Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Then the uprising faded into the background, with this singular effect: The departure of Howe’s column of fifteen hundred to suppress the mutiny left the Commander-in-Chief so little to do that he became bored. In his dull and narrowed field Washington’s correspondence underwent a change. Friends in England were free to write again. Among them was the master of Belvoir in the days before the war, George William Fairfax, who seemed unchanged in spirit. His wife, the beloved Sally Cary Fairfax, was alive and in improving health. Washington answered his letter as if there had been no break in their letter-writing and expressed the friendly hope that these long-loved neighbors would return to Virginia and reside at Mount Vernon till their own house, which had been burned, could be rebuilt. This message from the Fairfaxes was exceptional. Some from former acquaintances were anything but gratifying.

  Nearly the whole of official life at Newburgh was unpalatable. Washington resolved to get away from it temporarily, and set out on the eighteenth for Albany, Saratoga, Lake George, Ticonderoga, the lower end of Lake Champlain, Crown Point and Putnam’s Point. Then, starting south again, he went via Schenectady to Fort Schuyler, over the portage to Wood Creek and on to Lake Oneida. It was August 4 when Washington again reached Albany, and the sixth when he went back to his office at Newburgh.

  At Newburgh Washington found a letter in which James McHenry, now a member of Congress from Maryland, intimated that the Delegates soon would summon the Commander-in-Chief to Princeton. The General would have preferred to remain at Newburgh until a single journey would carry him home. As it was, as soon as his wife recovered from a fever, he set off for Princeton. In the homage he received on the road, and through newspapers and letters, he found daily accumulating proof of a sort no man could minimize that he had become a national hero. At Princeton the Delegates had voted that an equestrian statue of him be erected at the permanent seat of government, and they received Washington cordially in a formal session August 26.

  Army correspondence and meetings with committees of Congress on a peace-time Army and Indian relations were atonement to the military conscience of Washington for a variety of social affairs. In acknowledgment of hospitality shown him, Washington entertained Congress September 5 and seated his guests for dinner in a marquee captured from the British. Now that he did not have the burdens of war on his heart, the change in his expression was apparent to all. He weighed 209 when he left the Hudson, and “his front,” said David Howell of Rhode Island, was “uncommonly open and pleasant, the contracted, pensive phiz, betokening deep thought and much care, which I noticed on Prospect Hill, in 1775, is done away.” Washington probably enjoyed this festivity more than he thought he should while the country still had no assurance that peace actually had come; and he found pleasure in arranging for the distribution of badges of the Society of the Cincinnati, to the presidency of which the officers who organized this mild counterpart of a European order had elected him. His largest satisfaction must have been in welcoming Nathanael Greene, who reached Princeton at the end of the first week in October on his way to his home in Rhode Island. Apart from this, Washington was holding the reinless tightly on his impatience. He wanted news of the signing of the definitive treaty, wanted to discharge his last duties to the Army and the country—and wanted after that to live his old life of planter, land owner and traveler.

  While he was chafing, word came about October 12 that Sir Guy Carleton intended to begin in November the evacuation of the area around New York. Congress accepted this assurance and proceeded to release the men enlisted for service “during the war.” Simultaneously the Delegates accepted the resignation of Lincoln as Secretary of War and to Washington, rather than to him, was assigned the duty of announcing to the troops full release from service. Long association prompted a personal message by Washington to the soldiers who remained under his direct orders at the end, and to avoid any suggestion that he was partial to these men, he addressed himself in “Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States,” a plural he seldom had employed.

  About November 1 the news that justified the orders reached Princeton: The definitive treaty had been signed in Paris on September 3. Although a peace of independence was a reality, negotiations had been spread over so long a time that delay had stripped the climax of all its trappings. Washington now lingered at Princeton only for a final decision in Congress on the inclusion of more of his officers in the promotion by brevet that previously had been approved for some. He hoped also that a conclusion could be reached on the size of the Army to be maintained; but when a vote on this issue became impossible because a sufficient number of States were not represented in Congress, the General rode back to West Point with two objects to accomplish before he started home. He would add what he could to his pleas for loyal support of the union of the States and he would see that New York and its environs were restored to American sovereignty with the least possible disorder and no reprisal. He found that the officers at West Point wished to present him an address in answer to his farewell orders. This paper, delivered to him on the fifteenth, proved to be rhetorically much better than the one to which it was a reply: “We sincerely pray God this happiness may long be yours, and that, when you quit the stage of human life, you may receive from the Unerring Judge the rewards of valor exerted to save the oppressed—of patriotism and disinterested virtue.”

  At the time of Washington’s receipt of the officers’ address, the evacuation of New York by the British and its occupation by the Americans was the theme of correspondence, polite as between Washington and Carleton but most embarrassing on the part of Washington and of Gov. George Clinton. The reason was not political. The awkwardness was in the familiar lack of money: Washington did not have funds to pay for moving the Army to New York and had to ask Clinton for an official loan of $2000. When his Excellency the Governor of New York had to admit that his treasury did not possess that much, the Quartermaster General appealed to Philadelphia for cash or bills on anyone who would accept them immediately. By the middle of November it was the understanding of Washington that the last of the enemy’s troops would leave New York on the twenty-third, and, on November 20, he issued his last official paper at West Point and rode to Day’s Tavern in the village of Harlem.

