Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781

Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781

by William J. Wood
Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781

Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781

by William J. Wood

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Overview

The Americans didn't simply outlast the British, nor was the war just a glorified guerrilla action with sporadic skirmishes, says W. J. Wood. Americans won their independence on the battlefield by employing superior strategies, tactics, and leadership in the battles of Bunker Hill, Quebec, Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, and Cowpens, among many others. Here in this groundbreaking book are detailed accounts of attempts by commanders to adapt their forces to the ever-shifting battlefield of the Revolutionary War, as well as analyses of the factors that determined the eventual American victory.

Battles of the Revolutionary War is designed for "armchair strategist," with dozens of illustrations and maps--many specially prepared for this volume--of the weapons, battle plans, and combatants. It's an insider's look at the dramatic times and colorful personalities that accompanied the birth of this country.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781616202033
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date: 05/21/2012
Series: Major Battles and Campaigns
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
Pages: 364
Sales rank: 244,701
File size: 8 MB

About the Author

W. J. Wood (19171501997), was a retired Army lieutenant colonel whose background included not only professional authorship but also combat experience in World War II and the Korean war, a decade spent in professional war gaming for weapons systems analysis at the Army Material Command, and a lifetime studying military history. His books include Battles of the Revolutionary War and Leaders and Battles .

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Bunker Hill

THE BRITISH GENERALS IN BESIEGED BOSTON were fed up to the teeth with their situation. Here they were with 6,000 of King George's troops, the finest in Europe, surrounded by hordes of peasants armed with old muskets and fowling pieces. The three major generals — William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne — had arrived on 25 May 1775 to receive a rude introduction to the facts: scarcely five weeks before, the rebellious farmers of Massachusetts had chased 1,800 of General Gage's best troops all the way from Concord to Charlestown Neck, across from Boston, where they had collapsed like exhausted sheep while their officers counted their 273 casualties. The next day the colonists sealed off the city. The siege of Boston had begun.

Now, in early June, the three generals had urged on General Gage, in his dual role of governor and military commander, an operation plan designed to snatch the initiative from the rebels and break up the siege. The key to the plan's success was to be the seizure and fortification of Dorchester Heights. The heights, thus secured, would not only ensure British domination of the port and city but would provide a base from which garrison forces could attack and roll up the besieging American force from the south. By 13 June, however, the American Committee of Safety, which was overseeing affairs in Cambridge, had already received a complete report on the proposed operation, due in great part to Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne's mouth, which was at times as big as his military ambitions.

The committee's deliberations on 14-15 June were actually a council of war that focused on countermoves to defeat the British sally on Dorchester Heights. The committee resolved that "Bunker Hill in Charlestown be securely kept and defended, and also some one hill or hills on Dorchester neck be likewise secured." Since it was deemed impossible to do both, occupying Bunker Hill would serve as an immediate counter-threat to the British seizure of Dorchester Heights. So the high ground on the Charlestown peninsula would be the immediate objective for the colonists.

The map shows the peninsula, somewhat less than a mile and a half long and hardly three-quarters of a mile wide at its midsection, suspended like a bulging hornet's nest from Charlestown Neck, and bounded by two rivers: the Charles on the west and the Mystic on the east. The chief features of the peninsula, other than Charlestown itself, were its three hills and the neck. On the east lay Moulton's Hill, actually a knoll only 35 feet high. In the south center was 62-foot-high Breed's Hill. On the north was flat-topped Bunker Hill, no feet in height. Charlestown Neck was an isthmus, narrowing to only about ten yards at some points, and so low that at high tide it was sometimes inundated.

After taking his direction from the committee, the colonists' commander in chief, General Artemas Ward of Massachusetts, ordered the occupation of Bunker Hill to begin on the night of 16-17 June. It was to be achieved by a detachment of about a thousand men from the Massachusetts regiments of Colonels Prescott, Frye, and Bridge, along with a two-hundred-man Connecticut company commanded by Captain Thomas Knowlton. The detachment also included an "artillery train" of two four-pounders and forty-nine men, commanded by Captain Samuel Gridley. In overall command was Colonel William Prescott, a most fortunate choice to direct such an operation.

