First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Washington soon learned that every problem, no matter how big or how small, inevitably was passed on until it stopped at his desk. His greatest immediate problems arose from the army’s shortage of certain provisions. He discovered deficiences of clothing, muskets, picks, shovels, and tents. Even more alarming was the lack of money. And at the end of July he learned that he had less powder than his hurried audit had revealed. Far less, in fact. The Continental army had only ninety barrels of powder, one-third the amount he had been told was stored in the colonists’ arsenals.25

  The most painful shortage was the want of manpower. “Between you and me,” Washington told a friend during that first month, “I think we are in an exceedingly dangerous situation....” During his first week in Cambridge, Washington called his officers together for his initial council of war. The subject: how to fill the ranks of the new army. The officers concluded that New England’s contribution had about reached its optimum limit; henceforth, only “Boys, Deserters and negroes” could be induced to enlist in that picked-over region. Everyone deplored the recruitment of children and turncoats, and Washington was opposed to the use of black soldiers. He had countenanced the presence of mulatto soldiers in his Virginia Regiment, but he did not want any black men in this army. His racist outlook was not uncommon; in fact, each New England colony had forbidden black men to serve in its militia, although they had soldiered as volunteers in the colonial wars and had fought and died at Lexington-Concord and at Bunker Hill. When the siege of Boston commenced in April, blacks once again enlisted. Nevertheless, Washington thought them inherently inferior, and the sight of an armed Negro was too much for him to bear; so, with the consent of the other officers, he prohibited the recruitment of “any stroller, negro, or vagabond.” (In September Congress upheld Washington’s dictum, although it turned back a move by Edward Rutledge of South Carolina to expell all black soldiers already in the army.) Washington thought provincial militiamen hardly more trustworthy than blacks, though he did not yet feel free to be quite so candid; at this point he obliquely attributed the “Defficiencies in . . . their Discipline” to the allegedly long state of British oppression under which New England had groaned. Anyway, there were not many militiamen left, so the officers called on Congress to gather recruits from the colonies south of New England.26

  The Siege of Boston

  Not only were there too few men, Washington was shocked by the conduct of those in camp. He found officers shaving their men, captains shining and repairing the shoes of soldiers, commanders and subordinates hailing one another on a first-name basis. He was appalled to learn that some soldiers had been browbeaten into working on their officer’s farms. He discovered that soldiers came and went as they pleased, that serious offenses—cowardice at Bunker Hill, for instance, or falling asleep while on guard duty, or pillaging the property of civilians—went unpunished, that the scruffy camp where the men had lived since late April seemed devoid of measures for sanitations or hygiene. None of this should have been too surprising. Few of the men had any military experience, not even in their village militia units, for, as the French and Indian threat receded in eighteenth-century New England, local trainband companies often assumed the role more of a social than a martial organization. Moreover, these farmers and artisans who were resisting British centralization sometimes were just as loath to surrender their personal freedom and independence to an American officer.

  Washington sought to counter these conditions by rigorously enforcing the Articles of War that he had helped to prepare before leaving Philadelphia. He restricted the men’s mobility to and from camp. As with the Virginia Regiment, he punished swearing and drunkenness as surely as he disciplined slackers, thieves, and deserters. He ordered that the camp streets be swept daily and the barracks weekly, and he directed the disposal of “Offal and Carrion.” He required attendance at worship services, certain, of course, that his frequent pronouncements would be echoed by the army’s chaplains. Punishment for violators was severe—and certain. Men were made to ride the wooden horse, locked in the stockade, or forced to wear some humiliating costume; but mostly they were flogged, ten stripes for this offense, twenty for that, thirty-nine lashes for most indiscretions. In moments of petulance and exasperation during those early days in camp Washington fumed that these New Englanders were “an exceedingly dirty and nasty people,” the “most indifferent kind of People I ever saw,” a group characterized by the most “unaccountable kind of stupidity.” But in his more dispassionate moods Washington more correctly blamed their lack of discipline on “the principles of democracy [which] so universally prevail” and on the “leveling spirit,” the sense of egalitarianism, which infused the region.27

  Washington also believed that a better solution to the problem of an intemperate and unrestrained soldiery was to create an elite and aloof officer corps. He was certain that only such a complement could command deference and fashion an orderly and disciplined fighting machine. His first step was to weed out noticeably incompetent and corrupt officers, and within two months he bragged privately of having “made a pretty good slam among such kinds of officers.” In his daily orders he endeavored to educate the officers, exhorting them “to show an example of Bravery and Courage,” to comport themselves with dignity and always to act with diligence. Meanwhile, he privately instructed his officers to be strict but not unreasonable, to treat their charges with impartiality, and to be vigilant. He told the officers that there must be a barrier between themselves and their men, and he advised the senior officers to be “easy and condescending in your deportment to your officers, but not too familiar, lest you subject yourself to a want of that respect, which is necessary to support a proper command.” And since formal uniforms were lacking he devised what he called “Badges of Distinction” for his men of rank. Field officers were to wear red or pink cockades in their hats, captains were to sport yellow or buff, green would identify lieutenants, sergeants were to sew a stripe of red cloth on their shoulders, corporals a green stripe. Moreover, to assess his officers, as well as to heighten their sense of elitism, the commander invited each day’s adjutant, officer of the guard, and officer of the day to dine with him at headquarters.28

