Last Refuge of Scoundrels

by Paul Lussier

  “It’s cold up there in Saratoga, too, by the way,” John Harvie piped up. “October in the north is much like February in Pennsylvania, yet somehow, Gates pulled it off. As we speak, the defeated General Burgoyne and his men are being marched through the countryside, vanquished prisoners in chains. And what do you offer by way of comparison, General Washington—dead horses and men stewing rocks?”

  In case you hadn’t realized it already, the snow I prayed for hadn’t come.

  At long last the men came around to the real reason for their visit: “We feel it is incumbent upon us to acquaint you with Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand, Baron von Steuben, who will be arriving shortly.”

  Congress was sending an inspector general all their own because they had lost faith in Washington. “Just to discipline, drill, and organize the troops in the European style. To teach them how it’s done.”

  “I see,” Washington muttered, shifting in his seat, visibly reining in his famous temper.

  “Congress would be most grateful if you’d receive him well.”

  Nothing more was said. At least Washington would keep his job, and all assurances were given that Steuben would be working under, not equal to or above, Washington. At least we weren’t being altogether sacked.

  In any event, Steuben ended up being quite a charming and helpful fellow. The only real difficulty he ever presented to us was learning his full name. One of the congressmen suggested turning Steuben’s name into a tune for easy memorization. Truly I think one of the most ridiculous memories of the war was the scene, that night, of ten men of the highest military and legislative echelons in America trying to fit the name Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand, Baron von Steuben, to the melody of “Come jolly Sons of Liberty, come all with hearts united . . .”

  Soon thereafter, the meeting ended and the deputation from Congress headed back to York.

  In their wake, in celebration, plans were laid for a party for the General’s forty-sixth birthday, for which it was decided a military band would be paid fifteen shillings. The menu was chosen: veal, potatoes, and cabbage. And since there would not be quite enough silverware or pewter dishes to go around, my job was to see to it that one of the blacks, perhaps Washington’s loyal slave Lee, would stick to the kitchen and wash over and over again the few pieces that we had.

  We drank while Washington crushed hickory nuts in his fist. Clearly he was nervous, distracted—more so than I’d ever seen him since the inception of the war.

  “Everything all right, General?” I asked.

  “Quite, quite,” he replied, seemingly unnerved.

  But of course, Washington was a wreck. And not because he’d just had yet another run-in with Congress.

  I was about to learn that such encounters were of little or no concern to Washington. What he worried about was winning the war, and toward that end, what was preoccupying him was not Congress or even Steuben, with his new drill techniques promising greater efficiency, discipline, and facility for battle.

  What Washington was obsessing on was me. He hoped that in whipping tonight’s soldier (who had stolen and killed a cow) I would finally, at long last, be of real help to him in his campaign to win this war.

  “Patriotism . . . whosoever builds upon it as a sufficient basis for conducting this bloody war will find themselves deceived in the end. We must take the passions of men as Nature has given them. . . . I do not mean to exclude altogether the Idea of Patriotism. I know it exists. . . . But I venture to assert that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle.”

  Remember, reader, that George Washington said that around this time, and then join me, if you will, in the whipping shed at Valley Forge.

  CHAPTER 27

  Finding The Cause

  February 7, 1778, was the date I moved from officer back to soldier, from lieutenant colonel back to John. The day I moved from chief aide with responsibility for tabulating the Historical details of war—the count of missing bodies and the wounded, powder supply and ordnance, things like that—to living the real story of the Revolution. And the irony was that George Washington himself was the one bringing me back where I belonged—with a little help from his friends.

  I remember having been astonished, over the years, at the General’s extraordinarily high threshold for Congress’ infinite idiocy. Even during that night’s “council of war,” for example, his relative calm found me befuddled and, in all honesty, dismayed. How was it possible for him to sit there amid such deliberate insults, maintaining for the duration that soft, ridiculous smile portraitists liked so much?

  Wait a minute. That smile . . .

  Maybe the failing commander with the pockmarked face, the gawky body, and the soft heart, the one who’d suffered such illness all his life, wasn’t so passive after all.

  Maybe it was simply that he knew what Congress would and could never know: that like it or not, this was a war for Revolution, and everything they wanted from Washington—a bankrupt show of military excellence and prowess to grace the accounts of History—was wrong. And maybe he knew he could never breathe a word of any of this, that should Congress discover it, they’d sign a peace treaty tomorrow and shut us all down. Maybe he had faith, and thus the stamina and confidence, to take criticism in stride. To be more or a less a yes-man (except for his constant whining to Congress for more food and guns—sound familiar?) so as to keep Congress off his back and to buy himself time to deliver to the people what they dearly sought: freedom.

  But maybe Congress, given that the war had been going so badly for so long, finally was at its wits’ end. The arrival of Steuben aside, maybe the game was pretty near up indeed, and it was time for George Washington to step up his timetable, take bigger risks, and go full-tilt ahead for Revolution—and a more profound kind of civil war.

  Maybe George Washington wasn’t at all who we thought he was. Maybe he knew much more than he’d ever let on. After all, he said himself that he’d decided well in advance of that Second Continental Congress session to bring that ratty old military outfit along.

