by Simon Schama
Washington’s implacable severity dismayed him. In the matter of Captain Charles Asgill, he thought, it bordered on the inhuman. Asgill had become a pawn in the brutal vendetta between Patriot and loyalist irregulars in New York and New Jersey. At the eye of the storm was the Patriot partisan Captain Joshua Huddy. By fatally wounding Colonel Tye, Huddy had earned the hatred of black loyalists. By summarily executing a loyalist militiaman, Steven Edwards, he was detested by their white counterparts. So when the Associated Loyalists marched the captured Huddy to the Dover Cliffs, and instead of exchanging him for a British prisoner, hanged him, it may have been a crime, but it was no surprise. Nonetheless, when Washington got news of Huddy’s death, he was apopleptic, demanding that Sir Henry Clinton immediately hand over the loyalist responsible, one Lippincott, to American justice. But Clinton had replied cooly that the matter was under investigation and that Lippincott might be tried by British court martial.
Inheriting the dispute, Carleton had written a politely conciliatory letter to Washington regretting the “passions of private and unauthorised persons” and daring to hope that the cycle of retaliations might be over. As a gesture of good faith, he released the son of Governor Livingston of New Jersey. But this cut no ice. Strongly implying that, if acts of barbarism had been committed in the late war, it was the British who had been responsible for the most atrocious of them, Washington replied to Carleton that the “unnatural war” had been disfigured by “inhuman excesses which in too many instances…marked its progress.” He declared that in the circumstances he would have no option but to choose, by lot, from among the British prisoners a surrogate for Lippincott who, if the matter was not properly settled, would be executed in his stead.
The lot fell on the nineteen-year-old Charles Asgill, the heir to a baronetcy and a captain in the 1st Guards, who was among the thousands of prisoners taken at Yorktown. Although the terms of the capitulation expressly forbade any of those prisoners being used as hostages, on Washington’s orders, Asgill was taken from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Morristown, New Jersey, put under close confinement and made aware of his fate should the British position not change. Shocked by the cold-blooded application of the lex talionis, an eye for an eye, along with Washington’s grim resolve to see it through, and aware that the British garrison in New York, enraged by Asgill’s misfortune, would much rather see Lippincott punished than Asgill (the loyalists, of course, felt the opposite), Carleton thrashed around for a judicious solution. He promised Washington that the court martial of Lippincott—postponed first so that the defendant could have time to prepare his case, then a second time while the legality of a court martial on an irregular soldier was adjudicated—would be hastened. And so it was; but its verdict—acquittal on the grounds that Lippincott had acted merely on orders from others in the Associated Loyalists—was unlikely to help Asgill very much.14 Nor did Carleton’s insistence that he would find those really responsible for the hanging.
What saved the young guards officer was the inflation of the Asgill matter into “L’Affaire Asgill,” the talk of the European salons and gazettes in the autumn of 1782. It had all the elements of the sentimental romance, much in vogue in this, the same year as the appearance of Rousseau’s Confessions: a stricken mother; a father on his death bed; a sister distraught and in “delirium”; one sternly unbending general, and his opposite number desperate for a solution that would be both humane and just. Given the news about her son, the anguished Theresa Asgill had written to Carleton to implore his personal intercession. Instead of shrugging his shoulders Carleton had a stroke of genius, suggesting that the mother write instead to the French Foreign Minister, Count Vergennes, in the knowledge that the fashionable cult of sensibility had a strong grip on the French aristocracy. Theresa Asgill, as it turned out, knew just what to do and how to do it.
Figure yourself, Sir, the situation of a family in these circumstances. Surrounded as I am with objects of distress, bowed down by fear and grief, words are wanting to express what I feel and to paint such a scene of misery: my husband given over by his physicians some hours before the arrival of this news is not in a condition to be informed of it; my daughter attacked by a fever accompanied with delirium; speaking of her brother in tones of wildness and without an interval of reason…let your sensibility, sir paint to you my profound, my inexpressible misery and plead in my favour, a word, a word from you like a voice from Heaven would liberate us from desolation, from the last degree of misfortune. I know how General Washington reveres your character. Tell him only that you wish my son restored to liberty, and he will restore him to his desponding family; he will restore him to happiness…I feel the whole weight of liberty taken in presenting this request but I feel confident, whether granted or not, that you will pity the distress by which it was suggested; your humanity will drop a tear on my fault and blot it out for ever
May that Heaven which I implore grant that you may never need the consolation which you have it in your power to bestow on
THERESA ASGILL
Once he had stopped sobbing, Vergennes passed the letter on to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who—mother to mother—melted in sympathetic sorrow. The philosophe Diderot’s correspondent, Grimm, began to embroider the scene, claiming that a gallows was being built directly outside Charles Asgill’s cell and that he had been taken thrice to the gibbet only for the agonized Washington to find himself incapable of giving the order for his execution. The journals and gazettes reported that passengers disembarking from ships coming from America were immediately asked, “What news of Asgill?”
