The acquisition and movement of supplies had become the real battle of the highlands, but it was the events at Pines Bridge, not long after my arrival at the Point, that had been the final straw. DeLancey and his men had attacked a defensive position held by the Rhode Island Regiment on the north bank of the Croton River near Yorktown in Westchester. The Rhode Island Regiment was partially made up of African soldiers, and Colonel Christopher Greene, their white commander and a cousin of General Nathanael Greene, had been dragged from his tent, mutilated, and killed. His body was found a mile from the skirmish, the excessive violence wrought upon him thought to be retribution for enlisting African Americans and encouraging them to rebel against the Crown.
In late June, a corps of light infantrymen, of which I was part, were dispatched to scout enemy positions and troop activities, including those of DeLancey’s men. A shipment of goods was expected on the Connecticut coast, and my unit would be patrolling the entire area for as long as necessary in hopes of securing the much-awaited supplies. It would be the first chance at engagement for many of us, and the men around me vibrated with an enthusiasm I could not capture. Even Jimmy was flushed with excitement, and Beebe could not contain himself.
“I’m going to get me a redcoat,” Beebe crowed, “if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Pack light—we’ll be moving fast and frequently—and pack well. We may not be back until the summer’s over,” Captain Webb told us.
I did not talk to the general before I left and felt a fool for wishing I could say goodbye. In a moment of weakness, I penned a short letter from Deborah Samson, dated it April 1, and included it in the stack of correspondence I’d helped my bunkmates draft to their own loved ones. I delivered it to the post rider myself, certain it would eventually find its way onto the general’s desk with no one being the wiser. If for some reason I did not return, which part of me expected, I wanted him to know what Elizabeth—and he—had meant to me. I was careful and brief, but felt better for having done it.
Instead of heading toward Westchester, a detachment of about fifty of us were held back as Colonel Jackson’s regiment prepared to go south. We watched as they left in waves, expecting to bring up the rear, though as light infantry, we should have been at the front. We waited all day, ready to depart, only to spend another night in the barracks. None of us knew where we were going, and Captain Webb was tight-lipped about the delay. We were told, last minute, to put our blue coats in our packs, and issued hunting shirts of various browns and greens to wear instead. The plumes from our tricorns were all removed, and some men were issued wide-brimmed hats of felt or straw.
Whatever our mission, it was clear that we were to blend in, and that the fewer people who knew the plan, the better. That included us. Troop movements were tradable intelligence, and nobody was to be trusted, even the troops themselves.
We covered ten miles a day, moving steadily north, the river on our right, until on the evening of the fifth day, we arrived on the outskirts of Kingston, a settlement fifty miles above the Point, and waited for nightfall before entering the town. After dark we were herded into an empty warehouse near the wharf and directed to wait. The only one who seemed to know what was going on was Captain Webb, and he wasn’t talking.
Kingston had been burned to the ground by the British in ’77 to destroy the army’s wheat stores kept in the town. The granaries had been rebuilt, but the residents who had returned were wary of our presence, though the American control of the North River all the way to Albany gave them far more protection than the communities in the lower river valley enjoyed.
We holed up for two days, waiting for reasons that weren’t explained to us, but the rest was needed and the outhouse, complete with a latching door, a relief. My toenails had turned black from the march from Worcester and some had begun to fall off. I was sure the march back to the Point would finish the job.
But we didn’t return the way we’d come. We didn’t march at all.
On our second night in Kingston, we bagged and loaded two barges with grain from a nearby silo, moving silently up and down the loading dock, taking turns on armed watch until the hulls were filled and our backs breaking. We were then ferried to the other side of the river to a slaughter yard where we found barrels of salt beef in such quantities to prompt the acquisition of a fourth barge to handle all of them.
Then our detachment was divided between the vessels, a dozen men or so on each deck, where we waited for the tide to shift, nerves taut, our muskets loaded and drawn. The Hudson flowed both ways, six hours to the north followed by six hours to the south, a massive inhale, exhale that moved freight up and down her banks.