by Flora Fraser
On the seventh Washington asked John Adams, who was then at Watertown, to share “pot luck” at headquarters. It was anticipated that the British expeditionary force would strike first at New York. The commander wished to dispatch Charles Lee from Massachusetts to shore up defenses there. Washington established, with Adams, that the original scope of his commission from Congress—to take command of the army at Cambridge—had widened. He was commander-in-chief of the Continental army, wherever it was posted. Washington duly dispatched Lee. The possibility of British reinforcements from England rendered the security of the Boston Bay area perilous. Mercy Otis Warren, wife of James, newly Massachusetts Provincial Congress president, wrote to Martha, offering a safe haven at Watertown, farther inland. In reply—in the third person—Martha was polite but firm: “If the exigency of affairs in this camp should make it necessary for her to remove, she cannot but esteem it a happiness to have so friendly an invitation as Mrs Warren has given.” For the time being, she remained at her husband’s side.
In mid-January Washington wrote to Reed of experiencing “many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in Sleep.” At a council of war on the eighth, it was agreed that the New England colonies should be called on to supply thirteen regiments of militia to reinforce the new Continental army. Even before they could be mustered, on New Year’s Eve news came of disaster at Quebec. Besieging the Canadian city, American General Richard Montgomery had been killed, and his fellow general, Benedict Arnold, severely wounded. Accordingly, three of the new regiments forming were diverted north to aid in the continuing siege. Ammunition in the American lines facing Boston was in no greater supply than troops. Were he to overcome the innumerable difficulties he faced, Washington averred, “I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the Eyes of our Enemys; for surely if we get well through this Month, it must be for want of their knowing the disadvantages we labour under.” He was determined to attack, as soon as the harbor froze over and troops could traverse the ice from Dorchester and Roxbury to Boston.
Washington sought support and aid wherever he might find them. Toward the end of the month, he and Martha dined at Thomas Mifflin’s in Cambridge. Six or seven Cagnawawa sachems (chiefs) and warriors were of the company and pledged support. The New Englanders present were somewhat at a loss. The commander-in-chief was familiar, from colonial military service and earlier, with the customs of Native Americans. He introduced John Adams, who was in the company and now of the Massachusetts General Court, as a member of the “Grand Council.” The visitors looked on the lawyer with new respect.
Martha continued resilient, whether at her husband’s side on social occasions or overseeing the various needs of the household at the Vassall house. “Nelly Custis…I believe, is with child,” she wrote to her sister Nancy Bassett at the end of January. Nelly was indeed in the early stages of pregnancy and would give birth in Virginia to a second child in August. Cautious following the early death of Nelly’s first child the previous summer, Martha wrote, “I hope no accident [miscarriage] will happen to her in going back.” She continued: “I have not thought about it much yet. God knows where we shall be.” She supposed there would be “a change” in the military situation soon, but when she could not pretend to say. The winter continued mild, she added: “the rivers have never been frozen hard enough to walk upon the ice since I came here.”
Freezing weather in February brought the ice for which Washington had waited so impatiently—“some pretty strong Ice from Dorchester Point to Boston Neck and from Roxbury to the Common,” he informed Hancock. Troops could now attack the town from the south. He advocated a “bold & resolute Assault upon the Troops in Boston with such Men as we had.” But a council of war, including the generals on his staff, voted against attack. Washington argued that this was the best recourse they had, when they neither had nor could expect enough powder to initiate “a regular Cannonade & Bombardment.” The council opposed him. Knowing that “the eyes of the whole Continent” were fixed on Cambridge, in “anxious expectation of hearing of some great event,” he could only wait for men and powder, uneasily aware that with the spring tides British reinforcements could sail at will into Boston Bay.
