Charles Lee and the Widow White

On December 13, 1776, following the loss of New York and the retreat by Washington's army across New Jersey, General Charles Lee indulged himself at the Widow White's Tavern in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and was captured that day by a British patrol led by Colonel William Harcourt; the advance guard of that patrol was commanded by a young Banastre Tarleton.  They had extorted the information as to Lee's whereabouts from captured American sentries.  Here is the spot in Basking Ridge, indicated by the blue sign on the corner in the lower right.

There is a fair amount of commentary that contrary to being a severe blow to the Continental Army, the removal of Charles Lee at this time as a thorn in Washington's side was a good thing.  Lee and his approximately 2,000 men were in the vicinity of Basking Ridge; General John Sullivan took command of them after Lee's capture and added them to Washington's force.

What was interesting to me is that on this otherwise unremarkable corner in the New Jersey suburbs, two of the main characters of the Revolution--Lee and Tarleton--were present in a rather intimate setting.  If we listen, we might just catch Tarleton proclaiming, as the tavern was surrounded, "If the general does not surrender in five minutes, I will set fire to the house." Lee surrendered in his nightclothes, and the Americans suffered two killed, two wounded and five in all captured.

Black Point and the Loyalists

On June 10, 1779 Loyalist Lieutenant James Moody of the New Jersey Volunteers led the successful force in a raid on weapons and supplies at Tinton Falls, New Jersey, as well as the capture of several important militia officers in Monmouth County, New Jersey.  As he was making his way back to Sandy Hook and British lines, further fighting ensued, and two of the American officers were killed.  Here is where the marker stands indicating the Battle of Black Point, in present-day Rumson, New Jersey:

Moody was a sincere Loyalist, contrasted with some of the rogues in New Jersey at the time (on either side) that used the cloak of partisanship for personal gain.  Extolled by the contemporary British press and excoriated by the contemporary American press, he survived the war, emigrated to Nova Scotia and became a political leader there.

Black Point and Moody are reminders that even long into the war--by 1778 and the Battle of Monmouth, the focus of the war in the middle colonies had essentially ended--the fighting among Patriot and Loyalist militia remained vicious and deadly.

Savannah and the Multicultural American Revolution

The siege of Savannah lasted from September 16 to October 18, 1779, and essentially ended on October 9 when a joint French-American assault on a fortified British position ended in disaster, claiming among others, the Polish general Casimir Pulaski.  The French forces included some 500 Haitian volunteers from Saint-Domingue.  A monument in Savannah memorializes this contribution.

Though still under French authority at this time, the Les Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint Domingue were free men who fought on the American side.  It provides a contrast to the ambivalence, if not original hostility, of Washington to allowing slaves or freed slaves to fight in the Continental Army.l

Nathanael Greene Monument

So this is where Nathanael Greene, brilliant, self-taught Revolutionary War General, spends eternity, his ashes below the monument to him in Johnson Square, Savannah, Georgia.  This is the man who said: "We fight, get beaten, rise, and fight again."

Greene settled in Georgia after the war, about fourteen miles north of Savannah.  He died suddenly of sunstroke at the age of 43.

The plaque on this memorial states: "General Greene's remains were originally interred in the burial ground now known as Colonial Cemetery. His exact resting place was a matter of doubt and speculation for many years. The remains of the famed Revolutionary hero were found in the Graham vault in 1901, and were reinterred beneath this monument the following year."

I find this spot compelling.  One of the themes of this blog has been the force of place.  Here, we are in the physical proximity of the one of the greatest military figures of the Revolution, the man Washington would have had succeed him were he killed. 

Sergeant William Jasper and the Man of Action

One of the most gallant soldiers of the American Revolution was Sergeant William Jasper; remarkably, he has two memorials to him in Savannah, more than Casimir Pulaski and more than General Nathanael Greene.  One, in Madison Square, shows him holding a flag; the other, surrounded by interstate and local highways, is a more classical monument

His birthdate unconfirmed (some sources put 1750, another 1756), there is no doubt as to his death--October 9, 1779, during the failed assault by the Americans at the besieged British position at the Battle of Savannah.  At the Battle of Sullivan's Island, he retrieved a fallen flag of the 2nd South Carolina while exposed to enemy fire and restored it to its prominent position, proclaiming "God Save Liberty and my Country forever!" He successfully conducted a variety of raids that resulted in British prisoners.  Offered a lieutenant's commission, he turned it down, saying "Were I made an officer, my comrades would be constantly blushing for my ignorance, and I should be unhappy feeling my own inferiority.  I have no ambition for higher rank than that of a Sergeant."

While it is hard to admire foolhardiness with the consciousness of today, and with Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est ringing in our ears, it is nonetheless possible to think about Jasper as a man who put his "money where his mouth was," who acted and did not just talk, and who did so with a marked humility that is completely absent from most public figures today.

The Citizen Soldier and National Security

On a recent business trip to California, I stayed for a couple of nights at Cavallo Point, on the premises of now-closed Fort Baker, at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County.  Here is the parade ground:

No Revolutionary War battles were fought in California, and Fort Baker dates back at best only to 1850 when President Millard Fillmore created The Lime Point Military Reservation.  What caught my eye, though, was this plaque on the parade ground:

The plaque sets forth the dates 1775-1975 and the headline "Citizen-"Soldier," and then tells us that it commemorates the bicentennial of the United States Army.  It further states that "when a citizen-soldier sees our national flag, he sees not the flag but our nation." 

Colonial leaders, if not Americans in general at the time, had a deep concern about a standing army, but American military leaders like Washington and Henry Knox knew that such a Continental army, as opposed to militia, was necessary.  It is interesting to revisit the debate in the context of current defense by the NSA and the American president over the necessity of centralized control, including invasions of privacy, in the name of national security.  The old fears return to roost in the brave new digital world.  The difference though is that the notion of citizen-soldier invokes a "bottom up" mindset for defense, with the emphasis on citizen and democratic participation, as opposed to a "top down" assertion of what is necessary for the country.

John Witherspoon and the Warrior Clerics

John Witherspoon, a Scottish Presbyterian Minister, became president of The College of New Jersey (as Princeton University was then known) in 1768.  Affected by continued assertion of British Episcopacy in the Colonies, Witherspoon became caught up in the Revolutionary fervor of the times; in 1774 he joined the Committee of Correspondence and Safety.  In 1776, he was the only active cleric (as well as university president) to sign the Declaration of Independence.  He served in the Continental Congress as well as the New Jersey Legislature.  Here he is, memorialized today on the campus of Princeton University:

In Massachusetts, another cleric, Reverend Jonas Clark wrote the inscription for the monument that today stands marking the Battle of Bunker Hill and among other things, said: “The Blood of these Martyrs In the Cause of God and their Country Was the Cement of the Union and these State, then Colonies, and gave the spring to the spirit, firmness, and resolution of their Fellow-Citizens. They rose as one man to revenge their Brethren’s Blood, and at the Point of the Sword, to Assert and Defend their native Rights.” Witherspoon, when challenged in 1776 that the country was "not yet ripe" for independence, Witherspoon responded, "in my judgment, sir, we are not only ripe, but rotting."

Other men of the cloth were firebrands for the Revolution, and some paid with their lives.  It is interesting to reflect on this early role of the clergy in the formation of the American republic and the encouragement of war to achieve it, as we contemplate the rise of non-secular governments and the role of clergy in nation-building today.