NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE

TRENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The Savior of the States 1777-1781

/

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/georgewashington0003hugh

George Washington Painted by C. W. Peale

(By permission of ex-Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen)

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Washington

The S avior of the States

1777-1781

RUPERT

HUGHES

1930

^|U]^

William Morrow & Company

COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY

Rupert Hughes

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY QUINN ft BODEN COMPANY, INC.

RAHWAY. N. J.

“A man never mounts so high as when he does not know where he is going.”

Oliver Cromwell, to the French minister, M. Bellievre, 1647.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER (PAGE

I The Dawn of ’77 . 1

II The Second Battle of Trenton ... 14

III The “Old Fox” in the Trap .... 22

IV The Two Battles of Princeton . . . 31

V Laurels Rain . 44

VI He Discovers Morristown . . . . 50

VII The Penalty for Treason . . . . 57

VIII He Confounds the Tories .... 62

IX Another Try for an Army . . . .67

X The “Business” of Desertion . . . . 81

XI The Problem of Officers . . . . 88

XII Juggling the Prisoners . 98

XIII His Family . 109

XIV The Campaign Opens . 116

XV Howe Plays Hide-and-Seek . . . .126

XVI Lafayette Appears and Howe Reappears . 143

XVII The Battle of the Brandywine . . .156

XVIII He Tries to Save Philadelphia . . . 179

XIX The Battle of Germantown .... 187

XX The Doldrums . 209

XXI His Rival Triumphs . 215

XXII The Conway Cabal . 235

XXIII Idolaters and Iconoclasts . . . .250

XXIV Valley Forge . 261

XXV Did He Pray at Valley Forge? . . .270

XXVI Holding the Army Together .... 299

XXVII Clashes with Congress . 312

vii

viii CHAPTER XXVIII	CONTENTS The Brighter Side of Valley Forge		PACE 324
XXIX	The Recovery of Philadelphia		338
XXX	The Battle of Monmouth		357
XXXI	The Elimination of Lee and Others .		382
XXXII	On the Crest of the Wave .		407
XXXIII	The French Come and Go		412
XXXIV	The Collapse of 1778 .		428
XXXV	The War with Money ....		439
XXXVI	Dissipation and Idleness ....		457
XXXVII	Ineffective Gestures ....		470
XXXVIII	The Wars Within the War .		477
XXXIX	Starvation and Stagnation at Morristown	495
XL	Lafayette as Ambassador		5°5
XLI	The French Stalemate . . . .		518
XLII	Exit Arnold ......		536
XLIII	Exit Andre ......		CO WO WO
XLIV	The Demise of 1780 . . . .		Cn CO 0
XLV	Mutiny .		590
XLVI	Hamilton and His Mother Humiliate	Him	598
XLVII	He Offends the French . . . .		613
XL VIII	He Is Forced to go South		638
XLIX	Yorktown .		656
	Afterword .		688
	Appendix I. Notes and References		697
	Appendix II. Who Suggested the St at Princeton? . . . . .	roke	773
	Appendix III. A Word for Howe .		777
	Appendix IV. The Pacifists and Rev. Duche .	Mr.	784
	Appendix V. The Spurious Letters		791
	Books Consulted and Quoted .		796
	Index ........		811

ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of George Washington by C. W. Peale Frontispiece

(By courtesy of ex-Senator Joseph S. Frelinghuysen. For descrip¬ tion see the Afterword.)

PAGE

The Battles of Trenton and Princeton . . . . 15

(From James Wilkinson’s Memoirs)

Washington at Princeton . 22

(From the portrait by Trumbull)

The Marquis de la Fayette . 144

(From the painting- by Alonzo Chappell)

The Battle of the Brandywine . . . , . .157

(From Sparks’ Life of Washington)

The Battle of Germantown . . 191

(From Johnson’s Life of Greene)

Contemporary Portraits of Washington and Gates . 219

(From Bickerstaff’ s Boston Almanac , 1778)

Major-General Horatio Gates . 224

(From the painting by Gilbert Stuart)

Major-General Benedict Arnold . 224

(From the etching by H. R. Hall)

Washington’s Circular Letter to the Governors . . 290

(From this “Washington’s Prayer” was devised)

Foreign Volunteers in the American Service . . . 342

(From B. J. Lossing’s Life of W ashington)

The Battle of Monmouth . 366

(Clinton’s own map, by permission of William L. Clements)

Waschington des Landes Vater . . . .431

(Perhaps the first ascription of the title “Father of his Country.”

From a German Almanac, Lancaster, Pa., 1779.)

Chart Showing the Steady Decline of American Forces 434

ix

X ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Chart Showing the Steady Increase of British Troops 435

Chart Showing the Steady Decline of American

Expenditure .	- 435
The Tune, “A Successful Campaign”	620
French Officers .	. - 638
(From B. J. Lossing’s Life of Washington)
The Siege of Yorktown .....	. . 665

(From Sparks’ Life of Washington )

GEORGE WASHINGTON

The Savior of the States

I

THE DAWN OF ’77

THE year 1776 is over. I am heartily glad of it, and hope you nor America will ever be plagued with such another.” 1

So Robert Morris wrote to Washington on January first, 1777, and his letter shows how different, to the eyes of the time, that year was from what it is in retrospect. In Amer¬ ican ears it has an epic sound, and the people who ennobled it are revered as demigods. But it was a year of plague to those who had just lived through it and who looked forward to its successor with little hope of improvement.

It had begun brightly with Washington’s announcing on New Year’s day the realization of his lifelong dream, a regu¬ lar army, the Continentals. With this and the militia he was keeping the whole British force locked up in Boston. But by January 14th only half of his army was recruited and the militia began to disband. He had to call them out again to take possession of the town when the British evacuated it March 17th, 1776.

From that moment he watched his power and his prestige decay. He marched to New York and found it such a nest of Tories that late in June one of his own bodyguard joined a plot to assassinate him and seize the city.

Having declared that Canada was necessary to the success of the Union and having sent thither troops that he could ill spare from his own poor ranks, he received nothing but re¬ ports of wholesale desertion, smallpox and disaster ending in defeat on defeat and, in June, the flight of “the last man to leave Canada,” Benedict Arnold.

The only good news fell to other officers: the repulse of a

(For all footnote references, see Appendix I, pp. 689-772.)

I

2

GEORGE WASHINGTON

British attack on Charleston, South Carolina, by troops under the nominal command of General Charles Lee. The Declara¬ tion of Independence was hardly passed on July 2nd (not 4th) when a British armada took possession of New York harbor with Lord Howe’s fleet, bringing 10,000 Hessians on trans¬ ports, Sir William Howe’s army and fleet from Halifax, and Sir Henry Clinton’s expedition returning from South Carolina — 32,000 soldiers in all, besides 10,000 seamen, and many big guns.

Against these Washington had about eighteen thousand soldiers, mainly militia. On the very day set apart by Con¬ gress for fasting and prayer, he saw his men slaughtered and captured and pursued in the disgraceful Battle of Long Island.

He withdrew the remnants to New York, lingered there overlong, and witnessed, on a September Sabbath, one of the most shameful panics in history, a stampede so frantic that he rode into the mob and whipped with his cane men and officers, including a brigadier general j then he longed to die and would have let the Hessians take or kill him if an aide had not dragged him away.

At White Plains, in fifteen minutes one October morning Howe chased his men off a hill and pushed him back into the high ground, then turned and in a few hours of a November day captured Fort Washington in a whirlwind assault with 3,000 men, 12,000 shell, 400,000 cartridges and other precious munitions. Washington himself escaped in a rowboat only a quarter of an hour before the fort was surrounded. A few days later Howe crossed the river and descended on him so un¬ expectedly that he could not finish a letter he was writing to Congress, and the garrison at Fort Lee barely escaped capture by leaving its tents standing and its provisions and artillery for the British. Washington’s army melted away as he fled across New Jersey, and he got over the Delaware with only three thousand men. In natural contempt for troops that Washington himself called “sheep,” the British scattered a few outposts through New Jersey, and devoted themselves to recre-

THE DAWN OF ’77 3

ation and the taking of oaths of allegiance from thousands of repentant rebels.

Congress had fled from the very menace of Howe’s approach and abandoned Philadelphia, after voting Washington dicta¬ torial powers over an army most of which would go home Janu¬ ary first on account of the expiration of enlistments. General Charles Lee was captured by the British and there was nobody else of importance to supplant Washington, who resigned him¬ self to a further flight across Pennsylvania and prepared for an outlaw existence in the back mountains and the wilderness be¬ yond. His few troops were so naked in the cold that he was glad to accept old clothes gathered for them by a few charitable people in Philadelphia.

Wondering why he was not pursued, he noted that the out¬ post at Trenton was made up of about a thousand Hessians, under a commander who had promised to capture Washington as soon as the river froze over, but neglected to throw up even an earthen breastwork for his own defence.

Then the impetuous, headstrong, fearlessly rash Virginian (who had been called “Fabius” because that was the only polite name to give one who was forever on the retreat) succeeded at last in persuading his officers to make an attack. On the night of December 26th, 1776, he attempted to push three bodies of troops across the Delaware, to arrive simultaneously at dawn and crush the outpost. Two of the bodies could not make it, and the one he led himself was so delayed that it did not reach Trenton until eight o’clock. Fortunately for him, the Hes¬ sian patrols just missed discovering his army and the Hessian commander was asleep in a drunken stupor. The attack was a dazzling success and only a few of the Hessians escaped.

To Washington, the victory had none of the immortal splendor it later acquired. It was the desperate lashing out of a beaten fighter, who would die fighting. He wanted to push on, but New Jersey was a frozen waste, across whose snows he could foresee a rush of British troops, to gobble up his own army before it dissolved. He had nothing to do but turn back

4 GEORGE WASHINGTON

across the river with his booty and his captives, less in a mood of triumph than of sardonic frenzy at the thought of what he might have achieved if his people had but done their duty.

So the year 1776 ended for him as a twelvemonth of almost unrelieved heartbreaks, for which he could blame only his fel¬ low citizens.

John Adams, who had, so to speak, invented Washington, by forcing his nomination to the post of Commander-in-Chief, was as bitter as he about the maddening poltroonery of the people. To John Adams the glorious forefathers of ’76 were effeminate, luxurious, and corrupt! He bewailed “the gloomy cowardice of the times” and uttered this apostrophe:

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present gen¬ eration to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent it in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” 2

Adams knew all too well that only a minute portion of his fellow citizens did any public service, and he expressed to his wife a dismal hope that defeat might “cure Americans of their vicious, and luxurious, and effeminate appetites, passions, and habits, a more dangerous army to American liberty than Mr. Howe’s.” 3

The creative genius of John Adams has been far too well forgotten and a recent biographer has thrown into the scales a valuable counterweight, calling him, not altogether whimsi¬ cally, “the man who never died,” and piling up striking argu¬ ments for the claim that “if anyone is to be called ‘The Father of His Country,’ and ‘The Founder of the Republic’ it is he.” 4

Even if those names belong to Washington irretrievably, still Adams has a share in them, for, as he wrote later:

“We owe no thanks to Virginia for Washington. Virginia is indebted to Massachusetts for Washington, not Massachusetts to Vir¬ ginia. Massachusetts made him a general against the inclination of Virginia. Virginia never made him more than a colonel ... I was subjected to almost as bitter exprobrations for creating Washington commander-in-chief, as I had been, five years before, for saving Pres-

THE DAWN OF ’77 5

ton and his soldiers [the British participants in the Boston ‘Massacre’] from an unrighteous judgment and execution.” 5

A few hard-working statesmen, a few hard-fighting soldiers did all the work, suffered all the peril, all the malice of con¬ ditions. But in the hearts of posterity they now divide the glory and the reverence with the indifferent, the cowardly, the treacherous and selfish multitude whom they hated almost more than the open enemy. Lieutenant-Colonel Ebenezer Huntington, once, after forty-eight hours of lying out in the rain, hungry, ragged and filthy, and long unpaid, contrasted his lot with the comfort of the stay-at-homes who were in general prosperous and cheerful, but would neither fight nor be taxed:

“I despise my Countrymen, I wish I could say I was not born in America . . . My Cowardly Countrymen . . . hold their Purse Strings as tho’ they would Damn the World, rather than part with a Dollar to their Army.” 6

Washington knew that if the Americans had risen as a nation, raised and supported the army of which it was capable, and had done the few wise, brave things he asked, he could have freed them almost immediately from the invader. Per¬ haps that is why he revealed no word of elation or of pride in his new power as dictator. First he had no desire for the honor and had entered into no deal, no conspiracy, to gain it. He was such a reluctant ruler as Plato spoke of when he said: “No man governs well who wants to govern.” 7 In acknowl¬ edging the power imposed upon him by Congress he wrote with his usual modesty that he might fail, but added:

“I trust the failure will be imputed to the true cause, the peculiarly distressed condition of our affairs, and the difficulties I have to com¬ bat, rather than to a want of zeal for my country, and the closest attention to her interest, to promote which has ever been my study.” 8

To the Congressional committee of three that brought the word of his new honors and powers from Congress he was in¬ spired to express himself with a classic purity of diction as of thought:

6

GEORGE WASHINGTON

“They have done me the honor to entrust me with powers, in my military Capacity, of the highest nature and almost unlimited in extent. Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations, by this mark of their confidence, I shall constantly bear in mind, that as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside, when those liberties are firmly established.” 9

Sometimes, in the bitterness of his trials, he must have felt that he was not so much the foremost citizen of a great people as what a fellow-countryman of Tory convictions called him: “the first simpleton of consequence.”

“The Congress . . . find themselves in a slippery situation, and are glad to throw their burden upon the first simpleton of consequence that would take it. Washington has now no mean character to sup¬ port. He must be the first or last of men, who would accept power upon such terms. But as the Congress are desperate, so is this gentle¬ man.” 10

Ragged soldiers shivering in the sleet need the blur of years to look their best. Posterity finds them both majestic and piteous. But to their contemporaries they were a pack of snivelling vagabonds in the snow and little more. The English ridiculed them and despised them, and Captain Smythe of the Royal Army set it down in his diary that even Wash¬ ington could hardly keep his breeches on:

“A deserter . . . says that the Congress troops are suffering ex¬ tremely for food and rum; that there is not a whole pair of breeches in the army, and that the last news from Mr. Washington’s camp was, that he had to tie his up with strings, having parted with the buttons to buy the necessaries of life.” 11

Washington found most of his men poor in spirit and in flesh and as frayed in patriotism as in breeches. It was this infinitely confirmed opinion that gave him pause when he had his first sip of victory and looked on the first real array of prisoners he had ever beheld. For he had begun his military career by surrendering his command of three hundred to the French at Fort Necessity on July 4th, 1754- a year later he had barely

THE DAWN OF ’77 7

escaped death or capture with Braddockj he had seen only- hardship, humiliation and the taking of a deserted fort with Forbes in 1758. And that was all the military service he had ever known, except some Indian fighting, until in July, 1775, he took command at Boston. He made no prisoners worth mentioning there in the nearly nine months of siege, and in the subsequent battles it was nearly always Washington’s men who were captured, often in droves.

But now, after the battle of Trenton, in his forty-fifth year, he could feast his eyes on his first prisoners: 868 wretched Hessians in thin and ragged uniforms surrounded by twenty- five hundred of his own ragamuffins. That little gulp of glory must have stirred him deeply and created an appetite for more. He sent his Hessian prisoners on to Philadelphia, whence most of the Whigs had fled and where the Tories were already preparing to seize the town in expectation of Howe’s presence.

The confounding of these Tories by the victory at Trenton was an act of heaven, and Washington its direct agent, accord¬ ing to the Reverend Wheeler Case, a Presbyterian minister. This was strange, too, for John Calvin had written with all the horrible chastity of his logic that magistrates and monarchs were selected by God and must be obeyed:

“Those who rule in an unjust and tyrannical manner are raised up by him to punish the iniquity of the people; they all equally possess that sacred majesty with which he has invested legitimate authority. If we have this constantly present to our eyes and impressed upon our hearts, that the most iniquitous kings are placed on their thrones by the same decree by which the authority of all kings is established, these seditious thoughts will never enter our minds.”

According to Calvin, Washington was a rebel against heaven. The Episcopalian clergy and John Wesley the Methodist said much the same thing. But all religions have always adapted themselves to all wars, and this Presbyterian preacher lauded the Episcopalian Washington for defying the anointed King and turning the sacrilege into a sacrament:

8

GEORGE WASHINGTON

“When these affairs are view’d and duly scann’d,

He’s blind that does not see Jehovah’s hand.

See Washington thro’ Jersey State retreat,

His foes rejoice — they thought that he was beat . . .

A storm of snow and hail the Lord sent down,

A blessed season this for Washington:

He now return’d, and thro’ the storm he press’d,

And caught twelve hundred Hessians in their nest.” 12

The Hessians found Washington “a good rebel” and were astounded when he did no more harm to them than to take away and restore to the owners the loot they had been so as¬ siduously compiling. They suffered horribly in their pas¬ sage across the Delaware — Lieutenant Wiederholdt stated that he had to wade seventy paces through water breast-deep and break through the ice to get to shore.18

Washington invited several of the officers to dinner and Lieutenant Wiederholdt describes him graphically:

“General Washington is a courtly and elegant man, but seems to be very polite ( folie ) and reserved, speaks little, and has a sly expres¬ sion ( listige Physio gnomie ). He is not very tall yet also not short, but of medium height, and of a good figure and has some resemblance in the face to Captain von Bieserod of the Knyphausen Regiment.” 14

It is strange to hear Washington described as “sly.” Yet a relation of Martha Washington’s later commented on Gilbert Stuart’s familiar portrait as giving too “soulful” a look to the eyes, in which she saw rather a look “not exactly of cunning but very quick and Knowing.” 15

Busy as Washington was and concerned about so many things, he took time to renew his efforts to persuade the Hessians to desert. He advised the Council of Safety to separate the sol¬ diers from their officers, and canton them in the German counties.16

The effort was vain. The statistics give an unsuspected dignity to these greatly maligned victims of the cruel times. The number of Hessian deserters was less than that of either the English or the Americans.17

9

THE DAWN OF ’77

The day after the Trenton victory, Congress having no telegraphic news of it in Baltimore, had despondently resolved to make a further grand surrender of its useless military powers.

Believing the rumor that Howe had actually taken Philadel¬ phia, Congress enlarged and particularized on December 27th the grant of December 12th by vesting Washington “with full, ample, and complete powers” to raise “from any or all of these United States” sixteen battalions of infantry, 3,000 Light- Horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers 5 to call for the militia, form magazines of provisions, displace and appoint all officers under the rank of Brigadier-General, fill up all vacancies; “to take wherever he may be, whatever he may want,” if the inhabitants would not sell what the army needed, allowing a reasonable price for it, “to arrest and con¬ fine persons who refuse to take the Continental currency, or are otherwise disaffected to the American cause.” 18

All this absolutism was to last for six months, unless sooner revoked. At the same time a committee was appointed to pre¬ pare a letter of explanation to the public, requesting coopera¬ tion. Also it was ordered that “Five Millions of Dollars be now emitted on the faith of the United States.”

This final resounding phrase, “the faith of the United States,” was taken with little seriousness by the public and with less seriousness later by Congress when it came to the matter of making good the pledge. To compel people to accept fiat money at its face value has always been as vain an effort as the hunt for perpetual motion. Penalties make no difference at all. Tyranny and prayers both fail, and one might as well issue an edict that mud is bread and people must both eat it and thrive on it.