  The first day at Harlem brought disappointment, Carleton sent notice that his troops could not complete withdrawal from New York on the twenty-third. Then came bad weather that might hold the British longer. Washington could do nothing except wait. On the twenty-fourth, Carleton gave notice that he would complete the evacuation the following day at noon. Nothing of importance occurred while the troops made ready for their last and greatest march.

  The next morning, Washington, Clinton and their attendants rode southward. The enemy had disappeared now; Knox and his troops had proceeded downtown. The design was for the military to occupy the streets and assure good order. Then Clinton was to enter the city and assume its administration. Although Washington was the man of all others the people wished to see, he came, by his own desire, as a spectator and guest of Clinton. The second stage of the symbolic events of the day was to be the formal welcome and celebration.

  At the Bull’s Head Tavern the cavalcade waited, close to a throng of rejoicing citizens. At length all was ready. Washington touched his horse; Clinton started at the same moment. Their escort was the Westchester Light Dragoons. Past crowds that cheered and shouted and cried for joy, the column moved slowly to Tea Water Pump in Chatham Street and drew rein. When civilians assembled there joined the cavalcade, the procession started again. On Broadway Washington found the troops who had formed line to do honor to him and to Clinton. New Yorkers watched tearfully and reminiscently. “We had been accustomed for a long time,” a woman spectator wrote years later, “to military display in all the finish and finery of garrison life; the troops just leaving us were as if equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms, made a brilliant display; the troops that marched in, on the contrary, were ill-clad and we
ather beaten, and made a forlorn appearance; but then they were our troops, and as I looked at them and thought upon all they had done and suffered for us, my heart and my eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more, because they were weather beaten and forlorn.”

  There followed during the next week a succession of elaborate dinners. A higher pleasure came to Washington in other ways unnumbered. Fully did he possess abounding measure of the reward he cherished most, the good will of honest men, good will won by the devoted service he had rendered them.

  Washington waited to see the back of the last Redcoat. Carleton wrote that, if wind and weather permitted, he hoped to leave December 4 with the last of his troops. Washington shaped his plans so that he could start home as soon as it was certain Sir Guy was going or had departed. Not an hour would Washington remain beyond the time all danger of a clash of arms had ended. In Philadelphia he would settle his accounts, and, as quickly as he might, go to Annapolis, where Congress was to meet, and return his commission. Then—home and a private life!

  Before he started he must say farewell to the officers who remained with the troops. Gratitude, affection and courtesy alike prompted Washington to a last meeting. Twelve o’clock would be a suitable hour and Fraunces’ Tavern the most convenient place for saying farewell to the officers. Notice to that effect was passed. Arrangements were made for a barge to be in waiting at nearby Whitehall to carry him to Powles Hook, where he would take horse. Steuben would go with him as far as Philadelphia, and a few dragoons would be in attendance, but the cavalcade, including the servants, would be small.

  Washington entered the long room at Fraunces’ soon after the clock struck the hour. He found there nearly all the officers who had entered the city on the twenty-fifth and all the others who could assemble on short notice. They were not a large company, nor were many of them exalted in rank. If all who stood when Washington entered were not renowned, they were typical of the hundreds who had remained at their posts in poverty and shabbiness while their families at home had pinched and patched though speculating neighbors had grown fat. Now, as the last representatives of a vanishing Army, they were looking at their commander and awaiting his word.

  Washington did not succeed in going through even the form of refreshment, but he did achieve composure enough to fill a glass with wine, as if inviting the gentlemen to do the same. Passing this wine had the effect of permitting the officers to get a grip on themselves. By the time they had drunk it, Washington’s emotions had risen so high that tears were blinding him. “I cannot come to each of you,” he said in a faltering voice, “but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.” Chance fixed it that, in the absence of Greene, the soldier best entitled to be first among them was nearest at hand. Henry Knox stepped forward silently and held out his hand; Washington extended his own, but as he looked into those honest eyes he could not say farewell with a handshake. Impulsively he put his arms around Knox and, weeping, kissed his Chief of Artillery. Once done, this had of course to be done with all, from Steuben to the youngest officer. With streaming eyes, they came to him, received the embrace and passed on.

  Washington could not endure it long. When the last weeping officer had been embraced, the General walked across the room, raised his arm in an all-inclusive, silent farewell and passed out of the tavern. The wharf was crowded with men and women of every station. Many held up children to look at the tall man who had to set his mouth and keep taut the muscles of his face lest he could not bear the parting. Without a word he climbed into the barge. At a nod from an officer the boat was shoved off. Again, Washington made that all-inclusive gesture of farewell.

