Chapter V: The Great Battle Near Elmira

One of the first obstacles to the army, was a very high hill at the edge of the river. To avoid this, all but the infantry crossed the river twice, being supported and guarded against hostile attack by Maxwell’s New Jersey regiments. The other brigades marched over the hill, and camp was made on the site of the Indian town of Chemung which the advanced detachments had destroyed two weeks before.

Our fathers thought few articles of food more delicious than green corn roasted in the ear. So the maize in the fields near by helped to make a good supper. In addition, the army enjoyed a feast of potatoes, beans, cucumbers, watermelons, squashes and other vegetables which were here in great plenty. It was the season of ripeness.

Towards the end of July, there had gathered together, whites and reds, Indians, Tories, Royal Greens and British regulars, numbering over a thousand men, at Newtown, the Indian town near Baldwin’s Creek, opposite to the present village of Wellsburg on the Erie, and at Lohmansville on the Lackawanna railroad. Here they were for weeks hard at work. Tearing down the Indian houses, they built, with the old and fresh-cut logs, a fortification that extended up the slope of the hill to the north and along the western ridge nearer the Chemung river.

But where was the enemy? It was known that the raid of Brant, down the Walkill valley to the Delaware, had failed to draw Sullivan from his main purpose. The other parties of Tories and Indians had been equally impotent. What then should be done to drive back the avenging army and save their villages and crops?

Evidently the only safety was to join all forces. At a great council of Tories and Iroquois, held where Geneva now stands, it was decided to send wampum belts again to every and all tribes and bands of the Iroquois, and bid them assemble to oppose the invaders in the Chemung valley. Some of the parties that started in response to this call arrived too late. The notorious John Butler, who had led the expedition against Wyoming, was in command of the mixed forces of King George, red, black, and white, and the strategy and tactics employed by him showed the combination of the crafts of both savage and civilized man.

On Saturday evening, August 28, Sullivan’s advance pickets heard the sound of axes and saw many fires brightly burning along the hills just beyond Baldwin’s Creek. A scout sent out a day or two before, reported that the enemy were fortified just beyond the creek and west of the Indian village of Newtown. The march must now be made with a constant reference to ambuscade and with the greatest wariness. “Above all, no Braddocking.”

On Sunday, August 29, the day broke with every indication of very hot weather. The air was close and heavy. The army moved at nine o’clock, the riflemen being well scattered in front of Hand’s light corps, so as to act as scouts and skirmishers, while every man in the brigade moved with the greatest caution. Hardly had they gone a mile, before they discovered several Indians in front. One of these fired and then all fled. Going forward still further a mile, the riflemen found the ground low, marshy and well fitted for the shelter of hiding Indians. Moving slowly and alertly, they discovered another party of Indians, who as before, fired and retreated. Evidently their purpose was to lure the Americans into ambush.

Major Parr, commander of the rifle corps, now determined to advance no further without reconnoitering every foot of the ground. Ordering his men to halt, he sent one of them to climb the highest tree and survey the whole situation. The scout was unable at first to discover anything peculiar, but peering intently ahead, he made out a line of brushwood artfully concealed with green boughs and trees. Starting from near the Chemung river on the left, it ran up the slope of a high hill to the right, for possibly half a mile. Here had been the Indian village of Newtown, consisting of twenty-five or thirty bark houses, but most of the houses had given way to timber entrenchments and to the camp inside of them, though two or three were left so as to form, as it were, bastions for the newly-built fort.

Here the enemy had gathered to make their determined stand. Their force, numbering about nine hundred warriors from five tribes, had been reinforced by between two and three hundred white men, Tories and Canadians, drilled and aided by fifteen regular soldiers of the British army, and commanded by Butler, McDonald, and Brant, while two or three hundred more warriors were soon expected.

Such a position was a formidable obstacle to the advance even of an army provided with artillery. The right flank of the British rested on the river, their left on the side of a hill, while immediately in front of them and for a space of about one hundred yards was a clear field which their fire could sweep easily. Between this field and the Continental lines was a stream, since called Baldwin’s Creek, and then very difficult to cross. On the American right lay a valley so low and marshy that an attack in flank would seem nearly impossible. Thus the place was evidently well chosen.