Washington, however, accepted the fallacy and denounced as unreasonable and treasonable any refusal to accept Con¬ tinental money at par. He approved the cruel and spasmodic measures taken for singling out unfortunate individuals as the victims of the laws. But he could not even force his own

10

GEORGE WASHINGTON

soldiers to accept the bad money, and later he evaded his own ruin by various devices.

In Washington’s hands, the usually fatal loan of the dictator¬ ship was accepted as a responsibility, not an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. John Adams later denied that it was even a nominal power and wrote to his wife:

“Congress never thought of making him dictator or of giving him a sovereignty. I wish I could find a correspondent who was idle enough to attend to every report and write it to me. Such false news, uncon¬ tradicted, does more or less harm. Such a collection of lies would be a curiosity for posterity.” 19

When the British failed to appear on the other side of the Delaware river and Trenton lay empty waiting for somebody to come and take it, Washington was consumed with an eager¬ ness. Yet he could not fight without soldiers and his soldiers would not fight without pay. They could be no longer de¬ coyed by thirst for glory or stamped paper or promises. They wanted “hard money,” something that they could feel in their pockets and buy things with. The Pennsylvanians were will¬ ing to remain, for their state had given them a bounty of ten dollars each and an assurance of their wages. But the Eastern¬ ers were filled with a homesickness. In the breasts of some of them this was doubtless due to the new gold rush that had set in throughout New England. The success of the patriot privateers on the ocean was costly to the British supply fleets, and the prize money was so magnificent that at one time there were said to have been ninety thousand patriots at sea, while the armies languished between three and twenty thousand. The results of privateering were dubious in many ways, for, though the Americans took and sent into port 559 British ships, the British took to port 904 American vessels.

It is not generally remarked that Washington himself felt the lure of privateering and before this year was out went in with Jacky Custis, Lund Washington and Baylor as part owner of a privateer and a sharer in the profits.20

II

THE DAWN OF ’77

Benjamin Rush, however, was alive to the peril of this lust for piratical gold and wrote to R. H. Lee:

“Many of the Continental troops now in our service pant for the expiration of their enlistments, in order that they may partake of the spoils of the West-Indies. . . . New-England and the Continent can¬ not spare them. They have a right at this juncture to their services and to their blood. We must have an Army; the fate of America must be decided by an Army. It must consist of seventy or eighty thousand men, and they must all be fit for the field before the first day of May next.” 21

If by the first of May Washington had found himself with half that number he could probably have ended the war. He had now less than one tenth and by June 1st only 8,000, but he decided to begin his fourth crossing of the Delaware on December 2,9th, 1776, a Monday. He had to leave behind most of Captain Forrest’s battery because the men had neither shoes nor overcoats.

General Cadwalader with eighteen hundred men was already over. He had tried to join the battle at Trenton on Christmas night but had been unable to cross until the 27th. Then he could not get back. After waiting anxiously at Bordentown for news, he moved to the village of Crosswicks. At the same time Mifflin had brought over about eighteen hundred volun¬ teers from Philadelphia and they were gathered at Borden¬ town.

Washington, being dictator now, did not have to ask Con¬ gress for permission to act. He simply wrote to the President and told him where he was going.

Having ceased to expect either help or hindrance from the remote and resourceless Congress, he threw himself on that inexhaustible worker of miracles, Robert Morris, frankly con¬ fessing that he had promised the soldiers money he did not have:

“Tomorrow the Continental Troops are all at Liberty — I wish to push our Success to keep up the Pannick & in order to get their As-

12

GEORGE WASHINGTON

sistance have promised them a Bounty of io Dollars if they will con¬ tinue for one Month.

“But here again a new Difficulty presents itself. We have not Money to pay the Bounty, & we have exhausted our credit by such frequent Promises that it has not the Weight we could wish. If it is possible, Sir, to give us Assistance do it — borrow Money when it can be done we are doing it from our private Credit — every Man of Inter¬ est and every Lover of his Country must strain his Credit upon such an Occasion. No time, my dear sir, is to be lost.

“The bearer will escort the money.” 22

That postscript was as neat a tribute to Morris as was paid to heaven in the old story about the congregation that gathered to pray for rain and was amazed to find in its midst an inno¬ cent child who had actually brought along an umbrella.

While waiting to see if his faith in Morris were justified Washington paraded the regiments whose term had now ex¬ pired and bombarded them with oratory and prayers and pledges of money. Colonel Knox pleaded. Even Washing¬ ton grew eloquent. General Mifflin, a famous roarer, thun¬ dered at them. John Howland describes Mifflin as “seated on a noble looking horse, and himself clothed in an overcoat made of a large rose blanket, and a large fur cap on his head.” 23 He made promises of land; they were not kept. But at last Washington could write to Congress on New Year’s day:

After much persuasion, and the exertions of their officers, half or a greater proportion of those from the eastward have consented to stay six weeks on a bounty of ten dollars. I feel the inconvenience of this advance, and I know the consequences which will result from it; but what could be done? Pennsylvania had allowed the same to her mili¬ tia; the troops felt their importance, and would have their price. In¬ deed, as their aid is so essential, and not to be dispensed with, it is to be wondered, they had not estimated it at a higher rate.” 24

Nearly half of those who accepted the bounty and promised to stay changed their minds and set out for home — and took the bounty with them.23 When Washington crossed December 26th he took 2,500 men. When he crossed January 1st he had sixteen hundred men. He had as usual an ingrowing army.

THE DAWN OF ’77 13

He ordered Mifflin and Cadwalader to march to him in Trenton with what men they had, and posted an advance guard under the Frenchman, General Roche de Fermoy.

It might seem that he had learned nothing from his disaster on Long Island, for now he was in a worse trap with only five thousand men, and back of him a river that could not be crossed at all.

But, again, the fault was not his. He knew better but could not do better. When he planned to push forward and attack the British, his men would not budge until he put money into their hands. His poverty and not his will consented. In criti¬ cizing his generalship, his ineluctable fetters should always be recalled. His men were not skilled in maneuver, nor was he; else he could have marched east away from the river to where he might have had elbow room, but now he was nailed to the cross and, before he could free himself, the British had broken through his outguards, and were hastening to put back to his lips the bitter and apparently inescapable cup of defeat.

The irony of it was that on the day after New Year’s day, 1777, he must accept this sour wine on the very ground where he had been granted a brief and unusual taste of victory the day after Christmas.

II

THE SECOND BATTLE OF TRENTON

WHAT had the British been doing all this while? On Christmas day, 1776, Sir William Howe and his officers had been congratulating themselves, and with good reason, on the profitable business they had done since they landed on Long Island on August 22nd. In four months they had won battle after battle and had captured 4,430 prisoners, including 304 officers, among them three Generals, Sullivan, Lord Stirling and Charles Lee. They had taken from the hard-pressed Americans 12 pieces of brass ordnance, 235 iron cannon, 23,979 shells, 17,122 iron shot, 2,684 double¬ headed shot, 140 grape quilted, 2,800 muskets, 400,000 cartridges, 16 barrels of powder, 500 intrenching tools, 35 breast plates for engineer armor, 4 covered wagons, 200 hand barrows, 5 2 mantelets, 81 chevaux-de-frise complete, 4,000 barrels of flour, baggage, tents, long pikes, ammunition carts and a large quantity of stores.1

This was a grievous loss to the poor young republic de¬ pendent now largely on supplies smuggled from France or captured by privateers.

The loss in territory was great also, for Rhode Island was occupied, New York largely free of alarm, New Jersey clear, and Congress in disgraceful flight from Pennsylvania into Maryland. Besides Washington’s men, the Americans had troops at various points in New England, New York, upper New Jersey and elsewhere, but these were hardly more than recruiting stations.

Lord Cornwallis had packed his things for a visit to Eng¬ land during the season of hibernation, and General Llowe, hav¬ ing left the hired men from Hesse out in the cold along the

14

The Battles of Trenton and Princeton.

Washington’s night march was along the road to the right,

(From Wilkinson’s Memoirs.')

GEORGE WASHINGTON

1 6

idle frontier, had settled down to a pleasant winter in New York with Mrs. Loring, the lovely Cleopatra from Boston who had followed her Mark Antony to New York. Her husband, Joshua, had been pacified with the ofiice and emoluments of Commissary of Prisoners. Fortunately there was a plenty of them and they were troublesome enough to keep the hus¬ band extremely busy and conveniently blind and deaf.

Howe ordered Lord Cornwallis to recall his baggage from the ship and go back into New Jersey to the rescue of General Sir James Grant — the very Grant who had promised Parlia¬ ment that he could march from one end of America to an¬ other with five thousand men.2

Cornwallis moved warily out of Princeton before daybreak on the morning of January 2nd, 1777, with about 5,500 men, not many more than Washington had altogether, but far superior in discipline. Grant, who had come down from Bruns¬ wick, leaving there only six hundred men to protect the heavy baggage of the whole force and a treasure-chest of £70,000, was superseded by Lieutenant-Colonel Mawhood, who re¬ mained in Princeton with twelve hundred men to act as a rear guard, under instructions to march on Trenton the follow¬ ing morning.

Altogether the British had something less than 8,000 men in New Jersey, and a heavy rain on New Year’s night made the roads heavy going for infantry, almost impassable for the artillery.

Outside the hamlet of Maidenhead, half way between Princeton and Trenton, lay Washington’s advance under Gen¬ eral de Fermoy, who had been instructed to do his best to hold the British, but who absented himself from his post at the critical time, and aroused much suspicion. He was ad¬ dicted to drink. Colonel Hausegger of the German battalion was also suspected because of the ease with which he let him¬ self be captured and his conduct afterward as a prisoner.3

At ten o’clock in the morning of January 2nd, 1777, the British light infantry and Hessian Jagers who made up the

THE SECOND BATTLE OF TRENTON 17

advance party of Cornwallis’ force struck rebel riflemen at Five Mile Run just outside Maidenhead and paused for a time to bring up the main force. The check was not serious though the British column was nagged by snipers posted in the woods along the road. There is no record of their hitting anybody.

At one o’clock the advance was held up again at Shabbakonk creek. The column deployed into line, fired a few cannon at the forest, formed into column again, and pushed on for Trenton, where Washington waited in the position he had selected: the high ground outside the town on the southeastern side of the Assunpink creek. The stream was high and swift with melted snow and only one bridge crossed it along the three miles occupied by his troops.

During the early afternoon Washington rode far up the creek with Knox to inspect his outposts. General Greene, who was in command of them, assured him that they would put up a stiff opposition to the British advance.

Washington rode back, encouraged, only to be followed shortly by his outposts, who came tumbling after him in a con¬ fusion rivalling the waters of the Assunpink. He tried to calm his men by posting himself at the end of the bridge; but they swarmed past in such a mob that John Howland long afterward remembered being crowded so hard against Washington’s big white horse that he gouged his arm on one of the general’s spurs. He described how “the noble horse of Gen. Washington stood with his breast pressed close against the end of the west rail of the bridge, and the firm, composed, and majestic countenance of the general inspired confidence. . . . The horse stood as firm as the rider, and seemed to under¬ stand that he was not to quit his post and station.” 4

By four o’clock Washington could see the enemy at the point where King and Queen streets then met, and from across the creek he reviewed some fifteen hundred British and Hessians taking possession of the town he could not hold with five thou¬ sand.

Washington dared not hurl his undisciplined troops across

i8

GEORGE WASHINGTON

that bridge to overwhelm the British advance, small as it was, and he had to sit still in his saddle and watch the arrival of four thousand more marching in from Maidenhead.

The second battle of Trenton was hardly worthy of the name of skirmish. In his own words, it was only a matter of “cannonading the enemy, and receiving the fire of their field- pieces, which did us but little damage.” 5

“Little damage” was the word. The list of American casualties on that day reads more like a Hessian report, for the only man killed was private John Goebel of Captain Woel- pepper’s company. Besides three officers the only men wounded were named Jacob Bottamer, George Filsin, and Wender Fort¬ ney, all but one of the German battalion.6

The Hessians had eleven wounded and four killed, including Lieutenant von Grothausen, who had escaped from the first battle of Trenton only to be more or less assassinated at Shab- bakonk creek. A party of six men from Colonel Hand’s regi¬ ment amused themselves by pretending to be deserters, waited till the lieutenant came up to accept their surrender and then shot him down and ran. Robust humorists, those early patriots!

Perhaps it was in reprisal for this that the Hessians on over¬ taking a fleeing Presbyterian chaplain, the aged Reverend John Rosborough, cut him almost to pieces with their bayonets and sabers, and stripped his body. This was the extent of the “carnage” referred to by many historians, and the contempo¬ rary statements that “the creek was nearly filled” with British dead are typical of the reliability of rumor.7 The British reports, ignoring the slight Hessian loss, do not mention a single man killed or wounded.

When night fell, the British and Americans lighted their supper fires and the cannonade ceased, except for a few shells, which, as Knox wrote to his wife, “we now and then chucked into town to prevent their enjoying their new quarters securely.” 8

Washington had arranged his troops in successive lines,

THE SECOND BATTLE OF TRENTON 19

massed forty guns to sweep the bridge and set guards at all the spots where he imagined the British might attempt to ford the swollen waters. But his right flank was in the air out along the banks of the Assunpink.

Cornwallis, however, was probably so eager to enter Tren¬ ton for the moral effect of its reoccupation that he never thought of looking at his map or turning off the road at Phillips’ Mill and fording the creek where it was shallow. If he had done that he might easily have smashed Washington’s line in upon itself like a closed telescope and crowded among the ice floes all who did not surrender or stampede. He might in a swift round-up have annihilated the army, and ended the Revolution. As the Reverend Mr. Gordon put it: "

“The fate of the continent seems suspended by a single thread.” Wilkinson credited the salvation of the army to “the obstinate resistance of a handful of brave men, and the work¬ ings of Heaven in the breast of Lord Cornwallis.” 9 He and others gave Cornwallis the “dreadful odds” of 8,000 men to 6,000, but the British had no appreciable superiority in num¬ bers and they had to fight on Washington’s choice of a battle¬ field. Yet he had to fight with soldiers whose ideals of liberty were individual rather than national.10

Washington seems to have had no more idea of the open door to his position than Cornwallis had. It must have been a shock to him when the bad news was brought to him at dusk by his Adjutant-General Joseph Reed, who had gone out with a few light-horse from Philadelphia to examine the raging creek and make sure if its crossings had all been guarded as Washington supposed. In a fragment of manuscript that breaks off short, Reed tells what word he brought to Wash¬ ington concerning the fords:

“At Phillips’s mill, about one mile higher, the ford was in very good order; and had the enemy taken the opportunity of passing it, the con¬ sequences would probably have been fatal — ” 11

What Washington must have thought of this information is found in the words of Reed’s grandson and biographer:

20

GEORGE WASHINGTON

“The night of the 2d January, 1777 . . . was, perhaps, the most gloomy and anxious that our revolutionary soldiers knew.” 12

There was a military maxim that the stronger army ought not to attack toward night. The British regulars loved maxims, loved to work out a good literary battle. And they loved hunting foxes to their holes. Cornwallis was sure that he had Washington cornered and promised his officers that they would “bag the old fox” on the morrow. The promise was not ex¬ travagant.

Sir William Erskine, quartermaster of Cornwallis’ army, said: “If Washington is the general I take him to be he will not be found there in the morning. If your lordship does not attack, throw a large body of troops on the road to your left.” 13 He begged Cornwallis to finish the battle that night, and other officers joined him in pointing out the lack of courage and dis¬ cipline of the Americans, but Cornwallis would not be hurried. He had, as Belcher says, “imbibed much of the spirit of Howe. ... It was a question of one hour’s fighting, and the storm¬ ing of the entrenchments would have certainly ended the war.” 14

It must have been the climate that dulled these brilliant British generals one by one and made them all Manana men. In India later Cornwallis did magnificent things.

On the American side there was little doubt that the army was in a sack. Among the troops was young Major Wilkinson, who was destined to become one of the most puzzling and sin¬ ister figures in later history. He allotted Washington just half the life that Belcher gave him:

“If ever there was a crisis in the affairs of the revolution, this was the moment; thirty minutes would have sufficed to bring the two armies into contact, and thirty more would have decided the combat; and covered with wo, Columbia might have wept the loss of her most be¬ loved chief and most valorous sons. In this awful moment, the guardian angel of our country admonished Lord Cornwallis that his own troops were fatigued, and that the Americans were without retreat.” 16

THE SECOND BATTLE OF TRENTON 21

There is dispute as to who inspired Washington. To some¬ body in that hopeless band came one of the prettiest inspirations in all military history. No wonder so many people claimed it. Washington was content to take the advice and let the credit go as he carried out a maneuver that owed its astounding re¬ sults to a recognition of the principle that Stonewall Jackson was always hammering into his staff:

“Mystery, mystery is the secret of success.” 16

Ill

THE “OLD FOX” IN THE TRAP

“t | AO give his military character, in the most sublime mo¬ ment of its exertion . . . when viewing the vast

JL superiority of his approaching enemy, and the impos¬ sibility of again crossing the Delaware, or retreating down the river” — that was the avowed motive of Colonel John Trum¬ bull in painting the familiar full-length portrait of Washing¬ ton facing the Assunpink creek — Washington as an almost effeminately elegant -poseur , a fieldglass extended gropingly in his right hand, his other hand draped daintily over his left hip. Behind him a soldier in a feathered bonnet admires an effeminate hobby horse rearing impossibly. The broken can¬ non and the gnarled tree only prettify the general by contrast.

Yet Trumbull says of the picture that Washington, who posed for it in 1792, gave him expert advice.

“He entered into it warmly, and, as the work advanced, we talked of the scene, its dangers, its almost desperation. He looked the scene again, and I happily transferred to the canvas, the lofty expression of his animated countenance, the high resolve to conquer or to perish. The result was in my own opinion eminently successful, and the gen¬ eral was satisfied.”

Washington may have been chiefly “satisfied” with getting the posing over with. It is refreshing to learn that, even in those days when painting was generally done with the same bombastic grandiloquence as history, Mr. Smith, who had ordered the portrait for Charleston, S. C., politely declined to buy it because “he thought the city would be better satisfied with a more matter-of-fact likeness.” 1 Whereupon Trumbull, with perhaps some slight satirical intention, painted another picture in which about half the canvas is filled with the very lofty rear end of the horse.

22

Washington at Princeton

(From the portrait by Trumbull)

.

t ■*

THE “OLD FOX” IN THE TRAP 23

A “matter-of-fact likeness” was the last thing anybody seemed to want of Washington for a century or more. A camera, had there been one, would surely have shown him at something less than his best in his impotent bewilderment out¬ side his easily won, easily lost Trenton j and there is no reason to believe that the idea for his escape came to him in any such moment or any such posture as Trumbull shows.

The scheme seems to have been worked out gradually by a collaboration of his officers in a long and dismal night con¬ ference. The brilliance of the result and the audacity of the conception startle and delight the dramatic sense. And there was need of something unusual, for the plight of the American army was dire.

This fateful council was held at the headquarters of St. Clair in the Alexander Douglass home on Greene street to which Washington had been driven from his own earlier headquarters at Jonathan Richmond’s tavern, “The True American.” Wash¬ ington must have looked into a sombre ring of faces gathered about the table in Mr. Douglass’ two-story frame shanty, in whose combined parlor, dining room and kitchen the future existence of innumerable capitols, palaces of justice, buildings of state and monuments was being unwittingly considered.

Above the room’s one candlestick fluttered a little flame that wavered with the minds of those fagged, dirty, muddy, dis¬ traught generals and colonels, certain of only one thing: that after their little glimpse of what it meant to capture and kill, they were about to be captured or killed. The one thing to do was to run for it — but which way?

