by Logan Beirne
Meanwhile, Howe was so fixated on Philadelphia that he never ordered Clinton to provide reinforcements from New York. While Burgoyne assumed that Clinton was bound by orders to join him “at all risks,” Clinton never received such a command.29 Leaving much to Clinton’s discretion, Howe had merely said, “if you can make any diversion in favor of General Burgoyne’s [army], I need not point out the utility of such a measure.”30 And Clinton did not exactly jump to Burgoyne’s rescue of his own accord.
Instead, ever cautious, Clinton feared that Washington would launch a renewed attack on New York City and decided to retain the bulk of his forces there. Like Howe before him, he was thoroughly enjoying the New York high life, as evidenced by his tremendously high liquor bill. Not only did he have four houses, but he also took a liking to an officer’s wife, Mrs. Mary Baddeley.31 He had little desire to venture out of the city.
When Clinton received Burgoyne’s plea that “an attack on Fort Montgomery must be of great use,” he dispatched just that small force for its quick assault on the fort and rampage up the Hudson.32 Not fully grasping his comrade’s desperation, Clinton failed to do more, writing merely, “I hope this little success of ours may facilitate your operations . . . . I heartily wish you success.”33
Clinton’s diversionary effort was too little, too late. Refusing to divert troops south towards Clinton, the Americans proved unrelenting in their pressure on Burgoyne.
After days of hesitation, Burgoyne was surrounded by the Americans, who “swarmed around the little adverse army like birds of prey.”34 Retreat became impossible. As a chilly rain began to fall, he knew his beleaguered force was doomed. Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, 1777, at what came to be called the “Battle of Saratoga.” His ego finally checked, he would return to Britain in disgrace. The Americans took thousands of prisoners in a victory that stunned the world.
This was not just a military victory, but also a hugely symbolic one, since it demonstrated the Americans’ ability to defeat the British in large-scale European-style warfare. If the sneak attacks at Trenton and Princeton had been the psychological turning point in the war, Saratoga was the political one. It prompted the French, eager to prey on their old rival’s weakness, to enter the war on the United States’ side. Washington was overjoyed. Although suspicious of the French, he adhered to the ancient Chinese proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” since he badly needed the help of this “friend.” He looked forward to France’s money, ammunition, clothing, and troops. Perhaps most of all, he wanted the aid of her powerful navy. His efforts had repeatedly been hobbled by his lack of a naval force, and France was his only hope to counter Britain’s maritime supremacy. When France then prompted Spain to declare war on Britain also in an attempt to settle old scores, Washington exclaimed that these new allies brought “universal joy” to the patriots.
This joy was not so universal, however. Little did Washington know, the great victory at Saratoga would lead to treachery that nearly ended the Revolution. Ironically, Arnold’s great triumph also led to his betrayal of the American cause.
22
A Traitor Lurks
Benedict Arnold was born into a wealthy and socially prominent Connecticut family. After two of his sisters died during a yellow fever epidemic that swept New England during his childhood, Benedict’s grieving father began paying more attention to rum than the family finances. He eventually squandered the family fortune and was thrown into a debtors’ prison, thereby forcing his family out of the Arnold ancestral home in a humiliating public spectacle. These hardships instilled in Benedict a tremendous drive for both financial success and public recognition. As a headstrong, ambitious teenager, he sought to prove his worth through military service and enlisted in the provincial militia to fight in the Seven Years’ War in 1757. Although he served for very short stints and saw no combat before returning to his family, his service in the war instilled in him a taste for battle and a hatred for the French.1
Back home in Connecticut, he grew into a courageous man, though haughty and vain. Reaching five foot nine, he was of average height for the era but powerfully built. He was stern-featured, with a sharp chin, high cheekbones, a prominent nose, and intense blue eyes that quickly transformed from cordial to cold when his temper flared. As quarrelsome as he was bold, Arnold had a knack for making enemies. He once attempted to kill an English sea captain in a duel over a perceived slight, and he fired a pistol at a Frenchman he caught alone with his only surviving sister.
