The Immortal 400: Mordecai Gist and His Maryland Macaronis

By the time they reached New York in the summer of 1776, they had been designated as the 5th Maryland Infantry. While Gist had been elected as the captain of his unit (a practice not uncommon in colonial militia units), Congress promoted him to the rank of major general in the Continental Army. Because they were well-dressed and well-equipped, the unit earned the sobriquet, “the Dandy 5th,” and when they joined the bulk of General George Washington’s command in New York, they were dubbed “macaronis,” a pejorative term of the period with the same connotation.

After the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, Washington presciently deduced that the next major British attack would be made against New York City. He ordered his nascent army out of its quarters around Boston and moved to defend New York. The commander was right: In July 1776, a massive British assault force appeared on the horizon outside New York Harbor. One Continental post said from his position on Staten Island that “It looked like London all afloat.” The British. encountering little resistance, disembarked on Staten Island and readied to launch their attack on New York City by way of Long Island and Brooklyn to the east of Manhattan.

Upon reaching New York, the 5th Maryland had been assigned to William Smallwood’s Maryland Battalion, which was under the authority of General William Lord Stirling. Overall command of American forces should have fallen on the shoulders of Washington’s most trusted general, Nathanael Greene. But Greene had fallen ill and was incapacitated, so Washington was forced to turn command of his army on Long Island over to General John Sullivan, who lacked Greene’s tactical skills.

Washington’s plan was to form two lines of defense: a primary one on Brooklyn Heights, and another several hundred yards ahead on Gowanus Heights, commanded by Sullivan and Stirling.

The defensive position on Brooklyn Heights was led by General Israel Putnam, the aged and grizzled hero of the French and Indian War and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Washington and Putnam hoped that Stirling and Sullivan’s line on Gowanus Heights would blunt the British advance and that Putnam’s men would hold their line.

As was typical of Washington’s performance early in the war, he failed to reconnoiter his positions and left his flanks unprotected. This would be his army’s undoing at Brooklyn; Loyalists in the area tipped off British commander General Sir Henry Clinton that one of the passes that led to Gowanus and Brooklyn Heights was lightly defended by only five members of the local American militia.

Knowing Washington’s disposition toward this weakness of planning, Clinton conceived a plan to throw a feint at the American forces on Gowanus while the bulk of his army slipped through the weakly held American line at Jamaica Pass on the American left. On the evening of August 26, 1776, Clinton ordered his men to move out. By 5:00 a.m. the next morning, they had achieved tactical surprise on the Americans. In just a few short, stealthy hours, the British force of 20,000 men, including 5,000 Hessians, had almost encircled the forces on Gowanus Heights, including the Marylanders.

The opening assault on the American position held by Stirling and Sullivan on Gowanus was led by General James Grant. Sullivan and Stirling’s men numbered little more than 2,000 troops. The bulk of the American army, nearly 6,000 men, defended Brooklyn Heights.

Vastly outnumbered, Stirling tried to inspire his men by reminding them of their opponent General James Grant’s pompous boast before Parliament’s House of Commons that he could, with 5,000 men, march across the American continent unimpeded. Addressing his men in the moments before the impending attack, Stirling exhorted, “Grant may have 5,000 men now — we are not so many — but I think we are enough to prevent his advancing further on his march over the continent than that mill pond.” With Smallwood detached to court-martial duty, command of all Marylanders fell to Gist.

The feint worked to perfection, as the American commanders erroneously believed that Grant’s movements were the primary attack. Intense fighting on the American left devolved into grim hand-to-hand combat, in which both the bayonet was employed and muskets were swung like clubs. Men on both sides fell in heaps as the Americans put up a stiff resistance, but the British numbers were overwhelming, and by 10:00 a.m., the American left collapsed.

An hour earlier, Washington had arrived on the battlefield to assume overall command, still believing that the attack on their left was the main British assault. Stirling’s forces still held the right and center of the American position, but all of that changed at 11:00 a.m., when the British launched their main assault against Stirling, a classic anvil and hammer maneuver. The American line crumbled as the British slipped in to attack Stirling’s rear.

Horrified, Gist’s men recognized that they, too, had been flanked. Later, Gist recalled, “We soon heard the fire on our left, and in a short time discovered part of our enemy in our rear. Surrounded, and [with] no probability of reinforcements, his Lordship ordered me to retreat with the remaining part of our men, and force our way through our camp.”

The Hessians attacked the American center on Gowanus Heights with pure German military precision. When Clinton’s signal gun belched, the Germans moved out to dislodge the American position. One eyewitness recounted, “[W]ith colors flying, to the music of drums and hautboys as if they were marching across Friedrich’s Platz at Cassel… They did not fire a shot, but pressed steadily forward until they could employ their bayonets.”

