First of Men
Page 45
“The great man is confounded” as to the cause of the army’s misfortunes, General Greene advised a friend that winter. In fact, however, Washington had a pretty good idea of what was responsible. In part, he blamed the misery on fraud and mismanagement within the supply service, chicanery that left the army with eleven thousand tons less hay and three-quarters of a million fewer bushels of grain than it had requisitioned. He also attributed his woes to the shortcomings of Congress. The national legislature, he charged, not only did not devote sufficient attention to the chronic enigma of provisioning its army, it lacked the executive personnel to administer such a program. He might have been reminded of what he had concluded during his first winter in this place two years before; Congress, he had fumed, “think it is but to say Presto begone, and everything is done.” Washington and everyone else also knew that the awful weather that roared in just before Christmas exacerbated each other defect in the supply system. This winter was worse than any that even the oldest Morristown resident could remember. Nearly twenty inches of snow was dumped on the camp during the holiday period, and before the snowbound soldiery could dig out another blizzard howled across New Jersey. By early January four feet of snow lay like a canopy over the army; by February the camps were buried beneath twelve-foot-high drifts, choking off all river and road access to the outer world. To make matters worse, when a thaw set in around the 10th of January, and again in February, the highways leading to Morristown quickly turned to impassable quagmires.30
Washington never mentioned his own culpability in contributing to the shortages, but some of the responsibility was his. Early in October, despite a lack of convincing evidence that d’Estaing might return to the northern theater, Washington summoned twelve thousand militiamen to active duty. Thirty days later he countermanded his order, certain at last that the French fleet would not appear. But by then the trainbandsmen had helped reduce the army’s precious stockpile of supplies.31
Whatever the cause, Washington knew that something must be done. “We can no longer drudge on in the same way,” he warned. Some high officers had a solution. They whispered about the need for a military dictatorship, an expedient that some civilians also found palatable. That winter a conclave of New England states endorsed such a remedy, inasmuch as it formally recommended that Washington be given dictatorial powers for the purpose of supplying the army.32
Congress had a more modest solution in mind. It believed the problem stemmed from the economic malaise that gripped the nation. By the time Washington’s army entered winter quarters the depreciation of Continental paper stood at thirty-nine to one, leaving the general and his suppliers to watch in wonder as farmers refused to sell their beef and grain despite steadily rising prices. No one was interested in the nearly worthless currency. The government borrowed money, raised revenues by the expedient of seizing and selling the property of the Loyalists, printed more and more paper, and, finally, revalued the debt. In the end the army muddled through. For the most part the soldiers simply endured, displaying that same persistent fortitude that had gotten them through Valley Forge. The only break came late in May when two regiments of hungry Connecticut men mutinied, hoping to escape the privation by hurrying home. The rising was quelled in short order, both by promises and by cajolery, but Washington recognized the incident for what it was—still another sign of the war weariness that clutched soldiers and civilians alike. The “patience of the soldiery” is “worn out,” he acknowledged; “we see in every line in the army, the most serious features of mutiny and sedition,” the general added. Then, ominously, he told Joseph Reed: “I have almost ceased to hope. The country in general is in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests, that I dare not flatter myself with any change for the better.”33
Washington must have believed that his spirits had reached their nadir when he poured out his despondency to his former aide. But only twenty-four hours later, near dusk on May 29, 1780, a courier arrived at headquarters with even more lamentable tidings. Charleston had fallen to the adversary. An American army of fifty-five hundred men had been lost.34
In 1780 Clinton at last had launched his southern strategy in earnest. It was a policy born of desperation. Temporarily writing off the North, Britain now sought to push the rebels from each southern state, leaving it to their Loyalist allies—organized now into auxiliary units—to secure what they had gained.35
With Savannah in hand, Clinton struck first at Charleston, South Carolina, a city defended by Major General Benjamin Lincoln, the commander of America’s southern army. Lincoln committed every error that Washington had made in his Brooklyn campaign, but with more devastating results. Soon trapped by a superior force, Lincoln surrendered his entire army. In its worst defeat during this war, America lost 5466 men, 6000 weapons, nearly 400 barrels of powder, and a huge cache of military stores.36
By the end of June British forces had swept into the interior, occupying a string of forts across the South Carolina frontier. All that remained of the Continental forces in the South was about 1400 men in North Carolina under Baron de Kalb, a contingent that Washington had dispatched in April to augment Lincoln’s forces. Their trek from Morristown had met with one delay after another, fortunate hindrances as it turned out, for otherwise these men would have arrived just in time to be captured. Now, deep in North Carolina, de Kalb paused for orders, and, since he was a foreigner, the likely notification of his replacement. Word arrived in July. Congress had appointed Horatio Gates.37
General Gates had lobbied hard for the post, writing southern politicians, even visiting Congress to urge his case. Washington favored Greene for the command, but he did not press the matter, and in mid-June, without consulting Washington, Congress awarded the post to Gates. It was late July before he finally reached de Kalb and his meager army. What he found was not encouraging: a few ragged soldiers, a commissary in a “deplorable state,” a “Deficiency of Magazines.” On the other hand, his intelligence service reported that the foe had divided its army, that Cornwallis, who had been placed in command when Clinton returned to New York following the collapse of Charleston, had marched to Savannah, leaving only a small British force in northeast South Carolina. Despite the ill-prepared state of his own army, Gates opted to fight.
