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July 2, 2022 - February 3, 2023
A century earlier, the home’s massive walls had been built to fend off potential Indian attacks. Now, these same barriers that had shielded Americans were called upon to repel them. Cornwallis’s men trained a light cannon and musket fire on the advancing Marylanders, who launched a preemptive strike aimed at protecting their brothers-in-arms.
From a distant hill, General George Washington watched the gallant display through his spyglass. As the Marylanders began to fall, he cried out, “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!”1 1. Their bravery and sacrifice gave rise to the Maryland nickname, the Old Line State.
The soldiers who participated in that unorthodox assault would become known as the Immortals or the Maryland 400.
It wasn’t the Revolution of famous men trapped in the amber of fading oil portraits, but an alive, boots-on-the-ground, brutally long conflict that pitted brother against brother in a war that America wasn’t preordained to win. These sacrifices by a small group of men—in the right place, at the right time—who were willing to march thousands of miles and endure years of unimaginable hardship, made the difference between victory and defeat.
At the time, Baltimore, one of the primary trading centers in the colonies, was a boomtown with a seedy, rough-and-tumble quality about it.
Some things never change!
His uncle, Christopher Gist, had served with George Washington in the French and Indian War, and on two separate occasions he had saved the future general’s life.
A natural leader known for his forceful opinions, Gist was among the colony’s first agitators for independence and later emerged as one of America’s most powerful Freemasons.
On that December night in the tavern, like-minded Patriots had gathered to hear Gist, whom they elected as captain of their company, read aloud the articles of incorporation for the Baltimore Independent Cadets. The charter called for sixty men—“a company composed of gentlemen of honour, family, and fortune, and tho’ of different countries animated by a zeal and reverence for rights of humanity”—to voluntarily join and tie themselves together “by all the Sacred ties of Honour and the Love and Justice due to ourselves and Country.”
Still clinging to the glorious cause.
Like Gist and Smith, many of the company’s members were prosperous merchants. For them, the decision to join the company meant sacrificing their livelihood—the ability to trade with Great Britain.
but for them the Revolution wasn’t only about money. They were motivated by ideals of freedom and liberty, and they didn’t want their daily lives and business decisions at the mercy of the bureaucracy in London.
When the British had put down an insurrection in Ireland around the same time, a judge decreed to the captured revolutionaries, “You are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead, for while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces, your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters.”
How civilized!
John Adams noted that Washington had two invaluable leadership skills: “He possessed the gift of silence and had great command.”
Answering the call of the Second Continental Congress to enlist regulars for a Continental Army, Maryland created a force unique in the thirteen colonies because it was neither militia nor Continental; instead, it was a state-funded (from taxes levied from Marylanders and later the seizure of Loyalist property) defense force created to protect Maryland from the British
and from the internal threat of Americans loyal to the Crown.
Irish immigrants,
Of Spanish ancestry,
The Marylanders spanned the spectrum of socioeconomic classes but were largely farmers (and their sons) and some artisans, like ship’s carpenters, brewers, bakers, and blacksmiths. One officer stated when writing to Smallwood that he hoped to “have a very Respectable Company of farmers sons as I am determined I will take very few, if any, out of this Town.”
In all wars, the privates do most of the fighting;
Free African Americans also joined the ranks of Smallwood’s Battalion. While the exact number who served the unit through the course of the war is impossible to determine, estimates say around five thousand African Americans
served in the entire Continental Army and twice as many fought for the British.
This was not only America’s first army, but America’s first integrated army, the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again until after World War II. In a cruel irony, thousands of black men fought for the values of liberty and freedo...
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This civil war was particularly evident in Maryland, where Chesapeake Bay divided the colony in half, effectively creating two factions. Those who lived on the Eastern Shore tended to be Loyalists, or Tories, while other areas were home to more Patriots.
Although the colony had been founded as a haven for Catholics, by the end of the seventeenth century, Protestants were asserting more control in the colony, just as they were in Britain. On the Eastern Shore, the Church of England dominated the religious
landscape.
Yet Toryism in principle was nothing but a conservative attachment to the government and institutions of the Mother country. . . . This admirable sentiment of loyalty to the king was so strong that it required almost the bitterness of death to break it. All the more, we must admire the heroic manhood of the colonies, which threw off these attachments in the cause of freedom and endured all kinds of pain and suffering rather than endure oppression.
General Howe’s top lieutenant, General Sir Henry Clinton, had a very different view; he believed the aim of the war should be to destroy the American army. Clinton wasn’t particularly likable and even described himself as “a shy bitch.”