When he was not busy fighting, he worked furiously to rebuild the family’s estate. With the funds he could scrape together, he founded a small trading company in New Haven, Connecticut. He married the sheriff ’s daughter and benefitted financially from her family’s investments in his business. Protected from creditors by his father-in-law, Arnold’s trading house thrived. Enterprising, he eventually became one of the most successful merchants in New England, trading wares all along the eastern seaboard. It was in this role as a prosperous merchant that Arnold became disenchanted with British rule.
Angered by the Crown’s rising taxes in the lead-up to the Revolution, Arnold turned to smuggling to avoid the new duties. He came to see the Crown’s actions as a threat to his enterprise and to Americans’ personal liberty. As usual, Arnold was eager to fight. Thus, upon hearing of the outbreak of war, he swiftly organized a small group of New Haven militiamen to join the fight, declaring that Britain’s actions had rendered him “obliged to have recourse to arms in defense of our lives and liberties.”2
Despite his patriotic fervor, however, Arnold did not fit in well with his revolutionary compatriots. To many Americans, Arnold’s mannerisms, powdered wig, and fashionable dress made him seem more a Brit than a patriot. No matter how many times he proved himself in the early battles of the war, he was disliked on a personal level by the Revolution’s political and military leaders. This fact crystallized for Arnold following his great victory at Saratoga.
“Granny Gates,” ever eager for more power after ousting Schuyler, claimed credit for the Americans’ triumph at the Battle of Saratoga, even though it was due in large part to Arnold’s tactics and bravery. Adding injury to insult, he even accused Arnold of insubordination. This infuriated the prideful man. The serious leg wound he suffered during the battle was far less vexing to him than the fact that Gates took credit for routing the British. When asked about his injuries, Arnold— dejected from all the ill-treatment—whispered in a wavering voice that he had been shot in the leg and added, “I wish it had been my heart.”3
After Arnold’s victory at Saratoga, General Howe’s days enjoying the Philadelphia highlife ended abruptly. He resigned as commander of the British forces in 1778 so that he might return to Britain to defend his honor. He was anxious to explain his failure to end the American uprising before his vocal detractors in the British Parliament, and to make them understand the difficulty of subduing such a large nation’s rebellious populace. He was unsuccessful. Fiercely condemned for his indecisive leadership, he lost the seat in Parliament that he had held for two decades. He had lost his command along with Mrs. Loring. And to add insult, his smug underling benefitted from Howe’s fall from grace.
Sir Henry Clinton, much to his delight, was selected as the new British commander in chief. He had arrived with Howe and Burgoyne in 1775, and, as the last man standing, he held seniority. Taking a less conciliatory approach to the rebels than his predecessor, Clinton was eager to show that his leadership could crush the American rebellion.
During the transition of command in the spring of 1778, London ordered Clinton to abandon Philadelphia. With the French navy looming, the British feared that the city was under threat, and they chose to employ their overextended resources elsewhere. Clinton sent some of the troops to the Caribbean to protect British interests there and ordered the others to bolster his New York City stronghold. With a supply train twelve miles long, 10,000 redcoats set out across New Jersey back towards the island.4 Believing them t
o be more vulnerable as they traveled, Washington seized this opportunity to keep the British off-guard, and in the process, he settled some old political scores.
When the British withdrew from Philadelphia, Washington received intelligence that the redcoats were on the move across New Jersey. He convened a war council to seek advice on how best to disrupt Clinton’s plans. Meanwhile, the ever-insubordinate Charles Lee had returned to the scene.
Washington had negotiated Lee’s release in a prisoner exchange following his humiliating capture at Widow White’s, but Lee was far from appreciative. Greeting Lee “as if he has been his brother,” Washington brought him back to his headquarters, held a dinner in his honor, and provided him with Martha’s sitting room to sleep. The next morning, however, Lee missed breakfast and, when he finally awoke, he appeared “as dirty as if he had been in the street all night.” It turned out he had snuck a “miserable dirty hussy” into his room that night.5 Martha was not pleased.
