Nor did Washington’s reconnection with the Baron signal that a new career might be in the offing. Steuben did not expect one, but the president actually gave it some thought. In the winter of 1792, Washington was looking for a new general to lead U.S. forces against the Shawnee-Miami-Delaware confederation in the Ohio country. The confederation had already annihilated the expeditionary force of Steuben’s old army friend Arthur St. Clair in a bloody debacle on the banks of the Wabash River. It would stand as the worst defeat ever of United States troops by Native Americans, and Washington was not about to let the matter rest. As he mulled over the possible candidates for the commander’s position, he jotted down a few thoughts on the character and abilities of each.
On the Baron, Washington wrote: “Sensible, sober and brave, well acquainted with tactics and with the arrangement and discipline of an army.” Not effusive, but accurate. His shortcomings? “High in his ideas of subordination—impetuous in his temper—ambitious”…and then the curse: “a foreigner.”29
Washington’s assessment, if it had ever become known to the Baron, would have cut him to the quick. Steuben was well aware of his temper and his ambition, and his insistence on obedience to orders. But a foreigner? Even when he wrote little essays and memoranda for no one’s eyes but his own, analyzing the problems of American government and the “military constitution,” Steuben always referred to Americans as we, not they.
The Baron himself, however, would have conceded that in 1792 he was no longer the soldier, no longer the man, he had been ten years before. He was too old and feeble, his tired frame incapable of weathering the physical demands of leading an army into the Ohio country. As it was, his activities in New York after 1790 wore him out more and more each year. He moved with the season, wintering in New York City, summering on his Mohawk Valley estate, exhausting himself with the arduous journey and the constant worries that accompanied the development of his tract. But the bullheaded Steuben stuck it out to the end. He would not admit defeat.
In 1794, Steuben decided to spend the winter at his wilderness estate, residing in his two-room log cabin while still contemplating the construction of a far more elaborate house on the property. There were few diversions to entertain the sociable if ailing man. In July he presided over the dedication of the Hamilton Oneida Academy, a grammar school for local whites and Oneidas that later would form the basis of Hamilton College. But mostly he whiled away the long, dreary, lonely hours in his cabin, playing chess with his new secretary, John Mulligan, reading Montesquieu and his beloved Cervantes. Mulligan, a learned young graduate of Columbia College, would be Steuben’s only companion that winter. The Baron celebrated his sixty-fourth and final birthday in the gray solitude of his cabin.
In the wee morning hours of November 25, 1794, Mulligan was startled from his sleep by loud cries from the Baron. It was an unnatural sound, for the stoic gentleman usually grumbled and cursed over physical pain, but the Baron was in “extreme agony.” His entire left side was paralyzed; he appeared to have had “suffered long,” and he yelped to Mulligan that he was dying. Mulligan, frantic at the unexpected sight of the helpless Baron, roused a hired hand and sent him to summon help. Steuben was in great pain, “retching violently,” and remained in bed for the next two days. On Wednesday, the twenty-sixth, he lost consciousness, and though a physician arrived the following day, there was little he could do. At about half past noon on Friday, November 28, 1794, the Baron de Steuben passed from this world.30
Billy North arrived at the cabin a day or two later, just in time to preside over his mentor’s funeral. It was a very simple ceremony, in keeping with Steuben’s wishes and his Calvinist faith, a faith that he kept almost entirely to himself. “Wrapped in his cloak, encased in a plain coffin,” the body of the Baron de Steuben was interred in an unmarked grave while North, Mulligan, and a few tenants and neighbors stood glumly by.
A decade later the grave site had been all but forgotten. Ben Walker, fortunately, happened to be in the vicinity when a new post road was laid over the Baron’s grave. To the faithful aide, this was nothing short of sacrilege. At his own expense, he had Steuben’s remains disinterred and moved to a new grave in a nearby grove of trees.
IN THE NEXT CENTURY, the state of New York would memorialize its adopted son, erecting a a simple but massive granite monument atop his grave, a bronze plaque saluting the Baron as indispensable. But few people visit the site. Even today, even in the spring and summer months when it is open to the public, there is something inexpressibly sad and mournful about the Baron’s last resting place.
