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

by Logan Beirne

  Washington was livid. “Shocked at the frequent horrible Villainies of this nature committed by the troops of late,” he was “determined to make Examples which will deter the boldest and most harden’d offenders.”44 He had Herring and his cat burglars tried by courts-martial. When they were found guilty and Herring condemned to death, Washington upheld this harsh punishment. He wrote in his general orders for the day, “Men who are called out by their Country to defend the Rights and Property of their fellow Citizens, who are abandoned enough to violate those Rights and plunder that Property deserve and shall receive no Mercy.”45 The commander had made a strong statement in defense of a Tory’s property.

  Realizing their inability to supply Washington’s army, Congress soon granted him license “to take, wherever he may be, all such provisions and other articles as may be necessary for the comfortable subsistence of the army under his command, paying or giving certificates for the same; to remove and secure for the benefit of the owners, all goods and effects, which may be serviceable to the enemy.”46 Washington was reluctant to take advantage of this authorization, however. During the winter of 1778 he wrote, “I shall use every exertion . . . for subsisting the Army and keeping it together; But I must observe, that this never can be done by coercive means. Supplying of Provisions and Cloathing must be had in another way, or it cannot exist.”47 He believed it was Congress’s place to confiscate supplies, not his. But with his men in such dire need, he eventually did seize American property—albeit in the least coercive way possible.

  Washington acted as a tool of Congress, and a delicate one at that. He reasoned that he must proceed gently, since the military’s exercise of power was always viewed “with a jealous and suspicious eye.”48 Thus, when he did order his men to confiscate supplies, he provided careful instructions.

  In order to requisition supplies in the most democratic way possible, Washington set up a sort of confiscation checklist. His soldiers were required to: 1) have a compelling reason for the taking; 2) work with local authorities as closely as possible in carrying out the seizures; 3) take only small amounts so as not to harm the citizens; and 4) arrange for some type of repayment or, more likely, a promise thereof.

  The first criterion was easy to fulfill. By the winter of 1780, Washington had shifted north from his previous quarters at Valley Forge to the area around the tiny village of Morristown, New Jersey. He and his 9,000 men settled into this little hollow nestled in a tranquil region of rolling farms and pasture in northern New Jersey. The land was dotted by picturesque cottages built in the so-called “ancient Dutch form,” with signature sloping dormitories that projected from a dramatically pitched wooden roof. Almost uniformly painted white, these houses varied in size but were typically encircled by “verdant lawns, shrubbery, and well-cultivated gardens.”49 The Continental Army, however, did not find their stay so idyllic.

  Far from a rural utopia, this was a warzone. Adjacent to New York City, the county had been scarred by gruesome battles and had witnessed Washington’s disastrous defeats following his loss of New York. By 1780, Washington had retaken New Jersey and was determined to remain in the mid-Atlantic in hopes of retaking New York. He set up camp at Morristown so that he might keep pressure on Clinton’s troops holed up in the city. The two commanders still assumed there would be a climactic battle between them after so many grueling years of bloodshed. But for now, Washington just worked to survive.

  His contest with Clinton had devolved into a war of attrition. And he was losing. In fact, Parliament kept the British troops so well fed and clothed—albeit to the British taxpayers’ growing dismay—that Clinton began putting on a great deal of weight from all the dinner parties he enjoyed in New York. The Americans were unable to keep pace.50 Washington, for his part, was living comfortably with Martha, five of his officers and eighteen servants in the white Georgian mansion that served as his headquarters. The grand house had been owned by a late patriot, and Washington respectfully paid rent to the widow.51 But despite his comfort, he was not one to grow detached from the condition of his soldiers, who were shivering and hungry in the less genteel lodgings in the surrounding areas.

