The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [17]
In the center had been John Sullivan, a veteran from the siege of Boston, one of Washington’s first trusted subordinates. He had placed Sullivan in command of those troops positioned in the field outside of the fortified position at Brooklyn Heights.
By rank, Charles Lee was his second in command, but Lee was still in Charleston. Though there was no doubt the American forces there had accomplished a stunning victory, Washington was beginning to hear reports that Lee had been a very small part of the whole affair, that he remained in South Carolina only to bask in the glow of the victory. It was the kind of talk Washington could not tolerate now. He had more pressing problems right in front of him.
With Lee in the Carolinas, Israel Putnam was the second in command in New York, and Washington had placed him in the works at Brooklyn Heights, the command center of the entire position on Long Island. Putnam was one of the heroes of the extraordinary fight on the Charlestown peninsula above Boston, what they all knew now as Breed’s Hill. It had been the worst day of the war for the British, a victory that cost General Thomas Gage his command. Though there were quiet disagreements over what role Putnam had actually played, he had been in overall command of the field, and most reports said that Putnam had been responsible for keeping the militia withdrawal organized and preventing the British from inflicting the same casualties they had absorbed.
Despite Putnam’s self-confidence, and his reputation in Massachusetts, Washington would have preferred to place Nathanael Greene in overall command on Long Island, while Washington himself would stay in New York and maintain command of the half of the army that still fortified the city. But Greene had fallen ill, a serious fever, was tended to by nervous doctors across the East River. With the British pushing forward into what could be the most serious confrontation of the war, Washington was without the one man who inspired his confidence. Dividing the Long Island command between Sullivan and Putnam was the only alternative.
The British had the troop strength to attack both Manhattan and Long Island, and even after Howe’s armada had landed at Gravesend Bay, Washington could not be sure if it was meant as a feint, to mislead him on the true direction of the British attack. But Washington could not abandon the city just to meet the British on Long Island, and so he divided his army, an anguished decision to weaken an already outnumbered force in the face of such a powerful enemy. Washington believed he had no choice. The British simply had too many options.
When the first sounds of battle had finally broken out, Washington had come across the river himself, his doubts erased. The British had made no move toward Manhattan, and the outpost on Governor’s Island had sent no word of any warships coming their way. Very soon after daylight, the attack had spread across the entire front, a British force pushing into Stirling and then a strong wave of Hessians moving against Sullivan. To the inexperienced troops who faced this well-disciplined army, the shock had been devastating. All along Sullivan’s line, entire units simply melted away, some without firing a shot. The men who stood their ground discovered they could not reload quickly enough to hold away the terrifying sight of so many bayonets coming toward them, and when the fight became face-to-face, it was the steel, not the musketball that did the horrible work. Stirling’s men tried to hold their ground, but were soon pushed into the swamps, many trapped there, overtaken by the rapid advance of the well-disciplined attack. As both fronts pushed hard against Washington’s lines, the men began to turn toward their one sanctuary, the safety of the fortified works on Brooklyn Heights. But there would be no organized retreat. Before Sullivan could even begin his own withdrawal,