First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  These disgruntled soldiers had trekked about fifteen miles when Washington learned of the uprising. There was not much he could do other than to direct his officers to endeavor to talk to these men. Indeed, he was so alarmed at the temper of the soldiery at West Point that he did not dare leave his post to assist Wayne.

  At Princeton, almost five years to the day following Washington’s great victory in the little college town, a settlement was reached. Joseph Reed, now the president of Pennsylvania, arrived and engaged in an amicable but spirited parley that resolved the matter. Those men who had volunteered before 1778 were to be discharged. Otherwise, commissioners were to be appointed to hear the case of each disputed enlistment.62

  That scare was over, but through the spring the threat of mutiny hung in the air like a heavy, pungent fragrance. Two weeks after the insurgents in the Pennsylvania Line returned to the fold, rioting broke out among New Jersey troops. This time Washington’s response was ruthless. He sent General Robert Howe with troops from West Point to suppress the uprising, ordering him not to negotiate and to “instantly execute a few of the most active and most incendiary leaders.” Howe did just that, eventually compelling twelve arrested mutineers to serve as a firing squad that executed two ringleaders. The mutiny was suppressed before January ended.63

  “[E]very thing is now quiet,” Washington could report at the beginning of the next month. But a sense of profound uneasiness had settled in at headquarters. Two campaigns had come and gone since Monmouth, since France had entered the war, and each year the allies had failed to score the sort of decisive victory that might have compelled Britain to recognize American independence. Despite the sanguinity of the commander when he had emerged from Valley Forge, these years had been more devastating to the United States than to the enemy. Enervated, its economy in shambles, its spirit strained, its troops restless and disgruntled, its armies battered in the South, the nation’s future seemed bleak. For Washington, moreover, the war suddenly had struck home even harder, for on January 3 redcoat forces under their new brigadier general, Benedict Arnold, invaded Virginia.64

  In public Washington strove to remain optimistic, to exhort his men to further sacrifice. “We began a Contest for Liberty and Independence . . . relying on our Patriotism” to see us through. It remains “our duty to bear present Evils with Fortitude.” But in private he was more candid, and more atrabilious. He could not “count on a speedy end to the War,” nor could he put much faith in the staying power of France or Spain, inasmuch as the “change or caprice of a single Minister is capable of altering the whole system of Europe.” His mood was one of funereal gloom, for he sensed that the United States began 1781 on the “verge of ruin,” near to the point that “we must once more return to the Government of G: Britain, and be made to kiss the rod preparing for our correction. . . .” Washington’s pessimism was matched by Britain’s glee. “No resistance on their part is to be apprehended that can materially obstruct the progress of the King’s arms in the speedy suppression of the rebellion,” trumpeted a blithe Germain at Whitehall. And even the taciturn Clinton thought victory was at hand. “I have all to hope,” he exulted early in 1781, “and Washington all to fear.”65

  12

  Victory and Retirement

  “Cornwallis must fall into our hands”

  Early in 1781, for the first time since the war began, General Washington embarked on a new year certain that America’s cause was lost if his army was not active and victorious before the next winter. Fiscal chaos was the culprit. The people were no less zealous for independence, but they were exasperated with the nation’s feebleness, with the inertia that grew from its bewildering economic miseries. Still another year of missed opportunities would sap the citizenry’s will to persist, he predicted; nor could he guarantee the survival of the army if conditions went unimproved. The “patience of the army ... is now nearly exhausted,” he had to admit.1

  Three changes could save the Revolution, Washington wrote that January. A foreign loan was the most essential ingredient in advancing America’s ability to prosecute the war. French naval superiority was nearly as important. Finally, he and Rochambeau agreed that fifteen thousand additional French troops would provide the allies with strategic options that presently did not exist.2

