American Crisis

by William M. Fowler Jr.

  Morris was not the only person exchanging barbs with Luzerne. In a response to the secretary of foreign affairs Luzerne warned Livingston “that the expulsion of the enemy from this continent depends in great measure on the exertion of the United States; France would … afford … very little assistance.”43

  Thus far in the war France had loaned 28 million livres to the United States.44 The most recent loan in 1781 had credited the American account with 10 million livres. Little of that money, however, came to Morris. Most of it remained in Europe to pay debts already contracted. The financier needed cash in America to pay the army and meet the rising costs of government. When Luzerne suggested that there had been extravagance in the Congress, Morris “with some warmth” replied that he had done all he could to economize.45 He assured the minister that a new system of contracting had been put in place to supply the army, and he was moving to reduce the number of officers on active duty. He had gone so far as to cut the office budget for the president of the Congress. Even after all of this, he was still desperate for cash. He needed, he told Luzerne, at least 12 million livres.46

  Since the military gobbled up the lion’s share of expenses, Morris placed the army budget in his crosshairs. He did so, however, at the risk of annoying Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln, Washington, and the entire Continental army. Morris believed that the sinews of war were financial. In his estimation bankruptcy was a greater threat to the nation than the British army. With the French balking at further loans, the states refusing to fulfill their obligations, and continental currency barely worth the paper on which it was printed, Morris hammered on the theme of economy. He took particular notice of the number of officers in the army. There were, he believed, too many.

  How to reduce the officer corps without collapsing morale was Morris’s challenge. By the fall of 1780 morale among the officer corps had sunk so low, due mostly to lack of pay, that Washington feared a complete dissolution of the corps. Two years before, in May 1778, to encourage them to remain in service, Congress voted to grant those who served for the duration of the war half pay for seven years.47 It was, as everyone knew, an unfunded obligation that would come due only at the end of the war. If the army were reduced, however, “deranged” officers might legitimately claim their pay. How, Morris wondered, could this promise be fulfilled?

  Washington and Lincoln lobbied for the army. The commander in chief wrote, “I am exceedingly impressed with the Necessity of Oeconomizing the public Monies; but we must not spin this Thread so fine as to break it.”48 Morris acknowledged their concerns but remained unwavering in his view that treasury trumped army. Incessant imprecations from officers who insisted on visiting him in person to make their case only hardened his heart. He would not, he said, “give ground to that Clamor which from want of Pay is ready to burst forth in the Army.”49 The army and Congress were on colliding paths.

  Money would solve everyone’s ills. On past occasions presidents of Congress had dispatched pleas to state authorities that fell on deaf ears. In January 1782 Washington yet again stepped forward to implore the governors to meet their obligations. “You cannot conceive the uneasiness which arises from the total want of so essential an Article as Money,” he argued. For the moment Washington reported that the officers were “quiet,” but he couldn’t answer for the effects of a disappointment. “Enabling the Financier to comply with his Contracts, is a matter of the utmost consequence; the very existence of the Army depends upon it.”50

  Washington actually underestimated the discontent among his officers, some of whom were taking matters into their own hands. In secret a group sought out the talents of Thomas Paine, America’s best-known writer and propagandist, to advance their cause.

  In the early days of the Revolution Paine, the English radical, had electrified America with his forceful pamphlet Common Sense.

  O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe treats her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind!51

  Months later during the dark and desperate days of late 1776, he rallied America again in The Crisis.

  These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.52

  On the morning of January 24, 1782, a delegation of officers visited Paine in Philadelphia to ask if he would “draw up a petition for them to General Washington respecting their pay.”53 Paine’s response is unrecorded, but that afternoon he revealed the conversation to Morris. It may well be that Paine was seeking Morris’s favor, which he had lost a few months prior when he had failed to deliver to the financier an essay on the topic of taxation. Indeed, whether from writer’s block or his indolent ways, Paine had not published for more than a year. But by the end of 1781 he, like the Congress, was running out of cash. The officers’ proposal was inviting, and the fee would be welcomed, but reconciliation with Morris might be even more profitable.

  Morris was grateful to Paine for the information, and he lost no time communicating “directly to the Secretary at War,” who, Morris confided to his diary, “will take measures to keep the [officers] quiet.”54 Those “measures” included keeping such petitions away from Washington, who, Morris feared, would only be agitated by this news. Two days later, however, in a personal meeting, Morris informed the commander in chief of “discontent” in his officers’ ranks. Washington was thankful that Paine had come to Morris and that the petition had been suppressed. Perhaps the writer’s talents might be redirected, he suggested, observing that Paine’s “services to the public had rather been neglected.”55 Morris told the commander in chief that although he “had nothing in [his] power at the present to Offer a compensation for his Services Something might turn up.”56

