Lost to Time Page 9

  The destruction of so large a cache of supplies was a serious setback to the Continental Army, particularly the loss of the more than one thousand highly valued tents. Perhaps most interesting in the tally of the destruction was the listing of “120 puncheons of rum.” If that was true, then there must have been more puncheons (a large cask containing between 72 and 120 gallons of liquor) than the British destroyed, for by nightfall, with Tyron having become emboldened by his easy success and lack of real opposition in Danbury, and harboring thoughts of moving beyond the town and carrying out destructive raids in other communities in both Connecticut and New York, he was confronted with a serious problem in his own ranks. The general discovered that with so much rum lying before them, hundreds of his men had become drunk and were becoming even more so with every passing hour. As James Case wrote, “The drunken men went up and down Main Street in squads, singing army songs, shouting coarse speeches, hugging each other, swearing, yelling, and otherwise conducting themselves as becomes an invader when he is very, very, drunk.”

  With so many of his men inebriated, Tryon abandoned any thoughts of carrying out further raids. He also began receiving reports from loyalist spies that, with the fires in Danbury burning so brightly, news of the raid was surely spreading and the local militia was bound to react. It became clear to Tryon that he had to get his troops, no matter how many of them were drunk, back to the ships at Compo as quickly as possible. As he was making this decision, a rider, bearing the news of what had happened at Danbury, galloped up to the home of Colonel Henry Ludington and his family in Fredericksburg, New York, less than twenty-five miles from the burning town.

  LUDINGTON, ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED men in his entire colony, had served his community and his country with distinction since 1756, when, at the age of seventeen, he had enlisted in the 2nd Regiment of Connecticut, troops in service to the king. He immediately fought in the French and Indian War, and took part in the Battle of Lake George, where he looked on in horror as both his uncle and cousin, who were fighting by his side, were slain. In 1759 he was assigned to escort a company of wounded soldiers from Canada to Boston, a march that was made in the dead of winter. He was forced, during the nights, to dig shelter in snowdrifts to keep from freezing. When his food ran out, he subsisted on bark, twigs, and berries. Still, he survived and returned home a hero.

  In 1760, Ludington and his new bride, Abigail, moved to what soon became the Fredericksburg precinct of Dutchess County, New York (today the hamlet of Ludingtonville in Putnam County), where he not only carved a successful farm out of what had been wilderness but also quickly attained a position of influence and authority in the community. In 1761, Ludington was appointed subsheriff of the county, a position that required him to swear an oath to remain faithful to the king and “him to defend to the utmost of my power against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatsoever, which shall be made against his person, crown, and dignity.”

  In 1773, the captain-general and governor of the Royal Province of New York, none other than William Tryon, appointed Ludington captain of the Fifth Company of the Fredericksburg Regiment of Militia in Dutchess County. But shortly afterward, in a dramatic reversal, Ludington announced that he had decided that the king did not deserve his or any other colonist’s loyalty and resigned his royal commission. Soon, both the Patriot’s Provincial Congress of the Colony of New York and the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York commissioned Ludington as colonel of the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County militia and decreed that it should be officially known as Colonel Ludington’s regiment.

  The area of command to which Ludington had been assigned was a particularly difficult one, inhabited by a large number of Royalists and Tories, intent on providing whatever aid to the British troops they could. Dutchess County was also the operating grounds of bands of guerrillas known as “cowboys” and irregular British cavalry known as “skinners” who supplied General Howe’s forces with much of their cattle and grain by staging raids on colonial farms throughout the region. Within a short period of time, Ludington’s regiment became so successful in curbing the activities of the cowboys and skinners that the British placed a price of three hundred guineas “dead or alive” on his head.

  THE SUCCESSFUL GUERRILLA-LIKE TACTICS employed by Colonel Henry Ludington’s men and other Patriots at the Battle of Ridgefield, and later at other engagements such as the Battle of Saratoga (shown here in a 1975 painting by Hugh Charles McBarron Jr.), were vital to the winning of the War of Independence.

