During the Revolutionary War, the individual states formed their own navies for local defense and military operations.  These state navies existed simultaneously with the Continental Navy. Like many state navies, Virginia’s began when the war started and there was a need to defend the state’s coastline and waterways, just as troops were organized to defend its land. The Virginia State Navy patrolled the Chesapeake Bay, provided security on its rivers, and even went to Europe and the Caribbean to bring back supplies.

After several years of inactivity, by 1781 the war had returned to Virginia. British troops occupied Portsmouth and used it as a base for raids. Governor Thomas Jefferson scrambled to get the state’s defenses ready.

British forces under General Benedict Arnold capture the fledging capital of Richmond, where he dispersed local militia and destroyed supplies. Arnold withdrew to the British base at Portsmouth, but the redcoats would soon be back in the area.

Marching south with reinforcements from New Jersey was General Lafayette. By late April he reached Hanover Court House, and continued on towards Richmond. 

On April 8 General Phillips from Portsmouth up the James River to City Point. From there they moved on to Petersburg. The town was an important crossroads, port, and supply base for the Continental army. Generals Friedrich Von Steuben and Peter Muhlenberg had been gathering militia here, and they made a stand just south of the town on April 25. The British drove the defenders back, and the Americans retreated to Richmond. Phillips followed, intending to again capture the state capital.

As part of the British advance, General Arnold with the 76th, 80th, and some Jaegers (German riflemen) and Queen’s Rangers moved towards Osborn’s Landing on the James River. They arrived on April 27 and incredibly, won a naval battle without a navy!

Osborn’s Landing was a wharf about a dozen miles south of Richmond on the west bank of the James River. Assembled here were several merchant ships and the entire Virginia State Navy- nine warships with severely understrength crews. Across the river on the eastern bank were local militia from Henrico County.

Arnold sent a message to the American commander (whose identity is not recorded), “offering one half the contents of their cargoes in case they did not destroy any part.” The nameless American commander sent word, in answer, “We are determined and ready to defend our ships, and will sink them rather than surrender.” With that Arnold took them up on their offer.

The Queen’s Rangers and Hessian Jaegers charged down to the wharf, while the two British infantry regiments provided covering fire. Arnold also deployed two 3-pound and two 6-pound guns, which opened fire on the American ships “with great effect.” The Tempest became a primary target, and the Jaegers advanced, “by a route partly covered with ditches, within thirty yards of her stern.” The rifle fire prevented the crews from properly manning their guns on deck.

British artillery fire severed the rigging of the Tempest, and she began to drift, so the crew abandoned the ship. The other warships were also taking fire, and their crews abandoned them as well. Along with the Tempest, the other large warships lost were the Renown and the Jefferson.

The British destroyed the entire Virginia State Navy, and captured twelve private ships with 2,000 hogsheads of tobacco, flour, rope, and other supplies- all without a single ship of their own in the fight.

Phillips arrived at the town of Manchester, opposite Richmond, and Arnold’s forces joined them after moving up from Osborn’s. The British prepared to cross the shallow river and take the capital for the second time in three months. Yet the arrival of Lafayette on the high ground above the river convinced the British to turn back.   

There are few reminders of the Revolution in the Richmond-Petersburg area. Today the site of Osborn’s Landing is inaccessible. Across the river, on the eastern shore, is a county boat landing and picnic area, with historic markers about the engagement. Ironically, Governor Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather, also named Thomas Jefferson, was born at Osborne’s Landing in 1677.

Perhaps one of the most tragic and brutal stories from the Ten Crucial Days is the death of young Lieutenant Bartholomew Yates. Yates was an 18 year old officer in the 1st Virginia Regiment. He was originally from Gloucester County, Virginia, where his father Reverend Robert Yates was a minister of Petsworth Parish. He fought with his regiment at the Battle of Harlem Heights and at Trenton and Assunpink Creek.

However, he met his gloomy end at Princeton. The fighting on the fields south of the New Jersey town was brief but bloody. The 1st Virginia Regiment was in General Hugh Mercer‘s brigade that was the first engage the British at Princeton. The British 17th Regiment of Foot and Mercer’s men slugged it out in musket volleys in the William Clarke orchard. Shortly after the opening of the battle, Mercer discovered his 350 man brigade was greatly outnumbered and out matched. He ordered his men to retreat as the British lowered their bayonets and charged at Mercer’s men. Mercer’s men broke and ran. The British fell upon those Americans who were wounded or left behind.

Major John Fleming, commanding the 1st Virginia Regiment, had just ordered his men to dress their ranks when he was shot and killed. Mercer, on foot as his horse had been wounded, drew his sword and prepared to fight to the death. The British soldiers clubbed him on the head and bayoneted him seven times, mortally wounding him.