At least the Continental army was now supplied with ordnance—sixty tons of cannons and mortars from Fort Ticonderoga, which patriot forces had seized in the spring. Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller turned artillery man, had supervised the transport of this heavy booty on ox-drawn sleds. He reached Cambridge, three hundred miles to the south, on January 27. Five days later he and his wife, Lucy Flucker Knox, received a formal—if ungrammatical—invitation, in the handwriting of George Baylor, whom Washington had dubbed “no penman”: “Thursday evening, Feby 1st. The General & Mrs Washington, present their compliments to Colonel Knox & Lady, begs the favor of their company at dinner on Friday, half after 2 o’Clock.” Washington grew to count on Knox, above all others, for strategic advice. But Henry and Lucy, though so much younger—Henry was twenty-five, Lucy, twenty—also became friends with George and Martha. Impetuous, headstrong Lucy was beguiling. An heiress, she had flouted the wishes of her father, a prominent government official in Boston, when she married bookseller Henry. But the young Knoxes—both of them tall and broad—were well matched. Both were enthusiastic patriots, both loved literature—and both enjoyed the pleasures of the table, as their wide girth evidenced.
Cannons were useless without gunpowder, but by degrees small parcels of it arrived in camp. Washington was cautiously optimistic in a letter to Burwell Bassett of February 28: “We are preparing to take possession of a post”—Dorchester Heights—“(which I hope to do in a few days—if we can get provided with the means) which will, it is generally thought, bring on a rumpus between us & the enemy, but whether it will or not—time only Can show.” To Reed nine days later he wrote with justifiable pride: “On Monday Night [March 5], I took possession of the Heights of Dorchester with two thousand Men under the Command of General Thomas.” To divert attention from their nighttime entrenchments on the hill, he added, “we began on Saturday night [the third] a Cannonade and Bombardment” of Boston itself. This, “with Intervals, was continued through the Night. The same on Sunday. And on Monday a continued roar [of cannons] from Seven O’clock till day light was kept up between the Enemy and us.”
Howe, fully occupied with an artillery defense of the town, paid no heed to the heights across the bay to the south. Henry Clinton, his second-in-command, had sailed for the Carolinas to assess military opportunities there. Washington and Thomas had “upwards of 300 teams in motion at the same Instant carrying on our fascines [brushwood to fortify the position] & other materials to the Neck,” and the moon was “Shining in its full lustre” all night. But only as day broke on the Tuesday morning, the sixth, did the British come to notice the occupation. American observers saw every sign that the British in the town had been cast into utter confusion both by the bombardment and by the fortification of the Heights. Would they now “come out” and attack?
It was an outcome that Washington declared he would welcome and that, it seemed at first, might occur. Knox’s cannons, from Dorchester Heights, were out of range of British cannons in Boston. Howe aimed to take the position with a thousand troops launched by sea. A violent storm, however, brewed up on the afternoon of the sixth, and drove his transports, with troops on board, back to base. Thereafter, there was every sign that the British were making haste to evacuate Boston. There was, in short, to be no attack, no battle. Washington had to be content with the seizure of Dorchester Heights as a “great event.” In the days that followed, Knox wrote from headquarters to Lucy, who had recently given birth to their first child elsewhere in Massachusetts: “certain it is they [the enemy] are packing up & going off bag & baggage.” The destination of the transports and troops, on their departure, was uncertain. “If to New York, my Dear Lucy must prepare to follow them,” Knox wrote with youthful energy. “As we are Citizens of the World, any pl
ace will be our home & equally cheap.”
In his letter to his wife, Knox voiced anxiety that the government forces would reduce their hometown to a “pile of rubbish” before leaving. The British duly demolished the castle and fortifications and rendered some artillery useless before they withdrew on March 17. But Washington, who toured Boston as soon as the enemy had departed, found that damage to the town was less extensive than he had feared. He told President Hancock on the nineteenth: “your house has receiv’d no damage worth mentioning. Your furniture is in tolerable Order and the family pictures are all left entire and untouch’d.” The British sailed for Halifax in Nova Scotia, where Howe was to await reinforcements from across the Atlantic. Washington, however, had no idea where the enemy was headed. Fearing that they meant to make for New York, he dispatched Continental troops south under Putnam to bolster the forces there led by Lee. Philip Schuyler, in New York, was still nominally in charge of the northern department, but he was now an invalid. Brass padlocks and “a trunk” appear in the Vassall house accounts under the date April 1, 1776. The Washingtons, with much of the Continental army remaining in Massachusetts, would soon themselves leave for New York.