  The Revolution had already robbed northern New Jersey of its tranquility, and now Washington wanted its food. At the same time, he was aware of the civilian population’s fears. The 250 residents of Morristown locked up their chickens and daughters as they watched the hungry-looking patriots warily.52 With the coldest winter of the century hitting in 1780, the region was a powder keg of trouble. Before things turned ugly, Washington dispatched his troops to collect 200 head of cattle and 800 bushels of grain from the neighboring farms.53 He demanded that his men act cautiously and respectfully in doing so, telling them: I have reposed this trust in you from a perfect confidence in your prudence, zeal and respect for the rights of Citizens. While your measures are adapted to the emergency, and you consult what you owe to the service, I am persuaded you will not forget, that as we are compelled by necessity to take the property of Citizens for the support of the Army on whom their safety depends, we should be careful to manifest that we have a reverence for their rights, and wish not to do any thing which that necessity and even their own good do not absolutely require.54

  This was a clear expression of Washington’s stance: the military should remain subservient to the civilians they protect.

  Even when authorized by Congress to take citizens’ property, the army should work alongside local civilian authorities,55 and “with as much tenderness as possible to the Inhabitants, having regard to the Stock of each Individual, that no family may be deprived of its necessary subsistence.”56 He warned his men, “Nothing is to be taken by way of plunder under any pretence whatever.”57 Washington would rather his troops starve than trample Americans’ rights.

  Though the country was verging on bankruptcy, Washington even took measures to repay citizens for the property taken from them. “The Commissary is either to pay or give proper Certificates for whatever he takes,” he directed.58 While this was somewhat wishful thinking since repayment seemed unlikely, the principle was clear: Citizens had a right to their property, and the government could seize it only in extreme circumstances. Even then, the citizens were owed compensation.59

  Washington was so delicate in carrying out these authorized confiscations, in fact, that he was ridiculed in Congress for being weak. But he considered his restraint to be a form of strength—the strength of American liberty. He wrote to Congress, “I confess, I have felt myself greatly embarrassed with respect to the vigorous exercise of Military power. An Ill placed humanity perhaps and a reluctance to give distress may have restrained me too far.”60

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  Not-So-Civil War

  As Washington struggled to hold his army together while also defending Americans’ rights from his ravenous troops, the British shifted their focus to conquering the southern states. Lord George Germain, the British secretary of state for the American Department, hatched an aggressive strategy that relied on aid from the Loyalists who pervaded the South. With his large, pointed nose, gaping almond eyes, and sharp chin, he appeared almost gremlin-like as he sent his many directives from London to Clinton, Cornwallis, and other officers in the warzone.1 More gifted as an orator than as a strategist, Germain was a distinguished aristocrat with a fine educational and military pedigree, but little understanding of the American continent. For one thing, he sorely overestimated the Loyalists.

  According to Germain’s southern strategy, the British could easily conquer Georgia and the Carolinas, leaving the Loyalists to occupy in their wake. He assumed that once the Tories were placed in charge, the British would not need to expend precious forces policing and holding their conquests, as they had been compelled to do in the highly rebellious northern states. In effect, Germain envisioned a southern conquest as more like a liberation effort. The British forces just needed to throw off the chains of the patriot oppressors and install the loyal subjects back into power—or so Germain
believed.

  General Howe knew better. Back in London, the disgraced former commander warned against this simplistic view of America. But he was ignored, and the British invaded Savannah in late December 1778.

  From 1778 to 1780, it appeared that Germain was correct. As Washington remained with the main force in the north outside New York City, the British racked up victories in Georgia and South Carolina. By the spring of 1780 it looked as if the American southern forces were defeated. At the Battle of Charleston, the combined might of the British naval and land forces trapped the patriots on a peninsula. With no means of retreat, the haggard troops were besieged on all sides for many blood-soaked weeks. In May, 5,500 tattered Americans finally emerged from the smoky rubble to surrender. They had just handed Clinton his biggest prize of the war: the American Southern Army.

  Clinton’s delight was premature, however. A wave of patriotism swept the region and the Americans hastily raised a second Southern Army. At its helm, Congress placed Granny Gates.

