Washington

by Ron Chernow

  That Washington found it frustrating to be junior partner in the French alliance was confirmed when he returned to New Windsor after meeting with Rochambeau. At Wethersfield, Washington had advised Rochambeau to relocate the French fleet from Newport to Boston. Then the Duke de Lauzun arrived with a message that a French council of war had opted to keep it in Newport. This was a direct slap at Washington, who was “in such a rage,” the duke said, that he didn’t reply for three days. He had to accept that the French were his superiors, notwithstanding their public claims that he supervised the two armies. When Washington finally replied, he said he took “the liberty still to recommend” that the fleet be moved to Boston.27 The French seemed to acquiesce, for on May 31 he recorded in his journal that Admiral de Barras “would sail with the first fair wind for Boston.”28

  On June 10 Rochambeau informed Washington that the Count de Grasse would bring his fleet north that summer to coordinate an attack with the French and American armies. Washington reiterated his hope that de Grasse would sail to New York. In reply, Rochambeau continued to string Washington along, contending that de Grasse had been informed “that your Excellency preferred that he should make his first appearance at New York . . . that I submitted, as I ought, my opinion to yours.”29 In reality, Rochambeau alerted de Grasse to his private preference for heading first to the Chesapeake Bay.

  In the early years of the war Virginia had been spared bloodshed, but in June 1781 fighting raged there with blazing ferocity. Lord Cornwallis had joined forces with Benedict Arnold, and despite able defensive maneuvers by Lafayette, the two men spread terror through the state. “Accounts from Virginia are exceedingly alarming,” Washington told Rochambeau, reporting that the enemy was marching through the state “almost without control.”30 Still bent on taking New York, Washington pleaded that an attack there would be the best way to siphon off British troops from Virginia. In mid-June he wrote again with a new twist—if they had clear naval superiority, he would contemplate targets other than New York: “I wish you to explain this matter to the Count de Grasse, as, if I understand you, you have in your communication to him, confined our views to New York alone.”31 Clearly Washington had been fooled as to what Rochambeau had whispered in the admiral’s ear.

  With the benefit of hindsight, Washington’s preoccupation with New York seems a colossal mistake, just as Rochambeau’s emphasis on Cornwallis and Virginia seems prescient. As a rule, Washington did not tamper with history and implicitly trusted the record. In this case, however, he later tried to rewrite history by suggesting that his tenacious concentration on New York was a mere feint to mislead the British in Virginia, while maintaining the political allegiance of the eastern and mid-Atlantic states. Responding to a query from Noah Webster in 1788, Washington defended his behavior with unusual vehemence, as if the inquiry had touched a raw nerve. He alleged that his preparations against New York were intended “to misguide and bewilder Sir Henry Clinton in regard to the real object [i.e., the Chesapeake] by fictitious communications as well as by making a deceptive provision of ovens, forage and boats in his neighborhood . . . Nor were less pains taken to deceive our own army.”32 He went so far as to say that “it never was in contemplation to attack New York.”33 But in confidential correspondence with Rochambeau he pushed for no Chesapeake operation, and the record shows that he had repeatedly favored a strike against New York. Only on the very eve of the Yorktown campaign did he undertake the deceptive maneuvers described to Webster.

  In general, Washington lived up to his vaunted reputation for honesty, but it was awkward for him to admit that he had, at least initially, opposed a campaign that served as the brilliant capstone of his military career. He wanted to portray himself as the visionary architect of the Yorktown victory, not as a general misguidedly concentrating upon New York while his French allies masterminded the decisive blow. Washington made it difficult for people to catch his lie because he alleged that he had tried to deceive his own side as well as the enemy; hence any communication could be construed as part of the master bluff. When Washington’s letter to Noah Webster was published in the American Museum in 1791, Timothy Pickering, the former adjutant general and quartermaster general of the Continental Army, shook his head sadly. “It will hurt [Washington’s] moral character,” he wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush. “He has been generally thought to be honest and I own I thought his morals were good, but that letter is false and I know it to be so.”34

  Whatever his shortcomings as a military strategist, the French understood that Washington’s greatness as a general lay in his prolonged sustenance of his makeshift army. He had done something unprecedented by cobbling together a creditable fighting force from the poor, the young, the black, and the downtrodden, and he had done it in the face of unprecedented political obstacles. In early July the French and American armies camped close together near Dobbs Ferry, on the east bank of the Hudson, giving the French officers a chance to study the Continental Army and marvel at what Washington had wrought. It was a heterogeneous, mongrel army such as no European had ever before witnessed. “I admire the American troops tremendously!” said Baron von Closen. “It is incredible that soldiers composed of men of every age, even of children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.” He gave all credit to “the calm and calculated measures of General Washington, in whom I daily discover some new and eminent qualities.”35

  Von Closen’s amazement was shared by his colleague the Count de Clermont-Crèvecoeur. As the latter roamed about the American army camp, he was stunned “by its destitution: the men were without uniforms and covered with rags; most of them were barefoot. They were of all sizes down to children who could not have been over fourteen. There were many negroes, mulattoes, etc. Only their artillerymen were wearing uniforms.”36 Such tributes are the more noteworthy in that Washington was ashamed of the slovenly state of his army, which only heightened the admiration of the flabbergasted French.

