American Crisis

by William M. Fowler Jr.

  18 Eleazer McComb to Nicholas Van Dyke, June 30, 1783, LD, 20:379; Charles Thomson to Hannah Thomson, July 4, 1783, in ibid., 20:397.

  19 GW to President of Congress, June 18, 1783, FW, 27:20. The trip apparently put a strain on Martha’s health. GW to George William Fairfax, July 10, 1783, in ibid., 27:60.

  20 GW to Schuyler, July 15, 1783, in ibid., 27:65.

  21 GW to President of Congress, July 16, 1783, in ibid., 27:70; Washington’s itinerary can also be followed in his expense account, George Washington’s Family, August 5, 1783, Revolutionary War Accounts, Vouchers and Receipted Accounts, GWLC.

  22 Franklin to Robert R. Livingston, April 27, 1783, www.yale.edu/franklinpapers. Accessed July 20, 2010.

  23 Elizabeth Cometti, ed. and trans., Seeing America and Its Great Men: The Journal and Letters of Count Francesco dal Verme, 1783–84 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969), p.12. For Washington’s high opinion of the count, see GW to General John Sullivan, August 4, 1783, FW, 27:79 and note 24.

  24 Cometti, dal Verme, p. 12.

  25 GW to the Chevalier de Chastellux, October 12, 1783, FW, 27:190.

  26 Ibid., p.189.

  27 GW to Dr. Hugh Williamson, March 31, 1784, FW, 27:377–81.

  28 Governor Clinton’s nephew DeWitt would fulfill that promise with the building of the Erie Canal.

  29 GW to Chastellux, October 12, 1783, FW, 27:190.

  30 GW to Clinton, November 25, 1784, in ibid., 27:501; The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, Dorothy Twohig, et al., ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 4:485, 516, 524n.

  31 GW to John Sullivan, August 4, 1783, FW, 27:79.

  32 The trip was an ordeal, but the commander in chief came through well. Whatever impression he might have wished to leave on March 15 (that is, taking out his glasses), he proved he was physically fit.

  33 Elias Boudinot to Washington, July 31, 1783, LD, 20:487.

  34 GW to McHenry, August 6, 1783, FW, 27:82.

  35 On the same day that he wrote to McHenry, Washington also wrote to Quartermaster General Timothy Pickering chastising him for spending too much time away from the army. GW to Pickering, August 6, 1783, in ibid., 27:81.

  36 David Howell to Thomas G. Hazard, August 26, 1783, LD, 20:595.

  37 McHenry to GW, August 11, 1783, in ibid., 20:538–39.

  38 JCC, 24:494–95.Congress’s statue never materialized. Virginia did better. On June 22, 1783, the House of Delegates resolved to “procure a marble statue of General Washington ‘to be of the finest Marble and best Workmanship.’ ” As a result, Jean-Antoine Houdon’s life-size statue stands today at the Virginia State Capitol.

  39 Howell to Hazard, August 26, 1783, LD, 20:594.

  40 During the Revolution Washington kept his headquarters at 169 locations. http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/

  revolution/itinerary/index.html. Accessed May 16, 2010. The widow’s husband, Judge John Berrien, committed suicide by jumping into the nearby Millstone River on April 22, 1772. http://www.dennisberrien.com/StoriesJudgeJ.html. Accessed May 16, 2010.

  41 Ibid.; Charles Thomson to Hannah Thomson, August 27, 1783, LD, 20:599.

  42 http://www.dennisberrien.com/StoriesJudgeJ.html. Accessed May 16, 2010. Mrs. Berrien had apparently moved into her home in Princeton. Independent Gazetteer, November 11, 1783.

  43 Charles Thomson to Hannah Thomson, August 27, 1783, LD, 20:599.

  44 JCC, 24:521

  45 Knox was particularly unhappy. His request for pay had been rejected by Benjamin Lincoln, the secretary at war, and Congress was slow in determining the status of the army at West Point. Knox to General Robert Howe, August 21, 1783, and Knox to R. T. Paine, August 22, 1783, both KP, reel 13. On the same day that he wrote to Lincoln, the secretary resigned his post. Knox to Benjamin Lincoln, August 1, 1783, BLP, reel 17. General Frederick Haldimand, the British commander in Canada, was uncooperative. Pickering to his wife, August 25, 1783, PP, reel 1; Knox to GW, August 26, 1783, KP, reel 13.

  46 “Observations on an Intended Report of a Committee of Congress on a Peace Establishment, September 8, 1783,” FW, 27:140–44; GW to James Duane, September 7, 1783, in ibid., 27:133–40.

