USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > History of New London, Connecticut, From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1852 > Part 53
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But the work of destruction in New London was a mere sportive sally in comparison with the tragic events that were passing on the opposite side of the river. The division of Lieut. Col. Eyre which landed on that side, consisted of two British regiments and a battal- ion of New Jersey volunteers, with a detachment of yagers and artillery. The British regiments, however, were the actors in the scenes that followed, for the Jersey troops and artillery, who were under the command of Lieut. Col. Buskirk, being the second debark- ation, and getting entangled among the ledges, copses and ravines, did not reach the fort until after the conflict had ceased.1
The object of Arnold in directing an attack upon Groton fort was to prevent the escape of the shipping up the river, and he imagined it could be very easily taken.
" I had reason to believe (he says) that Fort Griswold was very incomplete, and I was assured by friends to government after my landing that there were only twenty or thirty men in the fort."
When, however, he gained a height of ground from whence he could survey the scene, he found that the works were much more formidable than he expected, that the garrison had been recruited and that the vessels were already too far up the river to be checked by the guns of the fort. The general proceeds :
" I immediately dispatched a boat with an officer to Lieut. Col. Eyre, to countermand my first order to attack the fort, but the officer arrived a few min- utes too late. Lieut. Col. Eyre had sent Capt. Beckwith with a flag, to de- mand a surrender of the fort, which was peremptorily refused, and the attack had commenced."
What momentous import in those few minutes too late ! Could those few minutes have been recalled, how much human crime and human suffering would have been spared ! One of the saddest pages of American history would never have been written !
1 Arnold's report
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
" The fort was an oblong square, with bastions at opposite angles, its long- est side fronting the river in a north-west and south-east direction. Its walls were of stone, and were ten or twelve feet high on the lower side, and sur- rounded by a ditch. On the wall were pickets, projecting over twelve feet ; above this was a parapet with embrasures, and within a platform for cannon, and a step to mount upon, to shoot over the parapet with small arms. In the south-west bastion was a flag-staff, and in the side near the opposite angle, was the gate, in front of which was a triangular breast-work to protect the gate ; and to the right of this was a redoubt, with a three-pounder in it, which was about 120 yards from the gate. Between the fort and the river was another battery, with a covered way, but which could not be used in this attack, as the enemy appeared in a different quarter."1
The number of men in the fort was about 150;2 two-thirds of them farmer's, artisans, and other inhabitants of the vicinity, that had just come in with what arms they could seize, to aid the garrison. The British troops were first discovered from the fort as they emerged from the forest, half a mile distant, with ranks broken, and running half bent till they obtained shelter behind the hills and ledges of rock. Col. Eyre formed his men under the lee of a rocky height, 130 yards south-east from the fort, near the present burial-ground. Major Montgomery, with the fortieth regiment, took post a little farther off, protected also by a hill.
It was about noon, just at the time when Arnold, from the hill on the opposite side of the river, was taking a survey of the scene, that Col. Eyre sent a flag to demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of the fort. Such a demand on their first taking a position of attack was an inauspicious and barbarous commencement of the siege. Col. Ledyard summoned a council of war, in which it was decided at once and unanimously, not to surrender. Captains Elijah Avery, Amos Stanton, and John Williams, three brave volunteers from the neighborhood, all unconsciously wrapped in the awful shadow of coming slaughter, were sent to meet the flag and deliver the reply. A second summons from the British, accompanied with the assurance, that if obliged to storm the works, martial law should be put in force, was answered in the same decided manner, " We shall not surrender, let the consequences be what they may." This answer was delivered by Capt. Shapley.3