Elsewhere Steuben is commemorated more ostentatiously. There are statues of him at Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Lafayette Square, in Washington, DC. New York and Indiana each have a Steuben County; Ohio, a Steubenville, named for the frontier outpost of Fort Steuben, itself christened in honor of the Baron by Billy North in 1786. He has become a symbol for German American friendship, his name gracing German cultural festivals throughout the United States, notably the “Steuben Day” parades held annually on his birthday in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
The lasting image of the Baron, though, is that of the blustering, foul-mouthed drillmaster of Valley Forge. Yet that legend, the very thing that has kept Steuben’s name alive in American history texts, has also overshadowed his other contributions to American military victory in the Revolutionary War, to the point that those contributions have become little more than a footnote to the story of the Baron shouting his “Goddams” at awkward citizen-soldiers in the snows around the Schuylkill.
And that is unfortunate, for the Baron’s significance goes far beyond the fruit of his first three months’ labor in 1778. The Blue Book would survive as the official regulations of the U.S. Army through the War of 1812; its rationale—that European military practice could be integrated into a uniquely American way of war—would last for much longer. His notion of a small peacetime army, supplemented in times of war with a national militia, would likewise serve as the underlying foundation of the American military establishment for many decades to come. West Point, and indeed all of the American service academies, are products of the Baron’s agile mind. Above all other contributions tower the concepts of discipline and professionalism in the army as a whole and in the officer corps in particular.
The Baron de Steuben’s contribution to American independence and, more important, to the history of the American way of war was fundamental. Although he did not gain the glory of his more fortunate European comrades in the Continental Army—Lafayette comes to mind—he brought more of value to that army than any of them did. No one deserves sole credit for the creation of the American army—that was a team effort, by many individuals over many years—but if anyone ranks at the head of that team, it was assuredly the tempestuous Baron.
The Baron de Steuben’s is the classic “coming to America” story writ large. Like so many immigrants before or since, he cut himself loose from the Old World and journeyed to the New intending to reinvent himself. He did just that. Although he blurred a few details of his past in order to seek preferment in the United States, somewhere between his arrival and the achievement of American independence, the Baron became something very much like the man he had pretended to be.
Steuben’s cabin, near present-day Rome, New York. Here Steuben administered his unprofitable wilderness estate after the war, while he made plans to build a much more elaborate manor house on his property. He died here in November 1794. (Emmet Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)
Notes
REGARDING THE NOTES
For this book, I have relied primarily on the vast collection of Steubeniana contained in The Papers of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, 1777–1794. This collection, assembled through the considerable labors of Edith von Zemenszky in the late 1970s and early ’80s, brings together not only the largest single grouping of Steuben manuscrip
ts (at the New-York Historical Society, New York City), but also nearly all known correspondence to or from Steuben, or even mentioning Steuben, from dozens of archival repositories and libraries worldwide. Largely in order to save ink, I have indexed these documents in the notes that follow by their location in the Zemenszky collection on microfilm. The actual location of the individual manuscripts can be found by consulting the Zemenszky collection.
ABBREVIATIONS
CHS: Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL
PAH: Syrett, Harold C., and Jacob E. Cooke, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 25 vols., New York, 1961.
PHL: Hamar, Philip M. et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Laurens, 16 vols., Columbia, SC: 1968–2003.
SP: Zemenszky, Edith von, ed., The Papers of General Friedrich von Steuben, 1777-1794, Microfilm, 7 reels, Millwood, NY, 1976–84.
CHAPTER 1: THE FINEST SCHOOL OF WARFARE IN THE WORLD
1. Friedrich Kapp, Life of Frederick William von Steuben (New York: 1859), 49–50.
2. Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (New York, 1955), 1–21.
3. Christopher Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great (New York, 1974), 54–68. By “foreigners” I mean non-Prussians, which includes German men from other territorial states within the Holy Roman Empire.
4. Otto Büsch, Militärsystem und Sozialleben im alten Preußen. Die Anfänge der Militarisierung der preußisch-deutschen Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1962); Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, trans. Heinz Norden (4 vols., Coral Gables, FL, 1969–73), 1:15–42.