Outside, the raw night was turning sharper, to the more bitter distress of soldiers fighting for sleep now on the freez¬ ing ground where the mud congealed on their tattered clothes and their half-naked feet. They must have glanced miserably at headquarters and wondered what new misery was being con¬ cocted for them.

To move off to the left was impossible. The Delaware was there. To move off to the right was to move into British terri-

24 GEORGE WASHINGTON

tory, leaving Cornwallis in the rear and confronting Leslie at Maidenhead and Mawhood at Princeton. The south was the only way open. They might fall back hugging the river until they reached a possible crossing into Pennsylvania. But the British would follow hard, overtake their mired wagons and guns, strike the fleeing brigades in the back and capture them, slaughter them or scatter them to the four winds. General Greene’s own grandson gives this detailed story of the council:

“Meanwhile, Washington summoned his officers to council, at the head-quarters of St. Clair, his own being now in the hands of the enemy.

“ ‘What shall we do? Shall we retreat down the Delaware, on the Jersey side, and cross it over against Philadelphia ; or shall we remain where we are, and try the chances of a battle?’

Each course had its advocates, when a voice was heard, saying,

Better than either of these, let us take the new road through the woods, and get in the enemy’s rear by a march upon Princeton, and, if possible, on Brunswick even.’

“From whom did this bold suggestion come? St. Clair claimed it as his; and why should the positive assertion of an honorable man be lightly called in question? But whose ever it was, it was the inspiration of true genius, and was promptlv accepted by all.” 2

Both of these statements seem to be true and St. Clair de¬ serves the gratitude of his adopted country, but there has been such fierce and complex controversy on the point that a full discussion of it is deferred to the second Appendix.

In any case, whipped, trapped, with an army made up of homesick soldiers and raw recruits, Washington was forced to outrage the fundamental rules of tactics: march by the flank along the enemy’s front, then throw himself into the midst of the enemy between the main body and the rear guard, and crush the rear guard at Princeton before the main body could turn about and overtake him. Then if he were not destroyed he might even push on eighteen miles further and

THE “OLD FOX” IN THE TRAP

25

capture the enemy’s magazines at Brunswick, where there was incidentally that treasure of $350,000, and where General Charles Lee was held in captivity and might be released as the final fillip to the triumph. The distances were great, the roads abominable, the maneuvers would test the skill of trained veterans, and the least failure would mean ruin. But he was ruined anyway and there was something dazzling about the opportunity to rescue the spirits of his men and his people from the collapse that would be the greater for the recent uplift. As he wrote to Congress:

“One thing I was certain of, that it would avoid the appearance of a retreat (which was of consequence, or to run the hazard of the whole army being cut off), whilst we might by a fortunate stroke withdraw General Howe from Trenton, and give some reputation to our arms.” 3

By Howe he meant, of course, Howe’s army, for Howe him¬ self was still in New York.

The chief difficulty in the way of Washington’s plan was the woeful state of the roads from the recent thaw and the hard rains. The downpour had filled the Assunpink to its banks and kept Cornwallis from wading over, under fire, but it had also turned the highways and the fields into bogs.

Once more Washington’s tantalizing friend “Providence” came to his rescue. Even while the council pondered, the tem¬ perature fell so rapidly that the ground froze hard in two hours. The roads would carry the guns.

He gave his orders. The council broke up. The officers dispersed in such haste that they forgot to blow out the candle. It burned itself out and left wax drippings on the table. The very stains were long preserved as a memorial of the time when American independence flickered, and might have burned out in a night like another solitary candle.4

The officers dispersed to the double duty of lulling the British to sleep and waking the Americans to action. The orders were passed in whispers. The captains and sergeants and corporals were wakened or were visited at the blazing fires

26 GEORGE WASHINGTON

where they collected. No one was told what was to be done, where to go.

Some of the minor officers had stolen away to farm houses for better beds than the ground afforded and they could not be found. Their companies had to march without them. They must have been amazed when they woke.

Only those who have taken part in night maneuvers can imagine what it means to wake up a family of 5,000 drowsy soldiers, push them into line, keep them awake and in line and lead them off into dense night. It is bad enough in sham battle, but when the life of the army depends upon making no noise to awaken the suspicions of the outnumbering enemy, the achievement is a triumph in itself.

The horses were certainly troublesome. They never want to be harnessed, especially at night, and they could not have welcomed the prospect of being hitched to the lurching cannon and the heavy wagons. They doubtless bucked and squealed, but the British would be having the same racket in their own camp, for army horses are forever rioting.

The British sentinels would perk their ears at the first rumble of wagons or guns and on this cold night the wheels would ring out like chimes in the frosty ruts. The rims must be wound with rags. There were rags enough, but they were on the soldiers. There must have been a scurry to find a supply not in use. Everywhere men with frost-bitten hands were kneeling and bandaging wheels, while the soldiers in line leaned on their muskets and slept or stared and blew on their fingers.

Four hundred men were selected for the uncomfortable honor of staying behind to keep the fires blazing all night by piling fence rails on them, and to deepen the trenches guard¬ ing the bridges and the fords, until just before dawn. Then they were to steal away and try to overtake their comrades. They were instructed to maintain blinding non-transparent fires, multiply their numbers by bustling about, relieving

27

THE “OLD FOX” IN THE TRAP

sentinels and making all the noise they could. Two cannon were sacrificed and left behind “to amuse the enemy.” 6

There is a tradition that Washington had one hearty laugh before he left Trenton. Having stationed the Virginian Colonel Scott to defend the bridge to the last, he lingered long enough to hear the Colonel rebuke his men for the usual soldierly fault of shooting too high, and add:

“Boys, whenever you see them fellows first begin to put their feet on this bridge, shin ’em!”

Washington laughed and vanished in the dark.

Speed was so important that he resolved to rid himself of three of his biggest guns and all his baggage and stores. He started them off after midnight under escort to Burlington. The Philadelphia troops were ordered to lighten their burdens for the march by putting their overcoats in their baggage wagons. In consequence they went without them for ten days.

It is heartrending to read throughout the war the count¬ less references to bare feet trudging over ice, to backs and thighs so naked in the edged winds that they were indecent, to blanketless men lying out on snow without even straw for their comfort. There seems to be a special excruciation in the plight of those Philadelphia volunteers who owned good over¬ coats but had unwittingly shipped them off.

It was a little after midnight when at Washington’s orders Reed sent Putnam an order to find the baggage train and take care of it.6

Then the march began with Patrick Lamb, tavern keeper, and Ezekiel Anderson and Elias Phillips, farmers of that neigh¬ borhood, as guides over the invisible side roads. According to one story, a woman was the guide but her name is not given.7

Along a vague farmroad that is now Hamilton Avenue in Trenton the soldiers moved under the strictest command to keep their mouths shut and their equipment silent. The way led across a creek called Muddy or Miry Run, then into a forest in whose night-within-night many a sleep-walker fell over a

28

GEORGE WASHINGTON

sharp stub in the new-cut road and tore his ill-shod feet. The path was afterwards traced for miles by the blood on the snow. The cannon wheels were checked and wrenched by old stumps and the men waiting for the guns to be yanked along fell asleep standing up • only to be knocked over by other stumbling wretches when the march was resumed.8 Captain Rodney of Delaware described their mood:

“The van moved on all night in the most cool and determined order, but on the march great confusion happened in the rear. There was a cry that they were surrounded by the Hessians and several corps of Militia broke and fled towards Bordentown, but the rest of the column remained firm and pursued their march without disorder, but those who were frightened and fled did not recover from their panic until they reached Burlington.” 9

This throws a vivid side-light on the quality of the army with which Washington must defeat the British Empire. A large part of his force was so frightened by merely having to march through dark woods that it bolted and ran away from itself. At Germantown later they would run away from each other and from men trying to surrender to them. Excellent runners and ever willing.

Contempt is changed to pity when one happens upon a refer¬ ence to some of these fugitives in the diary of an elderly Tory woman who looked upon them as they slept in Burlington:

“At noon upwards of one thousand men came into town in great confusion, and were quartered on the people. Several went into my next neighbour’s (Colonel Cox’s) house, where I went to see them, and my heart was melted to see them, lying on the floor fast asleep, although many were without blankets to cover them. I had my sus¬ picions that they had fled the field when they should have remained, and it proved so. Among them were several innocent-looking lads,' and much I sympathized with their bereaved mothers.” 10

Of the very opposite sort was young Captain Daniel Neil, a New York Presbyterian, who had moved to New Jersey with his wife and two little children and bought a mortgaged farm at Passaic where he sold imported “patent machines for dress-

THE “OLD FOX” IN THE TRAP 29

ing wheat and flour.” He had joined the militia, but bad luck had only heartened him, and on the very day after Washing¬ ton began his retreat across the Jerseys, Neil offered to join the Continentals, and wrote the following letter to a man of influence:

Dr Sr the Raising of the Standing Army I sepose will Prevent the Rising of any more Troops for the Imeadiate Service of this State — Therefore I woud beg your Intrest in my behalf for a Birth in the Standing Army as I am Determined to Continue in the Artillery or other Service Dureing the Warr.” 11

When Washington had fallen back through Passaic, Neil and his artillery company had joined him, shared his disgrace and the glory of both Trentons. Neil now marched on high¬ hearted to an unforeseen death.

On the way north Washington’s already diminished army encountered the upper waters of the Assunpink creek, and again crossed them on the Quaker Bridge. They threaded a moor of stunted oaks called the Barrens. As they sogged through Bear Swamp, they were now only four miles east of Maiden¬ head, where General Leslie’s troops were said to be asleep.12

Washington’s men were drawing near Princeton, but, in spite of all his efforts, he was turning up late, as at the first battle of Trenton. He had hoped to surprise whatever troops he might find and sound his own reveille to them. The Brit¬ ish, however, were already on the march after a good sleep and a good breakfast, while his men were jaded with hours of march, and would have been the better for hot coffee or a swig of something hotter. But, as Knox wrote to his wife, they were in want of both “rum and clothing.” 13

A cold January dawn groped through a sky frosted with stars and lighted up the rime-covered foggy ground as Washington’s congealing men ended their fourteen-mile trudge and emerged from the long back road into the main highway.

At Trenton in the same dawn, the yawns of the British and the Hessian sentinels were widened further by the emp¬ tiness of the heights where the only evidence that the Ameri-

30 GEORGE WASHINGTON

cans had ever been there was the mockery of lonely camp fires still blazing high with no other company than two abandoned cannon.

The sentinels called their officers and the alarm was given. Cornwallis rushed from his tent to gape and curse and register his lifelong regret that he had not finished his military chores before he went to bed. His fellow-officer, and later his sharpest critic, Sir Henry Clinton, made this comment on his immortal blunder:

“From such a situation he [Washington] could not possibly have escaped with Impunity, had only a single Patrole been sent to feel for him . . . for his Lordship holding the String of the Bow could have easily met Mr. Washington before he finished his circuit.” 14

While Cornwallis was wondering what genie had lifted up Washington’s army and flown off with it, and where, he heard thunder in the north. That was odd in winter. His quarter¬ master Erskine taunted him:

“Thunder? Those are Washington’s guns at Princeton. He has outgeneralled us! To arms, to arms, my lord!”15

Cornwallis did not linger over his repentance. He ordered his troops into line in all haste and set out as fast as his men could leg it. He “marched to the guns.”

Washington was now in the jaws again. The British were converging on him from both directions. And he had to meet them in the open with a worn-out, haggard army that he had not dared to fight with in his own entrenchments.

IV

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON

ABOUT two miles south of the village Washington halted to assemble his far-strung weary column and assign its elements to the plan he had devised for draw¬ ing a net around Princeton.

He ordered certain infantry to file olf to the side of the highway and wait. Then he despatched General Sullivan along a woodcutters’ road through the forest to flank the town on the east while two brigades flanked it on the west by march¬ ing up the turnpike. He planned to avoid the old road as being out of his way, but he instructed General Mercer to go over with his advance guard, including Captain Neil’s two guns, and break down the bridge there so as to delay Cornwallis when he came up. Having destroyed this bridge, the advance guard was to act as a rear guard and detain Cornwallis as long as possible if he arrived during the attack on Princeton.1

The sun was rising the treetops by the time this elaborate rearrangement was under way with its inevitable entangle¬ ments, and Washington had hardly set his elements in motion when all of his strategy was thrown into the discard and into disarray by the premature energy of the British Colonel Maw- hood, who was not only not asleep but had already marched several miles on the old road towards Trenton. Colonel Mawhood had left the 40th regiment of about two hundred men in Princeton to guard the stores and had crossed the west¬ ern bridge over Stony Brook with two-thirds of his force, the 17th and the 55th regiments, two guns and some cavalry.

He was riding a little brown pony and was attended by two pet spaniels.2 On a rise called Millet’s Hill he caught sight of troops to the west of him. He could not make out how many

31

32

GEORGE WASHINGTON

rebels there were over there below him. But the Americans were all sheep to the British, and there is an old saying that “the wolf is never frightened by the size of a flock of sheep.” 3

Mawhood’s first glance selected the Clark farm as the strategic point to seize, and, whirling his column, he led it across the bridge. When his scouts ran into Mercer, Maw- hood left the road, deployed in double time, ordered his wagons back to Princeton, despatched a swift rider to bring down the 40th regiment, and rushed his troops across the field, hoping to reach Clark’s orchard ahead of Mercer’s men and hold them in the low ground by the creek.4

But by this time Mercer had descried him, or had been warned by a messenger from Washington, and tried to head him off at the bridge. Realizing the impossibility of this he thought he could join General Sullivan’s advance guard or at least support it by breaking the force of Mawhood’s attack.5

Mawhood brought up the rear of his troops and passed the head of Washington’s column so closely that he might have been checked if the Americans had not been too befuddled to act.6

Mercer was mounted on a gray horse, but his three hundred and fifty were mainly Delaware foot, under Colonel Haslett. He had also some Maryland and Philadelphia gentlemen and the two cannon in charge of Captain Neil. Mercer’s brigade, already in Indian file, scrambled up the ridge, streamed through a gate into the orchard and, running down to a hedge fence, lined up behind it on their knees, while Mawhood was still on the slope.

Mercer got in the first volley with good effect, but the Brit¬ ish light horse dismounted and opened fire from a ditch and a fence. A bullet shattered the forefoot of Mercer’s horse and he had to dismount, finding Colonel Haslett dead with a bullet in the temple and his men panting from the run and panting to be gone.

The British light horse opened out to let their main body through, but Mercer held his men for two more quick volleys.

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 33

In fact the breathless Americans accomplished what was then the miracle of firing three volleys in less than five minutes, the smokes rising with the British smoke “in one beautiful cloud,” says Wilkinson, while Captain Neil’s two small cannon barked at the British right wing where Mawhood’s two brass cannon overpowered them.

Mawhood did not pause to exchange volleys, but ordered his men forward to the charge. The Americans had no bayo¬ nets, or few, and those greedy blades of the British set up such a yearning in their bowels that they left the orchard in a wild stampede up the slope. Mercer darted here and there trying to check the rout and was knocked down with the butt of a musket. As he rose, he was quickly surrounded. The British thought they had overtaken Washington himself and encir¬ cled him shouting:

“The rebel general is taken!”

But Mercer refused to surrender and struck away their bayonets. They begged him to surrender: i Call for quarter, you damned rebel!” The brave doctor who kept the drug¬ store in Fredericksburg shouted back, “I am no rebel!” and slashed furiously at the eager faces behind the muskets.

So they naturally stabbed him down, and have been slan¬ dered ever since for wantonly murdering an officer who had given up his sword. The legend persists, though Mercer on his deathbed protested that it was false and claimed the honor of wielding his sword till he had seven deep wounds. Then he sank, closed his eyes, and pretended to be dead.7

Captain Neil was killed and his deserted cannon were turned about by the British and fired into the rebels who had only one field officer left standing — Lieutenant-Colonel Stone of Mary-

land. £

In the meanwhile, though Washington had learned of

Mawhood’s presence before Mercer, he had been too far away to save him. On hearing the firing, Washington made fren¬ zied efforts to bring up his men, but there was a long delay in getting his troops into motion. The militia were doubtless

34 GEORGE WASHINGTON

hard to manage. There was a gap of at least a thousand yards to close up.8

The nearest troops he found to hand were Cadwalader’s untrained militia. There was a devil of a time getting them forward, and deploying them was still worse, though Captain Henry handled one little group of a hundred well enough to drive off fifty British advance guards. Cadwalader hurried a ragged line up the ridge and Washington sent along two cannon from Moulder’s Philadelphia battery, also what little was left of the First Virginia regiment in command of the twenty-one-year-old Captain John Fleming and eighteen-year- old Lieutenant Bartholomew Yeates. Washington rode along with Captain Moulder and saw the cannon posted on the right of the Clark house. He saw the Pennsylvania militia run into the fleeing remnants of Mercer’s brigade, take one look at Mawhood’s advancing regulars and join the flight.

Captain Fleming, trying hastily to align his men near the Clark house, had just time to shout:

“Gentlemen, dress the line before you make ready.”

The British closed in and mocked him:

“We’ll dress you, damn you!”

They killed young Fleming and in their frenzy mangled Lieutenant Yeates so brutally that Washington sent his death¬ bed affidavit to General Howe with a protest. The boy lived six days with a bullet hole in the breast, a skull fractured with the butt of a musket and thirteen bayonet gouges in his flesh.9

Moulder’s artillery from Philadelphia escaped capture by pouring in grape, and drove the British back for a time; but they formed again and pressed forward through the panic, bayoneting all who resisted until they came to the crest of the hill. There, as the fog lifted, Mawhood looked down upon an army ten times the size of his own, but in greater confusion.

As he stared, his spaniels probably yipped their contempt, for dogs despise ragged men running and Washington’s army must have resembled startled hoboes. The spaniels probably took credit for the panic they were in. But Mawhood on his

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 35

brown pony studied the tall man on the white horse. Wash¬ ington was everywhere in a whirlwind of fury, trying to shame the fugitives, swing his column left into line and surround the insolent British few before they completely dispersed his ter¬ rified, weary, hungry irregulars. Dashing from regiment to regiment, dragging his horse back on his haunches to rebuke some skulking soldier, waving his hat to rouse his men to a cheering assault, he rode bareheaded through the crisscross of bullets.

One of Mercer’s men told that he heard Washington cry to the fugitives:

“Parade with us, my brave fellows, there is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly.” 10

According to a contemporary collector of anecdotes, at one moment, Washington led forward in person a shaky pack of militia and, seeing Mawhood’s line about to deliver a volley, set his people an example of steadiness by halting thirty yards from the British, reining his horse’s head to the front and calmly facing the blazing muskets.

He then took the perhaps greater risk of ordering his own men to fire. They did, “without their adverting to the posi¬ tion of the general, who is providentially preserved from being injured either by foe or friend.” 11

One of his aides-de-camp, a young Irishman, Colonel John Fitzgerald, having been sent to the rear to hustle along some laggards, returned just in time to see Washington, posing as statuary for once in his life, waiting for the volleys to cross. Fitzgerald gave him up for lost, laid his reins on his pommel and drew his hat over his eyes to hide the vision.

The smoke obliterated Washington but before it cleared he came out of it on the gallop waving his hat and cheering his men forward. Fitzgerald spurred to his side to shout:

“Thank God! your excellency is safe!”

“Away, my dear colonel,” Washington howled back.

