The political progressive in him thought very highly of the idea of America. He was nobly born and proud of it, yet he found the lack of class distinctions in the New World wondrous. “What a beautiful, happy land is this, without kings, without high princes…and without idle barons…. Here we are in a republic and a baron does not count for more than any James or Peter,” he explained, with evident pride, to Chancellor Frank. “Our general of artillery [Henry Knox] was a book-printer in Boston—a worthy man who understands his craft from the bottom up, and who carries out his present position with much honor.”5
He liked most politicians, too, but as individuals and not as officials. As a body, Congress left much to be desired, he thought: there were too many idealogues and self-seeking businessmen, too few realists who understood war. Congress’s lack of authority perplexed him. What perplexed him even more was the unwillingness of the states to cooperate with one another when solidarity was vital for America’s survival. “In the moment when the most Vigorous exertions are necessary,” he ranted in exasperation in 1780, “the States instead of vying with each other [to see] who should do the most, observe a Contrary Conduct & calculate only to furnish the least to the general good.”6
Steuben’s assessment of American politics was not far off the mark. Nothing, however, could have prepared him for his firsthand experience of American democracy in 1781, when the shortcomings of American politics nearly resulted in the loss of an entire state.
AS KNYPHAUSEN’S ARMY receded sullenly from northern New Jersey, burning farmsteads as it went, Washington concentrated his forces in the Hudson Valley. Steuben was already in the mountains at West Point, helping Maj. Gen. Robert Howe to train new recruits and prepare the Point’s defenses for a possible British attack. He reunited with Washington and the main army before the summer was out.
Steuben made his headquarters near Fishkill, New York, in the modest, one-story stone farmhouse of Hendrick Kip. There, he and the core of his staff—Walker, North, and Duponceau’s replacement, Lt. James Fairlie—inspected the small bands of recruits trickling in from New England and New York, and resumed the training that had been so rudely interrupted by the Hessian Knyphausen. But the Baron didn’t mind the brigade drills and inspections that started each morning at five o’clock. He loved the Hudson Valley above all the places he had fought or camped; the views of the broad river from Fishkill Landing, and of the mountains to the west beyond, calmed and invigorated him. And at the Kip house he had plenty of room for entertaining guests, which he did almost nightly. “Notwithstanding the scarcity of provisions in the camp,” one of those guests noted with approval, “the Baron’s table continues to be well-supplied; his generosity is unbounded.”7
More exciting than the idyllic landscape and the social life was the promise of action to come. Rochambeau’s first expeditionary corps of French royal troops had made landfall in Newport in mid-July. There would be battle soon—maybe not this year, but undoubtedly in the spring—and as a division commander, a real major general, Steuben would be in the thick of it.
As eager as Washington was to oust the British from New York, he and his generals agreed that the time was not yet right. The British fleet still controlled the seas, trapping Rochambeau in Rhode Island, and the Continental Army remained quite small. Developments in the south were not at all encouraging. On August 16, Horatio Gates, the darling of Congress, fled in terror as Lord Cornwallis destroyed his army just north of Camden, South Carolina. The battle ruined Gates’s career, but more important, it all but gave the Carolinas to the British.
