Letters from the Front: British Landings at Head of Elk

"It is likely we shall have hot work in this Neighbourhood ‘ere long—I wish it most cordially..."

August of 1777 found the Continental and British Armies facing off in Maryland, at the beginning of the campaign for Philadelphia, the then-capital of the United States. Having failed to bring Washington to battle during several campaigns in North Jersey during the opening months of 1777, British General Sir William Howe embarked his men in mid-summer and sailed south to the Chesapeake. His design was to quickly overrun Philadelphia through bypassing the formidable American defenses set across Delaware Bay by moving overland from his landing spot at Head of Elk in Maryland's eastern shore. In today's Letter from the Front, we catch a window into Washington's maneuvers as he concentrated his portion of the Continental Army to face this new threat. Mounted troops were essential to his operation, providing a flexible reaction force as well as a desperately-need body of scouts who could keep tabs on the British advance. Short of horsemen, Washington called on Baylor to bring his regiment of dragoons, which had not finished recruiting, into action. Attached to the bottom of the letter is a post-script by Washington's aide, R. H. Harrison, who replaced Joseph Reed. Harrison's note references the opening salvos of the other campaign of 1777-- British General John Burgoyne's invasion of Upstate New York, which focused on capturing Albany, forging a link with British forces in New York, and successfully cutting the United States in half. As Harrison's note shows, the American forces were full of fight and ready to engage with the redcoats on multiple fronts. For the full transcript of the letter, please read below. Our thanks go out to David Swain for this transcript.

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Letters from the Front: Tending to POWs

"You will immediately take into your Charge the following Prisoners of War who have petitioned for to be sent in to New York, being all maimed, but otherwise recovered of their wounds..."

As the British and American forces geared up for the Philadelphia Campaign, the daily administrative routine of both armies continued to grind on. Among the more poignant issues addressed was the treatment of prisoners of war. By August 1777, when Elias Boudinot penned the letter below to his colleague in Bucks County, both sides had ample numbers of enemy combatants "behind the wire." In some cases, however, these prisoners posed no further threat to their captors, having been so maimed in battle that they were no longer fit for service. This letter covers just such a group of men-- British soldiers who had recovered from their injuries (as much as they could) and who requested to be sent back to their Army in New York. From there, these men would have been discharged and sent back across the Atlantic to England, on the government dime, unless they opted to stay in America. A lucky few might be recommended for military pensions from the Chelsea Hospital. While the war was over for these men, Boudinot's letter speaks to another side of the issue: the treatment of American prisoners held by the British. One of the standard military conventions of the days was to send money and clothing through enemy lines to the prisoners to aid in their car, since armies of the period did not feel themselves obliged to provide for captured enemy troops (though the British often did the best they could for American prisoners). This practice reflects how the Continental Army attempted to act in every way like a conventional professional European army of the period. Our thanks once again to David Swain for this transcript.

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Letters from the Front: Opinions on Light Horsemen

"...I am confident that since the Beginning of this campaign not one light horse man gave or got a trust or a Cutt of a sword."

One of the most under-represented types of soldiers present in the armies which fought in the American Revolution was the light horseman. In British terms, light horse was generally represented by light dragoons, men who originally fought on foot but rode to the battlefield on horses. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, dragoons more often than fought on horseback. Their "lightness" was reflected in their lack of armor and use of light sabers, in addition to their pistols and carbines. The dragoons were represented by two regiments, the 17th and the 16th (or Queens) Light Dragoons, the latter of which provided a special dismounted troop for service in America. The Royal Provincial Regiments would take the light horse a step further towards the ideal with the Queen's Rangers Hussars, who were armed primarily with sabers, and the British Legion Dragoons, who carried pistols and sabers. Both fought from horseback. On the opposite side of the field, the Americans struggled to form a competent cavalry corps. From the outset, the Continental Army had been a primarily infantry force, though some militia formations were mounted (though in the classic dragoon since, where they rode to battle but did not fight from horseback). For the Ten Crucial Days Campaign, for example, Washington had only the 50 mounted troopers of the Philadelphia Light Horse, which he used as his personal bodyguard. The Continental Army would come to raise several regiments of light dragoons, which included dismounted troops and legionary formations that appeared later in the war. At the crucial stage when Brigadier General Thomas Conway wrote the letter below, however, the American forces were still figuring out how to raise and employ mounted troops. In Colonel Armand's Legion, they would find an excellent example of the proper use of light horsemen. Our thanks to David Swain for the excellent transcript below.

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Letters from the Front: Perils of the Recruiting Service

"...They were ready to fight when men of Fortune & monopolizers did."

In this installment of Letters from the Front, we skip ahead of the dreary late winter days of 1777 and into the spring, when the recruiting service started up again. As discussed in a previous entry, most Continental regiments recruited annually, enlisting men for one year of service at a time. In 1777, this practice began to change, but many regiments still felt the crunch to recruit their full quota of men. As the letter from Thomas Cartwright and James Jones below demonstrates, the recruiting service was extremely difficult. Colonel Henry Jackson dispatched the two men from his headquarters in Boston to head north, towards New Hampshire, "beating up for men" (as recruiting was sometimes called in period speech) along the way. Their report highlights the many difficulties involved in this task. While communities were expected to provide a certain quota of able-bodied men for Continental Service, they generally lacked the coercive power to actually do so. The drafting referred to below is the one exception: in later years, militia companies were formed and a certain number of the men therein were drafted into Continental service. Personally, I did not think this practice caught on until much later in the war, so I welcome comments from other researchers here. Also of note is the fact that a clear gulf was beginning to emerge between the rich and the "monopolizers" (merchants benefiting from the sale of now-rare goods) and the common men who did most of the actual fighting. This is one version of the age-old theme of "rich man's war, poor man's fight" that echoes throughout world history. Please see below for the full text of the letter. Our thanks go out to David Swain for this transcript.

