Howe, Knight of the Bath, member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, and commander in chief of red-coated British forces, green-coated Hessian mercenaries, and a fleet of warships in New York Harbor was undeniably real, and Bear Mountain would prove to be a target. Howe had withdrawn his forces from Boston in the face of stubborn American resistance, but this time, he assumed, the result would be different. His 22,000 troops landed ashore and fought in several skirmishes and battles with the Continental Army and by November 1776 were in military possession of New York City. Strategically, Howe also wanted control of the Hudson River. If British warships could maneuver up the river to rendezvous with British troops marching down from Canada, the rebellious colonies of New England would be cut off from New York and Pennsylvania and the other colonies to the south. Collapse of the uprising might soon follow.

This fact was not lost on General George Washington. In his attempt to defend the city and river, Washington had ordered the fortification of the Palisades. He named this defensive location Fort Constitution, then renamed it Fort Lee in recognition of Charles Lee, a British general who switched sides and joined the Continental Army. An abatis of felled trees sharpened to spearpoint was positioned across the vulnerable northern approach to the site. Out in the river, just beneath the surface, a chevaux-de-frise made up of wooden cribs and sharp-pointed iron poles designed to rip at the hull of any passing ship had been floated and anchored from shore to shore. Log huts were built in the interior of the fortress to house hundreds of troops. From the high cliffs, cannoneers aimed their weapons downward toward the river to interdict hostile ships. According to historian Adrian C. Leiby,

The site was almost a natural fortification. A clove in the Palisades, where a farm road from English Neighborhood twisting its way from the heights down to the river landing, left a high promontory standing out from the Palisades, inaccessible from three sides because of precipitous rocks, which fell off hundreds of feet to the river on one side and far enough on the other to discourage any assault. Ten acres were cleared, partly on this promontory and partly on the high land to the west, all rocky and heavily wooded wasteland on the farm of Peter Bourdet, whose farmhouse and cultivated land lay to the west, along the road to Bergen.

In October 1776, while battles for control of Manhattan Island and White Plains (present-day Westchester County) were being fought, Fort Lee also was tested. The British warships Phoenix and Roebuck maneuvered around the sunken log chain and sailed upriver despite repeated attempts by American cannoneers positioned on both sides of the river to sink them. In November, General Washington arrived at Fort Lee with 2,000 troops after commanding a vital tactical retreat from White Plains and a river crossing at King’s Ferry, well above the position of the Phoenix and Roebuck. Once across the river, the troops marched twenty-five miles back downriver on the west side of the Hudson to join General Nathanael Greene and 2,400 Continental Army soldiers stationed at Fort Lee and in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey.

The last point of American resistance on Manhattan Island under the command of Colonel Robert Magaw was Fort Washington (where the modern-day George Washington Bridge connects to the east shore of the Hudson). On November 16, 1776, superior British forces overwhelmed Fort Washington, killing scores of defenders and capturing almost 3,000 Continental Army troops.

The next step for the British was to capture Fort Lee and, with luck, George Washington himself. Under overcast night skies on November 19–20, the “portly and awkward” British general Charles Cornwallis oversaw the clandestine transport of British and Hessian troops on flatboats across the Hudson River. The troops landed under the darkened Palisades cliffs near the “Blackledge House,” ten miles upriver from Fort Lee. Cornwallis claimed the house as his headquarters and ordered his troops to climb up a precipitous half-mile trail to the summit of the Palisades.

While British and Hessian soldiers laboriously dragged cannons up the trail, delaying their assault on Fort Lee, watchful Continental Army sentries signaled the alarm. When Cornwallis’s troops finally reached Fort Lee, its defenders and generals were gone, escaping to a miserable winter encampment at Valley Forge. With the capture of Fort Lee, the great river avenue that could divide the colonies now seemed open for the taking.

Attack on Fort Lee, Sketch by British Officer Thomas Davis (New York Public Library)

In June 1777 the British strategy was put in motion. From Montreal, the British general John Burgoyne moved south with his army of 7,000 men. With little difficulty, his troops retook Fort Ticonderoga, a remote outpost captured early in the Revolutionary War by Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and Colonel Benedict Arnold. From Fort Ticonderoga, Burgoyne faced a trek through wilderness that sapped the strength of his men and slowed progress almost to a standstill, but he doggedly pushed on. A smaller British force under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger had been transported by boat from Montreal to Lake Ontario with the intent of following the Mohawk River for more than 150 miles through wild country to its confluence with the Hudson and to a rendezvous with Burgoyne. General Sir William Howe, the British commander in New York City, would send ships and forces up the Hudson River to meet the British troops descending from the north, completing the dismemberment of the colonies.