  47 GW to Duane, September 7, 1783, in ibid., 27:134.

  48 GW to von Steuben, March 15, 1784, in ibid., 27:360.

  49 GW to Hamilton, May 2, 1783, and “Sentiments on Peace Establishment,” in ibid., 26:374–98.

  50 GW to Morris, August 12, 1783, in ibid., 27:98.

  51 Robert Dalzell and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 113–15.

  52 GW to Parker, September 12, 1783, FW, 27:150. By Orange Town, Washington was most likely referring to the meeting at Tappan the previous May.

  53 GW to Robert and William Lewis, September 6, 1783, FW, 27:132.

  54 Monroe H. Fabian, Joseph Wright: American Artist, 1756–1793 (Washington: National Portrait Gallery, 1985), pp. 22–38.

  55 Thomson to GW, August 28, 1783, LD, 20:602.

  56 Fabian, Joseph Wright, p. 45; Washington to Comte de Solms, January 3, 1784, FW, 27:291.

  57 Hugh Howard, The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 13–14.

  58 Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution (New York: Dana, 1856), p. 139. While there is no doubt about the painting, there is some question as to whether Wright actually did a cast of Washington’s face at Rockingham. The evidence seems to suggest that he did; in any case, the procedure described was common at the time and would have been the process used by Wright. Jean Antoine Houdon did a cast of Washington at Mount Vernon in 1785 using this process. Fabian, Joseph Wright, pp. 50–51n.

  59 David Howell to William Greene, September 9, 1783, LD, 20:646.

  60 Ibid., 647.

  61 Ibid.

  62 Franklin to Livingston, April 15, 1783, http://www.yale.edu/franklinpapers. Accessed July 20, 2010.

  63 Charles Thomson to Hannah Thomson, October 13, 1783, LD, 21:52.

  64 JCC, 25:701–2. Greene “retired” to a plantation in Georgia given to him by the state. He died there on June 19, 1786. There is no evidence that the cannon ever arrived. PNG, 13:171n.

  65 GW to Morris, October 6, 1783, FW, 27:179; Patricia Brady, Martha Washington: An American Life (New York: Viking, 2005), pp. 143–44.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1 Quoted in “Guy Carleton,” DCB online.

  2 “Intelligence,” F. Michaels to Major Beckwith, October 4, 1783, CPNAC.

  3 Lord North to Carleton, December 5, 1783, DAR, 19:454.

  4 Carleton to North, June 2, 1783, in ibid., 19:403–4.

  5 Carleton to North, June 6, 1783, in ibid., 19:405; Lieutenant Colonel William Smith to GW, August 31, 1783, FW, 27:126n.

  6 To “All Adherents to the British Government and Followers of the British Army Commonly Called Tories,” August 15, 1783 (Poughkeepsie: Morton and Horner, 1783). “Brutus” was a common pen name often used by patriot writers.

  7 Carleton to North, June 6, 1783, DAR, 19:405; Carleton to North, June 15, 1783, in ibid., 19:409; Carleton to North, June 21, 1783, in ibid., 19:411; Carleton to Clinton, July 25, 1783, and “Intelligence,” August 11, 1783, both CPNAC; Carleton to Boudinot, August 17, 1783, DAR, 19:431; James Cook, “Information Before William Smith,” September 16, 1783, CPNAC.

  8 In this decision Carleton was supported by the government at home. North to Carleton, August 8, 1783, DAR, 19:426.

  9 Smith to GW, July 15, 1783, GWLC.

  10 Smith to GW, August 26, 1783, in ibid.

  11 Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 194–96.

  12 Hamilton to Robert R. Livingston, August 13, 1783, PAH, 3:431–32.

  13 Rivington’s Royal Gazette, August 29, 1783. Some may have remembered the great fire of September 20–21, 1776, which destroyed a good part of the city. Although there is no evidence, s
uspicion of arson turned toward the American forces evacuating the city. Thomas Jones, History of New York During the Revolutionary War (New York: New York Historical Society, 1879), 2:120.

  14 New York Gazette, September 29, 1783.

  15 Carleton to North, July 11, 1783, CPNAC.

  16 Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 435–37.

  17 Ibid., p. 435.

  18 Henry Laurens of South Carolina was also a commissioner, but at the time of the signing he was in London.

  19 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris.asp. Altogether the Treaty of Paris contained ten articles. A separate secret article, agreed to by the United States and Great Britain, gave to the latter additional territory in West Florida if “at the Conclusion of the present war” British forces were “in possession of West Florida.”

  20 Elbridge Gerry to John Adams, November 13, 1783, LD, 21:157; Samuel Osgood to Henry Knox, November 24, 1783, BLP, reel 7.

  21 Boston Evening Post, November 1, 1783; Newport Mercury, November 1, 1783; Providence Gazette, November 1, 1783; Pennsylvania Evening Post, November 1, 1783.

