General Greene’s transference to a desk was not that winter’s only major change in the line-up of officers about Washington. Before the army abandoned Valley Forge the commander moved General Sullivan to a distant post. In October Sullivan had been cleared by a court of inquiry that studied his raid on Staten Island; six months later, when Joseph Spencer resigned his commission, the way was open for the commander to appoint Sullivan as his replacement in command of the American army in Rhode Island.31
Another general was not as fortunate. Adam Stephen, an old acquaintance of the commander, the second in command under Washington in the Virginia Regiment twenty years earlier, was convicted by a military tribunal of chronic drunkenness, as well as of malfeasance during the retreat from Germantown. It was left to the commander to accept or reject the court’s findings. If Washington had known Stephen for years, the two never had been close. Young Washington had thought him a less than fit officer in the 1750s, and after the French and Indian War, when Stephen had challenged the master of Mount Vernon for his seat in the Burgesses, their relationship had grown especially cool. Stephen, moreover, had made it his business to keep a particularly close eye on Washington’s land hunting for the Virginia Regiment veterans, as though he had not quite trusted George’s honesty. Nor had this war brought them any closer. Indeed, on Christmas night in 1776 Washington had loudly accused Stephen of nearly wrecking his planned attack on Trenton, for without orders he had sent a patrol to that Jersey village just hours before the scheduled assault. The court’s recommendation was the final straw. Without a word to his one-time comrade, Washington approved the verdict and dismissed General Stephen from the Continental army. Lafayette was given his command.32
If Washington rid himself of two officers whom he thought to be frequent sources of affliction, he was compelled to receive Charles Lee back into the fold. For sixteen months after his capture at Basking Ridge, Lee had been a British prisoner. At first he had feared that as an ex-redcoat officer he might be hanged as a traitor, but Congress had made it quite clear to Howe that if anything happened to Lee reprisals would be carried out against British prisoners in American hands. Thereafter Lee lived well, sumptuously even, in captivity, residing with his dogs in the council chambers of the city hall in New York, then aboard a vessel in the city’s harbor, and finally in a comfortable apartment in town. From the moment of his capture Congress had worked diligently to secure his release. Finally, in April 1778 its efforts paid off, and Lee was exchanged for a British general held by the United States. Needless to say Lee was delighted, and he presumed that Washington would share his exhilaration; “considering how [Washington] is surrounded” by inept advisors, Lee told the president of Congress, “he cannot do without me.” Accompanied by his usual retinue of canines, as well as by the wife of a British sergeant (“a miserable dirty hussy,” according to America’s commissary general of prisoners), Lee breezed into Valley Forge.33 Whatever Washington privately felt about this man who had joined Reed in criticizing his generalship back in the dark days of 1776, he welcomed him with the grace and ceremony that might have been accorded a conquering hero.
According to one officer the coldest period of the winter hit during the first week of March. It may only have seemed colder, because on one or two fleeting occasions the men had been teased with springlike days. The troops also had been misled into believing that the other hardships of that awful winter were at an end. Before the end of January the stow of food improved a bit. The supply departments finally got some victuals into camp, while foraging parties rounded up supplementary fare. In addition, beginning in mid-month Washington countenanced the establishment of a public market on the camp’s periphery, enabling those with the wherewithal (primarily officers, since the men had not been paid for two months) to purchase comestibles. The shortage of clothing and blankets remained chronic however. What made the situation even more maddening to Washington was that he was aware of a generous supply of apparel stockpiled in the Highlands, but confusion and ineptitude among wagoners and within the department of military stores prevented its arrival. The army did procure one considerable cache of livery. At the beginning of January the British brig Symetry ran aground above Wilmington and was captured by the United States. Its cargo included forty terrified women, the wives of British officers, General Howe’s personal silver service, and a hold laden with cloth, hats, shoes, boots, and stockings. After being held for two months, Washington directed that the women and Sir William’s silver be delivered to Philadelphia; he ordered that the raiment be sold among the officers, a somewhat shortsighted step for a commander who prided himself “the common Guardian of the Rights of every man in this Army.”34
A few mild days early in February unclogged the Schuylkill south of Reading, enabling the commissariat to funnel in stores of much-needed supplies. For a moment conditions improved, then another howling winter storm swept through. The miseries of this loathsome place returned in earnest. On February 1 Washington had depicted the army merely as “uncomfortably provided” for; a week later he described its state as “most Melancholy.” For four days there was no meat to allocate, and almost every other commodity was in perilously short supply as well. Desertions increased, averaging ten to fifteen each day, and Washington grew anxious at the prospect of a “general mutiny.” A “fatal Crisis” had set in, warned the commander, whose communiqués reassumed the same desperate air that had characterized his letters to Congress during the first days at Valley Forge.35
It seemed as though Washington’s proverbial good fortune had taken a holiday. He sent Anthony Wayne with over five hundred men into southern New Jersey on a foraging mission, and the party succeeded splendidly in locating cattle and other precious commodities, but the sudden appearance of British cruisers south of Philadelphia prohibited their recrossing the Delaware for an immediate return to Valley Forge. Wayne was compelled to drive the livestock and forage wagons all the way to the vicinity of Trenton before he could cross, and it was nearly March before he returned with his viands, by which time some men had been without meat for seven days. Washington learned, too, that 130 beeves were en route from New England, but unfortunately for him the British also got wind of the cattle drive; incredibly the cowpunchers had not been provided with military guards, and when the British were the first to get to the herd the American army lost what would have made several days of succulent dining.36
