by Logan Beirne
In other attempts at imposing piety on his ranks, he actively combated his troops’ vices. As his troops enjoyed all that New York City had to offer, prostitution flourished. “The whores continue their employ which is become very lucrative,” wrote a New England colonel, reassuring his wife that he only learned about it as part of his official duty.13 An area near St. Paul’s Church in lower Manhattan, ironically called the “Holy Ground,” became a notorious rendezvous spot for soldiers and the “bitchfoxy jades.”14 One soldier wrote of the women, “I thought nothing could exceed them for impudence and immodesty . . . . To mention the Particulars of their Behavior would so pollute the Paper I write upon that I must excuse myself.”15
The Holy Ground was not just debauched but also dangerous. Tales of murderous prostitutes gained support from discoveries of soldiers’ limbs and heads at the park.16 Washington did his best to stamp out the prostitution, sending patrols and repeatedly warning his men of the dangers of such moral failing. And prostitution was not the only vice that Washington actively combated.
Although fond of occasional gambling himself, he outlawed dice and cards, viewing them as pastimes that should be kept in check.17 He strongly discouraged profanity and worked—often in vain—to make his army into a good neighbor to the surrounding populace. When citizens complained of soldiers skinny-dipping within eyesight of refined women, Washington strove to keep his troops clothed and in line. Frisky, naked soldiers were terrible for public relations. Despite Washington’s efforts, rumors of depravity circulated—even about Washington himself.
Some gossips claimed that the great moral enforcer did not practice that which he preached. A rumor circulated that Washington was “very fond” of a Jersey girl named Mary Gibbons. A Tory spy testified at his own trial that the commander “maintained her genteelly in a house [and] came often at night in disguise” to visit her. Upon hearing the startling accusation, the patriot judges immediately halted the trial to confer with the general. After “many conferences” with Washington, the trial resumed with no further mention of the alleged affair.18 Such accusations were very likely just vicious rumors circulated by Loyalists in an attempt to discredit Washington and the revolutionary cause along with him. If they fostered distrust in Washington and his army, the Loyalists could help end the war.
But Washington was tireless in shining his own image along with that of his army. The last thing he wanted was to stoke the citizenry’s fear that the army would run out of control and trample on their liberties.
To assuage their fears, Washington consistently avoided any action that could be perceived as a power grab. As the leader of these soldiers, he knew his every action was eyed with suspicion. And so he went out of his way to demonstrate that he had no intention of wresting power from the politicians in Congress or the states. In fact, he chose to err on the side of being overly deferential.
General Howe once addressed a letter to “George Washington, Esq.” But Washington refused to accept the letter. This was because Howe had failed to acknowledge his official designation as the congressionally appointed leader of the American army. After some diplomatic haggling, Howe tried presenting the letter to “George Washington, Esq., &ca, &ca.,” attempting to use “&ca.” as a sort of catchall to cover Washington’s positions. Washington again rejected the letter. Finally, Howe addressed the letter to “His Excellency, General Washington,” and Washington accepted it.19 He was not being vain. On the contrary, he was making it clear that his position as commander of the army had been delegated to him by the civil authorities. So if Howe harbored any illusions of negotiating a separate peace with Washington, thereby leaving Congress without a military, such hopes were swiftly put to rest.20
Washington also tried to allay suspicion by seeking congressional authorization for his every move. Even on matters such as troop deployment and the interception of ships—matters that just about any other military commander in history would have assumed he had authority to decide—Washington asked Congress for approval.21 When he received an answer, he followed it almost unquestioningly. Although he did not have Jefferson’s erudition or Franklin’s quick wit, Washington was politically brilliant, and he knew precisely how he needed to act in order to engender trust and define the role of America’s first commander in chief. And so, like a child eager to please a hovering parent, he asked, “Mother, may I?” at almost every turn. And Congress was quite the helicopter mother.
The “obedient son” wrote Congress constantly, informing them of his actions. Rather than focusing all of his energies on formulating tactics, “[i]n the hours ‘allotted to sleep,’ [General Washington] sat in his headquarters, writing a letter, with ‘blots and scratches,’ which told Congress with the utmost precision and vigor just what was needed” to conduct a war.22 In fact, he produced so much correspondence—a whopping 140,000 documents during the war—that he employed a team of scribes who lived with him for this purpose.23 Foreseeing his letters’ value to posterity, he checked virtually all of the scribes’ work and held it to exacting standards. Every letter bearing his name had to be direct, grammatically correct, and free of the slightest error. Washington wanted perfection. And that was a lot to ask, considering the tremendous volume of letters he sent.
