The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [1]
—song written by a soldier of the Second New York Regiment
CONTENTS
Author to Reader
Chapter 1: Bunker Hill: The Arrival of Private John Greenwood, Age Fifteen, Fifer
Chapter 2: The Siege of Boston, 1775–1776: Private Greenwood Joins an Armed Camp
Chapter 3: Camp Life
Chapter 4: Mother and Son Reunion
Chapter 5: The Soldiers
Chapter 6: Why They Fought
March to Quebec
Chapter 7: Private Jeremiah Greenman and Benedict Arnold
Chapter 8: Jeremiah Greenman: Prisoner of War
Chapter 9: A Harrowing Retreat
Chapter 10: The Healers: The Reverend, the Doctor, and the Smallpox Scourge
Chapter 11: Death Becomes a Daily Visitor
Chapter 12: The Compassionate Minister and the Enraged Doctor
Chapter 13: Christmas, 1776: Private John Greenwood Crosses the Delaware
Chapter 14: The Victory That Saved the Revolution
Chapter 15: New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1777–1778: Lieutenant James McMichael: A Poet Goes to War
Chapter 16: Women of the Revolution
Chapter 17: Saratoga, 1777: The Arduous Journey of Sergeant Ebenezer Wild, Nineteen
Valley Forge
Chapter 18: The Harsh Road to a Winter Camp
Chapter 19: Private Elijah Fisher and the Agony of Valley Forge
Chapter 20: “The soldiers of our army are almost naked Lieutenant James McMichael: The Poet
Chapter 21: Private Elijah Fisher Joins Washington’s Elite Life Guard, 1778
Chapter 22: Monmouth, 1778: Captain Sylvanus Seely’s Militia Goes to War
Chapter 23: The Secret Life of Captain Seely
Chapter 24: Spring 1778: The African American Soldiers
Chapter 25: The Heroism of the Black Rhode Island Regiment
Chapter 26: John Greenwood, Privateer
Chapter 27: 1779–1780: The War’s Worst Winter and Mutiny
Chapter 28: Springfield: The Militia Saves the Revolution
Chapter 29: 1781: Victory at Yorktown
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes
Index
AUTHOR TO READER
The American Revolution may have been highlighted by the inspirational writing of Thomas Paine, the patriotism of the delegates to the Continental Congress, and the leadership of George Washington, but it was won by the enlisted men of the Continental Army over eight years of fighting against one of the greatest military forces in the world. It was not only their bravery under intense fire on battlefields at Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown that won the war, but their courage in simply staying together as an army through incredibly severe winters, smallpox epidemics, tattered clothes, and near-starvation that gained independence for America.
There have been many books written about George Washington and other generals in the rebellion and volumes about the key battles of the conflict. There have been lengthy biographies about important political figures of the revolutionary period such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. But there have been very few works written about the ordinary soldiers of the Continental Army, America’s first army, especially the enlisted men, the original grunts.
The First American Army is an effort to tell the story of the Revolution through the eyes of the common soldiers, not the generals. It is the story of eight men and their travails. Four of them—Elijah Fisher, John Greenwood, Ebenezer Wild of Massachusetts, and Jeremiah Greenman of Rhode Island—were enlisted men. I added a lieutenant, Pennsylvania’s James McMichael, because he was a poet whose patriotic stanzas added much to the story. I selected a feisty thirty-five-year-old county militia captain, Sylvanus Seely of New Jersey, to explain the role of the militia units. I added a chaplain, the Reverend Ammi Robbins of Connecticut, and a physician, Dr. Lewis Beebe of Massachusetts, so that the reader could understand the spiritual and medical sides of the war.
Finding the men was not easy. Many generals and officers kept journals throughout the war, but few enlisted men wrote down their thoughts for posterity. Most of the enlisted men who did keep journals filled them with rather bland entries (“It rained . . .”). Very few infantrymen fought for more than