  Now, on the night of April 26, 1777, Ludington was hastening to his door, anxious to discover who was pounding upon it so loudly. As soon as he opened it and heard the news of what had happened at Danbury from the exhausted messenger, he knew what had to be done. His regiment had to be assembled immediately and had to march to Danbury to confront Tryon and his troops before they could inflict more damage on the colonial cause. There was, however, a serious problem. Ludington’s men had just gone home after a long period of duty. It was planting time in New England and New York, and Ludington had allowed them to get back to their farms in order to get their crops in on time. Now they had to be reassembled—and as quickly as possible.

  The militiamen were scattered on their separate farms in what may well have been more than a one-hundred-square-mile area. Who was available to ride out and tell them that they had to return immediately? Certainly not the rider who had brought the news from Danbury. He was too tired to go any farther. Besides, he had no idea where the various militiamen lived or how best to get there. And Colonel Ludington could not go. He needed to begin making preparations for the march and had to be there as the members of his regiment returned.

  Ludington realized, however, that there was one person who had perhaps the best chance of carrying out the vital mission. It was Sybil, the oldest of his twelve children—but still only just turned sixteen. But she was a marvel on horseback and knew the region extremely well. And she had taken on great responsibility by helping her mother care for her eleven brothers and sisters. Most important, for one so young she had already demonstrated genuine courage and ingenuity.

  Knowing that there was a price on her father’s head, Sybil had assumed a leading role in protecting him. As Louis Patrick wrote, “The Colonel’s most vigilant and watchful companion was his sentinel daughter, Sibell [sic]. Her constant care and thoughtfulness, combined with fortuitous circumstances, prevented the fruition of many an intrigue against his life and capture.” In his article, Patrick then described what had taken place when a group of reward seekers under the leadership of notorious Tory Ichabod Prosser surrounded the Ludington house and prepared to attack, only to be outsmarted by Sybil and her sister Rebecca. “These fearless girls, with guns in hand,” Patrick wrote,

  were acting as sentinels, pacing the piazza to and fro in true military style and grit to guard their father against surprise and to give him warning of any approaching danger. They discovered Prosser and his men and gave the alarm. In a flash, candles were lighted in every room of the house and the few occupants marched out and counter-marched before the windows and from this simple and clever ruse, Prosser was led to believe that the house was strongly guarded and did not dare to make an attack. He kept his men crouched behind the trees and fences until daybreak, when with yells they resumed their march toward New York City, ignorant of how they had been foiled by clever girls.

  When the messenger arrived and began relaying the news from Danbury to Colonel Ludington, Sybil was busy putting the younger children to bed. Hearing the commotion downstairs, she joined her father and listened to the end of the man’s report. As soon as he finished speaking and was given a place to rest, the Colonel turned to his daughter and told her that he had something terribly important to ask her. He had to go no further. Sybil knew what had to be done and knew that she was the one that had to do it.

  Within minutes she was ready to go, fully aware of the difficulties, even the dangers, that lay ahead. It
was a stormy night, and the heavy spring rain gave no indication of letting up. The narrow roads upon which she was about to ride were not really roads at all, but mere dirt tracks. They would be totally muddy, and washouts would be a constant danger. And even before her father reminded her, she was all too aware of the danger of being overtaken and captured by “cowboys” or “skinners” who might well be operating along the route she was about to take.

  But she did not hesitate. At nine in the evening, dressed in a pair of her father’s work pants, she mounted her horse Star. In her hand was a stick that she would use to prod Star on and to knock upon the militiamen’s doors. Then, with the glow from the fires of a burning Danbury visible in the night sky, she was off from Fredericksburg to Carmel Village, into Mahopac and Mahopac Falls through Kent Cliffs, Farmers Mills, and Stormville, more than forty miles in all. Ignoring the driving rain and oblivious to the muddy rutted terrain beneath her, she charged on, banging on doors, crying out in a voice steadily growing hoarse, “The British are burning Danbury! Muster at once at Ludington’s.”

  In some of the towns, a church bell was rung to warn the citizens that the British might well be on the way. In one of the communities, a man, astounded to see a young girl spreading the alarm and mustering the militia, offered to accompany her the rest of the way. Politely declining his offer, Sybil instead sent him off to the town of Brewster, which was not on her route, to warn the people there.

