* * *
It has been years since New York City, nestled on the southern tip of Manhattan island, has seen any military action, but the island city has suffered terribly from overcrowding and deprivation. A fire in 1776, set by fleeing Americans bent on denying New York to the British, destroyed a fourth of the city, which has never been rebuilt. Two fires in later years burned additional sections. Soldiers live largely in tent camps and hut villages outside of the city, but the army nonetheless requires large amounts of storage space for food, fuel, hay, clothing, equipment, and munitions. All of the army’s administrative activities are centered in the city, requiring the presence of staff officers, clerks, and countless others. All of these people need housing, as do the thousands of refugees who have flocked to the city. Hundreds of craftsmen and laborers maintain the navy’s ships and the army’s wagons, arms, and equipment.
Even though many inhabitants fled the British occupation, there is a constant struggle to find quarters for everyone. The crowded conditions resulted in problems with sanitation and crime. Every space in every building is put to use, some rented, some appropriated by the army, some taken by opportunists. American army prisoners of war are crammed into the Sugar House, a large warehouse in the middle of town; naval prisoners suffer on old ships anchored in the harbor. Hulks of abandoned merchant vessels litter the shoreline. Bored soldiers, sailors, and refugees find alcohol cheap and plentiful, and it fuels abuses that military policing can never fully restrain.
But as difficult as life in New York might be, for the British the city is vital. Its harbor and location make New York the hub of all British commerce. For this reason, King George maintains a strong military presence in Manhattan. Even if America is granted independence, the king would very much like to continue occupying New York—forever.
* * *
On August 10, with George Washington still demanding William Franklin’s arrest, a group of Loyalists gathers and votes that it would be best for their cause if Franklin sailed to England and presented their petition for protection personally to the king.
A few days later, William Franklin departs for London, never again to return to America.
Benjamin Franklin’s son is finally safe from George Washington’s hanging noose, but for those who remain in New Your City, there is little safety and little hope.
33
MONTICELLO, VIRGINIA
SEPTEMBER 6, 1782
DAY
Thomas Jefferson is grief-stricken.
The Virginian has hovered at his wife’s bedside for four months. Since the birth of a daughter in June, Martha has failed to regain her health. Jefferson has personally administered his wife’s medicines and nursed her, aided by his sister and sister-in-law. It has been this way all through the heat of the summer. When Martha sleeps, Jefferson spends his time writing in a small room just off her bedroom, making sure to be near if she calls out in need.
Jefferson has long known that his wife will die young. Martha knows it, too, and has extracted a promise from him that he never remarry. She “could not die happy if she thought her … children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them.”
Jefferson agreed.
Now, at the instruction of his sister (also named Martha), slaves help a devastated Thomas Jefferson leave his wife’s bedchamber. His sister believes his grief will be so great as to kill him, should he witness the death of his wife.
In her final days, Martha struggled to copy a quotation on death from her favorite novel, Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.1 As Thomas Jefferson begins the process of burning all her letters to protect forever the privacy of their love from the world, he wraps this last piece of her handwriting in a lock of her hair and hides it in his writing desk, so that Martha will always be with him.
Martha Skelton Jefferson, thirty-four years old, passes away from complications of childbirth. She leaves behind three daughters and a husband who will never break his deathbed vow.
* * *
It is weeks before Thomas Jefferson has the will to rise from bed to face the world. As the autumn of 1782 descends over Monticello, he begins wandering the estate aimlessly, sometimes attended to by his nine-year-old daughter, Martha. In time, she will become his steadfast companion and confidante, privy to his innermost thoughts. One day, when her father becomes president of the United States, young Martha will be formally known as the First Lady.
But now, as the leaves fall at Monticello, settling onto the graves of her mother and three siblings, buried in the nearby family cemetery, Martha is only a young girl bearing witness to the depths of her father’s pain.
* * *
Late in 1782, an event occurs that will change the path of Thomas Jefferson’s life. Congress requests that he sail to Paris to help Benjamin Franklin negotiate the peace with Great Britain.
In the past, Jefferson would have denied Congress, for his devotion to his wife and children always came first. But the time has come for him to reinsert himself into public life and his once-prominent position at the forefront of independence.
Thomas Jefferson accepts.
34
PARIS, FRANCE
JANUARY 21, 1783
DAY
Thomas Jefferson never reaches Paris. Foul winter weather prevents the Virginian from making the twenty-five-day sail across the Atlantic. Nonetheless, he has reengaged with public life.
Therefore, John Jay, U.S. ambassador to Spain, and John Adams, ambassador to Holland, have traveled to the French capital to assist in negotiating the end of the war. But it is the tireless Benjamin Franklin, now in his eighth year as America’s diplomat in Paris, who leads the way through the labyrinthine peace talks.