  The ceremonies at New York made Washington more conscious than ever that he was saying good-bye to men and places associated with the highest satisfactions and most agonizing misery of his Revolutionary career. His desire to retire was in no way diminished, but the feeling of separation took on a poignancy that showed in the papers he had David Humphreys draft as answers to addresses delivered to him as he progressed to Philadelphia. Along with this feeling, was strengthened conviction that Providence had intervened for the achievement of American independence, which it was the duty of all honest men to preserve through justice, vigilance and right conduct. That became Washington’s creed.

  As he approached Philadelphia December 8, he found awaiting him at Frankfort the President of the Executive Council, now John Dickinson, together with Robert Morris, Arthur St. Clair, Edward Hand, and the notables of the town. The familiar City Troop of Light Horse was present to act as escort of honor. With Congress still absent, the citizens had opportunity of welcoming Washington when they were not eclipsed by the Delegates; and they indulged in bountiful, unrestrained celebration.

  He had much to do besides shake hands with delegations, attend dinners and carry on his correspondence, mercifully lighter now. Of nothing was he more solicitous in his sojourn to Philadelphia than that all his accounts and documents should be transported with the same attention that had been given to transcribing and packing them. He purposed to store these at Mount Vernon and make them available to historians when Congress thought proper to open its archives. Washington’s other concern was for settlement of the accounts from the time he had notified Congress June 16, 1775, that he would accept nothing for his services other than his expenses. He had interpreted this to mean the cost of equipment and utensils, travel, entertaining, and everything he would have purchased if he had been living away from home as a private individual on the scale he maintained at Mount Vernon. The total was accepted without question by the Comptroller of the Treasury, James Milligan, whose generous settlement undoubtedly conformed to the wishes of Congress. Washington, for his part, turned into the Treasury an unexpended balance of $27,770 from the military chest.

  By the morning of the fifteenth the discharge of business had reached the stage that permitted Washington to cross the Schuylkill, homeward bound. For a short distance, the City Troop and a number of citizens attended the General, but after they turned back, Washington, Humphreys and Benjamin Walker, a recent addition to his staff, had no companions except the servants. The General, as usual, rode fast and before darkness reached the vicinity of Wilmington, Delaware. There the Governor and Council and a company of old army officers and representatives of the state and town met him, welcomed him heartily, and gave him a salute of thirteen guns. Hard riding carried the General on the seventeenth to Baltimore, where the next day he had another dinner and, in the evening, a ball that lasted till 2 A.M. He was in the saddle December 19 with the explanation that he must hurry on because he had promised Martha to dine with her on Christmas at Mount Vernon. A few miles outside Annapolis, when a number of gentlemen met Washington to escort him into the city, he found Gen. William Smallwood of the Maryland Line among them and, perhaps to his surprise, General Gates.

  Congress had ajourned at Princeton on November 4 to meet in Annapolis on the twenty-sixth, but it had not been able to count a quorum until December 13. Even now, seven States only were represented. For the purposes of the General, as Congress was the body from which he had received his commission it was also the body to which he joyfully would return it; so, on the morning of the twentieth, with his letter of resignation, Washington waited on the President of Congress, newly elected to that office but an old acquaintance who had been under suspicion during the Conway cabal—no less a person than Thomas Mifflin. After Washington’s letter was read, the Delegates voted to entertain him on the twenty-second and receive him in person December 23.

  From the hour of his coming it seemed that every official, every lawmaker and every other person of means and station in Annapolis wished to honor Washington and be in his presence at least once before his departure which, it was understood, would be immediately after he had returned his commission to Congress. Some of the time not consumed by entertainment had to be spent in completing a letter on the final odds and ends of public business for the consideration of th
e Delegates; the responses to the addresses had to be reviewed after Humphreys and Walker had drafted them; hours must have been devoted to the preparation of the brief statement Washington intended to read when he appeared before Congress. He wrote it himself, word by word, and then reviewed it with like care.

  The morning of the twenty-third he started for the State House and, exactly at noon, presented himself with two aides at the chamber where Congress was sitting. The messenger bowed and asked the gentlemen to wait. In a moment the attendant was back with Charles Thomson, who had been Secretary of Congress when Washington himself was a member. Escorted by this senior official, the General entered the room. Washington took a seat pointed out to him. Doors of the chamber and the gallery then were opened; favored ladies quickly filled the gallery; public servants, former officers and Maryland’s most eminent citizens packed along the wall. The Secretary ordered silence; a hush of high expectancy prevailed. Mifflin addressed Washington: “Sir, the United States in Congress assembled are prepared to receive your communications.” The General arose and bowed. Out of his pocket he drew the text of his address, and held it in a hand that shook visibly.

  He began: “Mr. President: The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place; I have now the honor of offering my sincere Congratulations to Congress and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.” He had to grip the paper with both hands to hold it steady enough for reading. He choked and fought to recover his voice. If he scarcely could follow his short manuscript, there were many spectators who could not see him through their tears. As he reached the end his voice came back strongly: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”