Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Surely a man who wrote in that spirit should have the support of the last musket even if the rearguard had to march and fight on an empty stomach. So Washington reasoned from Arnold’s letter and from that of Enos. Washington assumed that when Arnold’s advance became known, General Carleton could be expected to bring together at Quebec the British forces that had survived the fall of Chambly and of St. John’s and the expected occupation of Montreal by Montgomery. The task of Arnold now would be much more difficult than it would have been if, with Enos’s men in support, he had reached the vicinity of Quebec a fortnight earlier. In spite of this ill fortune Washington did not despair of the success of the resolute man who had ascended the Kennebec.

  Anxiety over Arnold’s plight was deepened by hourly concern over reenlistments and barrack-construction. Another and serious problem was procurement of powder and artillery for operations against Boston. Washington decided to extend his earthworks beyond Plowed Hill more than halfway to Bunker Hill from the dominating ground of Winter Hill. As far as the Commander-in-Chief could foresee, he would not have to pay too high a price for Cobble Hill, an excellent position three-quarters of a mile south of Plowed Hill and slightly less than that southwest of Bunker Hill. The three positions were a triangle with the apex to the east, a circumstance that some day might make it possible to direct a converging fire on Bunker Hill. If Cobble Hill was to be taken, it had to be at once, because the ground was freezing fast and deep. Whether the British would be content to let the Americans hold this ground must be ascertained by the new move. Howe might conclude that a stop had to be put to the gradual shortening of the range. It seemed much like trying to tighten a noose around the neck of the enemy, but the experience at Plowed Hill was duplicated incredibly. Under Washington’s own eye, high parapets were thrown up on the night of November 22/23 and were undisturbed by the British for days.

  Thus many things seemed to be shaping to a climax, when Colonel Enos returned to Cambridge with his three companies. Washington put him under arrest and ordered a court of inquiry under the presidency of Charles Lee to sit on November 28. During the evening of the day on which the order for the court was issued, the twenty-seventh, an express from General Montgomery brought tidings of the unopposed occupation of Montreal on the morning of the thirteenth. General Carleton got away with his troops and his powder, but when Montgomery wrote, at Montreal, he was hopeful he could capture the explosive. Almost as important was a paragraph that began: “By intercepted letters, I find Colonel Arnold is certainly arrived in the neighborhood of Quebec; that the King’s friends are exceedingly alarmed, and expect to be besieged, which, with the blessing of God, they shall be, if the severe season holds off, and I can prevail on the troops to accompany me.”

  There was fine news from the sea, also. Washington received during the second week of October word of the departure from England, August 11, of “two north country built brigs of no force,” laden with arms, powder and other stores for Quebec. These vessels were proceeding without convoy. Washington must undertake to send out armed craft and capture the immensely valuable prizes. Many delays had been encountered, but two vessels had left port October 21, and the armed schooner Lee, Capt. John Manley, had sailed from Plymouth November 4. Manley had the initiative and the good fortune to recapture a schooner, laden with wood, that a British prize crew was carrying into Boston. Now, November 27, Washington received intelligence that the diligent Captain had brought to Cape Anne an infinitely richer prize, the large brig Nancy, believed to be one of the vessels of which word had been sent from England. Almost before the handshaking over the good news was ended, Washington ordered four companies to Cape Anne, gave authority for the impressment of teams to haul away the stores and directed the minutemen of the adjoining country to assist in removing the cargo to a place of safety. As the men went about this task, every lift from the hold of the Nancy seemed to bring a military treasure into daylight. When he saw her papers, Gates exclaimed that he could not have made out a better invoice if he had tried. Although she carried no powder, she yielded two thousand stand of small arms, many flints, tons of musket shot and a fine brass mortar with a maw of thirteen inches and a weight in excess of 2700 pounds.

  When this giant was brought to Cambridge, General Putnam was to christen it with a bottle of rum and Colonel Mifflin was to name it “Congress”; but before that festive celebration, many things happened. First among them was the assembly of the court of inquiry in Enos’s case. Contrary to Washington’s expectation, by no means all the testimony was adverse. There was doubt, in fact, whether Enos had not helped Arnold by sending forward all the supplies he could spare, instead of marching ahead to add more mouths to those already exhausting Arnold’s provisions. The court was somewhat reluctant to recommend action in the light of the evidence, but it concluded that a formal trial was necessary “for the satisfaction of the world,” as it said, and for Colonel Enos’s “own honor.” Washington accordingly ordered a court-martial with John Sullivan as President.