  22 “Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States,” November 2, 1783, FW, 27:222–27. In the “Farewell” Washington once again referred to a “band of brothers.”

  23 Although there is no direct evidence that Humphreys was on leave, I conclude this from the fact that between September 8 and November 7 Jonathan Trumbull Jr. seems also to have been absent. Washington’s letters were drafted by his other secretaries, David Cobb and Benjamin Walker, FW, 27:144, 234.

  24 “Farewell Orders,” November 2, 1783, FW, 27:225.

  25 http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/revolution/itinerary/all.html.

  26 GW to John Hancock, August 13, 1776, FW, 5:426–27.

  27 General Orders, March 11, 1776, in ibid., 4:388.

  28 JCC, 19:368; Washington to Varick, May 25, 1781, GWLC.

  29 George Washington Papers: Provenance and Publication History, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwabout.html; Tappan was Governor George Clinton’s brother-in-law; Varick to Washington, July 19, 1781, GWLC.

  30 GW to Parker, May 15, 1783, FW, 26:435.

  31 GW to Howe, November 9, 1783, in ibid., 27:238.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Pickering to his wife, November 12, 1783, PP, reel 1.

  34 “Address to His Excellency General Washington Commander in Chief of the Armies of the United States of America,” November 15, 1783, GWLC.

  35 JCC, 25:714

  36 For a description of the tenor of debate over this issue, see Chares Thomson to Hannah Thomson, October 20, 1783, LD, 21:82–84 and same October 21, 1783, in ibid., 21:86–88. Kenneth R. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C. The Idea and Location of the American Capital (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1991), pp. 49–57. The date for reconvening proved to be absurdly optimistic. A quorum did not appear in Congress until January 14, 1784. Edmund C Burnett, The Continental Congress (New York: W.W. Norton, 1941), pp. 593–95.

  37 GW to James Duane, November 15, 1783, FW, 27:241; “Orders Relating to the Withdrawal of the British Troops from the Various Parts in New York and Vicinity, Memoranda from Maj’r Beckwith,” PPGC, 8:285–86.

  38 For threats of violence, see Carleton to Clinton, November 19, 1783, PPGC, 8:282–83 and “Additional Information Concerning Evacuation Day Plots,” November 18, 1783, in ibid., 8:284–85.

  39 When American forces reoccupied Philadelphia in June 1778, Congress authorized Washington to secure the city. He gave the task to Benedict Arnold. JCC, 11:571; GW to Arnold, June 19, 1778, FW, 12:94–95.

  40 Carleton to North, November 22, 1783, DAR, 19:451; Digby to North, November 25, 1783, in ibid., 19:452.

  41 Elliott to Scott, November 17, 1783, and Elliott to Carleton, November 15, 1783, both CPNAC.

  42 Timothy Pickering to Samuel Hodgdon, November 16, 1783, PP, reel 34.

  43 Ibid.

  44 Near 126th Street and Eighth Avenue—Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

  45 Von Krafft’s Journal, quoted in I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1967), 5:1173.

  46 Stokes, Iconography, 5:1172.

  47 Ibid.

  48 The “barrier” was located near the junction of the Bowery and Third Avenue. Ibid., 5:1173.

  49 Carleton to GW, November 24, 1783, in Jared Sparks, ed., Writings of George Washington (Boston: American Stationers, 1835), 8:547.

  50 “Orders to the Light Infantry of the American Army … from Orderly Book of Lt. Silas Morton,” New York Historical Society.

  51 James Riker, “Evacuation Day 1783” (New York: printed for the author, 1883), p 10. Washington rode two horses during the Revolution, Nelson (a sorrel) and Blue Skin. From this description it is likely that he was riding Blue Skin for his entrance into New York. The Papers of George Washington, http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/faq/govern.html.

  52 Stokes, Iconography, 5:1173.

  53 Ibid., 5:1174.

  54 Ibid., 5:1171.

  55 Riker, “Evacuation Day,” p. 10.

  56 Ibid., p.14–16.

  57 Given that Samuel Fraunces had spent the entire occupation in New York and that his tavern had been a well-known resort for British officers, some suspected his commitment to the patriot cause. Perhaps a bit nervous about his postwar future, Fraunces asked Washington for a letter testifying to his patriotism. Washington complied, writing, “You have invariably through the most trying Times, maintained a constant friendship and Attention to the Cause of our Country, and its Independence and Freedom.” GW to Fraunces, August 18, 1783, FW, 27:111.