Yates was among those killed in the William Clarke orchard in a most brutal manner that many witnesses remembered. Captain John Chilton of the 3rd Virginia wrote, “Lieut. Yates had got a slight wound in the thigh which threw him into the hands of the enemy who immediately butchered him with the greatest Barbarity.” Dr. Benjamin Rush, who would treat many of the wounded after the battle described Lt. Yates’s death in terrifying detail:

“he received a wound in his side, which brought him to the ground. Upon seeing the enemy advance toward him, he begged for quarters; a British soldier stopped, and after deliberately loading his musket, by his side, shot him through the breast. Finding that he was still alive, he stabbed him in thirteen places with his bayonet; the poor youth all the while crying for mercy. Upon the enemy being forced to retreat, either the same or another soldier, finding he was not dead, struck him with a butt of a musket on the side of his head. He languished a week in the greatest anguish, and then died (I declare it upon my honour, as a man and a physician) of the wounds he received after he fell and begged for quarter.”

Continue reading ““Butchered him with the greatest Barbarity” – The tragic death of Bartholomew Yates” →

After reading this title you may assume this is a quote about the year 2020, but this is actually a quote from financier of the Revolution Robert Morris in a letter to George Washington describing the year 1776. While the year 1776 started with much promise and hope with the capture of Boston and the passage of the Declaration of Independence, the second half of the year saw the Patriot cause nearly destroyed.

After losing New York City and a long string of battles, Washington’s Continental Army had shrunk from more than 23,000 men to just around 5,000 by December. Washington breathed life into the dying cause at Trenton on the day after Christmas, defeating a Hessian garrison.  This glimmer of hope was almost crushed by the fact that most of his army’s enlistments expired on January 1st, and his army was on the verge of dissolution. As General Cornwallis and a large British army marched towards Washington and his army at Trenton, Washington needed to convince his veterans to hold on. It led to one of the most dramatic moments of the Revolution, which occurred on New Year’s Eve, 1776.

While many of Washington’s brave men believed they had done their duty, at this moment, they were needed more than ever before. All day on December 31, 1776, Washington’s generals appealed to the soldiers through impassioned speeches to reenlist. Washington authorized an exorbitant $10 bounty to those men who agreed to remain. Despite all these exhortations, very few men were agreeing to stay on. Finally, in one of the most affecting scenes of his life, Washington himself personally appealed to the patriotism of the men who had campaigned by his side.

Washington paraded Gen. John Sullivan’s and Gen. Nathanael Greene’s divisions just outside Trenton. He entreated the men to stay on just a few weeks more. He asked those who wished to reenlist to move forward, but at that point no one moved. Sergeant Nathaniel Root of the 20th Continental Regiment (Connecticut) remembered that the men were “worn down with fatigue and privation” and had their “hearts fixed on home.” Washington, pleading with his brave soldiers wheeled his horse in front of the men and declared to them:

“My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay only one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country which you probably never can do under any other circumstances. The present is emphatically the crisis which is to decide our destiny.”

Moved by their commander’s words, more than two hundred of these men stepped forward to stay on and fight. The combination of patriotic pleas and hard currency helped persuade many more to stay. Washington retained a force of about 3,000 men from his army. These veterans would prove invaluable in the coming days, and some of them would tragically pay the ultimate price in the coming days.

America has persevered through many terrible years, and we shall again. The men who persevered in the winter of 1776-1777 give us hope. Happy New Year, from all of us at Emerging Revolutionary War!

To learn more about the campaign that saved the Revolution, check out my book: Victory or Death: The Battles of Trenton and Princeton or consider joining us on a tour of the actual sites in November.

December 1776 was one of the darkest months in American history. The American Revolution was on the brink of collapse. New York City had fallen, George Washington’s Continental Army was disintegrating before the country’s eyes, and the British Army under Sir William Howe was steamrolling its way across New Jersey toward the Delaware River—the only barrier preventing Howe from squeezing the life out of the rebellion.

Following the fall of Forts Lee and Washington along the Hudson River the previous month, the Continental Army fled from the British in two major wings. Washington, commanding just 3,000 men, hastily made his way across the northern part of New Jersey in an attempt to get over the Delaware and into Pennsylvania. Major General Charles Lee, who the commander in chief described as, “The first officer in Military knowledge and experience we have in the whole army….,” commanded the other wing—7,000 men at White Plains situated above New York City in case Howe attempted to head north. Lee was eccentric and erratic, but was by far the American commander with the most military experience and knowledge at this early stage in the conflict, as Washington had admitted. This could not, however, protect Lee from the enemy.

On multiple occasions at the end of November and in early December, Washington asked, requested, and then ordered Lee to bring his command into Pennsylvania so the army may be reunited. Lee hesitated, drug his feet, and then began to grow fond of the idea of having his own independent command in New Jersey away from the reigns of his superior, whose abilities he doubted. While Washington waited, Lee wrote to Congress on December 8 that he planned to stay east of the Delaware River and “annoy, distract, and consequently weaken [the British] in a desultory war.” On December 10, his command marched into Morristown, New Jersey, and two days later moved south west to Bernardsville. It was here, that Lee decided to search for more suitable conditions for a general to make his headquarters for the evening. He found what he was looking for three miles to the east in Basking Ridge at the two-story Widow White’s Tavern. With him, he took his aide, Major William Bradford, two French volunteer officers, and fifteen guards who situated themselves around the building. That evening, Major James Wilkinson, General Horatio Gates’s aide, rode to White’s Tavern with a dispatch for Lee from his superior.

