A shocking incident on October 15 would have justified Washington in saying of the moral fibre of Americans substantially what he had written of their war for independence: God alone knew whether it would outwear adversity. A devout woman of culture, Mrs. Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson, came to Headquarters that day and asked to see the General. Washington knew her not only by her own reputation for literary attainments but also as the daughter of a distinguished Philadelphian, Dr. Thomas Graeme, who had died five years previously, and had full faith in her. Mrs. Ferguson handed Washington a bulky package of fourteen folio pages. It proved to be a letter to Washington from a man he admired, the Rev. Jacob Duché, a Philadelphia clergyman whose eloquence had stirred the heart of every Delegate to Congress in 1774. It was a blow in the face to read long, fervent paragraphs in which the minister urged that Washington call on Congress to rescind the Declaration of Independence and open negotiations for peace. Duché was confident that such a move would meet with favor in America. “If it should not,” the former Chaplain of Congress said, without abashment, “you have an infallible recourse still left; negotiate for your country at the head of your Army.”
Washington reflected immediately that if he had been given an inkling of the contents of the letter he would have returned the paper unopened. As he could not do that now, he would transmit it to Congress lest it be found among his records in event they were stolen or he was killed or made prisoner. Congress shared his amazement and decided to make the paper public. Delegates, attachés and Pennsylvanians talked of the incident with a zest little below that of discussion of Burgoyne’s surrender. As Duché saw them, “cause” and “commander” were almost synonyms. He believed this was the opinion of “the whole world” and he set in contrast to the rise of Washington the decline of Congress. Said Duché:
Take an impartial view of the present Congress, and what can you expect from them? . . . These are not the men you engaged to serve; these are not the men that America has chosen to represent her. Most of them were chosen by a little, low faction, and the few gentlemen that are among them now are well known to lie on the balance, and looking up to your hand alone to turn the beam. ’Tis you, sir, and you only that support the present Congress; of this you must be fully sensible.
Had Washington been disposed to discuss the composition of Congress he would have insisted that Duché erred in generalizing, but he would have been compelled to admit that Congress no longer represented America’s best. Nearly all the members of that body who had voted unanimously in June 1775 to put their Virginia colleague at the head of the Army had died, terminated their service or taken long leave. Seven only remained—John Adams, Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the Massachusetts delegation, Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut, James Duane of New York, Samuel Chase of Maryland, and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Of these, Chase was saying his farewells and the three senior members from Massachusetts were preparing to leave York, where Congress now held its sessions. Before December arrived, Dyer and Duane were to be the only Delegates in a shrunken body of twenty-one or twenty-two who had seen Washington in uniform when Congress had filled the seats during the late spring of 1775 and a majority still had hoped for reunion with England. Newcomers were acquainted, of course, with Washington’s high reputation; most of them had never seen him in committee or council of war and did not know the quality of his judgment.
Duché wrote that Washington alone supported Congress, but the question in reality was, would Congress continue to support Washington? His good name was at the mercy of strangers, some of whom were divided by sectional jealousies and were dazzled by Gates’s easy success in the Northern Department. Inexperienced Delegates did not realize that Washington had to do much more than maneuver an army. When these men compared Gates’s decisive victory near Saratoga with Washington’s defeats on the Brandywine and at Germantown, they naturally would reason that Gates was the better General. He had captured an entire army. While he was achieving that, what had been Washington’s next accomplishment? The loss of Philadelphia—so members of Congress might be disposed to answer. In doing so, they failed to perceive the vast difference between Gates’s task and Washington’s.
Gates made the utmost of the praise he received. One immediate effect was an abrupt change of attitude towards Washington. Most of the careful deference to “Your Excellency” disappeared from his communications, which became less and less frequent. When young Colonel Wilkinson at last reached Headquarters with the dispatches, which were addressed to the President of Congress, not to Washington, the aide observed the surprise over Gates’s disregard of “channels of command” and wrote back to his chief in partisan spirit: “The dissensions, the jealousies, calumnies and detractions which pervade a certain quarter must be reserved for some other opportunity. I am often asked the cause of your not writing to General Washington, so that this omission has been noticed publicly.” Gates continued to communicate directly with Congress and later forwarded to the President the news of the British evacuation of Ticonderoga, though by that time he had received, along with Washington’s congratulations on the defeat of Burgoyne, a mild reprimand for failing to send official notice to Headquarters.
Washington did not build a grudge on this disregard of his position as Commander-in-Chief; but he could not fail to observe how promptly some officers now became his critics and Gates’s avowed supporters. In the foreground, rather because of arrogance than of eminence, was Thomas Conway, the Irish-French officer who had made a somewhat favorable impression on Washington. Conway had been in Sullivan’s Division and at Brandywine had won in the mind of Sullivan a respect that amounted almost to awe. Two weeks after Brandywine Conway addressed to President Hancock a letter that began: “It is with infinite concern that I find myself slighted and forgot when you have offered rank to officers who cost you a great deal of money and have never rendered you the least service. Baron de Kalb to whom you have offered the rank of Major General after having given him large sums of money is my inferior in France.” Then in a tone half boastful, half scolding, Conway set down seven reasons why he thought he should be made a Major General and ended with more of a bark than a bow: “Your very speedy and categorical answer will very much oblige him who is with respect. . . .”
