Walking the Berkshires

"On the Weakeness of our Army our Enemies Build Their Hopes"; Aaron Ogden Writes his Father After the Battle of Connecticut Farms (Knyphausen's Raid Part V)

The Ogden Family, Elizabethtown Branch by William Ogden Wheeler (1907) reprints the following letter in it's entry for my ancestor Aaron Ogden, who was Brigade Major under William Maxwell during Knyphausen's Raid.  It was addressed to his father, Robert Ogden Esq., who had left their home in Royalist occupied Elizabethtown and was then in Trenton.

"Jersey camp at Springfield, June 15th, 1780.

Honored Sir,  Wishing to relieve that anxiety in you, which must fill every breast in the present posture of affairs, I set down to give you as much satisfaction as is in my power.

On the night if the 6th Inst. the enemy landed at Elizth Town; it is supposed, with about 5,000 troops, including three hundred Dragoons & a large train of artillery - their advance reached Connecticut farms soon after Day break, where they were opposed by some small parties of the Jersey Brigade & a few militia - they did not pass the defile till after they had received reinforcements from Town - much scirmishing (sic) happened during the day, in which almost the whole of Brigade were at different times engaged assisted with a considerable body of militia, who on this occasion merit much praise & have, I think, acquired to themselves lasting honor. 

Our loss in the Brigade is not very considerable, one Ensign killed,  3 [officers] wounded, 7 privates killed & 20 wounded, - from the dead found after their loss in killed, wounded & taken prisoners can not be less than two hundred - I speak within bounds in my opinion - the difference between our loss and theirs may perhaps appear incredible, but let it be considered that they were harassed by small parties on every side in such a manner that it was out of their power to make retaliation.  That they were thoroughly sick of their situation appears evident from the silence & precipitancy of their retreat, which they performed under cover of night & a heavy shower of rain - it was not known in our camp untill (sic) the next morning. - Genl Hand, with two Battalions of Continental troops, fell on their rear a little below where Ebenezer Pine lives - he charged them with vigour, but superior force soon obliged him to retire - his loss was trifling.

Since that time nothing very material has happened - the advance of the enemy are as far up as the Town bridge the wooden bridge by Potters - their main body between the forks of the road & the ferries. - Our light parties do them very little injury in their present position. -

To develope (sic) the objective of the enemy in this excursion seems almost impossible - perhaps they may have been brought to believe that our small army would receive but little assistance from the militia - They may possibly suppose that our magazines of provisions are so small as not to be able to subsist a large body of men together but for a short time - I hope that such exertions will be made, as may disappoint our enemies in their expectations, and that hereafter our Continental regiments may be put into such a situation as may enable Genl Washington to make sufficient opposition without the aid of the militia, whose absence from their farms must be attended with bad consequence to agriculture on which our support depends. -

Had every State in the Union compleated (sic) their Battalions, which might have easily been done - this distress would not probably have come upon us. - On the weakness of our army our enemies build their hopes - they say that those few can not long hold together, - and that they must be more than men, who will fight, without pay, clothes or food. - A few vigorous exertions on our side might destroy these expectations, & make them wish to be at peace with us - what can more speedily bring our foes to terms, than our being prepared for war? - Oh! that every one would exert his power & influence to give vigour to our operations this campaign - & peace may again be established.  I wish that matters of trifling importance might be dismissed & that a spirit of unanimity might prevail.

Dr. Wolsely [Ogden's brother-in-law] arrived in Sussex on Sunday last, his wife and Hannah [Ogden's younger sister] came with him, they are all in health.  The Doctor proposes to stay about a week from this time, perhaps longer.  Colo. Ogden [Ogden's elder brother Mathias, commander of the 1st New Jersey Continentals] has been ill, but is now fast recovering.

I am Sir, with much respect, your affectionate Son, Aar. Ogden."

Aaron Ogden, who in later years delighted in demonstrating his command of the classics, surely missed an opportunity in this letter to quote young King Harry at Agincourt -

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

He clearly was writing not only to inform his father of the state of affairs with the war in their very backyard, but also with an eye toward it being shared with people of influence in the government, for the utter failure to build up the ranks of Washington's depleted Continental batallions was a point of deep resentment among those who served.  The fact that the militia performed well on this occasion was a relief, but Ogden is absolutely correct that the British, hessian and Loyalist advance during Knyphausen's Raid toward Springfield was checked and even thrown back for a time at Connecticut Farms by the 800 man Jersey Brigade and local men who fought on their very doorsteps.   Ogden, as Brigade Major, was dispatched by his commander William Maxwell to stiffen the resolve of the militia, so he was able to see their quslity firsthand while his relatives and close friends fought neearby with their regiments.  More on Connecticut Farms and its aftermath in a subsequent post. 

