CHAINING THE HUDSON The fight for the river in the American Revolution COLN DI Chaining the Hudson Relic of the Great Chain, 1863. Look back into History & you 11 find the Newe improvers in the art of War has allways had the advantage of their Enemys. —Captain Daniel Joy to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, January 16, 1776 Preserve the Materials necessary to a particular and clear History of the American Revolution. They will yield uncommon Entertainment to the inquisitive and curious, and at the same time afford the most useful! and important Lessons not only to our own posterity, but to all succeeding Generations. Governor John Hancock to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, September 28, 1781. Chaining the Hudson The Fight for the River in the American Revolution LINCOLN DIAMANT Fordham University Press New York Copyright © 2004 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ii retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotation: printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 0-8232-2339-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Diamant, Lincoln. Chaining the Hudson : the fight for the river in the American Revolution / Lincoln Diamant.—Fordham University Press ed. p. cm. Originally published: New York : Carol Pub. Group, 1994. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8232-2339-6 (pbk.) 1. New York (State)—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Campaigns. 2. United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Campaigns. 3. Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.)—History, Military—18th century. I. Title. E230.5.N4D5 2004 973.3'5'097473—dc22 2004040429 Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 Fordham University Press edition, 2004 First published by Citadel Press, 1989 Contents Foreword ix Introduction xi I. Romans's Fort (1775) 1 II. Bushnell's Submarine (1775-1776) 20 III. Fort Washington's Chevaux-de-Frise (1776) 36 IV. Stirling's Beacons and Hazelwood's Fire Ships (1776-1779) 68 V. Fort Montgomery's Chain (1776-1777) 85 VI. Pollepel Island's Chevaux-de-Frise (1776-1777) 123 VII. Machin's West Point Chain (1778-1782) 133 Epilogue 175 Appendix 187 Bibliographical Notes 205 Index 223 DEDICATED TO AN EARLY "UNKNOWN SOLDIER" OF THE REVOLUTION: COURAGEOUS CAPTAIN THOMAS, HIS FIRST NAME LOST TO HISTORY, WHO DROWNED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO SET FIRE TO THE ROYAL NAVVS H.M.S. PHOENIX ON THE HUDSON RIVER, AUGUST 16, 1776. Foreword NOTHING I have seen, heard, or reconsidered since the initial publication of this book has suggested any change in my funda­ mental thesis: that the massive chained/boom the Americans stretched across the Hudson River at West Point in the spring of 1778 played an essential role in the eventual success of the War of Independence. For five years, until the end of the struggle, the great chain at West Point, a war contract executed at a speed since unequaled, checkmated the overwhelming superiority of the Royal Navy. It reduced the enemy's grand military design in the northern states to a series of dice-table passes in which Benedict Arnold and John Andre were merely high-stake chips. Confronted by Kosciuszko's (and Washington's) brilliantly evolving West Point defense-in-depth centered on the rugged wrought iron chain and its twin water batteries, protected by a great river bank fortress, in turn protected by four smaller hillside forts, in turn protected by eleven strategically placed artillery redoubts, the frustrated British high command was reduced to bribing rather than fighting its way past such formidable obstacles. Fear of the admittedly untested West Point Chain and its massed cannon prevented further British movement to fatally split New England from the other newborn United States along the hinge of the Hudson and Champlain Valleys. The enemy's waterborne regular, mercenary, and tory troops moved instead to Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia—a shift in War Office strategy that climaxed in the total loss of a second expeditionary army. For the rest of the war, the chain at West Point—once ruefully saluted by the British commander as "the key of America"—remained unassailed. One reviewer of this book has characterized the huge linkage, removed each winter to barely escape the inexorable grip of tidal ice, as the "American X CHAINING THE HUDSON army's first strategic defense initiative." It is the author's renewed hope that the surviving links of what the ragged and occasionally mutinous garrison at West Point once called "General Washington's Watch Chain" will continue to inspire Americans everywhere as a symbol of their long and difficult fight for political freedom. Editorial Note Quotations from original manuscript sources have been tran­ scribed closer to exact reproduction than full modernization. To retain as much as possible of the character of these crucial eighteenth-century communications, their irregular capitalization, spelling, misspelling, grammar, and