So nearly convinced was the General of the certainty of powerful French naval aid that on October 4, he called on the nearby States for twelve thousand militia to serve three months. For a time the enemy seemed even less in doubt about the coming of a strong French fleet than Washington was. The British evacuated King’s Ferry on October 22 and carried down the Hudson all their cannon, equipment and supplies. By the thirtieth, Washington learned something still more important—that the British had left Newport on the night of October 25 without committing any serious depredation. These moves were strong evidence that the British were concentrating at New York in anticipation of early attack there. This seemed ample reason for transferring Gates’s troops from Rhode Island to the Hudson and moving the main Army farther down that river. Washington made these arrangements swiftly and waited, in dwindling hope and growing surprise over the paucity of news from the South. Then, on November 15, the ugly truth was disclosed in dispatches from Philadelphia: The French and American attack on Savannah had failed; d’Estaing had been wounded; Pulaski had received mortal hurt; the siege had been abandoned; the French had sailed back to the West Indies.
Washington took care not to magnify the defeat, but he completed pending measures of defence, stopped all possible financial outlay, and took steps to put the Army in winter quarters. In keeping the Army together despite desperate hardships, Washington would require compact camps as close as possible to whatever meat and grain and forage the country could supply. This necessity was made absolute by the insistence of Commissary General Wadsworth that his resignation be accepted. Washington lost also the colorful and mercurial Sullivan, whose ill health forced resignation. Alexander McDougall was suffering from stone in the bladder and must have a quiet post; Putnam was on leave and was feeble; Gates declined the post on the Hudson and went home to Virginia for the winter. Even if Washington succeeded in getting all his troops close together and ridding himself of duties he considered those of the Clothier General, he would be taxed to the limit of his endurance.
With little loss of time, Washington marched the troops from the middle and southern States to Morristown, New Jersey, where Greene had chosen position for each brigade. When Washington himself started from West Point for that town at the end of November, he had reached the end of a campaign during which he had been wiser and more fortunate than he realized. Sir Henry Clinton had expected in the spring of 1779 that with reenforcement from England he could seize King’s Ferry and lure Washington to the Valley of the Hudson where either he could defeat the Americans or drive them into the highlands and then destroy their communications. Clinton blamed the late arrival of Arbuthnot’s fleet for his inability to give battle to Washington early in the spring. After that, the British Commander confessed, “nothing . . . could draw [Washington] from North Windsor.” Washington’s refusal to be tempted to unequal combat had been responsible for the frustration of this part of his adversary’s plan.
In the next phase of the campaign, the daring that Washington had displayed in the seizure of Stony Point likewise had yielded larger returns than he had claimed. At the time Wayne took Stony Point, Clinton was expecting four regiments from the West Indies and was making ready for a move on their arrival. Later, the British Commander told an English friend he was so much retarded by having to garrison and restore Stony Point and Verplanck’s that he abandoned plans for a new offensive.
Washington reached Morristown December 1, opened Headquarters at the residence of Mrs. Jacob Ford and turned to problems of a different sort. He had to keep an eye on certain indications of a British raid up Long Island Sound and he had to study the defensive security of Morristown, but his main problem was that of trying to determine in conference with Lincoln’s messenger, who was John Laurens, and with a committee of two members of Congress whether substantial help could be dispatched Lincoln, or Spain be induced to organize a diversion in Florida. The decision was to send the Virginia regiments and perhaps the remnant of Baylor’s Cavalry, along with the North Carolinians. Stirling declined the command because, on arrival in South Carolina, he would outrank Lincoln, whom he was unwilling to replace. As a result, the troops started their march under Brig. Gen. William Woodford.
The soldiers who took the road were less to be pitied than those who remained at Morristown in an early winter of cruel severity, where half-naked and even shoeless men had to fell stubborn trees to get timber for huts. Wretched as these men were, Washington had to devise ways of prevailing on them to reenlist, because he stood to lose by May 1, 1780, no less than eight thousand through expiration of service.
Thin ranks and filthy tatters had their usual wintry concomitant of hunger. Congress made desperate appeals for flour, but it could not overcome the loss because of the drought, nor could it prevail on farmers to accept paper money otherwise than at discounts that inflated millions of debt. When bitter December was half over, Washington had to warn the middle States that unless aid were given immediately, “there is every appearance that the Army will infallibly disband in a fortnight.” The sailing of an estimated five thousand British soldiers from New York, presumably for Georgia, was reported at a time when, as he had to inform the Clothier General, a great part of the Army “could not move on the most pressing exigency” for lack of shoes.