A substantial portion of the army consisted of seasoned combat veterans tested in the wilds of North America during the French and Indian War or in the killing fields of Europe during the Seven Years’ War. Its members took pride in Britain’s long history of imperial supremacy, leading one American to label it “the most arrogant army in the world.”
As one historian has noted, “For men on both sides who actually did the fighting, the war was not primarily a conflict of power or interest. It was a clash of principles in which they deeply believed.” This army, highly motivated and imbued with its own principles and traditions, invaded the shores of Staten Island in the summer of 1776.
Many of the officers despised having these women and their children along, believing that they distracted the soldiers, slowed their movements, and consumed food that could have fed the men. Others were more pragmatic, noting that the men might not continue to fight if they couldn’t bring along their wives. Washington wrote that he “was obliged to give Provisions to the extra Women in these regiments, or lose by Desertion, perhaps to the enemy, some of the oldest and best Soldiers in the Service.”
Most of America’s colonists were of middling class and enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of the world. For many of the British, the perceived wealth and plentitude seemed to be proof that the colonists got rich off the Crown.
Thanks to a sports injury, one of his eyes looked unusual, and he was, by his own description, “rather corpulent” with a double chin. By contrast, his wife, whom he loved dearly, was known for her beauty.
Oh sure, the fat guy USED to get the girl!
He also volunteered for service in putting down the American uprising, even though he was one of only six lords in Parliament who voted against the Stamp Act.
The Marylanders who participated in that unorthodox assault became known as the Maryland 400, or the Immortal 400. With their blood, the Immortals bought “an hour, more precious to American liberty than any other in its history.”
Perhaps mindful of the severe losses sustained on Bunker Hill, and of the delay caused by the Marylanders’ stand, General William Howe made his fateful decision and ordered his men to halt instead of storming the American defenses. “It required repeated orders to prevail upon them to desist from the attempt.”
Thomas
Joseph?
Pell’s Point provides an example of the evolving style of war in the Revolution. As the war progressed, Marylanders were in the forefront of helping pioneer an American style of combat. That reflex to adapt flourished from the start and it remains evident to the present day. Tactically, the Americans tended to concentrate their firepower on a specific point in the battlefield where it had the greatest impact.
Through guile, the Marylander likely took the British oath of allegiance, made his way back to the American lines, and resumed serving in the Continental Army.
Washington’s reply would inspire the Marylanders through many hardships to come. “I can assign no other regiment in which I can place the same confidence; and I request you will say so to your gallant regiment.”
Cornwallis followed the Americans—but in a measured way. While never far behind, the British general always seemed to be a day late. Cornwallis had orders to push the American army out of New Jersey but not to engage it in a major battle that might result in the loss of British troops.
There, Cornwallis received orders to halt. Like the Americans, his army was also in poor shape. Many of the exhausted Hessians were barefoot, their shoes worn out from marching and fighting since August.
Initially, the British planned to compensate local inhabitants for the supplies they needed. However, instead of paying in hard currency, they issued IOUs that would often prove to be worthless or simply took what they needed. New Jersey was filled with Loyalists, many of them middle-class farmers with abundant fields and livestock. But instead of protecting its sympathizers in New Jersey, the Hessians ransacked the farms.
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine Patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he, that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women.” Paine
ordered his pamphlet to be sold at no more than two pennies, or just the cost of printing, and it “flew like wildfire through all the towns and villages of the counties.”
Contrary to the myth perpetuated by many children’s books, the Hessians in Trenton were neither drunk nor idle.
Through Washington’s leadership, the Continental strategy and tactics generally aligned with principles of the Revolution. This democratic army of amateur citizen-soldiers followed a code of conduct that John Adams called a “policy of humanity.”
Gist, William Smallwood, and a force of more than two thousand men marched to the Eastern Shore to quash the rebellion and imprison its leaders.
Nevertheless, Washington ordered inoculation for the Continentals and the civilians in the area, which helped prevent the epidemic from becoming worse. One of those inoculated was Marylander John Boudy, who recalled that “the whole Army, or nearly all, was inoculated for the smallpox.”
Instead, he remained fully dedicated to the cause, even though he frequently received only half the pay he had been promised and the army confiscated his two horses. Later in life, he suffered financial hardships until the Maryland legislature approved a petition that gave him “full pay of Col. of Dragoons for life.”
Although the Americans didn’t accomplish any larger strategic goals with this attack and others like it, they were slowly grinding away at the British army while avoiding heavy casualties on their own side.
Washington frequently assigned the Marylanders to serve as a blocking force while the rest of the army withdrew from a particular location. An elite unit, the Immortals20 were to occupy an exposed position and engage the advancing British forces, hoping to slow the enemy’s march long enough for the rest of the Patriots to reposition themselves.