  Some two weeks later, with Washington’s support, Morris drew Livingston into a scheme. The secretary of foreign affairs’ participation was essential since he could supply secret information from abroad that would be useful ammunition for Paine. On February 10, 1782, Morris, Washington, and Livingston signed a secret contract with Paine. They promised that they would only ask him to espouse “upright measures,” mostly revolving around persuading the states “to grant sufficient taxes” to support the confederation and rouse “the People to Spirited Exertion.” For this they agreed to pay him eight hundred dollars per year from the secret service account.57 Secrecy was essential for if the information leaked out that Paine’s efforts were a work for hire, the sponsors’ motives would be revealed. If that happened, state authorities, fearful about any loss of power to the Congress, would reap a propaganda windfall. The image of three of America’s most powerful men conspiring to enhance their own power and using public money to do it would blemish the reputations of nationalists who sought a more powerful Congress. Unfortunately, Thomas Paine was not discreet. The news was soon about Philadelphia that he was a “hireling writer.”58

  Paine fulfilled his contract. Over the next several months he wrote several essays appearing under the title The Crisis, urging the states to support the national cause.59 He dismissed the flood of petitions and resolutions flowing from the states pleading poverty. The nation was not poor. “There are not three millions of people in any part of the universe who live so well or have such a fund of ability as in America.” If the states were ever to “lie down in security,” they must now pay the cost.60

  Paine delivered his essays, but the old passion was absent. The heady days of 1776 were gone, and Paine’s rhetoric failed to stir the hearts and minds of Americans. Taxation was not among the emotional issues that �
�try men’s souls.”61

  Although Washington sat in the high councils and engaged in discussions over issues of taxation, foreign affairs, and other matters, his true concern was the army and its well-being. He understood that the army had to grow smaller, but since the British still remained in America and showed little inclination to leave, some force needed to be kept. How to advocate for these men with discontent in their ranks was his challenge.

  Not only did Washington get little support from Congress; it embarrassed him to boot. He was “astonished,” for example, when he discovered that Lincoln, without consulting him, had assigned several officers to be “servants to civil officers.”62 Equally annoying to him were the politics behind promotion. In bitter debate Congress twice, along sectional lines (North in favor, South opposed), refused to promote Henry Knox, Washington’s closest adviser, from brigadier to major general.63 The members gave as their reasons that Knox lacked seniority and the army had too many generals.64 In November 1781 the Board of War recommended that “no more General Officers be retained in the field than shall be absolutely necessary.”65 A few weeks after Congress rejected Knox’s promotion, Ezekiel Cornell of Rhode Island, sponsor of the November resolution, and a representative of the state most vehemently opposed to increasing the powers of Congress, lobbied the commander in chief for the promotion of eleven brigadiers to major general. Washington shot back, “You must recollect that we already have more Major Generals in Commission than we can conveniently employ.”66 Cornell gave up the plan.67

  Although Washington was often disappointed by the behavior of civilian authorities, both in the Congress and the states, rarely did he express publicly his dismay and despair. In the matter of prisoners of war, however, he was more forthcoming.

  By the standards of civilized warfare victors were expected to secure and care for captives. It was an obligation both inconvenient and expensive. To shed it, Europeans had developed elaborate systems of prisoner exchange, ordinarily referred to as cartels. Ironically, while both the Americans and the British were well acquainted with the traditions of prisoner exchange, for the duration of the Revolution they could never manage to agree on terms. Politicians and generals argued while men rotted and died in captivity.

  Until the British general John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga in 1777, American prisoners in British hands far outnumbered British in American custody. Saratoga tipped the balance in favor of the Americans, prompting the British commander Sir William Howe to open negotiations for an exchange. His proposal was a simple one for one, soldier for soldier and officer for officer.68 By keeping the arrangement on a commander-to-commander basis, Howe was offering a practical field expedient that sought to avoid the messiness of the king’s refusal to recognize the United States. The members of Congress abruptly upset this plan by insisting that Tories be turned over to them and returned to their homes to be tried. Congressional representatives also demanded that in advance of any exchange Howe pay in gold or silver all the expenses Congress had undertaken for the care of British prisoners. The terms were outrageous, and the promise of exchange collapsed. Washington was furious. Not only had Congress undermined his authority, but it had also condemned his soldiers to continued confinement, punishing them and denying him the return of much needed veteran troops.69 According to Elias Boudinot, commissary of prisoners, Washington “resented” the action of Congress “and said his troops looked up to him as their Protector and that he would not suffer an opportunity to be lost of liberating every Soldier who was then in captivity let the Consequence be what it might.”70

  Congress’s unfortunate actions provoked the British to be equally obdurate. Here and there partial exchanges took place, avoiding the official notice of Congress, but no general exchange was ever accomplished during the entire war. However, as a result of the favorable turn in American fortunes, Washington’s attitude toward exchanges shifted. With Cornwallis’s surrender the ratio of British prisoners in American hands to American prisoners in British confinement exploded to an astounding 24:1.71 Those numbers gave Washington pause. At a time when British forces in North America had been hollowed out by defeat and potential reinforcements dispatched to other parts of the empire, any exchange of prisoners in America would work to the advantage of the king’s forces. Even those Americans who came home were not likely to stay in service. While in captivity many Continental enlistments had expired, and it was highly unlikely those men who had endured so much would rush to reenlist even if they were fit. In a letter to the president of Congress Washington put an unusual gloss on the situation, assuring him that “we have had no reason to complain of the treatment of the Continental land prisoners in New York.”72 In a further shift two weeks later he wrote to Sir Henry Clinton, who had replaced Howe as British commander in chief in 1778, to correct a misunderstanding. From a previous letter to him the British commander had come to believe that Washington was interested in a general exchange. Washington replied that any exchange would have to be part of a financial settlement that reimbursed Congress for the care of British prisoners. Washington understood that this demand, the same one that had precipitated the collapse of previous negotiations, would break the deal. Sensing his own advantage in numbers, and perhaps hoping that Clinton would pay to get his soldiers back, Washington took a harder line with the enemy.73