“Bring up the troops — the day is our own.” 12

Washington once more, as always, terrified his bravest offi-

GEORGE WASHINGTON

36

cers by his incredible indifference to peril. But he was in a frenzy now for the victory that belonged to him. He had brought the greater number to the point of contact. He had all the advantages, but not a moment to lose, for Cornwallis was certainly hot on his trail. If the Americans would not stand up to this little British detachment, what would they do when a British army poured in?

So he swung his great white horse this way and that, stretched him out on a lope, bridled him in to a halt, whirled him high and brought him down to a swift run again. He sent Cadwalader forward in a charge with cannon, but saw the line halt within fifty yards of the British, refuse the chance, break and fall back. Cadwalader formed them in line again and they made another try, but they could not face it. They collapsed and ran to a forest a hundred and fifty yards in the rear.

Captain Rodney’s men took post behind haystacks and build¬ ings with two cannon. Only a few of his men would stay with him, but he kept up a continuous fire that galled the British.

Washington began at last to spread a line around the ridge and envelop Mawhood’s men so well that the 40th regiment rushing down from Princeton could not get to him. In fact it ran into General Sullivan, who handled it roughly and flung it back in disorder.

Gradually Washington closed in on Mawhood’s little band, fighting grimly, though their excited artillery men fired over the heads of the Americans. Washington sent Colonel Hand’s riflemen to turn the British left and ordered Colonel Daniel Hitchcock of Yale to turn their right.

Hitchcock was suffering from dysentery, and in just such a high fever as had racked Washington when he took part in Braddock’s Defeat long before, but he led forward his regi¬ ment, now reduced to less than six hundred men, with such courage, and his men took the British fire so well that the red¬ coats recoiled and left their two brass cannon, all they had, in Hitchcock’s possession.

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 37

_ Washington later took Hitchcock by the hand and thanked him and his regiment publicly and Greene took off his watch and made him a present of it. Then Hitchcock staggered away to die of his fever ten days later.13

The British, hopelessly outnumbered, held their ground with such magnificence that Washington is said to have ex¬ claimed to his staff with bitter envy:

“See how those noble fellows fight! Ah! gentlemen, when shall we be able to keep an army long enough together to dis¬ play a discipline equal to our enemies?” 14

The language as reported is probably too turgid for him, but in his letter to Congress he spoke of the enemy’s “gallant resistance.” 15 The British properly said of Mawhood that

the brave commander, and his equally brave regiment, have gained immortal honor.” 16

Having lost his only cannon to Hitchcock and seeing Hand closing in, Mawhood fell back to the crest of the hill, where he could survey the twenty-five-to-one odds against him, for he was by now cut off from the 55th, and the 40th was lost to sight. He might have surrendered without disgrace, but he remembered his orders to join Cornwallis. He wheeled his line and, with what remained of the noble little 17th regi¬ ment, bayoneted his way through the multitudes crowding around him. Those who survived then broke into a wild run and scattered across the fields. Though his spaniels are not mentioned in the chronicles, it may be hoped that they were not left dead or wounded on the gory snow.

Strange to say, the picturesque Mawhood rides out of Amer¬ ican history. He reappeared for a day in an obscure indecisive action a year later, then was called to England as an aide to his grateful King.17

His one regiment had lost sixty-six killed and wounded and thirty-five captured, out of a total of about two hundred.

Howe thanked Mawhood and Scott in his General Orders, and the historian of the British army, Fortescue, pays a double compliment to Mawhood and his opponent:

38 GEORGE WASHINGTON

“In the circumstances he can hardly be blamed for risking an action; for it was difficult for a man to divine that Washington, who was credited with the glaring blunders of the past campaign, could be capable of movements so brilliant and so audacious.

Pursuit of the fugitives was hastily organized by Washing¬ ton, who gathered what riflemen he could and led them him¬ self, forgetting all about the rest of his army in the zest of the hunt. He was having his revenge for the sickening hu¬ miliation he had endured when, on Harlem Heights, he had heard the British bugles blow the fox-hunt call as they rode down the panic-stricken rebels.

He was in high feather now and Captain Harris of Balti¬ more heard him cry out;

“It’s a fine fox chase, my boys.” 19

“Such was the impetuosity of the man’s character, when he gave rein to his sensibilities,” says Wilkinson.

A squad of the Philadelphia gentlemen who had recently joined Washington accompanied him in the round-up. One of them was Mr. John Donaldson, who had a brisk morning. He rode so far ahead of the footmen that any straggler might have killed him. But he took Lieutenant Simpson in the saddle with him, and Simpson, says Wilkinson, “whenever a fugitive threatened to be refractory, jumped off and shot him, and in this manner three men, whilst taking aim at Mr. Donaldson, were knocked down and his life saved, but he made a score of prisoners, whom he sent to his rear after disarming them.”

The fugitives were so widely scattered and Washington so headlong in his gallopade that he seems to have gone quite blind with joy. Again an aide saved him from capture or death. He was accompanied now by the devoted Colonel Stephen Moylan, who had been his secretary during the siege of Boston, had served as quartermaster-general until relieved by General Mifflin, and had now returned to Washington’s side.

Remembering the fear and hatred of the papacy that had so inflamed the colonists and their rage at the tolerance shown

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 39

to the Catholics by the Quebec Act, which was one of the im¬ portant causes of the Revolution, it was odd to see Washington cantering along in warm friendship with a brother of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cork.20 But it showed how little Washington cared for the fierce sectarian wars. Today he was unconsciously earning the renewed interest of His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of France.

Blindly eager to add Mawhood to his other prisoners Washington was outlining to Moylan just how he would sur¬ round the fugitives when Moylan suddenly asked:

“But where are your troops?”

Washington turned in his saddle, and saw that he and Moy¬ lan were alone on the road.21

He turned and galloped back, passing a few who had fol¬ lowed him and ordering them to return. He might easily have been captured, for Colonel Potter, who followed Maw¬ hood too closely, was taken along prisoner.

If Washington had gone a little farther he would have run into the whole British army pressing north, since General Les¬ lie’s troops had already been ordered forward by couriers from Cornwallis, whose men had left Trenton, says Knox, “in a most infernal sweat, — running, puffing, and blowing, and swearing at being so outwitted.” 22

Realizing that the British would soon be dashing in to rob him of his success, Washington remembered the bridge that he had ordered Mercer to destroy at daybreak. Encountering Captain Varnum of the Massachusetts line, he ordered him to take a detail and break down the bridge. The captain touched his hat and asked:

“Are there enough men?”

Washington answered with blood-curdling calm:

“Enough to be cut to pieces.”

The captain turned so white that, as he rejoined his troops, he pinched his cheeks for fear that they should see his pallor.23

The danger was real enough, for the British came up soon after the demolition began and opened fire on the detachment,

40 GEORGE WASHINGTON

several of whom had to work in the icy stream or tumbled

into it. ,

Among these was Major Kelly, who was on the wiong end

of a timber that he was hacking at when British soldiers came dashing down to the creek. One of them plunged into the icewater just as Major Kelly fell into it. As was to be ex¬ pected of a Kelly, he came up clutching by the collar the im¬ petuous Britisher. Dripping and shivering, the Major ran with his soppy prisoner while Leslie’s men hesitated to breast the torrent until their commander came up and drove them through.24

Meanwhile, Washington paused on the corpse-littered bat¬ tleground to see to his wounded. In the ploughed field where Haslett lay dead, he saw some British captives supporting a bleeding officer. Washington paused to ask who he was and was told that he was Captain Leslie, twenty-six years old. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who had accompanied Washington from Trenton and joined him now, exclaimed:

“A son of the Earl of Levin?”

On being answered Yes, Rush begged to be allowed to give the young man special care as his father had been very kind when Rush was a student in Edinburgh. Captain Leslie was taken along with the troops, but died that night and was buried with the honors of war by his weeping fellow prisoners."5

General Mercer had been carried into the riddled home of the Quakers. The house was crowded with wounded and dying as were other houses thereabout. Washington rode up to Thomas Olden’s house and asked the farmer to make room for some British wounded and look after them.26 He believed that Mercer was dead or dying, but could not carry him off and had to leave him for the British to bury when they came up. He lived till January 1 2th and was buried in Philadelphia.

In the meanwhile there was a tremendous flurry in the American army. The troops were well on their way north when somebody remembered that Washington had last been

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 41

seen galloping south. Firing was heard in that direction. General St. Clair and the others were sure that he had been killed or taken prisoner, and went on about their business in dismay.27

It was because of terrors such as this that Washington’s officers protested loudly against his recklessness. Benjamin Harrison wrote to Robert Morris:

“Every officer complains of his exposing himself too much.”28

The defeat of Mawhood, which is really the first battle of Princeton, has taken a long telling, yet it was all over in twenty minutes. It was, however, “for the time it lasted and the numbers engaged, the most fatal to our officers of any action during the whole of the Revolutionary war.” 29

The defeat of the British was still to be completed. The majestic solidity of Mawhood’s line had not been rivalled by the 55th and the 40th, some of whom had flung away their arms and vied with the American militia in panic. During Washington’s absence, the braver among them had drawn up in line at a ravine half-a-mile below Nassau Hall, where Gen¬ eral St. Clair attacked them and drove them in flight. Most of them struck out for Brunswick and did not halt till they reached there. But a few of them crowded into Nassau Hall with a portion of the 40th that had not responded to Maw¬ hood’s summons. They knocked out the windows and made ready for a desperate resistance.

Captain Alexander Hamilton is said to have commanded the light cannon run into position here. It sent through a window a six-pound shot that passed through the chapel and neatly decapitated a portrait of George II. It fired again and the shot glancing from the outer wall nearly killed the horse on which Major Wilkinson was mounted. Captain Moore with some militiamen then dashed into the building and the inmates surrendered, 194 in all.

And now Washington reappeared on the scene. There was

42 GEORGE WASHINGTON

pleasure in the knowledge that he had escaped annihilation at Trenton and had annihilated the British power at Princeton, but the job had taken an alarming amount of time.

He had lost about forty killed and wounded, the exact num¬ ber being uncertain. Seven of the dead or dying were officers, and among his best.

The British loss was about four hundred, of whom perhaps a hundred were killed, and fourteen officers and two hundred and sixteen men prisoners.30

Washington had captured some cannon but had no horses to carry them off, except that he shifted the teams from two of his six-pounders and swapped them for Mawhood’s two superior brass cannon.

Never dreaming how great his triumph would be in its effect and how glorious at a distance, he regarded it as a petty by- blow, an unforeseen interruption of his original plan and a disruption of it. He was still eighteen miles from his goal at Brunswick, and once more on the defensive, for Cornwallis was actually on the outskirts of the town. Everywhere he looked he saw most of his troops scattered on the ground as if slain. They were fast asleep where they fell on their faces.

“Marching in the frigid cold without proper nourishment and uniform, the soldier’s sufferings were possibly greater than those at Valley Forge,” says Major Ganoe, and adds: “It was estimated by eyewitnesses that the ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-sup¬ plied and exhausted American army could then have been put to flight ... by one well-equipped and drilled battalion.” 31

Washington’s heart was full of disappointment. If he had had a few fresh troops he could have accomplished miracles, but he lacked even cavalry enough to pursue the shattered British. He had with him only those twenty-two Philadelphia gentlemen, and he could not expect them to destroy the British infantry in Brunswick. He gave up with a sigh all hope of those precious three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was so pushed that he could not write his report to Congress until three days later and then it is more tinged with what

THE TWO BATTLES OF PRINCETON 43

might have been than with the unsuspected glory that was.32

Relinquishing his dreams of capturing the rich loot at Bruns¬ wick, he was so far from daring to try conclusions with Corn¬ wallis, that he dared not stop to pick up his wounded prisoners. He had to leave his own wounded in Princeton to British mercy. His men had been without food since the night before.

At the order to march, the dead arose and pounded their red soles on the icy road again. At Kingston they turned off to the left from the Brunswick highway that was to have led to riches. Arriving at Somerset Court House, they made bivouac in the field with the sky for their blanket.

Cornwallis went puffing on to Brunswick expecting to find Washington ahead of him. But Washington pushed on to the hamlet of Pluckemin and spent his Sunday writing letters and accepting the advice of his council to seek a safety in the mountains.

The next camp was made at Morristown in the Short Hills of New Jersey. And this proved to be one of the most aston¬ ishingly happy strategical positions in all history. He was doing a better thing than he knew and he had done a luckier thing. In the words of the historian of the American army:

“Washington’s daring and skill had caused his little force to out¬ number that part of the enemy he had attacked. Had he failed in any part of his plan he would have been annihilated and gone down into history as a fool.” 33

But history is full of fools who might have been immortal heroes if their adversaries had been a little less acute. Wash¬ ington’s fame and his success in building a nation depended all too often on his genius for selecting adversaries who ig¬ nored the plainest laws of common sense and military practice. If Howe had followed the motto, “Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today,” he would have put off the United States to a far tomorrow.

V

LAURELS RAIN

ACCORDING to the anecdotards, Washington’s mother was the only one who begrudged him praise for the skill with which, in two moves, he shifted his army from a position of disaster to a position of checkmate. There are few stories told of her conduct during the war. It is to be hoped that they are all libels.

According to the tradition, when her Fredericksburg neigh¬ bors rushed to her with the news of the two Trentons, the two Princetons and the inspired occupation of Morristown, Mary Washington rebuked them with a priggish soul-quenching egotism:

“But, my good sirs, here is too much flattery ; still George will not forget thq lessons I early taught him — he will not forget himself, though he is the subject of so much praise.” 1 This is given as a proof of her “preternatural serenity,” 2 and of the distressing account Lossing gives, that “she never betrayed any uncommon emotion.”

But surely emotion is not a crime and a good deal of delight and less self-satisfaction would be pardonable in the mother of a Washington. The denial of a trace of elation after such a crisis amounts almost to denying that Washington had a mother at all. It orphans him.

Whether or not Mary Washington was a Tory at heart, as has been affirmed and denied, she unquestionably abhorred war, and her son’s military predilections. She can be as easily forgiven and loved for trying incessantly to dissuade her son from fighting as he can be forgiven for disobeying her, but it seems too cruel that she should be accused of unwillingness to rejoice in his escape from calamity to glory. Almost more

44

LAURELS RAIN

45

heartless is the silence she is said to have slapped him in the face with when he visited her himself after his Yorktown triumph, for which he waited four whole years.

The worst of it is that these grim stories are related in al¬ leged praise of Mary Washington. If they are true, it is well that such icy tactlessness skipped the generation of her son, who was singularly liberal in praise and parsimonious of cen¬ sure.

Whimsical legend, after making Washington’s mother in¬ different to his welfare, has turned the indifferent Frederick of Prussia into his warmest admirer. The story is forever repeated that Frederick the Great said of Washington’s battles between December 25th and January 4th:

“They are the most brilliant recorded in the annals of mili¬ tary achievement.” Also it is insisted that he sent to Washing¬ ton a noble sword on which was engraved: “From the oldest soldier in Europe to the greatest soldier in the world.” 3

Also, he denounced the rental of the Hessians and forbade their passage through his country, thus foiling Howe’s hope of overwhelming reinforcement.

Frederick did denounce the rental of the Hessians, but it was because he objected to anything that helped England. He had hired them himself previously. His refusal to let them cross his realm was only temporary and he shanghaied the deserters into his own army.4

Frederick loathed the English whom he called “diese God- dams,” and the ministry, which he called “die Goddam- Regierung,” but he did not love the Americans, especially not the republicans. He refused to admit to Berlin the American representative, Arthur Lee, unless he came secretly: S’il vient inconitOy bony mats fas en deployant son caractere .B Frederick usually wrote and spoke French in preference to his own lan¬ guage. When Lee arrived Frederick refused to see him and teased him frantic with evasions. When Lee’s papers were stolen and copied by the British minister, Hugh Elliot, whom Frederick called “goddam Elliot!” 6 the King made no protest

46 GEORGE WASHINGTON

and it was Lee instead of Elliot who lost prestige at Berlin.'

Frederick refused to admit American privateers into his ports. Evasively he promised to recognize American inde¬ pendence when France did, then declined to keep his word since the outbreak of the war of the Bavarian Succession in 1778 made him eager for the sympathy of England. When the American Revolution was over he actually urged the Eng¬ lish not to withdraw their troops too quickly as he doubted that the republic would remain independent long.

The only sword Washington received from Germany was one sent to him in 1 7 9 5> nearly ten years after Fredericks death, by a Prussian cutler who entrusted it to his son to de¬ liver; the son pawned it in a tavern for thirty dollars; an un¬ known admirer redeemed it and left it at Alexandria with a friend of Washington’s who paid the thirty dollars and carried the sword to Mount Vernon.8

The sword story may have started from a mythical tale (published in the New Jersey Journal of August 9, 1780) that Frederick had sent his portrait to Washington. But he did not do even this.

Washington always revered Frederick the Great, and imme¬ diately after his marriage he ordered Frederick’s bust for his library, in which he kept a 13-volume edition of Frederick’s works, but there is not a single hint in the voluminous records of Frederick that he ever said a kind word or cherished a kind thought of Washington. He did refer once to Washington’s laughable stupidities, but even then bracketed him with others as an object lesson. He wrote to his brother:

“We study the Washingtons, Howes, Bourgoynes and Carletons in order to learn from them this great art of war wherein man can never learn enough, in order to laugh at their stupidities {urn ilber ihre Dummheiten zu lachevJ) and to approve what they carry out in unison with the rules of the art.” 9

Frederick also wrote to his friend Voltaire a word about General Howe, “whose name every dog pronounces when he barks.”

LAURELS RAIN

47

The real Frederick was within his rights and acting reason¬ ably enough for his own people’s interests, but the legendary Frederick will probably always pursue the legendary Washing¬ ton with his legendary superlative and his legendary sword, which will flash as long as Excalibur and live the better for its glittering untruth.

The praise accredited to Frederick was none the less de¬ served and was really uttered by another Prussian, von Billow, who wrote:

“The surprise of Trenton was . . . one of the best planned and boldest executed military movements of our century. It was, however, excelled by the Attempt upon Princeton, and both events are sufficient to elevate a General to the temple of immortality.” 10

Botta, the Italian historian, writing in 1809, was moved to this well-earned exordium:

“Thus, by an army almost reduced to extremity, Philadelphia was saved, Pennsylvania protected, New Jersey nearly recovered, and a victorious and powerful enemy laid under the necessity of quitting all thoughts of acting offensively, in order to defend himself. Achieve¬ ments so astonishing acquired an immense glory for the captain-general of the United States. All nations shared in the surprise of the Ameri¬ cans; all equally admired and applauded the prudence, the constancy, and the noble intrepidity of general Washington. An unanimous voice pronounced him the savior of his country; all extolled him as equal to the most celebrated commanders of antiquity; all proclaimed him the Fabius of America.” 11

In England there was the typically British admiration for a brilliant enemy. Twenty-two years before, Horace Walpole had written of Washington as a swaggerer, a “fanfaron” 12 again as a “brave braggart.” 13 He lived long enough to con¬ fess the splendor of the Princeton climax: “Washington the dictator has shown himself both a Fabius and a Camillus. His march through our lines is allowed to have been a prodigy of generalship.” He dubbed him “Caius Manlius Washingtonius Americanus, the dictator.” 14 The English exile, young Nicho¬ las Creswell, marooned in Virginia, wrote in his Journal:

48

GEORGE WASHINGTON

“Six weeks ago this gentleman [a Mr. Kirk] was lamenting the unhappy situation of the Americans and pitying the wretched condi¬ tion of their much-beloved General, supposing his want of skill and experience in military matters had brought them all to the brink of destruction. In short, all was gone, all was lost. But now the scale is turned and Washington’s name is extolled to the clouds. Alexander, Pompey and Hannibal were but pigmy Generals in comparison. . . . It is the Damd Hessians that has caused this, curse the scoundrel that first thought of sending them here.” 15

Robert Morris, without whose money Washington would have been perhaps an almost unaccompanied fugitive or a prisoner, wrote of him: “He is the greatest man on earth.” William Hooper, congressman from North Carolina, repeated the phrase:

“Will posterity believe the tale? . . . how often America has been rescued from ruin by the mere strength of his genius, conduct, and courage, encountering every obstacle that want of money, men, arms, ammunition, could throw in his way, an impartial world will say with you that he is the greatest man on earth. Misfortunes are the element in which he shines; . . . He rises superior to them all; they . . . bring into view those great qualities which his modesty keens con¬ cealed.” 16 F

The poets, of course, leapt at this chance to celebrate them¬ selves; and one of the paeans, called “The Jerseys” and issued with great promptness, certainly shows no lack of warmth or of classic elegances:

“As Mars, great god of batdes! lay,

In dalliance soft and amorous play,

On fair Bellona’s breast;

Surpris’d he rear’d his hoary head,

The conscious goddess shook with dread.