Content, and with time on his hands, Steuben drew up plans for the creation of a corps of light infantry based on the ideas of the French tactician Guibert: selected from the most agile, physically fit, and intelligent veterans in each regiment, the light infantry would be specially trained as shock troops for special operations like Stony Point. He also tried to fine-tune the administrative procedures practiced by the army. In the Prussian, Austrian, and French armies—the only armies worthy of emulation, in Steuben’s view—the commanding general met daily with all of his subordinate generals as a group, but in the Continental Army “the Commander in Chief…does not see the General Officers as often as he should.” This bad habit came from British practice, and just because the British did it “certainly cannot justify any thing which is in itself absurd.” Henry Knox, who had come to be Steuben’s best friend among the generals, warned him that Washington might take “umbrage” at the blunt criticism of his leadership style, but Steuben was unconcerned. He knew he was secure in the commander’s esteem, and saw no reason to mince words.8
But the pleasant late summer could not last forever. Congress had just resurrected the incorporation plan. That might have been alarming news in other circumstances, but the Board of War had taken a different approach this time. The loss of Charleston and Gates’s disgrace at Camden had humbled Congress, so when Washington dictated his ideas on army reorganization, Congress hushed to listen. In Washington’s plan, the number of infantry regiments would be reduced only slightly, the number of men per regiment increased, and the army—not Congress—would determine which officers would have to be dismissed. Retired officers, like their brethren who served throughout the war, would be granted half-pay for life. And Congress must pressure the states for more recruits. It was a bold proposal. Anticipating a fight, Washington sent Steuben back to Independence Hall in October 1780 to defend the plan.
Steuben went, with a certain amount of dread, but much to his surprise there was almost no wrangling except over the issue of half-pay. After only a few days of negotiation, the Baron could report back to Washington that Congress had accepted the proposal “without Alteration.”9
On the very same day, Washington had news of his own for the Baron. The commander in chief had made a decision that would radically alter Steuben’s role in the war. On October 22, 1780, Washington nominated Nathanael Greene to replace Horatio Gates as commander in the Southern Department, where he would rebuild the army and try to slow the northward advance of Lord Cornwallis. Accompanying Greene as his second-in-command would be the Baron de Steuben.10
WASHINGTON WAS WILLING to part with two of his most prized subordinates because he was deadly serious about the southern theater of operations. There was nothing to keep Cornwallis from sweeping through the Carolinas and into Virginia—and that would be a catastrophe. If Virginia fell, then Clinton and Cornwallis could envelop Washington’s army in a giant pincers, crushing it and ending the war. Of all of Washington’s generals, only Greene had the command instinct and the fire to take a swing at Cornwallis, and only Steuben had the ability to fashion a functioning army out of virtually nothing.
“To the Southward there is an army to be created,” Washington informed Steuben, “the mass of which is at present without any formation at all.”11 It was no exaggeration. Most of the Continental troops in the South had been lost with Savannah and Charleston, and the small remainder had been chewed up and spat out by the British at Camden. It would be Steuben’s assignment to raise and train a new Continental force, and—more challenging—to get some useful service out of the southern state militias.
Orders in hand, General Greene went to Philadelphia to receive Congress’s blessing and to consult with Steuben. Four days later, on November 3, 1780, the two men and their staffs set off for Virginia as quickly as they could. Joining them, over Steuben’s initial objections, was Duponceau. The young Frenchman had been suffering terribly from consumption, and his doctors had condemned him to death, but he insisted on accompanying his master anyway. “Very well,” Steuben conceded, “you shall follow me, and I hope that you will either recover your health or die an honourable death.”12
The group paused briefly at Mount Vernon, where Martha Washington greeted them as old friends. Steuben loved Mrs. Washington, whom he knew well from many gatherings at the Potts house in Valley Forge, but he was unimpressed with the Washington estate. “If General Washington were not a
better general than he was an architect,” he told the ailing Duponceau with a wink, “the Affairs of America would be in a very bad condition.”13
ACTUALLY, the affairs of America were in a very bad condition, and the greatest troubles were within Virginia.
Greene and Steuben did not plan to stay very long in Washington’s home state, for their tasks there were very simple: assess the strategic situation, make sure that local defenses were adequate, take whatever Continental recruits and supplies they found, proceed to South Carolina. But from the intelligence they garnered along their journey to the new state capital at Richmond, it appeared that their business in Virginia might be a bit more complicated than they had anticipated. Before they had even left Philadelphia, Maj. Gen. Alexander Leslie and 2,200 Redcoats had sailed into Chesapeake Bay, disembarked, and seized the towns of Portsmouth and Suffolk. The British “invasion,” if it could be called that, caused little damage and did not last for very long. On November 16, the very same day that Greene and Steuben rode into Richmond, Leslie’s corps boarded their transports again and left for Charleston.
