Although Washington did not name the individuals who told him of the attitude of Congress, those who gave him assurance included, among others, President Laurens and Charles Carroll of Maryland. At strongest, the hostile, the disaffected and the unacquainted in Congress and in the Army showed themselves so feeble when challenged that this question rises: Should Washington have given attention to the cabal? Washington made no effort to answer the question while the maneuvers against him were in progress, and later he had more important concerns. His observations, at one time or another, show that he had mixed motives for giving serious attention to the affair: he confessed to Henry Laurens that knowledge that a “malignant faction” had been operating to his hurt “could not but give me some pain on a personal account. . . .” That was one consideration. The second and “chief concern,” he told the same friend, arose “from an apprehension of the dangerous consequences which intestine dissensions may produce to the common cause.” As he explained to Lafayette, the cabal involved the “fatal tendency of disunion.” For that reason he was convinced that it should be resisted to the utmost. Washington took the action he did, in the third place, because he regarded Conway as a treacherous personal foe. The Frenchman’s malignancy and, later, Gates’s evasion violated Washington’s sense of honor, aroused his wrath and made him resolve that he would not permit a self-seeking faction to drive him from his post of duty, service and honor. His enemies sneeringly styled him “demigod,” but he was in nothing more completely human than in dealing with the Conway cabal.
Resolute as Washington proved to be in facing the cabal and trying to hold the Army together in the winter of 1777-78, he could not say until after the end of April that he had defeated Conway finally and irrevocably. While the Frenchman was at Albany preparing for the Canadian irruption, he had been deep in discontent, particularly after the coming of Kalb. By the beginning of April Conway was outraged that another man now had the place he had desired as Inspector General. Once again he professed his willingness to resign, and injudiciously did so, in tones promptly described as “taunting.” Congress accepted the resignation and refused to reconsider when Conway expostulated that he had not meant his letter to be more than a private communication to President Laurens. Conway’s strange influence was at an end.
Washington could not write that word “end” at the bottom of the story of Valley Forge on March 15 or on April 1. Even when the mud dried in the roads and green appeared in the fields, he had no assurance his troops would get sufficient meat every day. There was emergence, not deliverance, from the miseries of Valley Forge. If at last, by good fortune, Washington did not have to fear that his men would be half-starved before a week was out, he always had an accumulated burden of business, the most galling part of which was put on his shoulders by men who wished to leave the Army.
No particular regret was recorded when Joseph Spencer resigned the Rhode Island command and his commission as Major General, but as neither Putnam nor Heath was acceptable in his stead, Washington had to send Sullivan and with no guarantee that Congress would elect an additional officer of divisional rank. At the time the command in Rhode Island was being discussed, it was apparent that a change would be necessary in New York also. On March 16, McDougall was named to relieve Putnam whose standing as a commander was alleged to have been destroyed by indolence, ignorance and patent incompetence. Among field and company officers the “rash of resignation” had become a disease that menaced and might prove mortal. It was especially severe in the cavalry and in the Virginia regiments but was so nearly pandemic that Washington estimated the number of resignations at more than two hundred within eight months.
The Count Pulaski and the Marquis de Lafayette became problems. Pulaski spoke no English, did not understand Americans and soon found himself in so much difficulty that he resigned the general command of the cavalry and successfully solicited permission to organize an independent corps, in which he was authorized by Congress to enlist deserters if Washington approved. Washington had no intention of allowing this. The Commander-in-Chief consequently was surprised and provoked to learn, a little later, that Pulaski had been recruiting among prisoners of war. It was in part because of Pulaski’s mishandling that Washington saw little prospect of having the cavalry take the field in the spring, though there was reason to hope for good performance by young Harry Lee who was promoted to Major and entrusted with recruiting and directing independently two companies of light dragoons. Lafayette was a problem of a different sort. He was able, diligent, appreciative and almost embarrassingly affectionate. At the same time he was ambitious and so insistent on the avoidance of any impairment of what he considered a high reputation that after the failure of the irruption into Canada, he had to be nursed and coddled by Congress and by Washington.
When all the whims and frailties and derelictions of malcontents were added to the doubts of the campaign, Washington still found hope for America in the performance of two men that spring, one a newcomer and the other an old lieutenant with a changed assignment. On February 23 an attractive German soldier had come to Valley Forge with letters from President Laurens, who introduced him as “Baron Steuben” and explained that Congress had voted its thanks for the gentleman’s tender of service as a volunteer and had directed him to report to Washington. Washington’s questions elicited the admission that Friedrich von Steuben, who said he had been a Lieutenant General in the service of Frederick the Great, was interested in the training of troops and would be glad to receive the rank and pay of a Major General, though he did not desire the command of a division.
The apparent candor, the asserted rank and the delightful personality of Steuben prompted Washington to approve a temporary arrangement which soon created confidence in the character, equipment and zeal of the Prussian. Within little more than a fortnight, Washington detached one hundred men as a supplementary Headquarters Guard and assigned them to Steuben for training. By the end of another week Washington was writing of Steuben as a “gentleman of high military rank, profound knowledge and great experience in his profession,” who was to be “at the head” of a “department of inspection.” Washington announced that Steuben “[had] obligingly undertaken to exercise the office of Inspector General” and, until the pleasure of Congress was known, was to be obeyed and respected in that position. Congress soon approved and made him a Major General.