Two years ago, Franklin was sharply critical of the prickly Adams’s confrontational negotiating style. But their time together has been restorative for the two signers of the Declaration of Independence. The past few months have seen a return of their friendship.1
It has taken almost a year for the specifics of the treaty to be worked out, but now Franklin pens a historical letter to Congress:
“The preliminaries of peace between France, Spain, and England were yesterday signed, and a cessation of arms agreed to by the ministers of those powers, and by us in behalf of the United States. I congratulate you and our country on the happy prospects afforded us by the finishing so speedily this glorious revolution.”2
* * *
It is Valentine’s Day in London as King George finally admits defeat.
Despite a series of surprising British naval victories against the French in the West Indies that could prolong the war, the king bows to public pressure and issues a proclamation calling for an end to the fighting.
“We do hereby strictly charge and command all our officers, both at sea and land, and all other our subjects whatsoever, to forebear all acts of hostility, either by sea or land, against … the United States of America.”
* * *
Two months later, the Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia to discuss the news from Europe concerning peace.
A resolution is put forth, requesting whether “it be our will and pleasure that the cessation of hostilities between the United States of America and his Britannic Majesty should be conformable.” The measure goes on to state, “We hereby strictly charge and command all our officers, both by sea and land, and other subjects of these United States, to forebear all acts of hostility, either by sea or land, against his Britannic Majesty or his subjects.”
The motion passes by a unanimous vote.
* * *
April 19, 1783, will mark eight long years to the day since the Revolutionary War began in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.
George Washington, aged by war
George Washington is now fifty-one. The war has aged him. He is well over two hundred pounds, far from the lean, athletic horseman he was in the years prior to taking command. He has grown weary of the pressures of command and longs t
o return to Mount Vernon, where Martha has been ill with ongoing abdominal problems. There is also the matter of recapturing his many slaves, who either ran off during the war or took refuge with the British.
Yet, those matters, while pressing, do not preoccupy the general’s mind today. Instead, he writes a letter from his headquarters in Newburgh, New York, where he has spent the last year. Washington has written thousands of letters over the course of the war, but none as wondrous as the missive he now composes. Directed by Congress to formally declare the end of fighting to his men, His Excellency allows his innermost emotions to flow onto the page.
“The Commander in Chief orders the cessation of hostilities, between the United States of America and the King of Great Britain,” he begins. “The Commander in Chief, far from endeavoring to stifle the feeling of joy in his own bosom, offers his [most] cordial congratulations, on the occasion, to all the [officers] of every denomination, to all the troops of the United States in general, and in particular, to those gallant, and persevering men, who had resolved to defend the invaded rights of their country, so long as the war should continue…”
He then orders that the letter be read aloud on the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, to every regiment and brigade in the Continental Army.
He also orders a reward: “An extra ration of liquor, [is] to be issued to every man, tomorrow, to drink [to] perpetual peace, independence, and happiness—to the United States of America.”
* * *
The successful treaty that Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay cobbled together now means that America officially extends as far west as the Mississippi River and that the fishermen of New England have unlimited access to the thriving Canadian fishing waters. More important, the Treaty of Paris can best be summed up in the opening sentence, a string of once-heretical words first suggested by the pen of Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
“His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States,” Article 1 begins, “to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”
With that sentence, the American War of Independence is over.
35
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
NOVEMBER 25, 1783
NOON
Almost three months after the Treaty of Paris is signed, General Washington finally retakes New York.
That event will go down in history as “Evacuation Day.” The sun is shining brightly, although a sharp northwest wind makes Washington pull his cloak tightly about his shoulders. The general is astride his stallion Blueskin, leading a column of eight hundred American soldiers from Harlem to the Bowery. This army is no longer a band of rebels, but the true fighting force of the United States of America. Each man wears a black-and-white ribbon affixed to his military cocked hat in commemoration of the alliance with France.1
For Washington, this is to be a day of celebration, soon to be remembered for drinking at Fraunces Tavern, a night of bonfires and fireworks, and the adoring applause from rebel refugees returning home after years in exile—some now bereft to find their former dwelling burned to the ground or plundered of every stick of furniture. The crowds line the streets or look down from balconies and windows, all clamoring for a glimpse of this famous hero—the famous George Washington—whom they have only read about in the newspaper.
LEGEND HERE
To the British and their followers, this is a time of shame and misery. After several delays, the army and their Loyalist civilian followers are finally fleeing the city. Ships will carry the soldiers home to England in defeat.