Washington also wanted each letter to display the right tone. At the beginning of the war, that tone was one of deference. Even when seeking such basic necessities as munitions or money to pay troops, he carefully worded his letters as requests rather than demands. “I am not fond of stretching my powers,” he wrote tellingly; “and if the Congress will say, ‘Thus far and no farther you shall go,’ I will promise not to offend whilst I continue in their service.”24
Congress did not hesitate to appoint committees to pull their commander’s strings. And if Washington was frustrated with the growing bureaucracy’s micromanagement, he certainly hid it well. He trod patiently as he shaped this novel role of American commander in chief. This concept was an experiment and Washington sought to define it very carefully. The concept of “the republican commander” was an evolving one, however. It was adapted as the new nation learned the necessities of war the hard way.
Washington’s strict subservience to Congress waned as the war effort deteriorated, for while he was amazingly restrained and principled, it eventually became clear that this new kind of scorpion needed a more powerful sting if America was going to win. This reality became extremely apparent when Congress’s meddling helped lead the nation to the brink of destruction.
The politicians in Philadelphia did not fully grasp their army’s predicament in 1776. John Adams, who headed the Board of War in the Continental Congress but admitted that he knew little about warfare, urged Washington to defend New York City. “No effort to secure it ought to be omitted,” he said, for the city was “a kind of key to the whole continent.”25 The congressmen were not military experts, but that would not stop them from letting their commander know their opinions. They were motivated by the political—rather than military—consideration that ceding a major city was liable to turn public opinion against the war.
And Washington hung on their words. He knew that in attempting to defend an island without a navy, he was at a tremendous disadvantage. But, after heading to Philadelphia for a strategy session with Congress, he agreed to make a stand at New York.26 Bending to political pressure and perhaps his own inexperience, Washington attempted to fortify the city.
Washington’s first attempt to defend New York had almost destroyed the new country, as we saw in Chapter 10. The British onslaught in the Battle of Brooklyn had nearly crushed Washington’s army. Even after his brilliant escape across the East River, Washington was not safe yet. He found himself precariously situated in Manhattan. Like Brooklyn, the island was indefensible against Britain’s overwhelmingly powerful navy coupled with its better-trained army. However extensive his fortifications, he could not count on his shaken men to stand and fight. To make matters worse, even if he could find a way to inspire cour
age, many of his men were not physically capable of standing. Washington’s own army was in tatters, quite literally.
Adams, ever the gifted orator, described the troops’ sorry condition: “Our Army . . . is an Object of Wretchedness, enough to fill a humane Mind, with Horror. Disgraced, defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, naked, undisciplined, eaten up with Vermin—no Cloaths, Beds, Blanketts, no Medicines, no Victuals, but Salt Pork and flour.”27 Unable to obtain funds from the cash-strapped Congress, Washington was months behind in paying this wretched lot, and he had no way to provide supplies either. At this stage in the war, the leashed American commander could do little more than plead with Congress for more supplies. And his requests went largely unfulfilled.
In an attempt to remedy their hunger, the “filthy, divided, and unruly” troops violated Washington’s orders and ransacked deserted homes in search of food and clothing.28 It made for a miserable end to the summer, as the soldiers were preoccupied merely with eating rather than such “luxuries” as cleanliness. Contrary to Washington’s hygiene orders, they bathed and washed their clothes rarely, if at all. One traveler described these desperate men in rather colorful terms: “These troops stationed here are Yankee men, the nastiest devils in creation. It would be impossible for any human creature whose organs of smelling were more delicate than that of a hog to live one day under the less of this camp.”29 At this point, Washington might have been less cross if they had resumed their skinny-dipping antics.
In these conditions, infection and disease ran rampant. The Americans were so plagued by “putrid disorders” that an estimated one in four soldiers were diseased.30 The most dreaded ailment was smallpox, a vile malady that brought rashes, burning fever, and death. Extremely contagious, it festered among Washington’s men and erupted in an epidemic so dire that John Adams described it as “ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians and Indians together.”31 Smallpox threatened to decimate Washington’s army.
While the British troops had some natural tolerance to the disease from repeated exposure in their densely populated home country, the virgin American wilderness had isolated the colonists from it. Therefore, this new outbreak hit them much harder since their immune systems needed to work to develop the antibody defenses that many of their enemies’ bodies already possessed. Washington himself had contracted the disease as a teen, and his face still bore the scars (it is believed that he never fathered children due to sterility caused by this bout with smallpox). His troops lacked his immunity, however.
The British sought to exploit this advantage by pioneering in germ warfare. One British officer recommended, “Dip arrows in matter of smallpox, and twang them at the American rebels [to] disband these stubborn, ignorant, enthusiastic savages.”32 There was little evidence that the British utilized arrows, but many accused them of using human conduits instead. Reports abounded that they went as far as intentionally infecting American civilians and sending them to spread the disease to the American side.33 While it is difficult to confirm such accusations, Howe indeed dumped boatloads of sick civilians near Washington’s lines. Whether these civilians were intentionally infected or Howe merely took full advantage of their preexisting illness is unclear, but the effect was the same: they spread horror and disease.
