RHODE ISLAND, August, 1778.
Sketched from a colored plan among the Sparks maps at Cornell University, which follows a plan made for Lafayette. It is called Plan de Rhode Island avec les différentes opérations de la flotte Française, et des troupes Américaines, commandées par le Major Général Sullivan, contre les forces de terre et de mer des Anglais, depuis le 9 Août, jusqu'à la nuit du 30 au 31 du même mois, 1778, que les Américains ont fait leur Retraite.
Key: The British works are solid black, their troops diagonally black and white; the American works of open lines, and their troops shaded obliquely. The British in Newport were protected on the water side by batteries (3, 3, 3); on the land side by an inner line of defence (4) and an outer line (5, 6, 7, 8), with nine guns (8) commanding the water approach by Easton Pond. At the north end of the island they had works (16, 18, 20,—solid black) to resist attack from the mainland. Upon the entrance of the French fleet by the Newport batteries, the English evacuated these advanced posts, and some frigates were sent into the East passage (15) to protect the movements of the Americans, who, moving over to the island, threw up redoubts (17) to protect their first position, and erected a battery of two guns at 20 to cover their retreat across Howland's Ferry, should that become necessary. They now advanced, and on August 15th took position on the line 11, and began their approaches (9). The French had landed from the ships at 22, and joined the left wing under Lafayette. The redoubts on the extreme left and right of the line 11 were never completed. The fire from the parallels was kept up from the 19th to the evening of the 28th, when the retreat began, and the Americans in the night of the 28th, erected the breastworks (19, 19) flanking the abandoned British forts (18), and during the night of the 30th left the island by Howland's Ferry, while the British were at Turkey Hill (16). The position of the British fleet was at 1.
Sparks has added to the plan these references: 12, Overing's house, where Col. Barton captured Gen. Prescott; 13, guard-house; 14, round redoubt thrown up by the New Hampshire militia,—skirmishing commenced here under Col. Laurens; and 10, Bishop Berkeley's house. The broken lines are roads.
The most elaborate of the manuscript contemporary maps is one belonging to the Mass. Hist. Society, which is reproduced, full size, in the Proceedings of that society (vol. xx. p. 350), and is given in its essential parts in Gen. G. W. Cullum's Historical Sketch of the Fortification Defences of Narragansett Bay (Washington, 1884). It is on a scale of nearly an inch and a quarter to the mile, and is signed "J. Denison scripsit." The French fleet is represented as going out to join battle with Lord Howe's fleet, exchanging shots with the English shore batteries, which are more numerous than in the Lafayette map. The French ships in the East passage are shown as sailing out to sea, to join D'Estaing on his way to Boston. In the battle of the 29th, near Butt's Hill, English ships are drawn as engaging both the American right and a battery on the Bristol shore. The first line of the Americans stretches across the island in this order from west to east,—Livingston, Varnum, Cornell, Greene, Glover, Tyler. These are without the breastworks. Behind them are Lovell at the west, Titcomb between the abandoned British forts, with a reserve under West behind them.
There are general surveys in Carrington and Dawson; in Mag. of Amer. Hist., by J. A. Stevens, July, 1879; in Stone's Our French Allies (Providence, 1884), part iii. On the British side see the contemporary account in Gent. Mag., xlix. 101; the Tory account in Jones, N. Y. during the Rev., ii. ch. 12; the German in Ewald, Belehrungen, ii. 249; Eelking's Hülfstruppen, i. 105; ii. 14, 30; epitomized in Lowell's Hessians, 215, 220. Cf. J. G. Rosengarten on the German soldiers in Newport, in R. I. Hist. Mag., vii. 81. Silas Talbot, a Rhode Islander, who had gained credit in the land service, and had managed some fire-ships against the British fleet in New York, captured a floating battery of the enemy near Newport, and made his subsequent record on the water as an officer of the navy. Henry T. Tuckerman wrote the Life of Silas Talbot, which had been intended for Sparks's Amer. Biography, but was published separately in N. Y. in 1850. Cf. Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 849.
The next morning Clinton's reinforcements appeared, brought by Howe's fleet. They were not needed; and so, while Gen. Grey made some raids, with transports and light craft, upon Fairhaven and other ports, whose privateers had annoyed the British (cf. Harper's Monthly Mag., 1885, p. 823; and statement of losses in Sparks MSS., lii. vol. ii. 29), Clinton took his troops back to New York, and Howe went round Cape Cod and cruised off Boston harbor, trying in vain to allure D'Estaing to battle. The French commander remained in port till November. As the time for his sailing approached, another English fleet, under Admiral Byron, appeared off the harbor; but a storm scattering his ships, the French, on the 3d of November, left the port unmolested, and sailed for the West Indies.
D'Estaing, while in Boston, addressed a letter to Congress (Sparks MSS., lii. vol. iii.), and promulgated a proclamation (Oct. 28th) to former French subjects in Canada, seeking to detach them from English interests (Andrews's Late War, iii. 171; Niles's Principles, 1876 ed., p. 136, Doc. rel. to Col. Hist., N. Y., x. 1165).
The reports which reached Boston relative to the campaign under Sullivan, and the impressions respecting the French, are given in Ezekiel Price's diary (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1865, p. 334). Hancock, who had been in command of the Massachusetts militia during the campaign, returned to Boston to do what he could by his hospitality to prevent the general indifference of the Boston people producing evil effects on the French (Memorial Hist. Boston, iii. 185; Loring's Hundred Boston Orators, 102; Adams's Familiar Letters, 342; Greene's Greene, ii. 143). On the unfortunate riot (Sept. 17, 1778) in the town, in which the French were roughly handled, see Mag. of Amer. Hist., viii. 785, 856, xv. 95. Considerable apprehension was felt lest the British, elated by success, should push towards Boston from Rhode Island, and beacons were got in readiness (Sept. 7th) on Blue Hill in Milton. A regiment of artillery had been raised for the defence of the town, and an orderly-book covering its service, June 8, 1777, to Dec. 18, 1778, is given in the Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., xiii. 115, 237; xiv. 60, 110, 188. Heath (cf. his Memoirs for this period), at a time when the French were making ready to sail, wrote from Boston, Oct. 22, 1778, to Weare, of New Hampshire, that he feared the British were planning an attack by water (Letters and Papers, MSS., 1777-1780, in Mass. Hist. Soc. cabinet).
IV. The Penobscot Expedition, 1779.—This expedition was fitted out in Boston by the Massachusetts authorities, with some assistance from New Hampshire, for the purpose of dislodging a British force, which in June, under General McNeill, supported by a few vessels under Captain Mowatt, had taken possession of the peninsula now called Castine. The treasury of Massachusetts issued bills to cover the cost (Goodell's Province Laws, v. 1191).