  As bleak as conditions appeared, there was hope. Rochambeau had dispatched his son to Versailles to beg for money for the United States, and Congress had sent John Laurens, the son of its president, to the same source to plead for a loan, for reinforcements, and for supplies for the Continental army. At the same time, Congress finally ratified a national constitution, the Articles of Confederation. For four years that document had gathered dust, the hostage of conflicting western land claims and of factions who feared relinquishing even a particle of state sovereignty to a national government. At last, however, the war crisis had provoked the foot-draggers to act. After all, if General Washington’s gloomy predictions about the floundering war effort were correct, there soon would be no United States, much less a constitutional issue with which to be concerned. Virginia’s change of heart—which occurred when Benedict Arnold and his new friends invaded the state—was perhaps the most crucial turning point, for the Old Dominion’s wilderness land holdings were enormous. When Maryland followed suit at the beginning of March, the United States had a written constitution that outlined Congress’s powers.

  The charter did not really give Congress much power. Indeed, real power was reserved to the states. Yet the new government created federal departments, including a centralized war department that was to direct the war effort. Moreover, even with its inherent shortcomings the new constitution could only aid young Rochambeau and Laurens in their quest for assistance at the French court.

  At the beginning of 1781 it seemed that all planning for the annual campaign would have to await the decisions of the royal court at Versailles. But early in January Washington learned that Arnold had led a British force into Virginia. That altered matters. The landing of the redcoat force of sixteen hundred was opposed by only fifty Virginia militiamen, and forty-eight hours after disembarking, without the loss of a man, Arnold’s troops had driven well up the James River to claim possession of Richmond. Shortly thereafter Arnold went into winter quarters, but his presence in Virginia compelled Washington to reconsider his options.3

  Since late in November the principal American army in the South had belonged to Nathanael Greene. Appointed by Washington after Gate’s failure at Camden, Greene had taken command at Charlotte thirty days before Arnold’s landing in Virginia. Heavily outnumbered, Greene envisaged a war of posts, his army sustained by shipments of essential goods by—and through—Virginia. Arnold’s abrupt appearance, therefore, constituted a potentially serious threat, for if the redcoats succeeded in cutting the supply routes that linked the northern and southern states, the British could block all succor to Greene.

  Strangely, Washington initial reaction to the incursion into Virginia was muted. He seemed to think that Arnold soon would abandon the state, as the British had done following the raid at Portsmouth in 1778. A month after Arnold’s landing Washington still was exhorting Thomas Jefferson, now the governor of the province, to forget the redcoats in Virginia and to aid Greene. But early in February the commander’s views changed. He learned that the British fleet which had blockaded the French navy at Rhode Island had suffered heavy damage during a winter storm; miraculously, the French fleet, tethered at Newport, had survived unscathed. Perhaps now Rochambeau would consent to act. If he would send a large fleet to the Chesapeake, Arnold could be bottled up, prey for a combined Franco-American army that the two commanders might send after him. Washington hurriedly sent a courier to Rhode Island to inquire, hoping that this was the break that was needed to destroy Britain’s will to continue.4

  While he waited the French response good news reached headquarters, tidings that he quickly shared with his allies at Newport. An American force under Daniel Morgan had defeated a larger Br
itish army at a place called Cowpens in South Carolina. Indeed, it was not just a victory, but America’s first success in the southern war, and a major triumph at that, for the redcoats had suffered over eight hundred casualties, while Morgan lost just twelve, with sixty wounded.5

  The day after Washington learned of Morgan’s “most decisive victory,” he received disappointing word from Rhode Island. The new commander of the French squadron, Chevalier Destouches, successor to Ternay who had died in December, agreed to act in the Chesapeake, but he planned to send only four warships to that theater. Washington was dismayed. His European allies were beginning to seem as cautious as the British commanders. This would be still another missed opportunity, he exclaimed, unless Destouches sent his entire fleet, and unless Rochambeau sent at least a thousand men to act in concert with the twelve hundred Americans he could detach. Do that, he said, and the Chesapeake could be blocked, sealing Arnold’s egress. But the French would not budge. Even so, Washington’s mind had changed. He now saw Virginia as crucial to Greene’s survival, and he spoke of Arnold’s destruction as something of “immense importance.” With or without French help, Washington planned to send an American force into Virginia.6