As for the Loyalists, they face uncertainty. The wealthy will be allowed to enter England, but the remainder will be taken by ship to either Nova Scotia or the West Indies, to start a new life. Bitter and no longer welcome in the new United States, Loyalist families have flooded into New York City with their belongings, desperately hoping to find a place on board the evacuation vessels.
Many black Loyalists who fled a life of slavery to fight for the British have also chosen to sail away rather than return to servitude. Some travel to Canada, and others return to their ancestral homeland in Africa. In all, twenty-five thousand soldiers and thirty-five thousand Loyalist civilians are fleeing from New York.2
Washington’s arrival at the Bowery has been timed to coincide with the precise moment the last British ship leaves the dock, leaving no time for looters to destroy what remains of Manhattan.
The route of Washington’s triumphal entry has been altered to avoid the charred ruins from the Great Fire of 1776, but there is plenty to shock him. The streets are covered in filth and trash. Many businesses are shuttered; homes are vacant and devoid of furniture, windows, doors, and other fixtures. Fences and church pews have been burned as firewood. Abandoned ships litter the waterfront. Everywhere there is damage from years of overcrowding.
But none of that matters now. The most vital port and city in America is finally in patriot hands.
* * *
As a last defiant taunt, the British have left the Union Jack hanging over Fort George, at the southern tip of Manhattan. The ensign is nailed to the top of the flagpole, which has been heavily greased. New Yorkers rush to rip it down and hoist the Stars and Stripes, but there is not a man strong enough or a ladder tall enough to accomplish this. Muskets are fired at the flag, which defies all attempts at destruction. Finally, a young sailor wearing a pea coat and a canvas hat who has served since the beginning of the war, surviving time on a British prison ship and in the jails of New York City, runs to a nearby hardware store. There, twenty-six-year-old Jack Van Arsdale buys the equipment that will allow him to improvise the same sort of cleats he might have used for climbing a ship’s mainmast.
As George Washington looks on, Van Arsdale ascends the pole and rips down the British flag.
In its place, as cannon boom a thirteen-round salute, one for each colony, the flag of the United States of America is raised over New York City.
* * *
With New York finally in American hands two years after Yorktown, there remains just one more obligation for George Washington before he can return home to Mount Vernon and his wife.
The general’s war is over. It is unlikely that any other senior officer on either side has spent as many days in uniform. It has been a lonely life, with Washington spending nights in more than two hundred different homes and taverns over the course of the fighting. Having recently learned that his plantation is failing due to neglect, he is eager to return to Virginia.
The general is famous throughout America, lauded as a hero wherever he goes. But His Excellency does not crave power; nor does he long for more acclaim. Instead, he seeks to return to the quiet life of a gentleman farmer.
But first, George Washington must fulfill this last duty.
* * *
On December 4, Washington says an emotional good-bye to three hundred of his officers. He has delayed his departure from New York because the British remained on Staten Island one week longer than expected, and he refused to leave until they were gone. However, Washington has promised Martha that he will be home by Christmas, so he must be away.
George Washington’s going-away party is held at Fraunces Tavern, where he has lodged this past week. “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you and now most devoutly wish that your later days be as prosperous in your future lives as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.… I cannot come to each of you but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.”
One by one, the officers come forward to shake the general’s hand. It is a scene of unfiltered emotion, and many of these tough men actually break down and cry.
The next morning, Washington begins the long ride home. His fame makes it impossible for him to travel quickly, for news of his journey precedes him. The resi
dents of every town and village along the route cheer him, an outpouring of affection decidedly distant from the horrific apathy of the war years, when so many Americans turned their backs on Washington and his men.
The journey takes Washington through Philadelphia, where he is lionized and feted at dinners and balls. The public outpouring of warmth is tinged with a second emotion—a national longing that George Washington lead the country. There is now a power vacuum. The Congress was never intended to be the sole legislative authority it has now become. As with Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, Charlemagne, and so many other military leaders down through history, it seems only natural that General Washington take command of America.
But Washington has a better plan.
On December 23, he stands in a small room in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. The Congress has temporarily relocated to this port city, making it America’s de facto capital.3 Members of the Congress now sit before Washington. Above and behind the general, a gallery of spectators looks on. To his right, against the wall, sits Thomas Jefferson, newly returned to Congress.
Earlier in the day, Washington dictated his last document as commander in chief. The letter was to Baron von Steuben, thanking him for his “zeal” and “meritorious service.”
George Washington believes in the unique promise of America and that military rule is at odds with the virtues of democracy. Now, as evidence of that deeply held tenet, the man who once longed for the Congress to grant him a commission to lead the armies of the United States against the sovereign power of Great Britain stands before Congress to resign that commission.
Killing England Page 27