1 Narrative of Stephen Hempstead.
2 Hempstead says 160. Rufus Avery, in his narrative, 155. The Connecticut Ga- zette, the week after the battle, 120.
3 Stephen Hempstead.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
The officers of the fort were not unconscious of the weakness of their works, nor of the surpassing skill and discipline, as well as the great superiority of numbers, about to be brought against them. But they expected reenforcements, and were confident if they could hold out for a few hours, the country would pour out its thousands to their rescue. Col. Nathan Gallup, of the Groton militia, had visited the fort at an early hour of the day, and left it, fully intending to return with what force he could assemble to aid the garrison. At the mo- ment the attack commenced, the gleam of arms might be seen on the distant hills, from men gathering for the fight. But it was not easy to persuade the militia to coop themselves up in stone walls, where they might be hemmed in and butchered by an overwhelming force. Many valiant men, who had shouldered their muskets and hastened forward with full intent to join issue with the enemy, hesitated when they saw the situation of affairs. Capt. Stanton, who was sent out to draw in volunteers, just before the attack commenced, was met on every side with an urgent appeal for the garrison to quit the fort, one and all, and come out and meet the enemy on the open ground. "We will fight," they said, " to the last gasp if we can have fair play, but we will not throw away our lives, by fighting against such odds, with no chance to escape." Col. Gallup was afterward severely censured for not attempting to relieve the garrison, but a court-martial having in- vestigated the charges, exonerated him from blame, and it is there- fore manifestly unjust that dishonorable imputations should sully the name of an otherwise estimable officer.
No sooner was the second defiance returned to the summons than both divisions of the enemy's force were put in motion, and advanced with a quick step in solid columns. A party of Americans posted in the eastern battery, gave them one discharge, and then retired within the fort. Col. Ledyard ordered his men to reserve their fire until the detachment which came up first had reached the proper distance. When the word was given, an eighteen-pounder, loaded with two bags of grape shot, and directed by Capt. Elias H. Halsey, an expe- rienced naval officer, was opened upon them, and it was supposed that twenty men fell to the ground, killed or wounded by that first discharge. "It cleared," said an eye-witness, "a wide space in their column."" Their line being broken, they divided and scattered ; and now all the fields were covered with scarlet-coated soldiers, with trailed arms, and in every variety of posture, bending, prostrate,
1 Capt. Rufus Avery.
560
HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
dropping, half-up, rushing forward, and still keeping a kind of order, as goaded on by their officers, in the face of a deadly fire, they came up against the south-west bastion, and the south and west sides of the fort. They were met with a steady, quick, obstinate fire ; Col. Eyre, mortally wounded, was borne from the field ; three other officers of the fifty-fourth regiment fell.1 Major Montgomery, in the mean time, came up in solid column, bearing round toward the north with his division, and threw himself into the redoubt, east of the fort, which had been abandoned.2 From thence rushing down with great fury, he effected a lodgment in the ditch, and a second lodgment upon the rampart, or fraising, which was defended by strong inclined pickets, that could with difficulty be forced out or broken, and was so high that the soldiers could not ascend without assisting each other.3 The vigor of the attack, and the firmness of the defense, were both admi- rable. The Americans, having no better method of opposing them, poured down cold shot, nine-pounders, and every variety of missile, that could be seized, upon the heads of the assailants.4 Many a bold man was cut down as he was hoisted up through the pickets, but his place was instantly supplied by another as desperate and determined. The assailants conquered by numbers. Arnold, in his report, notices this obstinate contest :
" Herc the coolness and bravery of the troops were very conspicuous, as the first who ascended the fraise were obliged to silence a nine-pounder which en- filaded the place on which they stood, until a sufficient body had collected to enter the works, which was done with fixed bayonets, through the embrasures, where they were opposed with great obstinacy by the garrison, with long spears. On this occasion I have to regret the loss of Major Montgomery, who was killed 'by a spcar in entering the enemy's works; also of Ensign Whitlock, of the forticth regiment, who was killed in the attack. Three other officers of the same regiment were wounded."
When Major Montgomery fell,5 his followers, with terrific cries, rushed in to avenge him. One after another they poured in through
1 Arnold. 2 Avery. 3 Arnold.
4 Samuel Edgecombe, a stout, lion-hearted man, who survived the battle, stated that they threw down cold shot like a shower of hail, upon the assailants, but it scarcely checked them a moment, so furious was their onset. Joseph Woodmancy, another of the garrison, stood at his post with such cool concentration of purpose that he kept count while he loaded and fired eighteen times.
5 It has been stated that Jordan Freeman, a colored man, was the person who con- fronted and killed Montgomery. Hempstead's account gives the credit to Capt. Shap- ley, but the latter was engaged on the other side of the fort.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
the embrasures, and clearing the path before them, made a desperate attempt to force open the nearest gate. This was not accomplished without a struggle. The first man who attempted it, lost his life in a moment.1 But the garrison was soon overpowered, the gate opened, and the troops from without rushed in, swinging their caps and shout- ing like madmen.