     

Fighting with Two Arms Behind his Back: Knyphausen's Raid (Part 4)

The Royalists under Knyphausen had little more than a dozen miles to cover between their landing at Elizabethtown, New Jersey and Hobart's Gap which lead toward Washington's encampment and vulnerable supplies at Morristown.   The invading army that June night in 1780 included a strong force of cavalry that was utterly squandered on the campaign. 

The high mobility of the 17th Lancers, von Diemar's Black Hussars, the mounted Queens Rangers and the mounted German Jaegers could have been used to penetrate the countryside ahead of the marching columns and determine the enemy strength, and if they were not able - as was Buford at Gettysburg - to secure the high ground, at least they could screen the advance from attack by militia.  Washington, in fact, was so greatly alarmed by the presence of so many enemy horsemen that he ordered the recall of "Lighthorse Harry" Lee and his troopers, on their way South, to help counter a cavalry threat that ultimately never materialized. 

The Hessian commander was unable to get his horsemen across from Staten Island in time to be of any use on June 7th, when the head of the advancing column was blunted for hours at Connecticut Farms just a few miles northwest of Elizabethtown.  Nor were they used effectively during the battle two weeks later at Springfield just a bit further up the road.  Aside from a few ambuscades during the period when the British hunkered down between engagements at their beach-head below Elizabethtown, the mounted arm of Kyphausen's force contributed little to the outcome of the campaign.

Knyphausen also had a substantial advantage in artillery.  After Maxwell's depleted brigade of New Jersey Continentals and assorted militia stood in the path of the Royalist advance at Connecticut Farms without artillery of their own - and held them off for more than three hours of ferocious fighting - they withdrew toward Springfield and the protection of an "old iron four-pound field piece" manned by New Jersey militia.   Only two or three of the estimated 15-20 cannon Knyphausen brought over from Staten island were brought to bear at Connecticut Farms, and these were the "battalion guns" that traveled with the lead brigades rather than a concentrated force. 

Artillery played a much greater role at Springfield on June 23rd, but even here it took six of Knyphausen's guns to silence a single six pounder that held up the British advance.  The Continentals never managed to get a battery of guns in place and the militia actually lost some of theirs when the Royalists emerged from their defenses at Elizabethtown for their second drive inland.

Thus the bulk of the fighting fell to just a few battalions out of the entire Royalist force, and to a thin blue line of Continental regiments and swarming groups of militia.  Given the total number of troops available to Knyphausen (on paper, at least), it is remarkable that the casualties were not much greater on the patriot side.  But merely having the resources under his command did not assure that they could be effectively deployed, and Knyphausen in his only independent command did not prove to be an aggressive commander.  We'll see how these factors played out when we examine the fight at Connecticut Farms in detail in the next post in this series.

Book Review: The Forgotten Victory; The Battle for New Jersey - 1780 by Thomas Fleming (1973)

There is only one full length history of Knyphausen's Raid and the engagements at Connecticut Farms and Springfield, New Jersey, and it has long been out of print.  Time and again during my research of these events for this series of posts, it became clear that I needed to find this book, and yesterday Interlibrary Loan delivered a much anticipated copy of Thomas Fleming's 1973 account:  The Forgotten Victory; The Battle for New Jersey - 1780.  In 1975, Fleming condensed this book into a 33 page booklet - #8 in the New Jersey's Revolutionary Experience Series entitled The Battle of Springfield - and I'm sorry to say that this abridged work, also out of print, is the better history of the two, for in its brevity it makes fewer errors.

Fleming is an engaging writer, a novelist and author of historical fiction as well as several excellent histories.  He has gone particulalry deep in the American Revolutionary period, and for this early work he clearly did a great deal of research on an important and neglected campaign of the war. He benefited from access to a wide range of documentary sources and there is plenty of fresh information available in both The Forgotten Victory and The Battle of Springfield, much of which with appropriate citation to aid the historian. Nonetheless there are nagging errors that taken individually seem nit-picky but in aggregate make one start to question the veracity of more essential points in the narrative. 