While Steuben was introducing uniform and expeditious maneuver, Washington saw that better equipment and transportation would be made available to the Army through the skillful, industrious and military approach of Greene to his new duties as Quartermaster General. Hampered as Greene was by the resignation of Mifflin’s deputy, he proceeded to employ to advantage the business experience of able new assistants and devote his energies to what he knew to be a task of great complexity.
Training under Steuben and the improvement of the quartermaster service by Greene soon could be left to the men in charge. Sound methods were solving a few of the difficulties that had baffled Washington’s previous attempts. An arrangement by which hides were bartered for shoes worked out surprisingly well and, by the end of April, supplied footgear for most of those in painful need. Nakedness was not yet covered. The Clothier General was regarded by some officers as arbitrary and inefficient and was increasingly unpopular. As for provisions, Washington was able on March 1 to thank the Army for the patience it had shown during the days of shortage, which Commissary officers appeared to have overcome. Congress now was nervously concerned over the failure of the Commissary and no longer was disposed to defend the system disastrously adopted in 1777. Wadsworth was prevailed upon to become head of the purchasing division under amended regulations. Soon the word from optimistic officers was, “we fare much better than heretofore,” though it was undeniable that life in the camp still was meager, uncertain and dirty.
A little later in the spring, evidence of jealousy of the Army on the part of a certain element in Congress led Washington to protest:
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p; . . . without arrogance or the smallest deviation from truth it may be said that no history, now extant, can furnish an instance of an Army’s suffering such uncommon hardships as ours have done, and bearing them with the same patience and fortitude. To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lay on, without shoes, by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and almost as often without provisions as with; marching through frost and snow, and at Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day’s march of the enemy, without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built, and submitting to it without a murmur, is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarce be paralleled.
Perhaps it was not unnatural that some Delegates felt the jealousy of which Washington sought to make them ashamed by recounting the misery his men had endured. A Congress of few members, and most of them undistinguished, was laboring long hours and expending too much of its time on financial accounts it tried to discharge with a currency that continued to depreciate.
Long bargaining over a special exchange of Charles Lee and Gen. Richard Prescott was successfully terminated. During the last stages of this negotiation, Washington had instructed Elias Boudinot, the Commissary-General of Prisoners, not to permit trifles to stand in the way because, said Washington, he never had needed Lee more. When final arrangements were made for the parole of Lee within the American lines as a preliminary of his full exchange, the Commander-in-Chief fashioned for his senior lieutenant such a reception as would have been accorded the victor in a campaign that had liberated Philadelphia or New York. An escort of horse under a member of Washington’s staff awaited the paroled General at the British picket on April 5. The Commander-in-Chief and most of his senior officers went out to meet Lee at the lines and escorted him to Headquarters. Mrs. Washington was hostess to Lee and to those who came to do him honor.
He proved to be the same self-confident individualist. If any change had occurred it was of the sort that disposes a prisoner or invalid to be autocratic and to covet more power than usual because he has been exercising less. Even before Lee’s parole ended in complete freedom of action, he forwarded Washington a new “Plan for the Formation of the American Army in the least Expensive Manner Possible . . .” with the statement, not altogether jocular: “I have taken it into my head that I understand it better than almost any man living.” Reluctant to be matched with the inconspicuous Prescott, he had proposed that he be exchanged for Burgoyne. Said Lee to President Laurens: “. . . to speak plainly and perhaps vainly I am really convinced as things are circumstanced, I am of more consequence to you than General Burgoyne is to the other party.” Although it may have bruised the conceit of Lee, he was traded for Prescott, not for the loser at Saratoga, and back on duty, he soon was trying to prevail on Congress to give him the rank of Lieutenant General.
Whether Lee would justify by his counsel and leadership his conception of his importance or would repeat the part he had played in the dark drama of the late autumn of 1776, Washington required all the sound counsel the Army could get, because, as April advanced, the American cause had to face the possibility of a double, perhaps triple, British offensive. One prong of the coming attack was to be political. Lord North had introduced two “reconciliation bills,” one to set forth the intentions of Parliament concerning the exercise of the right to tax the Colonies and the other to appoint commissioners to “treat, consult, and agree upon the means of quieting the disorders subsisting in certain of the Colonies, Plantations and Provinces of North America.” Washington wrote Laurens:
The enemy are determined to try us by force, and by fraud; and while they are exerting their utmost powers in the first instance, I do not doubt but that they will employ men in the second, versed in the arts of dissimulation, of temporizing, negotiating genius’s.
It appears to me that nothing short of independence can possibly do. The injuries we have received from Britain can never be forgotten, and a peace upon other terms would be the source of perpetual feuds and animosities. Besides, should Britain from her love of tyranny and lawless domination attempt again to bend our necks to the yoke of slavery, and there is no doubt but that she would, for her pride and ambition are unconquerable, no nation would credit our professions, nor grant us aid. At any rate, their favors would be obtained upon the most advantageous and dishonorable terms.