5. On the details of Steuben’s ancestry, early life, and service record, see: “Zuverläßige Nachrichten von dem Geschlecht und Herkommen des Nordamerikanischen Generals, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben,” Historisches Portefeuille zur Kenntniss der gegenwärtigen und vergangenen Zeit 4 (Berlin, 1785), 447; Daniel Heinrich Hering, Beiträge zur Geschichte der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche in den preußisch-brandenburgschen Ländern (2 vols., Breslau, 1784–85), 312–13; Anton B. C. Kalkhorst, “Neuen Daten über Steubens Dienstzeit im Heere Friedrichs des Grossen,” in the Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 14, CHS.
6. Edgar Melton, “The Junkers of Brandenburg-Prussia, 1600–1806,” in H. M. Scott, ed., The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 2007), 118–70.
7. For the latest research on the noble status of the Steuben family, which effectively refutes the work of earlier prosopographers, see: Theodor Albrecht, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben: Des Generals unbekannte Ahnen: ein Forschungsbericht (Berlin, 1983). The details of the controversy over Steuben’s genealogy are also available online, on the Steuben family genealogy website: http:// www.steuben.de. My thanks to Henning Hubertus von Steuben for this reference.
8. Christopher Duffy, Russia’s Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power 1700–1800 (London, 1981), 42–55.
9. Christopher Duffy, The Military Life of Frederick the Great (New York, 1986), 21–75; John MacAuley Palmer, General von Steuben (New Haven, 1937), 23–28.
10. Duffy, Army of Frederick the Great, 160; Kapp, Steuben, 49–50.
11. Ibid., 31.
12. Ibid., 24–53.
13. In his own writings, especially on American political life, Steuben quoted extensively from Don Quixote and Montesquieu’s L’Ésprit des Lois. The inventory of his personal library from 1784–86 includes an even mixture of works on military theory, political theory, history and fiction. Steuben also enjoyed a few bawdier comedies, such as Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. “Catalogue de ma Bibliotheque,” 1786, SP 7:489.
14. Kapp, Steuben, 49.
15. Duffy, Military Life, 101–21; Johannes Kunisch, Das Mirakel des Hauses Brandenburg: Studien zum Verhältnis von Kabinettspolitik und Kriegsführung im Zeitalter des Siebenjährigen Krieges (Munich, 1978).
16. Duffy, Army of Frederick the Great, 69–92, 165; Hans Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte (7 vols., Berlin, 1921–28), 4:230–49; Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London, 1983), 18–22.
17. Duffy, Army of Frederick the Great, 76–78.
18. Steuben’s correspondence with the king is preserved in the Steuben/Kalkhorst Papers, Box 336, Folder 14, CHS.
CHAPTER 2: COURTIER AND SUPPLICANT
1. Steuben to undisclosed recipient, June 16, 1764, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
2. Ibid.
3. Prince Henry of Prussia to Steuben, November 18, 1764; Friederike of Württemberg to Steuben, December 31, 1764, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
4. Steuben to Daniel Marianus Frank, May 17, 1773, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
5. Steuben to Daniel Marianus Frank, February 1, 1772, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
6. Steuben to Daniel Marianus Frank, February 12, 1772, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
7. Steuben to Daniel Marianus Frank, January 29, 1772, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS.
8. Palmer, General von Steuben, 79–81. Copies of Steuben’s correspondence with Baden, and with the Baron de Hahn in the Strasbourg garrison, are preserved in the Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 11, CHS. In 1771, the former margraviates of Baden-Durlach and Baden-Baden were united as the margraviate of Baden, under the rule of the former margrave of Baden-Durlach.
9. Palmer, General von Steuben, 79–80.
10. Peter Burdett to Benjamin Franklin, June 1777, SP 1:1.
11. Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (New York, 2005), 7–45; Brian N. Morton and Donald C. Spinelli, Beaumarchais and the American Revolution (Lanham, MD, 2003), 53–112.
