Unburdened of campaign responsibilities, Washington undertook a business and pleasure trip that summer. Bored with the “distressing Taedium” of head-quarters life, he longed to get away for a couple of weeks, and in mid-July he and a few aides and officers set out on a nineteen-day sojourn through New York’s northern wilderness. It was his first trek into such an environment in nearly fifteen years, but he took right to it, displaying the stamina of a young man—or of a man of his age who had worked to remain fit. Indeed, Washington seemed to find solace in long hours on horseback, many of them spent thrashing through dense woods, or in awkwardly steering a mount across a cold, swift stream. He traveled up the east bank of the Hudson to Albany, then to Saratoga, and ultimately to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, to places where his armies had been posted and had fought, but that he had never seen, to faraway donjons of which he had heard tales when he was only a child. He inspected installations and took mental notes of the terrain, filing away the data for who-knew-what subsequent eventuality. Aside from whatever rest and relaxation a fifty-one-year-old man could derive from such a strenuous jaunt, the only concrete result that stemmed from the journey came later when Washington, together with Governor George Clinton of New York, purchased a lush tract of upstate real estate at Oriskany, near Fort Stanwix.71
Bored before his trip, Washington had even less to do when he returned. Indeed, he already had begun to say his goodbyes. Even before his junket Washington had issued a somber farewell to the citizenry. In this “Circular Letter,” as Washington called his epistle, the commander offered a few perfunctory comments on public sacrifice before getting down to cases, for the heart of the address was a four-thousand-word admonition on popular policy. It was a curious undertaking for a military commander in chief, and, in fact, Washington apologized for “stepping out of the proper line of duty” to make his remarks. But he made them anyway. At its core his address was a refrain that he had uttered in private during the previous three years: there must be “adequate authority in the Supreme Power,” the federal government, and “unless the States will suffer Congress to exercise” its constitutional powers “the Union cannot be of long duration,” for its central government would be so weak as to rob it of its very reason for existence.72
Washington had hardly returned to Newburgh from upstate New York when Congress summoned him for consultation. Some legislators characterized the invitation as merely an opportunity for him to escape the tedium of headquarters, but others had some important matters in mind. Chiefly, these men wished to talk with him about the postwar army and about future United States policy toward the Native Americans. Washington welcomed Congress’s call, as much to escape the routine of camp as to air some of his ideas. For one thing, if the United States acquired the transmontane West in the final peace treaty, he hoped to convince Congress to maintain garrisons in the region. Moreover, there still was lobbying to undertake on behalf of his officers, principally in securing promotions for this and that worthy, advancements that could boost a man’s severance pay quite handsomely.73
Washington’s departure from Newburgh was delayed by an illness that had stricken Martha—he found her in the grip of a fever when he returned from his frontier trek—but he finally set out on the 19th. It was the beginning of what would become a three month’s absence from the army. His route was thoroughly familiar, although this time his destination was Princeton, not Philadelphia. In June still another army mutiny had flared, and though short and inconsequential, the event had induced Congress—which briefly had been encircled by the rebellious soldiery—to abandon Philadelphia for the third time in this war. The legislators moved up to the sleepy little college town in New Jersey, a place where not much had occurred since Washington fought his battle in and about the place seven years before.74
Washington and his wife set up residence in a country farmhouse just outside of town, a dwelling that had been pretentiously christened “Rocky Hill.” In the midst of a 320-acre estate, much of it given to orchards of apple, pear, plum, peach, and cherry trees, the new headquarters perched atop a steep knoll above the Millstone River. A two-story white clapboard dwelling, Rocky Hill was comfortable, and the guests settled in for an extended stay. If Washington was anxious to get home to his own farm, this nevertheless was a comfortable period. The pace was slow and easy, the weather was sunny and Indian-summer mild, and the autumn foliage in this bucolic setting was unsurpassed for its beauty.