Resuming his old antics, Lee was ever ready to criticize Washington. At the war council, he lambasted Washington’s plan of attack as “criminal” and convinced the council to reject it.6 But Washington, now effectively a military dictator, ignored them. He prepared to pounce on Clinton’s rearguard at Monmouth, New Jersey.
Washington had used the winter of 1777–1778 to drill his unruly troops into a lethal fighting force. Much of the credit for this transformation falls to Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben. A veteran of the Prussian army, he claimed the title of Baron, although it was a sham based on a falsified lineage invented by his father. Due to “alleged homosexuality and accusations of his having taken improper liberties with young boys” in 1776, Steuben had resigned his post in Europe and sought work far away.7 Agreeing to aid the American army gratis, he was soon on a ship sailing across the Atlantic.
Regardless of his questionable background, Baron von Steuben was welcomed by the Americans with open arms. What was most important to Washington was that Steuben was schooled in the cutting-edge fighting tactics of Frederick the Great, whose machinelike style Washington aspired to emulate.8 With his beady eyes and drooping jowls, Steuben looked like a bulldog as he barked orders in his English-French-German mix. Throughout the winter, he mercilessly drilled the troops in the ways of European warfare. A gruff and short-tempered man, he unwittingly amused the American soldiers when he would exhaust his vocabulary and demand of his aide, “Come and swear for me in English; these fellows will not do what I bid them!”9 The Americans respected his efforts and tenacity—Washington included. The troops learned to march more efficiently, fire their guns more accurately, and use their bayonets more lethally. So when the warm weather arrived, Washington was eager to put his newly trained force to the test.
On the scorching hot morning of June 28, 1778, Washington sent Lee to lead the initial assault on the British force at Monmouth. It was a natural assignment for Lee as second-in-command, but Washington kept a close eye on his perpetual detractor since he was dubious of Lee’s loyalties after his yearlong captivity. The British had treated him a little too well, showering him with wine and even allowing him to dine with officers, thus fueling suspicion that Lee had leaked intelligence to them. Washington could not count on him to fight.
With temperatures climbing to over 100oF before the sun even reached its zenith, the well-clothed British were finally at a disadvantage—the Americans’ rags breathed far better than the redcoats’ red-hot wool uniforms. One British soldier wrote,We proceed for miles on a road composed of nothing but sand which scorched through our shoes with intolerable heat. The sun beating on our head with a force scarcely to be conceived in Europe and not a drop of water to assuage parching thirst. A number of soldiers were unable to support the fatigue and died on the spot.10
Washington was undeterred by the blazing heat and ordered Lee to strike.
Lee, however, still opposed the action and had developed no real battle plan. His troops were in disarray as they approached the British columns on the scorched fields, and they soon began to retreat. Lee followed.
While Washington was a rather sensitive man who was usually quite unforgiving of perceived slights, he had remained surprisingly tolerant of Lee’s insubordination. But this time, Lee had gone too far. As Washington rode along to buoy the troops, he came upon a lone fifer. Perplexed, he asked the young man where he was going. The fifer answered that he had been ordered to retreat. As he had been in New York, Washington was “exceedingly surprised” and “exasperated” by this unauthorized withdrawal. He followed the trickle of retreating soldiers back towards Lee.11 Upon finding him, Washington lost his composure. Quivering with rage, he purportedly called Lee a “damned poltroon” to his face and swore at him “till the leaves shook on the trees.”12
Putting himself directly into the line of fire yet again, Washington took over command and rallied his troops. With the British artillery “rending up the earth all around him,” Washington courageously led another bold attack. 13 The redcoats tried again and again to pick off the American commander, but he proved as indestructible as he seemed to fancy himself—the British missed and the patriots charged.
