boss.77 He also was given command of the nascent Fort Griswold on Groton Heights for the first time.78 Then, on July 10, 1776, Trumbull appointed Shaw agent of the colony for collecting naval supplies and taking care of sick sailors, another official sanction for a job he was already doing.79 The Continental Congress followed, prompted by his friend Samuel Huntington, who recommended him, saying, “I had the pleasure of procuring you to be appointed Agent, being the most suitable person I could think of.”80 Of course, this meant he was taking orders from both Lebanon and Philadelphia, like the micromanaging order from John Hancock to “deliver Mr. Barnabas Deane any Continental Stores in your possession which he may want for the up[keep] of the Frigate Trumbull now filling out in your state.”81
Shaw and Ledyard lived under constant threat of invasion from the superior British navy. A “ship-of-war” ran a captured prize ship onto the rocks by Fisher’s Island, but luckily “armed men from Stonington” and Capt. Elisha Hinman in the Cabot took the supplies ashore.82 Next, on July 25 three British men-of-war, the Rose, the Swan, and the Kingfisher, anchored outside the harbor to blockade the town. Shaw kept his good humor, sending George Washington a report a few days later and, along with it, an epicurean gift and joke: “as the Turtle was Intended for the Support of our Enemys, we thought best to Send him to head Quarters, to be Dealt with.”83 Washington thanked Shaw for “an extreme fine turtle” and commiserated about a lost prize ship.84 Then, on August 5 and 6 nine ships and several other vessels arrived but did not attack, being more interested in plundering Fisher’s Island, where they took over a thousand sheep, cattle, and other provisions. On this occasion they paid the Tory owner but stole from other islands like Gardiner’s and Plum without paying.85
After this scare, Shaw wrote a more urgent letter to Trumbull the following day, begging for help: “This town has been drained of men already, so that there is scarcely a sufficiency of hands left to get in the harvest.”86 Ledyard had already begun improving the land fortifications, saying, “no place lies more exposed than we do.” Ships had appeared in the Sound as early as 1775 and “appeared to be beating in but they came to Anchor off Fisher’s Island.” Ledyard “alarmed the country,” but so many people showed up to his signal that “we could not agree on a plan to oppose [the raiders] till Monday morning when they had got all the stock off.” Ledyard was one of the people who lost sheep in this raid.87 Later that autumn a commission found “that there is in Groton, nearly opposite the old Fort at New London, a hill or an eminence…. It seems nature had prepared a place to plant cannon for the protection of that port or harbor.”88 Now in 1776 the Groton citizens dug ditches and built fortifications around the harbor. At Waterman’s Point below Norwich, a small battery with four six-pound cannons was also erected to receive a potential invasion. But the process was slow. Acquiring the sledges, hammers, shovels, timber, and other supplies took ages, and every sight of sails would remind them that the work was incomplete. The lack of effective central government haunted small projects like this as much as it did George Washington’s much larger needs.89
And Washington’s problems had become very serious indeed. His army had gathered in New York, waiting for an invasion they knew was coming. One of the soldiers gathering with Washington was Nathan Hale, who had reenlisted on New Year’s Day. His friend Benjamin Tallmadge had also decided to drop his job as high school superintendent and join the army. Perhaps one of Hale’s hilarious poems of rhyming couplets had done the trick and inspired his friend, who was quite a fan of versified letters.
Reviv’d a little by your letter,
With hopes of speeding better,
At length I venture forth once more,
But fearing soon to run ashore….
For this I leave my wonted course,
with you, and seek for aid from verse.90
Maybe it was a less poetic kind of aid Tallmadge thought his friend was asking for, because on June 20 he rode up the dusty track to Hartford, where Governor Trumbull gave him a lieutenant’s commission.91
Only five days after Tallmadge joined up, British warships began appearing in New York Harbor. Throughout the hot, tense summer, more and more arrived, cutting off Long Island, spreading up the Hudson, just out of cannon range. Hale handed out new equipment to his men, preparing for an epic conflict.92 Then, sometime in August, he switched to a company of Rangers to patrol the shores of Manhattan and Westchester. In doing so, he missed the biggest battle on the continent since Europeans had arrived.
On August 22, twenty thousand British troops landed on Long Island and smashed into the American lines, pushing them back across Brooklyn. Those troops not captured or killed barely escaped, retreating back against the East River. Tallmadge had just arrived in Brooklyn and remembered the retreat: “It was one of the most anxious, busy nights that I ever recollect, and being the third in which hardly any of us had closed our eyes in sleep, we were all greatly fatigued.”93 At last they reached Brooklyn Ferry and crept across the river to Manhattan. It was one of George Washington’s most skillful maneuvers, though there is little glory in retreat. Israel Putnam was astonished they had escaped from Long Island, saying the British commander “is either our friend or no general…. He suffered us to escape without any interruption.”94 Meanwhile, David Bushnell of Westbrook sent his Turtle submarine into New York Harbor, attempting to attach mines to the hulls of British warships, but this technological ploy was unsuccessful.
Connecticut’s front with British-controlled New York and Long Island lasted from 1776 to 1783, leading to dozens of confrontations. Connecticut and Parts Adjacent, Geography and Maps Division, Library of Congress.
It was the beginning of a bad season. Throughout the autumn British troops whipped the Continental army off Manhattan and up through Westchester County. Stopped at the line of hills at the southwest corner of Connecticut, they pushed Washington and the main army across the Hudson River and into New Jersey. On December 7, 1776, another British force occupied Newport, Rhode Island, while a huge British fleet patrolled the Sound, effectively surrounding a panicked Connecticut on three sides.95 Things must have seemed bleak indeed. But there was no turning back. These patriots had committed themselves now, through both declarations and blood, through fire and sacrifice. They were bound through comradeship and oaths, through the connections they had created before the war and through the ones they continued to make in the thick of the struggle. And each of them now faced an uncomfortable prospect: victory or death.
The Shadow War
GEORGE WASHINGTON needed information. No one could run a war without it, and now that the British had occupied Long Island, he needed to know what their next move was. He wrote to his generals on September 1, 1776, and told them he needed a “channel of information” through Tories willing to take a bribe, but “friends would be preferable, if they could manage it.”1 The officers filtered this request carefully down through the ranks, until it reached Nathan Hale, who saw in the job a chance to do something positive for the war. After all, he had yet to participate in a battle.
A college friend from Derby named William Hull was stationed nearby, and Hale asked his advice about the job of “assuming a disguise and passing into the enemy’s camp.” Hull argued against it, saying first that spying was “not in keeping” with Hale’s “character,” and then putting down the entire idea, calling this sort of action was “moral degradation.” He asked, “Who respects the character of