Before she left Cambridge, Martha received a visit from Mercy Otis Warren, who had, in January, offered her asylum. Mercy did not stay to dine, though “much urg’d.” On this occasion Mrs. Warren, a devastating critic, noted of Nelly Calvert Custis that “a kind of Languor about her prevents her being so sociable as some Ladies.” Nelly was pregnant, admittedly, but she was indeed very passive in character. Martha, far from langorous, sent the Washington “chariot” for her new friend next day, and together they toured the “Deserted Lines of the Enemy And the Ruins of Charleston.” Mrs. Warren wrote this encomium of her new friend to AbigaiI Adams: “her affability, Candor and Gentleness, Qualify her to soften the hours of private Life or to sweeten the Cares of the Hero and smooth the Rugged scenes of War.”
When the Washingtons embarked on their journey south to duties at headquarters at New York, Mercy was not alone in feeling she had lost a friend in Martha. Dr. Morgan remained in Cambridge to tend to the sick, and his wife missed Martha’s company. But Martha’s focus, for all her care of friends, family, and members of staff, remained, as it had been ever since they married, her husband. When he was content, so was she. “I am happy…to find, and to hear from different Quarters, that my reputation stands fair—that my Conduct hitherto has given universal Satisfaction,” Washington, on the point of leaving Cambridge, wrote to his brother John Augustine. Within a few months, with his conduct under scrutiny and his reputation under fire, Martha would be more than ever needed to “soften the hours of private Life…and smooth the Rugged scenes of War.”
13
New York and Philadelphia, 1776
“the place shall not be carried without some loss”
WASHINGTON REACHED NEW YORK on April 13, 1776, in company with his new aide William Palfrey, secretary Stephen Moylan, and General Horatio Gates. Martha, traveling more slowly with her pregnant daughter-in-law and Jacky, arrived four days later. Three years earlier young Parke Custis had enjoyed a privileged existence at King’s College, under the supervision of President Myles Cooper. The city was much changed now. A new revolutionary committee of safety was in power, while Royal Governor William Tryon hovered in a British man-of-war in the harbor. All but five regiments of those that Washington had commanded at Cambridge were now stationed in the city. King’s College was closed and served as an army hospital. Dr. Cooper himself, condemned for publishing tracts arguing that opposition to the Crown constituted treason, had taken ship for England, never to return.
The Washingtons established themselves in an elegant house on Richmond Hill, a mile and a half north of the city, belonging to Abraham Mortier, British army paymaster. New Yorker Mary Smith was employed as housekeeper and kept the accounts. Caleb Gibbs, an officer with the Fourteenth Continental Regiment from Marblehead, Massachusetts, captained a company known as “the guard,” formed in March to protect the chief from attack. Yankee Gibbs himself was cheerful and capable, but some of the men under him proved irksome. Though proud of their duty, they were not quick to perform it and consumed rather more than their fair share of food and drink.
Facing the Hudson, the Mortier property offered views of the New Jersey shore opposite, of the city southward, and of farmland northward. The grounds included a large enclosed flower garden, shrubs, and venerable oaks. There was little time for the Washingtons to enjoy these amenities together. The commander, whether at work here or at his official headquarters on Broadway in town, was overseeing the completion of fortifications to the city. Charles Lee, who had begun this work, was now in the south with orders to combat Clinton in the Carolinas. Washington reconnoitered, in addition, Staten Island and Long Island. His aim was to see all the places where Howe and his forces might possibly land. No matter where the British troopships that had earlier left Boston harbor might be currently located, their goal, in the opinion of the American commander, was New York. Wherever he was located, the general was, with his aides, engaged in correspondence. As at Cambridge, he pressed Congress for more arms, more men, and more money.