  58 Riker, “Evacuation Day,” pp. 18–19.

  59 A reference to the French king.

  60 In September 1783 Congress had ratified a treaty with Sweden. JCC, 25:613–14.

  61 Orderly Book of Lieutenant Silas Morton, New York Historical Society.

  62 Riker, “Evacuation Day,” p. 20.

  63 Ibid.

  64 Broadside, December 2 1783, printed at the State Printing Office, no. 47, Hanover Square.

  65 For a sample of addresses presented to Washington, see FW, 27:249–58.

  66 Carleton to Washington, December 1, 1783, in ibid., 27:254n.

  67 Benjamin Tallmadge, Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (New York: Thomas Holman, 1858), p. 61.

  68 Ibid., p. 63. There is some question as to whether or not Washington actually stayed at Fraunces. The evidence seems to support the conclusion that he was not a guest at the tavern. Fraunces Tavern curator to author, March 22, 2010; Benjamin Walker, December 27, 1783, Revolutionary War Accounts, Vouchers and Receipted Accounts 2, GWLC. This document is extremely difficult to read and interpret. Stuart Murray, Washington’s Farewell to His Officers (Bennington, VT.: Images from the Past, 1999), pp. 226–27.

  69 One New York officer not present was Alexander Hamilton.

  70 Congress was no longer sitting in Philadelphia, so no representative to the body was present to greet Washington.

  71 Pennsylvania Packet, December 9, 1783.

  72 GW to James McHenry, December 10, 1783, FW, 27:266.

  73 Pennsylvania Packet, December 23, 1783.

  74 Howell to William Greene, December 24, 1783, LD, 21:227–28.

  75 Ibid., p.228.

  76 Hugh Williamson to William Blount, December 5, 1783, LD, 21:183.

  77 Jefferson to Benjamin Harrison, December 17, 1783, in ibid., 21:205.

  78 Ellery to Huntington, December 19, 1783, in ibid., 21:213.

  79 Annals of Annapolis (Baltimore: Cushing, 1841) gives the arrival date as “Friday, the 17th December” (p. 209). Since Friday fell on the nineteenth, this appears to be an error.

  80 Elihu Samuel Riley, “The Ancient City”: A History of Annapolis, in Maryland, 1649–1887 (Annapolis: Record Printing Office, 1887), p. 201.

  81 GW to President of Congress, FW, 27:277–78.

&nb
sp; 82 JCC, 25:818–19. This may have been a parliamentary maneuver. Should the resolution not have passed, Ellery, as a member of the majority, could ask for reconsideration. Should he have voted yes and the motion lost, he could not ask for reconsideration.

  83 Calvin Jillson and Rick K. Wilson, Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination, and Choice in the First American Congress, 1774–1789 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 139–42.

  84 Julian Boyd, et al., ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 6: editorial note, pp. 402–9. Boyd suggests that McHenry was, in his own words, “on a rack of suspense” by his upcoming marriage to Margaret Caldwell and that therefore he was of little use.

  85 James Tilton to Gunning Bedford, December 25, 1783, LD, 21:232.

  86 Later Mrs. James MacCubbin. William S. Baker, Itinerary of General Washington from June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1892), p. 320.

  87 Tilton to Bedford, December 25, 1783, LD, 21:232.

  88 GW to von Steuben, December 23, 1783, FW, 27:283.

  89 Burnett, The Continental Congress, p. 284.

  90 Tilton to Bedford, December 25, 1783, LD, 21:232.

  91 “Report of a Committee on Arrangements for the Public Audience,” December 22, 1783 in Boyd, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 6:409; JCC, 25:837–38.

  92 The speech was 341 words. “Address to Congress on Resigning His Commission,” December 23, 1783, FW, 27:284–85. It is not clear from surviving accounts whether Washington read his speech or spoke from memory. He most likely read it. There is no mention of whether or not he was wearing glasses.

  93 McHenry to Margaret Caldwell, December 23, 1783, LD, 21:221.

  94 Ibid.

  95 Ibid., 221.

  96 Ibid.

  97 Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, 6:407.

  98 Washington and his companions may have stayed in Georgetown to await taking the ferry across the Potomac in the morning. Stanley Weintraub, General Washington’s Christmas Farewell (New York: Free Press, 2003), pp. 165–66. Washington’s precise homeward itinerary is unknown.

  99 Jacky’s widow, Eleanor Calvert Custis, had four children. After the death of her husband she lived for a time at Mount Vernon but then went to live at the Custis plantation, Abington, not far from Mount Vernon. Because she was not always in the best of health, the Washingtons agreed to care for her two youngest children, Nellie and Wash. Although they never formally adopted them, for all intents and purposes these two children became the Washingtons’ adopted family. The widowed Eleanor remarried in the fall of 1783; her new husband was a local doctor, David Stuart. Patricia Brady, Martha Washington: An American Life (New York: Viking, 2005), pp.146–49. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport occupies much of what was once Abington.