by Paul Lussier
She shifted to sitting Indian-style, just as she had the night of the Tea Party. “I say Gage better sit down with your General Georgie—have you noticed that he looks an awful lot like a pear, by the way?—and tell him what he knows . . . set George straight before it’s too late.”
She leaned forward, eyes wide. “By my calculation, every musket in American hands counted for one Brit gone or hurt bad. Those Redcoats, they went down. Major Pitcairn, remember him? I’m the guy who shot him, good for me! Bam! Bam! Bam!” She simulated firing her musket.
“And you know why they were beat? (And they were beat, makes no difference what nobody thinks.) They expected their pretty little soldiers to keep their pretty little lines while they were climbing a not-very-pretty, steep, prickly hill. Steep like this. . . .” With her thumb and forefingers she illustrated an angle of at least eighty degrees and chuckled. “Stupid fools.
“I’ll be the first to admit it,” she resumed. “Whatever good came of Breed’s Hill, it was due a good amount to dumb luck. But I ain’t afraid of luck. Luck don’t take nothing from me. Don’t make our winning any less likely the next time, and so on.”
“But you didn’t win at Bunker Hill,” I protested defiantly.
“Not Bunker Hill, no, we didn’t, quite right. But then again, there wa’nt a battle there.”
Now I was confused.
“That’s another thing. High time we start calling the battle after the damned fool hill it was fought on, don’t you think? Breed’s. It was fought on Breed’s Hill. That’s where people died.”
“So Howe took Breed’s Hill, then?”
“All Howe took from Breed’s was a bloody wound and the scared-as-shit feeling that he was a sparrow staring at a cat. And the reason everyone keeps calling it the Battle of Bunker Hill is ’cause that’s where the battle was supposed to be. It’s only one hill over, so nobody’s bothering with changing the name, especially since doing so, they think, would kinda be like rubbing salt in a wound. Bad enough, they say, the dumb Rebels ran. We can’t be advertising to the world that on top of it all, the stupid Yankees met the British on the wrong hill. What kind of assurance is there in that?”
I was fascinated.
“Sure, Breed’s Hill was a mess, as military things go. But that don’t matter. What matters is that Howe—precisely because he thought we were stupid to fortify Breed’s Hill—got cocky. But somehow, somewhere, we knew—this was the hill where we could beat the Redcoats.
“Because Breed’s Hill was not defensible according to any book he’d ever read, Howe thought he’d spare himself the usual tactic of coming at us from behind the hill (which woulda locked us in without an escape, ’cause there wasn’t nothing but a tiny neck he could have blocked at the bottom of the hill’s backside). Thinking we were too stupid to waste time sneaking up on, he just crossed the Charles in his big boats, disembarked his troops in broad daylight, and headed right for us, straight on up.”
She stuck her face in mine and continued in a whisper.
“Only to be completely undone. Up they came, big red and white lines, three deep, shooting at us, salvo after salvo, as we tucked ourselves behind rocks and prayed we had enough powder (we didn’t) to ward them off (we did). With fifteen paces between us, two bayonet-lengths apart, finally we unleashed all we had left: a barrage of musket power so loud that people across the Charles watching from Boston thought there was an earthquake going on.
“Oh, you shoulda seen their bearskin caps flying in the air, big ol’ hairy things in the sky, and all those soldiers who didn’t know what hit them falling, somersaulting down the thorny hill, wondering how the hell our useless fowling pieces and itty bit of powder could have done ’em in.” She couldn’t stop herself from talking about it. It was like she was on fire.
“Just one big blast of firepower that came out,” she continued, enthralled. “No command, no order, no design, still every shot perfectly timed. Seventy guns up against their two thousand, and they were the ones with prickers in their behinds. And according to Howe, according to Washington, according to all their military rulebooks, it never should have happened.”
She stood up, high up on her tiptoes, brandishing her chained hands like a torch, like Washington with his sword.
“And that’s how a few stupid farmers on the wrong hill put the fear of God into fifty thousand king’s soldiers. Bring ’em on!”