Representations were made from Versailles to Philadelphia and New York. Informed that Lippincott would indeed be brought to trial, Washington was beginning to be plagued by a troubled conscience. He wrote uncharacteristically guilty letters to Asgill himself, expressing his earnest wish that the matter, properly resolved would result in the young man’s release. And in August he told Asgill that his fate and the whole issue was to be laid before Congress. A combination of sentiment and prudence eventually did the trick. A stormy three-day debate took place in early November, with a majority of the Congress still bent on the execution. On the third day of the debate a letter from Washington, known to be on the side of clemency, was read out along with those from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as well as Theresa Asgill’s personal appeal to the queen that “on the whole,” Boudinot reported, “was enough to move the heart of a savage.” The substance was a request from Washington to spare the life of young Asgill, which operated like an electric shock—each member looking at his neighbour in surprise as if saying, “Here is unfair play.” The most hardened members, suspecting some sort of fraud, demanded to see Washington’s letter and examined his signature for authenticity. Since it seemed to be in order, it was unanimously resolved that Asgill’s life should be preserved as a “compliment to the King of France.”
Delivered from her agony, Theresa Asgill wrote again to Vergennes with no apparent loss of poetic passion: “May this tribute bear testimony, to my gratitude long after the hand that expresses it, with the heart which at this moment only vibrates with the vivacity of grateful sentiments, shall be reduced to dust.” A hugely relieved Washington ordered Charles Asgill’s release, and at the same time sent him a letter begging, in effect, to be absolved from blame; he asked Asgill to appreciate that the order for his detention and execution had been signed not from any “sanguinary” motive but merely from a right sense of duty, and that no one other than the young man himself could possibly have greeted the news of liberty with more complete happiness than the general. Needless to say, hack playwrights in Paris immediately started to write Asgill plays, which, in one case at least, were a huge hit. Asgill himself went on to a long career in the British army fighting the French, thus biting the hand that had liberated him.
It was uncertain which Washington would confront Sir Guy Carleton: the stone-faced defender à l’outrance of American interests, or the humane, philosophical statesman?
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ON THE MORNING of the 6th of May, two barges took the British party across the river. In Carleton’s barge were his secretary, Maurice Morgann; the British lieutenant-governor of New York, Andrew Elliot; and Chief Justice Smith. Captain Lutwyche and a party of naval and military officers followed to show the flag for the king. At Tappan Sloot beneath the cliffs of the Palisades, where the boat docked, there was a smart military band and a full American guard of honour for Sir Guy in his scarlet dress coat to inspect. There, too, was George Washington, come from Newburgh and awarding the first medals of the freshly created order of the Purple Heart. Both generals were suffering afflictions: Carleton a heavy cold and Washington toothache. But history beckoned them to a show of cordiality. There was an exchange of courtesies, a shaking of hands, before Carleton climbed into a coach and four with Washington for the short drive to the Amos de Wint house where the meeting was to take place. Others took the horses they were offered, while William Smith and Andrew Elliot chose, rather Britishly, to walk.
The de Wint house was, did Carleton but know it, an inauspicious place for Anglo-American reconciliation. It looked innocent enough: a standard Hudson valley Dutch farmhouse, parlour and kitchen on the ground floor, two bedchambers above, with flaring gables overhanging whitewashed brick and stone walls on which, in the Dutch fashion, the date of its construction, 1700, had been set. There was a fenced grassy yard; the dogwood had uncurled its papery buds, and on a weedy pond ducks paddled about, indifferent to great men and moments.15 But the de Wint house had a grim history. In 1780 it had been Washington’s headquarters, and there Major André, the British spy who had orchestrated Benedict Arnold’s defection and the failed attempt to surrender West Point, had been tried and sentenced to death. On the 6th of May, however, its doorway was the scene of an hour of meaningless pleasantries, after which business was convened in the larger of the two rooms that took up the ground floor. There were Delft tiles on the wall, oak beams in the ceiling, and precious little light admitted through the leaded windows. The mood was weighty. Around the table sat Washington’s secretary, Jonathan Trumbull, the attorney-general of New York Egbert Benson, the American governor of New York, George Clinton (who, William Smith acidly noted, had once been his legal clerk) and John Morin Scott, New York’s Secretary of State. For all the courteous preliminaries, neither Clinton nor Scott was prepared to tolerate temporizing from the British. They should go, go soon and without the negroes. Opening the proceedings, Washington got to the heart of the matter right away, bringing Carleton’s attention to Article VII before asking for a definite timetable for the remaining evacuation from Westchester, New York and Long Island. He spoke, as he generally did, in a low, even tone: the voice of gravitas, of history. But the famous mask of dispassion broke when he heard Carleton’s response.
Before they had ever met, there was something about Sir Guy Carleton that had irritated Washington. It was the British general’s habit to lecture him, in their correspondence, on the general subject of humanity and what he presumed was their common duty towards it. Dear General Washington, on the subject of the piteous plight of the prisoners…. Your Excellency, knowing full well your concern to relieve the unfortunate young Captain Asgill…General Washington, would not it be possible to grant some leave for clothes to be delivered to the neediest…? And now, it seemed, the man was concerned with the fate of negroes, our negroes, my negroes! When Carleton began his reply there had been no cause for concern, except that the general seemed determined to address the concerns in the opposite order from the one in which Washington had set them out. On the changing of the guard in Westchester? To be done and done swiftly; already orders had been given to withhold supplies from de Lancey’s Refugee Cowboys. Long Island? Not so fast, for want of both ships and some security to protect loyalists during the departure. But it would happen; all in good time, as soon as the vessels were come—they would be gone before the year was out.