Prescott paraded his men on Cambridge Common at 6:00 P.M. on 16 June. Christopher Ward, in The War of the Revolution, has passed on the graphic description of an eyewitness to the formation on the common:

To a man, they wore small clothes, coming down and fastening just below the knee, and long stockings with cowhide shoes ornamented by large buckles, while not a pair of boots graced the company. The coats and waistcoats were loose and of huge dimensions, with colors as various as the barks of oak, sumach and other trees of our hills and swamps, could make them and their shirts were all made of flax, and like every other part of the dress, were homespun. On their heads was worn a large round top and broad brimmed hat. Their arms were as various as their costume; here an old soldier carried a heavy Queen's arm, which had done service at the Conquest of Canada twenty years previous, while by his side walked a stripling boy with a Spanish fusee not half its weight or calibre, which his grandfather may have taken at the Havana, while not a few had old French pieces, that dated back to the reduction of Louisburg. Instead of the cartridge box, a large powder horn was slung under the arm, and occasionally a bayonet might be seen bristling in the ranks. Some of the swords of the officers had been made by our Province blacksmiths, perhaps from some farming utensil; they looked serviceable, but heavy and uncouth.

After their preparation, including prayers by the president of Harvard College, the Reverend Samuel Langdon, the detachment formed column and marched off about 9:00 P.M. heading eastward on the road which connected with the road running southeastward to Bunker Hill. The men and their company officers not only marched in the dark, they were equally in the dark about their destination and mission. Prescott led the way, keeping the same silence he expected of his men. At Charlestown Neck Prescott was joined by Brigadier General Israel Putnam of Connecticut, who brought wagons loaded with fascines (bundles of wood bound together) and empty hogsheads to be filled with earth and used to form the walls of a fort, and entrenching tools. After detaching Captain John Nutting's company from Prescott's regiment and sending it to Charlestown as a covering force, Prescott led the column over Bunker Hill and halted on its southeast slope.

Prescott then called the senior officers together for an informal command conference. No record was kept of what was said, but we can assume that there were lengthy and heated arguments about where to start entrenching — on Bunker Hill or on Breed's Hill. We do know that the discussion between Prescott, Putnam, and others, including Colonel Richard Gridley, the army's chief engineer, may have lasted for as long as two hours. Prescott had already pointed out that his orders were to fortify Bunker Hill, but there were arguments for taking over Breed's Hill first. Being nearer to Boston, it commanded any approach from a landing on the south end of the peninsula, and it could therefore constitute a first line of defense as a buffer to Bunker. Finally, an impatient Gridley told the group that time was wasting. The decision was then reached to fortify Breed's first, with Bunker as backup as time permitted. It was a sort of committee compromise, and as such was to lead to unexpected consequences.

Prescott led the column to Breed's Hill, where Gridley traced out the lines of a square redoubt of about 132 feet on a side, and the men began digging about midnight. These "embattled farmers" may not have been soldiers, but they were diggers, accustomed to putting their backs into it with pick and spade. And dig they must, for only four hours remained until first light, when the whole works would be revealed to the sentries on the British warships below them in Boston Harbor. Prescott kept relays working feverishly, and it may be assumed that Putnam was there urging men to dig for their lives, no doubt recalling his words to Artemas Ward at the council of war the day before: "Americans are not at all afraid for their heads, though very much afraid for their legs; if you cover them they will fight forever." Putnam stayed until about 3:00 A.M., when he decided to ride back to Ward's headquarters in Cambridge where his own battle would begin.