All the Delegates were of this mind and promptly adopted resolutions designed to convince the people that the British proposals were nothing more than a snare for unwary feet. When Governor Tryon sent copies to Washington of North’s bills, the American commander acknowledged the documents and said they would have a “free currency” among his soldiers. As a return compliment Washington forwarded prints of a resolve of April 23 in which Congress recommended that the States offer pardon to those citizens who had joined or aided the British forces in America. Tryon was asked to distribute this paper.
The British offer of peace thus was blunted before it was delivered. Would there be one other offensive, or two, a campaign by General Howe from Philadelphia and one by Sir Henry Clinton, based on New York City? Washington was not sure. In anticipation of active combat involving all the American forces, Washington recalled absent general officers and studied closely the confusing movement of ships to and from Philadelphia and New York; but he could ascertain nothing tangible. Reports of heavy reenforcement of Howe’s army in Philadelphia seemed to be unfounded. Washington considered the possibility of an attack on New York and sought on this the counsel of McDougall. On the subject McDougall was to study, Congress had opinions of its own. Its members had been thought negligent in not providing for the better defence of the Hudson, but at length they ordered the demolition of what remained of Forts Independence and Ticonderoga and directed Gates to resume command of the Northern Department. As a result, McDougall could come back to the main Army, where he would be most welcome; Gates would be free to make his own plans which he might or might not communicate in advance to Washington. Nothing was done by Congress to reduce the authority of the Commander-in-Chief; nothing was said of any restriction of Gates’s command within his department, but Congress quietly made it plain that Washington remained in fact what he was in title. Washington was “authorized and directed” on April 18 forthwith to convene a council of war and, with its advice, “to form such a plan for the general operations of the campaign as he shall deem consistent with the general welfare of these States.” To this instruction, a few amendatory lines were added that may have seemed perfunctory—”that Major Generals Gates and Mifflin, members of the Board of War, have leave to attend the said council.” The purpose was unmistakable: As Major Generals, these critics of the Commander-in-Chief were subject to his summons and under his orders. Congress gave them leave from the Board that they might answer the call of their superior officer.
Washington had intended to take counsel with Gates, and now he wrote not only Gates and Mifflin but also Gen. John Armstrong and invited all of them to the council. The letter to Mifflin was stiff but unexceptional. Gates could not leave York as soon as he had hoped, for which reason the council had to be deferred; but the delay was not of consequence, for by April 23 it was reported that Gen. Sir William Howe had been recalled to England and that Gen. Sir Henry Clinton was to succeed him in command. While Washington suspected Howe might try to strike a parting blow, he doubtless reasoned also that some weeks might elapse before the new commander would have a plan ready to put into execution. Washington and his senior officers meantime could consider alternatives he already had formulated—offensive against Philadelphia, attack on New York, or continued defensive. If Gates or Mifflin or anyone else could demonstrate the superiority of one plan over the others, Washington wished it done. The larger relation of Gates to the plans of the Commander-in-Chief, and of Washington to administration on the upper Hudson, was clarified by Congress on April 21 when instructions to the head of the Northern Department were adopted. Gates was not to
stop supplies sent to the main Army from New England; when called on to do so, he must dispatch Continental troops to reenforce Washington, while privileged to ask for help from the divisions in the middle States. Gates was to conform, also, as far as practicable, to the plan adopted at the council of war Washington was to assemble.
In anticipation of that council, the general officers at camp were expressing a diversity of opinion. Most of them favored an offensive but all of them took into account the difficulties that compelled the Commander-in-Chief to list as the third possibility: “remaining quiet in a secure, fortified camp, disciplining and arranging the Army, till the enemy begin their operations, and then to govern ourselves accordingly.”
Almost everything in the Army had suffered direly from neglect, or despair or incompetent direction during that frightful winter at Valley Forge. . . at no period of the war,” Washington had to write Congress, “have I felt more painful sensations on account of delay than at present. . . .” Richard Henry Lee was to be more outspoken in a letter he soon was to write Thomas Jefferson: “For God’s sake, for the love of our country, my dear friend, let more vigorous measures be quickly adopted for re-enforcing the Army. The last draft will fall greatly short of the requisite number.”
It was now the end of April; 1778 thus far had been a nightmare of cabal and intrigue in command, and of pallor, hunger, tatters and foul odors at Valley Forge. For what torture of spirit must Washington now steel his soul? That very morning of April 30, he had written Henry Laurens an appeal for a half-pay bill and almost despairingly, had said:
I do not to this hour know whether (putting half-pay out of the question) the old or new establishment of the Regiments is to take place; how to dispose of the officers in consequence; whether the instituting of the several other corps, as agreed to by the committee, and referred by them to Congress, is adopted or not; in a word, I have no ground to form a single arrangement upon; nor do I know whether the augmentation of the Cavalry is to take place, or was rejected, in order that I may govern myself thereby. . . . In short, our present situation (now the first of May) is beyond description irksome and dangerous. . . .
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