It was a disastrous decision. Gates ran upon the British at Camden, and to his horror he found that his intelligence reports had been faulty. This was a large British force, one led by Cornwallis. Gates outnumbered his adversary, but Cornwallis’s army consisted largely of regulars, and it would have the only cavalrymen on the field. The result perhaps was predictable. Gates’s army was overrun. De Kalb was killed, as were at least six hundred others, but most just fled into the wilderness, there to hide and, eventually, simply to melt away, so that only about one-third of those with Gates that day ever were accounted for. Gates, too, was one of those who dashed for safety, he and his staff madly riding for sixty miles across the South’s bleached dust and shallow, russet streams before they finally stopped in Charlotte.38
The general’s frantic dash from the scene proved his ruination. His defeat at Camden was complete, but it might have been forgiven; after all, Washington had survived three similarly disastrous thrashings in 1776, just as St. Clair was not made to suffer for losing Ticonderoga or Lincoln for his defeat at Charleston. But Gates’s dismaying flight, however pragmatic, was deemed unpardonable, a verdict encouraged by those who had a score to settle with him. Such a harsh judgment seemed necessary to others, however, simply in order to restore morale. Congress relieved him of command pending an inquiry and directed Washington to appoint his successor. The commander named Nathanael Greene.39
Throughout the summer of 1780 Washington had been on pins and needles, not just because of the portentous news from the South, but over the role his army should play during that campaign. He feared that it would be unable to do a thing. Some men still were without shirts or shoes, and well into July many continued to endure five or six consecut
ive meatless days. In the midst of plenty, the soldiery experienced frequent scarcities even of bread. In addition, there was a dearth of salt and of rum, tents could not be found, hospitals lacked medical supplies, and by early summer the troops had not been paid for two months. Nor did Washington have the manpower he had anticipated. The “bitterness of my soul” knows no bounds, he confessed sardonically to his brother-in-law that July. Not only could the war have been ended successfully many years earlier, he went on, but now victory was imperiled as never before. And all for “want of System.” The national government was too weak, the states too strong. America had created “a many headed Monster . . . that never will or can, steer to the same point,” for each state was moved only to consider its local interests. “The contest among the different States now, is not which shall do the most for the common cause, but which shall do least. . . ,”40
So weak was the army that Washington feared that he could not act defensively, much less offensively. He doubted that he could protect the supplies at Morristown should the British endeavor to raid that post, and, more importantly, he was not certain whether West Point could be successfully defended. As for a siege of New York, the insufficiency of stores seemed to rule out such a venture. And this summer was—perhaps it had to be—“the time for America by one great exertion to put an end to the war.”41
But Washington was not without hope. Early in May he received the tidings that he had longed to hear for two years: a French army was en route to the United States. He first learned of the French action via a Tory newspaper. Lafayette, who had sailed to France following the battle for Newport, brought the news with him when he returned to America that spring; but he dallied in Boston and along the way to Morristown, so it was a Loyalist publisher in New York who broke the story. Whatever the source, Washington could hardly have been more delighted. Escorted by a half dozen ships of the line, French transports containing six thousand professional soldiers were ploughing across the Atlantic, all due in Rhode Island sometime in June. Their instructions, Lafayette told Washington when he finally arrived at headquarters, were to permit Washington to plan strategy. There was talk at Versailles of a campaign against Halifax, yet there was equal sentiment for striking at the British in the South or for besieging New York. But it would be Washington’s task to recommend a course of action.42
It was not until mid-July, a month later than expected, that the white sails and the colorful banners of the Gallic flotilla at last were spotted in waters off Newport. On board, clad in their traditional white uniforms, were crack soldiers, many of whom had come topside for a first glimpse of the New World. The Compte de Rochambeau was the general in command of the army. Rochambeau’s appearance was friendly and avuncular, more that of a Paris shopkeeper than of a soldier. But looks were deceiving: he had soldiered for thirty-seven of his fifty-five years, and when one looked more closely the legacy of his trade could be discerned. A long scar extended from his hairline onto his face, and he walked with a slight limp—both the result of battle wounds. Cold without being supercilious, he came with neither much respect for his ally nor with much enthusiasm for helping them in their struggle against imperial and monarchical domination. The naval commander (d’Estaing had returned to France on crutches, nursing wounds he had received at Savannah) was Chevalier de Ternay, an old salt with three years more service than Rochambeau. In poor health and unhappy with duty in America, Ternay, a naturally ill-humored man, was particularly out of sorts when he arrived, not least because he feared an immediate British strike.43
Rochambeau hurried his men ashore and sat about constructing his defenses, yet for ten days the French army was exposed and vulnerable to attack. It was an anxious time for the French commander. But the British made no move. Indeed, Clinton did not even know that his adversary had reached Rhode Island until more than a week after the French fleet dropped anchor. British intelligence had failed miserably. Had Clinton quickly attacked, one young French officer later remarked, the British army “would have met with but feeble resistance.”44
Some American leaders also believed that a turning point had been reached, but the uncommonly upbeat atmosphere at headquarters soon vanished. In the weeks before the French arrival Washington and his closest advisors had determined to recommend joint operations against New York; Lafayette had proposed an assault on the city, but Washington wisely brushed that foolhardy notion aside, favoring a plan by Knox to besiege the adversary. The idea was to strike simultaneously at Staten Island and Morrissania, fanning out thereafter until the redcoats’ contact with the outside world was severed, its ability to forage impeded by the American army, its Atlantic lifeline severed by the French fleet.