  Predictably, French officers carped at the quality of American food. On the other hand, they couldn’t fault the quantity, except the way it all seemed thrown indiscriminately on one plate: “The table was served in the American style and pretty abundantly: vegetables, roast beef, lamb, chickens, salad dressed with nothing but vinegar, green peas, puddings and some pie, a kind of tart . . . all this being put upon the table at the same time. They gave us on the same plate beef, green peas, lamb & etc.”37 One wonders how Washington squared this groaning table with his constant pleas to Congress about food shortages. The French stared in amazement at all the beer and rum consumed and the interminable toasts with raised glasses of wine. They found Washington in an expansive mood at these dinners, convivial and relaxed—the Count de Ségur spoke of his “unaffected cheerfulness”—and he lingered long into the night after the evening meals.38

  On July 18 Washington and Rochambeau wandered along the Hudson at the north end of Manhattan, surveying enemy positions. So many years had elapsed since 1776 that land denuded of its thick vegetation early in the war had started to grow back. “The island is totally stripped of trees and wood of every kind,” Washington wrote, “but low bushes (apparently as high as a man’s waist) appear in places which were covered with wood in the year 1776.”39 He knew that de Grasse’s arrival off the coast was imminent, though he didn’t know whether it would be off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, or the Virginia capes. Meeting with Rochambeau the next day, Washington reprised his idée fixe: that if de Grasse’s fleet could navigate its way into New York Harbor, then “I am of opinion that the enterprise against New York and its dependencies should be our primary object.”40 In his journal Washington confessed that the Massachusetts governor hadn’t responded to his plea for more men and that he was petrified that, after de Grasse’s arrival, it would be found “that I had neither men nor means adequate” for a military operation.41 Even as he knew he might be on the brink of a major triumph, he was also distraught at th
e impotence of his position vis-à-vis his French allies. When he wrote to the Count de Grasse on July 21, he ducked the essential question of exactly how many men he had. “The French force consists of about 4,400 men,” he told the French admiral. “The American is at this time but small, but expected to be considerably augmented. In this, however, we may be disappointed.”42 Contrary to his later statement, Washington told de Grasse that he hoped there would be no need to go to Virginia, “as I flatter myself the glory of destroying the British squadron at New York is reserved for the king’s fleet under your command.”43

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The World Turned Upside Down

  IN EARLY AUGUST 1781 George Washington began to surrender his dream of taking New York and avenging its early loss. Ironically, his own inadvertent action helped bring about this change. Sir Henry Clinton intercepted a letter in which Washington named New York as his main strategic objective, prompting the British to strengthen their forces there and rendering Virginia more vulnerable. “It seems reduced almost to a certainty that the enemy will reinforce New York with part of their troops from Virginia,” Washington notified Robert Morris on August 2.1 Turning his attention to Virginia, Washington asked Morris if he could amass a fleet of thirty double-decker transport vessels to ferry the Continental Army southward. Even though Washington reversed course the next day and dangled before the Count de Barras the shimmering prospect of New York Harbor “open and defenseless” for the taking, his mind was preoccupied for the first time by the logistics of a southern move.2

  If Washington muddled along in something of a strategic dither, his heroic stature remained unimpaired among ordinary citizens, who thanked him for keeping alive the embers of rebellion. On August 4 Abbé Robin, a chaplain with Rochambeau’s army, witnessed the adulation firsthand at the allied camp at Philipsburg, New York: “Through all the land, [Washington] appears like a benevolent god; old men, women, children—they all flock eagerly to catch a glimpse of him when he travels and congratulate themselves because they have seen him.”3 He noted Washington’s gift for inspired leadership, his capacity to make men vie for his favor. Washington “knew how to impress upon his soldiers an absolute subordination, to make them eager to deserve his praise, to make them fear even his silence.”4

  On August 14, while still distracted by reports of a large British fleet arriving in New York, Washington absorbed dramatic news from the Count de Barras in Newport: Admiral de Grasse had sailed from St. Domingue with a mighty fleet of up to twenty-nine ships of the line and 3,200 troops. If all unfolded according to plan, the fleet would show up off Chesapeake Bay by September 3. Stunned, Washington retired forever his ambition to conquer New York. In his journal he acknowledged the “apparent disinclination” of his French partners to tackle New York and noted the feeble response from state governors to his despairing pleas for more troops. He decided to discard “all idea of attacking New York,” the fulcrum upon which his strategic calculations had hinged for years.5

  De Barras told Washington that de Grasse would need to sail back to the Caribbean by mid-October, leaving only a brief interval for a joint operation against Cornwallis. This gave Washington and Rochambeau three weeks to transport two cumbersome armies 450 miles to Chesapeake Bay while de Barras and eight ships of the line and four frigates sailed south from Newport. After a desultory war that had shuffled along for years, Washington, Rochambeau, and de Barras now engaged in a headlong rush to reach Virginia. But orchestrating the movements of three armies and two navies over a vast portion of the eastern seaboard was to prove a fiendishly intricate maneuver.