  History likes to say Valley Forge was the turning point in the war. Actually this is true, in that it was only after Valley Forge that we won any battles to speak of at all. Like I said, prior to the winter of ’77–’78 we could boast “victories” at Trenton and Princeton, but neither were battles, really. More like sneak attacks.

  And if truth be told, even during the post–Valley Forge years the victories were very few and far between (Cowpens, King’s Mountain, Guilford Courthouse).

  In any event, for the war’s more successful turn after 1778, Steuben, the general with the long name, is most often given the credit. The argument being that he turned a loosely organized, undisciplined, ragtag group of men into a professional army once and for all. Ah, there we are, blaming the soldiers again, not Congress or our Founding Fathers for their lassitude, apathy, and unwilling frame of mind.

  But the discipline Steuben inculcated in his men is, as usual, less than half the story. The fact is Steuben got his men to love him. He supervised his own drills, cursed a blue streak in several languages, and brought his huge, gentle Italian greyhound, Azor, with him wherever he went. Additionally, he threw dinner parties for his men for which the dress code—“sans culottes, s’il vous plait”—gave the half-naked Valley Forge soldier a hearty, good-natured laugh at his ragged plight. Additional traits redounding in his favor were his love of beer and loathing of church and the lies about his rank, which he claimed to have earned in service to his Prussian king, when it was quite clear that Franklin, who brokered Steuben’s consultancy, was solely responsible for his sudden promotion from captain to general. Be all that as it may . . . yes, it is true that Steuben’s involvement in the war was critical, not to mention colorful.

  Frankly, Valley Forge was a turning point for another reason: because it was during this time that George Washington stepped up his commitment to the Revolution, figuring this as the best way to win.


  I like to think that the turning point was Washington commandeering the likes of me for his top-secret, brilliant little underground Revolutionary War.

  For sending me to the woodshed that night and insisting that I whip this derelict soldier myself, I will forever be in his debt, for it taught me what he perceived in his vision and wagered his career upon: the possibility that I still had a heart which could be broken (open). Thank God for that, otherwise there’d have been no hope. I’d just have continued on as an officer: bloodless, feckless, and cruelly clueless as to the real story of the Revolutionary War. Which was Deborah’s story, redux.

  Fifty lashes was the punishment, to be suffered in a pitch-dark room, the soldier attached to a whipping post strategically placed by the fire so that the whipper could get a good look at the target and only the target: the soldier’s back, an abstract, headless, legless, armless rectangle of thin, bony flesh. All that the whipper could stand to see.

  I detested the thought of whipping soldiers, as Washington well knew. He had always, until now, excused me from the terrible duty. Why now was he forcing me to undertake this hideous task and stare into the black hole that was my life?

  As I stood in that shed, staring at the faceless soldier’s naked back, I blenched at my task and trembled at what I’d become.

  John Lawrence, you wretch, what are you doing whipping a starving soldier for stealing food from a local peasant? Who the hell cares that as far as the military is concerned, starvation is a crime?

  I reached for the whip, felt the leather in my hand. . . .

  Who was John Lawrence fighting in this war? Who exactly was the enemy? More to the point, what was I fighting for?

  I wrapped the snakelike instrument around and around my fist. . . .

  Was I fighting for or against the “gentleman Patriot” plantation farmer who, in refusing to supply the Continentals with hay so as to fetch a better price from Howe, was denying the naked American soldiers the simple cover of a thatched roof?

  I unfurled the whip to its fullest length. . . .

  Was I fighting for or against the “gentleman Patriot” wagon masters who, after demanding to be paid in advance for the delivery of provisions to camp, would dump barrels of goods over a cliff at the first sharp or rutted turn?

  I raised my arm and cracked the whip to test its weight. . . .

  For or against those fish merchants who, during the arduous journey to Valley Forge, would lighten their load by emptying their cod casks of brine, causing the fish to arrive rancid and poisonous?

  I recoiled at the gunshot sound the whip made, while my victim-to-be held steady. . . .

  And what of the merchants who would sell barrels of rum cut with water? Deliver cattle so emaciated they were translucent, so thin that one could watch the worms wriggling their way through the intestines and brain?

  I fought the rising bile in the back of my throat, breathed deeply to keep the vomit down. . . .

  And why the devil is this godforsaken place called Valley Forge when it’s neither a valley nor a forge?

  Nothing made sense anymore.

  What on earth were we doing?

  One more second. One more torturous thought.

  What good would ever come of a Revolution that, to save on horses, treated their men like beasts and refused the hungry soldiers even the means to convey logs to build their rude, drafty huts, ordering them instead to harness their own skeletal bodies to the felled trees, some trunks as long as eighteen feet and fifteen inches wide, to drag them to the building site?

  I raised the whip and let fly, my arm angry as a lightning bolt. And there was the blood, dripping from the deep slash across the pale back.

  And then, something else: a vision of Apollo as the soldier twisted in his bonds to face me, his eyes red, squinting with fire. And from his mouth—lips and tongue chewed raw from holding back his scream—came five quiet words:

  “Mother wants to see you.”

