The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [285]
He could not find reason to arrest Peggy Arnold, and once she was allowed to leave, and provided transportation to Philadelphia, her condition seemed to improve dramatically. Washington granted her a favor. If she desired to be joined with her husband, he would not object.
Among his own staff there was disagreement on how Major André should be regarded, whether the man’s favored position in the British command required special circumstances. But Washington would hear no pleas for leniency, for treating André as anything other than a spy. The trial was brief and the verdict definite. No argument could be offered to prevent André’s execution. Despite André’s own request that a man of his lofty status be allowed to choose the manner of his own death, Washington made the decision himself. On October 2, John André was hanged.
47. GREENE
HORATIO GATES HAD ARRIVED IN NORTH CAROLINA TO ASSUME command of a ragged and exhausted army. Several regiments of continental regulars had been marched southward, adding to the few survivors from Charleston. They were accompanied by cavalry, a necessity in this part of the country, where so much flat open land invited rapid assault. The newly arrived troops had made a torturous march through inhospitable land, and when Gates arrived, many were still suffering the effects of their ordeal. The horses of the cavalry were in poor condition as well, many not surviving the long ride south. Gates was met with urgent requests from the officers that the entire army required time to refit and replenish their strength. But Gates would not wait. If the cavalry was not prepared to ride, they would be left behind. The men would fare as best as the land would provide. Gates started them on another grueling march, his eye focused squarely on the British outpost at Camden. It was a ripe target, unsuspecting and vulnerable, and as Gates gathered militia units from North Carolina and Virginia, he had begun to see his army as invincible. Camden would be his first prize.
If Gates believed his attack would be a surprise, the British commander, Francis Rawdon, disappointed him. At first, Gates seemed to have the upper hand, and presented his forces in such a way that the British wisely pulled back. Gates interpreted the move as an all-out retreat, but Rawdon was merely buying time, reorganizing and reinforcing his lines. By the time Gates met the British again, they were stronger and better prepared, and now, were commanded by Cornwallis himself.
Gates pursued the attack with perfect vigor, but he had positioned the raw Virginia militia along a key position of his line. Confronting Cornwallis’ regular infantry, they fired one volley, then turned and ran, completely abandoning the field. Their collapse endangered Gates’ entire position, and inspired a massive panicked retreat. The only units that held their ground were the veteran regiments from Maryland and Delaware, William Smallwood’s regulars, who had shown their astounding bravery as far back as Long Island. With most of Gates’ army dissolving in front of him, Cornwallis turned his entire force on Smallwood, a power the veterans could not resist. With no alternative except annihilation, Smallwood retreated as well.
While the fight had been a crushing defeat, it was Gates himself who placed the final punctuation mark on a perfectly disastrous ordeal. As his army fled piecemeal through woods and swamps, Gates himself rode hard and fast, as he made his own retreat as well. When he finally brought himself under control, he had ridden for better than three days, to Hillsboro, North Carolina, a distance of one hundred eighty miles. Though his report