General Henry Clinton: the scapegoat
By Peg Eastman
Did Sir Henry Clinton deserve the blame the British placed on him for the humiliating loss of the American colonies?
Henry Clinton was born in 1730 in Newfoundland, son of Admiral George Clinton, the colonial governor of Newfoundland, 1731, and New York, 1741-1753. His father was descended from the Earls of Lincoln and related by marriage to the dukes of Newcastle.
Young Clinton joined the New York militia at 15. He went to London in 1749 and was commissioned in a prestigious foot guard regiment in 1751. In the Seven Years’ War, he saw combat in Germany and as aide-de-camp to the duke of Brunswick (brother-in-law of George III) from 1760 to 1762. By 1772, Clinton had been promoted to major general and had obtained a seat in Parliament.
In 1775, Clinton and Major Generals William Howe and John Burgoyne, accompanied by reinforcements, were deployed to support General Thomas Gage in Boston, which had been occupied by British troops since the infamous “tea party.”
En route, they learned that war had broken out and George Washington had put Boston under siege. The British reinforcements arrived just in time to take part in the Battle of Breed’s Hill, popularly known today as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Clinton had advised against a daylight frontal assault. Ignoring his suggestion turned out disastrously for the British. Although a victory, British losses totaled 1,054 casualties, including 89 officers — the highest casualty count of the British in any single encounter during the American Revolution. (About 450 Americans were killed, wounded or captured.) Clinton wrote of the battle: “A dear bought victory; another such would have ruined us.”
To counter the siege, Clinton advocated fortifying Dorchester Heights, which overlooked Boston, and plans were laid to occupy it on June 18. However, the Continental Army learned of the plan and fortified it the night before with armaments Henry Knox’s forces hauled from Fort Ticonderoga. Arming Dorchester Heights gave Washington’s army an advantage over ships entering the harbor, and this vulnerability caused the British to retreat to Nova Scotia.
By late 1776, despite his military acumen, General Howe resented Clinton’s interference, and their relationship deteriorated. Clinton returned to England to resign his commission, but King George III considered him too valuable and offered him knighthood if he returned. Clinton agreed, but when he returned to New York in July 1777, little had changed, and the two men continued to strategically disagree.
The British New York campaign was to divide New England from the middle and southern colonies. General Burgoyne led an army southward from Quebec, Canada, with the goal of taking Albany. Clinton had favored marching up the Hudson River to support Burgoyne. Instead, Howe marched to Philadelphia and Clinton led a smaller force up the Hudson, but his command could not get there in time to relieve Burgoyne at Saratoga. Surrounded, Burgoyne was forced to surrender an entire British Army to the Americans. This decisive victory convinced France to become an American ally. General Howe was relieved, and Clinton became the British commander-in-chief of North America in 1778.
Clinton’s first act was to turn his attention to the southern colonies where it was hoped loyalist sympathies ran strongest. Although his first campaign in South Carolina at Fort Sullivan had been a fiasco that he had blamed on Commodore Peter Parker, things were different in 1780. Clinton personally led 8,700 troops to initiate the siege of Charles Town. The city’s surrender was a major British victory. They took more than 3,300 Continental and militia troops prisoner (including seven generals), the worst Continental Army defeat of the war.
It was so bad that Washington wrote Clinton, condemning the British troops’ behavior, “I wish I could agree in opinion with you on the spirit which actuates your Officers in Southern command ... They not only profess a flagrant breach of the capitulation of Charles Town and a violation of the laws of nations; but under whatever forced description the unhappy objects of the severity are placed, it is in a form and carried to an extreme at which humanity revolts.”
Initially, pacification efforts seemed to work in S.C., but Clinton’s over-confidence led to a final proclamation on June 3 requiring those seeking protection as loyal subjects to take up arms in support of Britain. This proclamation led to armed insurrection. Clinton left the Backcountry in revolt and ordered General Cornwallis to subdue the state.
Back in New York, Clinton was reluctant to dispatch additional troops to Cornwallis, for he had lost 10,000 plus troops to other British conflicts, and he feared both being harassed by French naval forces off the coast and being attacked by Washington. Apparently, his untenable situation caused him to fall into a mental decline, which was evident in his failure to take action during the fighting season. Meanwhile, communications between Clinton and Cornwallis continued to break down, which finally resulted in the British catastrophe at Yorktown.
Clinton resigned his command in 1781 and returned to England, where he found Cornwallis viewed with sympathy and himself blamed for the Yorktown defeat. In 1783, Clinton published a Narrative of the Campaign of 1781 in North America in which he attempted to lay blame for the 1781 campaign failures on General Cornwallis. This was met with an angry public response by Cornwallis, who leveled his own criticisms at Clinton.
Yorktown had other consequences. George III was so upset that Parliament did not wish to continue the war that he decided to abdicate and was dissuaded only through the intervention of Lord North. Parliament had lost interest in the eight-year war and wished to move on. The secretary of state for the American colonies, Lord Germain, was sacked; Lord North’s administration fell; and the country hoped that the defeat would be quickly forgotten.
On the plus side, the 13 American colonies won their independence and created a revolutionary new government with a constitution with checks and balances that limited the abuses of absolute power. This form of government has become a beacon of light to the world. People from many nations have flocked to America for its opportunities — something colloquially known as “the American dream.”
May we continue to honor the nation’s 250th anniversary and those who created the precious freedoms we enjoy today.
My appreciation to Bob Stockton for contributing to this article.