Some of these errors are those only one with a vested interest in esoteric details might catch.  Such, however, is the nature of the interested genealogist, and this campaign involved many of my ancestral kin.

On pg. 99 and again on pg 155, Fleming identifies Ensign Moses Ogden as the nephew of Major Aaron Ogden, who happens to be my Gr-gr-gr-great grandfather.  According to The Ogden Family Elizabethtown Branch by William Ogden Wheeler (1907) pg. 85, Moses Ogden was in fact a 1st cousin.  Unfortunately, Fleming actually references this work as his source for Ogden's lineage, but ended up getting it wrong more than once in print.

On page 247, Fleming describes the spectacle of the Royalists on the march to Springfield on June 23rd, making reference to "the Foot Guards gleaming in white lace.  Even the sergeants wore epaulets on their right shoulders.  Their drummers and fifers were in white coats lined with blue, and they wore white fur caps."  While that is they way they would have looked in the garrison uniforms back in England, the Service Brigade of Guards that fought in America wore a stripped down campaign dress from the moment of their arrival in 1776 when their commander, Brigadier General Edward Mathew, made radical alterations to their uniforms, removing the lace and epaulets and cutting down their hat brims and coat lengths.  They were still elite soldiers, but not the bandbox battalions described by Fleming.  His source for this description was accurate for the Guards in general, but not as they appeared in America.

On page 239, Fleming notes that General Nathaniel Greene had a personal bond with Col. Israel Angell's 2nd Rhode Island Regiment but gives no further explanation for it.   In fact this it quite true, for the Rhode Islander Greene had fought with these men in the defense of Fort Mercer during the Philadelphia campaign two years before, an event described by Fleming as an example of the fighting quality of the 2nd Rhode Island Continentals without ever making the connection back to Greene.

On page 244, Fleming describes Springfield's "thirty-odd houses" at the time of the battle and states; "The present-day town of Springfield is only a fraction of the colonial town's size."  This would be news indeed to the present-day residents of Springfield, New Jersey, population 14,429 in the 2000 census, which may have grown in the past 35 years since Fleming wrote his book but not from a mere handful of houses in the 1970s as would have had to have been the case for Fleming's statement to be accurate. He probably meant to say the 1780-era village of Springfield was only a fraction of the present town's size: better editing should have caught this transposition.

The documentation of this campaign is full of confusing and misleading primary and secondary source material, and it is very difficult to sort out precise troop movements, let alone casualties.  As often as he provides footnotes in his account, Fleming's narrative reads more like one of his novels, and I found myself wanting more documented details and less dramatization.  In one of the most griping episodes in the story, the brave, forlorn stand of a lone cannon served by a doomed handful of continental artillerymen, Fleming introduces a 13-year-old boy who remains unidentified and is part of Springfield legend.  He volunteers to bring water to those manning the gun who are cut down one by one.  In the end, he joins Angell's men and fires on the converging British, wounding one "to his ecstatic delight."  Whether this character actually was ecstatic or not is a matter of conjecture, as he was reported killed very soon thereafter by a cannonball.  In a novel, ascribing emotions to characters is an appropriate devise.  In a work of history it is laden with assumption, and this is not the only case when Fleming falls back on the novelist's art.

There are further details that might clutter up the narrative but would have been very useful if included in an appendix.  Often Fleming describes unnamed regiments when it would have been a simple matter to identify them.  He says that five were left behind in Elizabethtown before the second advance on Springfield but nowhere in his book offers an order of battle.  Given that he was well aware that his was to be the first comprehensive historical treatment of the campaign, it is regrettable that Fleming did not provide the details of particular interest to historians.  It is still a fine popular account and a good read if you are looking to get the flavor of the events.  It has two excellent maps and plenty of engaging anecdotes, but as history it falls short as the first and last word on the subject.

"Who's on First?": Kyphausen's Raid (Part 3)

[Map: George Buchel, from Thomas Fleming (1975) The Battle of Springfield. Click to enlarge]

At the core, even the set piece battles of the American Revolution were often a matter of limited engagements.  Only a portion of Gates' and Burgoyne's men, for instance, clashed at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights during the climax of the Saratoga campaign.  Neither side could afford to lose their armies in pitched battles. 

Just as significantly, the organization of these armies, especially on the Royalist side, worked against unit cohesion.  Brigades were created and reshuffled as needed, and battalions routinely broken up for detached service.  A force of the size that Knyphausen brought over against New Jersey from New York in June of 1780 was really a small army, yet in neither of the principal engagements of the brief campaign was he able to concentrate his forces, the initial grouping and command structure went by the boards early on, and the brunt of the fighting was borne by just a few units.

