Battle on Harlem Plains

Washington had, early in his chieftaincy, urged upon the Congress the necessity of the establishment of a permanent army, and with prophetic words had predicted the very evils arising from short enlistments and loose methods of creating officers, which now prevailed. While there was a brief lull in active military operations after the battle on Harlem Plains, he again set forth, in graphic pictures, the sad condition of his army, and the importance of a thorough reform and reorganization of the forces, for he foresaw the natural dissolution of his army, by the expiration of enlistments, only a few weeks later. The Congress had just resolved (September 10th) to form the army anew into eighty-eight battalions, to be "enlisted as soon as possible, and to serve during the war;" but they were so afraid of the "military despotism" implied by a standing army, that much of the efficacy of this longer term of enlistment was neutralized by retaining the old method of levying troops by requisitions upon the several States, and the appointment of officers by local authorities without due regard to their qualifications. Washington was compelled to relinquish all present hope of obtaining an efficient army for the great work before him. Yet he never despaired nor uttered a petulant word of complaint, nor threatened to resign. His duty as a patriot and soldier was plain, and he pursued it.

For almost a month Washington rested with the main body of his army on Harlem Heights, watching the movements of Howe. He had constructed strong lines of fortifications across the narrow island, between the Harlem and Hudson Rivers, and redoubts were planted at proper places to defend approaches from the waters and the main land. The crest of Mount Washington was crowned with a five-sided earthwork, named Fort Washington. It was two hundred and thirty feet above tide-water, a mile northward of headquarters, with strong ravelins and outworks, and mounting thirty-four great guns. This was the principal fortification within the American lines, and was commanded by General Putnam. General Greene, the best leader in the army excepting Washington, was in command of Fort Lee on the Palisades on the New Jersey shore.

At this time General Charles Lee was making his way toward the camp. He had been called from the Carolinas, by the Congress, to take the chief command of the army in the event of Washington being disabled. His fame was very great, not because of anything of importance which he had done, but from what it was supposed he was capable of doing. But he was a charlatan, and afterward became a traitor to a cause which he really despised, and supported only from base motives. He was a hot-headed and wrong-headed man, and extremely vain. He was proud of being an English-man, and looked with contempt upon his American associates. Incapable of planning a campaign or executing a complicated military movement, he had, by dash, audacity, boasting, fault-finding, and the force of an imperious will and temper deceived the Americans into a belief that he was a great soldier. On his way north he had, at Philadelphia, wrung from the Congress a grant of thirty thousand dollars, as an indemnity for any losses of property which he might sustain in England in consequence of his playing "rebel;" and he came to Washington's army in the field with the sanction of Congress as the delegated commander-in-chief on a certain contingency. Forever afterward he intrigued, as did Gates, for the chief command by superseding Washington, until he was driven from the army in disgrace.

John Adams, then the chairman of the Board of War, gave to Lee the confidence which he always withheld from Washington. When a letter from the commander-in-chief, warning the Congress of the great dangers to which his army was exposed, was read in that body, Adams treated it as the utterance of a timid man. "The British force is so divided," he said, "they will do no great matter this fall;" and at that critical moment, when his energy was most needed in his responsible position, he obtained leave of absence. He had been deceived by the perfidious Lee, who wished to discredit Washington's sagacity, and who, at the very moment when Howe was moving to gain the rear of Washington's army, wrote from Amboy, that the British would "infallibly proceed against Philadelphia," and leave the American army alone.