All the accounts of the battle given by Americans who were in the fort, agree, that at this point, the north-east bastion being carried, the enemy within the fort, and the gate forced, Col. Ledyard ordered all resistance to cease, and the garrison to throw down their arms. This was immediately done, but it had no influence in checking the rage of the enemy. They continued to fire from the parapets upon the disarmed men, and to hew down all they met, as they crossed the in- closure, to unbolt the southern gate.
In the mean time the resistance was still continued at the south- west bastion, by a few brave men who knew not what had taken place on the opposite side of the fort. Against these the enemy turned the cannon of the north bastion, and giving them two volleys in quick succession, mowed them down like grass. Capt. Shapley and Lieut. Richard Chapman fell at this point. Those who sur- vived retreated within the fort and threw down their arms.
The resistance being thus continued in one quarter after the actual surrender of the fort, gives some color to the excuse which has been offered in palliation of the excesses of the British, that the garrison obstinately persisted in fighting after the surrender. It is said also, that during the attack, an unlucky shot at the flag-staff brought the colors down, and though the flag was instantly remounted on a pike pole, the enemy regarding it as a token of surrender, rushed unguard- edly to the gates, expecting them to be opened, and were saluted with a heavy fire. This seeming deception, it is alleged, exaspera- ted the troops, and led to the barbarous massacre that followed the reduction of the fort. No allusion to any such mitigating circum- stances is made in the British official accounts of the affair ; nor were they pleaded by them in that day. These excuses seem to be after- thoughts, suggested by the difficulty of accounting for that almost in- sane thirst of blood displayed by the conquerors.
When the south gate was opened, the enemy marched in, firing in platoons upon those who were retreating to the magazine and barrack rooms for safety.2 The officer at the head of this division, supposed
1 Avery.
2 Avery, Hempstead and others.
562
HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
by some to have been Major Bromfield,1 as the superior command had devolved upon him, cried out, as he entered, "Who commands this fort ?" "I did, sir, but you do now," replied Col. Ledyard, rais- ing and lowering his sword, in token of submission, and advancing to present it to him. The ferocious officer received the sword, and plunged it up to the hilt in the owner's bosom ; while his attendants rushing upon the falling hero, dispatched him with their bayonets. Capt. Peter Richards, a young man of noble disposition and gallant bearing, who though severely wounded, was standing by Col. Led- yard, leaning on his espontoon, Capt. Youngs Ledyard, the nepliew of the commander, and several other brave men, enraged at this barbar- ous act, and perceiving that no quarter was to be expected from such savage foes, rushed forward to avenge their murdered friend and sell their lives as dearly as possible. They were all cut down ; some of them were found afterward pierced with twenty or thirty wounds.
There was no block-house to this fort ; the parade was open, and as the British marched in, company after company, they shot or bay- oneted every American they saw standing. Three platoons, each of ten or twelve men, fired in succession, into the magazine, amid the confused mass of living men that had fled thither for shelter, the dying and the dead. This fiend-like sport was terminated by the British commander, as soon as he observed it, not on the plea of hu- manity, but from fear for their own safety, lest the powder deposited in the magazine, or scattered near, might be fired, and they should all be blown up together. An explosion, it was thought, might have taken place even carlier than this, had not the scattered powder and every thing around been saturated with human blood.
In the barrack rooms, and other parts of the fort, the butchery still went on. Those who were killed, seemed to have been killed three or four times over, by the havoc made of them. A few of the garri- son crept under the platforms to conceal themselves, but were ferreted out with bayonets thrust into them ; several had their hands mangled by endeavoring to ward off the steel from their faces or bosoms. Some attempted to leap over the parapets, but were mostly arrested and slain. One man, by the name of Mallison, escaped in this way ; being tall, stout and active, he leaped from the platform over the par- apet, and with another bound cleared the pickets and came down in
1 Major Bromfield, or Bloomfield, as he is generally called by the Americans, was afterward promoted in the East India service.
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563
HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
the ditch, and though half a dozen muskets were discharged at him, he escaped unhurt.