This letter greatly offended Congress but it by no means included all that Conway had to say. He visited widely and discussed personalities without restraint. “No man,” said he of the Commander-in-Chief, “was more a gentleman than General Washington, or appeared to more advantage at his table, or in the usual intercourse of life; but as to his talents for the command of an Army they were miserable indeed.” Washington ignored such of this as may have come to his ears. Although he was scarcely less sensitive than he had been, he did not have the time to notice every man who disliked or disparaged him. Nor, in this instance, was he inclined to put a high estimation on Conway’s abilities or judgment.
Conway found after Saratoga that what he had been saying in dispraise of Washington fitted perfectly into the arguments advanced by those who were trying to exalt Gates. Some members of Congress previously incensed by Conway’s arrogance now were willing to listen, accept his estimate of himself and ask whether, after all, it might not be in the country’s interest to use his much applauded military knowledge by giving him the rank he sought. One report reached Washington that this had been done, or soon would be voted, and it both aroused his fears and outraged his sense of justice. The Army was suffering already from a downpour of resignations; men considered their duties so difficult and were themselves so tired that obligation to country no longer had first place in their minds. Besides, their pay in depreciated currency left them little or nothing for their families. All twenty-three of the American Brigadiers were Conway’s seniors in date of commission. If now a boastful self seeker, a foreigner at that, and the most recently created Brigadier were promoted over these men, they would have a grievance that would seem to justify what some were anxious to do anyway. The best method of pr
eventing this seemed to be for Washington himself to protest to Congress against the elevation of Conway.
Washington addressed his appeal to Richard Henry Lee, the only member of the Virginia Delegation of 1777 with whom he had served. He told Lee the appointment of Conway would be “as unfortunate a measure as ever was adopted” and “I may add (and I think with truth) that it will give a fatal blow to the existence of the Army.” Forthrightly he explained: “General Conway’s merit . . . as an officer, and his importance in this Army, exists more in his imagination than in reality: For it is a maxim with him to leave no service of his untold, nor to want anything that is to be had by importunity.”
Lee’s reply was reassuring and at the same time alarming. Conway had not been elected Major General and would not be “whilst it is likely to produce the evil consequences you suggest.” The Virginia Delegate then proceeded somewhat coldly to discuss the reorganization of the Board of War and the identity of three individuals who were to take the place of Congressmen and constitute the membership. Washington doubtless needed all his self-control as he read what some members of Congress favored: they wanted to put on the board Joseph Reed, Timothy Pickering, who was Washington’s Adjutant General, and Robert H. Harrison, the indispensable Headquarters secretary, and they talked of electing Conway Pickering’s successor as Adjutant General. Did Congress wish to make life intolerable for him?
During the evening of November 8 a messenger brought Washington a letter written by Lord Stirling at Reading on the third, principally a report on numerous small affairs. At the end was this sentence: “The enclosed was communicated by Col. Wilkinson to Major McWilliams”—Stirling’s aide—”such wicked duplicity of conduct I shall always think it my duty to detect.” The enclosure itself consisted merely of this: “In a letter from Genl. Conway to Genl. Gates he says—’Heaven has been determined to save your country; or a weak General and bad Counsellors would have ruined it.’ “ Conway in correspondence with Gates—that, and not the Frenchman’s sarcastic reference to Washington, struck home. Had Conway and Gates made common cause against their senior officer? Washington’s amiability led him to conclude that Wilkinson had communicated the message at the instance of Gates and as a means of warning him. Nothing could be done about the matter, but the next day he let Conway know that his contemptuous criticism had been reported.
Washington knew members of his military family would see this note, and he talked with them confidentially about Conway’s apparent effort to stir up strife, but little time or thought could be given the incident because every officer was busy with preparations to meet the enemy’s anticipated final attacks on the river defences of Philadelphia. Washington did his absolute to reenforce Fort Mifflin and Red Bank, eliminate bickering, employ and then preserve the armed craft, and try every tactical device that ingenuity could suggest and common sense approve; but the task was almost hopeless. The end of a gallantly stubborn defence was the evacuation of the ruins of Fort Mifflin on the night of November 15/16 and of Fort Mercer on the night of November 20/21 before Cornwallis could deliver an intended assault. The river now would be open to the British.
What next? The Army was not strong enough to attack. “Our situation, . . .” Washington told Greene,
is distressing from a variety of irremediable causes, but more especially from the impracticability of answering the expectations of the world without running hazards which no military principles can justify, and which, in case of failure, might prove the ruin of our cause; patience and a steady perseverance in such measures as appear warranted by sound reason and policy must support us under the censure of the one, and dictate a proper line of conduct for the attainment of the other; that is the great object in view.