Standing against this strategy were Continental Army forces gathering in the vicinity of Albany/Saratoga under the command of General Philip Schuyler, a Continental Army group under the command of General Israel Putnam holding a defensive position on the east shore of the Hudson at Fort Independence (Peekskill), and the small, rustic fortifications at Bear Mountain manned primarily by tenant and freehold farmers from surrounding counties. The principal fortifications were forts Clinton and Montgomery located in proximity on the west side of the river. Using boulders, logs, abatis, and earth to erect the defenses, the militiamen had done their best to impose military control on the river narrows.

Preparations also included the Herculean task of floating a massive chain on logs across the river and securing it firmly shore to shore. Iron for the chain had been mined and forged in the highlands. Each link in the chain weighed upwards of 100 pounds, and the fully completed chain weighed many tons. The gambit was that any British ship trying to bypass the forts would be blocked within point-blank range of shore-based Continental Army cannons.

The defenses were placed under the command of the governor of New York, George Clinton. He was a prominent politician and lawyer-farmer from Ulster County, New York, who had gained military experience in the French and Indian War and held the rank of brigadier general in the Continental Army. Clinton was elected in June 1777 just as Burgoyne was slowly moving southward from Canada. The high urgency of defending the Hudson River narrows prompted the governor to join his brother, Col. James Clinton, to oversee construction of the defenses at Bear Mountain. The larger fort was named in honor of Major General Richard Montgomery, a casualty of an ill-fated Continental Army attempt in December 1775 to capture Quebec. The smaller fort probably was named by James Clinton for himself.

Far downriver in New York City, General Howe, seeing a chance to take Philadelphia, divided his forces and sailed for Chesapeake Bay. Left in charge of the Hudson River strategy was Sir Henry Clinton, Canadian-born, a veteran of battles at Boston and New York, and perhaps a distant relative of the brothers Clinton. The river assault was delayed pending arrival of 1,700 reinforcing troops from England who reached New York Harbor in late September.

In early October 1777, Sir Henry launched the river offensive. Signals from Continental Army sentinels posted on high elevations along the river corridor were quickly passed to the waiting defenders. On learning of the British threat, Governor Clinton, who had returned to the provisional seat of New York government at Kingston, rushed back to Bear Mountain to rejoin his brother and 600 militiamen. The “battle of the Clintons” was about to begin.

Sir Henry had his own informers and sentinels and determined not to confront the currents of the narrows, its forts, and chain head-on. Covered by an opportune fog, British and Hessian soldiers landed at Stony Point on the western shore of the Hudson, well downriver from Bear Mountain. These forces were strengthened by the Loyal American Regiment commanded by Colonel Beverly Robinson, a wealthy landowner opposed to the revolution. Robinson’s home was just across the river from West Point, and he had roamed the forests on both sides of the river on many hunting trips. He knew the terrain in the vicinity of Bear Mountain and helped Sir Henry plan a surprise flank attack against the forts.

Robinson identified a narrow trail that led through an unguarded pass on Dunderberg Mountain to Mountville (later renamed Doodletown), an isolated hamlet tucked in a small valley within two miles of forts Clinton and Montgomery. The hamlet had been settled by woodcutters, most of whom now were among the militiamen at Bear Mountain. So, too, among the defenders, were tenant farmers from across the river who, ironically, paid rent to Robinson.

At Mountville, the attacking British/Hessian troops split into two columns, one looping around the western slopes of Bear Mountain well out of sight of the forts. The other contingent was held in reserve at Mountville. The signal for the troops at Mountville to advance at fast march directly toward the forts would be the sound of gunfire when the first column attacked its intended target, Fort Montgomery.

Attack on Fort Clinton Redoubt. Diorama (Palisade Interstate Park Commission)

The movement of so many hostile troops was detected by the defenders at Bear Mountain, although the size of the force being brought against them was unknown. A message asking for reinforcements was sent by Governor Clinton to his commanding officer, General Putnam. Putnam, though, was confronted by a British raid in a trick intended to distract from the larger British mission unfolding on the west side of the river. The deception worked; no reinforcements would arrive at Bear Mountain.

