Washington's General

by Terry Golway

  Amid the smoke, noise, and chaos enveloping the American position, Greene urged Washington to leave immediately and volunteered to remain behind to command the desperate defense of Fort Washington. Putnam and Mercer did likewise. Washington was in imminent danger of death or capture; either one surely would have ended the Revolution.

  Washington agreed, but he persuaded his generals to come with him. They made their way down to the shore by an old path, and they were rowed away as the British pressed forward.

  They left behind nearly three thousand men. Within a matter of hours, nearly all of them were made prisoners–the rest were dead or wounded–and most of the prisoners would later die terrible deaths in foul, suffocating prison ships anchored off present-day Brooklyn. Fort Washington surrendered. It was the worst defeat of the war so far.

  And it was, to a large extent, Nathanael Greene’s fault.

  Ultimately, Washington had to take the blame, for he had arrived at Fort Lee in plenty of time to overrule Greene and order an evacuation before the British attacked. But he didn’t. And while Washington accepted responsibility, the loss was so bitter he could not help but remind Congress that he had taken bad advice, advice given him by Nathanael Greene. Neither man knew that days before the attack, an American officer had deserted to the British and told them all he knew about the fort’s defenses.

  Washington had to break the disastrous news to Congress in a letter the morning after. In it, he did not spare Greene, noting that he had instructed the young general “to govern himself by Circumstances. . . . General Greene, struck with the Importance of the Post, and the Discouragement which our Evacuation of Posts must necessarily have given, reinforced [Colonel] Magaw.”

  Greene was distraught. Had Washington fired him on the spot, historians very likely would have judged the action understandable and perhaps even necessary. Greene was, after all, little more than an amateur playing at war, and Fort Washington had shown the danger of taking advice from such a man. Nobody was quite sure why he was a general in the first place; he had no experience, no expertise, and little more than a schoolboy’s enthusiasm for the idea, although not the reality, of war. It had been a mistake to place him with such a trust. Yes, his intentions were good, and he was competent enough as an administrator, but as a strategist?

  Nobody rose to Greene’s defense. In fact, the duplicitous General Lee heaped scorn on Greene’s injured reputation. “Oh, General,” Lee wrote to Washington, “why would you be overpersuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own?” Lee tersely informed Washington that he would not honor Greene’s recommendations for promotions among the Rhode Island troops under Lee’s command. He claimed that other officers accused Greene “of partiality to his connections and townsmen, to the prejudice of manifestly superior merit.” Some of those Greene recommended, Lee said, “were wretched.”

  If Greene believed he no longer had a friend in the world, he was not entirely mistaken. Washington’s aide Joseph Reed, a presumed ally of Greene’s, joined the whispering campaign against him, telling Lee that the fort’s loss was Greene’s responsibility. Greene poured out his heart to Henry Knox, one officer who most certainly had not abandoned him, in a letter the day after Fort Washington fell: “I feel mad, vext, sick and sorry. Never did I need the consoling voice of a friend more than now. Happy should I be to see you. This is a most terrible Event. Its consequences are justly to be dreaded.” Characteristically, he asked Knox to tell him “what is said upon the Occasion.” If Knox knew what was being said, one can only hope that he spared his friend. His reply to this heartrending letter has not been found.

  Washington, although eager to make it clear that he was simply listening to bad counsel, did not fire Greene. To his credit, he kept the young general at his side, understanding that there were more battles to fight, knowing he would need every good man he could find. He did not protect Greene from criticism, but he declined the chance to make him a public scapegoat.

  With Fort Washington in enemy hands, Fort Lee was useless. In addition to three thousand men, the fort held enormous stores of ammunition, foodstuff, tools, and muskets. All would have to be removed to some other place in New Jersey. A lethargic evacuation, hampered by a lack of wagons, was under way on the morning of November 20 when Greene was awakened from his sleep with electrifying news. General Charles Cornwallis, a brilliant young officer, and six thousand troops had landed in New Jersey about six miles north of the fort. Their orders were to finish off Greene.

  In Lord Cornwallis, Nathanael Greene was about to meet an antagonist who was everything the Rhode Islander was not, a symbol of the Old World of privilege who now sought to crush troops under the command of a New World general who represented the triumph of merit over blood. Cornwallis was a graduate of Eton, the English finishing school for highborn military officers, a politician, a onetime aide to King George III, and a veteran of Britain’s campaigns on the Continent.

  A liberal, at least by the standards of his class, Cornwallis had mixed feelings about the men he now sought to crush. He believed the Americans had valid complaints, but when mere discontent degenerated into outright rebellion, he put politics aside and returned to his first career, the military. If nothing else, he shared with Nathanael Greene a love of country and a sense of duty.

  Now the graduate of Eton was hot on the heels of the unschooled general from Rhode Island.