More specifically, he would put his Army in winter quarters close to Philadelphia and would try to keep his barefoot men from starving or freezing. The more vigilant part of the light horse and such infantry as could move swiftly with decent shoes and satisfied stomachs, he would employ to guard against surprise, discourage raids by Howe’s forces and prevent the movement of supplies into Philadelphia. If Washington saw an opening, he would try to make the most of it; in general, he would remain on the defensive.
The struggle for the forts on the lower Delaware and the reconcentration that followed their loss so occupied Washington during November that he had little time to study a bright event of that dark month—the completion by Congress of the Articles of Confederation and the dispatch on the seventeenth of the text to the States for ratification. In Washington’s eyes the close cooperation of the States had been and still was the first essential of success in the attainment of independence, but not one line had he, the soldier, written of the compact Congress had been discussing at intervals since July 12, 1776. The perfection of those articles, as far as it was attainable at all, was the work of the civil arm of government. He who held the sword must not use its point as a pen.
Conway made immediate reply to Washington’s blunt note of November 9 which had enclosed the text of the Frenchman’s observations in his letter to Gates. He asserted:
. . . I am willing that my original letter to General Gates should be handed to you. This, I trust, will convince you of my way of thinking. I know, sir, that several unfavorable hints have been reported by some of your aide de camps as the author of some discourse which I never uttered. These advices never gave me the least uneasiness because I was conscious I never said anything but what I could mention to yourself.
In its entirety this letter could be regarded either as candid or as cunning. At Headquarters, Washington’s opinion probably was echoed some weeks later by John Laurens, a most intelligent aide, who said of the Frenchman, “the perplexity of his style, the evident insincerity of his compliments, betray his real sentiments and expose his guilt.” Washington did not think Conway’s explanation called for a reply and probably felt some satisfaction when he learned that, in a letter of November 14 to the President of Congress, the French officer had submitted his resignation. This was followed by a request to Washington from Conway for a leave of absence in which to collect his scattered effects. The request was granted through Colonel Harrison the evening it was received. Washington himself signed a letter in which he explained that acceptance of the resignation of Conway was the prerogative of Congress.
When the Frenchman’s resignation was presented to Congress there was no motion to accept it, but, instead, an order to refer it to the Board of War, on which, at this stage of the reorganization, the most powerful member was Thomas Mifflin. He had consented on November 18 to serve and was entering on the discharge of his duties. Pickering had agreed to become a member, though as yet he could not leave Headquarters in the absence of anyone who was qualified to be the Adjutant General. As Colonel Harrison had declined, Congress filled out the membership of five by electing Gates, Joseph Trumbull, and Richard Peters, who had been Secretary of the “old” Board. Delegates voted that Gates should be President, should retain his military rank, and should “officiate at the Board, or in the field, as occasion may require.”
Washington probably was aware by this time that Mifflin, though cautious and adroit, was regarded as head of the movement to make the largest use of the abilities of Gates. That was the best face to put on the activities of Mifflin, who had been among the most useful and active of Washington’s supporters until, in the summer of 1777, he had been alienated by the refusal of the Commander-in-Chief to disregard the possibility of a British attack based on New York. Mifflin had wanted all the American forces employed to save Philadelphia. Increasingly his name was being associated with those of men who sometimes spoke mysteriously of their unwillingness to pay homage to “the image.”
So far as Conway and his resignation were entangled in these matters, the Board did not report to Congress on his resignation, but some leaders in York began to support a proposal for which Conway took credit, that Congress name an Inspector General who would instruct troops, apprehend deserters and see
that public property had careful custody. When the Board of War asked the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief on what such an inspector might do, Congress did not wait on Washington’s views, expression of which was delayed until December 14 by field duties. On the thirteenth the Delegates adopted a long resolve on the establishment of a system of inspection. Conway forthwith was elected Inspector General and was made a Major General.
Washington might well have regarded the resolve as a carefully planned affront. Had such an incident occurred while he had been in the French and Indian War, he would have resigned wrathfully and at once. Now it was different. When liberty was at stake, pride and personalities dwindled in perspective. He would see to it that official dealings with Conway were in every way correct, though personally he would not pretend to like a man he distrusted. Moreover, if Congress wished to decide questions that previously had come to his desk, he would tell correspondents to communicate directly with that body. Was there dissatisfaction with him as Commander-in-Chief? Did Congress think Gates a superior General? Washington would make no defence of what had been the best he could do; if another were preferred, let the gentleman have the sash, the epaulettes, and the daily, devouring duties!
Doubts and resentments in Congress created for Washington an opportunity of showing members depressing realities it had not been prudent to set down even in a letter read behind closed doors. A committee of Delegates was named to consider means for conducting a winter campaign. Congress voted to scrutinize the “causes of the evacuation of Fort Mercer” and followed that with orders for like investigation of the loss of Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton. The failure of the Rhode Island expedition also was to be investigated. This, in turn, was fortified with bristling assurance that whenever an operation failed or a post fell to the enemy, Congress would seek to establish the reason by inquiry conducted “in such manner as [it] shall deem best adapted for the investigation of truth in the respective cases.”
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