Map of Virginia, 1781
The real reason for Leslie’s precipitous withdrawal was that Cornwallis, clamoring for reinforcements, had ordered Leslie to leave. No one in Virginia knew that, however. Leslie’s invasion had prompted a groundswell of patriotic fervor. The state militia, poorly organized and worse armed, had turned out in force. From the rebel side, it certainly looked as if the British had withdrawn because the militia had convinced them to.
The whole episode gave the Virginians and their governor, one Thomas Jefferson, a false sense of security, a conviction that the militia alone was sufficient to protect the state. This was dangerous. For as Greene and Steuben clearly saw, Virginia was in no condition to fight a protracted campaign against even a small force of British regulars. The state owned few muskets and little ammunition, not even enough to equip the militia who had been called up to defend against Leslie.
Inevitably, Leslie’s invasion had an impact on the Continental Army, too. There were at most eight hundred Continental recruits in Virginia in November 1780, and—untrained, lacking weapons and clothing, all but destitute of provisions—they were not even ready to march south. The Continental quartermaster’s department in Virginia was, in Greene’s words, “totally deranged,” without any organization or personnel.14
Greene desperately needed men, equipment, clothing, and food from Virginia, but neither could he tarry in the state much longer. Before he left for the Carolinas on November 21, he decided to leave Steuben behind in Richmond to organize recruits and supplies for the Southern Army. He did so reluctantly, for he needed Steuben’s personal assistance, too. But it would be only a temporary assignment. As soon as a critical mass of Continental recruits could be clothed, armed, and formed into regiments, Steuben could march south with them and take his place at Greene’s side.
Easier said than done, as the Baron soon discovered. “All the Wheels of the Machine are Stopt, and all the Departments in the greatest Confusion,” he reported to Washington in dismay. The eight hundred Continental recruits—inactive, half-naked, and without food—were deserting in droves. Because of the invasion scare in October and November, the Virginia General Assembly was much less concerned about meeting Greene’s requirements than it was about the defense of the state. “Your Affairs are very little more advanced than when you left this town,” Steuben told Greene at the very end of November.15
Steuben took charge. On Greene’s recommendation, he delegated the task of recruiting and supply to Col. William Davies. A rough-spoken man with “an uneasy disposition,” as Timothy Pickering described him, Davies was nonetheless highly dependable and intelligent, and he knew how to work with the Baron: he had been one of the original sub-inspectors at Valley Forge. Davies quickly constructed a recruiting depot at Chesterfield Courthouse, complete with barracks, a hospital, a clothing manufactory, and storehouses. Here Steuben made his headquarters. A Continental “laboratory”—a facility for manufacturing ammunition and repairing weapons—was established at nearby Westham. Davies somehow managed to find enough clothing and equipment for four hundred men. Within days, more than a full battalion of fresh Continental troops was on its way south to Greene.
Better yet: the next month, the state government gave every sign of willingness to cooperate with Greene. At Jefferson’s urging, the General Assembly authorized the recruitment of three thousand men for Continental service, promising cash bounties, gold, silver, and slaves to men who volunteered for three years’ or more service.16
At this rate, Steuben could count on sending off a battalion to Greene every month or so, maybe even every couple of weeks, and perhaps he, too, could leave the state by February. But the obvious strategic vulnerability of the state troubled him. Entrusting the defense of the state to the militia was in itself a risky proposition. Geography, too, made eastern Virginia difficult to defend. The network of rivers, the James and York estuaries in particular, could serve as a highway for an invading enemy. If the rivers were not properly guarded, a seaborne army could stab deep into the state.
One very inexpensive measure, Steuben saw, would go a long way toward forestalling invasion. Just downriver from the mouth of the Appomattox, the tidal estuary of the James narrowed sharply at a place called Hood’s Landing. A simple earthen fort there, properly sited and bristling with ship-killing cannon, could keep a British fleet at bay indefinitely. Steuben could find the cannon, and he already had a competent engineer: Col. John Christian Senf, formerly chief engineer to Horatio Gates. All that was wanting was labor.