With the work well under way, Prescott ordered Captain Hugh Maxwell of his regiment to take a force and join Captain Nutting in Charlestown. From there they would patrol the shores of the peninsula to protect them against any British landing parties. Not content with that, Prescott later, before dawn, twice personally reconnoitered the shoreline. Under other circumstances it could have been called a romantic June night — quiet and warm under a starlit sky. Prescott and his executive, Major Brooks, could make out the forms of the British ships whose identities and anchorages they had memorized: to their far left lay the sloop Falcon with her fourteen guns, then the frigate Lively with twenty guns, off to their right lay the Glasgow with twenty guns, and in the distance was the ship of the line, the sixty-four-gun Somerset. As Prescott and Brooks moved along the silent shore they could hear across the calm harbor the routine cries of the British sentries on the ships. Assured that all was well, Prescott rounded up Maxwell and his men and returned to the redoubt. By then it was almost first light.

William Prescott was forty-nine years old, a fine New England rock of a man, still in his prime, over six feet tall and as strong of mind as he was of body. His jaw was firm and well rounded, giving his face a look of determination, and yet kindliness. He was direct of speech, though always courteous, as befitted his station of gentleman farmer. Always self-possessed, he had a natural air of command and a way of exacting respect without being domineering. His courage and coolness under fire had been first noticed by his superiors when the British had wrested Louisbourg from the French in 1745. There he had been offered a regular commission in the British army, a rare opportunity indeed for a provincial lieutenant. He had declined that offer, and at the end of King George's War had retired to his farm in Pepperell, Massachusetts. Prescott preferred that life, having been born to it in a family of wealth and prestige. He had improved upon a limited education through his love of reading. In 1775 he raised a regiment, was made its colonel, and arrived at Concord too late to fight. As we picture him now on the wall of the redoubt, with the first light of dawn breaking over the Mystic River, he looks an elegant figure in his light blue uniform, his balding head covered with a wig and crowned by a three-cornered cocked hat.

A few minutes after dawn the guns of HMS Lively opened fire on the redoubt. After a few ranging rounds, however, the frigate's artillery fell strangely silent. Prescott took advantage of the silence to take stock of his situation. He decided to start work on a breastwork to protect the vulnerable left flank of the redoubt. He got a work detail going on a straight breastwork about 100 yards long, extending from the southeast corner of the redoubt down toward the marsh at the foot of the hill.

MEANWHILE, BRITISH GENERAL GAGE HAD CALLED a council of war that same morning of 17 June. Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne were there, along with other senior officers. Clinton first proposed an immediate attack on the Charlestown peninsula: Howe to make a frontal holding attack from the east, while Clinton with 500 men would land on the peninsula just south of the neck and behind Prescott's redoubt to cut off the American force. The other generals opposed Clinton's plan as unsound, for it risked placing a British force between the Americans on the peninsula and those on the mainland. Howe then proposed an alternate method of attack: cut off the Breed's Hill redoubt by pinning down its defenders with a frontal attack, while an enveloping force would march up the east shore of the Mystic and attack the redoubt's left rear. Gage approved Howe's plan and ordered it put into effect that day. It was decided to wait for high tide. "High Water at two o'clock in the afternoon," Howe recorded in a letter to his brother.

Howe, as senior officer, was to lead the expeditionary force, with Brigadier General Sir Robert Pigot second in command. The force of about 1,500 infantry and twelve guns would be moved in barges, due to shove off from Boston at high noon. To be held in reserve at the Battery in the city were 700 infantry of the 47th and 63rd regiments, as well as the major elements of the 1st and 2nd battalions of marines.

The concept of such an attack was not unsound. If it had been carried out at the earliest possible moment, British landing forces would have had ample room to maneuver and possibly capture both hills. The execution, however, was fatally flawed by a six-hour delay, which gave the Americans valuable time to extend their fortifications and make additional deployments. In the actual event there was neither adequate maneuvering room nor concentration of force at the right time and place.