CHAPTER / 15
Discomfort, chill and misgiving attended the birth of 1780 at Morristown. In the absence of furloughed Generals, the business of the Army took so much of Washington’s time that he felt he was not devoting himself as he should to the “military parts” of his task. He was isolated as well as burdened, because Congress had ordered the dismissal of the expresses in order to save the cost of the service. Communication was rendered more nearly impossible and all the miseries of camp were made torture by extreme cold. On January 2 and 3 a storm piled up snow drifts of four to six feet, with temperature so low that prolonged venture out of doors was self-murder. For weeks before the storm, bread had been scarce. On the first of the cruel new month, some of the regiments ate the last of their meat; the second found still more of the troops with nothing except their meagre, unpalatable bread. Some increase in ration was arranged on the third. After that, the badness of the public credit, added to the severity of the weather, reduced almost to nil the provisions offered the Commissaries. Washington was not sure he could provide three days’ rations even for the equivalent of one full company, assigned to special duty. Nathanael Greene broke out: “Poor fellows! They exhibit a picture truly distressing—more than half naked and two thirds starved. A country overflowing with plenty are now suffering an Army, employed for the defence of everything that is dear and valuable, to perish for want of food.”
The Continentals were patient because they were powerless, so long as the storm roared over Jersey, but as soon as they could make their way, many of those who had clothing began to slip away from their quarters. Marauding parties robbed nearby farms of food and wandered about in the darkness almost as they pleased. Washington asked himself, Would it not be less of a hardship to the natives for the Commissaries to determine what the farmers could provide, and then to take this, making lawful compensation, rather than to have the householders lose even the bread of the children to desperate prowlers? Action was dictated as soon as the question was put. Provisions in surprising volume were accumulated; within a few days Washington’s immediate task became one of transportation. It was not easy to get the meat, grain and flour to camp, with the few and hungry teams of the Army.
For a time, then, the troops would have full rations with which to combat the continuing cold, but this was reprieve and not release from the threat of famine. The weather grew colder and colder. Travelers soon were crossing the Hudson on the ice at King’s Ferry; passage of North River to and from Powles Hook was practicable about January 19 even for heavy cannon on trucks. Once the fury of the lashing wind and the pelting snow had subsided, the worst sufferers were Lord Stirling’s men, who were sent on a vain raid January 15 in the hope of
catching the British garrison of Staten Island off guard. Numbers of Americans were frostbitten; a sergeant and sixteen men were captured; the failure was complete. In every respect the Army continued to decline. The roster was swollen with men listed as “absent, sick”; some companies were almost without officers, while others had more than regulations permitted. Because of lack of clothing, one Captain wrote, “many a good lad [had] nothing to cover him from his hips to his toes, save his blanket.” The greatest shortage was in the most critical item—shoes.
While doing everything possible to relieve the misery of his benumbed troops, Washington had to seek recruits for 1780. He previously had outlined to Congress a plan for meeting uniformly by annual draft the deficiency in the quota of each state, but he could not prevail on the Delegates to act. Nor could he hold his half-frozen little Army to full vigilance. Although the General had given warning, the advanced parties at Elizabeth Town and Newark permitted themselves to be surprised on January 25—with the loss of more than sixty men and considerable damage to property.
About two weeks later, on the night of February 11/12, when a new snow still lay heavily on Headquarters, a hardy rider brought Washington a dispatch in which Arthur St. Clair reported that hostile parties had made an incursion into American positions—three from Staten Island and one from Powles Hook. The objective of the largest force appeared to be Elizabeth Town, but withdrawal was rapid after the American guard had been found on the alert. Little or nothing was done by detachments that went to Woodbridge and Rahway. About three hundred cavalry came from Powles Hook to Hackensack and apparently started towards Morristown but turned back because of the depth of the snow. Many officers believed this column hoped to capture Washington himself and that the weather had defeated the attempt. Next came news that an outpost near White Plains had been surprised February 2 and that the greater part of five companies of infantry had been killed or captured—an altogether discreditable affair. Then, on the nineteenth, the British attempted another raid on Newark, but they met with swift challenge and quickly retired.
One of the principal reasons for these humiliating affairs was the continuing absence of officers. The greater part of those who could find any excuse for leaving the Army during the winter procured furloughs, which Washington indulgently granted for periods unduly long. The officers who remained at their posts were overworked and, in some instances, incapacitated by sickness. In the New York regiments, no less than sixty-four ensigns, lieutenants and captains were preparing a paper to ask the privilege of leaving the service because they thought their state had failed to make decent provision for them. The General was alarmed and depressed by this disintegration of command, but he had two contrasting assurances that may have comforted him: Benedict Arnold, who had had charges brought against him in Philadelphia, soon was to return to field-duty; Charles Lee would not come back.
Arnold was convicted on two charges—that he had given permission for a ship to leave Philadelphia without the permission of the State authorities or the Commander-in-Chief, and that he had used wagons of the State of Pennsylvania to transport his personal property and that of certain disaffected residents of Philadelphia, but his punishment was to be only a reprimand in General Orders. As for Lee, he wrote Congress arrogantly in January that he had heard of a plan to strike his name from the Army list. Delegates, he said, must know him very little “if they suppose that I would accept of their money since the confirmation of the wicked and infamous sentence which was passed upon me.” Congress took him at his word and terminated his service.