Knyphausen used all but three of the infantry regiments he had available in New York on his invasion of New Jersey.  There are some inconsistencies among the various sources as to the precise strength and composition of his army.  Contemporary reports estimated between 5000 and 6000 men.  The most complete order of battle I have been able to discover in any of the histories of the campaign is presented in Winter at Morristown, 1779-1780: The Darkest Hour by Samuel Steele Smith (1979), which is both out of print and incredibly hard to locate.  It is possible to get snippet views of the text through Google Books, however, and from what I could tease out and compare with other sources I believe I have a complete picture.

Knyphausen initially organized his force into 5 "divisions" of  2 - 4 infantry regiments each.  2 divisions included cavalry, and all but the 3rd included artillery.  Each was commanded, at least on paper, by a Brigadier or Major General, but forces were detached and moved about almost from the start. 

The 1st Division was lead by Brigadier General Thomas Stirling, the subject of an earlier post.  This was the vanguard and made the first crossing in the evening of June 6th from Staten Island to Elizabethtown Point.  Stirling established the beachhead with the light companies of the 37th and 38th regiments of foot, veterans of hard service (the 38th had been at Bunker Hill).  The rest of these two regiments soon crossed over, along with the Hessian Leib ("du Corps") and Landgraf musketeer regiments.  Stirling's division also had 2 six pounders.

The problem with having Stirling lead the van was that he only had these two light companies for skirmishers and no screen of cavalry.  Soon after leading the advance up the darkened road to Elizabethtown he was felled by a picket guard lead by Ensign Moses Ogden of Spenser's (4th) New Jersey Regiment.  During the delay that followed the Hessian and Anspach (dismounted) Jaegers were moved to the head of the column.  They had been assigned to the Third Division under Major General William Tryon, the former Royal governor of New York and an old hand at leading raids into Connecticut. The Jaegers were not at full strength, with 280 of their number on detached service in the South and another on mounted service elsewhere in the column.  The remaining 300 riflemen would be the tip of the spear in the actions to come and in the end suffered more than 1/3 casualties. 

Tryon also seems to have had 40 loyalist pioneers under his command (possibly from the "Black Pioneers" comprised of escaped slaves).  The core of his command was the elite Service Brigade of the British Foot Guards, made up of officers and men selected by draft from each of the 3 Guard Regiments in England.  The Guards on American service were organized into two battalions of 5 companies each, including Grenadier and Light Companies.  Only the 1st Grenadier Company was comprised of men who came from pre-existing flank companies of the Guards.  Their commander had been Brigadier General Edward Mathew of the 2nd "Coldstream" Guards, but on this expedition for reasons I have not been able to determine he was apparently assigned the command of the 2nd Division which did not include the guards.  Perhaps he was still suffering from the illness that compelled him to give up his command of Fort Knyphausen that April.  One biography says he participated in the expedition as a volunteer which would indicate that he was a supernumerary. 

In any event he was a senior officer and was given command of one of the largest Divisions with nearly 1,700 men.  It included the 22nd and 57th regiments of foot, and also the 1st and 4th battalions of the New Jersey Loyalist volunteers under Brigadier General Cortland Skinner.  According to Steele he had "some cavalry" and 2 six pounders, and he also had the single company of the 17th regiment of foot - 79 men - that had been formed from those of the battalion who had not been captured at Stony Point the previous winter by Anthony Wayne.

The 4th and 5th Divisions were lead by Hessian Generals Carl von Hackenberg and Friedrich von Lossberg.  Von Hackenberg had the British 43rd regiment of foot, the Hessian Regiment Böse and the 1st Anspach Regiment (some sources say also the 2nd Bayreuth regiment but this unit appears to have remained in New York at the outset of the campaign).  He also had 2 three-pounders.  Von Lossberg had the Hessian Donop regiment, and I believe also the Garrison regiment von Bünau.  The bulk of the cannons, from both the Royal an Hessian Artillery, was with the 5 Division, possibly including 2 six-pounders, 6 three-pounders, and 2 howitzers.  It also had the bulk of the cavalry - elements of the 17th light dragoons, and the mounted Queen's Rangers, which included Captain Friederick de Diemar's "Black Hussars".  This last unit was comprised of Germans - largely Brunswickers - who had escaped after the surrender of Burgoyne's army. Diemar has a Hanoveran and held a commission in the 60th Royal Americans.

