Steuben spent much time that spring at Washington’s Newburgh headquarters, discussing with the general the future of the army and not infrequently staying for dinner. He had the unaccustomed luxury of time on his hands, and at Newburgh he could reacquaint himself with the Washingtons and with his old aide Walker. The Washingtons likewise enjoyed the lighthearted banter that the Baron brought to the table; Martha in particular found his accent and his occasional difficulties with the English language highly amusing. The Baron knew when he had an appreciative audience, so he pretended to be clumsier with the language than he actually was. One evening Martha asked him how he passed the time now that his military duties were somewhat reduced. Steuben replied that he read, wrote, played chess, and—for the first time in his life—went fishing. But he knew he wasn’t a very good angler, he confessed, for he had sat in a boat in the Hudson for three hours and had caught only two fish. One of them, he said, was a whale. “A whale, Baron, in the North River?” Lady Washington asked. “Yes, I assure you, a very fine whale.” Turning to his staff, he demanded with a wink, “It was a whale, was it not?” Billy North corrected him: “An eel, Baron.” Steuben shrugged his shoulders and pretended to be mortally offended by the correction. “I beg your pardon, my Lady, but that gentleman certainly told me that it was a whale.”37
The Baron’s main duty, when he wasn’t fishing for whales in the Hudson, was working out the details of demobilization. He had hoped for a dramatic send-off. The men deserved that much, he believed. He envisioned a ceremony that would demonstrate to the soldiers that their leaders, their Congress, and their nation regarded them as heroes. A grand review, perhaps, like that at Valley Forge, just one last time, before the individual regiments marched off to their home states. They would do so with colors uncased and flying proudly, fifes and drums ringing out the lilting tunes that had led them into battle at Brandywine, at Monmouth, at Yorktown.38
It would have been a fitting end to eight years of heartache and sacrifice, but it was not to be. Congress could not afford to keep the army a day longer than was absolutely necessary, but with the British still in possession of New York, it would be risky to get rid of the troops altogether. The compromise arrangement was to be a mass “furlough” of the army. Those men who had enlisted for the duration of the war were to disband and go home, taking their muskets with them. If their country needed them before the British departed American soil, they could be recalled to the colors, ready to fight if need be. A handful of men, whose enlistment terms had not yet expired, would remain at West Point until all affairs were settled.
On Congress’s order, Washington began the process on June 2, 1783. There was none of the ceremony that Steuben had envisioned, only the sadly undramatic spectacle of a camp breaking up as the men said their goodbyes to their brothers in arms and went their separate ways. During the first two weeks of June, they took to the road in small bands, with little in their pockets but promissory notes for back pay and a few scraps of food.
It was difficult for Steuben, or any officer, to part with the army for good; it was even harder to see it trickle away to nothing, man by man, without the satisfaction of viewing his creation on parade one last time. Years later, a former Continental officer recalled the very last drill session conducted by the Baron. His bitter melancholy came through that day at Newburgh. After giving his men the order to “March!” he added in a growl loud enough to be heard by everyone, “…into the river and drown yourselves!”39
Yet there were consolations. The men did not forget him. Disillusionment was rife in the now-defunct army, as many were convinced that the furlough system was just a clever way of disposing of the army without paying it. Washington, rather unfairly, took much of the blame for the circumstances of the disbandment. Steuben did not, and in fact he received unrestrained accolades. The officers of the New York and New Jersey regiments expressed their affection in a heartfelt but florid letter. The testimonial, written soldier to soldier, could not have failed to move the Baron.40
Your unremitted exertions on all occasions to alleviate the distresses of the Army—and the manner in which you have shared them with us, have given you more than a common title to the character of our Friend—as our Military Parent we have long considered you. Ignorant as we were of the profession we had undertaken, it is to your Abilities & unwearied assiduity, we are indebted for that Military Reputation we finally attained.
THE BARON had better luck memorializing the contributions of the officer corps. That May, while still at Newburgh, Henry Knox had the idea of forming a fraternal association of officers, to perpetuate the friendships forged over eight long years of war, and to honor those who had given so much in the service of their country. The result was the Society of the Cincinnati, named for the Roman citizen-soldier cum political leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus, who had reluctantly put aside his plow to serve as dictator of Rome in a moment of national emergency, only to shed his political powers as soon as the crisis had passed, had long been held up as a model of selfless republican virtue and civic duty. This made him a perfect namesake for this new society, which saluted the Continental officers for exactly the same qualities.
The first formal meeting of the Cincinnati was held at Steuben’s Fishkill headquarters, the Verplanck house, on May 13, 1783. Washington was elected president of the society by universal acclaim, but as he was not present, Steuben served as acting head. At Steuben’s insistence, Pierre L’Enfant designed the society’s seal and insignia. The basic aims of the society—among other things, to provide charitable assistance to American officers and their families who had fallen on hard times, as so many would—were harmless and above reproach.
