General George Washington’s Original Orders to General James Clinton Assigning Him to Help Lead the Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois

The expedition broke the Iroquois Confederacy’s organized power, and proved to all involved that the British were incapable of effectively supplying the Iroquois;

 

A very rare order of Washington to a named general;

 

The 1779 Sullivan Campaign was designed to break the Iroquois Confederation, a Native American political and military alliance, and did so, effectively changing history.

Most Native American tribes were allies of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, and through much of the war they, with Loyalist support, were effective in keeping the American frontiers in a state of fear and anxiety. The Iroquois Confederacy, which during the war comprised the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes, had a homeland that stretched from upstate New York in the north to northern Pennsylvania in the south. Together with Loyalists forces, the Iroquois ravaged the Pennsylvania and New York frontiers, wrecking havoc and decimating several American settlements.

The bloodiest of these attacks occurred in 1778 in the northeastern Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley and the Cherry Valley of New York. In July 1778 the Indians and Loyalists were involved in the massacre at Wyoming, and a month later burned homes and destroyed fields in the Mohawk Valley. In November at Cherry Valley, Indians massacred civilians in the village, killing and scalping 16 soldiers and 32 civilians, mostly women and children, and taking 80 captive, half of whom were never returned. The town was plundered and destroyed. Up to this point defense of the frontier was mainly left to state militias, but these incidents brought matters to a fever pitch, and people were so aroused that the Continental Congress felt called upon to take action. On February 27, 1779, it passed a resolution directing General George Washington to take effective measures to protect the frontier.

Washington developed a strategic plan at his Middlebrook, New Jersey headquarters, for the coming campaign season. Although much of the military activity had shifted to the southern colonies, Washington’s army sat in a virtual stalemate with a British army entrenched within New York City. Washington gambled that a quick strike into the Iroquois’ central New York homelands could eliminate a key British ally without significantly weakening his forces outside New York. He sought an experienced officer to lead the venture, and the command fell to New Hampshire’s Major General John Sullivan. Sullivan’s expedition would prove to be the only major campaign of 1779 in the north.

Washington’s orders to Sullivan made it clear that he wanted the Iroquois threat completely eliminated: “The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more…The country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” Washington also hoped to use the opportunity to launch a substantial offensive towards Fort Niagara, the Loyalist headquarters. So after accomplishing his work destroying the Iroquois, Sullivan would move forward and capture Niagara “if possible”.

It would be a difficult task to equip a force and traverse an almost unknown, and altogether unmapped, wilderness which was almost wholly without roads, in the face of an active and vigilant as well as relentless enemy. So Washington determined to assign a sizable force to the task. Sullivan’s command would include four brigades, totaling about 4500 men. Specifically, he was given General Enoch Poor’s Brigade consisting of three New Hampshire and one Massachusetts’s regiment, who Sullivan boasted “are all marksmen & accustomed to the Indian mode of fighting;” General William Maxwell’s New Jersey Brigade; General Edward Hand’s Brigade of mostly Pennsylvania troops; a company of Virginia riflemen; two independent artillery units; and General James Clinton’s Brigade of four New York regiments.

The plan was for Sullivan to gather most of his forces near Easton, Pennsylvania and advance up the Susquehanna River Valley. Clinton would gather three of his regiments – those commanded by Colonels Peter Gansevoort and Lewis DuBois, and one formerly commanded by Colonel Peter R. Livingston – along with a Pennsylvania regiment commanded by Colonel William Butler, and a Massachusetts regiment formerly commanded by Ichabod Alden. His command would then, simultaneously with Sullivan’s advance, sweep westward from the Mohawk River Valley and down the upper Susquehanna to link up with the main force at Tioga. From there, the combined force would travel into the Iroquois country and destroy everything in its path. Sullivan’s cohorts reached Easton in early May 1779. On May 12, the units Washington intended to be placed under Clinton’s command gathered at Canajoharie on the Mohawk River.

The pieces were now in place; and Sullivan had his orders. All that remained now for Washington to execute his plan was to give Clinton his orders. He did so.

Letter signed, Head Quarters, Middle Brook (NJ), May 24, 1779, to General Clinton, formally placing Clinton under Sullivan’s command, and assigning to Clinton the units at Canajoharie. “Sir: You will be pleased to consider yourself under the command of Major General Sullivan and to follow such Orders as you may receive from him, respecting the conduct and operations of the Troops under your command.” He adds a P. S., writing “The Corps which you are to consider as under your command, when ordered to march by General Sullivan, are Gansevoort’s, Dubois’s, late Livingstons, Aldens, Butlers and the Rifle Corps.” The text of the letter is in the hand of Robert Hanson Harrison, Washington’s military secretary and de facto chief of staff.

Military orders of Washington to named generals are great rarities.

Clinton’s men left the Mohawk Valley on June 17 and began marching down the Susquehanna River on August 9. They met up with Sullivan at Tioga on August 22, and four days later set out on their mission. It was all over by the end of September. The homelands and infrastructure of Iroquois life were devastated by the expedition, with many villages destroyed and crops burned. There was widespread famine and dispersion of the Iroquois people.

Washington was disappointed by the lack of a decisive battle and the failure to capture Fort Niagara. Moreover, the Iroquois would have their revenge, as the following year groups of their warriors descended on numerous towns along the frontier, including Cherry Valley, which they hit a second time. In these raids they destroyed an estimated 1,000 homes, 1,000 barns and 600,000 bushels of grain. Some attacks would continue nearly to war’s end. For these reasons some label the Sullivan expedition a failure.

However, that was not so. The expedition war broke the Iroquois Confederacy’s organized power, and showed that they could not defend their own villages or food supplies. The Confederacy’s belief in itself as a separate entity was dispelled. Just as importantly, it proved to all involved that the British were incapable of effectively supplying the Iroquois when they were in need. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolution, the British essentially abandoned their Iroquois allies as impractical ones. The next year, in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the discouraged Iroquois ceded much of their lands to the United States.