  In his biography of Ludington, historian Willis Fletcher Johnson gave an early assessment of Sybil’s accomplishment:

  One who even now rides from Carmel to Cold Spring will find rugged and dangerous roads, with lonely stretches. Imagination can only picture what it was a century and a quarter ago, on a dark night, with reckless bands of “Cowboys” and “Skinners” abroad in the land. But the child performed her task, clinging to a man’s saddle, and guiding her steed with only a hempen halter, as she rode through the night, bearing the news of the sack of Danbury. There is no extravagance in comparing her ride with that of Paul Revere and its midnight message. Nor was her errand less efficient than his. By daybreak, thanks to her daring, nearly the whole regiment [of some four hundred men] was mustered before her father’s house at Fredericksburgh, and an hour or two later was on the march for vengeance on the raiders.

  They were not the only ones now on the march to keep Tryon from attacking other towns. Sybil’s alarm had spread beyond Dutchess County. And colonial spies operating in the area had also spread the news about what had taken place at Danbury. In New Haven, Continental Army generals David Wooster and Benedict Arnold, along with a small group of Continental soldiers, began making their way toward Danbury. At the same time, General Gold Selleck Silliman, commander of the Fairfield County militia, was hastily calling his men to arms.

  By two o’clock in the morning on Sunday, April 27, Wooster, Arnold, and Silliman had formed a plan. Aware that Tryon and his troops were following a route toward their ships at Compo Beach that would take them through Ridgefield, it was decided that Arnold and Silliman, with their combined forces of about four hundred men, would proceed to that town and prepare to attack the sure-to-be-weary British soldiers once they arrived. At the same time, Wooster, with his two hundred men and aware that Ludington and his regiment were soon to join them, was to catch up with the advancing British column and strike it from the rear.

  Wooster’s regiment was made up of men who knew the area between Danbury and Ridgefield well, and it did not take long for them to position themselves at a spot in the woods overlooking the trail they were certain the British would follow. Their instincts were perfect, and when the British arrived, Wooster’s soldiers attacked Tryon’s unsuspecting rear regiment and captured forty men. Later that morning, sensing the opportunity for an even bigger victory, Wooster ordered another attack. This time, however, the British were ready for them. Halting their march, they countered the American assault with artillery fire. According to historian Albert Van Dusen, as soon as the artillery fire began, Wooster turned in his saddle and cried out, “Come on my boys! Never mind such random shots.” The words were hardly out of his mouth when a British musket ball struck the general in the back, killing him.

  In the meantime, the British pushed on and reached the outskirts of Ridgefield, where Benedict Arnold and his men, although outnumbered four to one, were waiting for them. Less than three years later, Arnold’s name would become a byword for treason in the United States, but at Ridgefield, as he had done earlier at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Valcour Island, and as he would later do at the Battle of Saratoga, he was about to perform with extraordinary bravery in the Patriot cause.

  Arnold had had his men erect a roadblock on the approach to Ridgefield, and as soon as Tryon and his troops reached it, the colonials greeted them with a barrage of musket fire. The British troops’ superior numbers, however, soon enabled them to outflank the Americans. Arnold was the last of his troops to retreat, but as he did so, he was spotted by a British platoon who fired shot after shot at him, peppering his horse with bullets. As he tried to get his feet out of the stirrups, a bayonet-wielding soldier rushed at him, shouting, “Surrender! You are my prisoner!” Arnold, according to Van Dusen, calmly replied, “Not yet!” and shot the redcoat dead.

  Then, after making his escape to a nearby swamp, Arnold returned to the outskirts of Ridgefield that night and rounded up his militia—who by this time had been joined by citizen-soldiers from other counties, including Ludington’s regiment. The next day they forced the British to retreat back to their ship. Every step of the way to Compo, the British were set upon from all sides. Had it not been for a heavily armed, highly trained company of marines stationed aboard the English vessels who covered the last leg of the British retreat, Tryon’s mission might well have ended in total disaster.