If by now you are thoroughly confused as to who goes with whom, imagine the state of affairs on the ground, with multiple crossings made from Staten Island to the marshy Jersey Shore at night toward an enemy whose disposition was unclear and who got the ball rolling by shooting the Brigadier General leading the advance.  There were delays while a swamp was bridged.  There were delays while units were shifted position from command to command.  In the end only two divisions marched through Elizabethtown on the road to Connecticut Farms on the morning of the 7th, with considerable gaps between them. We'll pick up the narrative of the fight that took place that day in a future post.

"Theirs Not To Reason Why"; Knyphausen's Raid (Part 2)

From the Patriot point of view, the way General Knyphausen conducted his invasion and subsequent withdrawal from New Jersey in June of 1780 made no sense.   The Royalists had a force of nearly 6,000 that far outnumbered the local militia and the handful of depleted Continental regiments that opposed them.  Knyphausen twice marched inland from his beachhead to fight two sharp engagements, only to withdraw his entire force each time - as the commander of the New Jersey Continentals, General William Maxwell, would later put it - "with their backsides to the Sound near Elizabethtown."  Washington's letters throughout the crisis show that he struggled to find meaning in the retrograde movements of the enemy, writing to General Anthony Wayne after the enemy's second withdrawal that "It is certainly difficult if not impossible, to ascertain their views."

Participants on the Royalist side has questions of their own.  Lt. Colonel Ludwig Johann Adolph von Wurmb, who commanded the Hessian and Anspach Jaeger Corps, later wrote;

"I regret from the depths of my heart that the great loss of the Jaegers took place to no greater purpose."

Indeed, if the objective of the campaign were merely a raid in force, its costs do not justify the result.  A campaign of more than two weeks to burn two insignificant villages, followed by a retreat back to Staten Island, should not have taken the deployment of 16 British, German and Loyalist infantry battalions, not to mention a considerable cavalry force and artillery.  It was only much later, when historians were able to study British and German accounts of these events, that Knyphausen's behavior, if not his leadership, becomes understandable.  Far from being the result of a coherent strategy, Knyphausen's objective changed in the midst of battle, and the reason for it was more than just a remarkable intelligence failure that underestimated Patriot resolve and the capacity of the militia to put up an effective resistance.  Factional intrigue within the Royalist High Command doomed the venture from the start.

When Sir Henry Clinton, the British Commander in Chief in North America, sailed south with nearly half the New York garrison in the end of 1779, the focus of the war effort shifted to the southern colonies.  As mention in the first post in this series, those Royalist leaders who remained in New York bridled at the thought that Clinton was keeping them inactive and in the dark while he was off winning laurels in the south.  For his part, Clinton was notoriously silent about his intentions and overall strategy, confiding in a few close staff officers but not his commanders, let alone the Loyalist elite in New York who indeed wished to have him replaced, potentially by one of their own. 

Lt. General Knyphausen was the senior officer left in New York and so by default was commander in Clinton's absence.  Speaking no English, he was unwilling to launch a major campaign without orders from Clinton, much to the dismay of the New York Royalists, who even as late as May 28th were asking themselves if it were certain that Knyphausen "has a mind."

In fact, Clinton did have a plan for Knyphausen that resembled the course of action the reluctant Hessian general ultimately took in New Jersey, but it was to bring his Carolina Army north after reducing Charleston and to break the back of the Continental army in a two pronged advance on the patriot encampment in Morristown. 

It was an excellent strategy.  The continental battalions had suffered through the worst winter of the war and new recruits were lacking to fill their depleted ranks.  The stores and artillery at Morristown were as vulnerable as Washington's army, which could not fight both Knyphausen and Clinton simultaneously.  New Jersey might well be returned to royalist control. 

But Clinton failed to let anyone in New York know his intentions.  Knyphausen, too, was tired of garrison duty.  When two regiments of the Connecticut line mutinied that May, it seemed to the Royalists in New York that Washington's army was on the verge of collapse.   A plan finally took shape that would send a major force into New Jersey at Elizabethtown and march toward Hobart's Gap, the gateway through the Watchung Range to the Continental encampment and the supplies at Morristown.  This, of course, was what Clinton had in mind for Knyphausen, but it was premature for Clinton's force was still in Charleston.

