Throughout the state, the reaction to the invasion had been a near-fatal mix of poor planning, panic, and complacency. Even state military leaders were aghast at the abject failure of the militia to come to the aid of their native state. “My God!” one of them wrote to Steuben in shame. “What could have occasioned this total Departure from Virtue on the Part of the People?”22
Steuben didn’t have an answer. He wanted only to leave, to be with Greene. “He had rather Obey in an Army,” Billy North intimated to Greene, “than Command in Virginia.”23 And Greene wanted Steuben to join him, but he also believed that the Baron would be far more valuable in Virginia at the moment. “As reenforcements and supplies are more important than Generals without them, I wish you not to leave Virginia,” he wrote to Steuben in January. “I fear that when you leave it nothing will be done.”
Greene added, with uncanny foresight: “The state is lifeless and inactive unless they are often electriced.”24
So the Baron would stay. His primary responsibility was to support Greene—or, as he put it, “tormenting the Governor” into supplying what Greene needed.25 Initially, he had promised Greene that he would send along one infantry battalion every fortnight, and additional clothing, weapons, and horses as opportunity allowed. This soon proved impossible. So long as Arnold remained on Virginia soil, the state government was loath to part with a single man or musket that could be employed by the militia. Steuben was unable to raise so much as a solitary infantry battalion between late December and late February. “My Situation here is really very embarrassing,” he reported to Washington on February 18. “Genl. Greene’s whole dependance is on this State.”26
Unable to raise troops for Greene, yet stuck in Chesterfield anyway, Steuben became by default the man principally responsible for the defense of Virginia. The charge was more demanding than he could have anticipated. He had several excellent combat commanders beneath him, men like John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, the Prussian-educated Lutheran parson who had led most of the Virginia troops in the Continental Line. Governor Jefferson, not a military man by any stretch of the imagination, nonetheless worked untiringly to keep a militia army in the field. But to Steuben fell everything else.
The workload nearly overwhelmed the Baron. Each day his desk was piled high with requests and petitions. Militia officers begged him to supply them with muskets, cartridge boxes, shirts, canteens, all from Continental stores; at the same time, the Board of War scolded him for distributing Continental property to state militia. Quartermasters wanted his advice on requisitioning horses from farmers unwilling to part with them. Greene wrote to him nearly once a week, asking for more men and supplies to be shipped south. Well-meaning Jefferson was the worst offender, sometimes writing to the Baron three or four times in a single day, and usually about trivial issues. The militia lacked proper hats, he once informed Steuben. Would it be acceptable to issue them cloth caps instead? Could Steuben come to Richmond to model a cloth cap for the governor?27
VIRGINIA SORELY NEEDED THE TOUCH of an experienced, no-nonsense soldier. Steuben, as the Continental Army’s resident miracle worker, was perfect for the job. But he was not perfect for Virginia. With the state’s defenses in such profound disarray, and with so little time to spare, he saw no choice but to be autocratic in his undesired role. His intolerance of mediocrity and false pride—qualities he would find, and to spare, among his subordinates in Virginia—made him appear insufferably overbearing. This had landed him in trouble before, among his fellow Continental officers, and they were men who were accustomed to being ordered about. Virginia civilians were assuredly not used to this kind of rough treatment.
The result was that Steuben clashed with just about everyone. He upbraided militia officers for trying to recruit young boys when so many eligible men were shirking their civic duty. He publicly rebuked Commissioner Muter for his incompetence in providing the militia with weapons, ammunition, and equipment. In mid-February 1781, he unleashed a storm of protest by giving George Weedon an upper-level command. Weedon was a former Continental brigadier who had resigned his commission in 1778; Steuben found him to be a talented commander, but many Virginia officers—even William Davies—were offended that a man who had voluntarily stepped down should be promoted over them.28
In his quest for efficiency, the Baron did not hesitate to criticize those who put their self-interest above the common good. While his better subordinates praised him for his forthright, critics-be-damned approach to leadership, as time went on he alienated a growing number of political leaders, militia officers, and ordinary citizens.