William Seymour, of Hartford, a nephew of Col. Ledyard, who being in Groton at the time, had gone into the fort as a volunteer, received thirteen bayonet wounds, after his knee had been shattered by a ball.1 Ensign Woodmancy was gashed in his arms and hands with strokes of a cutlass, as he lay wounded and partly sheltered by a platform. Lieut. Parke Avery, after having lost an eye, and had his skull broken, and some of the brains shot out, was bayoneted in the side, as he lay faint and bleeding on the ground. What is very surprising, he recovered and lived forty years afterward. Lieut. Ste- phen Hempstead had his left arm and several of his ribs broken, and a severe bayonet wound in his side. It was eleven months before he recovered.
Some of the British officers at length exerted themselves to restrain the excited soldiery, and stop the massacre. The surviving Ameri- cans used to relate that an officer ran from place to place with a drawn sword in his hand, exclaiming with agony in his countenance, " Stop ! stop! in the name of heaven, I say, stop ! my soul can't bear it." Some have supposed this to have been Capt. Beckwith, while others have branded that officer as the murderer of Ledyard.2 It is well, perhaps, that the person who committed that barbarous deed has not been ascertained with certainty. Let him forever remain unknown and unnamed.
Light and darkness are not more opposed to each other than the views taken by the conquerors and the conquered, of the storming of Fort Griswold. Arnold observes:
" After a most obstinate defense of near forty minutes the fort was carried by the superior bravery and perseverance of the assailants."
He says also that eighty-five men were found dead in the fort, and sixty wounded, most of them mortally; intimating by this word found, that they were killed in the attack, and not after the surrender. Sin
1 This is stated in Hempstead's narrative.
2 Capt. Beckwith acted as aid to Lieut .- Col. Eyre, and after the death of the latter, led on his men to a bold charge upon the fort, being one of the first officers that entered the works. He was afterward promoted in the king's service, and was at one time appointed governor of Barbadoes. On his way to this government, he landed in New York, and while there was announced in the public papers as the murderer of Led- yard. Capt. Beckwith indignantly denied the charge, and a relative of Ledyard having opened a correspondence with him, he submitted to him certain documents and proofs that entirely exculpated him from any share in the massacre.
564
HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
Henry Clinton, in his dispatch to England, inclosing Arnold's report, remarks :
" The assault of Fort Griswold, which is represented as a work of very great strength, and the carrying it by coup de main, notwithstanding the very obsti- nate resistance of the garrison, will impress the enemy with every apprehen- sion of the ardor of British troops, and will hereafter be remembered with the greatest honor to the fortieth and fifty-fourth regiments, and their leaders, to whose share the attack fell."
The closing scenes of the tragedy were in keeping with the other acts. The prisoners, the wounded and the dead, were all alike plun- dered by the soldiers, till they were left nearly naked. The wounded lay in the hot sun without water, without medical care, without cov- ering, for two or three hours. The British were busily engaged in taking care of their own dead and wounded, and disposing of the plunder.' Col. Eyre, and all the other wounded men, were carried on board the transports. Major Montgomery was interred in the space fronting the gate, not very far from the spot where he fell. Several other officers were buried near him. About forty of their common soldiery were hastily thrown into pits, several together, and scarcely covered with earth.
Of the garrison, eighty-five, who were entirely dead, were stripped and left in the fort. Those who were regarded as mortally or very dangerously wounded, about thirty-five in number, were paroled, to be left behind ; thirty others, most of them wounded, were marched down to the landing to be carried away as prisoners.2
The last thing to be done by the enemy was to set fire to the mag- azine and blow up the fort. Preparatory to this, the helpless Amer- icans must be removed. Every thing was done in the greatest pos- sible haste-the movements of the enemy show fear and trepidation, as if afraid the hills would fall on them before they could finish their task and get away. The soldiers ran, rather than walked, hundreds
1 William Seymour was the only one of the garrison whose wounds were dressed by a British surgeon. He owed this courtesy to Capt. Beckwith, with whom he had previously some acquaintance, having met him in New York, when sent thither to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Seymour was a son of Col. Thomas Seymour, of Hartford, and uncle of T. H. Seymour, the present governor of Connecticut.