There was no assurance that spring would bring a sufficient number of recruits for offensive operations. Congress was hesitant and blind in assigning quotas. When Delegates finally agreed on February 9 that the call should be for a total of 35,211 men, Washington saw immediately that even if he promptly dispatched estimates to the States of the forces they were to furnish, they would not have six weeks in which to raise and equip the recruits and get these men to the assigned rendezvous by April 1, the date designated in the resolution. With the calendar confronting him, and the Treasury without funds, Washington had to face the likelier probability he had described to Steuben just before Congress acted: “I imagine we must of necessity adopt the principle of a defensive campaign and pursue a system of the most absolute economy.” Even for this defensive, Washington thought a force of close to 24,000 infantry would be necessary, and he did not know where he could procure sufficient small arms if he had the men. So it was with nearly all equipment needed for 1780. Everything was scarce; prices were rising fast.
These new distresses came when the February snows were melting and the roads were bottomless in mud. Everything seemed, once more, to be collapsing simultaneously. Forage was almost exhausted with no future supply assured. The store of meat, if dealt out scantily, might suffice until almost the end of April, but disappointing deliveries and bad roads made it probable the men would have no bread after March 22.
Congress had neither specie nor credit, but when it saw its Army in danger of falling into fragments it goaded itself to a three-fold reform. The first phase of this was a determination of the quotas it would impose on the States in accordance with a plan of direct requisition. In theory, provisions were to be furnished by the States according to their special resources. Washington’s somewhat embarrassed criticisms had to shape themselves to the further warning that the provisions asked of the States would not suffice for the Army. To Philip Schuyler he confided that if some parts of the plan were adhered to, “ruin must follow.” Along with this desperate adventure in the supply of provisions, Congress began a painful study of the reorganization of the Quartermaster Department, though even the inquiry, without specific action, made Greene more sensitive than ever and sharpened his suspicion that Mifflin was seeking to revive the cabal against Washington. The third phase of reform was an effort to give stability to paper money. During two months of intermittent debate, conditions went from wretched to ruinous and compelled a bewildered Congress to agree March 18 on a plan to stop the further printing of unsecured paper money and reissue a limited amount of Continental currency that could be held, it hoped, as a ratio of forty to one.
Of every phase of these ills, Washington could have written dismally and of some despairingly. The enemy raided Paramus on March 22 and might threaten even West Point. If further help was to be sent Lincoln from the main Army, it must start soon; but how could Washington spare men? Seven thousand Continentals only were left in the Jersey camps; of these, about thirteen hundred would terminate their service in May. In the foreground, hourly, remorselessly, were hunger and cold. As of March 25, Washington wrote: “The Army is now upon a most scanty allowance, and is seldom at the expiration of one day certain of a morsel of bread for the next.” At the end of the month, eight inches of snow remained on the ground, and the misery of the troops seemed almost past redemption.
Slow communication with the South obscured Lincoln’s defence of Charleston, but Washington feared that a concentration in that town of the small American forces might involve the loss of the whole. The first decision at Headquarters was to send the Army’s Chief Engineer, Duportail, and Harry Lee’s light horse to South Carolina. Next, the reported embarkation at New York of 2500 British troops led Washington to order the Delaware Regiment and the Maryland Line to start the long march southward. It was doubtful whether provisions and transportation for these troops could be found, but Washington reasoned that if they could reach South Carolina they would be valuable in any situation that might develop after the disaster that seemed almost certain at Charleston.
These days of preparation for a cruelly long journey were made hideous by the nearer approach of starvation. Greene feared the horses would perish before the forage to be supplied by the States would reach the stables. Cattle had to be killed to keep them from starving. On April 12, Washington was compelled to write: “We have not at this day one ounce of meat, fresh or salt in the magazine” and he did not know
of any in transit, or procurable within reach of the Army that would suffice for more than three or four days. By the fourteenth the only issue was of bread. This was supplemented by the later arrival of some salted provisions. After this was consumed, the men at Morristown would have to keep alive, if they could, on what the Commissaries could find and deliver day by day.
With an adequate division of duty, Washington should have been able to rely on the Commissaries to do whatever was possible while he devoted himself to general command, or else, if he had to feed the Army and the horses, he should have been able to deputize other men for administration. As it was, he had now to pay the price of his generosity in granting furloughs to senior officers. The nearer the time of opening the campaign, the heavier and more cumbersome his burdens were. A pleasant, but expensive and irksome duty was the entertainment of the French Minister, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, with whom Washington had exchanged letters on the probability of early assistance from the Court of Versailles. Luzerne arrived at Morristown April 19, accompanied by his entourage and by the Spanish agent, Don Juan de Miralles. All that the poor camp could offer Washington tendered his guests—the pomp of welcome, a formal review, a visit to the outposts, and even participation in a fast day ordered by Congress. The General tried to make it plain to Luzerne that America was determined to fight until her independence was acknowledged by Great Britain but did not attempt to conceal from the Minister the condition of the Army, and he could not have done so had he tried. Luzerne left camp convinced “more than ever,” as he wrote his government, “of the very great advantage which the republic derives from [Washington’s] services.”
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