As the 20,000 soldiers shot and bayoneted one another throughout the blazing afternoon, more men died on both sides from heatstroke than gunfire.14 In fact, the British reported, “some preferred the shade of the trees in the direct range of shot to the more horrid tortures of thirst.”15 The Americans’ aim had improved, however, and one such thirsty gentleman “had his arm shattered to pieces.”16 Clocking in at over five hours of continuous fighting, it was the longest battle in the war.
By sunset, Washington’s forces had held their ground. The Battle of Monmouth was technically a draw, but the British suffered higher casualties and withdrew that night towards New York. For the first time in years, Washington was left in possession of the battlefield. He showed the world that his troops had finally gained the skill necessary to stand up to the British, and he further solidified his standing as the unquestionable leader of the American army.
On the other side, Clinton’s embarrassment over Monmouth made him ever more eager to punish the Americans. And he would soon have that opportunity presented to him by Arnold. Washington never suspected it, for he was too busy dealing with his other subversive officer, Lee.
Following his shameful retreat, Lee tried to deflect blame. But Washington had had enough. He ordered that Lee be tried before a panel of military judges for his “disgraceful” conduct.17 The gypsy trial moved along with the Continental Army during New Jersey’s hot summer of 1778. After six weeks of often-heated proceedings, the indignant Lee was finally convicted of disobedience of orders, misbehavior before the enemy, and disrespect to the commander in chief.18 As punishment, he was suspended from command for a year, which effectively ended his military career. Livid, Lee “publicly abused General Washington in the grossest terms,” running his mouth off to anyone who would listen.19 Word quickly traveled back to camp. When he learned of the scurrilous attacks on his beloved leader, Washington’s aide John Laurens challenged Lee to a duel.
A relic of the Middle Ages, dueling originally developed as “judicial combat,” a means of letting God determine who is in the right by allowing him to win. It was still commonly used to settle serious disputes in the eighteenth century. When one man’s honor was grievously offended by another, he might challenge him to a duel. The man so challenged could apologize, thus ending the disagreement, or he could fight. Simply attempting to avoid the fight was seen as cowardly, and word would likely spread throughout the community.
The combatants, typically armed with large-caliber, smoothbore flintlock pistols, stood at a certain distance from one another and fired on cue. Taking more than three seconds to aim their pistols was viewed as dishonorable, so they merely raised their guns and fired rather blindly. Along with the pistols’ inherent inaccuracy, this ensured that death for either party was quite unlikely.20
Laurens was a young so
uthern gentleman with big eyes and a round nose. The son of a wealthy merchant and landowner, Laurens had quickly made a name for himself as an abolitionist and an ardent patriot who loyally served Washington. The reckless twenty-four-year-old set out with Washington’s most trusted aid, Alexander Hamilton, to avenge his general’s honor. Although Washington condemned the practice of dueling, it was improbable that these two men would have done this without at least tacit approval.21 Laurens hit Lee in the side, thereby achieving his objective.
Lee retired home with his pack of dogs and died in a tavern just a few years later, in 1782. In his will, composed mere days before his passing, Lee wrote, “I desire, most earnestly, that I may not be buried in any church or church-yard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house, for, since I have resided in this country, I have kept so much bad company when living, that I do not choose to continue it when dead.” His wishes ignored, he was buried with military honors in the churchyard of Christ Church in Philadelphia.22 Washington paid his respects.
Although his old rival was no longer a threat, Washington faced a far more dangerous and unexpected one. His trusted officer Arnold was beginning to scheme.
When Philadelphia was liberated that hot June of 1778, Arnold became the military supervisor of the capital’s reconstruction. During Howe’s occupation, the British had destroyed much of the city, looting buildings and burning homes as firewood. The devastation and the inhabitants’ suffering had been great, and Washington therefore turned to Arnold to ameliorate their plight. On Washington’s suggestion, Arnold was appointed military governor of Philadelphia to reestablish order and rebuild. Still hobbling around on crutches, he used the time to heal from his battle wounds.