And all her fears confess’d.

Loud thunder roll’d through Heaven’s domain,

The Ethereal world was wrapt in flame,

The god amazed spoke:

Go forth, ye powers, and make it known,

Who dares thus boldly shake my throne,

And fill my realms with smoke . . .

LAURELS RAIN

49

“The god with wonder heard the story,

Astonish’d view’d Columbia’s glory,

Which time can ne’er subdue,

Great Warren’s deeds, and Gates’s fame,

Join’d to great Lee’s immortal name;

And cried, Can this be true?

“Britain shall cease to plague mankind,

With sister tyrants strive to bind,

And check the free-born soul;

To Washington her trophies yield,

Freedom shall triumph in the field,

And rule from pole to pole.” 17

It is not even laughably bombastic to represent Washington’s foxy escape with 5,000 ragged starvelings from 5,500 Hes¬ sian and British hirelings as a heaven-shaking cataclysm that frightened the god of war out of the lap of the goddess of war, and filled Bellona’s bedroom with smoke.

Time has dealt as roughly with “Gates’s fame” and “great Lee’s immortal name” as with the proclamation that Britain would “cease to plague mankind” and that Freedom would “rule from pole to pole.”

The tribute that Washington undoubtedly appreciated most of all at the time was the one paid him by Cornwallis, who had naturally little to say of praise in his despatches but pro¬ ceeded to abandon all of New Jersey except what he could protect from New York, whither he hastened with his rescued treasure chest.

VI

HE DISCOVERS MORRISTOWN

ALL this while Washington was a man who stands in a rainbow, seeing none of the radiance, and feeling only the rain. To people at a distance he was, and is, enaureoled in beauty; but he was aware only of his bewilder¬ ment and the bedraggled despondency of his companions. He had his courage and little else for his comfort.

Morristown turned out to be a position of amazing strategic felicity, but he took to it on the advice of others at a time when he did not know where else to turn.1 Whoever advised him to hide there might have used the words of Bairnsfather’s Old Bill to ’Erbert:

“If you know a better ’ole go to it.”

It seems that Washington had no knowledge of Morristown and was inclined to march back to the Delaware by way of Cranbury and cross to Philadelphia, when somebody per¬ suaded him to file to the left and stay in New Jersey. St. Clair probably deserves the honor of proposing this move as well as the escape from Trenton.2 In any case, Washington accepted the counsel, and gave up with regret his dream of taking Brunswick. As he wrote to Congress in the report pre¬ viously cited:

“My original plan, when I set out from Trenton, was, to push on to Brunswic; but the harassed state of our troops, many of them having had no rest for two nights and a day, and the danger of losing the advantage we had gained by aiming at too much, induced me, by the advice of my officers, to relinquish the attempt. But, in my judgment, six or eight hundred fresh troops upon a forced march would have destroyed all their stores and magazines, taken (as we have since learned) their military chest, containing seventy thousand pounds, and put an end to the war.” 3

50

HE DISCOVERS MORRISTOWN

5 1

Harsh things are generally said of councils of war, but they have often justified themselves. Washington was saved from self-destruction more than once by his willingness to listen to reason. It is plain that in this case he surrendered with reluc¬ tance, still half unconvinced. But if he had had the six or eight hundred fresh troops he longed for, what could he have done with them, even if he had accomplished the capture of the six hundred soldiers at Brunswick? He could hardly have set the magazines on fire before Cornwallis would have been on him with the very 5,500 men whom Washington had run away from at Trenton with his 5,000 then fresh troops.

As it was, Washington barely got out of Princeton in time, and he would not even have made Morristown if the bridges behind him had not been demolished under British fire. At Brunswick he would have been only a short distance from Perth Amboy where the British could have landed thousands more. In fact, reinforcements had already been started for Brunswick on January 1st. The British Lieutenant-Colonel Markham described in his Journal the forced march he made through knee-deep mire, over mill-dams and ice, to reach Brunswick with General Mathew, a regiment, two battalions of British regulars and a number of cannon.4

In a short while Howe had ten thousand men concentrated at Brunswick and Perth Amboy.

Washington in all probability would have been crushed. He might indeed have “ended the war,” as he wrote, but not as he hoped.

With fewer men than Mawhood had how could he have crushed as many British regulars as Mawhood had; then have faced eight times his force under Cornwallis?

When he learned that Cornwallis had left no troops in Trenton or Princeton, he began to realize a little of what he had accomplished, though he did not yet understand what a stronghold he would have in Morristown, and expected to halt there only briefly. He was already planning new and daring uses for the army he had hired for only six weeks longer.

5 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON

From Pluckemin he wrote to Putnam a letter of considerable guile:

“I shall remove from hence to Morristown, there shall wait a few days and refresh the troops, during which time I shall keep a strict watch upon the enemy’s motions. They appear to be panic-struck, and I am in some hopes of driving them out of the Jerseys. . . . You will give out your strength to be twice as great as it is.” 6

Though he expected to leave Morristown within a few days,6 he did not leave the town for nearly five months. Every one of his innumerable letters was written at Morris¬ town, from January 7th to May 28th. The advantages of the place were described by Major Wilkinson:

‘‘This position, little understood at the time, was afterwards dis¬ covered to be a most safe one for the winter quarters of an army of observation, and such was General Washington’s; the approach to it from the sea-board is rendered difficult and dangerous by a chain of sharp hills, ... it is situate in the heart of a country abounding with forage and provisions, and is nearly equidistant from New York and Amboy, and also from Newark and New Brunswick, with defiles in rear to cover a retreat should circumstances render it necessary.” 7

Washington took up his headquarters in the old Freeman Tavern kept by Captain Jacob Arnold. The troops built them¬ selves huts to replace their tents. To keep them out of mis¬ chief he set them to erecting what was known as Fort Nonsense.

Washington had had to leave fifty-six wounded and sick British prisoners under parole at Princeton. Cornwallis could not carry them away when he abandoned the town and Wash¬ ington got them back since he at once established an outpost there. But when he consented to Cornwallis’ sending a sur¬ geon to look them over, he ordered Joseph Reed to be careful that the surgeon should not “convey a true account of your numbers (which ought to be a good deal magnified).”

Following this advice, Putnam had the rooms in the college and other buildings all lighted up, and his few men were pa¬ raded about in such a manner that the Englishman returned to his camp with the report that Putnam had at least five thou¬ sand men.8

HE DISCOVERS MORRISTOWN

53

In a recent biography of Captain Neil, who w'as killed at Princeton, Edwin Knott Hopson, Jr., reveals, in a hitherto unpublished letter, another of the countless instances of Washington’s goodness of heart. Captain Neil left two small children and a widow, who wrote to Washington in February:

“The unhappy situation in which I am left by the late Catastrophe of my Husband, . . . induces me to apply to your Excellency, Who’s known Benevolence & politeness emboldens the most diffident.”

She asked Washington to help her obtain the relief prom¬ ised in a supposed resolution of Congress. Washington sent her letter to John Hancock, still President of Congress, with a recommendation of his own, but confessing: “If any provi¬ sion is made, I do not recollect what it is.”

Congress waited two months and answered that there was no provision for widows, though the war had gone on now for nearly two years. Washington wrote a letter of regret:

“Madam, I hoped to have given you a more favourable acc4 of my application to Congress, in your behalf, than the Inclosed resolu¬ tion will convey, — but that Honble body have, I presume, thought it rather too early to adopt a measure of this kind yet — what they may do hereafter, I cannot undertake to say.- — In the meantime, as I sincerely feel for your distress, I beg your acceptance of the Inclosed, as a small testimony of my Inclination to serve you upon any future occasion.”

The postscript notes “Fifty Dollars sent.”

Mrs. Neil appealed then to the state of New Jersey, but it was not until June, 1781, that she was awarded “a certificate of half pay,” for three years at twenty-five dollars a month.9

Congress completely ignored the widows and children of its slain soldiers, leaving them to the care of their states. In June 1 777 when General Sullivan appealed for money to replace his lost baggage, John Adams wrote frankly:

“I can only say, that Congress have hitherto refused to grant any Compensation to Sufferers of any kind. . . . Several Officers Widows, in deplorable Circumstances, have petitioned and been refused.” 10

The following winter when officers were resigning unusually fast, the problem of caring for widows was discussed and de-

54

GEORGE WASHINGTON

ferred. Washington pleaded in vain and the question, becom¬ ing involved with a plan to give officers half-pay for life, was tossed to and fro till 1780 when widows and motherless chil¬ dren were granted half-pay for seven years. The creation of a new government involved so many details and difficulties that the sins of omission were inevitably numberless and some of them cruel.

Washington was about to enter upon a campaign against obstacles countless and immovable. For the next few months the waging of battle was of necessity almost entirely ignored so far as he was concerned, except for the raiders he sent out to nag the British on the Raritan and shut off their supplies, and the vain and frequent efforts of the British to tease him down from his high fortress to some ambush in the plains, — except also for the disgusting outcome of his hopes for cap¬ turing New York.11

From Pluckemin he had written to General Heath on that busy Sunday, outlining a campaign of vaulting ambition that seems from this distance bound to have overleapt itself and landed on the other side. He counted on the reinforcements that were reported to be pouring in — but wrere not. He began by describing his success at Princeton 3 then went on:

<£It has been determined in council, that you should move down towards New York with a considerable force, as if you had a design upon the city. That being an object of great importance, the enemy will be reduced to the necessity of withdrawing a considerable part of their force from the Jerseys, if not the whole, to secure the city. I shall draw the force on this side of the North River together at Morristown, where I shall watch the motions of the enemy, and avail myself of every favorable circumstance.” 12

The instructions he sent to General Lincoln two days later actually anticipated the capture of New York: “in all prob¬ ability.” 13

Receiving Washington’s orders with alacrity but realizing with dismay that he had only militia to command, Heath marched his army against New York in three divisions: all on

HE DISCOVERS MORRISTOWN

55

the night of January 17th. By some miracle they struck the outposts at Kingsbridge simultaneously before sunrise on the 1 8th 5 but patrols discovered them and fled giving the alarm. Heath drew up his army before Fort Independence and sent in word: “Twenty minutes only can be allowed the garri¬ son to give their answer j and should it be in the negative, they must abide the consequences.”

The garrison replied verbally with a refusal to surrender and emphasized it with cannon, of whose presence the Ameri¬ cans were ignorant. Eleven days of burlesque siege followed during which a crowd of rebel generals with a handful of pri¬ vates quarreled and resigned while rain and snow added to their misery.

On January 29th, General Lincoln went back to Dobb’s Ferry, General Wooster to New Rochelle and General Scott to White Plains.14

Washington was on the butt end of the joke and he was furious. On the 17th and 19th he had actually written to Heath, in the belief that New York contained only a thousand men, and was perhaps “left so destitute of troops as to afford you an easy conquest of it.” 15 On January 22nd he was writing Congress that he had such well-authenticated accounts of the capture of Fort Independence “that I cannot doubt it. It is said that he took 400 prisoners in that Fort 3 and that he in¬ vested Fort Washington.” 18

This was confirmed by three officers and a spy, and one can imagine his joy in the thought.

On January 27th he was still in high hope enough to write to Heath:

“If you can take possession of the country round about the city, or the city itself, I do not desire you to desist. I have not been favored with a line from you since the 19th, and that never reached me till this evening.” 17

It shows the fog of uncertainty that surrounded all com¬ munication. He was just thirty miles from Heath as the crow or an airship flies, yet it took eight days for a message to reach

GEORGE WASHINGTON

56

him. Only then he learned to his chagrin that Heath was so far from conquering New York or besieging Fort Washington that he had been driven off. On February 3rd Washington received two letters from Heath dated January 30th, and con¬ fessed his disappointment, though for publication he belittled his hopes. He wrote to Heath:

“I never was very sanguine, as to any thing more being effected, than to oblige the garrison either to surrender or evacuate Fort Inde¬ pendence and retire within the Island. As neither has been done, I wish your summons had never been sent, as I am fearful it will expose us to the ridicule of our enemies.” 18

After writing Heath this mild letter for the general eye, he wrote a private letter in which his wrath is tempered with mercy and courtesy and even a hint of further hope:

“This letter is in addition to my public one of this date. It is to hint to you, and I do it with concern, that your conduct is censured. . . . Your summons, as you did not attempt to fulfil your threats, was not only idle but farcical, and will not fail of turning the laugh exceed¬ ingly upon us. These things I mention to you as a friend, for you will perceive that they have composed no part of my public letter. . . . Upon the whole it appears to me from information, that, if you had pushed vigorously, upon your first going to Fort Independence, the post would have been carried; and query may it not yet be taken by surprise?” 19

To this Heath replied with a long letter of self-defence, denying the bombast of the summons.20 He had studied tactics as a boy, had become a captain at eighteen, and had taken a brave and important part in the pursuit of the British after Lexington.21 It would have been pitiful if he had been laughed out of the army.

Eventually he won back Washington’s confidence so well that he was put in command of West Point after Arnold’s treason.

Of Washington it can be said, as of few other generals, that no officer ever suffered from his greed for power, his jealousy, or his revenge.

VII

THE PENALTY FOR TREASON

THE year 1777 “had three gallowses in it, meaning the three sevens,” wrote John Adams,1 quoting a Tory prophecy, only one of many that nearly came true. Adams would have dangled from one of those gallowses un¬ questionably for he had been especially omitted from the am¬ nesty offered by Lord Howe in 1776. What third neck would have been stretched is uncertain, but there can be no doubt that the first gibbet would have displayed George Washington as the chief traitor.

The hanging would have been the mildest detail of the ghastly business. The logical and historical intention of exe¬ cuting the leading rebels had been expressed when Washington was besieging the British in Boston, and it could not have been changed by the humiliation the royal troops had suffered there:

“As every rebel who is taken prisoner in America has incurred the pain of death by the law martial, it is said government will charter transports ... to convey the culprits to the East Indies ... it is the intention of the government to punish only the ringleaders and com¬ manders capitally , and to suffer the inferior rebels to redeem their lives by entering into the East India Company’s service.” 2

A noble lord in 1774 had declared that the best way to treat the rebels was to “hang, draw, and quarter fifty of them,” and the phrase was meant literally.3

The penalties for treason were hideous in Washington’s day and there is every reason to believe that he would have paid them in full if he had fallen into the hands of the British, in whose eyes he was certainly a rebel and a traitor.

He was not only deluding multitudes and seducing them from their loyalty, but he was causing great slaughter among

57

GEORGE WASHINGTON

58

the British, compelling them to hire foreign soldiers, stirring up foreign nations to renewed hostility, and reducing the Em¬ pire to such straits that financial ruin impended. “The trades¬ men who supplied the palaces with common necessaries were reduced to great straits for want of their money . . . the coal-merchant dunned in vain for his bill, amounting to £6000.” 4

Even while Washington was executing his dazzling flare- back at Trenton, King George and Lord North were pushing through Parliament a bill to deprive American rebels of the immemorial advantages of the sacred Habeas Corpus Act, to permit the King to imprison them when he pleased without bail and bring them to trial at his pleasure. His Majesty’s own letter gloating over his success with the bill is still extant.5

Washington’s discomfiture of the royal troops could not have diminished his liability to the penalties for high treason, and if he had been taken there at Princeton where he rode so far in his pursuit of Mawhood — or if he had been taken on any of the other occasions when he came so near capture — he would have been hurried to England on the first transport, with no pro¬ tection from that cornerstone of English freedom, the Habeas Corpus Act. He would have been thrown into the dismal Tower of London, tried for high treason and unquestionably found guilty.

We are so used to seeing him as lofty statuary in an attitude of supreme power or as portraiture in a mood of serene dignity that we can hardly conceive of him shackled, stretched out on a low sledge and drawn feet foremost over the cobbled streets of London, paraded as a felon through jeering mobs. He is all but unimaginable in the grotesque indignity of being sus¬ pended “between heaven and earth as being worthy of neither.” 6

Yet he must have often and vividly imagined himself under¬ going the tortures inflicted on many Englishmen of equal sincerity before his time, as afterward. He, too, might have been let down from the gibbet still alive so that he might see

THE PENALTY FOR TREASON

59

his own bowels torn out and his heart wrenched forth to be exhibited to his eyes and to the rabble, then thrown into the flames. He was so powerful of frame that he might well have survived long enough to feel the ax cleave his neck, before his head was lifted by the hair and held aloft in the hands of an executioner, who would have walked to the right of the plat¬ form and cried:

“This is the head of a traitor, George Washington!”

Then he would have walked to the left of the platform, lift¬ ing the white face high and crying again:

“This is the head of a traitor, George Washington!”

Next, his ghastly reliques would have been cut into four parts, parboiled for preservation against the rough weather, and exposed in various conspicuous places. In time the wind might have blown his head from the pole where it was stuck, and rolled it along the gutter into oblivion.

Such an end for such a man may seem unthinkable now, but just thirty years before the outbreak of the Revolution in America, Robert Watt suffered it for being one of a few who had conspired to overthrow the English rule in Edinburgh, and had been caught with fifty-five pikes of home manufacture. A year later, in 1746, when the followers of “darling Charlie,” the bonny Prince of Scotland, were defeated at Culloden, the few who were not slaughtered on the field or hanged or trans¬ ported were taken to England to be tried for treason, and no less than eighty men, including earls, lords, soldiers of all ages and ranks, were found guilty. Lord Mahon describes “the barbarous ceremony” done to them, and adds:

“Nor did it fail — such is the vulgar appetite for the horrible! — to draw forth exulting shouts from the spectators.” 7

Washington was already fourteen years old when these executions took place, and he must have learned of them, must have had them vaguely in mind as he made his first outcry against the English blockade of Boston, and offered to raise,

60 GEORGE WASHINGTON

subsist at his own expense, and lead against the King’s troops a thousand men.

When John Adams was ordered to France as a commissioner in 1777, he took into consideration what he called “the con¬ sequence of a capture.”

“As their Act of Parliament would authorize them to try me in England for treason, and proceed to execution too, I had no doubt they would go to the extent of their power*, and practice upon me all the cruelties of their punishment of treason.” 8

In 1778 Washington wrote of himself as “a man who fights under the weight of a proscription.” 9

When Henry Laurens of South Carolina, for some time president of Congress, was sent as an envoy to Holland in 1780 and captured by the British he was thrown into the Tower under charges of high treason.10 Circumstances saved him from death, but Frangois de la Motte, a French resident of London during the Revolution, was found guilty of high treason for giving information concerning the armies and the fleets. On July 27, 1781, he paid the price of his devotion to his native land, and was hauled on a sledge to Tyburn hill. He read a book of prayers until the moment when he must fulfill his hideous sentence. Also his heart was torn out and shown to the mob, then thrown into the flames.11

Americans make a national saint of Nathan Hale, and properly, but there was almost a mercifulness in the way he was hanged, compared to what young de la Motte endured, and what Washington might have had to endure.