  Still another problem Washington discovered upon his arrival in Cambridge concerned the organization of the army. Although the force was called the “Continental army,” the term was incorrect, for this still was only an army of New Englanders. In addition, since Congress had in effect decided to leave the appointment of all field grade officers to each colony in which a part of the army was stationed, the officer corps, from top to bottom, was certain to be monopolized by New Englanders. Washington had been in camp only a few days before he told Congress of the need to “new model” its three-week-old army. Principally, he hoped Congress would issue all field grade commissions, appointing meritorious men from all colonies. But Congress was in no mood to act in this fashion. Most congressmen still were confident of the army’s prowess, and many were alarmed by the centralizing tendency implicit in Washington’s suggestion. Congress did instruct Washington to fill certain posts, however, and after Congress selected Colonel Joseph Trumbull (another New Englander) as commissary general, the commander pointedly named Mifflin and Stephen Moylan, both Pennsylvanians, to be quartermaster general and mustermaster general respectively, and he selected two Virginians, Edmund Randolph and George Baylor, as additional aides.29

  An army at war does not act in a vacuum. It was imperative, therefore, that Washington immediately learn as much as possible about his adversary in Boston. Using the reports of the resistance movement’s spy apparatus—somewhat less trustworthy now that Boston no longer was an open city—and the carefully appraised accounts of redcoat deserters, Washington quickly got a remarkably accurate handle on Gage’s problems and plans. He wildly overestimated the size of the British army (he reported it as having twelve thousand men when Gage had fewer than half that number, of which at least one-quarter were unfit for action), though he may
have deliberately done so in order to pry more troops from Congress for his army. On the other hand, his knowledge of Gage’s losses at Bunker Hill were extraordinarily correct, and by early August he deduced that the British were laying plans for their winter quartering needs, knowledge that led him to surmise that an attack was not imminent. Although he could ill afford to relax, Washington believed that his old friend Gage had found the American defenses too formidable to assault, preferring to await reinforcements before attacking, perhaps planning to abandon Boston and strike somewhere else.30

  But Washington could not rely explicitly on the intelligence reports. His information might be incorrect. Thus, he continued to expand and improve the army’s fortifications. For the first time, too, he began to think of a protracted siege. That meant he had to plan for his own winter quarters. He renewed his search for additional tents, made arrangements to have many of the men housed in buildings on the Harvard College campus, and directed the construction of wooden facilities; each company was left to devise its own architectural design within the limits of guidelines prepared at headquarters. (The huts were not to exceed one story, and each building was to be 108 feet in length.)31

  Despite his manifest problems, Washington must have been pleased with the state of affairs after his first month on the job. His appointment as commander had been well received, especially by Artemas Ward, who responded to his sudden demotion without a trace of jealousy or wrath, betraying none of the prideful biliousness that had charactered Washington’s behavior at his own downgrading by Dinwiddie twenty years before. Although Washington’s efforts to remodel the army had made little headway, Gage’s apparent inability to assault the American lines would offer time in which some changes might be made. And Washington continued to hope against hope that this would be a short war. It still was possible that he might be reunited with Martha at Mount Vernon before Christmas, although that notion was predicated on the assumption that the news of Bunker Hill would topple the North government, forcing Britain to capitulate to the colonists’ demands.32 Meanwhile, just in case, Washington’s thoughts were turning to offensive operations of his own making.

  Canada had been on his mind since before Congress resolved to dispatch an army into that forbidding region. With the British garrisons there startlingly undermanned, he believed that Canada might easily fall into the colonists’ clutches. Having discoursed at length with General Schuyler on that topic, he presumed that an American attack was imminent. But Washington was largely ignorant of the real state of affairs on the Canadian border. Schuyler’s missives, though bulging with disapproval of the rag-tag army that he commanded, conveyed the clear impression that an invasion was pending. Unfortunately, Schuyler, who was a good and brave soldier, was an inept and dilatory commander, one whose conduct bore a startling resemblance to that of young Colonel Washington on the Virginia frontier in the 1750s. Schuyler did not join his men at Fort Ticonderoga until two weeks after Washington reached his army, then he did not linger for long, preferring to run his force either from Albany or from his palatial digs in Saratoga. He detested the New England soldiers who comprised his army and complained so mawkishly of their deficiencies that an exasperated New York Congress finally told him: “It is vain to complain. . . . Use the bad troops at Ticonderoga as well as you can.” But July and August dragged by and Schuyler made no use of these men. Some obstacle inevitably presented itself: the men had not been suitably trained before his arrival; the army was undersupplied; his force was too small to attack entrenched troops; his intelligence reports (which were in error) indicated that General John Burgoyne had entered Canada with a huge army of reinforcements; he could not determine from Congress’s contradictory orders whether it favored an incursion under all circumstances, or whether it would sanction an attack only if the Canadians civilians welcomed the invaders; finally, he convinced himself that the Tories and Indians in New York were a greater menace than the British in Canada. In reality, Schuyler was a dawdler. Washington ever so gently prodded him to move out, but his importunings were unavailing, as were the entreaties for action both by General Montgomery, the second in command, and Governor Trumbull of Connecticut.33