I noticed she had tears in her eyes. Oh, how I wanted to hold her, but didn’t dare.
“So . . . why’d you run then? If everything was looking so fine?” I asked, chastened but bewildered.
“We ran out of powder. So we disappeared like raccoons in the light of day, leaving Howe the hill, but knowing that jackass would never in a million years underestimate the Rebels again.”
She plopped herself back down into the dirt.
“And that’s my point. Men won’t be winning this Revolution with guns and smarts and big ol’ plans, John. They’ll be doing it like we did with the hoax, with ‘openings’ coming at them, openings they’ll see only if they’re open themselves. Just like your turtle coming to you up from the swamp—you gotta be ready.”
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that I wasn’t moved; I was near to tears, in fact. Every fiber of my being wanted to think she was right. It’s just that, right or wrong, I didn’t think she, in her state of mind, could ever win.
Sadly, I thought for certain she was a lost cause. That she would go the way of Apollo and be smashed to bits. And that I, unable to survive that since I’d be smashed to bits too, had better run now.
“Your way isn’t the way, Deborah. England will cut you up into little pieces and serve you for dinner. This is serious business now.”
“My point exactly.”
“What you want wouldn’t have been made right by killing Washington.”
She smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She clutched at the soil. Frustrated as all get-out, she clumped dirt in her palm and squeezed hard until traces of earth began to leach between the fingers of her hand.
“What happened to you down there in Philadelphia, Lieutenant?”
I had nothing to say.
“I’ll go,” she finally agreed. “Just tell me when and what ship.”
“I think that’s wise. And as I said, I’ll work tirelessly—”
She stopped me, just as she did that first night on the ferry, by covering my mouth with her salty hand, then she spoke. “I was just hoping . . . you’d have come around.”
It would be years before I’d realize that all along Deborah had been the one working tirelessly to rescue me deep in the safe house that day. Years before I’d realize that already she and Washington were a team, not adversaries, and that I was the one in the front lines making History, but not Revolution.
I was simply too scared then.
CHAPTER 26
Valley Forge
There I was, sitting in Washington’s fieldstone headquarters, preparing for a council of war demanded by Congress to help explain the three-year-long string of pathetic failures that had landed us in this hellhole called Valley Forge. Since Washington’d taken command, the war, as Deborah had prophesied, had not gone well. And Congress was spittin’ mad about it.
If hell were cold and snowy, its name would be Valley Forge. Just outside the window in Washington’s headquarters (where I resided with General and Mrs. Washington, Alexander Hamilton, French import Lafayette, painter Trumbull, and several other aides—yes, we were a very cozy lot) was a picket, a lowly enlist, shoeless but for a piss-drenched hat he was standing on as protection against the snow.
He’d be dead by nightfall.
As Washington and the rest spoke, the subject was how to handle the soon-to-arrive congressional committee who most assuredly would be giving us a hard time. I, having heard this conversation too many times, chose instead to look outside upon the cart carrying those who had frozen to death in the night to the mounting carcass pile
just outside the hospital: more food for the wolves.
I watched a soldier beating himself with a stick for warmth, drawing ninety-eight-degree blood to heat his flesh. I spotted another boiling a rock for the broth. History would have it that this action was merely an example of irrepressible Valley Forge gallows humor. It wasn’t funny. The poor, starving sod was entirely serious.
And here I was installed in Washington’s headquarters: a warm, reasonably well fed wretch whose most pressing assignments this day would be an unsuccessful quest on Mrs. Washington’s behalf for quality table linens and, later tonight, the whipping of a soldier whose only crime had been that he’d been caught in the countryside foraging for food.
And I thought I was doing my duty for my country.
My time with Deborah, who had been shipped with Alice to the West Indies on a slave ship, I considered a dark (but somehow never forgotten) mistake of my past. And believe it or not, I’d resumed uneasy relations with my father, who was president of Congress these days.
