Three days after Luzerne started for Philadelphia a committee of Delegates, headed by Philip Schuyler, arrived at camp to work with the Commander-in-Chief, under resolution of Congress, for the economical reorganization of the Army. Washington welcomed them gladly, and he held to his principle that the larger the information of Congressmen the better the prospect of discerning support by them. Schuyler and his colleagues observed the wretched condition and bad spirit of the soldiers. “Their patience,” the committee reported to Congress, “is exhausted.” More ominously, “Their starving condition, their want of pay, and the variety of hardships they have been driven to sustain, has soured their tempers and produced a spirit of discontent which begins to display itself under a complexion of the most alarming hue. . . .” A new line of communication with Congress was opened. If the committee would act for Congress and not merely report to it, Washington would have the benefit of a speed of decision he never had enjoyed previously.
This was the situation near the end of the first week of May. The troops were barely able to keep alive on the meagerest of rations; recruiting had to be pronounced as worse than slow; the enemy was close to victory in Carolina and suspiciously astir in New York; financial ruin apparently hung on the response of the States to the plan for calling in the old, discredited currency; the Army remained too weak for an offensive. In spite of all this, spring came symbolically to the wretched thousands encamped among the hills of Jersey, when on the morning of May 6, Washington received a letter from Lafayette dated at Boston Harbor, April 27, 1780, which read in its principal part:
Here I am, my dear general, and in the midst of the joy I feel in finding myself again one of your loving soldiers. I take but the time of telling you that I came from France on board of a fregatt which the king gave me for my passage. I have affairs of the utmost importance that I should at first communicate to you alone. In case my letter finds you any where this side of Philadelphia, I beg you will wait for me, and I do assure you a great public good may derive from it—tomorrow we go up to the town, and the day after I’ll set off in my usual way to join my belov’d and respected friend and general.
It was natural to surmise that the “affairs” of Lafayette’s letter related to the vital subject of assistance from His Most Christian Majesty—but in what manner and measure? Washington did not have long to wait. On May 10 Lafayette reached Morristown and, as soon as he could, confided the great news: Six French ships of the line and six thousand well-trained troops were to have left France for America early in April and should call at Rhode Island early in June. These allies were not to content themselves with half-measures but were to participate in joint operations for the capture of New York and its defenders, a task that Washington put above all others in desirability and possible results.
To Washington’s ears this was the best news that could have come at that season of gloom, and to his mind it was reassurance of that which he never had doubted for any length of time after the receipt in 1778 of the news of the French alliance. He “considered it,” Lafayette wrote later, “as deciding the successful issue of their affairs”; but it called for hard labor and a measure of cooperation on the part of Congress and the States beyond anything ever effected previously. Washington gave Lafayette the counsel the Marquis’s instructions bade him seek and then, as Lafayette went on to Philadelphia to confer with the French Minister and Congress, Washington wrestled with a new aspect of his old problem of subsistence: How would it be possible to meet the needs of the French reenforcements in a country where provisions were scarce and transportation was a mockery of everything the word ought to imply: A first essential, Washington reasoned at once, was the creation of a committee with authority to speak for Congress. When he came to ask for this, Congress acted promptly but did not confer adequate powers on the committee.
Within a fortnight, the General was overwhelmed with work. Little evidence was forthcoming of any response by the States to the call for troops; Washington no longer could persuade himself, as he had for a few days, that the French would reach America in time to raise the siege of Charleston. From that city, except for the announcement of the arrival of Woodford with his Virginia troops, all the news indicated that the British noose was being pulled remorselessly tighter. It seemed incredible that hope dropped so quickly from the height of Washington’s feeling when he heard that a French fleet and army were coming. After the first news and the initial rejoicing, everything went down, down, until the question, May we not end the war in this campaign? had become, Can we hold out till the French arrive? On May 25, as he reviewed the needs of the French and the effort America must sustain, he solemnly told the committee of Congress: “Drained and weakened as we already are, the exertions we shall make, though they may be too imperfect to secure success, will at any rate be such as to leave us in a state of relaxation and debility, from which it will be difficult if not impracticable to recover.” Then he added, as if he were reading the counts in an indictment posterity might draw of indolent America—“the country exhausted; the people dispirited; the consequence and reputation of these States in Europe sunk; our enemies deriving new credit, new confidence, new resources.”
Washington did not overwrite the tragedy of his Army. Some infantry companies had no more than four rank and file, with the average about fifteen; officers of three regiments were “so naked” they were “ashamed to come out of their huts”; the discontent of hungry men mounted daily; flour moved literally from wagon to hearth. Then, about May 21, the supply of meat failed completely. There was none in camp and no prospect of the early receipt of any.