  Washington thus far had endured without flinching all the venality, all the incompetence and all the ignorance of war with which he had been confronted, but he had to face the prospect that if the long-desired British attack was delivered, it might be at the most unwelcome time conceivable, the freezing days when the Connecticut troops would be marching home. In writing Joseph Reed of this and of some skirmishing around Lechmere Point, he explained that “a scoundrel from Marblehead, a man of property,” had gone to Howe, told of the reluctance of Continentals to reenlist and assured the British commander that the ministerial forces easily might make themselves master of the American lines. Washington undertook to counter. He began a bomb battery at Lechmere Point on the night of November 29/30. He could not tell whether this activity would serve its immediate purpose in deterring the British, but he confided to Reed that the Army expected an attack. What more perfect time for it could there be? In his months in command Washington had watched with growing repugnance the cunning of the place-hunters and sensed the acuteness of a danger the slothful disregarded. He had had to struggle with himself to keep his patience and his faith. To Reed he broke out:

  Such a dearth of public spirit, and want of virtue, such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of the military arrangement, I never saw before, and pray God I may never be witness to again. What will be the ultimate end of these maneuvers is beyond my scan. I tremble at the prospect. We have been till this time enlisting about three thousand, five hundred men. To engage these I have been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men a Regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, indulge as many more. The Connecticut troops will not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their term (saving those who have enlisted for the next campaign and mostly on furlough), and such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. In short, after the last of this month our lines will be so weakened that the minutemen and militia must be called in for their defence. . . .

  He rushed angrily on:

  . . . these [men], being under no kind of government themselves, will destroy the little subordination I have been laboring to establish, and run me into one evil whilst I am endeavoring to avoid another; but the lesser evil must be chosen. Could I have foreseen what I have, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command. A Regiment or any subordinate department would be accompanied with ten times the satisfaction, and perhaps the honor.

  Washington’s information on November 29 was that at least 1500 men were absent on furlough as a reward for reenlistment and that the force with which he had been defending his lines thus was reduced by almost 12 per cent. The report was, also, that the Connecticut troops absolutely could not be induced to continue in service beyond the first of the month. Something had to be done; the situation was critical; delay was dangerous. He summoned a council for
the next morning. At the council, the grim-faced seniors could give no encouragement: the Connecticut troops stood fast in their resolution; pleas and argument alike were vain; patriotism no longer stirred them. They must be replaced at Continental expense with minutemen from other Colonies until January 15, 1776, by which date the new Army would be organized or the American cause hopeless.

  Again on December 1 the Connecticut companies were addressed by their officers and asked to keep their faces towards the enemy until other soldiers took their places. The report was the same: Unless they were given extra pay, most of the men were resolved to go home, regardless of what happened. When some actually started, that was more than Washington would endure. He sent after the men; apprehended most of them, brought them back and sternly warned them not to leave until they received their formal, written discharges. At the same time, he put all the troops on the alert and undertook to make the camps as secure as possible. The certain loss of the Connecticut regiments within ten days put an attack on the British so far beyond reach that Washington scarcely need spend thought on it. He had in candor to tell himself there was no reason for expecting the troops from the other Colonies to do any better, when their enlistments ended, than the Connecticut soldiers had done. He could not believe that voluntary enlistment would bring the Army to the accepted maximum—20,372.

  After the departing Connecticut troops were brought back, they did their duty for several days without complaint. No mutiny swept the camps; the sentinels gave no indication of any preparation for an assault; December 3 passed without alarm, a movement of troops to Charlestown on the fourth amounted to nothing. The fifth was quiet. Routine was restored in the Army. The court-martial acquitted Colonel Enos “with honor,” a verdict that Washington accompanied, on publication, with an order for immediate release from arrest and with no other comment.

  Washington received on December 4 a dispatch from Schuyler, dated November 22, that contained letters of Montgomery and of Arnold. Montgomery reported that American artillery fire had kept Carleton and his men from moving on their ships down the St. Lawrence, and past the mouth of the Richelieu to Quebec. Arnold wrote at St. Mary’s. He told of his purpose to cross the St. Lawrence in a few days and to attack the city, though he feared it might have been reenforced. If it was too strong for him, he would march to join Montgomery at Montreal. The natives seemed friendly and willing to supply provisions. This was encouraging and led Washington to hope that Montgomery’s early juncture with Arnold not only would assure the capture of Quebec but also would complete the conquest of Canada.

  Some of the Connecticut troops refused on the tenth to perform any military duty and at least passively demanded that they be allowed to start home at once. Washington again had to refuse, but this time he had an encouraging reason: militia from other New England Colonies were beginning to arrive in noticeable numbers. If they continued to move into the camps, the Connecticut regiments might leave, but not until then. The safety of the lines had to prevail over the letter of old enlistment resolutions. On the eleventh it looked as if a new necessity was developing. Fretful activity was observed around Bunker Hill; large numbers of men moved from their encampments and crossed to Boston by the ferry. Washington concluded that the British either were reconcentrating in the city for an attack at some undisclosed point or were transferring the men to less exposed winter quarters. The more formidable of these alternatives was enough to make Washington ask once again whether Howe might be withholding his attack until the day some secret agent would hurry to British Headquarters and say, in effect, “The rebels are at their weakest now!”

  Keep the Connecticut regiments, then—will they, nil they—till a corresponding number of militia filed into the tents and barracks. That, in substance, was the order. Mercifully, the worst of the danger appeared to be over almost before the Connecticut men had time to get angry. The British made no further movement at Bunker Hill or from Boston; militia companies reported with a briskness that surprised the General. The militia came the more readily because they were outraged by the news that the Connecticut troops were going to leave regardless of what happened to Boston. Within a few days it was to be manifest, also, that the leaders of Connecticut and many of the humble folk were humiliated and outraged by the virtual defection of so many of their troops in an hour of peril.