  Alice looked at me as from another place, another time. She collapsed, but because her hands were bound to the post, she couldn’t fall to the floor. She dangled.

  “Mother wants to see you,” she said once more, barely audible. And then she fainted.

  My body, in shock, became teeth-chatteringly cold. So cold I was absolutely convinced my arm would stay frozen in midair for a lifetime to come. I felt stiff, hard, fragile, lonely. An image of my own body splintering to bits flashed through my mind, nobody in sight to pick the pieces up, let alone to join them into a necklace to be worn close to the chest like Apollo’s shell.

  Heaving myself to sensibility, I untied the girl and brought her immediately to the hospital. At some point after Dr. Thacher left surgery to give me a report on her condition (“battered, exhausted, otherwise fine”), she somehow fled.

  It was as though the earth had suddenly sprung a hole into which I’d been dropped. Everything was changing, and fast.

  The soldiers’ ritual chant—“No bread, no meat, no soldier”—which nightly would spread through the camp like fire, wasn’t the same. Tonight I was hearing “First Congress, then the Brits, then the world.” Had it changed? Or had I?

  With extra interest compounded on the agony delayed, it all came back:

  . . . The terrible fear and jealousy and fragility that had informed my misguided campaign for food and guns . . .

  . . . My hatred of Deborah’s lover, Job (which I’d never acknowledged, not even to her, for fear of being vulnerable, exposed) . . .

  . . . My hatred of my father (which I’d forgotten, in the interest of pretending to be loved) . . .

  . . . My love for Deborah . . .

  Mother wants to see you.

  Had she traveled by slave ship to the West Indies now to return? Had she escaped?

  Had she never gone?

  Of course she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. Oh, how could I have missed it? How could I not have seen that the Revolution was being fought all this time right under my nose? That Deborah had not only been alive and well all along, but . . . oh, my . . . could it be?

  Yes, as sure as I’d remembered only one of the soldiers’ chants (“No bread, no meat, no soldier”) but not another (“First Congress, then the Brits, then the world”), I’d convinced myself that the Revolution never could happen and therefore, like John, my own former self, wasn’t worth remembering at all.

  All along I was the one who’d been shipped in chains to a faraway land, not Deborah.

  “Mother wants to see you.”

  To the Revolution, Johnny . . . come home.

  Suddenly, events of record that I’d lived through took, in my mind, an entirely different character.

  The Evacuation of Boston: March 13, 1776 . . .

  The Historical Account: Washington was hailed a hero and awarded an honorary degree from Harvard for sending Howe packing from Boston. Specifically he was praised for having induced his men to climb Dorchester Heights (looming above Boston) under cover of night with six hundred pounds of cannon and to entrench themselves there with guns and artillery pointed down to the city, directly at Howe. Guns that dared Howe to come up or to make good on his threat to burn the city. Guns that warned him to get the hell out of town.

  The Revolutionary Record: Washington, taking a page—and specific suggestions—from the lowly Yankee book of tricks, fooled Howe into evacuation. The cannon were actually empty—we had no powder. And we knew that the British knew the cannon were powderless. That’s why, in addition to the cannon, and on their own cognizance, our soldiers lugged thousands of pounds of garbage up the hill with them: vases, milk jugs, latrine scrapings, chandeliers, broken baby cribs, axes, muskets, hoes, even mildewed butter churns.

  What they did with this kitchen refuse and household discards was stuff them into barrels placed at cliff’s edge at the top of the Heights, set and ready to roll. One look at the debris that would have been heaped upon him should he attempt the climb and Howe decided to run. Shooting at the barrels was
pointless. Cannonading the hill simply wasn’t possible: The Rebels were too far up, too high. And God forbid Howe attempt another Breed’s Hill–style frontal attack. This time, even more humiliating than being routed by Yankees, he would be pushed back by waves of shit, junk, and debris that would only be made more putrid and horrifically runny by the surprise gush of rain that suddenly and instantaneously began drenching the hillside just as Howe was deciding what to do. We slipped in shit, Your Majesty, and so were beat was not exactly what Howe wished to report back to the king. Better: Boston was no longer capable of being defended, so I took what I could and repaired to New York, tossing into the sea cannon, baggage wagons, artillery carts, horses, and, rumor had it, even a few desperate Tories clinging to the prow of his gunships—anyone and anything that would slow him down.

  The Battle for New York: July 1776 . . .

  The Historical Account: New York was a sorry miscalculation on Washington’s part. Howe took Manhattan and Brooklyn and White Plains and Forts Washington and Lee there, handily. Whole units of Continentals were killed or captured. Thousands upon thousands of men were left for dead, and just as many in retreat made a beeline for New Jersey and deserted. Hundreds of cannon, muskets, and vast stores of other ammunition and supplies were stolen away. The consensus was that Washington should have known better than to divide his troops or to set his men upon an exposed hill in Brooklyn, one that Howe could easily access from the nether side.

  History later made excuses for Washington, insisting that in light of the circumstances (his untried, panicking soldiers were too quick to retreat) this was the best Washington could do. In fact, Congress was enraged at the commander-in-chief.