The next action of Congress was the choice of the two major generals, who were to be Washington’s senior subordinates, and of an adjutant general, who would keep the headquarters records and perform minor executive duties for the Commander-in-Chief. Washington resolved that he would use his influence to procure the election of some, at least, of those on whose military qualities he had to depend. In the initial selection he could not intervene. The Eastern Colonies expected the General who held Boston Neck to receive immediate recognition. The ballot of Congress for “first Major General” consequently was in favor of Artemas Ward. Next chosen was the Adjutant General, who was voted the rank of Brigadier. This was Major Horatio Gates, whose name almost certainly had been put forward by Washington. The second Major General elected by Congress was another man Washington recommended—Charles Lee, who had made already a favorable impression on some Congressmen by his manifest knowledge of European affairs and by his confident familiarity with military organization.
These long proceedings were on Saturday, June 17, the last day of the most fateful week in Washington’s forty-three years. That evening Washington could survey the outlines of a task that would appal any man. Staff, command, army, equipment, supplies—all these had to be created from nothing! Washington was not feigning modesty when he told Congress his “abilities and military experience [might] not be equal to the extensive and important trust” the members put in his hands.
“Extensive” was about the most conservative word he could use to describe a task for the performance of which he had certain qualifications of experience and still greater equipment of character. Youthful experience had been ripened by the reflection of a maturing mind. He believed as firmly as ever that “discipline is the soul of an army” and that the first reliance of a commander had to be on well-trained troops.
As Washington undertook to begin anew on a larger scale where he had left off as temporary Brigadier, he did not have to adjust himself to changed tactics. Armies fought as they had when Washington took off his uniform at the end of 1758, but this persistence of a tactical system gave less of reassurance to the new Commander-in-Chief than might be assumed, because his scanty combat experience had been in woodland warfare. Washington’s other apparent military deficiencies in 1775 included almost complete lack of training in the formulation and subsequent practical test of strategical plans of any magnitude. Fundamentally, his chief experiential weakness was in scale. He who had operated a regiment on a frontier was now, after sixteen years, to direct an army on a continent.
Some of his colleagues in Congress believed he would win the gamble because they credited the myths that had grown up concerning his early exploits, the magnitude of his acquisitions and the valor of his Virginia troops of the 1750’s. This, of course, had the fragility of “the bubble reputation” but at the moment it was an advantage to Washington in assuring the support of a Congress on whom he would be dependent. It was an advantage increased by the fact that he looked the part of a soldier. Everything about him suggested the commander—height, bearing, flawless proportions, dignity of person, composure, and ability to create confidence by calmness and by unfailing, courteous dignity.
Discerning members of Congress had additional ground for believing that Washington would win the gamble with fate and with the circumstance of war, because they had observed how wisely he described in committee and in private the military pitfalls America must avoid and the hard road she must travel. In dealing with Congressmen and in winning their support, Washington’s experience as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses was of value beyond calculation. Nothing he possessed, save integrity, helped him so much, from his very first day of command, as his sure and intimate knowledge of the workings of the legislative mind. Now that he had met and conversed with some of the best men of every Colony, he was able to understand their problems and those of America. His horizon never had been provincial but it had been regional. Service in two Congresses had made it continental.
In the matter of equipment for his task, Washington had acquired, also, at least something of most forms of honest and useful experience that America had to offer in farming, manufacturing, shipping, frontier development, lay service on the bench, foreign purchasing, finance and exchange. Caution and daring were close to a balance in his mind. Deliberately, coldly bold, he was patient in waiting for an advantageous opening and wary until he found it. Along with daring, he had developed skill in adapting and improvising. He had shown ingenuity during the French and Indian War in employing feeble materials, human and man-made, to create and equip a regiment. After the war he had learned additional homely lessons in utilizing what he could get, instead of what he desired, and in making shift where he lacked a machine. Washington’s large experience in the subsistence of slaves would be of use in the commissariat. He would find for his troops the best food he could; but if gaunt hunger threatened, he knew on what simple rations, and of what kind, men might keep their health.
Admirable as was this equipment, unique as it perhaps was among Americans who lived in a simple, essentially agrarian society, it did not give Washington conceit, arrogance or overconfidence. Always he kept his head. Careful in what he said before strangers, he was candid among friends and as modest in manner as he was just in judgment. In his undeviating adherence to what he called “principles,” Washington had not changed from 1755 to 1775. The same was true of his conception of duty. Although he now was acquiring a nascent taste for humor, he still was too sparing with the tonic of laughter. Fear of censure continued. In most qualities of mind and spirit the Washington who put on his shoulders the heavy burden of continental defence in 1775 was different from the young officer who had ridden eastward from Fort Pitt in December 1758. Many men mature after twenty-five; Washington was almost transformed. The goodness of youth had not perished in manhood; modest characteristics had grown into positive virtues. The surest evidence of this was in his attitude toward money. He had not lost his acquisitiveness and was as stiff as ever in his dealings with overseers, tenants and tradesmen. If any man flattered himself that he could cheat Colonel Washington, let him beware! In all other transactions, Washington was increasingly disposed to think of the other party. Assured position, broadened sympathy and the financial ease that had come through his marriage to Martha—the most influential single event of the sixteen years after 1758—multiplied his benefactions.