  If the uncertainty created by the departure and arrival of these desperately needed troops had not absorbed Washington’s thought on December 11, he might have indulged a different and sentimental resentment. It would have been this: After much exchange of correspondence, long preparation and the muster of a considerable entourage, Martha had started for Cambridge from Virginia and she arrived that day. Her vehicle poured out Virginians as if they had been apples from a barrel—herself, Mrs. Horatio Gates, Jack Custis, his wife and George Lewis. There were, of course, affectionate greetings for Martha and for her fellow-travelers and there was as much of comfort at Headquarters as could be provided by fumbling males; but a man of other temperament might have complained that of all days on which a chivalrous foe and a considerate Army should have left a Commander-in-Chief alone, it would have been when he wished to receive a wife whom he had not seen for seven months.

  Behind all other burdens of command was gnawing concern over Arnold’s Canadian expedition and over the course of the reenlistment, a double dread—to darken a Christmas that Nature did her best to brighten. Christmas Eve brought heavy snow, but Christmas Day itself was full of sunshine. Some of the officers came, of course, to call on the General and his lady during the day. In the unfinished barracks and in the crowded houses of the towns the soldiers made such mirth as they might. A few who had money and the courage with which to face untrodden snow went out into the country and bought themselves such fruit and fowl as the farmers had. The enemy, too, kept the peace of the Prince of Peace.

  It was altogether a quiet day, but on the roads to Cambridge, two expresses were fighting their way through the snow. One of them came from Fort George with a dispatch from young Henry Knox, whom Washington in November had sent to New York and thence to Ticonderoga to get additional cannon and ammunition. Knox, writing December 17, reported excellent progress on his own account, but he said that Colonel Arnold was obliged to go to Point-aux-Trembles, about six miles from Quebec and that Montgomery had gone to join him and added: “I have very little doubt that General Montgomery has Quebec now in his possession.” That had been Washington’s hope, but his confidence could not be fixed until he learned that Montgomery was with Arnold.

  What of opportunity at Boston? The Massachusetts committee for the supply of wood was hinting to the townships of the “great danger the country is exposed to from a dispersion of the Army, which must take place if it is not supplied with wood”; Washington’s concern was whether reenlistment would yield a sufficient force to hold the line at the Year’s End, when those men from the other New England Colonies who would not reenlist for 1776 would leave the Army and go home. By the last returns prior to December 15, not more than 5917, including Connecticut volunteers, had agreed to sign for another year. On December 18, total reenlistments were computed at 7140. The task seemed an impossible one. As the Year’s End came within a bare hundred hours or so, Washington received from the second express who had been on the road at Christmas the answer of Congress to the question the committee of Franklin, Lynch and Harrison had submitted to Philadelphia. The reply was, “Resolved, that if General Washington and his council of war should be of opinion that a successful attack may be made on the troops in Boston, he do it in any manner he may think expedient, notwithstanding the town and property in it may thereby be destroyed.” Here was the authorization: would there be an opening and the men to make the most of it? If Howe was pretending to be cautious in order to deceive the Americans, would there be men to repulse him, or could he sweep aside a thin and shivering line? Amid desperate attempts to prevail on men to stay and fight for their country, the final day of the year came. Pres
ent, fit for duty, were 11,752 rank and file. Enlistments of every sort for the new establishment were 9650. Nathanael Greene heard the figures and spoke for his chief and for all his patriotic brother-officers when he wrote: “Nothing but confusion and disorder reign. . . . We never have been so weak as we shall be tomorrow. . . .”

  The New Year, 1776, began with so few troops in the redoubts and the barracks that the lines at some points were bare of defenders; but the British did not stir, and Washington issued a long appeal for “order regularity and discipline,” as if he were sure of “the new army, which,” he said, “in every point of view is entirely continental.” All offenses of the old establishment were pardoned; the guardhouse doors were opened for all imprisoned American soldiers; the British union flag was raised as if to honor the birthday of the Army. This was done with an air of confidence, almost of bravado. Washington was far less sure of the morrow than he appeared to be. He told Reed “How it will end, God in his great goodness will direct. I am thankful for his protection to this time. We are told that we shall soon get the army completed, but I have been told so many things which have never come to pass that I distrust everything.”

  Two days after Washington had hoisted the union flag “in honor of the United Colonies” the camps received the long-delayed text of the King’s speech to Parliament on October 26. George III then had announced his intention of putting “a speedy end” to what he described as a “rebellious war . . . manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire.” The monarch went on to say that he would give “authority to certain persons upon the spot to grant general or particular pardons and indemnities . . . as they shall think fit, and to receive the submission of any Province or Colony which shall be disposed to return to its allegiance.” This evoked nothing but ridicule from Chelsea to Dorchester Neck, but when Boston Tories saw the union flag lifted on the first day of the New Year they assumed that the Americans had put up the flag as a symbol of submission. News of this feeling in the occupied city amused even Washington.