2 Of this number was Capt. Rufus Avery, then orderly sergeant of the garrison, who wrote the narrative to which reference has been made in the foregoing account. Capt. Elijah Bailey was another of the prisoners, and probably the latest survivor of the garrison. He died August 24tl1, 1848, aged ninety, having been for the last forty years of his life, postmaster at Groton.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
of times up and down that steep declivity, removing their wounded, dragging their plunder, driving their prisoners ; and now the heaps of fainting, neglected men, lying upon the ground, are roughly rolled upon boards and tossed into a large ammunition wagon, one upon another, groaning and bleeding, those below nearly stifled with the weight of those above. About twenty soldiers were then employed to drag this wagon down the hill, to a safe distance from the expected explosion. From the brow of the ridge on which the fort stood, to the brink of the river, was a rapid descent of one hundred rods, uninterrupted except by the roughness of the surface, and by scattered rocks, bushes, and stumps of trees. The weight of the wagon after it had begun to move, pressing heavily upon the soldiers, they let go their hold, and darting aside, left it to its own impetus. On it went, with accelerated velocity, surmounting every impediment, till near the foot of the hill, when it came against the trunk of a large apple-tree, with a force that caused it to recoil and sway round. This arrested its course, but gave a sudden access of torture to the sufferers. The violence of the shock is said to have caused instant death to some of them ; others fainted, and two or three were thrown out to the ground.1. The enemy, after a time, gathered up the bleeding men, and carried them into a house near by, belonging to Ensign Avery, who was himself one of the party in the wagon. The house had been previously set on fire, but they extinguished the flames, and left the wounded men there on parole, taking as hostage for them, Eben- ezer Ledyard, brother of the commander of the fort.
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The village of Groton consisted of a single street on the bank of the river. The house of Thomas Mumford was singled out and burnt. The enemy plundered and burnt several other dwelling-houses and shops, leaving but a few buildings of any kind standing. About sun- set they began to embark on both sides of the river; a delay of two hours would probably have changed the evacuation into a flight, for the militia were gathering under their officers, and all the roads to the town were full of men and boys, with every kind of armor, from club and pitchfork to musket and spontoon, hurrying to the onset.
A rear-guard was left at Groton fort, with orders after all had
1 Lieut. Stephen Hempstead, who wrote a brief but interesting narrative of these events, and was himself one of the wounded men in the wagon, says that the shrieks drawn from them by agony, when they rebounded from the tree, were distinctly heard and noticed on the other side of the river, amid all the confusion produced by the sacking and burning of the town.
48
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
decamped, to take the necessary measures to blow up the magazine, burn the barracks, and entirely destroy the works, from which all but the mournful heaps of dead had been removed.
Gen. Arnold's report states :
„, A very considerable magazine of powder, and barracks to contain 300 men, were found in Fort Griswold, which Capt. Lemoine, of the Royal Artille- ry, had my positive directions to destroy ; an attempt was made by him, but unfortunately failed. He had my orders to make a second attempt ; the reasons why it was not done, Capt. Lemoine will have the lionor to explain to your Excellency."
It is supposed to have been late in the evening when Capt. Le- moine and his men, having laid a train of powder from the barracks to the magazine, kindled a fire in the barracks, and retreated to the ships. Without doubt Arnold and his officers gazed intently on the fort, as they slowly sailed down the river, expecting every moment the fatal explosion, and were keenly disappointed at the result. No explosion followed, but the failure was not owing to remissness or want of skill in the royal artillerist.
Under cover of the night, a number of Americans had cautiously approached the fort, even before it was evacuated by the conquerors ; and as soon as the rear-guard of the enemy had retreated down the hill, and the dip of their oars was heard in the water, they hastened to the gate of the fort. Major Peters, of Norwich, is understood to have first reached the spot. Perceiving the barracks on fire and the train laid, without a moment's hesitation he periled life by entering the gate, and being well acquainted with the interior arrangements, rushed to the pump for water to extinguish the fire. Here he found nothing that would hold water but an old cartridge-box ; the spout of the pump likewise had been removed ; but notwithstanding these disadvantages, he succeeded in interrupting the communication be- tween the burning barracks and the powder. The heroism of this act can not be too highly applauded.1 Others were soon on the spot, and the fire was entirely subdued. These adventurous men suppo- sed that the wounded as well as the dead had been left by the enemy
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