Washington was far simpler in character, and clearer in his sense of values. In 1755 there had been the most careful weighing of advantage against disadvantage, cost against “honor.” Now he did not seem to be thinking always of his own advancement or of public approval. Still deeper, Washington was distinctly more religious than in the days of the French and Indian War, and he was more frequently mindful of Providence, though he still was puzzled to distinguish Providence from destiny. His sensitiveness was as sharply painful as ever, but he was capable now of combatting every expression of it—not because he was callous but because he soon learned that he had to endure hurt lest he hurt his cause. High among his qualifications for command were spiritual attributes that some might have accounted weaknesses—patience, pity, understanding of the shortcomings of men. Washington did not realize and could not gauge at the time the extent to which his judgment had matured. The utmost that could be affirmed on this score was negative; he had not come to any blank wall of reasoning or of judgment beyond which he knew, in his heart of hearts, that he could not penetrate.
His dignity was innate; his calm was in part deliberate and in some degree the unconscious expression of his sense of rectitude. Goodwill begat amiability that shone in his countenance. The habit of command did not mar the benevolence of his visage. Although there was as yet no marked restraint in his mien, his continuing lack of facility of speech disposed him to be cautious in expressing himself outside the circle of friends who would not abuse confidence. This wariness might become reserve that would give a certain frigidity to his address. Apart from this pos
sibility that his native kindliness might be covered with ice, his unfailing good manners were consonant with his appearance as Commander-in-Chief.
If, then, the balance of circumstance was against Washington, because the visible resources of America were not comparable to those of Britain, the balance of personal character and qualification was indisputably favorable to him. The final casting of the fateful account could not be that simple. To what extent did he possess two of the supreme qualities demanded of the man who was to head so small and feeble an army as his country would put into the field? If he and his colleagues were justified in expecting that a single campaign would end in reconciliation or accommodation, the question might not be one on which the fate of a continent hung, but if a long war lay ahead, those two special virtues must be displayed by a General dutiful to the Philadelphia Congress and in command of soldiers of such temper as could be brought into Colonial ranks. He would need many elements of strength but, most of all, patience and determination, inexhaustible and inextinguishable. Did Washington have as much patience as he now might be called upon to display? Would pride outride patience, or would he be able to endure cowardice, quarrelsome rivalries and the hideous greed of a continental struggle? Men would have credited him with steadfastness of a sort to be admired if the end of man was honest self-advancement; but there had been no special evidence of any dedication of spirit, except as Washington had adhered unflinchingly to the cause of American liberty regardless of the effect on his private estate. Did he have the high order of determination that could be combined with his patience in self-effacing leadership of a desperate cause in its most desperate hour?
Before he would be called upon to face any part of that test he wrote to acquaint Martha with his decision and to ease as much as he could the emotion he knew his letter would stir. In the same spirit he wrote Jack Custis and confessed to “very anxious feelings” on account of the boy’s mother. Short of issuing a direct parental command, Washington said everything he could to induce the young Custises to reside at Mount Vernon in his absence.
CHAPTER / 9
When the Delegates came together June 19 they proceeded to put into effect some political agreements that had been reached over the weekend. A commission as Major General was voted Delegate Philip Schuyler, a New York landed proprietor and man of business who had seen service in the war of 1754-63 and had been active in the Colonial cause—in many respects the northern counterpart of Washington. The other command as Major General was awarded to Israel Putnam of Connecticut, a picturesque, little-schooled representative of the New England small farmers who were rallying to the Colonial cause.
When Washington had been assigned these principal lieutenants, he received instructions to cover his journey to Massachusetts, his assumption of command, his discretionary powers, and the steps he should take to organize, recruit and supply the Army. He was authorized to make brevet appointments of colonels and of officers below that rank until vacancies were filled by the Colony from which the troops and their commanders came. June 21 witnessed the choice of eight Brigadier Generals. Three of these were from Massachusetts, Seth Pomeroy, William Heath and John Thomas, and two from Connecticut, David Wooster and Joseph Spencer. New Hampshire was honored by the commissioning of John Sullivan; Rhode Island was credited with Nathanael Greene. An Irish resident of New York, Richard Montgomery, completed the list. Washington’s sense of justice made him wait hopefully to see what qualities these men possessed. By his restrained attitude towards this delicate business of appointments and by his other dealings with Congress, he increased as a General the good opinion he had won as a Delegate. Once the members had made him their choice, they instinctively became his champion in order to justify them-selves. Thus did Washington have the initial advantage, if no more than that, on the fields in front of Boston to which he had now to proceed. Two able young Philadelphians, Thomas Mifflin and Joseph Reed, agreed to go with him temporarily as members of his staff. Charles Lee and Schuyler were making ready to depart on the twenty-third with their Commander-in-Chief. Soon Washington completed his meetings with Congress or its committees on the compelling questions that had to be settled before his departure. Neither he nor the New England leaders felt he could wait in Philadelphia to deal directly with small issues when his presence with the troops in Massachusetts was required.