The commander had no sooner arrived than he addressed both Congress and the faculty of the College of New Jersey. Then, beginning about two weeks after he reached the little hamlet, he met on occasion with the proper congressional committees. The commander had some quite definite ideas about the West, the “New Country,” as he alluded to it. Peace in that region was essential. The nation needed peace just now, but common decency also dictated policies that might prevent another blood bath, while common sense suggested that prudent restraint would more rapidly open the area for settlement. Washington hinted at something like a federal territorial policy, an expedient that would control the flow of population into this region, making it conform to the national interest; in addition, he proposed the return of all Indian prisoners of war and the creation of an office to supervise trade with the Native Americans.75
He was no less opinionated about the postwar army. A standing army was “indispensably necessary,” he told Congress, not because of a threat from Europe but to protect the citizenry in the “New Country.” Once established, however, the army’s existence would assure that the nation would never again be as unprepared for war as it had been in 1775. He proposed a modest army—2631 men, about three-fourths in infantry units, the remainder in one artillery regiment. Initially, the soldiery would be comprised of the three-year enlistees already in the army, men whose term had not yet expired when the War for Independence ended; in time, many veterans would reenlist “upon almost any Terms,” for they would be put off by the “hard labour” of their civilian pursuits. In another generation or so, he went on, conscription would be necessary. To see that a trained officer corps existed, he advocated the creation of national military academies at certain artillery bases. The army that he envisioned would garrison bases on the Great Lakes and at West Point, as well as on the Ohio, Susquehanna, and Potomac rivers, and it would be augmented by a uniform militia system throughout the states, one in which each male between eighteen and fifty would be compelled to serve, and whose original officers would be required to have officered in the Continental army.76
Congress considered Washington’s advice, but it took no action. Now that he had made his pitch, the general’s stay in Princeton—indeed, in the army—must have begun to seem irksome to him, especially as he watched Martha ride off for Mount Vernon early in October, a journey she was anxious to complete before the onset of cold, inclement weather. He devoted a good bit of his time to the details of supplying the army during the coming winter, but increasingly his thoughts roamed back to his farm. It was “in a deranged state, and very much impaired,” he thought, so much so that he could “form no plan for my future” until he had actually overseen operations at Mount Vernon for a spell. And as he waited and waited for news of the treaty, he relaxed and caught up on his correspondence—some of which he actually got through the mails, no thanks to the postmaster of Princeton, a lazy, stupid oaf, if Washington is to be believed.77
Finally, early November brought the tidings everyone had awaited since the spring. The definitive peace treaty, inked two months earlier in Paris, at last arrived. Officially, the war was at an end, the pact signed almost seven years to the day after the commencement of that dark, dreadful campaign for New York. Now all that remained for Washington was to reoccupy that city and bid farewell to his army.
The general left immediately for West Point. His joy must have known no bounds. He had no quarrel with the peace treaty, and he simply characterized the document’s promulgation as a “glorious” and “happy Event.” Moreover, he had th
e satisfaction of knowing that he had presided over the victorious prosecution of the war. Already the “distresses” he had experienced were fading, overcome by remembrances of the “uncommon scenes,” the “astonishing events . . . which seldom if ever before [had] taken place on the stage of human action,” and of which he had been a part. He must have remembered those grim weeks after Brandywine when he came to believe that a plot existed in Congress to relieve him of his command, and perhaps now as he made the long ride back to the Hudson he reflected on his triumphant generalship. Obviously, too, the renown that he had pursued relentlessly as a young man had been realized to a degree that he would never have thought possible. Wherever he went he was feted and cheered; folks struggled for a glimpse of this man, and already poets and scribblers referred to him as “the father of His Country,” or as “the Father of the People.”78
Whatever Washington may have thought, he carefully guarded his inner self. If he ever gave much thought to the reasons for victory, he did not record it. At various times he maintained that the war had been won because of the “patronage of Heaven,” or because of the populace’s commitment to the Revolutionary ideology and idealism. The turning point, he once said, came with his victories at Trenton and Princeton, but he also noted that the presence of the French navy “rendered practicable . . . enterprizes which without it could not . . . have been attempted.” Many capable general officers assisted him, he added, and he also noted that the perseverence of the soldiery was crucial to success, especially after 1778 when his army was built on long-term service. He did not mention Britain’s shortcomings as a factor, nor did he make an attempt to evaluate his own role in the triumph.79
With the obvious exception of his Yorktown engagement, Washington’s performance in the years after Monmouth has often been slighted by historians. After all, during those three years he was involved in only that single general engagement on the Virginia peninsula, and it could be argued that America’s success owed more to the French presence than to Washington’s generalship. Of course, Washington’s dearth of action between 1779 and 1781 arose principally from factors beyond his control. Britain altered its strategy, France entered the war, and Washington simply adapted to the new situation, choosing to remain virtually immobile until he could act in concert with a French fleet. Still, he might have pursued alternative courses of action. An invasion of Canada or an attack on the British in New York—the sort of action he repeatedly had urged against Howe in Boston—were possibilities. That he chose not to undertake such risks usually has been attributed to his greater experience; he was pushed about early in the war, it often has been said, but in the process he learned valuable lessons, and after 1778 he no longer was the bumbling amateur. No one would quibble with such an assessment, though it does ignore an additional factor—Washington’s personality.
After 1779 Washington evinced a great deal of caution that previously had been absent from his generalship. While the new military conditions contributed to his altered deportment, so too perhaps did personality factors. The demise of Lee, as well as Congress’s tacit reconfirmation of the commander’s superiority over Gates in 1778, left Washington in a far more secure position than he believed he previously had enjoyed. Surrounded now by devoted officers and lauded by domestic politicians, not to mention fawning foreign emissaries and warriors, he had acquired that complete control that his disposition required, a turn that fulfilled the self-enhancement for which he had striven. Those inner needs that had driven him to feats of daring before 1778 now were met. Indeed, his only daring acts as commander were to sanction the raids on Britain’s two Hudson outposts, and those decisions came hard on the heels of his only real setback, the loss of Stony Point in 1779. Otherwise, his very tone seemed different.