The French were hardly ashore in Rhode Island before the American commander dispatched Lafayette to test his countrymen’s response to the American plan. Their answer was not promising. Until naval reinforcements arrived, they would not act. Moreover, the Franco-American land force would total only about fourteen thousand men, roughly the equivalent of Clinton’s army. European military textbooks, they reminded Lafayette, stipulated that to succeed the siege army must have a two-to-one numerical superiority. In addition, many of Washington’s men would be militiamen, and he could not guarantee their presence after December 31, a date certain to be reached before siege operations could be concluded. Besides, they went on, the wagons necessary to move the French army to New York had not yet even begun to be gathered. Behind these sound arguments lay still another factor: the French were uneasy with their new ally. Rochambeau, already dismayed by the Americans’s capitulation at Charleston, was shocked by the Continental soldiers that he had seen; no doubt, too, he found Washington’s supply problems to be worse than he had been led to believe by Versailles. Still, Rochambeau told Lafayette, if Washington could get more men, if Ternay’s flotilla could obtain reinforcements from the West Indies, and if the French Second Division arrived from France, a siege might be possible.45
There the issue hung for a month, until Rochambeau learned that reinforcements might arrive in October. He immediately wished to speak directly with Washington. He had taken an instant dislike to Lafayette, whom he found to be foolish and so ill-informed on military matters as to be difficult to converse with when planning strategy. Besides, he was anxious to meet and appraise his counterpart. One needed to know his ally as well as his adversary before the shooting commenced. He proposed a conference with the American commander, and Washington agreed. It was set for mid-September in Hartford, a midway point between the two generals’ headquarters.46
In the sixty days between the arrival of Rochambeau and Washington’s meeting with him, the latter’s spirits sagged to perhaps their lowest ebb since the first weeks at Valley Forge. Week by week he had watched helplessly while the hopes of midsummer “vanish[ed] like Morning Dew.” While Lafayette was holding his first meeting in Newport, Washington was buoyed by “a well grounded hope of putting a speedy and happy termination to the war.” Then came the news of his ally’s intransigent refusal to act without naval superiority. That was a blow, but it was understandable, he noted early in August, and he advised against pressuring the French into action. “Should they yield to importunity and an accident happen . . . they would lay the consequences to us.” Two weeks later he learned that the French naval reinforcements were coming, yet that news only heightened his frustration. Now he feared that he lacked the manpower to act in concert with his ally. By August 15 he had gotten only about 40 percent of the men he had requested. “[O]ur prospects of operating diminish,” he had to tell Congress. In fact, not only was the army undersized, he could barely feed the men who were on duty. “It is a most mortifying reflexion,” he told Reed. “Should we ... be found, after all our promises of a cooperating force, deficient in Men, provision, and every other essential,” the consequences surely would be catastrophic. By late August he feared that if the siege of New York was cancelled due to America’s infirmities, one of two occurrences virtually was certain: either the
army would dissolve before 1781, for “the hope which has hitherto supported them of a change for the better” would have been dashed; or, France would abandon the United States. Yet late in August, just as Washington’s spirits hit bottom, came word of a reprieve. News arrived that both the French naval reinforcements and the Second Division had been delayed by British squadrons. Neither would be coming in 1780. At least the onus for inaction was not entirely on America’s shoulders.47
Washington’s mood had brightened when he—together with his aides, a few advisors, and the Commander’s Guard—set out for Hartford in mid-September. Still, his spirits hardly were soaring as they had been the last time he had been in New England—when he had recaptured Boston early in 1776. He arrived in Hartford on the 22nd, entering town about the same time as Rochambeau and Ternay. A prim and rustic little village like Hartford didn’t offer much in the way of amusements, but Washington made amends by providing a lavish dinner. A superficial air of camaraderie prevailed at the table; as a brotherly gesture Washington’s men had added white to the black cockades they wore, and the French had touched their white cockades with black to reciprocate. Animated discussions accompanied by plentiful toasts must have run around the table, while the three leaders, all reticent men, talked stiffly. The French were impressed by Washington, finding him cold and standoffish like their own general, yet businesslike and competent. Even Count Rochambeau was pleased with Washington’s skills, and the meeting removed the doubts with which he had crossed the Atlantic, reservations that for a time had seemed to be borne out by the fact that the American commander had been so taken in by the likes of Lafayette. Washington seemed equally impressed by his counterpart. Late that afternoon the table was cleared and the leaders got down to business.48