Steuben’s sharpest conflict, however, was with Governor Jefferson. Jefferson admired the Baron for his talent and zeal, but when it came to the governor’s role in the defense of the state, the two men had very different ideas. Jefferson insisted upon the strict observance of state laws; Steuben put military efficiency and effectiveness before rights and liberties.
The first sign of trouble came from a project that Steuben considered essential: the fortification at Hood’s. After the smoke had cleared from Arnold’s raid up the James, the Baron pushed Jefferson to get the necessary labor to construct the fort at Hood’s, and pushed hard. Jefferson agreed that the fort was necessary and dutifully put the proposal before the General Assembly for approval, telling Steuben that work would begin no later than February 7. The appointed day came and went without so much as a single spadeful of dirt being turned, and the Baron was furious. Hadn’t Arnold demonstrated just how necessary the fort was? It was also a matter of personal honor, for if the enemy took Richmond again, it would look bad for him. “The shameful Opposition made to the last invasion falls in some measure on me as the Commanding Officer in the State,” he wrote to Jefferson with only a thin veneer of tact. “My wish is to prevent a Repitition of the Disgrace.”29
Jefferson would not give the flustered general a reason why the fort shouldn’t be built, only why it hadn’t. As governor, all he could do was present the plan to the legislature; he was powerless to make them act. He could not order the militia to do manual labor, he could not force ordinary citizens to work, he could not force slaves to work. To Steuben, this was sheer nonsense. An executive who could not bend the rules a bit for the sake of the common good was no executive at all. As the Baron put it to Washington, uncharitably but accurately, “The Executive Power is so confined that the Governor has it not in his power to procure me 40 Negros to work at Hoods.”30
As the burden of command pressed more heavily on Steuben’s shoulders, the relationship between him and the governor, between him and the entire state, grew progressively worse.
First, some alarming news from Greene: the Southern Army was in full retreat through North Carolina and approaching Virginia, with Cornwallis in hot pursuit. Jefferson and the General Assembly called out an additional three thousand militia to guard Virginia’s southern border, which meant that recruitment for Greene’s Continentals would come to a “total stop.” “Evry thing here is totally in Confusion,” Steuben told Washington. If Cornwallis actually invaded Virginia, or if Arnold were reinforced, then “without some speedy assistance, our affairs in this Quarter will go very badly.”31
Then a glimmer of illusory hope. On February 14, rebels scouts witnessed an amazing sight near Hampton Roads: a French naval squadron had dropped anchor off the Virginia coast, presumably to help Virginia evict Arnold from his base in Portsmouth. “Now is our time,” wrote Thomas Nelson, Jr., general in the militia and soon-to-be governor of Virginia, to Steuben. “Not a moment is to be lost.” Steuben agreed, rushing immediately to Richmond to talk strategy with Jefferson. But the high hopes were soon dashed. The French commander, Capt. Arnaud le Gardeur de Tilly, had not brought any troops, only a ship of the line and two frigates. He had been informed by sources in Virginia that French troops were not needed. Once he found that all Virginia could muster for an assault on Arnold was three thousand militia, many of them unarmed, he prudently decided to withdraw rather than
risk his ships and his reputation. “The forces with which you intend to assist me,” Tilly stiffly informed Steuben, “are completely insufficient.”32
There were many people and factors at fault for the failure of Tilly’s expedition. Steuben, however, blamed Jefferson and his government. The negligence of that government, he felt, had made him look very much the fool. He did not intend to let it happen again.
TILLY’S RETREAT to Newport had triggered no small amount of popular hostility toward the French. No one in Philadelphia or at Washington’s headquarters wished to see the French alliance fall apart because of a simple misunderstanding. Another and a better French fleet was soon on its way to Virginia to do what Tilly could not.