While Lee and his party got themselves comfortable that night, British dragoons were galloping about Central Jersey trying to find out all they could about Lee’s command’s whereabouts. Lieutenant Colonel William Harcourt, 22 year old Cornet Banastre Tarleton, and thirty or more horsemen of the 16^th Dragoons had left General Charles Cornwallis’s headquarters at Pennington earlier in the day and rode willy-nilly to Hillsborough on their intelligence gathering mission without any success. They made their camp there in a house that was lit on fire in the middle of the night, forcing them to make a hasty escape and sleep within a hay barn. Early the next morning, they mounted up and continued on their task. Tarleton and several other dragoons were sent ahead of the rest of the group.

As the sun rose, the two groups headed in the direction of Morristown, scooping up several rebels along the way, but only receiving sketchy information about the enemy’s location. Near Basking Ridge, their luck changed as a rider from Gen. Sullivan was intercepted who had just returned from Lee’s headquarters. He led Tarleton and Harcourt within sight of White’s Tavern. Harcourt quickly formulated his plan of action—Lee was there, and he was going to capture this grand prize. Young Tarleton was ordered to rush the guards at the front of the structure, while he took his party around the back to surround and cut off their escape. It was 10 a.m.

As the dragoons prepared to make their attack, Lee was still inside White’s Tavern. Even though his command had begun to march out of Bernardsville, he chose to stay behind and finish breakfast and dictating a response to Wilkinson for Gates. His response was a clear shot at Washington: “… entre nous [between us], a certain great man is damnably deficient—He has thrown me into a situation where I have my choice of difficulties—if I stay in this Province [New Jersey] I risk myself and army and if I do not stay the Province is lost forever … unless something which I do not expect turns up we are lost—our counsels have been weak to the last degree….” Lee had no idea of the risk he was actually facing at that moment.

Shots rang out from outside after Lee finished his message. Tarleton and his dragoons swept out through the woods and violently fell upon the general’s guard. “I went on at full Speed,” Tarleton later recounted, “when perceiving 2 [guards] at a Door and a loaded Waggon; I push’d at them making all the Noise I cou’d. The [guards] were struck with a Panic, dropp’d their arms and fled. I order’d my Men to fire into the House thro’ every Window and Door, and cut up as many of the Guard as they cou’d.” Within minutes the fire ceased and the cornet demanded Lee and everyone inside the tavern to surrender or he set fire to it and kill them all. Lee was upstairs during the fighting hoping and watching for reinforcements. They would not come. Recognizing the inevitable, he sent Maj. Bradford outside to inform Tarleton that he would surrender.

In the wake of the skirmish, Bradford, Wilkinson, and one of the Frenchmen managed to make their escape. Lee, however, would not be so fortunate. After surrendering himself to Harcourt, he was taken back to Pennington, sent to New Brunswick, and eventually to New York City for confinement. He would not be paroled and returned to the Continental Army for nearly sixteen months. The American army and the status of its cause for independence which it fought and bled for would be much different then.  

On December 13, 2020 at 7 p.m. Emerging Revolutionary War historian Mark Maloy will sit down and talk with preeminent George Washington historian Dr. Peter Henriques to discuss his latest book about the indispensable man of the Revolution, First and Always: A New Portrait of George Washington.  Peter Henriques is Professor of History, Emeritus, at George Mason University and gave the keynote address at the inaugural Emerging Revolutionary War Symposium in May of 2019.  You can watch this discussion live on our Facebook page.

George Washington is without a doubt the most important man in the story of America’s founding.  Henriques has studied Washington for decades and in 2006 published a book Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington.  Rather than a biography that covers everything in Washington’s life, both Realistic Visionary and now First and Always are “portraits.”  They are broken up into individual stand-alone essays and delve in depth into some of the most interesting and at times controversial aspects of Washington’s life.  Among these are Washington’s relationships with his mother, fellow Founding Fathers, and slavery.  The result is a deeper and fuller understanding of who George Washington really was.

To get a signed copy of Dr. Henriques new book First and Always, you can send $27.95 to 13704 Heritage Valley Way, Gainesville, VA, 20155.

Additionally, we will be talking with Dr. Henriques on the 221^st anniversary of the final illness of George Washington.  Washington became ill on December 13, 1799 and died late in the evening on December 14, 1799.  Henriques is an expert on the death of George Washington and the author of a book The Death of George Washington: He Died as He Lived that explores the final days of George Washington, so we will also discuss Washington’s death. We hope you are able to join us! If you miss the live talk, you will still be able to watch it on either our Facebook page or YouTube page in the future.