In 1793 an Irish protestant clergyman named Jackson was sentenced to all the torments but killed himself before execu¬ tion. Several other convicted Irishmen escaped in the same manner, notably Wolfe Tone. In 1820, eleven leaders of a conspiracy to seize the Tower of London were hanged, be¬ headed and quartered. It was 1870 before drawing, quarter¬ ing and beheading were erased from the law. By 1903 hu¬ manity had grown so tender that Arthur Lynch, a member of parliament, sentenced to death for aiding the enemy in the

THE PENALTY FOR TREASON

6 1

South African War, was pardoned after a year of imprisonment.

But in Washington’s day the savage rites of ancient codes were still in vogue, and two years after his death, that is, in 1802, George III approved the infliction of the full penalty on seven Irish patriots whom he called traitors. If his troops had succeeded in trapping “the old fox,” Washington, what could he have done but make an equal example of him? Since the judicial utterances tended to be standardized, Washington would almost certainly have been denounced in just about the words that Lord Ellenborough pronounced in 1802 upon the seven Irishmen:

“The objects of your atrocious and traitorous conspiracy were to overthrow the Government, ... to overthrow that constitution, its established freedom and boasted usages, which have so long main¬ tained among us that just and rational equality of rights, and security of property, which have been for so many ages the envy and admira¬ tion of the world; and to erect upon its ruins a wild system of anarchy and bloodshed. ... It has, however, pleased that Divine Providence, which has mercifully watched over the safety of this nation, to defeat your wicked and abominable purpose, by arresting your projects in their dark and dangerous progress. . . .

“The only thing remaining for me is the painful task of pronounc¬ ing against you . . . the awful sentence which the law denounces against your crime, which is, that you ... be taken from the place from whence you came, and from thence you are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; for while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces, your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters, and your heads and quarters to be then at the King’s disposal; and may the Almighty God have mercy on your souls!” 12

The knowledge of what Washington constantly risked en¬ hances his own valor and furnishes perhaps a partial excuse for those less dauntless colonists who deserted in droves on the eve of a battle or thronged to accept the amnesties frequently held out by British commanders. With these unfortunate waverers Washington now prepared to deal and with a severity that brought upon him unstinted abuse as an incredible criminal.

VIII

HE CONFOUNDS THE TORIES

THE sharpest sarcasm of Washington’s victory at Tren¬ ton and Princeton was that it encouraged the Congress¬ men to resume the reins they had flung at him so hastily when they abandoned the car of state, thinking that the British would soon take Philadelphia.

They passed no official decree rescinding the grant of dicta¬ torial powers, but simply began to meddle and give orders again, and prepare to return to Philadelphia from their exile in Baltimore and “the Extravagant price of Living here, the poorest of board without any Liquor, a Dollar a day horse keeping 3 shillings sixpence or four shillings Wine twelve shillings a bottle, Rum thirty shillings per Gall, and every¬ thing else in proportion.” 1

Washington, like a faithful servant left on guard, meekly accepted the restoration of the old tone in his masters’ voices. But he woke many vigorous rebukes from all sides by one of his earliest proclamations, and some of the Congressmen also re¬ buked it as an act of usurpation and tyranny.

If he had been fighting in a foreign country he could have taken precautions against the natives as inevitably loyal to their own ruler. If he had been resisting an invasion by men of alien speech he could have relied fairly well on the loyalty of those who spoke his own tongue. But his nation was not established yet and the invaders did not call themselves foreigners. They all spoke the same language or mixed the same dialects.

When Washington had wavered backward across New Jersey

with every look of a final defeat, and Howe followed him

62

HE CONFOUNDS THE TORIES

63

with amiable proclamations of amnesty to all who hastened to ask pardon of their offended but benignant monarch, thou¬ sands of prodigal sons forswore the husks of independence.

When Washington recaptured New Jersey, to the exquisite dismay of these bad guessers, he thought it both natural and necessary to offer a proclamation and an amnesty of his own, calling for a definite making up of minds on the part of the waverers. So on January 25th he put forth an edict addressed to those who had been “intimidated,” “deluded,” or “so lost to the interest and welfare of their country, as to repair to the enemy,” explaining that “it has become necessary to distinguish between the friends of America and those of Great Britain,” and adding:

“I do therefore, in behalf of the United States, by virtue of the powers committed to me by Congress, hereby strictly command and require every person, having subscribed such declaration, taken such oath, and accepted such protection and certificate, to repair to Head- Quarters, or to the quarters of the nearest general officer of the Con¬ tinental army, or militia, until further provision can be made by the civil authority, and there deliver up such protection, certificate, and passports, and take the oath of allegiance to the United States of Amer¬ ica; nevertheless hereby granting full liberty to all such as prefer the interest and protection of Great Britain to the freedom and happiness of their country, forthwith to withdraw themselves and families within the enemy's lines. And I do hereby declare, that all and every person, who may neglect or refuse to comply with this order, within thirty days from the date hereof, will be deemed adherents to the King of Great Britain, and treated as common enemies to these American States.” 2

Abraham Clark, Congressman from New Jersey, wrote twice to his State Assembly asking it to refuse obedience to the proclamation:

“I am much alarmed with Genal Washington’s Procl". of the 25th Janry. he hath assumed the Legislative and Executive powers of Government in all the states. I hope our Legislature will . . . not tamely Submit their Authority to the Controul of a power unknown in our Constitution; We set out to Oppose Tyranny in all its Strides, and I hope we shall persevere. . . .

GEORGE WASHINGTON

64

“I think the Genrls Proclamation a Violation of our Civil Rights and Ventured to call it in question in Congress ... he requires an oath of Allegiance to the United States when such an Oath is Absurd before our Confederation takes place.” 3

It naturally excited black wrath among the Tories. The New York Gazette published it as an emanation of “the Lord Protector, Mr. George Washington,” accusing him of “moral turpitude” and giving so vivid a statement of the case against him that it is worth quoting at some length as an example of the abuse Washington had to endure from some of his fellow- countrymen:

“ ’Tis hardly possible to read over this miserable proclamation with¬ out pity and astonishment. That Mr. Washington, who once was esteemed a gentleman . . . should be so contaminated by the vice of his associates as to lose all regard to the common forms of morality, all dignity of sentiment, and decency of conduct, was not to have been expected. . . .

“His desperate situation may be his apology, but it cannot be his excuse. He might have been mistaken in respect to his notions of civil polity; but he could not have been deceived in those actions and ideas of moral turpitude, which is the disgrace of human nature. . . .

“The next material circumstance in this Proclamation, is sufficient to make an honest man shudder. It may be styled, a Proclamation for the encouragement of Perjury. Mr. Washington ‘strictly commands and requires every person,’ who has taken a solemn oath of Allegiance to the King, and called God to witness the truth and sincerity of it, to repair to him or his officers, and take another solemn oath, and call God to witness the sincerity and truth of his adherence to the cause of re¬ bellion. Such an impious disregard, such a flagrant violation of all that is serious and sacred among men, has rarely been seen in any age, country, or profession.” 4

General Mifflin wrote to him advising him that he thought it “bad policy to confine persons, who will act the part of martyrs.” Washington answered approving caution in “the treatment proper to be observed to Martyrs,” and agreeing that “Lenity will operate with greater force, in such Instances, than rigor. ’Tis therefore my first wish to have our whole conduct distinguished by it. Still it is not my desire, neither

HE CONFOUNDS THE TORIES 65

indeed is it within my power, to release any man from a con¬ finement imposed upon him by the Civil power.” 5

It is not the prettiest phase of Washington’s conduct that, knowing and saying what he did about his army and his ad¬ herents, he should issue a proclamation ordering confiscation and exile for fellow-citizens, turn them over to the civil Ad¬ ministration, and then say that he had no right to intervene for their protection. This was exactly the procedure of the Spanish Inquisition. The English historian Belcher puts briskly the case of the Tories:

“They were offered the alternative of submissive allegiance to the United States of America, or of withdrawal within the lines of the British occupation. The alternative was embarrassing. There were no United States of America, and within a very short time there were no lines of British occupation. The Thirteen Colonies were independent powers severally, and Congress was, during the Revolutionary War, nothing better than a central committee of advice, or of grievances, or a committee of public safety. . . .

“The Union of States and the confirmation of Congress as a Legis¬ lature did not take place till 1789. Consequently Washington, in de¬ manding of a New Jersey man allegiance to any one of the twelve States of which a New Jersey man was not a subject or citizen, went a long way beyond the powers vested in him as dictator. . . .

“Congress or any deputy of Congress had no more power in New Jersey without the concurrent consent of the Legislature of New Jer¬ sey than it might pretend to exert in Alaska. . . . Hence the miser¬ able Tory had to make his profession of allegiance to an authority quite nebulous, or to seek the protection of an equally nebulous defender.” 6

There is, in the Huntington Library, a mutilated and un¬ published letter of Washington’s, written February 14, 1777, to an unknown person, that states his views upon the proclama¬ tion. In part it says:

“It is not within the scan of human Wisdom to devise a perfect Plan — In all human Institutions — In the accomplishment of all great events — In the adoption of any measure for general operation, In¬ dividuals may, and will suffer; but in the case complain’d of, the mat¬ ter may, I think, be answered by propounding a few questions. —

66

GEORGE WASHINGTON

“Is it not a duty Incumbent upon the Members of every State to defend the rights & liberties of that State? — If so, is an [oath ex] torted from them to observ trary conduct, obligating If such Oath was not e but the effect of a volunta can the person taking of

considered in any other light than as an Enemy to his Country?

“Is a neutral character in one of the United States ... a justifiable one?”

He goes on to say that the Proclamation offends two kinds of people:

“namely those that are really disaffected; and such as want to lay by and wait the Issue of the dispute — The first class cannot be pleased; the next are endeavouring to play a dble. game, in which their present protections may eventually become a sure card.”

That sums up his justification. In such a struggle a neutral character was not a justifiable one, and he would not aid those who tried to “lay by” and “play a dble. game” to find “a sure card.”

IX

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY

THE peculiarly maddening thing about Washington’s war experience was that he was always finding himself right back where he started from. He walked in circles and stepped anew into his old footprints.

Prayer followed prayer for an army enlisted for the war, a regular army, the ideal Continentals. For all the good his petitions did, he might almost as well have pasted them on a cylinder and had them run round and round and round by water power like the prayer-wheels of the Orient. There was nobody to answer them — at least nobody with the power.

This was the inevitable result of the strong states’ rights spirit of the time. In the southern part of the country the feeling against a national army was so strong that South Caro¬ lina was not really brought to the belief in independence until after the British mistakes and excesses in 1780 drove the people desperate.

Edward McCrady, indeed, criticizes Washington for insist¬ ing on a regular army, and holds it so contrary to the Ameri¬ can spirit that the ideal has never succeeded in this country.1 This doctrine springs naturally from the South Carolinian spirit, and the same jealousy of the parts for the whole had far more to do with wrecking the Confederacy than is generally known.2 It was this centrifugal pride that split the Union in 1861, and kept it split for four years owing to the military genius of Robert E. Lee, who was hampered by his Congress as Washington was by his.

If the British had had a great general in America the Con¬ federacy of 1776 might have been another Lost Cause. Event¬ ually America must inevitably have won free, but nearly every-

67

68

GEORGE WASHINGTON

thing was done to make it impossible for Washington to free it, and he frankly divided the honor of his success between Providence and the equally dilatory tactics of the British generals.

Congress has been accused of opposing the long term en¬ listments that Washington implored; yet, as Dr. Herbert Friedenwald asserts, Congress favored them, “but the adoption of such a policy was wrecked by the opposition of the people.” 3

Congress had a multitude of theories and problems but no authority and no weapons. Its internal jealousies and mutual suspicions were inevitable and too well justified, for the Con¬ gressman from Massachusetts felt — he knew! — that he had occasion to keep a careful eye on the Congressman from Vir¬ ginia. Little Rhode Island had eminent excuse for watching big Pennsylvania. And the citizens were wise to withhold omnipotence from their representatives, whom they knew to be only politicians after all. The war was fundamentally a business and commercial war. The people were fighting against taxation and greed, and they were canny enough to know that they were in danger of a mere exchange of despots. Nobody trusted anybody and the machinery had not yet been invented for supplying power without destruction.

Now and then Washington’s exceeding bitterness moved him to a form of dour humor as on January 31, ’77, when he wrote of the plethora of desertions: “We shall be obliged to detach one half the army to bring back the other.” 4 He is said to have written a clever Irish bull to Governor Johnson of Mary¬ land:

“The men with me are too few to fight, and not enough to run away with.”

But in general he ranged from solemn to morose. In Bos¬ ton he had faced the necessity for disbanding one army and organizing another in the presence of the enemy. Now, nearly two years later, he had the very same thing to do all over again. Then the enemy was besieged and outnumbered. Now the enemy was at large and Washington hopelessly outnumbered.

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY 69

Furthermore he had now less than a third of the men he had had before Boston, and practically all of these were soon to be released from their terms of enlistment, while great numbers were walking off without waiting, without even leaving their weapons behind, “in opposition to all my orders, and not¬ withstanding my utmost vigilance.” 5

Congress had written a fine cure for the old evils when it had authorized 88 battalions, then added 1 6 more. At 680 men to a battalion, this meant, together with the three bat¬ talions of artillery and three thousand cavalry, a grand army of 75,760 men.6

No wonder Washington dreamed dreams. He had driven the British out of Boston with 8,797 men fit for duty against their 5,000 effectives. He had captured Trenton and 868 Hessians with 2,500 men. What could he not do with seventy- five thousand?

Eighty-eight of the hundred and four battalions had been apportioned among the states, which were to commission the officers as well as provide the men. Sixteen battalions were to be enlisted by Washington, who was to name the officers below the grade of brigadier-general. There was much mag¬ niloquence about liberty and love of country, but bounties had to be offered and peddled. To secure commissions officers had as a rule to procure their own men and bribe them to serve.

Consequently the high-powered salesman prospered better than the military genius. It had seemed to Washington that no officers could have been worse than those he found when he reached Boston in 1775. Now he found that many of the new officers were “not fit to be shoeblacks.” He was an aristo¬ crat and it disgusted him to write:

“The officers are generally of the lowest class of the people; and, instead of setting a good example to their men, are leading them into every kind of mischief, one species of which is plundering the inhabi¬ tants, under the pretense of their being Tories.” 7

“Take none but gentlemen; let no local attachments influence you; do not suffer your good nature, when an application is made, to say

GEORGE WASHINGTON

70

yes, when you ought to say no; remember, that it is a public, not a private cause, that is to be injured or benefited by your choice; recol¬ lect, also, that no instance has yet happened of good or bad behavior in a corps in our service, that has not originated with the officers. Do not take old men, nor yet fill your corps with boys, especially for captains.” 8

“Take none but gentlemen,” he could urge, but he found that numbers of the officers were not even honest. The service was thronged with grafters and plain thieves.

“Soldiers are sacrificed for the private emolument of Com¬ missaries, Qr Masters, Surgeons, Phisicians, barrack masters and Captains. The low pay of officers first led them to fraud, in order to support themselves,” wrote Colonel John Taylor, and added: “The armies of the northern states are really mer¬ cenaries, and being foreigners, have no attachment to the country.” 9

Nobody has yet attempted a history of the corruption, polit¬ ical, military and financial, of the Revolutionary War. It stank to heaven then but historians have preferred to leave it under the smothering mantle of laurels and immortelles that have been heaped to heaven by the orators and prose-poets.

There is a noble opportunity here for some fanatic lover of the truth to do a vast amount of research and bring on him¬ self a vaster avalanche of abuse for traducing the Fathers. The work ought to be done, however, in order to bring forth in shining contrast the tremendous sacrifices of the amazing few who really did all the work. Many of the officers were devoted patriots and paid large sums out of their own pockets, bank¬ rupting themselves while others grew rich or at least fat. But the crisis fairly spawned criminals and traders of the lowest sort. Take Washington’s own words:

“There have been horrid abuses in this way; it has been heretofore customary to see almost as many officers as men in the pay abstracts, that have been brought before me. And what is, if possible, a still greater enormity I have reason to believe it is too often a practice for officers who command parties to assume the rank of their superior

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY 71

officers, who happen to be absent, and to draw pay equivalent to it, under the absurd idea of their acting in their stead & capacity.” 10

In Boston a captain was “tryed for enlisting a number of

men that were before enlisted by Capt. - , . . . and for

infamous and ungentlemanlike conduct.” 11 He was sentenced to repay the money and leave the army.

In Putnam’s Orderly Book one finds, in the writing of his Sergeant Ware (who was the unbeaten champion of all bad spellers), the case of a captain who was:

“Tryd for ye following Charges first for Disurting to the Enemy While a Cap1 in ye Continental Service & after he had Rcd 500 Dollars Recruiting money and taking with him to ye Enemi Secondly for for-

fiting ye Confidence Placed in him by Colo - for his going to ye

Peekskill 3d for Disarting the gentlemen under Confidence he was Put in order to be Conducted to Genr1 — 4ly for Forging a Pass . . . as to the first Charge of Disarting to ye Enemy ye Court is of Appinan that the Prisoner is guilty, as allso Appears by his own Confession the

Court therefore order & adgudg that ye Sd - be Dismissed from ye

army ye general approoves the Sentance.” 12

Washington found that the embezzlements of the officers were to blame for some of the abscondings of the men and exclaimed :

“The scandalous loss, waste, and private appropriation of public arms . . . are beyond all conception. I am well convinced, that the amazing desertions, which have of late prevailed among our troops, proceed entirely from their not being regularly paid. ... I have in vain endeavored to make the officers bring in their pay-Rolls and draw, their money. . . . But there is a Cause, which, I fear, will be found upon examination too true, and that is, that the officers have drawn large Sums, under pretence of paying their Men; but have been obliged, from extravagance and for other purposes, to appropriate this money to their own use.” 13

To Congress he described “the base frauds practised by Several of our officers. . . 14 His gloomy disappointment

is shown in his letter to his brother:

“I thank you for the visit to Mrs. Washington. . . . Your remark ‘that you cannot depend upon the Reports of our Strength’ is most

GEORGE WASHINGTON

72

laterally true ... it depends upon Militia, who are here to-day and gone tomorrow — whose way, like the ways of [Prjovidence are almost inscrutable ... it is our Interest however much our characters may [sujffer by it, to make small numbers appear large, . . . for in order to deceive the Enemy effectually, we must not communicate our weak¬ ness to any body. . . . Desertion is a growing evil — it is become a kind of business, under the present bounty — to Desert one Corps to enlist in another.” 15

The fury for desertion and reenlistment was an inevitable result of a system that Washington had denounced from the first. To encourage quick mobilization of the new army, Con¬ gress had allowed twenty dollars for a three-year enlistment. With the amiable intention of quickening their quota the New England states added a bonus of $33*33- In a noble spirit of emulation, Massachusetts doubled this. The soldier who joined a Massachusetts battalion received therefore $86.66. Which was much money then — and real money.