  Riding high on his victory at Saratoga, the ambitious Gates had become the stalking horse for Washington’s position as commander in chief. The thrill of the great victories at Trenton and Princeton in 1777 had long since subsided, and Washington was now perceived by many politicians as the man defeated by the British around Philadelphia. Congressmen even began to criticize his deference to Americans’ rights as a sign of weakness. Gates, on the other hand, was enjoying renewed admiration in Congress after taking credit from Arnold for defeating Burgoyne. Of course, the cunning “Granny” leveraged this esteem to seek more power.

  Gates was soon confronting an old foe in the South. But Cornwallis had reentered the war a changed man. Following his embarrassing defeat at Princeton, he had finally obtained leave to return to his sick wife. He was able to tend to his wilting love for just a few months before she died on Valentine’s Day 1779. The man was devastated. After burying her, Cornwallis threw himself into his work: warfare.

  Cornwallis returned to America “not with views of conquest and ambition” but because he could not stand to remain in England. His wife’s death, he said, had “destroyed all my hopes of happiness in this world.”2 There was nothing left for him to do but crush the Americans. For a man with nothing to lose, Cornwallis certainly grew accustomed to winning: by the spring of 1780, he was well on his way to conquering the South. Fearing all was lost, Congress turned to Granny Gates to stop him.

  Washington recommended his trusted friend Nathanael Greene for the job of stopping Cornwallis, but Congress astonishingly handed command of the Southern Army to their darling Gates. Washington was livid and Gates smug. Gates hoped to stage a repeat of Saratoga and thereby topple Washington’s reign as leader of the entire Continental Army.

  With 3,700 troops versus Cornwallis’s 2,100, Gates had the numbers on his side.3 But quality would trump quantity: Gates’s army was dominated by untested militiamen, while Cornwallis led battle-hardened veterans. Further, while Gates would never admit it, Cornwallis was simply a superior military leader. Even Charles Lee had smugly warned Gates, “Take care lest your Northern laurels turn to Southern willows.”4 But the proud Gates did not heed this advice. Overestimating the battle readiness of the Americans, as well as his own prowess, he chose to make a stand.

  Gates’s and Cornwallis’s armies unexpectedly collided at Camden, South Carolina. As the sun rose over the quaint town on the hot, summer morning of August 16, 1780, both sides were surprised when musket fire interrupted the birds’ serenade. Although neither side was prepared, this was especially inopportune timing for the patriots. Short on food and rum, Gates had served his troops half-cooked meat and molasses for dinner the night before. Thus, not only were they lacking their usual liquid courage, they were also suffering from gastrointestinal problems as they faced a terrifying mass of British red and metal. It was not a great morning to be sober and sick.

  Within minutes, the patriots’ exuberant calls for battle were quickly replaced by yelps of pain and terror. When Cornwallis’s highly trained regiments fired on Gates’s militia, panic spread through the sickly American ranks. As their compatriots fell and the British bayonets neared, many of the terrified Americans ran without even firing a shot. Cornwallis seized this weakness and effectively used his cavalry to shred the American lines.

  Gates was among the first to flee. As his army crumbled behind him, he galloped northward on the army’s swiftest horse.5 In fact, by the time the Americans were defeated after just one hour of combat, Gates was already many miles away. His abandoned army suffered over 2,000 casualties. Lord Germain wrote from London, “The Glorious success of Lord Cornwallis at Camden . . . will have removed all apprehensions of further disturbance from the rebel troops and must crush every hope in the secret abettors of rebellion of again subverting the King’s authority . . . .”6 It appeared to the patriots that the South was lost.