Astoundingly, there was still an eleventh hour opportunity to for Knyphausen to pull his punch, for by remarkable coincidence Clinton's A.D.C. Major William Crosbie, who was privy to his commander's plans, arrived from the South just as the invasion fleet was being readied.  Thomas Fleming, whose research into the Springfield raid stands as the most authoritative to date, describes how Major Crosbie failed to stop the unauthorized invasion:

"Major Crosbie was nonplussed.  He was on the stickiest wicket that any aide-de-camp ever encountered in the history of warfare.  Sir henry had told him his real plans, but he had enjoined him to strictest secrecy.  All Crosbie could do was give "hints" to those "to whom he should judge proper.  This left Major Crosbie in an impossible position.  He could not hope to screen out "proper" from "improper" hearers without making a host of powerful enemies.  Since Sir Henry had a tendency to be jealous of almost everyone in the army above the rank of Colonel, its was easy for Crosbie to construe all of these assembled generals as improper.  He has obviously intended to say nothing about Sir Henry's plan.  Now he floundered and flapped and blurted out something vague.  They had no reason to expect Sir Henry very soon, he said - or at least that is what everyone concluded from what he said.  After more circumlocutions, everyone had the impression that Sir Henry was going to raid in the Chesapeake.

In that case, Knyphausen growled to [his aid] Beckwith, who was frantically translating all this, their invasion of New Jersey was strategically sound.  It would pin down Washington's main army, leaving Sir Henry free to chew up what parts of Maryland and Virginia he chose.  With elaborate courtesy, General von Knyphausen suggested that Major Crosbie join the invasion as a member of his staff.  The agitated aide-de-camp mumbled his acceptance and before the night was over, found himself slogging through the marshes of Staten Island shore to board a New Jersey-bound flatboat."

                                    -  Thomas Fleming (1975) The Battle of Springfield, pgs 11,12

Crosbie, whose old battalion the 38th Regiment of foot was in the lead division of the Royalist force, would  not find the courage to inform Knyphausen of the real state of affairs until well after battle had been joined the following day at Connecticut Farms.  This changed everything, for with confirmation that Clinton was even now bringing his force back from the south, Knyphausen knew better than to proceed any further.  Instead, he brought his force back to their beach head and hunkered down to wait for Clinton.   No wonder the Patriots, let alone many of the Royalists, could make neither heads nor tails of it all!

Crosbie, incidently, was subsequently promoted to Lt. Col. of the 22nd Regiment of foot, which also took part in Knyphausen's Springfield Raid, and was a Major General by 1793.

Stirring the Hornet's Nest: Knyphausen's Raid (Part I)

The 1780 campaign season had arrived and the Royalists in occupied New York were restless and impatient.  The Commander in Chief, General Sir Henry Clinton, had shifted the main theater of the war to the southern colonies the previous winter and laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina which surrendered on May 12th, 1780.  In contrast, the main body of the continental army remained with Washington encamped in Morristown, New Jersey, from which it could shift to counter threats to the Hudson Highlands or New Jersey and Philadelphia.   

Clinton had left Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm, Baron von Knyphausen in command in New York in his absence.  Despite orders from Clinton to remain in place - though significantly without sharing with his subordinate his strategic reasons for doing so - Knyphausen was under increasing pressure from Clinton's detractors to use the garrison of 8,000 men offensively.  Among these loyalist and crown leaders were Benjamin Franklin's son William, the exiled Tory governor of New Jersey; the Royal Chief Justice of New York William Smith; the Royal governor of New York General James Robinson and former royal governor General William Tryon.

Knyphausen was a widely respected division commander and studied the situation carefully.  After the coldest winter of the century, New York was no longer under threat of invasion over ice and thought could therefore be given to offensive operations.  Washington's force at Morristown was thought to be on the verge of mutiny after enduring intense hardship in its winter encampment, and many Royalist leaders still held out hope that New Jersey loyalists would take up arms and help win back the colony.  A 1794 British report on The History of the Origin, Progress and Termination of the American War reveals how misplaced these assumptions about the coming campaign would prove to be:

"If the inhabitants were disposed to throw off the yoke of congress, the force sent to their assistance would enable them to do it: And if a mutinous disposition still prevailed amongst the soldiers of the American army, some advantage might probably be gained over general Washington. It soon however appeared that part of this intelligence was false, and the rest greatly magnified.  Although the Inhabitants of the Jerseys had murmured in consequence of the depredations committed on them by the American soldiers in the time of their distress from want of provisions, they had never thought of deserting the American cause:  On the contrary, they made the greatest exertions to relieve the necessities of those very men to whose depredations they were exposed; and it was principally owing to these exertions that the American army had not been actually disbanded.  A mutinous disposition had also certainly discovered itself amongst the soldiers of the American army:  But it arose from distress, and not disaffection...Under such circumstances the British commanders experienced a grievous disappointment:  Instead of being received in the Jerseys as friends, the militia very generally turned out to oppose them."