The other states had to fall into line. In a fine frenzy the towns went still higher. Before long Washington was writ¬ ing that in Massachusetts one hundred pounds per man had been paid for soldiers who joined for only fifteen months.18 This naturally retarded the Continental enlistments and drew in more short-term men. The bounties ran so high that two hundred dollars became a normal bonus for a recruit. In paper money a soldier demanded $ 1 ,000 and the time came soon when “in Virginia even twelve thousand dollars could not always buy a soldier.” 17

While the states were paying such premiums to fill up their 88 battalions, they left almost no chance for Washington to recruit his 1 6 unless he bid higher. The states went further, passed draft laws to fill their militia, imposing fines and im¬ prisonments, penalties which Washington could not inflict.18

In Maryland the authorities actually arrested one of his re¬ cruiting officers for enlisting two men to serve in the artillery.19

Even Virginia failed him. Patrick Henry was Governor then and Washington wrote to him begging that Virginia at

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY 73

least should hasten on her quota and well equipped.20 Henry wrote that there was little prospect of that.21 He suggested filling the gaps with short-time volunteers, an odious phrase. Washington answered woefully that the slow recruiting “in Virginia affects me in a peculiar manner.” He added a violent denunciation of the whole volunteer system:

“To the short engagements of our troops may be fairly and justly ascribed almost every misfortune, that we have experienced. To that cause, and that alone, have the liberties of our country been put in question, and the most obvious advantages lost. . . . Those who en¬ gage in arms, under that denomination, let them agree upon what con¬ ditions they may, are uneasy, impatient of command, ungovernable; and, claiming to themselves a sort of superior merit, generally assume not only the privilege of thinking but to do as they please.” 22

In January, 1777, he says that “reinforcements come up so extremely slow that I am afraid I shall be left without any men before they arrive.” 23 By February 20th his original 5,000 had grown to 4,000, and, as he wrote to Gates “under the rose,” he had hardly anybody but militia, “and what kind of troops ours are, you need not be informed . . . most of those that could be depended upon, are down with the small pox.” 24

On March 6th he taxed himself with “imprudence in com¬ mitting the secret to paper” that he would soon have only 500 Virginians and “parts of two or three other Continental bat¬ talions, all very weak.” 25 On March 14th he has “but a hand¬ ful” and only “adequate to the least valuable purposes of war.” 26 On April 3rd he writes, concerning the British:

“How I am to oppose them, God knows; for, except a few hundred from Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, I have not yet received a man of the new Continental levies.” 27

On May 17th he feels that a Draft is necessary.28

The desertions of soldiers are rivalled now by the desertions of officers.

“If I send an Officer to collect the sick or scattered of his Regiment, it is ten to one that he neglects his duty — goes home on pleasure or

74 GEORGE WASHINGTON

Business, and the next that I hear of him, is, that he has resigned.

“It seems next to impossible to make our officers in any of the States exert themselves in bringing in their men to the field, as if it were a matter of moonshine whether they come to-day, to-morrow, a week, or a month hence. The campaign will I expect be opened without men on our side.” 80

The ill health and bad morals of the army were added grievances to the much-suffering Washington. In August, 1776, out of 17,000 troops, 7,000 were sick at once and thou¬ sands died.

Having been rendered immune to smallpox as a boy by his narrow escape from death in Barbados, Washington was one of the staunchest advocates of inoculation, not by vaccine virus but by the actual human germ. Jenner did not seriously begin his immortal study of cow-pox until 1775. Washington had persuaded Martha to “take smallpox” in 1776, and he now made the heroic resolve to inoculate everybody, and get it over with.31 His own camp was at once turned into a hospital and since he refused to accept any soldiers who had not undergone the mild form of the disease, all the recruiting camps became hospitals. The result was grave delay in building an army, but when he got his man he had one less assurance of losing him in a crisis.

What he prescribed for his army he urged upon his family and all his slaves, and he was so little alarmed by the bugaboo that he wrote to his brother John Augustine (when he refers to “my own People,” he means, of course, his slaves):

“One of the best Physicians in this Army has assur’d me, that the great skill which many of the faculty pretend to have in the manage¬ ment of this disorder, and the great Art necessary to treat the patient well, is neither more nor less than a cheat upon the world, that in gen¬ eral an old woman may Inoculate with as much success as the best Physician. The whole art lying in keeping the Patient rather low in diet, and cool, especially at the period of the eruptive fever. . . . That this is truely the case, I firmly believe, and my own People (not less I suppose than between two and three hundred), getting happily through it by following these directions, is no Inconsiderable proof of

75

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY

it — Surely that Impolitic Act, restraining Inoculation in Virginia, can never be continued— If I was a Member of that Assembly, I would rather move for a Law to compel the Masters of Families to inoculate every child born within a certain limitted time under Severe Penal¬ ties. — ” 82

His proclamation demanding that the New Jersey people take the oath or exile caused even less excitement than his orders that not only the soldiers but the families they came from or lived with should have the smallpox forced into them. He was perhaps the first dictator to take so drastic a liberty with the people’s liberties. Catherine the Great of Russia in attempting the same rescue aroused the ferocious opposition of prelates and people.

Living near Morristown in 1777 was Ashbel Green, later president of Princeton and chaplain of Congress. He was a boy of fourteen then, but afterwards described the consterna¬ tion of the people when Washington and his army suddenly arrived and announced an intention not only to remain but to spread the smallpox:

“My father, I well remember, went in a sleigh to Morristown, ac¬ companied by some of the most respectable men of his congregation, to confer with General Washington on the subject. . . .

“The General said to them in reply, that their apprehensions, he was confident, were altogether groundless; . . . that they would all be carried through the small pox without charge, and with very little danger — the surgeons of the army affording them the exercise of their best skill and attention. . . . On the other hand, that if an attempt were made to separate the soldiers from the mass of the inhabitants, ... the natural small pox would be spread through the whole popula¬ tion, producing effects infinitely more to be dreaded. . . . My father and his friends came back perfectly reconciled to the measure. . .

It was remarkable that in our whole family there was not a single pock that filled. . . . The whole army had the disease so lightly, that I really believe there was not a day while they were under inocu¬ lation, in which they might not, with a few exceptions, have marched against the enemy, and would actually have done so if necessity had required it. For a short time my father’s church was made a hospital for the reception of those on whom the natural small pox had appeared before they could be inoculated; and more frightful and pitiable human

76 GEORGE WASHINGTON

beings I have never seen. The heads of some of them were swelled to nearly double their natural size, their eyes were closed, and their faces were black as a coal. The most of these died.

The colonies must have presented to the enemy such a face as was enough in itself to keep Howe at a distance. Nicholas Creswell, the Englishman marooned in Virginia, describes the look of Washington’s neighbors in Alexandria:

“Got to Alexandria to dinner. All the townspeople and a Regiment of soldiers that are quartered here all inocculated for the Smallpox an I believe there is a great number that has the Greatpox along with them. Such a pock-eyed place I never was in before.

Though Washington tried to keep his soldiers busy by con¬ structing Fort Nonsense purely for exercise, Ashbel Green tells how the officers at IVlornstown passed their time in gambling, never read a book and

“were the most shockingly profane in their common conversation of any men I have ever known. Their language, at times, was abso¬ lutely horrifying to any ear not accustomed to blasphemy.

In December Congress, probably at the behest of President Witherspoon, had “in the most earnest manner” recommended to all citizens and soldiers not only “the exercise of repentance and reformation,” but also an avoidance of the “profane swear¬ ing, and all immorality”36 In April, 1777, Samuel Adams was writing how much he was “regreting the abominable Prac¬ tice of prophane Swearing in our Army. It is indeed alarm-

• _ 1) 37

mg.

Washington always threw his weight against interference with religious liberty, but he always paid the highest deference to religious earnestness. Though he both gambled and swore in moderation, he realized that a military campaign was no time for wasting precious hours that might better be employed in neglected military pursuits, and he knew that money was too scarce to be thrown away while many officers bankrupted themselves in mind and purse.

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY 77

Throughout 1776 he had denounced gambling. Through¬ out 1778 he would §till be thundering against it without effect. He felt apparently no inconsistency in the issuance of an order reminding the soldiers that a few tickets in the Continental Lottery were still on sale.38 It made all the difference in the world who was gambling.

Washington’s crusade brought on him some ridicule for hypocrisy:

“The American republicans, like the rebels of all ages, from their justice , feacelovingy and mercy , pretend to have the especial favors of God, and none of the devil’s, on their side, and for this reason we rarely see a proclamation from the rebel camp, without a pious sentence bringing up the rear. The late orders given by the head rebel at Morristown, in the Jerseys, a copy of which is printed in all the rebel prints, is a greater illustration of this Yankee piety than any yet come out. In it Mr. Washington forbids card playing under the penalty of a court-martial, ostensibly for the reason that it. is wicked and brings a disgrace on the officers, but in reality to enlist the parsons and other old women stronger in the cause of rebellion. . . . However easily he may bait old Witherspoon, Billy Livingston, Jacky Jay, and some of the other pious ones, who are hanging on the rear of his moral forces; when the time comes, he’ll find he can’t ‘fool the Lord’ with pretended piety or Presbyterian general orders.” 39

He continued to deplore the vicious tendency of his men to loot the farms of sympathizers, rob fields, gardens, houses, and exceed the Hessians or the British in their ravages.

Weapons, also, were being stolen or wrecked faster than Washington could renew them.40

In March, 1777, two ships arrived from France with 23,000 rifles. But at this time he had no men to use them. Uniforms also began to pour in, but there were no men to fill them.41

It is a little too easy to grow sick with nausea at the revela¬ tions of these bleak days. Public affairs were in a state of in¬ conceivable bewilderment. Hot-headed radicals had run away with slow thinkers, had seized power with no shadow of legal reason, had reviled the multitude who did not under¬ stand or agree with them, and terrorized the mild and the con-

78 GEORGE WASHINGTON

tented as well as the hostile. Soldiers came home, if at all, half-mad with the itch and the lice and full of stories of naked¬ ness in the snow, chilblains from the cold, rags, hunger, sleep on frozen ground without tents or blankets, panics, eternal trudges for no appreciable reason to no perceptible benefit. The grog gave out. The only thing that kept them warm was the lash. Those who were wounded were often left to rot. Those who were sick were treated with an inefficiency and greed that Wash¬ ington denounced as infamous.

They were sent against the British regulars under officers who had learned nothing and taught nothing. They had few bayonets to match those lines of British steel. Many of those who were captured were forgotten. Congress wrangled over fine points of “honor” while they died of famine, vermin, cruelty, disease. The farmers at home were left short-handed in harvest time or in winter. The money the soldiers received was promises on paper that could not buy anything.

“Their shirts being worn out their backs and hips were galled very sorely — and what mortified them beyond everything they were getting lousy and therefore would go home,” wrote one colonel.42

Suppose the soldier lived to win the war, what good would it do the common man? Nobody dreamed of giving him a vote unless he had property, and the one way to get that was to stay home and grow rich and let somebody else be the fool. It is hard for latterday citizens to realize that in 1776 the thought of giving every grown white man the vote without regard to property, had hardly been imagined. When it was broached it horrified no one more than Washington, whose own state of Virginia did not permit the landless citizen to vote until 1850 — three-quarters of a century after the Declaration of Independence! It was nearly half a century before white manhood suffrage was permitted in half the states. One might well ask what the poor soldier was fighting for.

If a man must be fool enough to be a soldier, let him take the best offer he could get. It would be paid him by the

79

ANOTHER TRY FOR AN ARMY

stay-at-homes. Why should he enlist for nothing to save their hides and rescue them from paying their taxes to the mother country? And who knew how the war was coming out? Nearly everybody ran away in battle, or deserted in times of peace. There were widowed mothers hungering, and anxious wives and impatient sweethearts courted by the slackers. Why stay?

These arguments always haunt the soldier in any army. When he is hungry, ragged, ill-equipped, ill-drilled, sick and forlorn they become a mania, if it is a mania. For that rea¬ son some form of conscription has always had to be invoked in every prolonged war. The longer it is delayed, the more scandalous is the result and the greater the waste of lives and opportunities.

After every war there has been an after-war against the “profiteer” — a name of obloquy often visited unjustly on hon¬ orable patriots who have done necessary work at home because their age, their infirmities, or their special abilities kept them from the field. The Revolution had its invaluable patriots like Robert Morris, without whose aid the army would have perished. Even he was accused of growing rich by thievish speculation, and he all but starved to death in a debtor’s prison.

There is pathos in the very shiftiness of the majority and their reluctance to take a definite or a permanent stand, as in the case of the New Jersey people who had flocked to Howe and now flocked to Washington and took the oath of allegiance to the imaginary United States, “not however omitting to keep their certificates of loyalty to King George in their pockets,” says Fortescue, and adds: “Herein doubtless they displayed strong common sense, for they cared very little about the quarrel though a great deal about their farms, and were quite ready to swear allegiance to any one for the sake of peace.” 43

If they had all been Washingtons, then he would not have been Washington. Yet, even he, the man who has been praised for never despairing, grew so famous in that day for his pes¬ simism that his guardian angel, Robert Morris, felt called on

8o

GEORGE WASHINGTON

to rebuke him gently and implore him to pretend a little hope at least.44 Nothing could have been more exquisite than his appeal, but Washington answered it with even more despond¬ ency, adding Congress to his grievances:

“Genl Howe cannot, by the best Intelligence I have been able to get, have less than 10,000 Men in the Jerseys and on board the Trans¬ ports at Amboy, — Ours does not exceed 4,000 — His are well officerd, well disciplined, and well appointed — Ours raw Militia, badly officered, and ungovernable — His numbers cannot, in any short time be aug¬ mented — Ours must, very considerably (and by such Troops as we can have some reliance on) or the game is at an end. . . .

“Nor is it in my power to make C - ss [Congress] fully sensible

of the real situation of our affairs, and that it is with difficulty (if I may use the expression) that I can by every means in my power keep the life and soul of this Army together — In short when they are at a distance they think it is but to say — Presto begone — and every thing is done — or in other words to resolve without considering, or seeming to have any conception, of the difficulties & perplexities attending those who are to carry those Resolves into effect. — Indeed Sir, your obser¬ vations on our want of many principal characters in that respectable Senate, are but too well founded in truth — . . .

“I have wrote you a much larger Letter than I expected when I sat down to it; and yet if time would permit I could enlarge greatly on the subject of it.” 45

Never was there more conflict, more contradiction, more un¬ certainty in every phase of any war than in the American Revo¬ lution. Its immortal magnificence was in the aftermath, far beyond the vision of the wretched victims who agonized in the muck of its foundation.

X

THE “BUSINESS” OF DESERTION

THE British offered sixteen dollars, and later twenty-four for every deserter who brought along a musket.1 The drain was serious, though there were also many de¬ serters from Howe’s starvation camps to the American lines.

The desertions of the patriots to the invaders were numerous enough, but they did not compare with the desertion of the Americans to the Americans. This became, as Washington said, “a kind of business.” It was made profitable for the soldier to enlist, to pick up a bounty and a suit of clothes, desert, sell the clothes, and enlist again and again.

All this mounting bribery exerted an irresistible suction on the men at camp. Why should a soldier re-enlist in the field when he could go home and make a fortune by re-enlisting? Even a soldier feels that he must live. Otherwise he cannot die for his country.

One can form no conception of the extent to which bounty¬ grabbing was carried without reading the numberless cases in the Orderly books. The whole nation seems to have seethed with corruption and hilarious perjury ending often at the whip¬ ping-post, the gallows or before the firing-squad.

In Putnam’s Orderly Book 2 one day’s grist contains sen¬ tences to 500 lashes. The lash having failed signally, Old Put tried eloquence, and he was very eloquent, though Sergeant Ware plays havoc with his phrases:

“More than a Sentury & half ago our fore fathers fled from the Island of great Britan Crostd the atlentic'k to avoid the Cruel Per¬ secution & oppresion of unrelenting British Tereny and Sought an assilleam a Place of Security then a habitation of wild Beasts and Savages Determined to bare the Fatigues & Dangers of their Inter-

81

82 GEORGE WASHINGTON

prises Magnimimity & fortetude in order to Procure their own Lib¬ erty and to Prepituate a unhampord to us their Posterity . . . when the Invious Eye of Parsecution Hereditery to Tirents Grew Jellous of growing Posterity Race and Liberty of the United States of America Began Many years ago to Prepare Chanes for America and to Presue us with Intolerable oppresion in their Exorbitant Demands upon us from time to time and now at Length have Drawn their Swords and Like outdatious Robers thretten to take away our Lives unless we will Surender our Libertys and Propertys which By the Laws of god & man we have the greatest Right to Injoy the activity & Motive is great.

In spite even of that they continued to desert!

To this generation the knowledge of what a flogging meant is lost to imagination as well as memory. Those of us who have not enjoyed a taste of the cat may gain a picture of an important phase of the soldier’s life in our Revolutionary army from an Englishman who gave this account:

“At the first blow I felt an astonishing sensation between the shoul¬ ders under my neck, which went to my toenails in one direction, my finger-nails in another, and stung me to the heart as if a knife had gone through my body. The Serjeant-Major called in a loud voice,

‘One.5 55 3

General Sir Charles Napier wrote:

“I declare that, accustomed as I was to such scenes, I could not on these occasions bear to look at the first blows; the feeling of horror which ran through the ranks was evident, and all soldiers know the frequent faintings that take place among recruits when they first see a soldier flogged.” 4

William Cobbett, later an ardent pamphleteer in Washing¬ ton’s defence, was a British soldier in his youth and had vivid stories to tell of starvation, the graft, and poor pay — he man¬ aged to save a halfpenny one week and counted on buying a red herring for his Saturday treat, but he lost the halfpenny, an(} — “I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child.” 6

Of army punishments he wrote:

THE “BUSINESS” OF DESERTION 83

At the flogging of a man, I have frequently seen seven or eight men fall slap upon the ground, unable to endure the sight, and to hear the cries, without swooning away. These were as stout, hardy, and bold men as anywhere to be found.” 6

In 1809, Cobbett lost his temper when German mercenaries in England flogged a number of English militiamen for mutiny against having the cost of their knapsacks deducted from their little pay. Each of the ringleaders received 500 lashes from the Germans and Cobbett broke forth in protest at the sacri¬ lege. For this he was accused of sedition, tried before Lord Ellenborough, fined a thousand pounds, thrown into Newgate for two years and put under bond for seven years.

The career of the philanthropist in those good old days was a little more dangerous and odious than that of a pirate.

There was no check to flogging in the American army until 1813 when “stoppage of pay, confinement, and deprivation of part of the rations” were substituted “in lieu of whipping.” Yet in 1833 the lash was still in use, though one officer was court-martialled for having a private whipped till he was dis¬ abled.7 In 1861 flogging was “abolished” again.8 In the American navy flogging continued for years after it had been stopped by other nations.

It would have surprised and delighted Washington to sus¬ pect it possible to keep an army together without literally whipping it into line. From his earliest days as the young Commander of the Virginian troops he had flogged even before he secured authority.9

The Continental Congress in 1775 limited whipping in all cases to thirty-nine lashes. Failure to curb desertions led to the amendment of September 20, 1776, raising the limit to “not exceeding 100 lashes.” 10 In spite of a liberal use of both corporal and capital punishment, Washington saw such traffic in bounties and such desertion to secure them that in baffled desperation he gave gentleness a trial. He issued a proclama¬ tion April 6, 1777, addressed to the growing army of repeaters. Feeling that they might be sorry for “the enormity of their

84

GEORGE WASHINGTON

crimes” and afraid to return because of the severity of punish¬ ments lately inflicted for desertion, he offered “free pardon” to all who voluntarily surrendered themselves before the 15th of May.11

But the heavenly dew-droppings of mercy did not prevail against the tinkle of hard money. There is no record of any penitent hastening to the seat of pardon. Washington returned to the whip, increasing the doses as far as he dared, V et the whip did no better than no whip and he reverted to proffers of pardon on various occasions, with no success. He alternated these with appeals to Congress for an increase in the limit: “To give only a hundred lashes to such criminals is a burlesque on their crimes rather than a serious correction.” He asked for “a gradual scale of punishments ; in order to which, whip¬ ping should be extended to any number at discretion, or by no means, limited lower than five hundred lashes.” 12

His heart was less ruthless than these grim words imply today, for he was really seeking some means of avoiding too many executions. So he asked for five hundred lashes — to save lives. But Congress would not grant him permission.