  While he readied an expedition, Washington waited impatiently for word on the fate of the diminutive fleet that Destouches had sent to the Chesapeake. First came good news. The little Gallic fleet had met with some success. Commanded by Captain le Gardeur de Tilly, the French flotilla had caught their adversary off guard; four British transports had been destroyed, and a large frigate, four additional transports, two privateers, and five hundred royal seamen had been captured. On March 1 even better news reached Washington. A courier sent by Rochambeau galloped up to headquarters at New Windsor with the word Washington had longed to hear. Flushed with success, Destouches had experienced a change of heart. The entire French fleet at Newport was sailing for the Chesapeake, and on board would be eleven hundred soldiers. Washington immediately matched the French infantry commitment. He gave Lafayette command of America’s soldiery, directing that officer to march from Peekskill and to rendezvous with his countrymen on the beach of the Chesapeake. And he set out for Newport for a second meeting with Rochambeau, this one “to level all difficulties” in preparing for the campaign.7

  General Washington reached Newport early in March, just in time to learn that the French army already had departed and that Destouches had all but sailed. He stayed a week nevertheless, meeting with Rochambeau, and from time to time speaking with New England dignitaries. By the third week in March he was back at headquarters near West Point, there to wait with “anxious solicitude” for news from the South. Given all the false hopes of the past half dozen years he must have been steeled for the worst, although he tried to cheer himself with the reminder of God’s “many remarkable interpositions ... in the hours of our deepest distress and darkness.” Once again, he added, he could only trust “in our deliverance” from the present “awful crisis” by that “hand of Providence.”8

  At the end of the month bad news arrived, though it was not as dreadful as it might have been. For weeks Washington had feared the destruction of the French fleet, an expectation that left him on tenterhooks. His anxiety had been heightened because the French had procrastinated in agreeing to his plan until the British navy had repaired the damage sustained in the February storm; now, he knew, Destouches’s armada would be “unquestionably inferior” to the royal fleet it would find at the Chesapeake. Thus, although he learned that the mission had failed, it was with great relief that he discovered that Destouches had returned safely to Rhode Island.9

  Hoping to outwit the English, Destouches had sailed directly east fron. Newport, gliding a hundred miles into the Atlantic before turning south. His ploy did not work. The British fleet was waiting at the entrance to the Chesapeake when its adversary arrived. A short, brisk engagement ensued, and both sides sustained some damage, enough to dampen Destouches’s appetite for further combat. He turned tail for Rhode Island. Americans “could only console ourselves in the thought of having done everything practicable,” Washington intoned, trying to put the best face on the episode. In fact, more could be done, and Congress did it. For public consumption it lauded and trumpeted the French action, even throwing a victory party in Philadelphia when Destouches sent the Hermione, his flagship, to the capital on a good-will junket. Given the possible blow to morale that the truth might have brought, Congress’s action was wise. It also was necessary for another reason. A letter in which General Washington had injudiciously criticized the French failure to listen to his plans fell into Tory hands and was published by the royalist New York Gazette.10

  Essential as was the public-relations gimmickry, it hardly altered the military situation. Arnold remained unscathed; Lafayette was left alone in Virginia to contend with the British, though he had only half as many troops as his adversary; and Greene’s predicament remained as sticky as ever. Yet, almost unnoticed at headquarters, the war in the South was changing. Grimly, quietly, a deadly partisan war had begun to rage in this sector, an almost hidden conflict that steadily took its toll on the British supply lines and manpower lists. Led by men like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter, both former regulars, and by Andrew Pickens, still a militia officer, these guerrilla fighters darted out of swamps and forests periodically to make their strikes, scourging Britain’s river traffic, plundering its supply waggons, sniping at foraging parties, cutting lines of communication.11

  Meanwhile, alongside this nasty struggle, Morgan had rejoined forces with Greene, and the diminutive American army commenced a retreat to the Dan River, a blue-green stream that wound about the Virginia-North Carolina border. Too weak to fight, Greene’s strategy was not unlike that which Washington had adopted in 1776: fall back, draw the foe on, save his own meager force, wear down Cornwallis. The British general seized the bait that dangled before his eyes, and set out after Greene.