The battle at Bear Mountain began with a skirmish at about 10:00 A.M. on October 6, 1777, when militiamen on scouting patrol discovered the hostile troops waiting at Mountville. The farmers, woodcutters, and regular Continental Army soldiers soon would learn that they faced attackers of far superior strength in numbers. The quickly developing battle was fierce. British attempts to breech the fortresses were beaten back, and blood flowed. Warships on the river closed within range and began to bombard the forts. As the day faded the stubborn Continental forces appeared trapped, suffering, and low on ammunition, prompting the British regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Mungo Campbell, to demand surrender. No white flag was raised.

In the final attack, Campbell lost his life even as George Turnbull of the Loyal American Regiment came first over the wall at Fort Montgomery. Count Grabouski, a Polish nobleman and aide-de-camp to Sir Henry Clinton, was killed. British soldiers, pushing one another up and over the works at the two forts, were met hand-to-hand by defenders with bayonets, clubs, rocks, and a few remaining bullets from muskets. The struggle turned from defense of the doomed forts to attempted escape by the defenders.

At dusk, Governor Clinton and his wounded brother, James, managed to reach the river and cross by boat to the opposite shore. Militiamen, covering the escape, fired last volleys and threw down their muskets in surrender. Forty-one British-led combatants, mostly Hessians and loyalists, lay dead, with 142 wounded. An estimated 70 of the fort’s defenders died, 40 were wounded, and 240 were taken prisoner. Two Continental frigates anchored above the chain as part of the river defense were unable to sail from harm’s way against the strong current and were set on fire and abandoned by order of their captains. The battleground at Bear Mountain lay quiet. Several months after the battle, a chaplain visiting the site reported that bodies still could be seen where they had been dumped into a nearby pond.

The Hudson River narrows was in British hands, but the huge, ponderous chain still blocked the river. British forces were delayed for three days while the chain and a less formidable upriver chevaux-de-frise were removed. By October 16, Sir Henry Clinton’s forces, led by Major General John Vaughn, were in Kingston, still more than forty miles from Albany/Saratoga. The delay at Bear Mountain had proven strategically costly to the British.

Lieutenant Colonel St. Leger, attempting the Mohawk River route to the Hudson, had been driven into retreat in mid-August by Continental Army forces at Fort Stanwix, New York. Messengers brought the more urgent news to Vaughn that Burgoyne was facing unexpected disaster. In fact, Burgoyne, without reinforcements and after suffering losses in two sharp battles, surrendered his army on October 17, 1777, to General Horatio Gates, successor in the Albany/Saratoga region to Philip Schuyler.

The British strategy to divide the colonies through control of the upper Hudson River Valley was in shambles. Vaughn did not wait for final confirmation of the Saratoga defeat. Kingston, New York, considered by the British to be “a nursery for every villain in the country” and a “hotbed of perfidy and sedulous disloyalty to King George the Third and His Majesty’s Parliament,” was put to the torch the day the Vaughn forces arrived. By the end of October, British ships and troops were back in New York City.

More than a century later, George Perkins and his fellow commissioners would find themselves holding title to and managing priceless Revolutionary War sites far different in stewardship terms from the mission of protecting natural beauty, but of highly complementary public benefit. Rescuing the Palisades and acquisition of a prison site at Bear Mountain put the commission squarely in the business of preserving, presenting, and interpreting historic events at the very doorstep of United States nationbuilding. Among these historic gems, the commission would, over time, assume responsibility for the:

Blackledge-Kearney House where Lord Cornwallis set up headquarters in 1776 beneath the cliffs of the Palisades during the British assault on Fort Lee,

Fort Lee, taken by the British in November 1776, forcing George Washington and the Continental to escape to Valley Forge,

Forts Montgomery and Clinton, standing in defense of the Hudson River narrows and taken by the British in October 1777,

Senate House, Kingston, New York, first capital of New York, built in 1676, partially destroyed by fire in October 1777 in the aborted British assault on the upper Hudson River Valley,

Stony Point, the “Gibraltar of the Hudson,” taken by force from the British in July 1779 by Continental Army light-infantry soldiers under the command of General (Mad) Anthony Wayne,

Knox’s Headquarters, a home owned by the Ellison family that was used during the Revolutionary War as headquarters by Continental Army generals Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, and Horatio Gates,

New Windsor Cantonment, New York, the encampment in 1782–83 of 7,000 Continental Army troops restively awaiting the end of the Revolutionary War,

Washington’s Headquarters, Newburgh, New York, recognized in 1850 as the nation’s first publicly designated historic site. By stature and persuasion, General George Washington held the Continental Army together in 1782–83, awaiting the Treaty of Paris and the end of the Revolutionary War.

The distance from Fort Lee to Washington’s Headquarters is about forty miles. The distance in history is immense, from submissive colonies, erased, to proud states, united.