This fleet was much larger, and this time it brought with it twelve hundred French royal troops. It sailed from Newport under the command of Admiral Destouches. The planned assault on the Virginia coast was simple and bold: while the French fleet set sail, the Marquis de Lafayette would march at the head of twelve hundred elite Continental light infantry to the top of Chesapeake Bay. The French fleet would sail up the bay, rendezvous with Lafayette at Annapolis and Head of Elk, Maryland, take the Continental troops aboard its transports, and then sail to Portsmouth. Together, the Continentals, the French, and the Virginia militia would crush Arnold, with the French fleet preventing the traitor’s escape.
Now the pressure to perform was really on Steuben. He was annoyed that the younger and less experienced Lafayette—his senior—would take charge once he was in Virginia, but only a little. The Baron’s chief concern was seeing to it that everything was ready for the arrival of the Franco-American force. Horses, small boats, provisions, and fodder would have to be available, and of course the militia would be expected to do its part. Jefferson, delighted that a major victory over the British was just around the corner, promised the Baron that the state would provide everything necessary for success.
Once again, Virginia didn’t make good on Jefferson’s promises, at least not to Steuben’s satisfaction. Much of the militia Jefferson sent on to Portsmouth was unarmed, thanks to Muter’s consistently bad performance as commissioner. Farmers refused to surrender their horses, and ferrymen and fishermen their boats, to Steuben’s quartermasters, and Jefferson hesitated to coerce them into compliance.
This time the Baron let the stress get to him. He had been prone to outbursts of bad temper in less trying circumstances; in Virginia, he was at his worst. Even the deputy quartermaster in Virginia, a fellow Continental officer, remarked with some distaste upon Steuben’s “fits of execrating every body and every thing.”33 Those closest to him sympathized. John Walker, Jefferson’s personal friend and liaison at Steuben’s headquarters, understood better than anyone why the Baron might snap. “The difficulties & Embarrassments that have been thrown into the Baron’s way in the Course of this Business,” Walker reported to the governor, “have perhaps transported him beyond the bounds of moderation, but were you acquainted with them all you would make great allowances on account of his Situation.”34
With the unpleasant memory of the Tilly fiasco still rankling deep within him, Steuben lashed out at the governor. “In the Assurances I rec’d from [the] Government” he had guaranteed to Lafayette and to Washington that “every thing was ready for the Expedition,” he wrote to the governor on March 9. He had trusted Jefferson, and that had been a mistake. “My Credulity however is furnished at the expence of my honor and the only excuse I have is my Confidence in [the] Government.” If Jefferson could not do what he had promised, “if the powers of Government are inadequate to the furnishing [of] what is indispensably necessary, the Expedition must fail.” Steuben refused to take responsibility for the failings of the state. If Jefferson could not give him what he needed, what Virginia needed, then the Baron would have to apprise both Lafayette and the French commanders so “that they may not engage too far in an Enterprize which there is no prospect of carrying through.”35
Passionate words from a passionate man, but impolitic words, too, which Steuben immediately regretted. Jefferson deserves some credit for tolerating Steuben’s outburst with equanimity. But the governor’s response confirmed what the Baron thought of him as a wartime leader. “We can only be answerable for the orders we give and not for their execution,” he wrote to Steuben the next day. “If they are disobeyed from obstinancy of spirit or want of coercion in the laws it is not our fault.”36
To a military man like Steuben, Jefferson might as well have been speaking Greek. Even generals in the army were held responsible for the execution of orders. Why couldn’t the highest civil authority in the state hold his subordinates similarly accountable?
THE HEATED EXCHANGE between Steuben and Jefferson, jarring as it was, had no lasting significance. Whatever his faults as a war leader, Jefferson was still a great man, and did not take Steuben’s fulminations personally.
As it turned out, the planned assault on Portsmouth never happened anyway, and not through any fault of Jefferson’s. The French fleet never arrived at its destination.
The final plans for the operation were being made in mid-March. Lafayette came to Yorktown, without his troops, to discuss strategy with Steuben. But before the marquis could return to his troops in Maryland to await the coming of the French transports, disturbing news arrived. As Destouches’s fleet approached the Chesapeake, a superior British fleet under the command of Adm. Marriot Arbuthnot caught up with it and gave it a severe beating in the battle of Cape Henry. The entire French force, troop transports and all, had to limp back to Newport. Virginia would receive no assistance from France.