  Tryon actually had accomplished what he had set out to do. The stores at Danbury had been destroyed—but at a cost of more than two hundred of Tryon’s men, a loss that had come very close to being far worse. It was an experience that discouraged the British from any further attacks in the area. As a result, the American militia in the vital region gained precious time to organize and resist, in large part due to the efforts of sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington, who was officially commended by General George Washington for her heroic ride. In 1961, American sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington created a dramatic statue of Sybil riding Star and spreading the alarm. Versions of the statue were erected in Danbury, along Sybil’s route near Carmel, and at the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters in Washington, D.C. In perhaps the ultimate tribute, the name of her hometown was to be changed from Fredericksburg to Ludingtonville. Paul Revere traveled about twenty miles during his historic ride. Sybil Ludington made a much longer journey for the Patriot cause, and she did it over much more difficult terrain that did the Boston artisan and messenger. And, unlike Revere, Sybil Ludington completed her mission without being captured. Yet she remains largely unknown. As Virginius Dabney wrote, “Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, God rest his bones, put Revere on the map. Unfortunately for Sybil, no one with the talent or reputation of a Longfellow did that for her.”

  SYBIL RIDES STAR in the sculpture in Carmel, New York, by Anna Hyatt Huntington.

  AND SHE IS NOT ALONE. There was another Patriot who had no Longfellow to immortalize him. Yet he made the longest, most hazardous ride of all, one that had even more important consequences than those of either Ludington or Revere. His story begins in the spring of 1781, a time when the fortunes of the rebelling American colonists, particularly those in Virginia, were far from promising. In that pivotal colony, the full force of the war was being felt as the traitorous Benedict Arnold, now a general on the British side, continued to raid and pillage colonial settlements all along the James River, from its mouth to Richmond. By May, Arnold’s troops and those of Major General William Phillips had linked up with a much larger force led by British commander Charles Cornwallis that had moved into Virgini
a from the south.

  In the face of these advancing troops, Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature had been forced to flee from the colonial capital in Williamsburg to Richmond. Then, on June 1, General Cornwallis learned from a captured dispatch that Jefferson and his fellow Patriots had fled again, this time to Charlottesville, the site of Jefferson’s home at Monticello. It was, Cornwallis believed, a golden opportunity, a chance to deal the Americans what could be a near-fatal blow by capturing, in one fell swoop, a group of some of the most influential of all the rebellious colonial leaders. Included were Jefferson, author of the “seditious” Declaration of Independence; Patrick Henry, whose “Give me liberty, or give me death” motto had become the rallying cry of the Revolution; and Richard Henry Lee, whose resolutions presented to the Continental Congress had led to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Included also were Thomas Nelson Jr., who had been one of the first to cry out for armed resistance to Great Britain and had spent almost his entire fortune equipping soldiers for the Continental Army, and Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and ancestor of two future presidents.

  Cornwallis was aware that Washington and his Virginia troops were fully occupied in the northern area of the colony and that General Marquis de Lafayette, who had been so successful in harassing British troops, was too far away to provide protection for the legislators. On June 1, 1781, Cornwallis ordered one of his favorite officers, his “hunting leopard” Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, to carry out a surprise attack on Charlottesville and to seize Thomas Jefferson and his fellow politicians. It was a plan that called for Tarleton, accompanied by 180 cavalrymen and 70 mounted infantrymen of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, to march from Cornwallis’s camp on the North Anna River to Charlottesville as quickly and as secretly as possible. By nine o’clock the night of June 3, Tarleton’s troops had reached the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County, some forty miles from Charlottesville. Despite the size of the force, no one had detected its movements. And it is here that a twenty-seven-year-old, six-foot four-inch, 222-pound giant of a young man enters the story. His name was Jack Jouett Jr., and he was a captain in the 6th Regiment of the Virginia militia. One of ten children, his family was extremely active in the Revolutionary cause. Both his father and he had boldly signed the Albemarle Declaration, a document that renounced King George III. Jack Jouett Sr. served as a “commissary,” supplying the Continental Army with beef from his Louisa County farm. Jack Jr.’s older brother Matthew had been killed at the Battle of Brandywine. Two of his younger brothers were also Virginia militiamen.