Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency

by Logan Beirne

  Receiving no orders from their superiors, Martin and his battalion ran like hell, while “the grape shot and langrage flew merrily, which served to quicken [their] motions.”7 They made a mad dash to a nearby house, where they came upon women and small children crying amidst the mayhem. Even though it was still morning, the soldiers were in need of a stiff drink. Much to their delight, the women placed a bottle of rum on the table and the thirsty soldiers helped themselves. Fortified with some liquid courage, Martin and his friends then snuck out the door and ran for miles to safety.

  Hearing the British bombardment, Washington leapt onto his horse and raced to the scene. When he arrived, he was not pleased with what he saw. “The demons of fear and disorder” had infected his troops, sending them scattering.8 Even in areas where they outnumbered the British, the Americans fled, dropping their muskets, bullets, food, and even clothing to run faster.9 In Washington’s view, his soldiers were becoming a little too adept at running away. He was a man of action. Honor required that he stand and fight. Therefore, he boldly ordered his troops to stand their ground. Almost as if he were trying to beat honor into them, he struck several officers as they disobeyed.

  Washington scrambled to organize a counterattack, but the Americans were too terrified to return fire. He could take no more of such impotence. In one of the few times the remarkably stoic general lost his temper, he dashed his hat on the ground and exclaimed, “Good God, have I got such Troops as those!”10 Mad with rage, he mounted his horse and charged at the invaders. Almost no one followed him.

  The commander rode with nearly suicidal fury and virtually no backup to within a football field of the redcoats. Frustrated by his inability to stop the British and distraught over the peril to his nation, the tremendously unflappable man lost control of his faculties. And it almost cost him his life. There he was, blind with anger, singlehandedly opposing the invasion. Realizing the horror about to transpire, two of his aides frantically grabbed for his horse’s reins as bullets whizzed past, kicking up the earth around them. The commander almost died in that instant. But luckily for the him—and for the Revolution—muskets were rather inaccurate weapons.

  The French developed the flintlock musket in 1610. This ingenious contraption antiquated the need to ignite gunpowder with a match. Instead, the hammer used a piece of flint to cause the spark that created the (somewhat) controlled explosion that forced the lead musket ball through the gun barrel and hurling towards its target. This invention helped revolutionize warfare. The strength of these guns accounted for the prominence of the French musketeers, who were immortalized in the famous novel The Three Musketeers. Not to be outdone by their rivals, the British developed a similar musket and introduced it to their American colonies. Although tweaks were certainly made to the design over the next century and a half, the weapon remained largely the same. And Washington owed his life to this lack of innovation.

  Violently propelled by exploding gunpowder, the musket ball rolled around the gun’s barrel in an erratic spin. Like an inexperienced pitcher trying to throw a curve ball, the musket sent the ball hurling on an unpredictable path. A famous British marksman noted that “a soldier’s musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them were), will strike the figure of a man at eighty yards” or perhaps more, but at a distance much farther than that, “you may as well fire at the moon and have the same hope of hitting your object.”11 Although this clumsy musket was the preferred weapon, both sides of the conflict had varied arsenals at their disposal.

  Both the Americans and the British used rifles as well. Rifles enabled far greater accuracy, but they were often “more noisy than useful” in warfare, for three main reasons. 12 First, they required a longer reload time. While a trained soldier could reload a musket in about thirty seconds, a rifle could require a multiple of that time since the powder needed to be packed more tightly. And those extra seconds could mean the difference between life and death as the enemy swarmed towards him. Second, line marksmen had little chance to make use of their rifles’ accuracy: they lacked the time, and often they could not see well enough to aim amidst the smoke of battle. Finally, the rifle’s third fatal flaw was that it lacked a bayonet. Muskets were often fitted with sharp metal bayonets at the end of their barrel so the gun could be used like a spear. This was crucial. Just as a schoolyard fight might start out with punches and turn into a close grappling match, a battle of armies would often progress from distant shots to messy hand-to-hand combat. These factors helped ensure that the musket remained the weapon of choice for modern armies—fortuitously for Washington.

  The young Brits peered eagerly at the large enemy leader draped in his gold-trimmed blue coat astride a brawny, brown horse. Their glorious target mere yards away, they pulled their triggers, emitting a cloud of gunpowder that singed their hands and nostrils. The lead balls bounced around the chambers of their muskets, burst out haphazardly, and spun harmlessly past Washington and his horse. This gave the irate commander’s aides the opportunity to usher him to safety. Thus, the clumsiness of the old musket design saved the Revolution, allowing the commander an opportunity to flee with his troops up Manhattan.

  While disgraced by his troops’ cowardly retreat, Washington did see one of his goals accomplished: the Americans left the British with a nasty surprise.