12. Benjamin Franklin to James Lovell, October 7, 1777, SP 1:12.
13. Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years’ War (Durham, NC, 1967), 22–26, 139–43.
14. Morton and Spinelli, Beaumarchais.
15. Beaumarchais to Steuben, June 26, 1777, SP 1:2; Thomas J. Schaeper, France and America in the Revolutionary Era: The Life of Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, 1725–1803 (Providence, RI, 1995), 96–103; Silas Deane, The Deane Papers, 1774–1790 (5 vols., New York, 1887–91), 5:439.
16. Beaumarchais to the Comte de Vergennes, December 7, 1777, in Gunnar von Proschwitz, ed., Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais: Lettres de combat (Paris, 2005), 176–77. On Deane’s activity in Paris, see: Coy Hilton James, Silas Deane—Patriot or Traitor? (East Lansing, MI, 1975).
17. Morton and Spinelli, Beaumarchais, 80.
18. Ibid., 56–58, 79–80, 168; Deane, Deane Papers, 5:439.
19. Palmer, General von Steuben, 105–106.
20. Unknown to Prince Josef Friedrich Wilhelm, August 13, 1777, Kalkhorst/Steuben Papers, Box 336, Folder 13, CHS.
21. Paul Wentworth to the Earl of Suffolk, September 24, 1777, SP 1:11; Steuben to Vergennes, December 30, 1782, SP 6:56.
22. Silas Deane to Robert Morris, September 3, 1777, SP 1:5; Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane to George Washington, September 4, 1777, SP 1:6; Louis de L’Estarjette to Henry Laurens, September 5, 1777, SP 1:7.
CHAPTER 3: THIS ILLUSTRIOUS STRANGER
1. SP 1:15.
2. “The Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 63 (1939), 216; Morton and Spinelli, Beaumarchais, 139.
3. Morton and Spinelli, Beaumarchais, 7–8, 79–80, 137.
4. Philander Dean Chase, “Baron von Steuben in the War of Independence” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1972), 271–72.
5. Duponceau diary, SP 1:9; “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 199–200, 216–17.
6. “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 201–202; Steuben to Daniel Marianus Frank, July 4, 1779, SP 1:432.
7. Palmer, General von Steuben, 105–109.
8. Steuben to Daniel M
arianus Frank, July 4, 1779, SP 1:432; “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 199–200.
9. Palmer, General von Steuben, 117–19.
10. Samuel Adams to James Lovell, January 10, 1778, SP 1:27; to Horatio Gates, January 13 and 14, 1778, SP 1:30, 33.
11. “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 21.
12. Steuben to John Hancock, January 6, 1778, SP 1:22; Palmer, General von Steuben, 119.
13. William Gordon to George Washington, January 9, 1778, SP 1:26.
14. Francy to Beaumarchais, January 11, 1778, SP 1:28; Steuben to Beaumarchais, January 12, 1778, SP 1:29; Washington to Steuben, January 9, 1778, SP 1:24; Henry Laurens to Steuben, January 14, 1778, SP 1:31.
15. John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (Oxford, 2007), 282; Thomas Fleming, Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge (New York, 2005), 69–128.
16. “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 202.
17. Morton and Spinelli, Beaumarchais, 167; Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette Joins the American Army (Chicago, 1937), 17–20.
18. “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 202–203.
19. Duponceau diary, SP 1:9.
20. “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 212.
21. Duponceau diary, SP 1:9; Robert Morris to Henry Laurens, February 4, 1778, SP 1:39.
22. Steuben to the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, and George Washington, December 6, 1777, SP 1:15, 16, 17.
23. Steuben to Horatio Gates, December 27, 1777, SP 1:21.
24. Duponceau diary, SP 1:9; “Autobiography of Peter Stephen Du Ponceau,” 204–206.
25. L’Enfant accepted the offer; Romanet could not be persuaded to stay in America. Like most of the French officers then waiting at Boston, he was “very unhappy,” and had a “poor impression of the character of the inhabitants of this part of the world, and their conduct towards strangers.” He left Boston for France on March 12. Pierre Landais to Steuben, March 11, 1778, SP 1:64.
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 32