From time to time over the coming weeks, we will examine this last major land campaign of the American Revolution in the northern colonies, including the engagements at Connecticut Farms and nearby Springfield New Jersey that took place in June 228 years ago.  I'd roll this series out over several days, but experience has shown that except for hardcore history buffs it is best to leaven my offerings with other fare.  I'm also waiting to see if the local inter-library loan will come through with a couple of key sources not available on line and currently out of print.  I'll likely archive them together for those who wish to get the full, sequential effect.

As with Sullivan's Expedition against the Iroquois the previous year, my Ogden and Dayton ancestors played prominent parts in this story, and their leadership and actions on this occasion were particularly decisive in resisting the Royalist advances literally on the thresholds of their own homes.   A third cousin of Matthias and Aaron Ogden's became a celebrated female martyr for the cause, as galvanizing for the patriots at this stage of the war as had been the death of Jane McCrea in 1777 at the hands of Burgoyne's native allies.  Knyphausen's Springfield Raid is passed over in many histories of this period, and the details of its two principal battles are often jumbled together.  We will untangle this tale and explore its significance in subsequent posts. 

"Should Old Aquaintance Be Forgot": Who Ever Heard of Thomas Stirling?

Perhaps we Americans have a natural disdain for keeping track of our former British adversaries from the colonial era, or maybe there is less interest today in the United Kingdom in preserving the memory of those old defeats.  I am otherwise at a loss as to why it is so difficult to find accurate information about a soldier of long service (1747-1801) who fought during the French and Indian War as a Captain in the Black Watch, was severely wounded at the head of his brigade during the American War of Independence, and left the British Army a full general.  He doesn't rate a mention in Boatner's (1966) Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, and unless I decide to create an entry you won't find him in Wikipedia.

My interest in General Thomas Stirling came about during my research into two battles that took place in New Jersey in June of 1780.  He was wounded at the very outset of this campaign - what is often referred to as Knyphausen's Springfield Raid - but there was evidently very little awareness of his ultimate fate on the part of contemporary Americans and subsequent historians.  Some sources said the wound was mortal.  Others that he died from complications a year later.  Given that the Dictionary of National Biography. 63 vols. London, 1885-1901. Vol. LIV, pp. 383-384 declares that Sterling lived another 28 years after his injury, it seems high time that someone set the record straight.

Thomas Stirling (1733-1808) was the younger brother of Sir William Stirling, Fourth Knight Baronet of Ardoch, and succeeded to his brother's title as the Fifth (and last) Knight Baronet in 1799.  Most available sources agree he was born in 1733.  His most complete service record available on line states that Thomas Stirling began his military career with a commission from the Prince or Orange dated October 11, 1747 and spent the next decade with the Scottish Brigade in the service of the Dutch, participating in the final stages of the War of Austrian Succession. 

On March 24, 1757 (another source says July 24th) he was commissioned a Captain in the 42nd Highland Regiment.  One of Stirling's biographical references claims in 1755 he was a captain and lieutenant in the 48th Regiment of Foot and wounded with Braddock at Monongahela, which conflicts with his Dutch service and is not borne out by other available records, including a list of the officers of the 48th.  He appears to have been at the Battle of Carillon under Abercrombie and the capture of Ticonderoga the following year with Amherst. He was at the surrender of Montreal in 1760, and wrote to his brother at home that he was "heartily tired of this country, as was every officer in it" and expressing his hope that "Long may Peace reign here...as surely god never intended any war should be carried on by any other besides the natives."  It would be a very long time indeed before he would return to his home in Scotland.

It gets tricky to follow his movements during this period, as the 42nd had two battalions and the 2nd of these was sent to Martinique in 1759. Captain Stirling and the 42nd (now Royal) Highland regiment was actually sent to the Caribbean in 1762, and he was wounded at Martinique during this campaign and not in 1759 as others assume.