Washington did his best with his limitations. At Valley Forge he ordered that one private who attempted to desert should “be well washed with salt and water after he has re¬ ceived his last fifty.” 13 And a little later he managed 300 lashes for one luckless Virginian by dividing his offence into three different crimes, deserting, forging a discharge, and re¬ enlisting, then giving him 100 lashes for each.14

He made another effort to persuade Congress to extend the power of the whip to at least 500 lashes.15

To prove that his purpose was wholly disciplinary he men¬ tioned with regret the fact that officers were substituting arbi¬ trary punishments often excessive, which would not be resorted to if there were more rigor in the military laws. By “arbitrary punishments” he doubtless referred to such devices as com¬ pelling a deserter to run the gauntlet naked through the bri¬ gade. Sometimes they set a soldier in front of him to hold a

THE “BUSINESS” OF DESERTION 85

bayonet to the deserter’s breast and back slowly through the lines so as to give plenty of time for a terrific drubbing.

Riding the wooden horse often involved permanent mutila¬ tion even to the point of emasculation. On one occasion three deserters were made to draw lots 3 the loser’s head was cut off and hung over the camp gallows.16

Washington was entangled, as humanity has always been, in the riddle of punishment. He was himself tortured by the tortures it seemed to him necessary to inflict and, to the end of the war, his orderly books continued to carry such red pages as these:

“The Commander-in-Chief is pleased to approve the following Sentences of a General Court Martial, held the 6th Inst. . . . Wil¬ liam - of the 15 th Virg’a Reg’t, Charged with desertion, to receive

25 Lashes. Markham - of the 15th Virg’a Reg’t, Charged with

Desertion, to receive 25 Lashes. John - of the first New Jersey

Reg’t, charged with desertion, to receive 50 Lashes. Thomas - of

the 15th Virg’a Reg’t, Charged with Desertion, to receive 20 Lashes.

Anthony - of the 15th Virg’a Reg’t, Charged with desertion, to

receive 20 Lashes. John - of the 9th Virg’a Reg’t, Charged with

damning the General & his orders, to receive 39 Lashes. James -

of the 3d New Jersey Reg’t, Charged with deserting, to receive 1 00 Lashes. Daniel - of the 3d Virginia Regim’t, Charg’d with de¬

serting from his own Reg’t & Enlisting into another, to receive 25

Lashes. Samuel - of the said Regiment, Charg’d with the same,

to receive 20 Lashes. John - of the German Battallion, Charg’d

with Deserting & Enlisting into Another Reg’t, the Sentence postponed for further Evidence . . . the prisoners under Sentence of Death to prepare for Execution.” 17

In his own general orders between June 9th and June 23rd, he himself approves a total of a thousand two hundred and thirteen lashes across the bare backs of his men. Putnam in the month of July, 1777 , ordered a total of one thousand six hundred and fifty lashes and several executions.

A century and a half earlier Gustavus Adolphus had de¬ veloped a superb army though he forbade flogging,18 but it is hardly too much to say that the American army was bloodily

86 GEORGE WASHINGTON

lashed along the path of glory. The vanity of the incomput¬ able pain and shame is the worst of it, for the generals never learned that the soldiers never learned anything from the tongue of the thong.

The reasons for the desertions were many and complex. Sometimes they reflected no discredit on the deserter. The causes were economic, social, and not to be escaped by the in¬ dividual. The revolutionary army as a part of the revolu¬ tionary populace was a mixture of all sorts of people with all sorts of motives. The mercenary deserters are described by General Jedediah Huntington as “Transient Fellows . . . for the Sake of a Little ready Money they will risque the Smart of a few Lashes (Shame they have none).” 19

But his half-brother, Ebenezer, who rose from lieutenant to lieutenant-colonel, wrote of another sort of soldier, the un¬ paid wretch who did not always resist another sort of appeal:

“Not a Day Passes my head, but some Soldier with Tears in his Eyes, hands me a letter to read from his Wife Painting forth the Distresses of his family in such strains as these, £I am without bread, and Cannot get any, the Committee will not Supply me, my Children will Starve, or if they do not, they must freeze, we have no wood, neither Can we get any. Pray Come home* These Applications Affect me, my Ears are noty neither shall they be shutt to such Com¬ plaints. they are Injurious, they wound my feelings, and while I have Tongue or Pen I will busy myself to stir up my Countrymen to act like men , who have all at Stake, and not think to enrich themselves, by the Distresses of their brave Countrymen, in the Field. It hath been practizd too long. Dont drive us to Despair, we are now on the Brink.” 20

And, of course, there were fields going unplowed and parents appealing for the return of their sons. There must have been countless letters of the sort that Ebenezer’s elder brother, Cap¬ tain Joshua Huntington, received from a lonely father:

“I Hope you are well Thow I am Sencibell you Hav ben Threw Hard Seans Sence I Saw you; I Hope also my pore boy in your Com¬ pany is Still a Live pray Sir as he murst be Very Much worne out if a Live Dow Let Him Com out awhile for a Recrute and if He is so

THE “BUSINESS” OF DESERTION 87

unwell as not Likely to be fit for Duty pray get Him Discharg’d or Som How Let him Com home which will Give Grate Satisfaction to my family I Shall Estame it a Grate favour Sir I am Senceble you Have much Grater Things to attend to pray Let this Have a place in your Generos mind, you Will Much Oblige your Most Obediant Humble Sarv’t.” 21

In the Civil War “bounty-jumpers” became a household word for the man who took a bounty, deserted, and reenlisted for another. There were even bounty-workers. Neither execu¬ tions nor amnesties checked desertion. Officers deserted. Hun¬ ger, nakedness, pay deferred and in depreciated money exerted baleful and cruel influences. Out of 1,556,678 enrolled in the Union Armies, 278,644 deserted — one in seven, according to Dr. Ella Lonn.22 Seventy-seven thousand one hundred and eighty-one were recaptured. Out of 1,082,119 Confederate services there were 103,400 desertions — one in ten. Twenty- one thousand and fifty-six were recaptured. Finally the Con¬ federate armies fairly melted away, 70,000 deserting in four months. Possible victories were lost to Union commanders by the defection of important numbers, but Dr. Lonn believes the failure of the Confederacy was largely due to desertion. She finds the whole subject shocking and repellent, but what is one to do with the truth?

No such figures are available for Washington’s army, but it probably suffered an even greater proportion of defection. His ability to keep it from disintegration, to say nothing of destruction, was almost miraculous, an unsurpassed evidence of his amazing genius in one of the most vital phases of general¬ ship.

XI

THE PROBLEM OF OFFICERS

“ WAS told about a Month ago by a member of Congress & sev- ■ eral principal officers, and others, that the Continent had in pay ill 10,000 officers, when at the same time Gen1 Washington had not 3,000 men.”

So wrote James Allen in his Diary for June 6, 1777.1 This was hearsay, but not a gross exaggeration.

Washington’s officers, who should have relieved him of anxieties, and multiplied his efficiency, chiefly relieved him of efficiency and multiplied his anxieties. It would be hard to say which was harder for him: selecting them, getting Congress and the States to agree on those they imposed on him, pacify¬ ing the jealousies of those he got, or keeping the bad ones from robbing the men, the treasury and the inhabitants, and keeping the good ones from resigning out of pique. The num¬ ber of resignations was ridiculously enormous.

Washington’s suggestions were largely ignored. The sacred principle of promotion by seniority was tossed aside. John Adams described “this delicate point of honor” as “really one of the most putrid corruptions of absolute monarchy.” He actually advocated annual elections of all generals by Con¬ gress.2

The matter of decision on the new generals was put off and put off while the Congressmen bickered and traded. Washing¬ ton begged for decision repeatedly: “We have very little time to do a very great work in.” 3 He asked for 3 lieutenant- generals, 9 major-generals and 27 brigadiers. Congress re¬ fused him his lieutenant-generals altogether and on February

19th gave him only five new major-generals, Lord Stirling,

88

THE PROBLEM OF OFFICERS 89

Mifflin, St. Clair, Stephen, and Lincoln. Ten new brigadiers were elected on the 21st of February, two of whom declined to serve.

Washington had to exercise his patience, his delicacy, his eloquence on the disappointed officers. He scorned the easy way of blaming Congress for its partiality and set up a model for all time to warriors for a republic.

To Colonel Woodford, incensed at being named after Muhlenberg and Weedon, who were junior to him, Washing¬ ton wrote:

“If trifles, light as air in comparison with what we are contending for, can withdraw or withhold gentlemen from service, when our all is at stake and a single cast of the die may turn the tables, what are we to expect? . . . Consider twice, therefore, before you re¬ fuse.” 4

Woodford consented to stick, but he bided his time to cause wrorse trouble. Benedict Arnold’s case was the one that most acutely distressed Washington. Arnold was the senior briga¬ dier and his record was unequalled for brilliance. Not to pro¬ mote him was to degrade him. It was a mad folly, too, since it showed all the other officers that the place to win promotion was in the anterooms of Congressmen and not on the bullet- swept battlefield.

Congress had previously ignored Arnold when in July, 1776, it made Heath, Spencer, Sullivan, and Greene major-generals. A partial excuse now was the fact that charges had been made assailing Arnold’s honesty, but that excuse was rendered in¬ excusable by the investigation when at last it was granted. A further reason, and probably the controlling one, was the fact that Connecticut already had two major-generals, Putnam and Spencer, while the other states were clamoring for their share of the laurels.5

Washington could hardly believe that Arnold had been denied the place he had earned so well and would so adorn. Though he was still dictator nominally, the list of the officers

GEORGE WASHINGTON

90

had not even been submitted to him for advice or approval. When some of the newspapers announced that Arnold had re¬ ceived the honor they all felt inevitable, Washington made use of this as a device for breaking Arnold’s heart gently and fore¬ stalling a rash outburst on the part of that impetuous hero, who was even then working on a plan to recapture Newport from the British by a surprise assault:

“We have lately had several promotions to the rank of major-gen¬ eral, and I am at a loss whether you have had a preceding appointment, as the newspapers announce, or whether you have been omitted through some mistake. Should the latter be the case, I beg you will not take any hasty steps in consequence of it, but allow proper time for recol¬ lection, which I flatter myself will remedy any error, that may have been made. My endeavours to that end shall not be wanting.” 6

To this Arnold replied with a Washingtonian dignity.7 He consented to remain in the service, but resolved to secure an investigation of the charges against him and left Providence for Philadelphia. With his usual luck in finding the thick of things, he stopped at New Haven to visit his sister and his children, who were in her care, and thus was at hand when the British governor Tryon made a raid on Danbury with two thousand men and burned the stores collected there, including more than sixteen hundred much-needed tents. Arnold dashed into the fray, had a horse killed under him and managed his troops so well that Tryon’s men barely made the ships under the protection of marines landed to relieve them.

And now Congress did the proper thing belatedly yet hand¬ somely, and not only commissioned Arnold a major-general but resolved that the quarter-master general be directed to procure a horse properly caparisoned and present it to “Major- General Arnold.” The congressional Board of War further announced that, after examination of all the papers and a con¬ ference with Arnold, it was agreed that the charges against him were worthless and his character and conduct had been “cruelly and groundlessly aspersed.”

THE PROBLEM OF OFFICERS 91

Still, there was trouble} for Congress still left him junior to five major-generals who had been junior to him as briga¬ diers. This meant more worry for Washington, and more vain appeals to Congress.8

Another general was on Washington’s hands, that strange and tragic buffoon, General Charles Lee, who had won the con¬ fidence of so many Americans away from Washington. The British planned to hang him as a deserter, but Washington and Congress, having no British major-general to swap for him, offered five or six of the Hessian officers taken at Trenton and Washington wrote to Howe threatening bloody retaliation if Lee were harmed.9

Men of more ambition and less patriotism than Washington might have been glad to be so prettily rid of so formidable a rival, but Washington did everything in his power to recover Lee. He tried to mitigate his sufferings in captivity, sent him money and every comfort he could afford. Lee was a queru¬ lous person, bemoaned his hardships, and made repeated re¬ quests :

“I am likewise extreamly desirous that my Dogs should be brought as I never stood in greater need of their Company than at present. God bless you, my dear Sir, and send you Long Life and Happiness.” 10

To this Washington replied:

“Your dogs are in Virginia. This circumstance I regret, as you will be deprived of the satisfaction and amusements you hoped to derive from their friendly and companionable dispositions.” 11

Even in captivity Lee managed to stir up strife and he had been in the British hands hardly more than a month when he joined with the Howes in another of their efforts to bring about a cessation of war. He wrote to Washington asking him to transmit an enclosure to Congress in which he pleaded for the sending of two or three gentlemen from Congress through Washington’s camp to Howe’s, there to discuss a matter “of the Greatest consequence to me, & I think of no less to the Public.” 12

92

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Nothing is so startling in war as a suggestion of peace, and Lee’s letter threw Congress into a panic. The proposal was rejected.13 Washington wrote to Robert Morris:

“I wish with all my heart that Congress had gratified Gen1 Lee in his request — If not too late, I wish they would do it still — I can see no possible evil that can result from it — Some good I think might.” 14

Morris agreed with him, but Congress would not be moved. Lee was a man of such strange eccentricities, such flashes of in¬ tellectual and strategical brilliancy alternating with such erup¬ tions of wrath and imbecility, that Elias Boudinot, who knew him peculiarly well, was finally convinced of his insanity. As¬ suming that he was on his way thither would explain many baffling problems in his behavior.

Boudinot’s interview seems to have been overlooked by most of the historians and it is worth quoting in part. Boudinot asked him why he wanted to meet the three Congressmen, and Lee replied:

“Sir, said he, I had discovered the whole plan of the Sum¬ mer’s Campaign on the part of the British, and would have disclosed the whole to the Committee, by which Congress might have obviated all their Measures, for Mr Boudinot it is in vain for Congress to expect to withstand British Troops in the Field. . . .

“He then read his manuscript, which was a laboured Argu¬ ment to prove . . . that in the next Campaign we must be compleatly defeated — He therefor urged, that congress would immediately have a strong fortress Built at Pittsburgh and also several hundred Boats, that they would order all the Riches of the Country to be sent there with the Old Men. Women. & Children, and that when they found themselves driven there, that Congress &c &c might take Boat & go down the Ohio to the Spanish Territory, for Protection —

“The whole of this plan struck me in so absurd a light, added to the impropriety of reading such a thing to me who he knew was on my parole of honor, within an Enemys Lines.

THE PROBLEM OF OFFICERS 93

’ * ; that 1 could not but entertain the greatest Jealousy of the Integrity of Genl Lee— I answered without hesitation that 1 could not take any such message to Congress from him: or any other, without the knowledge of the British Generals. . .. . That I wondered at his prudence, in keeping such a writing in his pockett, as the Discovery of it in his Pockett & in his hand writing might cost him his life— He then, waived the Business & I left him.” 15

Having failed to persuade Congress either to treat with him and surrender or to transport the entire population to Pittsburg for a trip to. Spanish territory, the distracted genius seems to have determined on a desperate drive for peace at all costs.

He despaired of independence and apparently believed that it was his duty to mankind to commit what was to him a “brave virtuous kind of treason.” The Howes were liberals and Whigs and eager to protect the Americans as well as the Eng¬ lish from King George’s attack on human rights, so he sat him down and composed an elaborate “Scheme for Putting an End to the War, submitted to the Royal Commissioners, 29th March, 1777.” The “Royal Commissioners” was still the style and title of the Howe brothers.

.To justify himself to himself and his captors, Lee begins this strange thesis by stating that his first reason was the hope¬ lessness of America’s struggle: “She must in the end, after great desolation havock and slaughter, be reduc’d to submit to terms much harder than might probably be granted at pres¬ ent.” He saw also that Great Britain must lose though she won, evry life lost and evry guinea spent being in fact worse than thrown away.” Relying, therefore, on the Howes for moderate terms, he felt himself “bound in conscience to fur¬ nish all the lights, I can,” cautioning them that the more mod¬ erate the terms the more solid and lasting would be the union.

Assuming that Howe had 20,000 effectives, he insisted that the taking of Philadelphia would do no good:

In my opinion the taking possession of Philadelphia will not have any decisive consequences— the Congress and People adhering to the

GEORGE WASHINGTON

Congress have already made up necessary to unhinge or dissolve resistance.”

their minds for the event ... it is . . the whole system or machine of

His scheme was to reduce Maryland, as this would prevent Virginia from helping Pennsylvania. The fear of an invasion from Canada would “keep the New Englanders at home.

He proposed, therefore, that 4,000 men should be put on transports, one half to go up the Potomac and seize Alexandria, the other half to go up “Chesepeak Bay” and seize Annapolis. From there proclamations of pardon should be issued and, e said, “I will answer for it with my life — that all of the In¬ habitants of that great tract . . . will immediately lay down their arms.” The Germans, though Anglophobes, would fear the ravages of war on their property and would yield. In closing he pledges his life that “in less than two months . .. . not a spark of this desolating war remains unextinguished in any part of the Continent.” 16

This intelligent and promising scheme was excellent as grand strategy and virtuous for one who opposed independence, but it was never put to the test. The paper was apparently turned over to the secretary of the Royal Commissioners, Henry Strachey, who endorsed it, “Mr. Lee’s Plan, 29th March 1777,” filed it and took it to England. Oblivion swallowed it for seventy-nine years when it was somehow abstracted or stolen from the Strachey papers, and eventually reached Nova Scotia among other papers of Howe’s. A manuscript collector found it and offered it to the historian Benson J. Lossing, who saw its importance but found the price too high.17 He referred the dealer to the librarian of the New York Historical Society, Dr. George H. Moore, who bought it and published it in a volume called “The Treason of Charles Lee.” 1S Dr. Moore naturally dramatized every act of Lee’s into a consistent and malevolent treachery. At the cost of anticipating matters, however, it is only fair to confess that when Lee was finally restored to the Americans and resumed his post as sec¬ ond in command, he warned Washington in a memorandum

95

THE PROBLEM OF OFFICERS

that the British were not going to operate against Boston, as some thought, but would act by way of Chesapeake Bay, stating twice that he had “the strongest reason to think” that Howe’s intention was to attack in “the Middle Colonies . . . estab¬ lishing themselves about Annapolis, Baltimore or even Alex¬ andria.” 19

Justice does not require one to defend Lee’s actions in any or all cases, but it is dishonest to traduce even a Judas. When the Howes failed to leap at his brilliant plan, Lee seems to have turned against them in turn, swung back to the rebel cause, and served it as best he could with the soul he had.

Two exceedingly important facts in the case seem to have quite escaped the attention of the historians. In the first place, the Chesapeake Bay plan of March 29, 1777, was by no means the novelty that Lee and his denouncers evidently thought it to be, for there is a letter (written by the Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, to George Washington, a month before) which makes Lee’s treason,