The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [81]
McMichael, his musket held above his head, plunged into the pond, exhorting his men to follow him. Some of the men, their clothing, packs, and muskets too heavy for them, could not make it through the waters of the pond and drowned. The advancing British troops made it impossible for McMichael or other officers to go back to save them. McMichael himself was astonished that he reached the far shore of the pond. “It was the will of providence that I should escape,” he wrote.
Separated from the rest of the army, he and his men did not learn until later the extent of the devastation the army suffered in the Long Island battle. McMichael later wrote that his regiment and those fighting nearby lost two colonels, nineteen officers, twenty-three sergeants and three hundred ten enlisted men, all taken prisoner (total American losses that day were 312 killed, 1,097 captured1). The lieutenant had survived one of the most severe engagements of the Revolution. “My preservation I only attribute to the indulgence of God,” he wrote. “For though the bullets went round me in every direction, yet I received not a wound.”
The Americans continued to lose in their confrontations with the British in New York and were forced to pull back from a position on Harlem Heights. The army retreated north to White Plains and formed a three mile defensive line that cut through the village.
On the morning of October 28, Howe’s army, consisting of nine thousand British regulars plus four thousand Hessians, advanced on the town after crossing the Bronx River. McMichael’s company and several militia units marched two miles to meet the enemy and test the Redcoats’ strength. There, McMichael described a furious Redcoat and Hessian assault against the American advance party.
He wrote, “We were attacked with [their] right wing being all Hessians. We kept up an incessant fire for nearly an hour when being informed from our flanking party that the [British] light horse were surrounding us. We were necessitated to retreat to the lines.” The Pennsylvanians, ordered back, joined the main line of defense later in the morning as General Howe’s entire force moved forward.
“Their left wing attacked a party of ours at an advanced post on a hill,” McMichael continued. “Our troops behaved with great fortitude but being overpowered by numbers were at last obliged to retreat to the lines. The enemy attempted to force our right wing in the lines but were put to a precipitate retreat back to the hill. The attack continued from 9 a.m. until 2 in the afternoon.” Finally, the left side of the American line collapsed when the Massachusetts militia units broke and fled. That was the beginning of the end and Washington soon ordered another general retreat north, beyond the Croton River.
Word spread that American losses were light (actually, they had lost only one hundred fifty men, killed or wounded) and that the enemy had lost six hundred (actually 313), but McMichael, at the center of the action that day, knew that regardless of numbers, the field in front of him was covered in blood.
A wing of the American army that was sent to hold Fort Washington in Manhattan was defeated. The main army was forced to run for its life across New Jersey toward Pennsylvania, with the British in pursuit. All felt the end was near. “Our army now being reduced to a small number gives us less hope of victory,” McMichael wrote.
The soldiers were bitter about the lack of public help for an army that was on its last legs. There was no assistance with food, shelter, or clothing from the New Jersey towns through which the army retreated. No local militias marched into camp to swell the ranks and, in fact, continued desertions badly depleted the army. The cheers the troops remembered in Boston had faded rather abruptly in