Nearly the whole story of Indian craft in war is told in the one word, concealment. To hide their breastworks with the hope that the invaders might come very near to them without their being discovered, the Tories and Indians had laid boughs and greenery over the front and top. They had even planted out in front, here and there, fresh young trees, so as to give the appearance of primitive and untouched forests. They had stuck these young trees in the ground outside the breastworks and had thoroughly cleaned up the ground, so that no chips or evidence of human industry were left lying about. They hoped also that Sullivan’s troops would rush for plunder into the few Indian houses left standing outside the lines and would thus be entrapped.

Evidently, also it was their design that the Continentals, moving in a narrow defile and strung out in a line several miles long, should be caught between the river and the entrenchments, while the Indians in ambuscade could pour in their fire. They hoped to “Braddock” Sullivan’s force by stampeding the pack horses and cattle. On the high hill across the river, and on the summit to the northward, watching parties were stationed by Brant so that at the right moment they could quickly descend. Then by frightening the animals, sending them flying in every direction, they could complete the destruction of the army thus huddled together. With so many chances in their favor, the Tories and Indians hoped to give the Continental army such a check as to compel its return.

All these plans were frustrated by the great caution of Sullivan and the alertness of his lieutenants. When Major Parr, about noon, reported to his superior the situation of the enemy, Hand sent forward the riflemen to occupy the banks of the creek, within one hundred yards of the breastworks and under cover. The light brigade then moved to within three hundred yards and deployed in line of battle. Sullivan coming forward with the main army, sent Ogden’s flanking division along the river to the left of Hand’s light brigade and further to the west. He ordered Maxwell to remain in the rear in reserve. For a flank attack, he detached two brigades, Poor’s New Hampshire and Clinton’s New York, to move to the right and north. They were to make their way up the swampy valley, and gain, if possible, the enemy’s left and rear. In order to divert attention from this flank attack, Hand’s light corps opened in the center, while Proctor’s nine guns were run forward and posted on a hillock, directly in front of the angle of the breastworks and about two hundred yards distance from them. As everything had to be done in a rough country in the woods, on a fearfully hot day, it took several hours to get the batteries and the brigades into position.

Then opened a lively fusilade, of small arms, which held the attention of the enemy. It was proposed to allow until three o’clock for Poor and Clinton to reach the top of the hill (now called Sullivan’s Hill, on which the lofty monument stands), whence they were to turn and charge down upon the enemy. Yet Sullivan listened long in vain for the sound of musketry upon the distant right wing, notwithstanding that it was Poor’s intention to advance with unloaded guns and charge with the bayonet, for Wayne’s handsome work at Stony Point on July 16, only six weeks before, had stirred the army with an ambition to achieve a similar victory with cold steel. Colonel Cilley, who commanded a New Hampshire regiment, had been with Wayne on the Hudson and was now with Poor.

At three o’clock, Sullivan thinking it not wise to wait longer, gave order to Proctor to open fire with all his guns. The two howitzers, the little Coehorn and the six cannon opened with a terrific roar, while the light corps were ordered to be in readiness for a charge, as soon as the firing of the flanking column was heard. It was intended that the cannonade should be the prelude to a general advance on front and flank. The guns grew hot with firing, however, before anything was heard from the New Hampshire men, who had been obliged to face unexpected difficulties and especially to flounder through swamps, far deeper than anyone had supposed.

Proctor’s round shot, grape and bombs not only cut and tore the forest trees to the terror of the savages, but did terrible execution. In many places within the enemy’s line the bloody proofs of the terrific and destructive power of the shell fire were afterwards amply evident. Brant, their mighty leader, found it was all he could do to hold his painted warriors together. Suddenly, rather to their relief, than otherwise, runners from the hilltop came to inform their chief that the enemy had made an attack in force on their left flank, driven in the party of watchers, and were moving forward on the main body. Glad to escape the terrific missiles of the artillery, and to give his braves congenial occupation and one more suitable to Indian warfare, Brant led off a large party, possibly the majority of his warriors, to repel this new danger.

