The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [146]
The Germans were surprised, though. Their assault was stopped cold and their lines shattered by the 125 black troops behind the earthworks. They met “a more stubborn resistance than expected” and had to pull back, suffering high casualties. The regulars attacked the center of the American line at the same time that the Hessian charge began, but they were repulsed too. Greenman had to be pleased as he looked to his right to see the troops in the black regiment that he had helped to train turn back the ferocious Hessian assault.
The German commander was not pleased, however, and after his men had been stopped, shot up, and turned back, he ordered them to attack yet again. He was confident that the black troops could not hold off his veteran soldiers any longer. His second attack failed, as did a third. The Hessians could not dislodge the black troops from their position on the right. After four solid hours of fighting, the Germans ended their charges. Pigot’s regulars fared no better, turned back again and again by Greenman’s Rhode Islanders and the main force commanded by Sullivan. The British attacks ended as night fell; the Americans moved a short distance to another hill.
The soldiers in the First Rhode Island felt both relief and pride at the end of the day. “Balls, like hail, were flying all around me. The man standing next to me was shot by my side,” said a Doctor Harris, reportedly one of the troops in the black regiment, whose brother was killed in the Revolution. “They attacked us with great fury, but were repulsed. They reinforced and attacked us again, with more vigor and determination, and were again repulsed. Again they reinforced, and attacked us the third time, with the most desperate courage and resolution, but a third time were repulsed. The contest was fearful. Our position was hotly disputed and hotly maintained.”7
The commanders at Butt’s Hill marveled at the courage of the white troops and especially the bravery of the black soldiers. The British encountered “chiefly wild looking men in their shirt sleeves, and among them many Negroes,” wrote one. Lafayette called the stand at Butt’s Hill “the best fought action of the war.” General Sullivan heaped praise upon his black troops and cited the entire regiment for honors in his report on the battle to George Washington. Nathanael Greene, who watched the black regiment up close, agreed. Discussing the men under him, including the blacks, he wrote to Washington, “We soon put the enemy to rout and I had the pleasure to see them run in worse disorder than they did at Monmouth.” He added that the troops fought with “great spirit” and “great honor” and “stood the fire of the enemy with great firmness.”8 A Rhode Island historian wrote later that “it was in repelling these furious onsets that the newly raised black regiment, under Col. Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor.”9
The Hessians, who suffered the most that day, agreed. “No regiment is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in abundance; among them are strong able bodied and brave fellows,” wrote one.10
The following day, August 30, the Americans evacuated, departing across the channel on small craft. They had suffered 211 casualties in the battle versus 260 for the British. There would have been far more if Sullivan had been trapped on the island or waited to evacuate; the British fleet arrived the following day with five thousand troops.11
Americans everywhere were relieved. “I never in general saw people more anxious than my acquaintances under the present suspense,” wrote Henry Laurens about the pullback.12 There was a sense of loss by some, such as congressional delegate James Smith, who wrote forlornly that perhaps a victory at Newport “would have put an end to the war.” The country’s top propagandists, such as Richard Henry Lee, dismissed naysayers like Smith and told one and all that the Americans at Newport had actually won the battle and had given the British