Membership in the society was to be hereditary, passed down from father to eldest-born son. Herein lay the source of the controversy that would surround the group in the next few years. The Cincinnati, with its exclusive character and distinctive heraldry, struck many Americans as being too much like a noble order, an innovation that was highly suspect to a people who trumpeted liberty and equality. As a charter member and a titled nobleman himself, Steuben would naturally come to be seen as the author of such an alien and dangerous idea.
WITH MOST OF THE ARMY on the road home, Steuben’s formal duties as inspector general had gone from being an unworkable burden to almost nothing overnight. He did not have a family anxiously awaiting his return home, as most of the Continental generals did. Washington therefore selected him for a truly unconventional assignment: a diplomatic mission to General Sir Frederick Haldimand, the British military commander in Canada.
The transfer of British-held military posts to American hands was a potentially tricky matter, not only in New York, where thousands of Loyalists cringed at the thought of retribution by vengeful Patriots, but also in the frontier outposts to the north and west of the thirteen states. Washington wanted to make sure that the British did not abandon their frontier forts until the Americans were prepared to relieve them. This would be Steuben’s job—to work out the details of the transfer with the British authorities, and to visit the British forts as far west as Detroit in order to determine what kind of forces were needed to garrison these strongpoints.
It was fortunate for Steuben’s health that the mission was an unmitigated failure. The Baron ventured north through Albany into the dense wilderness of northern New York, and via Lake Champlain toward Quebec. Haldimand, alerted to his intended purpose by William North, who had gone ahead to make contact with the British general, intercepted the Prussian at the town of Sorel on August 8. He treated the Baron with kindness and tact, but firmly told him that he could not visit any of the British outposts. Haldimand did not have the authority to allow it, and certainly he had received no orders to evacuate. The mission was over. Steuben reversed course, took some time to recover his strength at Saratoga, and returned to duty.41
ALL THAT REMAINED at New Windsor was the pitiful detritus of the army: the sick, the maimed, those too weak to journey h
ome on their own. These he tended to as best he could, arranging hospital care for some, transporting others to West Point so that they could recuperate among the skeleton force guarding the Hudson there.
The Baron wrote very little during the autumn of 1783, keeping his thoughts to himself as he presided over the last lingering, tentative heartbeats of the army he had done so much to create. We can only guess at his emotions as he filled out his last reports, while the days grew shorter in his beloved Hudson Valley, the approaching winter setting the Highlands ablaze with fiery color. The army, the thing that had been his salvation and his home, was passing away before his eyes, and he had nowhere to go.
He did, however, have the advantage of closure of sorts, for since he was compelled to stick it out to the mournful end, he was witness to the final acts of the Continental Army. He rode alongside General Washington on November 25, 1783, at the head of the procession that reclaimed New York City as the British withdrew to their transports in the harbor, while Patriot crowds thronged the streets to cheer the victors. He returned to Washington’s side nine days later, sitting by him and Knox at a table on the second floor of Fraunces Tavern, embracing his general during the round of tear-filled farewells after Washington said his parting words to his officers there. He left New York that day with Washington, and shared with him the barge that took them to the New Jersey shore and the road to Philadelphia.
The general and the Baron parted ways in Philadelphia. The Baron would stay there to tend to his final business as inspector general. But Washington’s military career was over. He left for Annapolis, where Congress now sat, to tender his resignation at noon on December 23, 1783. Before Washington quit public life—for good, as he thought at the time—he performed his last act as general-in-chief: he wrote a letter of thanks to the Baron de Steuben.
Altho’ I have taken frequent Opportunities both in public and private, of Acknowledging your great Zeal, Attention and Abilities in performing the duties of your Office; yet, I wish, to make use of this last Moment of my public Life, to Signify in the strongest terms, my intire Approbation of your Conduct, and to express my Sense of the Obligations the public is under to you for your faithful and Meritorious Services…. I am persuaded you will not be displeased with this farewell token of my Sincere Friendship and Esteem for you.42
CHAPTER 12
An Old Soldier in Peacetime
[JANUARY 1784—NOVEMBER 1794]
You cannot do a Service to a worthier Man nor to one to whom we are more obliged. He is certainly the Father of our Discipline, tho’ he had to deal with docile Children.
RICHARD PETERS TO JACOB READ,
FEBRUARY 23, 17841
EARLY IN 1778, the Baron de Steuben had declared to John Hancock that he was “an American for life.” He didn’t really mean it then, not exactly. He can be forgiven a bit of ingratiating talk, perhaps, for at that time he was a job applicant, and it was important that he demonstrate attachment to the Cause in order to secure a commission. The Baron did sympathize with the Cause, even if he knew little about America or Americans. Over time, he grew to form a strong bond with his hosts and with the land itself.