The two battalions were combined after the fall of Havana and remained in New York as part of the force selected to protect the colonies.  Captain Stirling took part in the relief of Fort Pitt in the summer of 1763 during Pontiac's Rebellion and served against the Ohio Indians in 1764.  He is specifically credited with leading a 100 man detachment down the Ohio to take possession of Fort Chartres in southern Illinois.  It was an odyssey worthy of the likes of Robert Rogers or Benedict Arnold and I'd love to someday read the journals of the expedition, which reportedly describe such encounters as a "prodigious number" of pelicans that were initially mistaken for a regiment of the white-uniformed French, a personal battle that Captain Stirling had with a "monstrous" bear, and makeshift sails made from the regimental plaids.  After overwintering at the Fort, they traveled downriver to New Orleans and sailed via Pensacola to New York and then marched to rejoin their regiment in Philadelphia.

Thomas Stirling remained with the 42nd Highlanders after they were posted to the Irish garrison, rising to Major and Lt. Colonel, which in the British army at that time served as the tactical commander of the regiment, with the Colonelcy going to a General officer. In 1776, he lead the 42nd back to America, arriving in August before New York.  The battalion companies of the 42nd and two other highland regiments were organized into two temporary battalions under the overall command of Lt. Col. Stirling, who set about preparing his men for the realities of an American campaign and training them to fight in open order as light infantry, as this 1825 history recounts:

"From the moment of their landing, Colonel Stirling was indefatigable in drilling the men to the manner of fighting practiced in the former war with the Indians and French bushmen, which is so well calculated for a close, woody country.  Colonel Stirling was well versed in this mode of warfare, and imparted it to the troops, first by training the non-commissioned officers himself, and then superintending the instruction of the soldiers.  The highlanders made rapid progress n this discipline, being, in general, excellent marksmen, and requiring only to have their natural impetuosity restrained, which often lead them to disdain fighting in ambush."

Thomas Stirling lead his men at Long Island.  Coincidentally, the American General William Alexander (1726-1786) of New Jersey, who also happened to be a claimant for the earldom of Stirling, was captured during this battle.  Alexander was known to American contemporaries as Lord Stirling even though he was unable to secure the title and should not be confused with the subject of this essay.

Lt. Col. Thomas Stirling also took part in the attack and capture of Fort Washington later that fall and served in New Jersey that winter.    The battalion companies of the 42nd were in reserve during the Battle of Brandywine and Stirling later led the 42nd and a detachment of the 10th to drive the enemy from Billingspoint ,and so was not present at the Battle of Germantown.  He was often sent on foraging expeditions and raids with more than just his regiment under his command.  In February 1779 he led a raid from Staten Island to Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and reoccupied Stoney Point when it was abandoned by Anthony Wayne.

Clearly, this was a highly competent officer, well suited to service in America.  In February of 1779 he was appointed aide-de-camp to the King and.  In June, 1780, now a Brigadier General, he lead the first brigade in Knyphausen's invading force that crossed once again from Staten Island to Elizabethtown.  At the very outset, it was his misfortune to be shot from his horse in the single volley fired at the British vanguard by a picket of twelve men under Ensign Moses Ogden of Spenser's New Jersey regiment, who had been posted in Elizabethtown by my ancestor Colonel Elias Dayton.  Stirling's injury was considered severe and Knyphausen himself took command of the vanguard.

But how severe?  Thayer's As We Were; The Story of Old Elizabethtown published by the New Jersey Historical Society in 1964 mistakenly states that the wound was mortal.  Hatfield's History of Elizabeth, New Jersey (1868) to which Thayer's work owes a substantial debt, reports that the General was unhorsed, and his thigh fractured by the shot, and erroniously claims "he died of his wound, a year later".   His injury, while serious, did not prevent him from seeing further service, however.  One source states he was at Yorktown with Cornwallis, though it should be pointed out that this source also claims he was with Clinton during his 1780 Charleston, S.C. campaign, which was contemporaneous with his wounding in New Jersey.  His old regiment the 42nd Highlanders did go south with Clinton, however.  In May of 1782 he was made "colonel" of the 71st Highlanders, succeeded the deceased General Frasier.  In 1801 he was a full general.

Here then, was the commander of a famous regiment, who saw hard service in the American War of Independence and left North America a Major General, and yet his story is little known and much remains to be clarified. It may be that his loss at the beginning of the 1780 invasion of New Jersey had significant implications for the way that the campaign would develop, and it is a shame his record is not better understood or documented. I was unable to find even a portrait of Thomas Stirling to use in this piece.