Steuben laid his plan for Hood’s on Thomas Jefferson’s desk at Richmond. Nothing came of it. Neither Jefferson nor the Assembly thought that an enemy force would attempt to ascend the James. Virginia did not have the money to waste on guarding against every remote strategic possibility. The militia would have to suffice—if indeed there was any invasion at all.17
On December 29, 1780, a British fleet of twenty-seven sail dropped anchor off Old Point Comfort. On board were sixteen hundred British regulars and their commander, a familiar figure who had returned to plague his former comrades-in-arms. Benedict Arnold was back.
STEUBEN HAD GUESSED that another invasion was coming soon. At the first sign of trouble he took measures to safeguard what little Continental property he had, transferring men and supplies from Chesterfield to safe locations farther south, away from the James. The state government, on the other hand, “was never more taken off its Guard” than by Arnold’s sudden appearance that December.18 Even then, vague and conflicting intelligence as to Arnold’s intentions lulled the government in Richmond into indecision. The state’s executive council discounted the Baron’s warnings—that Arnold would invade—until late in the day on January 2, 1781, four days after the fleet had been sighted. And by that point it was too late to stop him. Arnold’s ships were already on the James.
The fleet did not stop to unload its menacing cargo at Portsmouth, as Leslie had done, but taking advantage of a fair wind, it drove straight upriver. The British encountered virtually no resistance. To Arnold’s amazement, there was nothing more at Hood’s Landing than a small band of militia, which a British landing party quickly swatted aside as if they were flies. On January 4, the fleet dropped anchor at Westover, where nine hundred Redcoats went ashore and set out on foot for Richmond.19
Richmond, then an unspectacular river port of less than four thousand souls, had served as the capital only since the previous April. It could not compare to its predecessor, Williamsburg, in size or stately elegance; its chief advantages over the colonial capital were its more central location—Virginia’s population was shifting steadily west-ward—and its lesser vulnerability. But little had been done to defend it. The General Assembly had called out four thousand militia before adjourning and fleeing. Few men, however, had yet answered the call.
Jefferson scrambled to impart some order, while the inhabitants of the Virg
inia Piedmont panicked and took to their heels as the traitor Arnold and his men drew close. Jefferson detailed the state’s commissioner of war, Col. George Muter, to grab what military supplies he could and take them out of Arnold’s path. The overall defense of the state he entrusted to Steuben.
The Baron did what he could. He rounded up what few militia troops he could find near Richmond, sending most of them downriver to slow Arnold’s advance by land. The militia commander flagrantly disobeyed the order, and instead retreated to the Chickahominy River. Steuben did not have enough men left to defend Richmond—and most of them were unarmed, thanks to Muter’s mishandling of the state-owned muskets—so he, too, retreated. At Manchester, across the James River south of Richmond, he intended to make a stand.20
Arnold ignored him. On January 5, his nine hundred Redcoats marched into Richmond. Half of his force proceeded to Westham, where they wreaked havoc with the Continental laboratory. The following day Arnold’s men torched a few public buildings and some tobacco warehouses in Richmond before withdrawing to their base at Westover. In less than a week, the British had marched with impunity into the heart of Virginia, terrorized the population, and burned much of the capital, almost without firing a shot or losing a single man. And it had all been done with an army less than one thousand strong.
Steuben fell back on Petersburg. The small battalion of Continentals from Chesterfield were there, but they were so badly clothed as to be of no earthly use and had to be sent back to their barracks. The Baron rallied a few militia and advanced carefully on Westover to observe Arnold from a safe distance. In a few days, Arnold’s troops boarded their transports and sailed back downriver to Portsmouth, where they landed again and dug in. Steuben pursued cautiously, finally establishing a defensive cordon around Portsmouth.21
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 25