  While the commander in chief and Congress drew closer in the matter of prisoners, they were divided in regard to deserters. Section 6, article 1 of the Articles of War, drawn up and approved by Congress in 1775, decreed the death penalty for desertion. Despite the threat of severe punishment, high rates of desertion, 20–25 percent, plagued the American army.74 Simple desertion usually brought a punishment of one hundred lashes and a return to service. Desertion to the enemy was likely to bring on the hangman or a firing squad. The challenge was catching deserters. By early 1782 several thousand American deserters were on the loose, all subject to arrest and punishment. Without the means to find these men, capture was unlikely to happen. In Washington’s view simple deserters comprised a pool of veterans whose skills he needed. To entice them back into service, the commander in chief supported a general amnesty for those who returned voluntarily to their units.75

  Congress viewed the issue differently: amnesty was not simply a grant of mercy; it was more about politics and money. Local authorities threw deserters into the same execrable pile as Tories, upon whom they took similar revenge: confiscation of property. In more than six years of war considerable property had been taken and sold. Talk of amnesty might endanger ongoing action, to say nothing of calling into question previous seizures. Lincoln advised Washington to back away, and he did.76

  Spring 1782 brought both hope and worry to Washington. Although it seemed increasingly unlikely, he still anticipated launching a new campaign, and he wanted to be back with his army to get ready for battle. He knew that after a long winter encampment his soldiers were anxious and uneasy. From Fort Pitt came news that the garrison was close to mutiny, and from Virginia arrived word that regimental officers had refused commands to march south to reinforce General Greene. Washington was taken aback by the officers’ behavior. He exploded, “What can they expect from their soldiers when they themselves strike at the Root of Authority and discipline.”77 At every post American soldiers, like the rest of America, waited for news whether there was to be peace or war. Their pay was in arrears, and supplies were dwindling. Officers and soldiers awaited word from their commander.78

  For Washington, the Philadelphia sojourn had been pleasant and restful, but he had grown weary of political jabber and posturing. In Congress he had witnessed weakness and bickering, and sadly, he had come to realize that the army was not a primary concern. It was, however, his first concern, and on March 18 he asked Congress—provided it had “no farther occasion for my stay in this city”—for permission to join the army on the Hudson.79 By invitation on Wednesday morning March 20, Washington entered the chamber. He was welcomed and told that Congr
ess granted him his request to leave, but, added the president, “[we] have nothing in particular to give you in charge and have appointed this audience only to assure you of [our] esteem and confidence, to recommend you to the protection of Divine Providence, and to wish you happiness and success.”80 Washington offered no response. He left Philadelphia the next day.81

  Chapter Three

  While washington and his wife were making their triumphal progress toward Philadelphia, the French frigate Surveillante, commanded by Captain Cillart de Villeneuve, scudded before a brisk fall breeze on a near record crossing from Yorktown to France. Among the passengers was the Duc de Lauzun, to whom Rochambeau had given the honor of announcing to the king the glorious news from America. Lauzun entered the palace at Versailles on November 20, 1781, just at the moment when the court was celebrating the birth of the Dauphin. They rejoiced doubly.1

  While the halls of Versailles resounded with joyful noise, George III, for the moment, was unaware of events in America. Cornwallis made his report to Clinton, leaving it to Sir Henry to inform his superiors. Rather than sending a special messenger, Clinton waited to use the regular mail packet from New York, which did not arrive in Falmouth until November 24. From Falmouth a waiting post rider spurred his mount on the road to London carrying the glum news. Clinton had addressed the doleful dispatches directly to Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the Southern Department, a post which included responsibility for the American colonies.2

  As such, Germain had charge of the conduct of the war. Although Lord North, the first minister, was his superior and sat at the head of the cabinet, Germain devised strategy and issued orders on a daily basis.3 There was no mistaking his unyielding attitude toward the Americans. When Germain took office in November 1775, a moment when reconciliation was still possible, he declared boldly that he would be “decisive, direct, and firm” in dealing with the rebels. He was, according to the court gossip Horace Walpole, “inflexible.” Under his administration that inflexibility had escalated a war of colonial resistance into a world war, cost the kingdom two armies and a major naval defeat, and reduced His Majesty’s forces in the colonies to toeholds, at Savannah, Charleston, New York, and Penobscot Bay. In Parliament there had been many demands to sack Germain, but such action would have been an admission of failure sufficient to collapse North’s government. Furthermore, in a political world where parliamentary debate drew attention North found Germain useful in the House of Commons, where he used his acid tongue to skewer opponents, making it risky for those who dared speak in opposition. “He engrosses all tongues” was Walpole’s judgment.4