With all his other worries Washington at least generally was unencumbered about the likelihood that Howe might assail Valley Forge. Duportail had laid out strong defenses for the camp, and it seemed likely that if Howe had shrunk from an onslaught against the more primitive ramparts at places like Dorchester Heights and White Plains, he would not be inclined to attack here. In fact, although Washington was unaware of it, General Howe’s war was all but at an end. Back in mid-November, at the moment he succeeded in opening the Delaware, he had offered his resignation; that winter Sir William was far busier preparing a defense of his conduct during the past two years—inadequate supplies and too few troops, would be the kernel of his plea—than in contemplating an attack on Washington’s ragged army.37
Could an attack on Valley Forge have succeeded? The Loyalists thought so. Joseph Galloway, a Pennsylvania Tory, was the most vocal proponent of an assault. Formerly an American congressman, he had defected to the British just after Howe’s victory at Fort Washington, and in the fall of 1777 he became the superintendent of occupied Philadelphia and a chief operative in the redcoats’ intelligence network. He kept the high command very well informed about the misery and desertion at Valley Forge; it seemed to him that cold, hungry soldiers were not likely to fight too well. In this assessment Galloway had company. Much later George Washington agreed that Howe had been unwise not to have assaulted the encampment. However, for once Howe may have been correct. Washington outnumbered Howe eleven thousand to ten thousand, and had a battle loomed the Americans could have gotten enough additional militia to have inflated the odds to c
onsiderably more satisfactory levels. The roads were in such poor condition that the transportation of the redcoats’ artillery and support systems was problematical. Furthermore, Howe would have had to cross—then recross—the Schuylkill, never an easy task in the face of the enemy. And all this to attack a well-entrenched foe that occupied hilly terrain.38
Under the circumstances Howe seems to have given no thought to an attack. His inactivity further estranged him from the Loyalists, now an increasingly desperate group who, behind his back that winter, sang a bitter doggerel:
Awake, arouse, Sir Billy,
There’s forage in the plain,
Ah, leave your little Filly,
And open the campaign.39
That caustic verse was Sir William’s swan song. Late in the spring he was relieved of command.
While the British idled away the winter, plans for the new year were being discussed in American staterooms. One notion that germinated that season called for still another invasion of Canada. Several factors made a Canadian operation seem attractive. Now that Burgoyne’s army had been destroyed and the domain was only weakly defended, Canada might easily be taken. Moreover, some thought that America had failed in its earlier endeavors in Canada largely because it had not secured the support of the French-Canadian citizenry, but an invasion force that consisted of a large number of the French volunteers serving the Continental army might rouse those recalcitrant British subjects. It was observed that the acquisition of Canada would close the door to any future British notions of invading the United States through that portal. It might even topple the North government, ending the war immediately. The thoughts of some also turned to postwar territorial considerations, leading them to conclude that unless Canada was won on the battlefield, it would not be won at all.
Washington, however, was not among those mesmerized by still another Canadian adventure. America’s bleak record of failure in that faraway domain left him unenthusiastic about still another try. Furthermore, he wondered, why squander troops in what now was likely to be a backwater sector of the war? Certainly Britain would not attempt another invasion from Canada. Washington, therefore, denounced the thought of invading Canada as “folly” and “not practicable.”40
But others were hopeful of success, and in January Gates prevailed on Congress to endorse an “irruption into Canada,” as the notion was labeled. Lafayette was named as the expedition’s commander; Thomas Conway was made the second in command. Then the Board of War informed the commander in chief of its plans and asked him to lop off one of his regiments to help flesh out the invasion army.41
There can be no doubt that Washington felt humiliated, proudly believing that he had been subjected to shabby treatment. There also is no doubt that he interpreted the episode as the work of the “Conway Cabal.” He seems to have viewed the adventure as nothing more than a ploy by the Board of War to erode his authority, while at the same time the prestige of Gates, Mifflin, and company would be enhanced. (Some historians even have seen the proposed expedition as a device through which the alleged plotters could lure Lafayette from Washington, and by which the Frenchmen could be used as a tool to bring France into the war.) In fact, it seems certain that the increasingly suspicious commander overreacted. Indeed, a good case can be made for the soundness of the plan to invade Canada at that moment. An attack launched in February or March, before Lake Champlain thawed and restored Britain’s total naval superiority, just might have succeeded. Moreover, if the attackers reached Quebec and once again besieged that fortress city there was a reasonable chance for success. Certainly by January 1778 the evidence was strong that France was about to enter the war, an event that probably would have prevented Great Britain from sending a relief force to rescue Quebec. As to who most favored the endeavor, there can be little question that New Englanders were the strongest backers of the “irruption”; and there also can be little doubt that they were less concerned about overthrowing Washington than about securing regional security, hardly a sinister motive for a people who had fought five wars in the past seventy-five years against armies descending from Canada.42
In the end the project failed, a victim of the politics of command that simmered that winter. Washington’s young friend Lafayette, who was unwilling to offend his sullen commander by participating alongside Conway in any campaign, Canadian or otherwise, helped its demise. Whether because of his political acumen or because of a genuine love for Washington, or both, Lafayette spent two precious winter weeks dickering with Congress over his command. Conway must be dropped, he insisted, and Washington must be permitted to name his successor. In addition, he dictated, he must remain subject to Washington and report to him. If these terms were not met, he would resign his commission and return to France, accompanied, he promised, by several of his countrymen presently in America’s service. The legislators caved in. But valuable time had been lost. Lafayette did not reach Albany until late in February, and there he quickly discovered a multitude of problems that soured him on the venture. Only half the promised twenty-five hundred men were present and fit for duty, and he learned that several Canadian veterans, including Arnold and Schuyler, had counseled against the invasion under such conditions. Early in March he decreed that the expedition must be “thrown down,” the victim, he said, of a “hell of blunders, madness, and deception.”43 By the beginning of April he once again was at Washington’s side at Valley Forge.