Washington wrote from New York to President Hancock in Philadelphia on April 23, pleading for an increase in pay for Robert Hanson Harrison, acting secretary, and other aides-de-camp. The letter attests to the burden of business undertaken at headquarters: “nothing but the zeal of those gentlemen who live with me and act in this capacity for the great American cause and personal attachment to me, has induced them to undergo the trouble and confinement they have experienced since they have become members of my family. I give into no kind of amusements myself, consequently those about me can have none, but are confined from morn till eve hearing, and answering the applications and letters of one and another.” This work would, he expected, only increase as the business of the “Northern and Eastern departments” passed through his hands.
“If these gentlemen had the same relaxation from duty as other officers have in their common routine,” he continued, “there would not be so much in it, but to have the mind always upon the stretch—scarce ever unbent—and no hours for recreation, makes a material odds.” By way of recompense, three days later his aides received the rank of lieutenant colonel. If their minds were “always upon the stretch—scarce ever unbent,” how much more so was that of their commander.
Early in May Washington wrote again to Hancock: “The designs of the Enemy are too much behind the Curtain, for me to form any accurate opinion of their Plan of Operations for the Summers Campaign; we are left to wander therefore in the field of conjecture.” It had by now emerged that Howe and his forces were massed at Halifax in Nova Scotia. There was no doubt in Washington’s mind that the British meant to gain control of the Hudson and thus isolate New England. It was anyone’s guess whether they intended, proceeding up the St. Lawrence, to advance down the Hudson on New York. They might instead sail down the coast, attack the city, and advance up the river. He had written to Hancock on April 26: “for anything we know, I think it not improbable they may attempt both…if they have men.”
The difficulties that Washington had faced, overseeing the siege of Boston, were as nothing to the oppressive responsibilities that were now his as commander-in-chief of the Continental army. Word came from Lee in the south sporadically. There were not men enough to defend successfully the approach to the Hudson in the north and to garrison New York as well. Nine regiments had perforce been dispatched to Canada, where Continental troops were battered by disease as much as by the British army. There were those far off in Congress who clamored for more troops to be sent north, advocating that Washington himself take the northern command. But he had made his position clear on the twenty-sixth: “I Could wish indeed that the Army in Canada should be more powerfully reinforced, at the Same time I am Conscious, that the trusting this important post (which is now become the Grand Magazine of America)”—New York—“to th
e handful of men remaining here is running too great a risque.” Securing the Hudson was also of vital importance: “I cannot at present advise the Sending any more troops from hence.” As ever, Washington declared that he remained the servant of Congress and would do its bidding.
Though he continued to believe that the British would strike at New York, Washington was aware that he courted disaster, were Howe instead to launch all his forces down the St. Lawrence. Martha remained behind at the Mortier house when her son and daughter-in-law left at the end of April for Virginia and Mount Airy, where Nelly would have her accouchement later in the summer. Jacky Parke Custis, for all his faults, was alive to the profound affection that existed between his mother and his stepfather. He wrote from home, in June, that in Martha, George had the one person who could “alleviate the Care and Anxiety which public Transactions may occasion.”
Martha had it in mind to undergo, in Philadelphia, inoculation for smallpox. The city boasted several physicians of repute who specialized in the procedure. “I doubt her resolution,” her husband told his brother John Augustine on April 29. No doubt he recalled Martha’s fears where her son’s inoculation had been concerned. But when he was called to Congress to discuss the military options a month later, Martha went as well. Her motive in seeking inoculation at Philadelphia is clear from the June letter that Jacky wrote to Washington, following the conclusion of the operation: “She can now attend you to any Part of the Continent with pleasure, unsullied by the Apprehensions of that Disorder.…Your happiness when together will be much greater than when you are apart.”