About dusk on the twenty-fifth the drums began to roll in the camps of the Connecticut Line; in a few minutes word came to Washington that two regiments, the Fourth and the Eighth, were in armed, defiant mutiny. The Connecticut soldiers were ten days behind in their allowance of meat. They had been on the parade for hours, “growling like sore dogs,” and after a sullen evening roll call, a private who was rebuked by the Adjutant suddenly called out, “Who will parade with me?” The whole Eighth Regiment fell in and formed. In a short time, the Fourth Connecticut joined the Eighth. Fortunately, the troops waited irresolutely a few minutes before they decided to go to the camp of the Third and Sixth Connecticut to arouse them. During this brief pause officers ran ahead and gave warning. The soldiers of the quiet regiments were ordered to parade immediately without their arms. After the men hurried out, a guard was thrown between them and their huts so that they could not procure their muskets. Some violence followed; Col. Return Meigs was stabbed with a bayonet; for a few seconds the issue hung on the heating or cooling of temper; presently the mutineers went angrily to their own camps. Courageously, the officers appealed to the men. One after another urged the mutineers to lay down their arms. The pleas, otherwise in vain, served one purpose: they kept the troublemakers quiet while Stewart’s Brigade of the Pennsylvania Line was moved out and thrown around the camp of the Connecticut troops. Would the Pennsylvanians act as guards or would they join the mutiny? Officers, conferring quickly, decided to take no chances. The line was withdrawn; the Connecticut regiments were left to cool down. They stirred about in darkness for a time and then returned to their quarters. Col. Walter Stewart thereupon visited them and prevailed on them to present their complaints in disciplined fashion.
The causes of discontent were indisputably the hunger of the men and the failure of Congress to put any money in their hands for five months. In deepest concern, Washington had to admit that unless food, at least, was supplied, mutiny might break out again and the Army disband. To every official who might find provisions for the Army, immediate calls were sent. The Commissary General was in Philadelphia and was doing his utmost to find meat; but he had to write on May 27: “I am loaded with debt and have not had a shilling this two months.” That day, a little meat was received at camp and was issued; on the twenty-eighth the situation again seemed almost hopeless. Lafayette, who had returned from Philadelphia to Morris
town, was appalled to see how low the forces had fallen. “An Army that is reduced to nothing,” he wrote Joseph Reed, “that wants provisions, that has not one of the necessary means to make war, such is the situation wherein I found our troops, and however prepared I could have been to this unhappy sight, by our past distresses, I confess I had no idea of such an extremity.” Washington told the same Pennsylvania leader: “Every idea you can form of our distresses will fall short of the reality. . . . If you were on the spot . . . ; if you could see what difficulties surround us on every side, how unable we are to administer to the most ordinary calls of the service, you would be convinced that . . . we have everything to dread. Indeed, I have almost ceased to hope.”
The twenty-ninth and the daylight hours of the thirtieth dragged by in misery. Then, late in the night, a messenger brought from Col. Elias Dayton a copy of an extra edition of Rivington’s Gazette: Charleston had fallen. Its garrison and all arms and equipment had been surrendered May 12. Washington forwarded the paper to the President of Congress with no comment on the effect of what he styled simply “this unfortunate event,” but he looked squarely into the face of calamity: “Certain I am,” he told Joseph Jones, “unless Congress speaks in a more decisive tone; unless they are vested with powers by the several States competent to the great purposes of war, or assume them as matter of right; and they, and the States respectively, act with more energy than they hitherto have done, that our cause is lost.” Details of the loss of Charleston were so slow in reaching Congress and the Army through American channels that some were tempted to doubt the authenticity of the published report, though it contained documents not easily disputed. Others credited the report and wondered whether it would arouse the public. If that happened, said Reed, “heavy as it now appears,” the disaster might “prove a real blessing to the country.”
In order to meet the enemy’s main effort, wherever directed, Washington on June 2 called for seventeen thousand militia, with instructions to rendezvous, fully armed, at designated stations by July 15. He asked a council of war on June 6 how he best could employ the twenty-four thousand he would have, presumably, by the time the state battalions were filled June 20; but the very night after the council he heard from Colonel Dayton at Elizabeth Town that the enemy had landed in force at nearby De Hart’s Point and was advancing. As Washington could not afford to permit the British to march at will to the district where his heavy cannon were parked and his meager supplies stored, he decided to march his troops towards the hostile column and maneuver without engaging. By afternoon Washington was in the Short Hills that overlook Springfield. Gratifying news awaited him. Dayton’s Regiment of Maxwell’s Brigade had been joined promptly by the militia of the neighborhood, who had fought stubbornly and shrewdly. The advance of the enemy had been retarded with a determination that had led the foe, after reaching Springfield Bridge, to retire a short distance to high ground northwest of Connecticut Farms, a settlement about two and a half miles southeast of Springfield. There the enemy had thrown up a breastwork in front of which skirmishing continued all afternoon.
Surprise over the rally of the militiamen and the hesitation of the British was deepened the next morning, June 8, by the discovery that the invaders had withdrawn to De Hart’s Point. Was the advance merely an attempt to cover an operation on the Hudson? Washington suspected this and sent cavalry to enlarge his range of vision at the same time that he organized under Brig. Gen. Edward Hand a force of five hundred to harass the enemy from the woods. Reconnaissance showed that the British intended to hold De Hart’s Point, at least temporarily, though some of the invaders were being withdrawn to Staten Island. The British commander at De Hart’s Point, identified as Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen, proceeded to throw a pontoon bridge to the mainland and move baggage and mounted troops back and forth to Staten Island—as if he intended to remain indefinitely near Elizabeth Town and threaten severance of communications between the Hudson and the South. “Our situation,” said Washington on June 14, “is as embarrassing as you can imagine,” and then he had to add: “When they unite their force, it will be infinitely more so.”