WHEN THE Lively guns opened fire, the noise awakened Connecticut General Israel Putnam, who pulled on his clothes and galloped off toward Breed's Hill. This kind of riding was to characterize Putnam's performance; to those who saw him on this day of battle, he seemed to be everywhere at once. Israel Putnam was not just a brigadier general in Connecticut's militia; he was literally a legend in his time. Old Put — he was fifty-seven in 1775 — was a household name due to the legends that had grown about him. There was his killing of a great wolf in her den, and also a true story of his being about to be burned at the stake by Indians when a French officer rescued him just in time to save his hide. Then there were tales of his adventures in the Havana campaign in 1762 when he was shipwrecked on the Cuban coast; and so on. In New England myth and legend he had become a real-life Revolution-era equivalent of Baron Munchausen.

Putnam was only five feet six in height, but he was built like a great brown bear. Yet his open, jovial face and halo of unruly gray hair made him resemble not a warrior but a generous, openhearted, dyed-in-the-wool American hero. He was immensely popular. Of generalship, the planning and execution of strategy, however, he was totally ignorant. He did possess the qualities of courage, energy, and aggressiveness, but those also represented his limit. Several historians have suggested that he would have made a splendid regimental commander — and so he should have remained.1 It was fully daylight when Putnam rode up to the redoubt and conferred with William Prescott. There he learned that Prescott's men were laboring and would be doing so for hours, without resupply of food, water, and ammunition. Each man had only the powder and shot he had carried with him. Prescott was not the kind of leader to ask for relief, but Putnam could see that Breed's Hill must have resupply and reinforcements if it were to be defended. By about 5:30 he was on his way back to Cambridge.

IN CAMBRIDGE A DEMANDING PUTNAM FOUND Artemas Ward chiefly concerned over the danger to his center at Cambridge and the threat of the same attack to cut off American forces at Charlestown Neck. Ward has been criticized for not taking immediate action to throw his reserves and meager stores into position where Putnam was demanding. But despite Putnam's pleas, the commander in chief, who was also suffering from an attack of bladder stone, was adamant about not acting until the situation became clearer to him. As John Elting saw it: "Unlike Putnam, he [Ward] was not going to immediately mount his horse and ride off in all directions." A disgusted Putnam left for Bunker Hill.

SHORTLY BEFORE 9:00 A.M. PRESCOTT HAD EXCHANGED his uniform, hat, and wig for his wide-brimmed farmer's hat and linen banyan, the light coat meant for summer wear. He had just started to climb the six-foot redoubt wall for a look around when the British ships opened up with a concerted roar. This was no mere frigate's broadside; the thundering chorus was joined by the twenty-four-pounder battery on Copp's Hill on the northeast extremity of the Boston peninsula. Prescott looked around at his farmer-militiamen and saw white faces. Fears that could grow into panic must be squelched — now. So he mounted the parapet and calmly walked along its top until the men picked up their tools and went back to work.

An hour later Prescott's senior officers were demanding some kind of relief. The men were exhausted after ten hours of constant digging, and the bombardment continued. A cannonball had smashed the last water cask; there was no food for the hungry men; and now came the news that the British troops in Boston were assembling around the waterfront, certainly to cross the harbor and attack their redoubt. Wasn't it time that fresh troops relieved them?

Their iron-souled commander refused: "The men who raised these works were the ones best able to defend them; their honor required it." Prescott did relent to the extent of dispatching Major Brooks to Cambridge to ask for supplies. Brooks asked Captain Samuel Gridley of the artillery for a horse and was refused. A disgusted Prescott sent Brooks on his way to trudge the four long miles to Cambridge on foot.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781"
by .
Copyright © 1990 William J. Wood.
Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations,
List of Maps and Diagrams,
Introduction by John S. D. Eisenhower,
Author's Introduction,
ONE Bunker Hill,
TWO Quebec,
THREE Trenton and Princeton,
FOUR Brandywine,
FIVE Oriskany,
SIX Saratoga: Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights,
SEVEN Kings Mountain,
EIGHT Cowpens,
NINE Guilford Courthouse,
TEN The Chesapeake Capes,
Essay on Sources,
Index,

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