Once breaching the American lines, the efficient German butchery began as scores of Sullivan’s men were slaughtered. Stragglers in the woods were hunted down, until they, too, were skewered.

Sullivan ordered a retreat to the American lines on Brooklyn Heights, and while most of his forces made it to the safety of the American position, Sullivan himself was captured.

The only avenue of escape was across a small millpond and Gowanus Creek. Stirling ordered his men, with the exception of the Marylanders, to pull back. Gist, with no more than 270 men, was asked to fight a rearguard action to buy time for the rest of the American army. In an act of bravery, Stirling remained behind to fight with Gist’s men.

Rather than deploy and wait for the enemy to attack, Stirling and Gist ordered their men twice to counterattack the British, whose numbers ran close to 2,000 men. The British formed a line of battle near the Vechte-Cortelyou House (referred to as the Old Stone House), led by Charles Earl Cornwallis. After the second attack, the Marylanders retreated; their numbers significantly depleted. As they withdrew, some of them drowned in the 80-yard-wide creek, and others got stuck in the mud only to be felled by British fire. Rather than be captured by the British, Stirling surrendered to the Hessians.

Two hundred fifty-six Marylanders were killed in the combined assaults. Only 12 managed to safely reach the American position; the rest were captured.

Of the furious melee, Captain Nathaniel Ramsay of Gist’s men recalled, “Our men fought with more than Roman valor.” As the British and their Hessian allies moved in as a pincer to cut them off, Gist recounted, “Surrounded on all sides by at least 20,000 men, we were drove with precipitation and confusion.”

The result was a bloodbath as the Hessians and British Highlanders methodically gave no quarter or mercy. One British officer reported, “The Hessians and our brave Highlanders gave no quarters; and it was a fine fight sight to see with what alacrity they dispatched the rebels with their bayonets, after we had surrounded them so they could not resist.”

Another British soldier claimed that “the Americans fought bravely, and (to do them justice) could not be broken till they were greatly outnumbered and taken in flank, front, and rear.” For some Redcoats, the carnage was inexcusable, with one writing after the fight, “We were greatly shocked at the massacre made by the Hessians and Highlanders after victory was decided.”

In part, the British used cunning guile to destroy the American force. Gist reminisced, “We soon fell in with a party of the enemy, who clubbed their firelocks, and waved their hats to us, as if they meant to surrender as prisoners; but on our advancing within sixty yards, they presented their pieces and fired, which we returned with so much warmth that they soon quitted their post and retired to a large body that was lying in ambuscade.”

Fortunately for Gist and his men, the British overshot the Americans and killed men running in flight. One of Gist’s men reported, “They entirely overshot us and killed some men away behind in our rear. I had the satisfaction of dropping one of them the first fire I made.” As the vortex of battle continued unabated, Gist remained on the field with his men. At one point, it seemed to one of Gist’s men as if they were the only thing standing to keep the flames of the Revolution burning so the army could escape, “Major Gist [and his men] kept the ground, while the rest of the brigade crossed a creek… The major and his party were drove, and I expected never to see them again.” Somehow Gist miraculously survived.

Washington watched the carnage unfold from a nearby knoll and famously mourned, “Good God, what brave fellows I must lose today.”

Sixteen-year-old Connecticut soldier Joseph Plumb Martin recorded in his wartime chronicle that the survivors emerged “out of the water and mud, to us, looking like water rats.”

But Cornwallis offered another, more complimentary analogy: “General Stirling fought like a wolf.”

Despite the carnage and high percentage of casualties, the Marylanders bought precious time for the rest of the American army. To history they became known as the “Immortal 400.” According to 19th-century historian Thomas Field, Gist and his men bought “an hour, more precious to American liberty than any other in history.”

For reasons that remain inexplicable today, the British never pressed their advantage. The Continental Army, badly mauled and bloodied, survived. And on the night of August 28, in requisitioned civilian boats helmed by another remarkable regiment, John Glover’s Marblehead Men, they slipped across the Hudson Riber.

For Gist and his Marylanders, it had been one hell of a baptism by fire. But their work was not done, and they distinguished themselves on many of the war’s most famous battlefields — Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth.

Appointed by Congress to the rank of brigadier general in January 1779, Gist was given command of the 2nd Maryland Brigade, which was soon ordered to the Southern Campaigns. At the Battle of Camden, he once again narrowly escaped death in a grim American defeat. By 1781, the Marylanders had fought through the Carolinas, shadowing Cornwallis and his army all the way to Yorktown. That October, Gist stood among the ranks of the American officers to accept the British surrender.

Rather than returning home to Maryland, Mordecai Gist remained in the Carolinas after the war, settling on a plantation outside Charleston, where he raised two sons whom he named Independent and States. He joined the Society of the Cincinnati, serving as first vice president of the Maryland chapter.