Knyphausen waited; the American Commander-in-Chief could not hope to do more than maneuver slowly with broken-down teams or resist awkwardly when assailed. Even that much seemed doubtful. The States were indolently backward in meeting the requisitions for men and money, meat and drink, flour and forage, without which the Army could not even hang together. The Delegates in Philadelphia and the committee at Headquarters were pressing their pleas, but Congress, in the words of a Virginia member, was at the time “little more than the medium through which the wants of the Army are conveyed to the States.” Washington saw the long days of June slipping past with scarcely anything accomplished to make cooperation with the French more than mocking promise and futile hope.
Washington learned, approximately June 18, that Gates had been directed to take charge of the Southern Department in succession to the captured Lincoln, who was credited with a good defence of Charleston. Intelligence reports to Headquarters on and after the eighteenth indicated that six men-of-war and at least sixty-five other sails had reached New York—almost certainly Clinton’s returning veterans of the Carolina campaign who might proceed directly against West Point. Precautionary orders were issued for vigilance and victualling at the Hudson River posts and for putting the main Army in condition to move, but nothing of importance occurred until June 20. Then Washington heard that six British ships had sailed up the Hudson as far as Verplanck’s and had dropped down the river again. This made him suspicious. If a powerful surprise attack was about to be made on West Point, he was too far away. On the other hand, until this hostile move was certain, he could not afford to be so far north that troops from Staten Island could get astride his communications in New Jersey. His solution was to leave Greene to watch and, if need be, delay the movement of the British on the island and the shore nearby, while the main Army proceeded cautiously to Pompton. From Pompton three or four good marches would carry the troops to West Point.
One day was all the men spent on the road with their faces to the North. During the night of June 22/23, Washington received two dispatches from Greene, who was puzzled by his intelligence reports. In mid-morning there arrived from Greene, near Springfield, this alarming message: “The enemy are out on their march towards this place in full force, having received a considerable reenforcement last night.” That was enough; soon the soldiers were marching back to support Greene. Nothing more was heard from that officer until, in the early afternoon, he reported the enemy driving on Springfield and moving as if to get in his rear. Then, after sunset Washington received news that the British had forced the Americans out of Springfield, burned the village and withdrawn swiftly, as if they were going all the way to Elizabeth Town.
The next morning Washington heard that the Redcoats had abandoned their position on Jersey soil. Their troops had moved across to Staten Island on the pontoon bridge and taken it up. Now none of the King’s soldiers remained in the State. Washington could surmise only that West Point remained the objective of the British; and as the removal of supplies from Morristown relieved him of the necessity of guarding that base, he proceeded towards the Hudson. He advanced the main Army on July 1 to Preakness, there to rest his men, await the drafts from the States and prepare for the coming of the French.
The familiar administrative vexations of command plagued Washington from the very day the Army pitched its tents at Preakness. Expensive, devouring militia were dismissed as soon as it was apparent that West Point was not in immediate danger, but the suffering, poverty and bitterness of men in the Continental service were as bad as ever they had been, perhaps worse. Washington had an embarrassment in the fact that Robert Livingston, as well as Schuyler, now was insisting that a more vigorous man than Howe was needed at West Point, even though Washington saw to it that Steuben remained there and advised with Howe. Livingston’s proposal was that the citadel be assigned Arnold. Arnold
, himself, en route to Connecticut on private business, stopped at Headquarters and remarked that he wanted field command but doubted if he was physically equal to it. On returning from Connecticut, he made the same statement and intimated that he would like the assignment at West Point.
The advent of July brought no improvement. Washington had to admit that not more than thirty men had reported, of all the thousands asked of the States. Small and doubtful as was the support of the States, it had to be divided. Gates must have every man and all the supplies that Virginia and the Carolinas would furnish, but more than this Washington did not think he could spare after Clinton returned north. For his part, Gates was receiving many congratulations on his new assignment, but he confessed privately his dismay at succeeding “To the command of an army without strength, a military chest without money, a Department apparently deficient in public spirit, and a climate that increases despondency instead of animating the soldier’s arm. . . .”
The whole inhuman tragedy was deepened now by uncertainty regarding the continuance of the dribble of stores Greene and his deputies had been able to divert to the Army. Congress was hammering again on the reorganization of the Quartermaster Department, and in circumstances that presaged an upheaval. Washington thought the proposed plan about as good as any that could be fitted to limitations that could not be overcome, but it was doubtful whether Greene would agree to remain as Quartermaster General or whether, in event the Rhode Islander and his deputies retired, the most essential requirements of the troops could be met. So desperate was the plight of the Army that Washington began to fear that the French might come, see the helplessness of America, and sail away. He gave warning: “If we do not avail ourselves of their succor by the most decisive and energetic steps on our part, the aid they so generously bring, may prove our ruin, and at best it will be in such case among the most unfortunate events next to that of absolute ruin, that could have befallen us.”
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