Sir John Johnson and his Conduct

The exertions of General Schuyler to reinforce and supply the army in Canada were untiring, and the amount of labor to accomplish that end, which he performed while tortured with bodily suffering, was prodigious. At the same time he was defeating, by vigilance, wisdom and energy, the efforts of Sir John Johnson to bring upon the rear of the Northern Army the Tories west of Albany, and the Six Nations of Indians. Early in January (1776) he was told that Sir John had fortified his manor-house at Johnstown, and that his retainers, mostly Scotch Highlanders, seven hundred in number, were in arms. The general called for volunteers to enable him to disarm this formidable conspiracy. The response was marvellous. They came in such numbers, that, when he was within a few miles of Johnson Hall, he was at the head of almost three thousand men, including nine hundred of the Tryon County militia. He had met Sir John on the way, and made friends of the Mohawks; and he compelled the baronet and his followers to surrender all the arms and military stores which they had collected. He also took Johnson's parole of honor that he would not take up arms against the republicans, nor tamper with the Indians. Sir John deceived Schuyler with false promises. He violated his parole; and when Schuyler sent an armed force to arrest him in May, he fled, with his followers, through the great wilderness between Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains to the St. Lawrence, and joined the British army in Canada. He was commissioned a colonel in that army, and raised two battalions--a total of a thousand men, composed of his retainers and other Tories. These were the formidable corps known in the border warfare of that period as The Royal Greens, because of their green uniform. Lady Johnson, who was a daughter of John Watts, one of the king's counsellors of the province, was sent to Albany on horseback in that pleasant spring-time, attended by a military escort, where she was kept in durance several months, as a hostage for the restraint of her husband.

The army under Washington, which had driven the British out of Boston, soon afterward appeared in other fields of duty, a part of them, as we have seen, in Canada, but more at New York and in its vicinity. At the beginning of the year Washington ascertained that Sir Henry Clinton was about to sail from Boston, with troops, on a secret expedition. It was suspected that New York was his destination, where Governor Tryon was ready to head a formal demonstration in favor of the crown. The Tories there were active and numerous. Disaffection prevailed extensively; and it was fostered by Tryon, whose "palace" was the armed-ship Duchess of Gordon, lying in the harbor. Fearing that province might be lost to the republicans, Washington ordered General Charles Lee, then recruiting in Connecticut, to embody the volunteers and march to New York. Governor Trumbull lent his official aid to Lee, and within a fortnight after the latter received his orders, he was in full march for the Harlem River with twelve hundred men, and the bold Son of Liberty, Isaac Sears, as his adjutant-general. His approach caused many Tories to flee, with their families, to Long Island and New Jersey; and the Committee of Safety, timorous and undecided, protested against his entering the city, because the commander of the Asia had threatened to cannonade and burn the town if "rebel" troops should be allowed to enter it. Lee did not heed the threats nor the protests. He encamped his troops in the Fields (now the City Hall Park), made his headquarters at the house of Captain Kennedy, No. 1 Broadway (yet standing), and issued a proclamation, saying: "I come to prevent the occupation of Long Island or the city, by the enemies of Liberty. If the ships-of-war are quiet, I shall be quiet; if they make my presence a pretext for firing on the town, the first house set in flames by their guns shall be the funeral pile of some of their best friends." Before these brave words the Tories cowered. The proclamation sent a thrill of patriotism among the weak-kneed in the Provincial Congress, and that body adopted measures for fortifying the city and the approaches to it, and garrisoning it with two thousand men.

Sir Henry Clinton's vessels appeared off Sandy Hook on the day when Lee arrived in New York. He was bound for the coast of North Carolina to execute a plan of the ministry for the subjugation of that province, suggested by Governor Martin the previous autumn. It was believed by the king and his advisers that the people of the southern provinces would join the royal troops when they should appear; but Dartmouth, evidently having some doubts, instructed Clinton, in case the people were not loyal, to distress them by burning any of their towns that might refuse to submit.