  Two days later Washington learned something from Lafayette that, in its way, was no less momentous than the startling news about de Grasse. Cornwallis had retreated to the eastern tip of the Virginia peninsula that jutted into Chesapeake Bay, dividing the York and James rivers. On high, open ground at a place called Yorktown, he and his men were furiously shoveling trenches and throwing up earthworks. As it turned out, Cornwallis had barged into a trap that Washington had spotted years earlier when Brigadier General Thomas Nelson wanted to station troops at Yorktown to track British ships. Washington had pointed out to Nelson that his troops “by being upon a narrow neck of land would be in danger of being cut off. The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships into York and James’s river . . . and land a body of men there, who by throwing up a few redoubts, would intercept their retreat and oblige them to surrender at [their] discretion.”6 The letter uncannily foreshadowed the events of 1781.

  As his army hurried south, Washington launched diversionary measures to dupe the enemy into thinking that New York remained his objective. He pitched a small city of tents on the west bank of the Hudson with wagons bustling in and out of this imaginary camp. American boats worked the nearby waters, laying down pontoons, as if readying an amphibious assault. To deceive the enemy, Washington needed to deceive his own men, who thought they were embarked for Staten Island. Instead they found themselves marching inland toward Trenton and then crossed paths with the French at Princeton, where Washington enjoyed a gratifying encounter with French officers. As he strode past their tent, he saw maps unfurled of Boston, Trenton, and Princeton: the officers were re-creating his victorious battles. One observer caught his reaction: “Despite his modesty . . . [Washington] seemed pleased to find thus assembled all the successful and pleasant events of the war.”7 The group repaired to a tavern to share Madeira and punch. One wonders whether the French made a fuss over Washington’s early triumphs to soothe his wounded vanity and draw the sting from his disappointment over abandoning New York.

  To march his men through New Jersey without betraying his intentions to the enemy, Washington contrived ingenious stratagems. He broke his army into three parallel columns and brought them forward at staggered intervals. The troops had no inkling of their true destination until they reached Trenton, where heavy guns were loaded on boats to carry them down the Delaware River to near Christiana, Delaware. From there it would be a twelve-mile march to Head of Elk, at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay. The original plan envisioned troops sailing with them, but Washington couldn’t rustle up the requisite vessels, so he and Rochambeau made a hugely daring decision to have the men traverse the immense distance to Maryland on foot.

  The southern landscape was unknown territory for Washington’s men, who braced for sweltering heat and disease. Fearful of a mutiny, Washington implored Robert Morris to come up with a month’s pay to pacify the men: “The service [in Virginia] they are going upon is disagreeable to the northern regiments, but I make no doubt that a douceur [bribe] of a little hard money would put them in proper temper.”8 Perhaps to garner popular support, Washington marched his army through Philadelphia, and cheering ladies jammed every window as a column two miles long filed through sunstruck streets. “The general officers and their aides, in rich military uniform, mounted on noble steeds, elegantly caparisoned, were followed by their servants and baggage,” noted James Thacher.9 The common soldiers, lean, sunburned, and spent from their march, padded along wearily to fifes and drums. At night the entire capital was illuminated in honor of Washington, who was thronged by crowds of admirers.

  Washington’s stay in Philadelphia was fraught with worry. He was on edge, having heard nothing from de Grasse or de Barras since they sailed from their respective positions. “If you get anything new from any quarter,” he entreated Lafayette, “send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety.” 10 It was highly unorthodox for Washington to confess to such jitters. On the morning of September 5, after riding out of Philadelphia, he was overtaken at Chester by a messenger bearing phenomenal news: the Count de Grasse had shown up in Chesapeake Bay with a full panoply of military and naval power: 28 ships of the line, 4 frigates, and 3,500 troops. Washington shortly learned that de Grasse had engaged the Royal Navy under Admiral Thomas Graves off the Virginia capes, sending the British squadron scurrying back to New York and leaving the French
in undisputed control of Chesapeake Bay. Between Lafayette’s small army on the land side and de Grasse’s massive fleet at sea, Cornwallis was bottled up near the end of the Yorktown peninsula.

  As Rochambeau and his generals glided down the Delaware, they beheld something that overturned their preconceptions of a staid Washington. He stood on the riverbank in delirious elation, signaling gleefully with a hat in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. From across the water they heard him shouting “De Grasse.”11 “I caught sight of General Washington,” wrote Rochambeau, “waving his hat at me with demonstrative gestures of the greatest joy.”12 Once the French commander came ashore, the two men hugged with a mighty embrace. One French officer, Guillaume de Deux-Ponts, was amazed by Washington’s ebullience. Before, he had been convinced of Washington’s “natural coldness,” but now he had to reckon with the “pure joy” shown by the American: “He put aside his character as arbiter of North America and contented himself for the moment with that of a citizen, happy at the good fortune of his country. A child, whose every wish had been gratified, would not have experienced a sensation more lively.”13 The Duke de Lauzun agreed: “I never saw a man so thoroughly and openly delighted.”14 Washington’s boyish exuberance testified to the years of suppressed anxiety from which he was now beginning to feel emancipated.