  In March 1781 the two armies collided at Guilford Court House, a wooded, rolling site that Greene had selected for the confrontation. Cornwallis finally had his shot, and at day’s end he owned the battlefield. He must have wondered at what cost though, for he had lost one-quarter of his army.12

  That night, while a steady rain smacked his tent, and while the forlorn cries of the unattended wounded pierced his ears, Cornwallis decided to jettison the Carolinas. He would take his army to Wilmington on the coast to be reoutfitted, then he would strike into Virginia. It was not an unwise decision, for it afforded the best hope of winning the war in the South. Cornwallis knew that the Carolinas had been denuded of supplies. Take Virginia, he reasoned, and the funnel could be plugged through which the Americans slipped provisions into the lower South. The Carolinas then could easily be squeezed to death. In a year or so the British flag would fly from the Potomac to the Savannah River, and Cornwallis could link his army with Clinton’s to resume the war in the North. By late spring, without Clinton’s consent, Cornwallis had begun his incursion into Virginia.

  Washington followed these events closely, and he immediately understood their significance. The events at Guilford Court House would “retard and injure” Cornwallis’s mobility in the Carolinas, he wrote, and he expressed no surprise when the British swept into Virginia. Nor did he find Cornwallis’s action to be as befuddled as have many historians. Indeed, he thought the move was “exceedingly alarming.” His consternation soon proved well founded. The British “are marching thro’ the State almost without controul,” he reported, for Lafayette’s army was too small to offer an effective resistance.13

  Still, Washington’s gaze remained fixed on New York. After the war he sought to foster the notion that his posturing before Manhattan had been a bluff, that all along Virginia and Cornwallis were his real concern. But the evidence does not support his claim. With the summer almost on them, he and Rochambeau—together with Comte de Barras, who only days before had arrived in America and supplanted Destouches—met at Wethersfield, Connecticut, to map their
plans for the year. Familiar with one another, each quite respectful of the other’s talents, these two reserved men found this to be their easiest session yet. Rochambeau opened the meeting with important news: Comte de Grasse had cleared Brest with a large French armada and with six hundred fresh reinforcements for the army; the flotilla was headed for the West Indies, though the troops were to be detached and transported to Newport. It was possible, he went on, that de Grasse might be able to sail for the American mainland at a later date that year. Washington had hardly digested those tidings before Rochambeau divulged additional news. He was sorry to report that Versailles had decided not to send his Second Division to America; in its place, however, 6 million livres worth of supplies and credit would be provided. Rochambeau had considered all these details. He had a recommendation. He proposed that the allies shift the war to the South during the summer of 1781.14

  As happy as Washington must have been with most of his counterpart’s presentation, he persisted in his argument that New York must remain the allies’ principal target. As much as he yearned to fight in Virginia, “where all my property and Connexion’s are,” New York still was a more important object. Besides, a long land march—450 miles from the Hudson, over 600 miles from Newport—seemed the only way to get to Virginia. It would be expensive and time-consuming, and to make the trek in the course of the summer was to risk the loss to disease of perhaps a fourth of the soldiery. In addition, if the two armies took up positions outside New York, Clinton almost certainly would recall some, perhaps all of his forces in Virginia, for he was believed to have only about 7500 troops scattered about the city’s environs; if Clinton declined to augment his forces, the allies would possess “a favourable opportunity” to assail him and reclaim the city. As to whether de Grasse should be instructed to sail to New York or to the Chesapeake, Washington proposed that the decision be postponed pending events of the next several weeks.15