Indeed, Carleton was doing all he could to expedite the embarkations. There had already been two previous sailings, one as early as October 1782, in which 56 blacks are recorded among the 501 passengers sailing for Halifax, followed by a much bigger departure at the end of April 1783 when 6,000 had left for Nova Scotia.16 The ships had been, and would be, inspected for any irregular carrying off of negroes; a book had been begun to record them so that owners might be compensated.
What? Washington reddened and interrupted. “Already imbark’d!” Carleton stared back, his voice still even, his demeanour cool, his manner maddeningly superior. Now the general must know, of course, that whatever the draft treaty might or might not say, “no Interpretation could be put on the Articles inconsistent with prior Engagements binding the National Honour which must be kept with all colours.”17
All colours. It was Carleton’s moment of truth and, he supposed, the vindication of his woeful, defeated kingdom, which, as long as he had anything to do with it, would at least rescue from the sordid debacle a shred of decency and honour. And it was his revenge over the Paris negotiators, British and American both, and their easy, blithe abandonment of the promises made to unfortunate blacks—promises that should and would be kept.
Incredulous, Washington kept his peace and remained stonily silent. But uproar broke out in the room as John Morin Scott became heated, accusing the British of violating articles already agreed on in Paris whilst the Americans had fully honoured their side. The British hit back by charging that the recent Trespass Act, which allowed owners of property to sue for damages those who had occupied it during the war, was irreconcilable with all known conventions of war. It got worse when (with Vermont still reputed to be against independence) Governor Clinton was asked by the British side whether, in the event of states disagreeing with Congress, they could be allowed to go their own way. Not at all, shouted Clinton. Voices rose, tempers flared. Carleton attempted to douse the sparks, expressing a liberal desire to look at any propositions made. An awkward, angry pause followed, broken by Washington and Carleton returning politely to the expediting of the evacuation. They were going round in circles, with the huge, unresolved, irreconcilable matter, in the middle of it all. There was nothing more to be done. Washington pulled out his watch, “and observing it was dinner time, offered Wine and Bitters. We all rose with Sir Guy.”18
A tent had been set up on the grass beside the de Wint house. Within was the very best that Samuel Fraunces, who kept a tavern in Manhattan and whom Washington would bring back as chef in his New York, Germantown and Philadelphia houses, could lay on for the princely sum of £500: oysters, cutlets, pies, roasts and the enormous puddings for which he was deservedly famous. Would that he could have eavesdropped on the earlier proceedings, for Fraunces was Black Sam, a free negro whose entire life had been a stirring Anglo-American adventure. His first New York tavern had been named the Queen’s Head in honour of Queen Charlotte, George III’s consort, but had then become a favourite meeting place for radical Patriots. His daughter Phoebe was credited with undoing a plot to poison Washington’s peas, which, thrown out of the window, promptly killed some chickens pecking below. But he had also entertained the British during the occupation before making his way to the American side in New Jersey. Now Black Sam, in the glory of his immaculate coat and white wig moved among the gentlemen and the puddings, ensuring that copiousness, if not harmony, prevailed.
There was supposed to have been reciprocity, Captain Lutwyche and General Carleton inviting Washington and his side to dine on the Perseverance the following day. They did indeed come, and for the first time Americans were accorded the honours of high officers of army and state: a seventeen-gun salute, repeated on their departure that evening. Absent from the lengthy dinner was Carleton himself, confined to bed by an aggravation in his condition—although the possibility that his indisposition might have been at least partly diplomatic could not have escaped the Americans. When it was time for the Americans to leave in their boats Carleton got up and bade them farewell, late enough to ensure that
nothing of importance on the issue of the blacks could be said.
In any case, Carleton’s mind was made up. Washington followed up the meeting at Tappan with a testy letter and Carleton duly replied, repeating his position that, whilst every effort would be made to record most faithfully all negroes wanting to leave, and whilst American officials had already joined the inspection of outgoing ships, he would do nothing to impair the liberty of “Negroes who had been declared free previous to my arrival; as I had no right to deprive them of that liberty I found them possessed of.” By acting correctly, Carleton insisted he was doing the slaveowners a favour since, should the blacks have been denied the right to embark, they would “in spite of every means to prevent it, have found various means of quitting this place so that the former owners would no longer have been able to trace them and of course would have lost in every way all chance of compensation.” But then Carleton could not resist the opportunity of once again putting Washington in his place. “I must confess,” he added, “that the mere supposition that the King’s minister could deliberately stipulate in a treaty an engagement to be guilty of a notorious breach of the public faith towards the people of any complexion, seems to denote a less friendly disposition than I could wish and I think less friendly than we might expect.”19