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Letters from the Front: Mr. Hood's Account of 2nd Trenton

"The Enemy advanced abt. half way over the Bridge when they were repulsed it is supposed with considerable loss as a heavy fire was kept up both in front & flank with The Artillery & Musquetry for abt. 12 Minutes..."

Among the most out-standing documents in the Letters from the Front collection is Mr. Hood's Account of the Second Battle of Trenton, which took place on January 2, 1777. Hood served with the 3rd Battalion, Pennsylvania Associators, under the command of General John Cadawallader, whose crossing on December 27th led to Washington's re-occupation of Trenton on December 30th. His account begins on near midnight of December 31, 1776, when his unit was recalled from its position in Crosswicks, NJ, to join the main Continental Army at Trenton. From there, Hood chronicles the second battle of Trenton, the night march to Princeton, and the engagement outside the town on the morning of January 3rd. Hood concludes with the American advance to Morristown after the victory at Princeton. For the full account, continue below.

We wish all of our readers a Happy New Year and look forward to new posts in 2012!

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Swain Report Special: War Office 28, Regimental HQ Papers, Installment 9

In this final installment of his on-going catalog of British War Office 28 (Miscellaneous Regimental Headquarters Papers from Canada), Library Research Assistant David Swain probes the returns of various Loyalist Corps, along with miscellaneous letters and records relating to the Indian Department. As with the other parts of this series, these documents serve a vital role in filling in the gaps in our understanding of British operations launched from Canada. The returns of Loyalist Corps in particular offer a means for understanding how the British Army struggled to incorporate Loyal Americans who fled to Canada and offered their military service. The Loyalist experience here was in marked contrast to the main British Army operating in the 13 more southerly colonies, as has been discussed in a previous entry. The records for the Indian Department provide an equaly important portal into the experience of another marginalized group of British combatants: the native tribes who kept their allegiance to Britain, along with the British Officers and Loyalists who worked closely with them. The remaining documents provide insights into the demographic composition of British and German units in the theatre, as well as general operations.

 Our sincere thanks go to David Swain for making this collection of material more accessible than it has ever been, and we hope our readers will embrace this opportunity to engage with these sources.

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28.10 Miscellaneous returns, letters, and papers; Indian Department (Reel 8)

Summary contents:

 Returns relating to Loyalists—John Peters’ Queen’s Loyal Rangers, Ebenezer Jessup’s King’s Loyal Americans, Sir John Johnson’s 2nd Battalion, Daniel McAlpin’s Corps of Volunteers, 1777-1778: 58 documents; documents 1 through 58; printed page numbers 1 through 65

 Returns relating to Loyalists—Captain Daniel McAlpin’s Corps of Volunteers, 1779: 2 documents; documents 59 through 60; printed page numbers 66 through 68

 Returns relating to Loyalist Corps, 1780: 28 documents; documents 61 through 88; printed page numbers 69 through 110

 Returns relating to Loyalist Corps, 1781: 20 documents; documents 89 through 108; printed page numbers 111 through 130

 Returns relating to Loyalist, Regular Army, and Brunswick Regiments, 1782: 18 documents; documents 109 through 126; printed page numbers 131 through 175

 Returns relating to Loyalist, Regular Army, and Brunswick Regiments, 1783: 38 documents; documents 127 through 164; printed page numbers 176 through 281

 Miscellaneous letters, 1778-1783: 25 documents; documents 165 through 189; printed page numbers 282 through 321

 Original letters delivered to Brigade Major Skone [Shane ?] by Major Alexander Fraser, June 25, 1785: 34 documents; documents 190 through 223; printed page numbers 322 through 373

 Indian Department, letters and papers, 1775-1782 and 1785-1797: 40 documents; documents 224 through 263; printed page numbers 374 through 443

For the full catalog, read below.

Patron's Perspective: Tracing the New Jersey Militia

Long-time Library Patron Larry Kidder has spent many years researching the life and times of the men who served in the Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Militia in our microfilm records. Over the course of his work, he has run into many challenges stemming from the nature of the source material, which was not always kept as exactly and regularly by contemporaries as historians could desire. In this installment, he takes on the particularly tricky question of tracing men who served in the militia as well as in the Continental service. Unlike the modern United States Army, the Continental Army was initially recruited for one-year enlistments from 1775 through 1777. One of the major source pools for recruits were the various county militias-- in fact, they were so important that in the second half of the war, American officials would actively draft men from the militia to serve in Continental regiments in order to meet Congressional quotas. These practices created an intricate spiderweb of documents, as well as gaps in the record, that complicate any attempt to trace a given individual's service. Thankfully, Larry provides some key insights that should smooth the path of other researchers.

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"The lack of official records relating to the New Jersey militia can cause identity problems.  Since many men served at different times in both the Continental forces and the militia, it is difficult to know what the actual service of any one individual was.  Was the man said to have been in the militia also the same man who served for a time in the Continentals?  Even standard and highly regarded sources can lead one astray.  Here is one case study – Captain John Mott."

For the remainder of Larry's entry, read below the fold.