The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [129]
Washington was full of optimism as he learned that the New Jersey state regiments were headed toward Monmouth. The ranks of the newly trained and resuscitated American army had swollen with new militia units and thousands of new recruits. The army had more cannon than at any time during the revolution. An exchange of prisoners had brought the return of General Charles Lee, whom Washington made his second in command and put in charge of the Monmouth attack. Washington’s total force consisted of about 12,600 men, as large as the British army. He was convinced that he could end the war when he intersected Clinton on the highway that meandered through central New Jersey’s farmland. He wrote to Robert Morris, “I rejoice most sincerely with you on the glorious change in our prospects . . . The game, whether well or ill, played hitherto, seems now to be verging fast to a favorable issue.”9
On June 27, British troops were near the tiny village of Monmouth Court House (now Freehold, New Jersey). Rumors that a fight was imminent spread through all the regiments. As night fell, a Rhode Island officer assembled his men to address the rumors. He was blunt. “You have been wishing for some days past to come up with the British,” he told them. “You have been wanting to fight. Now you shall have fighting enough!”10
The next day, the temperature soared into the high nineties, and the fields seemed like “a heated oven,” according to Pvt. Joseph Martin, who added that it was “almost impossible to breathe.”11 Seely had orders “to attack the enemy” that morning and he did, leading his men in an advance against Clinton’s rear guard and pushing them back across a wide meadow toward the courthouse. He intended to make certain that the Redcoats in front of him were unable to help flank General Lee’s main force. “We drove them back and they formed in a line across the plain from the courthouse.”
The Morris militia drove the British back even farther in another sustained attack, overseen by Colonel Seely, and the Redcoats retreated at 8:30 a.m. when it was already sweltering and Seely’s men sweated under their shirts and breeches. They did not sweat as profusely as the Redcoats, though, because Washington, realizing how much the heat would affect his men, ordered them to remove their coats before the battle.
Just after 10 a.m., General Lee arrived with some four thousand men. He spent some time studying the area and then ordered the Morris militia to join him in an advance that failed badly. Lee’s orders were confusing and contradictory. One advancing regiment would pass another that he had ordered to retreat. One command superseded another. Despite an order to devise one, Lee arrived without a general plan of battle and was unable to mount an orderly assault. Sensing that something was wrong, the British then attacked just before noon. Lee did not know what to do. Confusion reigned on the fields around the courthouse and the Americans, including Seely and his militia, were forced to retreat back toward a white clapboard meeting house, where they stopped.
Washington, with the rest of the army, seven thousand men, arrived just after noon to find the army in retreat as Clinton’s army attacked across the field. The commander, sensing disaster, rode to find Lee. He shouted at Lee in scathing language that his soldiers had never heard him use during the first three years of the war and relieved him of command. He later had him arrested. A threatened court of enquiry forced Lee to resign.
Washington