  Downtown Manhattan erupted into a raging inferno. Although Congress had forbade Washington from destroying the city, some of his less deferential compatriots apparently took matters into their own hands. Ardent in their attachment to the revolutionary cause, some patriots declared that they “would set fire to their own houses sooner than they should be occupied by the King’s troops.” 13 Around midnight on September 21, 1776, a fire broke out at Fighting Cocks Tavern and simultaneously in other downtown locations.14 How it started was never proven, but Americans and British alike believed that the patriots used “matches and combustibles that had been prepared with great art and ingenuity” to set the town ablaze. 15

  Aided by the summer evening’s warm breeze, the fire quickly spread among the wooden homes and shipping wharves. The sky soon turned a smoky red as the scorching heat engulfed a quarter of the city. Because Washington had taken many of the city’s church bells for smelting into cannon, the British had difficulty sounding an alarm.16 This not only slowed the containment effort but also exacerbated the panic. Many of the sleeping townspeople were not awakened to the danger until the fire was lapping at their doors. Others did not wake at all. One aghast British soldier described the heartrending scene:It is impossible to conceive a scene of more horror and distress . . . . The sick, the aged, women, and children half naked were seen going they knew not where, and taking refuge . . . . The terror was encreased by the horrid noise of the burning and falling houses . . . the confused voices of so many men, the shrieks and cries of the women and children, the seeing the fire break out unexpectedly in places in the distance, which manifested a design of totally destroying the city . . . made this one of the most tremendous and affecting scenes I ever beheld. 17

  The redcoats wanted instant revenge. Mobs of British soldiers and Tories seized two suspected patriot saboteurs and threw them into the fire. The British brutally cut off the hand of another patriot suspect and hung him up by his feet. 18

  Some inevitably suspected that Washington was secretly behind the plot—especially in light of his professed desire to burn the city. “Many circumstances lead to conjecture that Mr. Washington was privy to this villainous act,” it was asserted.19 Finding “villainy even in the virtuous Washington,” the British pegged the arsonists as his “emissaries.”20 It is unlikely that Washington was directly complicit in starting the fires since Congress had forbade him and he remained deferential. But that did not mean he was unhappy about the blaze. Privately he applauded the destruction since he was convinced that the congressmen’s order was an imprudent one. “Providence, or some good honest fellow, has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves,” he wrote.21


  While Washington would have liked to see the whole of Manhattan burn to the ground, about a quarter of it did. And the Americans were not done making the British miserable.

  Desperate to stand up to the British after months of defeat, Washington eventually succeeded in organizing a counterattack. He knew that even a moral victory would do much to assure Congress that their budding faith in him was justified. At Harlem Heights, miles north of the British forces, he got his troops to stop their panicked flight and huddle in a line of trenches that stretched across the woods and buckwheat fields that dominated the area.22 There, in the late summer heat, they lay in wait for their pursuers. His trap set, Washington patrolled on horseback, ready to ambush the rapidly advancing British forces.

  When the redcoats finally arrived at Harlem Heights, they were stunned. Expecting the Americans to run away as usual, they “were never so surprised” as to see the Americans charging at them instead.23 The patriots fought ferociously, and many lives were lost on both sides. But then an unusual thing happened. From the booming smoke of battle, a mass of red uniforms began to real backwards. For the first time in the New York campaign, the British retreated. One “mortified” British officer later wrote to a friend, “If I only had a pair of pistols, I am sure I would at least have shot a puppy of an officer I found slinking off in the heat of the action.”24

  The Americans had little time to gloat, however. British reinforcements soon arrived, and Washington prudently decided to retreat rather than pursue. Although his instinct was to fight, his level head prevailed. He knew that winning the war required him to protect his army.

  Had Washington ordered a full retreat days earlier, as he had contemplated, the patriots would have had time to evacuate in an orderly fashion. But the commander had bowed to political pressure and the delays permitted the disastrous redcoat assault. Thus the evacuation was so chaotic that a large battalion became detached from Washington. Trailing behind, this 3,500-man force was marching up Manhattan away from the British invasion when it came terrifyingly close to an enemy contingent of 8,000 advancing along the same road. The British would easily have decimated the American force but for an unexpected bit of good luck named Mary Murray.

  While Congress’s political pressure and meddling had helped get the Continental Army into this mess, she would help get them out. An ardent patriot who lived on that road, the fifty-one-year-old Quaker still possessed the wiles to attract the British officers’ attention. And work her charm she did, luring them into her home. Inside, she showered them with jokes, cakes, and generous helpings of wine.

  Inexplicably, “they were induced to tarry two hours or more.” As the officers lingered with Mrs. Murray and her Portuguese wine, the patriots fled to safety. “It became almost a common saying among our officers,” wrote one soldier, “that Mrs. Murray saved this part of the American army.”25

  Mrs. Murray may have helped them live to fight another day, but the Americans’ problems were far from over. With all the desertion and defeat, Washington’s army was now mostly a ragtag group of neophytes. One redcoat described them as a band of “lads under 15, and old men. And few of them had the appearance of soldiers. Their odd figures frequently excited the laughter of our soldiers.”26 The British were shocked to discover that the American soldiers were not even all male. The revolutionary cause was so desperate for manpower that some women entered the fight.