  Washington was not pleased. While he remained politely silent on the matter, Hamilton and his other aides ridiculed Gates mercilessly. For his devastating miscalculation, Congress relieved Granny Gates of his command and resolved “that the Commander-in-Chief be and is hereby directed to appoint an officer to command the southern army, in the room of Major General Gates.”7 They had gone against Washington’s counsel in appointing Gates and had now learned their lesson. This time, the choice was left to the commander. Washington gave the position to his old friend who had lobbied Congress to grant him sweeping powers a couple of years earlier: Nathanael Greene. In selecting this “man of abilities, bravery, and coolness,” Washington had chosen wisely.8

  Despite their catastrophic losses, the Americans proved scrappy. As Howe predicted, Germain’s southern strategy underestimated the difficulty of occupation. The British had crushed the Americans’ two southern armies, but they had inflamed the patriotic sentiments of the local populace. Cornwallis had kicked a hornets’ nest.

  The patriots rose up against Loyalist dominance. Old rivalries and land disputes sent the region spiraling into civil war. Like a fire feeding on itself, the region erupted into a vengeful bloodbath when patriots and Tories plundered one another’s homes and massacred each other in retaliation for atrocities. There were over one hundred battles and skirmishes in South Carolina alone in which not one Brit even participated. It was American vs. American.

  The British were taken aback by the mayhem. “The houses of desolate widows have been laid waste [and] innocent and neutral persons murdered,” said one officer.9 Washington would likely not have approved of the carnage, but he was far away in New Jersey, with little means of stopping it.

  One massacre occurred when patriots tricked a Loyalist regiment with their snappy uniforms. With short green jackets and plumed helmets, resembling the uniforms of a nearby British regiment, the patriots fooled the Tories into believing they were friendly forces.10 As the patriot leader was shaking hands with his duped Loyalist counterpart, the South Carolina militia emerged from the trees and mowed down ninety Tories.11

  With patriots gaining the upper hand and Loyalists running scared, it became very clear that Germain’s southern strategy was flawed. Cornwallis realized he could not count on the Loyalists to hold the South, as small bands of angry frontiersmen began attacking his forces from behind trees and rocks in guerilla warfare. Never camping in the same place for more than two nights in a row, the Americans confounded their hulking British pursuers. One American named Frances Marion particularly angered Cornwallis.

  A Carolinian of French Huguenot descent, Marion was called the “Swamp Fox” due to his penchant for hiding his forces in the Carolinas’ abundant marshlands. His cunning and bravery were complemented by an almost supernatural ability to discern the redcoats’ next move. As his ambush attacks on Cornwallis’s men kept succeeding, the patriots throughout the region began to look upon his thin face and intense gaze with admiration and hope. He was an inspiration. One patriot gushed, “His genuine love of country and liberty, and his unwearied vigilance and invincible fo
rtitude, coupled with the eminent success which attended him through his brilliant career, has endeared him to the hearts of his countrymen, and the memory of his deeds of valor shall never slumber so long as there is a Carolinian to speak his panegyric.”12 Eluding Cornwallis’s determined efforts to kill him, the Swamp Fox was able to “keep alive the expiring hopes of an oppressed militia.”13 Thanks in part to Marion, the American forces were growing and Cornwallis’s were shrinking.

  Still, Cornwallis had the superior force. When Nathanael Greene took command of the resurrected Southern Army, he described it as something like a zombie army, “wretched beyond description . . . living upon charity and subsist[ing] by daily collections” and having “not a drop of spirits.” Without ameliorative measures, Greene added, “I foresee we must starve.”14 He predicted, “An army naked and subsisted in this manner, and not more than one-third the size of the enemies’ army, will make but a poor fight.”15 But Greene proved himself wrong. He transformed those wretched men into an agile yet lethal fighting force.

  In order to prevent his unseasoned militiamen from retreating, Greene placed men behind them with orders to “shoot down the first man that runs.”16 As draconian as this sounds, it was a common and effective method of getting men to fight. But Greene was careful not to expect too much from the frightened farmers who dominated his ranks. After his militiamen fired two volleys, he allowed them to resume their usual flight “like a flock of sheep frightened by dogs.”17 He reasoned that the British would advance anyway, but with those two barrages of lead flying towards them.