Turning now to the hilltop on the right and to the flanking operations, we behold the most startling episode of the battle, when for a moment it looked as if a cloud of red men was about to overwhelm this one isolated body of their foes. The second New Hampshire regiment under Colonel Reid, separated from the others in the brigade, suddenly found themselves partly surrounded by a semi-circle of rifles and hatchets. Their thin scattered line of riflemen, sent out to scour the woods as skirmishers, and at this time only a few yards in front of them, was quickly driven back before a whirlwind of fire. With unloaded muskets, the destruction of Reid’s regiment seemed certain. Nevertheless the salvation of the Americans was in the Indians firing too high. They were too certain of victory to keep cool and take sure aim.

This was the situation--Dearborn’s Third New Hampshire, Alden’s Sixth Massachusetts, Cilley’s First New Hampshire, and Du Bois’s two hundred and fifty picked New Yorkers, on the extreme right flank, and far to the northwest of the main body, made up, with the Second New Hampshire, the brigade. These regiments moving in the woods, in a country which no white man had ever penetrated, had become quite separated from each other. Poor, the commander, hoping to completely outflank the enemy, was far ahead on the right, too distant to be heard from. Clinton’s brigade, consisting of the Third New York under Gansevoort, the Fifth New York commanded by Du Bois, the Fourth New York led by Livingston, and the Second New York on the right under Van Cortlandt, formed the reserve, but they were still far below in the rear. The regiments were all small, numbering each about three hundred men. The great and imminent danger was that Brant’s seven hundred warriors might wholly overwhelm the men of one regiment before help could reach them from their comrades.

Such disaster seemed now to threaten. Starting his men on the run, Brant had reached the hill top, just as the men of Reid’s Second New Hampshire, nearly out of breath, and toiling amid the terrific heat, were only half way up the rough face of the rather steep eastern slope. At the extreme left of their brigade and nearest the British breastworks, which were a few hundred rods to the westward, Reid’s men found themselves far away and out of sight from their comrades in the other regiments, which were further to the right--east and north. Their guns were unloaded while their ears were deafened with the yell of hundreds of exultant savages who felt sure of scalps. In a moment more they were face to face with the foe. With their empty muskets, defeat and massacre seemed certain. They realized that their brigadier, Poor, was far away to the right, pressing his troops on to the attack, hoping to close in upon the enemy and prevent their retreat.

There was but one thing to do. It was to fix bayonets and charge. Reid shouted the order. His men, jaded as they were, pushed further up the hill, driving the enemy for a moment before them and getting a bare chance, in the momentary lull, to load their guns. Then began the usual fusilade among the trees. Yet it was still a desperate uncertainty and the enemy outnumbered them.

Not far away, Dearborn, with the Third New Hampshire, hearing the firing, realized at once the peril in which Reid was. Without waiting a moment, he took the responsibility, without orders, to right about face. He did so, supporting Reid and striking the enemy on the flank, while Clinton, equally alert, pushed forward two of his regiments. His object was to support the New Hampshires and if possible gain Brant’s rear.

Then ensued a severe fight in the woods, which from the nature of the situation could not last very long. Brant seeing his plans upset, ordered his men to retreat and save themselves.

At the same time, further down on the flats, Sullivan having heard the report of the guns on the hill, at once ordered an advance along the whole line. With cheers our men rushed over the entrenchments, and then a running fight of several miles, indeed all the way into the limits of the modern city of Elmira, ensued. Nevertheless the enemy were able to escape, being much more familiar with the country. They carried away their wounded in canoes up the river, and made off with, or concealed some of the bodies of their dead.

The battlefield was fully occupied by our trains and camp, and about six o’clock in the afternoon, when the pursuit stopped, three cheers told the story of another American victory. The known loss of the enemy was thirteen whites and many Indians. Twenty-six corpses of red men were found upon the field. Two prisoners, one a negro and one a Tory with his face painted black, were taken. General Sullivan reported three killed and twenty-nine wounded, five of whom afterwards died. All the patriot dead and most of the wounded were New Hampshire men, and all the casualties except four were in Poor’s brigade, Reid’s regiment suffering the worst.

In reality this was one of the great decisive battles of the Revolution, for it broke forever the power of the Iroquois. Throughout the war, except in small parties, neither Tories nor savages were able to gather for raids. As a military factor the warriors of the Six Nations never again appeared in or with an army. Sullivan and his soldiers had ended the flank attacks on the army, and opened the way for civilization into western New York and Pennsylvania. Indeed, for over half a century, or until the railways dictated the lines of travel, “Sullivan’s Road” was the main highway into New York from Pennsylvania.