The ceaseless onslaught of military problems that confronted Washington that winter was not his only quandary. As a citizen-soldier, a warrior who took no salary and who expected to leave the army for Mount Vernon at the end of the struggle, General Washington could ill afford to ignore his planting and business concerns for the duration of the Anglo-American conflict. While at times it must have seemed that the war would never end, Washington realistically could expect to return home while still only about fifty years of age. During his initial months as commander in chief, he had tried to direct affairs at Mount Vernon over long distance, averaging a communication every ten days to Lund Washington, his cousin from Chotank who had assisted in the management of the estate since 1764. But early in 1776 the anxious owner and his cousin reached an agreement: Lund would remain at Mount Vernon as Washington’s manager until the war ended, and, in return, he was to be guaranteed good wages, a salary that never was to be lower than the highest annual compensation he had received during his first eleven years with Washington. Both men were happy. The salary gave Lund hope that someday he could purchase a home of his own, while Washington was confident that his affairs remained in competent hands. “[N]othing but your having the charge of my business, and the entire confidence I repose in you, could make me tolerable easy [while away] from home for such a length of time,” the general confessed.44
The arrangement hardly prevented the busy general from communicating his wishes to “Doctor Lund,” as he joshingly called his superintendent following the receipt of some unsolicited medical advice from his cousin. The “New Chimneys are not to smoke,” he carefully instructed; plant a grove of hardwoods at each end of the house, using “all the clever kind of Trees,” that is, flowering varieties such as crabapples and dogwoods; install a window at the gable end of the cellar; stay on the lookout for available land in the Northern Neck, acreage for which he would pay “(almost) any price,” even exchanging his slaves—“of whom I every day long more and more to get clear of”—or certain of his livestock, but not his cash.45
During this morose winter at Valley Forge Washington grew fearful that Lund would desert him, lured away perhaps by the prospect of receiving a land bounty in return for his enlistment in the Continental army. To assure his continued service, the general proposed to increase his salary, but it was a ploy that outraged Lund. “I hope for the future you will entertain a better opinion of me,” he shot back, “than to beleive that while you are encountering every danger and difficulty, at the hazard of your life and repose . . . I would attempt to take advantage of you by
screwing up my wages or leaving your estate to the care of a stranger.” But Washington hiked his salary anyway, a necessary action, he explained, because of the potentially ruinous inflation that had befallen the colonies.46
Running Washington’s business affairs was a full-time job. Lund oversaw the spinners who labored with flax and wool, directed the operations of the mill that ground corn and wheat, looked after the livestock, and tended to the ongoing construction of the gardens and the expansion of the house that Washington had begun just before the Continental Congress first convened in 1774. In addition, he supervised the agricultural operations of Washington’s vast empire, five separate farms at Mount Vernon that totaled thousands of acres worked by approximately 250 slaves, indentured servants, and free skilled artisans, as well as his dower farmholds and those he had purchased as a young man. And on top of all this he was responsible for the safety of Martha and Mount Vernon. Mrs. Washington probably was safe enough, but the estate and its slaves were owned by a traitor—at least in the eyes of Virginia’s last royal governor, Lord Dunmore. Lund expected to see a royal fleet ascend the Potomac, burning farms and liberating slaves in its path, and he took what precautions he could; he packed many of the general’s most precious items so they could be moved on a moment’s notice, and he arranged to store Washington’s wine in a neighbor’s cellar. Lund was prescient. Dunmore’s fleet did sally upriver in August 1776, hoping to raze Mount Vernon and other plantations along the way, but it was stopped twenty-five miles short of Washington’s home. It was Dunmore’s only such foray, and three months later he was en route to England, gone forever from Virginia.47
First of Men Page 38