  When John Adams wrote his wife of the army’s defeats, Abigail Adams confidently declared that if the men failed, the British forces would then be forced to fight “a race of Amazons in America.”27 And the British side certainly did confront some ferocious American women. The patriot ladies were particularly active on the home front, quartering soldiers, defending their homes, and hiding supplies from enemy raids. By working the fields and sewing uniforms, they fed and outfitted the troops. And as these ardent patriots played their part, God help those who opposed them.

  In one comical incident, a “stingy merchant” in Boston refused to sell his coffee, a commodity that was in very short supply. His refusal was seen as unpatriotic and it brought the ire of the local populace. Fed up, a hundred or more caffeine-deprived women marched down to demand the coffee. But when they arrived, the wealthy bachelor rebuffed them—not the smartest move. As “a large concourse of men stood amazed,” one of the women “seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart.” Thoroughly frightened, the merchant handed over his keys and the women seized the coffee. The miser purportedly received multiple spankings before the women finally released him. 28

  Some women even followed the men right onto the battlefield. Like many others, Mary Hays McCauley was eager to take an active role in the fight for independence. She followed her husband to the army camp, where she cooked and cared for the soldiers. But the fiery twenty-three-year-old did not stop there; she became a “pitcher,” bringing water to cool the cannon that her husband manned. A strong, heavyset woman described as having a florid complexion and a love of banter, she dashed through the smoke, whizzing to and fro, helping her husband and his fellow soldiers.29 Accounts of the battle say that when her husband was wounded, an enraged Mary grabbed a ramrod, hiked up her dress, took over the cannon and continued to fire incessantly at the approaching British. Both the Americans and their enemies were stunned. Joseph Martin described the scene in his diary:One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention. . . . [W]hile in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat, looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed, that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and ended her and her occupation.30

  Even Washington was reportedly impressed. Mary and her husband survived the battle and she returned home to live a good, long life.

  Mary Hays McCauley was far from the only female soldier among the patriots. Not only did other women jump to the aid of soldiers in battle, but some even enlisted.31 In fact, “It was not an unusual circumstance to find women in the ranks disguised as men, such was their ardor for independence.”32 The Americans needed all the help they could get, and Washington certainly appreciated patriotic zeal from wherever it came.33

  Washington’s men (and women) not only faced the well-trained redcoats, but also Britain’s German mercenaries—the dreaded “Hessians.” In the eighteenth century, Germany was not yet a united nation but a patchwork of impoverished smaller states. These agricultural communities had little commercial activity and poor farmland but droves of excellent fighters. And so their rulers utilized this resource by selling mercenary services to other princes and nobles around Europe. The German states became the largest suppliers of soldiers in the world and charged a premium for their men’s fighting prowess.34

  Ever mindful of its coffers, England had first attempted to obtain cheaper troops. British envoys requested soldiers from Catherine the Great in Russia and Frederick the Great in Prussia, but both Greats refused. To them, lending troops to the British war machine was akin to throwing their young men to the wolves. After approaching the Netherlands and even considering the Moors in Morocco, the British finally decided that the Hessian warriors were worth their price.35 And it was steep. In fact, the Duke of Brunswick sent just 4,300 soldiers but received 160,000 pounds (roughly equivalent to $300 million in modern U.S. dollars), while another noble used the profits from his fighters to build a new castle. Taking on this hefty expense, Britain hired 30,000 German mercenaries to crush the American rebellion.36

  The Hessian soldiers were, by and large, castoffs of German society. Referred to as “expendable people” in their homeland, their ranks included debtors, unemployed laborers, and school dropouts. Many of them were forced into service involuntarily when they were
kidnapped by wandering bands of military “recruiters.”37 Once in the “employment” of the German nobles, these ruffians were ruthlessly shaped into a lethal fighting force. Unlike Washington, their generals exercised iron-fisted control.

  The common soldiers saw little of the hefty compensation paid to their nobles. Instead, many hoped to get rich from the plunder they could carry from battle.38 As they marched, some would sing:Be quick, brothers, to arms!

  Let us go to America.

  Assembled is our army.

  Long live victory!

  That red gold, that red gold

  That comes rolling out from there

  There we’ll all get it, get it, there we’ll all get more gold.39

  To obtain that gold, some Hessians resorted to ransacking American towns. The Americans accused them not only of looting homes and farms, but also of slaughtering surrendering soldiers, abusing the sick and elderly, and raping women. 40 Britain had used foreign mercenaries such as these for centuries, but in America they were especially hated since they were seen as vicious interlopers in a battle between estranged brothers. And, along with his German friends, the British older brother was winning.

  The Americans viewed the Hessian hordes as demonic, otherworldly creatures. The patriots described these frightening figures as having “broad shoulders, their limbs not of equal proportion, light complexion with a b[l]ueish tinge, hair cued as tight to the head as possible, sticking straight back like the handle of an iron skillet.” The Hessians wore distinctive armored helmets, and blue or Jäger green uniforms with brass ornamentation that made an intimidating clanging sound as they marched.41 Many of these seasoned mercenaries sported large bushy mustaches, which many boys fighting in the American army could not yet grow.