I should have known then, with Father’s election, that something was amiss with this war effort. For one thing was certain: Henry Lawrence, who most assuredly had never suffered a change of heart with regard to his dislike for The Cause, was no friend of freedom. Now, on the advent of the congressional visit, I prayed for snow.
I understood, of course, that snowfall might result in the loss of yet more soldiers. I wasn’t completely insensible to that (yet). Still, given a choice between having the decaying remains of soldiers, horses, and dogs visible to the visiting congressmen or sacrificing another soldier, I would, regrettably, have chosen the latter. That’s how desperate we were to keep Congress on our side. Besides, if it didn’t snow, the quartermaster general was threatening to have one of us burn the carnage, and nobody wanted that noisome job.
Particularly troublesome were the dead horses. Horses would die of starvation standing up; when their bones were too dry to hold their weight, they would collapse with an unnerving thud onto the ice. They were a problem about which no one knew quite what to do. The ground was too hard and the men too weak to dig a hole and bury them. And there was no way in this hell, no matter how hard it snowed, for there to be sufficient accumulation of it to cover them up before Papa and the rest arrived. Heaps and heaps of snow were required for that.
For it was decided that at all costs Congress must not be allowed to see just how destitute, hard-up, and dispirited we were. Otherwise they just might do as threatened and blow out the candle on this ridiculous, failing campaign for independence.
Congressional support had been scant even in the best of times, which were generally acknowledged to be confined to the evacuation of Boston by the British after the Siege of Boston and the encouraging Christmas engagement at Trenton. But now, with the abysmal and embarrassing losses of New York in ’76 and Philadelphia in ’77; Brandywine (again, we lost hundreds); Germantown (we ended up, in the fog, shooting at each other instead of the British); not to mention the wholesale massacre at Paoli (three hundred men were bayoneted to death by the Brits), their support was particularly unenthusiastic.
We knew full well, in fact, that if we were not able in today’s meeting to persuade Congress to continue with their support, all would be lost and we’d be surrendering to King George within days.
Unfortunately, Trenton didn’t count anymore because it happened over a year ago and wasn’t much of a battle to begin with. A nice morale boost, perhaps, and certainly invigorating—navigating ice floes and rousing drunk Germans and all—but strategically insignificant, Congress well knew. And to call Princeton a victory was a stretch, as it was an altogether pointless escapade from start to finish.
So we were not about to take any chances with Congress, not now. If we were to be brought down, it must be by the enemy, not our own governing body. Anything else was simply unthinkable. Better that the body of the soldier who was thinking of eating that rock for dinner be covered in snow.
The problem was that the only way to please Congress, at this point, was to indulge them in this dangerous fantasy that we had what it took to take Philadelphia back. For well over six months now they’d been railing against Washington for having lost that city, for his October ’77 retreat to Whitemarsh after Germantown, then, in December, planting himself in Valley Forge for the winter and not budging.
“What about Philadelphia?” Congress screamed. Didn’t Washington have any idea the kind of trouble the colonies were in? France, upon whom we had been depending for assistance provided that we first declare independence from Britain (which we did primarily to please her), still was dragging her feet. Holland and Spain didn’t care and never did.
And meanwhile every black man, every Indian, and every woman was storming the delegates’ doors and demanding that the Declaration of Independence be taken at its word and its doctrines applied to them! The very idea: “All men are created equal.” That cursed vegetarian Jefferson, we should have known better than to turn to him. How presumptuous! How anarchic! How delusional! How silly!
Congress wanted to know why Washington couldn’t understand that a full-out victory, such as retrieving Philadelphia, was our only hope of pulling ourselves back together again, uniting the country behind a single effort and attracting international support. Without that, in all honesty, there was simply no point in continuing on with this exercise in futility, this so-called War for Independence. Without Philadelphia, it was all a sham.
