The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [167]
The Rhode Islanders and the local militia had no chance in face-toface combat against what Greenman labeled a “far superior” force and the enemy cannon; the Americans retreated back into the woods in an orderly manner and waited for the British to attack. The enemy, though, had no plans to do anything except leave. When he returned from the victory at Charleston on June 17, Sir Henry Clinton declared that the British were not finished with Springfield. Knyphausen’s plan had been solid. Clinton would try, too.
The Rhode Islanders had been expecting something would happen following the return of Clinton’s fleet. Washington had left them to guard the Springfield area and they heard numerous rumors that the British were about to attack again. They spotted seven large British ships in New York harbor. On the twentieth they were again told to be prepared. “ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to march at a moment’s warning.”
That same day a very nervous Baron von Steuben, hearing reports of a huge British force being assembled for an invasion, begged Governor Livingston for as many militia units as he could raise. Livingston had prepared for just such a situation. Within just twenty-four hours, he had armed troops on the highways headed north as fast as they could march. He wrote to a relieved von Steuben that morning, “The militia from the lower counties of this state are on their way in considerable numbers.”5
The situation became even more intense the next day. Early in the morning, Washington ordered Seely to draft as many men as necessary to swell his militia unit to its largest size ever, 1,248 men, and to get them into the service immediately. The commander took the main army and started toward West Point, fearful that the British fleet was getting ready to sail up the Hudson. Nathanael Greene assumed command of the twenty-fivehundred-man army in the Springfield area. On the twenty-second, more rumors flew and Greenman wrote that “this day a number of boats and small craft passing from New York to Elizabeth, which we imagine the enemy was reinforcing and their approach might be speedily expected.”
He was right. The British, now under Clinton, attacked the next morning, June 25, with a force of six thousand regulars and a long train of cannon against Greene’s far smaller army. The British had massed in Elizabethtown and at 5 a.m. again headed toward Springfield along two roads, Springfield and Vauxhall. The Second Rhode Island was at first ordered into the village of Springfield, with its fifty buildings, to defend a meetinghouse as part of Maxwell’s brigade. But then the Rhode Islanders were rushed back, over a bridge, into an orchard at a second bridge that crossed one of tributaries of the Rahway River—the scene of a hot fight during the June 8 invasion—to prevent the British from crossing and moving toward Morristown. The Second Rhode Island had only a single field piece for artillery. In the distance, they could hear cannonading coming from the British line and watched as shells hit several buildings in the area, setting them on fire. The Americans knew they were outnumbered by more than two to one.
Lieutenant Greenman wrote of the Rahway River that it was “not passable only by the bridge as it appeared swampy on each side. A field piece was posted on a hill just in our rear, our right wing on the right of the bridge and the left wing on the left of the bridge, where we thought the enemy must pass.” The British were soon in view, surging toward them. Lieutenant Greenman wrote, “A firing of muskets immediately took place by the enemy’s right column advancing for the other part of the town which they approached with little difficulty. We then discovered their left column approaching us very fast.”
Colonel Israel Angell ordered the men of his artillery battery to fire their lone cannon as rapidly as they could, filling the early morning air with explosions and clouds of thick smoke as the British bore down on the Rhode Islanders. “The field piece back of us played very briskly on them. The enemy opened