This was indeed bad news, but it got worse. On March 26, Arbuthnot’s fleet anchored in Chesapeake Bay. And it was escorting transports. Shielded by the guns of Arbuthnot’s eight ships of the line, two thousand Redcoats landed at Portsmouth to reinforce Arnold’s men. Maj. Gen. William Phillips, one of Clinton’s senior generals, replaced Arnold as the British commander in Virginia.
The strategic situation reversed overnight. Just a few days before, it was almost certain that the Franco-American coalition would drive Arnold’s 1,600 troops into the sea. Now, the British numbered some 3,600 men. Even with French help it would have been difficult to dislodge Phillips, but without that aid it would be impossible. Sensing the futility of his presence in the state, Lafayette returned to Annapolis the very next day.
THE NEW DEVELOPMENT CRUSHED STEUBEN, and not just because “the preparations we had made with so much trouble & Expence” were now proven “useless.” Mainly, he felt that he had let Greene down by allowing Virginia to fall into enemy hands. Muhlenberg’s defensive cordon around Portsmouth could not possibly hold firm against Phillips. If Phillips were determined to push into Virginia’s undefended interior, there was nothing the rebels could do to stop him.37
Desperation, however, drove Steuben to concoct a brilliant strategem. Virginia had about four thousand militia in the field, statewide. Even if all of them were concentrated around Portsmouth, it would still not be possible to keep Phillips and Arnold bottled up. There was, in short, nothing to lose, because Virginia was already beaten. So what if Steuben were to take half of the militia and make a forced march south to join Greene in North Carolina?
There was much to recommend the plan. Greene’s army had just met Cornwallis’s in a hard-fought battle at Guilford Courthouse, and while the rebels had suffered a minor tactical defeat there, Cornwallis’s army was so badly mauled that the British general had to retreat toward the coast to repair his shattered command. If Greene were reinforced with two thousand Virginia militia, he would enjoy numerical superiority over Cornwallis, and there was a good chance he could then crush Cornwallis. At the very least, the move would compel Phillips to go to Cornwallis’s aid, effectively removing the British threat from the Virginia coast.38
Steuben shared his idea with every general officer in the state, including Lafayette. And every one of them approved. Lafayette gave the plan his official endorsement just before le
aving for Annapolis. Generals Muhlenberg, Weedon, and Nelson praised it without reservation. Richard Henry Lee, one of the most influential politicians in the state, saluted it as “one of those Master strokes which are productive of great effects, but which if neglected lay the train for much future evil,” comparing its potential for victory to that of Rome over Hannibal.39 There was not a single dissenting voice to be heard. The illustrious Baron had found a way to save the state and help Greene at the same time.
Everyone liked it—except the executive office in Richmond. Jefferson submitted the plan, together with its glowing official endorsements, to the Virginia State Council. The Council rejected it out of hand with almost no debate. While the proposal seemed to be “founded upon very probable principles,” the fact that it would take so many men and weapons from the state made it unacceptable—even though many of those weapons had been initially intended for Greene’s use, and even though the state had not provided Greene with anywhere near the number of men it was supposed to.40
The Baron did not lose his temper. He did not fire off angry letters to the governor. He had expected as much from the government, as did his supporters. “I was fearful,” George Weedon commiserated, “our Scheme would be rejected by the Executive who has not an Idea beyond local security.” Steuben only wished for Greene to summon him to his side, and to be done with Virginia forever. “If I preferred my own inclination to the public interest,” he wrote to Greene in resignation, “I should immediately set out to join you.”41
STEUBEN WASHED HIS HANDS of Virginia. He really did intend to leave this time. Virginia was as good as lost, and for reasons of honor he did not want to be in the state when it collapsed. But he also felt duty-bound to delay his departure until he could accomplish something positive for Greene. He was fairly certain, he informed Greene, that he already had five hundred Continental recruits waiting at the Chesterfield barracks. Once he had these men armed and ready, plus a handful of cavalry, he would lead them to the South and be rid of Virginia forever.
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 26