punctuation have been allowed to stand—except where they would fail to convey the original writ­ er's thought. Doubtful cases have been resolved in favor of modern usage, with slips of the pen and unintentional oversights silently corrected. The author's comments within a quotation are thusly [bracketed]. Introduction THIS IS a story of the Hudson River from 1775 to 1783, and of the tens of thousands of liberty-loving Americans who—with Frenchmen, Poles, and other European volunteers—fought the British and Germans and their local loyalist sympathizers on the Hudson's surface and along its banks in the bloody eight-year struggle for the political independence of the United States. It was a cataclysm that divided much of the world's past from its future, a revolutionary challenge to the divine right of kings that Robert Graves has called "the most important single event of modern times." Graves is hardly alone. Closer to the conflict, Thomas Paine declared: "Could we clear away the mist of antiquity, it is more than probable the ancients would admire us, rather than we them." And by the end of the war, Yale's president Ezra Stiles proclaimed: "We have lived an age in just a few years; we have seen more wonders accomplished than are unfolded in a century." One anonymous British pamphleteer quickly understood the great loss toward which his stubborn ruler was heading, and characterized the epic North American struggle as "a war of absurdity and madness" in which every point was a turning point—including major events that would soon sanctify the Hudson River. The Hudson is not a true "river," but is, loosely speaking, the southernmost fiord in the Northern Hemisphere, a beautiful brackish estuary more than 135 miles long. Flanked by rolling hills, imposing granitic mountains, and an unusual band of basalt "palisades," it has always captured the American imagination. For eons, due to a vast downward geologic tilt of this section of the North American coastline, lighter fresh water that drains into this estuary does not flow "downhill," but blurs midriver with heavier salt waters from the encroaching Atlantic Ocean, in a shifting and swirling tidal interface. xii CHAINING THE HUDSON On September 16, 1609 the explorer whose name would eventually bless this unique waterway brought his "jacht Halve- Maan" about, some 25 miles south of present-day Albany, and steered back to Europe. Teased north by the river's salty tides, this Englishman, commissioned commercially by the Dutch, had discovered a natural sea level canal that not only penetrated a rugged mountain barrier, but also provided a magnificent military and mercantile highway between the Atlantic coast and the continent's northeastern interior. The beautiful river valley would be a striking example of the effect of geography on history. The implications of Henry Hudson's two-week voyage of discovery created profound political and economic repercussions throughout northern Europe. The unusually long fiord held the key to easy colonization and development of more than 13 million acres of unclaimed and immensely valuable North American land and natural resources. In such a strategic setting, conflict—at first between natives and colonials, then between colonial groups using native hirelings- developed quickly. For over a century, North American colonists— aided by native raiders generously supplied with outdated European arms that would occasionally burst when fired—battled for control, commerce, and wealth in New World equivalents of King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War, the Seven Years' War, the War of the Austrian Succession, and other less memorable European military confrontations. Throughout, the British Crown, asserting sovereignty over the entire Hudson River Valley, adhered to a simple principle: "Hold the valley—win the war." In the 17th and 18th centuries the population of British North America exploded-from less than 12,000 in 1670 to 2,150,000 in 1770. By that time, colonial rebellion over taxation and trade was teetering on the edge of continental revolution—first, a seaboard boycott of East India Company "bargain" tea; then, general colonial support for Boston and its intolerably interdicted commerce; and finally, Congressional approval for organized American economic resistance. The growing possibility of armed conflict with the mother country forced many forward-looking revolutionaries (and their counterparts among British Ministerial leaders) to weigh theoretical military strategies. At the actual outbreak of conflict, all sides appeared to accept as a military given the need to control the Hudson Valley. Along the Introduction xiii Atlantic seaboard, the issue was rarely debated. George Washington spoke for everyone in 1777 when he repeated to General Putnam: "The importance of the Hudson River in the present Contest, and the necessity of defending it, are Subjects which have been so frequently and fully discussed, and are so well understood, that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them.