Once so eager to act that he was willing to manipulate balky subordinates into consenting to his wishes, Washington now found reasons for inaction, though chiefly he attributed his inertia to the nation’s economic woes and its political chaos. He longed to act, he said repeatedly, but “the object of my Wishes [is] not within the compass of my powers.” He understood the danger of his course, and in 1780 he even told Congress: “If we fail for want of proper exertions ... I trust the responsibility will fall where it ought and that I shall stand justified to Congress, to my Country, and to the World.” Still, when he seriously contemplated acting, a note of hesitancy was there that had not been present earlier, and repeatedly he spoke of fighting only when there was “a moral certainty of victory” for “should we fail . . . it would be a real disgrace,” leaving “us in a state of relaxation and debility, from which it will be difficult if not impracticable to recover.”80
How then to evaluate Washington’s leadership in these last years of the war? His generalship is open to criticism, much of it owing to the attitudes he harbored toward his subordinates. His decisions to leave Sullivan in command in Rhode Island, then to select him to lead the expedition to the frontier in 1779, were misguided, nearly resulting in disastrous defeat in the first instance, and leading to an incomplete conquest in the second. Moreover, the idea of launching another campaign into Canada had real merit, but it was a dead letter with Washington so long as Gates was certain to command the invasion army. What Washington did focus on in these years was a prospective Franco-American siege of New York; indeed, he embraced this notion until it seemed to become a fixed idea virtually to the exclusion of every other possibility. A victory there would have been magnificent, surely ending the war in one fell swoop. But the odds against success were considerable, for the French and American armies would have been barely larger than Clinton’s force, while the French navy—assuming it would have been able to act in these waters—was not likely ever to have been vastly superior to its adversary. Even a friend like Jefferson eventually criticized Washington’s obsession with New York, comparing the likely futility of such an enterprise to the doomed attempt by France and Spain to besiege Gibraltor.81 In a sense Washington’s fascination with besieging New York was in keeping with his proclivity for the grandiose, for the most bold, resolute design. Curiously, however, while such a gamble was filled with risks for the United States—to fail might extirpate American morale and erode French willingness to persevere—it would have been a relatively safe undertaking for Washington, for failure was more likely to be attributed to his ally’s maritime shortcomings, or to the very magnitude of the endeavor, than to his errors. And, of course, just as the successful assaults on Stony Point and Paulus Hook seemed in Washington’s mind to remove the stigma of his failure at Fort Washington, a victory over Clinton in New York might have eradicated the memory of the egregious losses that he had sustained on these islands in 1776.
On the other hand, there is much in Washington’s performance to praise, particularly in the contributions he made away from the battlefield. He worked well with the French, an important fact that often is overlooked. Much could have gone wrong in the relationship between temperamental, savvy professionals and an insecure, inexperienced, amateur soldier, as Sullivan demonstrated in his own plaintive dealings with d’Estaing. Yet Washington’s relations with Rochambeau and three successive naval commanders were proper, amicable in some instances, and always characterized by mutual respect. Anything less might have jeopardized the 1781 campaign that ultimately resulted in the victory at Yorktown.
In fact, Washington’s principal contribution in these years stemmed from his demeanor and his temperament. After 1778 his character became a weapon in the war, more powerful in some ways than his regiments. The commander had been popular from the beginning of his appointment, but after Valley Forge and the alleged machinations of the cabal his stature grew until it transcended just being reputable. Washington thereafter was admired, even beloved. In 1779 his countrymen began to celebrate his birthday, and throughout this dark period sermons and essays, speeches and songs applauded him. For a society that feared it was witnessing the inexorable sapping of its revolutionary virtue by the vicissitudes of war,
Washington had come to be seen as one of the last virtuous men. He became, according to historian Charles Royster, the “exemplar of the qualities that would achieve the continent’s promised future.”82
Others used public life for private gain, or abandoned office altogether to seek greater rewards in private endeavors, but Washington, serving without a salary, was constant. Come pain or travail or disappointment, he was there. The public thought him above the improbity and the treachery it perceived in others, and in him it saw a man whose character matched the ideals of the American revolutionary identity. In these years he grew larger than life, “godlike” even, according to a popular song. He may not have been indispensable, but he had come to seem so in those buoyant early years of the conflict, for his persona had come to symbolize the preservation both of the army and the Revolution, and he was seen both by officers and political leaders as the unbending guardian of the revolutionary credo. Never more than in the long, difficult span from late 1778 until Yorktown did the new nation need a man with a felicitous genius for understanding what the nation expected of its commander in chief.
That November, as Washington returned for the final time to West Point, the encomiums continued to roll in. Along the way he paused frequently to be honored, and in return to address the local citizenry. In mid-month he reached the outpost, where he remained only for a week, tending to a few administrative chores and issuing a farewell address to his soldiery. Then, learning that the redcoats were about to depart New York City, he rode south, across Kingsbridge, already abandoned by Carleton, then on along the rustic environs of northern Manhattan until he reached Harlem. Finally, at noon on the 25th, the last British soldier stepped off New York soil, and Washington and his entourage, led by a suburban militia outfit, paraded into the city. It was a chilly day, but the late fall cold had kept few people at home. Citizens lined the streets, cheering the elegant little procession as it passed, craning for a glimpse of the large man most had come to see. At Cape’s Tavern on lower Broadway the parade ended. Washington alighted from his mount, inspected his militia escort, listened to still another round of panegyric addresses, then simply went inside for a private banquet.83
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