  Greene had posted troops along the New Jersey cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, anticipating the British offensive. But Cornwallis had exploited a gap in Greene’s patrols and had crossed the river at night, undetected. News of the British advance set the American camp into motion and chaos. Greene sent for Washington, who had ridden to Hackensack, and quickly ordered the troops to evacuate the fort. There was no time to douse the campfires, no time to eat breakfast, and, worst of all, no time to collect all the supplies, tools, and weapons in camp. Luckily, Greene already had removed much of the fort’s ammunition. Washington later estimated that the army lost more than two hundred cannon (a terrible loss), along with “a great deal of baggage, between two and three hundred Tents–about a thousand Barrels of Flour and other stores.”

  Cornwallis nearly had them. His advance guard arrived in Fort Lee even as the abandoned campfires burned and some of Greene’s slow-moving troops–they moved slowly because they were drunk–were lingering in camp. Greene joined Washington for a sullen march through the meadows outside of Newark. The race through New Jersey was on.

  Greene’s terse summation of the retreat did little justice to the suffering of this ragged, dispirited army: “We retreated to Hackensack. From Hackensack to Equacanock [present-day Passaic]; from Equacanock to Newark; from Newark to [New] Brunswick; from [New] Brunswick to this place”–meaning Trenton, where they arrived on December 2. They marched eighty miles in less than two weeks, along muddy roads, in dirty clothes, through towns that offered no parades, no smiles, no friendly waves, and certainly no new recruits to add to an army that had suffered such grievous losses since the Battle of Long Island. Local residents were quick to take a British offer for pardons providing they reaffirmed their allegience to the king. The soldiers, fighting, sacrificing, and dying for the liberty of their fellow Americans, were disgusted. Ebenezer Hunting-ton, a Continental captain who was on the march through New Jersey, wrote: “Our people, instead of behaving like brave men, behave like rascalls. . . . People join them almost in captains’ companies to take the oath of allegiance.” Washington called up the New Jersey militia; most of the militiamen ignored him. They were not about to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in a lost cause. Members of Congress, fearing the approach of the pursuing British, fled from Philadelphia–just after assuring Washington they would do no such thing.

  Lord Rawdon, the arrogant young British officer who had been so amused by reports of Staten Island women resisting British rapists earlier in the year, assured a friend that the American army “is broken all to pieces, and the spirit of their leaders ..
. is also broken.” He concluded that “it is well nigh over with them.” When Charles Lee, marching ever so slowly south toward Washington’s column, was taken prisoner in the New Jersey town of Basking Ridge, the end certainly seemed in sight. He was a professional soldier, as opposed to the amateurs who followed Washington through the snows of New Jersey, and many believed he, not Washington, was the man best suited to lead the rebels. Certainly he thought so. Not long before his capture, he shared his opinion of his commander in chief with another British officer turned rebel general, Horatio Gates. “Entre nous,” wrote the man who bragged of his ability to speak and think in French, “a certain great man is most damnably deficient.” But now Charles Lee, who considered himself the answer to the American army’s deficiencies, was in His Majesty’s custody, and that damnably deficient commander in chief was leading his men to God knows where.

  It was along this terrible, demoralizing march that Thomas Paine found new words to move his fellow patriots. Paine had joined Greene’s staff several weeks earlier as a civilian aide, and now he shared the army’s suffering as it slogged along, underfed and underclothed. He looked into the hollow eyes of those few troops–only about three thousand now–who remained with Washington. He wrote at night in Greene’s camp, often, no doubt, after long conversations with Greene and other American officers. From these observations came a brilliant pamphlet, The Crisis.

  “These are the times that try men’s souls,” Paine wrote. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

  The winter soldiers of the American army, shoulders stooped, heads down, defeat written on their faces, gloomily crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania on December 8. They were barely across when their British pursuers entered Trenton, just missing a chance to finish off the campaign with a crushing victory.

  On December 16, Greene wrote a letter to Caty that had some of his friend Paine’s eloquence and, amazingly, much of his own optimism. The march, trying though it was, at least allowed him to put some distance–physically and otherwise–from the disaster at Fort Washington. He told Caty: “Fortune seems to frown upon the cause of freedom; a combination of evils are pressing in upon us on all sides. However, I hope this is the dark part of the night, which generally is just before day.”

  Those words were not simply empty encouragement to a worried and, thanks to her visit to New York in June, pregnant wife. As Greene awaited the army’s next move, he established his headquarters in a private home along the Delaware River. There, above a mantle, he added a personal bit of decoration: a painting of a rising sun.

  6 Victory or Death

  On a cold Christmas Eve about three miles west of the icy Delaware River, Nathanael Greene hosted dinner for George Washington, his staff, and other top American officers. The officers drifted in after a hard ride through the rolling, frozen fields leading to Greene’s quarters, a private house owned by the Merrick family. While the house was made of stone and so was sturdier than the hastily built huts nearby, it also was unfinished and drafty. But the condition of the house hardly mattered. Neither, in fact, did the festive night itself. The American generals gathered not to celebrate but to discuss a surprise attack planned for the following day. Christmas was a time when lonely soldiers based in a faraway land–such as, say, the Hessian mercenaries who occupied Trenton–might be expected to have their guard down. The freezing weather certainly didn’t help morale, but at least the snow and ice made it highly unlikely that George Washington would risk his ragged band with a surprise attack.