But everyone knew that the real bug up Congress’ collective ass was being denied Philadelphia’s entertainments and the relative comfort of Independence Hall. York, in southeastern Pennsylvania, to which Congress had been displaced, was, after all, dark, dank, drab, and reportedly low on quality prostitutes. Why was Howe, the enemy, the one having all the fun? Why was he the one dancing quadrilles, living in a fine stone house in Philadelphia’s most desirable neighborhood? Why was he the one fucking a woman whose husband considered it a royal privilege to hand her over to the commander of the British army in America? Tell us, General Washington, where is the justice, the freedom, the sovereignty of America in all that?
Needless to say, it came as no surprise when, within minutes of their arrival, Congressman and Pennsylvania Governor Joseph Reed (or was it Gouverneur Morris? Or was it my father?) brought up the subject of winning back Philadelphia.
“So one more time,” he asked, wishing to settle this matter once and for all, “exactly why is it that Your Excellency has given up on Philadelphia altogether?” He was hoping that by referring to Washington as royally as possible he might be flattered into giving a different answer than he’d granted in the past.
Washington replied, with practiced politesse, “Because we are particularly without guns, powder, cannon, food, shoes, boots, horses, medical supplies, and even potable water—the bluffs above the Schuylkill River are covered in ice, by the way, making access to drinking water impossible short of melting snow. And to top it all, soldiers are deserting to the tune of six or so a day. So saving Philadelphia would be a challenging, if not impossible, task at present, sir.”
An understatement if ever there was one.
“Congress is a body made of men, sir, not all-forgiving gods,” was a congressman’s retort. “With all due respect, the feeling among those of us who meet—not many of us, you’ll understand, because raising a quorum has proved utterly impossible due to lack of interest in the war, which, because of your dull performance . . .”
At which point the speaker abandoned every pretense of interest and simply sighed with the utter tediousness of it all.
Nathaniel Folsom now jumped in and resorted to pleading. “Do you have any idea how ugly York, Pennsylvania, is, General? Truly it’s a horrid place. Please, please, please, get us out of there.” And then bribery: “Do that and I promise you’ll have all the food, clothing, and gear money can buy.”
At which point General Wayne, a pal of Washington’s in attendance, braved an affront. “So in the meantime,
sirs, let’s never mind about the quorum. If Congress cannot legislate because they cannot convene, whether that is due to lack of interest in the war or not, I take as none of my affair. About that nothing can be done just now. But what about the uniforms for the soldiers I ordered from the quartermaster’s office months ago with nine thousand dollars of my own money? What about that? Where the devil are they?”
Morris sighed. This was his attack to parry, as he was the money man. “No, the order has not been lost or stolen, just stalled. An order placed with private funds poses serious issues which Congress needs to consider before proceeding. An armed, standing army financed by government is one thing, is in itself problematic, but the specter of an army financed with personal monies is a precedent much too dangerous and fraught to ignore without thorough and open debate.” And since without a quorum there could be no debate and without a Washington victory no quorum . . . well, this line of logic led Morris to the dirtiest tactic of all.
Morris knew full well that the mere mention of the name Horatio Gates might be enough to cause Washington a rash, but he didn’t stop there, he reminded Washington—as if the General needed reminding—that there had been several in Congress wishing to remove the commander-in-chief and replace him with General Gates, leader of the northern army.
“Remember the little matter of the Conway Cabal?” Reed grinned like a cat. (Uppity Colonel Patrick Conway had engendered a plot to replace Washington with Gates.) “Talk of change is again in the air,” Fulsom said.
My, my—this was getting nasty.
The distinguished gentleman went on. “None of the other generals in the army seem to have this problem of yours. This habit of getting nothing done. Gates has had to endure all manner of adversity. First, Benedict Arnold: brilliant, but nearly impossible to command. And then there were all those blackflies in the backwoods of the Hudson River Valley, where Gates was stuck beating back the British who wanted to isolate New England from the remaining Mid-Atlantic states. These challenges couldn’t have been easy, yet neither Arnold nor the flies seem to have stopped Gates from managing the British defeat at Saratoga, New York, in October this year—the single greatest humiliation of the British since the war began. So really, General Washington, what gives?”