Washington was aghast and wrote, “The information I received that the Enemy intended spreading the smallpox amongst us, I could not suppose them capable of; I now must give some credit to it, as it has made its appearance.”34 Days later, he wrote with more conviction, saying, “This I apprehend is a weapon of defence, they are using against us.”35 Such germ warfare was not unprecedented—General Gage had purportedly used smallpox to wipe out some of his Native American foes during the Seven Years’ War. What was new and particularly outrageous to Washington was that such dirty tactics might be used against other white men. While he could not prove that the British were doing so, he was ready to take every precaution. The viral threat was so extreme that Washington’s most important military decision of the war was not a tactical one during battle. It was medical.
Many doctors and New York’s legislature, called the Provincial Congress, warned against smallpox immunization, claiming that it actually exacerbated the epidemic.36 The inoculation was a grotesque procedure that had been used in India for thousands of years but was still relatively new to the Europeans. First, the administering doctor used a pin to prick the pustule of a smallpox victim. Next, he extracted the puss and contained it in a jar. Then the doctor would scratch the skin of a healthy inoculation recipient to create an open wound. Finally, he dabbed the infected puss into the wound to spread the disease in a controlled fashion.37 This was a far healthier way to contract smallpox than by inhalation or casual contact. The patient inoculated with the puss would normally contract just a mild case of smallpox for a few weeks and then enjoy immunity to subsequent exposure. However, there was a catch. During those weeks of illness and recovery, the patient could spread the disease to others, giving them a full-blown, deadly case. While those who contracted the disease via inoculation suffered a mere 0.9 percent mortality rate, among those who contracted it via natural means, 17 percent perished—and the others suffered horribly.
Washington had mixed feelings about inoculation. He was reasonably well acquainted with the process, since his second cousin had previously set up a smallpox inoculation hospital, and Washington had even allowed his beloved stepson Jacky to be inoculated before going away to school in Europe. Nevertheless, he feared that mass inoculation would spread the disease further if the newly inoculated patients were not properly quarantined. And even if they were, Washington ran the risk that the British might attack while many of the American troops were still weakened.
Although he had seen the efficacy of inoculation firsthand, Washington—in his typical subservient fashion—abided by the New York legislature’s opposition to it. Upon receiving news that the New York authorities had arrested a doctor caught inoculating American troops, Washington presented “his Compliments to the Honorable The Provincial Congress, and General Committee” and expressed that he was “much obliged to them, for their Care, in endeavouring to prevent the spreading of the Small-pox (by Inoculation or any other way) in this City, or in the Continental Army.” He then ordered that his officers “take the strictest care, to . . . prevent Inoculation” and that any soldier who allowed himself to be inoculated “must expect the severest punishment.” Further, any officer who was inoculated would be “cashiered and turned out of the army, and have his name published in the News papers throughout the Continent, as an Enemy and Traitor to his Country.”38
Washington was serious about following the New York civil authority’s direction. But, with his headstrong wife’s help, he came to change his mind. And in doing so, he altered the course of history.
Martha Washington was a “small plump, elegantly formed woman”39 with hazel eyes, dark hair, and “those frank, engaging manners, so captivating in Southern women.”40 She was certainly seen as physically attractive, but people seemed to be most struck by her intelligence and her “sweet and radiant” temperament.41 A rich widow, she had married Washington when they were both twenty-seven years old, and in doing so, catapulted his social and financial standing. You can make more in a minute than you can make in a lifetime. While their relationship was not a particularly romantic one, they nevertheless shared a deep devotion to and admiration for one another. In fact, Washington was said to wear a locket containing a miniature picture of her around his neck every day of their marriage.42
Loving life almost as much as she loved George, Martha saw inoculation as a way to pursue both loves: if she gained immunity, she could join her husband at his encampment without contracting the deadly version of smallpox from his soldiers. So she took matters into her own hands. Despite the fact that her husband’s army threatened death to soldiers who sought inoculation, she pressed on undeterred. Washington, underestimating her tenacity, privately confided to his cousin,
“Mrs. Washington . . . talks of taking the Small Pox [inoculation], but I doubt her resolution.”43 To his surprise, she underwent the procedure.44 After several weeks, she recovered and rejoined her beloved husband without trepidation of the baneful disease.
Rumors had it that one of Martha’s reasons for being inoculated was to persuade her husband of the procedure’s merits.45 And it was around this time that Washington began to tout its benefits. The Americans’ efforts to combat smallpox by outlawing inoculation had failed, and Washington came to see the procedure as the only solution to the epidemic.
Despite the opposition from civil authorities in New York and elsewhere, Washington asserted his military authority and petitioned Congress to reverse course.46 Congress agreed, and Washington ordered mass inoculations of his troops to commence. This move was unprecedented. Washington’s army would become the first in history to utilize wholesale smallpox inoculation. Washington’s emerging boldness as a leader in the face of civilian disagreement would help save thousands of men and probably the American army itself.