  On this cold Christmas Eve, the only Americans with reason to be festive were those who were counting the days to New Year’s. On that eagerly awaited day, their military obligations would expire and they would be free to leave their wretched camp and return to their homes. Those expiring enlistments were very much on the minds of the American generals as they gathered in Greene’s headquarters. If they did not act now, they would be doomed to inaction when the bulk of the army–thousands of troops, most of them from New England–retired on January 1. Thanks to a stream of reinforcements, the army now numbered more than ten thousand, although only six thousand were healthy enough for duty. But Washington had to make use of this expanded force by January 1.

  On the other side of the river, a Hessian force of only about fifteen hundred guarded Trenton. Numbers alone suggested a glorious opportunity for the Americans after months of defeat and loss, and Greene was eager to take advantage. “I hope to give the Enimy a stroke in a few days,” he wrote on December 21.

  On Christmas Eve, from his place at Greene’s dining table, a somber Washington reviewed his plans for the following day’s action with his officers. The men would be issued a three-day supply of cooked rations. The operation’s countersign, or password, would be “Victory or Death.” One detachment under General James Ewing would cross at Trenton Ferry and seize a bridge over the Assunpink Creek, blocking a Hessian retreat to the south. Meanwhile, another detachment of more than two thousand men under Colonel John Cadwalader would cross the river to the south to create a diversion. The main attack force of about twenty-four hundred men with Henry Knox’s artillery would cross the river at McKonkey’s Ferry, north of Trenton, and then march toward the town in two columns. General Sullivan would command the column on the right, following the river road into town. Greene would command on the left, along Pennington Road, with Washington himself marching with Greene’s division. All these moves would have to be coordinated carefully, because surprise was essential. After overwhelming the garrison, the Americans would press forward against Princeton and perhaps even the critical British outpost in New Brunswick.

  The generals went over the details of the complicated plan and then bade one another good night, leaving Greene to his thoughts. The next few days truly would bring them victory or death.

  The dreadful weeks leading to this decisive moment had brought him closer still to Washington. When he heard that critics were complaining that he had been slow to evacuate Fort Lee before Cornwallis forced his hand, he noted with “satisfaction” that his conduct was “approved by the General” under whom he served. And when nervous politicians in New England asked Washington to send Greene to his home state after the British captured Newport in early December, the commander in chief refused. The general, Greene told Caty with some obvious pride, “would not permit me to go.” Benedict Arnold was dispatched to Rhode Island instead of Greene.

  Washington’s loyalty to Greene was repaid a hundred times over. Grateful that he was not publicly humiliated for the loss of Fort Washington, happy that he had so quickly regained Washington’s confidence in this hour of peril, Greene became Washington’s earnest champion and stouthearted defender. On December 21, Greene wrote to John Hancock, urging the nation’s political leaders to give Washington greater powers over the conduct of the war: the appointment of officers, the recruitment of new regiments, the power to arrest those who refused to sell merchandise to the army. The good New World republicans in Congress had been reluctant to grant what were described as “dictatorial” powers to a military officer, but Greene argued that in Washington, Americans had a general who would not abuse the powers given him in an emergency. Showing off his self-taught erudition, Greene noted that he ordinarily would be “no advocate for the extention of Military Power.” It was, however, necessary. He wrote:

  Remember the Policy of the Romans (a People as tenacious of their Liberties as any on Earth), when their State was invaded they [delegated] full Powers to exert their whole Force. The Fate of War is so uncertain, dependant upon so many Contingencies. A Day, nay an Hour, is so important in the Crisis of publick Affairs that it would be folly to wait for Relief from the deliberative Councils of Legislative Bodies.

  He assured Congress that there “never was a man that might be more safely trusted” with such broad powers as Washington. Thanks in part to
Greene’s argument, Congress approved a measure giving Washington the powers he needed to preserve the army and so the Revolution.

  The Americans began moving out of their camp toward the river at two o’clock on Christmas Day. Washington thought he could have everybody into New Jersey by midnight, but as the hours passed along the cold river’s banks it became clear that the crossing would take a good deal longer. It was an awful night, with wind and sleet whipping against far too much bare skin, and ice floes interfering with American boats. The men were not completely across until four o’clock, just a couple of hours before sunrise–a potentially disastrous development. Even worse, although Washington and Greene didn’t know it, the crossing at Trenton Ferry under Ewing never materialized, and Cadwalader’s diversionary landing to the south had been aborted.

  Cold and nervous, the Americans assembled on the Jersey side and marched about three miles, and then, after a short break for rest and a fast meal, they split into the two columns for the final five miles to Trenton. Conditions offered no mercy; two soldiers froze to death as they rested along the march. Greene’s troops, some of them without shoes, marched in silence through the snow. Conditions remained horrendous, and Greene would later describe the weather as “one of the severest” storms he had ever witnessed. A wind from the northeast blew snow and hail into the soldiers’ faces, making them all the more miserable. Progress was far slower than Washington had planned–Greene’s column still was two miles from its objective as the sky lightened.