  Ultimately, Schuyler was overwhelmed by events. Since shortly after his arrival in Massachusetts, Washington had toyed with a plan of dispatching an army of his own into Canada. Several New England leaders told him that it was feasible to reach Quebec via a land and river route through the Maine wilderness, and the more Washington studied the plan, the more he liked it. A two-pronged attack—one through Maine, the other a thrust from the West commanded by Schuyler—would mean that the British commander in Canada, General Guy Carleton, would have to chose between defending only vital Quebec or dividing his already meager army. But, cleverly, Washington intended to place the burden of the final decision for such a venture on Schuyler’s beleagured shoulders. Late in August he wrote his comrade, making it clear that he hoped Schuyler’s army soon would act—“I am sure you will not let any Difficulties not insuperable, damp your Ardour”—but leaving the final verdict to the New Yorker.34

  By the time Schuyler received Washington’s communication, he could not refuse. While Schuyler had sat passively in Albany, General Montgomery at Fort Ticonderoga had taken matters into his own hands. He had received intelligence on August 23 which indicated that urgent action was imperative. A small British force of three hundred at Fort St. John on the Richelieu River, between the border and Montreal, was about to complete the construction of two warships; if the Americans did not act before the vessels were finished, the British would have absolute control of Lake Champlain, thus enabling them, probably forever, to prevent an American invasion, and at the same time imperiling the colonial fortresses at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Without waiting orders, Montgomery moved out with twelve hundred men. Despite this rank insubordination, Schuyler was not angry. Perhaps his mind was of such a bent that his underling’s act was necessary. At any rate, Washington’s letter exhorting the army to act arrived two days later. Stirred to action at last—symbolically anyway, since he did not get around to joining Montgomery for another ten days—Schuyler agreed to Washington’s scheme of a twin offensive.35

  Washington was jubilant. Creating this new invasion force was not difficult. Gage’s immobility freed the manpower. Conveyances were a bigger problem, but after much effort he acquired schooners to transport the troops from northern Massachusetts to Maine, and he arranged for the construction of bateaux, a kind of wilderness craft used by northern Indian traders, vessels capable of hauling six or eight men and substantial supplies. What Washington needed was a commander, and for this he turned to Benedict Arnold.36

  Almost thirty-five, Arnold had no military experience. He had received only a miniscule formal education before he was apprenticed to two cousins to learn the apothecary trade; for a long time he ran a drugstore in New Haven, although through shrewd investments he ultimately acquired a small fleet and commenced a profitable trade (much of it illicit) with the West Indies and South America. On the eve of the war, he secured command of a New Haven militia organization, which he marched to Concord within hours of the opening shots of this conflict. Arnold could be charming and graceful, but that always seemed to be a self-serving veneer he applied to disguise his unquenchable thirst for power and wealth. Even as a child he had seemed to be aggressive and bullying, intent on achieving his goals whatever the cost. As an adult there was a faintly dubious quality to his behavior. It was difficult to pinpoint, but he gave people the impression that something of the savage predatory beast lurked just beneath his urbane surface. But societies in wartime often value brutes, finding in their normally repellent traits the qualities suited to the times. Just days after the awful scenes at Lexington-Concord, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety found in Arnold the kind of man it wanted, and he was commissioned to lead a force to capture Fort Ticonderoga. Connecticut, meanwhile, had retained a man of similar ilk, Ethan Allen, who commanded the raucous Green Mount
ain Boys, to lead his force against the same object. With fewer men than Allen possessed, Arnold had to play second fiddle, a role hardly suited to a man of such pride and vanity. Nor was he happy when the Green Mountain Boys got most of the credit for the victory. Humiliated, Arnold quit and returned to New Haven, sulking there until midsummer when he came to Cambridge to submit a reimbursement claim for his services. While in town, however, he secured an interview with General Gates, and he produced a plan for an invasion of Canada through the wilderness of Maine. Gates was impressed. Knowing that Washington already had begun to think in these terms, moreover, Gates passed along Arnold’s scheme to headquarters.37

  Sometime early in August Arnold was ushered in to meet Washington. The commander, who had an uncanny knack for assessing men, immediately was taken by this would-be soldier. Here was a resourceful, tough, and ruthless man, just the kind needed to lead an expedition certain to be filled with forbidding obstacles. Perhaps he saw the same qualities in Arnold that Dinwiddie had seen in him; perhaps he found in Arnold some reflection of himself. Whatever the cause, within hours of the receipt of Schuyler’s letter sanctioning the mission, Arnold was named its commander. He would plunge toward Canada with two battalions totaling 1050 men, almost 10 percent of Washington’s army. Among his troops would be three companies of recently arrived riflemen from Pennsylvania and Virginia.38