It was an interesting cavalcade. Washington’s immediate attendants, Mifflin and Reed, were attractive young men of charming manners. Reed, thirty-four, was of distinguished courtesy and accustomed to dealing with men in high station. Because he had seen something of the world and was a skillful writer as well as a man of high intelligence, Washington was gratified to have him as military secretary and as a conspicuous member of the Headquarters “family.” This was true, also, of Mifflin, who was ranked as aide-de-camp. Mifflin had wealth, position and much felicity in speechmaking. Lee and Schuyler had training to complement his own as a soldier and as a purveyor to the needs of fighting men in the field. The escort of some of the foremost young men of the Quaker City, the detachment of the Philadelphia Light Horse under Captain Markoe, seemed altogether appropriate.
A committee of the New York Provincial Congress met them at Newark during the forenoon of the twenty-fifth and announced among other things, that Gov. William Tryon, an uncompromising Loyalist, was returning to New York and had sent word that he would disembark that day. The King’s Governor and the Congress’ General to land in the divided town the same day—the oddness of it had humor and presented manifest danger. It was not a pleasing prospect but certainly not one over which Washington would hesitate. Washington and his cavalcade made their way to the ferry. For his first appearance in New York as American Commander-in-Chief, Washington put on a new purple sash with his blue uniform, and laid aside his travel hat for one that bore a fine plume. Philadelphia’s generous reception and grateful farewell were small affairs when set against this welcome that awaited him and Lee and Schuyler.
It was about four o’clock Sunday afternoon that Washington stepped ashore, shook hands with the officials and acknowledged the huzzas. He proceeded from the landing and, after more introductions, accepted Col. Leonard Lispenard’s invitation to dinner. Something besides savory viands awaited him. Excited members of the Provincial Congress told him that an express had arrived with a number of papers, among which was a letter to the President of the Continental Congress from the corresponding body in Massachusetts. It doubtless contained news of the battle of Bunker Hill, of which Washington had heard a sketchy account before leaving Philadelphia. Washington hesitated to break the seal of a communication addressed to the presiding officer of the body to which he was responsible, but the paper might contain facts that would be of value on the journey ahead of him. Reluctantly he took the letter from the express. The battle of the seventeenth was described in some detail. The number of Americans killed and missing was supposed to be about sixty or seventy, and the former President of the Provincial Congress, Dr. Joseph Warren, was among the victims. One report put casualties among the ministerial troops at one thousand, “but,” said the Massachusetts legislators honestly, “this account exceeds every other estimation.” Washington knew that casualty lists usually are to be corrected by adding to one’s own losses and subtracting from those of the enemy; but even if the final figures were half as favorable as the first estimates, Americans could stand up against British regulars. An ominous note followed the report of the battle: “As soon as an estimate can be made of public and private stocks of gunpowder in this Colony, it shall be transmitted without delay, which we are well assured will be small, and by no means adequate to the exigence of our case.” Powder shortage! It had been known, deplored and discussed in Philadelphia, but it had not been relieved and now was a threat to the defence of an army which had earned by its valor the right to protect itself and the Colonial cause.
Washington’s sense of duty prompted him to spur on towards Boston, but at the moment he had to consider the instruc
tions he was to give Schuyler, for that officer was to remain as commander in New York. Washington requested Schuyler to report to Congress and to him as frequently as developments required. Orders could not be explicit or restrictive: “Your own good sense must govern in all matters not particularly pointed out,” Washington said, “as I do not wish to circumscribe you within narrow limits.” In his first orders Washington thus abdicated the right of a Commander-in-Chief to have every decision of importance made at his Headquarters. Distance itself vested discretion. Schuyler could operate independently when, in his judgment, such a course was expedient. Washington would advise and perhaps could supervise; he could not direct or administer, and he neither would try nor would pretend to do so.
The next morning Washington was told that William Morris and Isaac Low wished, on behalf of the Provincial Congress, to present him an address. The General was anxious to start for Boston, but he could not decline this civility. Meantime, he directed his companions to have everything ready for departure as soon as the ceremonies were concluded. At the designated hour the members of the Congress waited on him with an address diplomatically fashioned to attest their devotion to the continental cause without giving unendurable offence to those who feared military rule in America and still hoped for reconciliation with England. Washington had his answer ready. His reply included a note of clear simplicity that reassured: “When we assumed the soldier we did not lay aside the citizen.” The words, widely circulated, came to represent Washington in the eyes of many Americans.
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