But he also had the dreams and ambitions of a younger man, ambitions that made him hope for further martial glory in Europe, in the French army. Repeated rebuffs from Gérard and Luzerne squeezed the life from that hope. Yet in December 1782, while he was talking money with Alex Hamilton’s committee in Philadelphia, he made a final appeal to France—directly to Vergennes. He reminded the foreign minister that “a peace glorious to France” was in the offing, and that the peace was in part Steuben’s doing. “You cannot forget the instruments whose services you have made use of to attain this important object.” What he requested, as a token of Louis XVI’s favor, was not an actual command in the line, but an honorary commission as major general and a pension—enough to “enable him to end his days at ease in the dominions of the King.”2
Vergennes had not forgotten his “instrument.” He could not, for Steuben’s fame in Europe was nearly as great as it was in America. One could buy an engraving of the Baron’s likeness at any bookshop in Paris; Lafayette, while traveling through Europe in 1786, found that nearly everyone in Prussia had heard of their native son’s exploits in the New World. Yet the French foreign minister felt no pressing obligation to reward him. “The King owes no recompense to the Baron de Steuben,” the minister informed Luzerne. He let Steuben down more easily, but not by much. “You have rendered essential services to the United States,” Vergennes wrote him in July 1783, “and I have no doubt of your reaping those rewards you have so much right to expect.” Steuben would have to seek his fortune through Congress, for France had none to give him.3
Steuben’s attitude toward the United States might, at first glance, appear to be ambivalent. He showed every sign of adopting America as his home. He bragged about its peculiarities to his friends in Europe; he was driven almost to madness by those Virginians who quailed in the face of peril instead of springing to the call to defend their country. When he wrote out his will in the summer of 1781, he left the bulk of his estate to the eldest son of his sister, the impoverished Baroness von Canitz, but on several conditions: that the young Canitz must move permanently to the United States, reject “the title Baron or any other sign of nobility,” and take up American citizenship “as a good republican.”4 Why, then, was Steuben still so eager to leave at the end of the war?
The answer is simple. Steuben was exhausted. His activity in the Revolution drained him, aging him well beyond his fifty-three years. He felt it in his bones, in his increasingly frequent fevers, in the recurring and painful flare-ups of gout that left him unable to ride a horse. His patriotism was not a sham. When he appealed to Vergennes in 1782–83, he did not do so as a mercenary looking to move on to bigger and better things under a different master, but rather as a tired, old man who wanted only to live out his last days in honorable comfort. The Baron suspected that he would not find such tranquility and ease in the United States.
His suspicions would prove correct.
THE BARON DID NOT FLY from public service at war’s end. Instead he launched himself into a project that had been very much on his mind since 1779: the creation of a permanent military establishment for the new republic. Steuben understood that as much as he favored the armies of Prussia and France, the United States could not and should not imitate them. Congress and indeed most Americans were dead set against a standing army. Aside from its cost, it would also raise the specter of military dictatorship à la Oliver Cromwell. Though the dark days of Cromwell’s Protectorate had ended more than a century ago, it was as fresh in the minds of educated Americans as if it had happened the week before.
The major powers of Europe, Steuben therefore argued, should most definitely not serve as a model for American military organization. He turned instead to the few existing republics in Europe for inspiration. One in particular struck him as especially pertinent: Switzerland. Like the fledgling United States, Switzerland was cash-poor and relatively undeveloped. Yet for centuries, even before attaining formal independence in 1648, it had managed to shake off the yoke of any foreign prince who laid claim to the land. It did so by relying on a well-organized, home-grown militia of ordinary peasants and woodsmen.
The main reason that the military security of the Swiss rested on their militia was economic: “the Want of the necessary means to maintain a Standing Army.” America had even better grounds for such a military system. Switzerland was small and compact; America was expansive, with a long, vulnerable coast and a long, vulnerable frontier. If the United States entrusted its national defense to a standing army, that army would necessarily have to be very large indeed to cover so much territory. “It is to our Militias that We must find the real Strength which we are to oppose to that of Great Britain.”5
The thought remained on his mind over the next four years, so when Washington—prompted by Hamilton in April 1783—asked his generals for their
ideas regarding a peacetime army, Steuben’s pen practically flew. He submitted two long memoranda. The first, addressed to Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln, covered military academies and manufactories. The second, written for Washington five days later, revealed the heart of his vision.
The defense of the United States, Steuben argued, could not be left entirely to impromptu musterings of militia. There would have to be a permanent army no matter what, but it could be kept small—fewer than five thousand men. It was needed to garrison “a chain of small posts along the frontiers,” to protect overland trade and to serve as “a check upon the Indians.” But five thousand men would not be enough to deter a full-scale assault by a European power. That was where the militia came in. No matter how large the militia was, no matter how it was organized, it would have to be uniform in composition. All units would have to be the same size, and they must be trained in the same manner, using the official Regulations already adopted by the Continental Army.
“As long as our Ambition is confined,” Steuben concluded, “to promoting the happiness of our citizens within our limits,” then a small professional army, supplemented in wartime by the trained militia, would do the trick. “A system of this nature will make us more respectable with the powers of Europe than if we should keep up an army of fifty thousand men.” And it could all be done without “the enormous expence which a large land and sea force would subject us to.”6
Washington approved. Steuben’s ideas formed the core of the general’s “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment,” which he tendered to Congress in May 1783. It had no immediate effect. Congress was far more worried about how it would rid itself of the army it had than it was about the way it would raise the next army.
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 30