The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

  In New York, Washington continued to write regularly of estate matters to Lund at Mount Vernon. He wrote on August 26 that he “most ardently” wanted the northern extension to the house covered in and completed, “if you should be obliged to send all over Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania for nails to do it with.” He was eager for the New Room—as the large reception room this extension would furnish was always known—to be constructed. Uncharacteristically, he encouraged Lund to act for himself, if only in the matter of where best to sell flour: “you know I shall not disapprove of anything you do (although it should not turn out well), as I am persuaded you mean to do for the best.” It is unlikely that Lund, a natural lieutenant, was cheered by this expression of—limited—confidence in him. But the general was oppressed, when he wrote, by his duties to “the noble cause we are engaged in.” The British had at last made a move, and “a pretty considerable part of their force” had landed on Long Island. These troops were now encamped within three miles of the Continental lines there that General Nathanael Greene commanded.

  Only a wood and some broken ground lay between these opposing forces. In New York, Washington thought the British show of strength on Long Island might yet prove a feint. They had sufficient troops still on Staten Island to attack the city. He hesitated to commit more men to Greene. “A few days more, I should think, will bring matters to an issue one way or another,” he told Lund on the twenty-sixth; “…victory, if unfortunately it should decide in favour of the enemy, will not be purchased at an easy rate.”

  The general proved a poor prophet. The very next day the British struck on Long Island. Aided by information that the Continentals had left a strategic eastward pass undefended, they secured an easy victory. In this first engagement between the United States of America and the army of their former overlord, two Continental generals—Lord Stirling and Sullivan—as well as 600 troops were taken prisoner. In driving rain Washington watched from afar on horseback, helpless to affect the disastrous outcome. Only in the retreat from Long Island to Manhattan, which took place under cover of darkness on the night of August 29, did Washington prove effective as a general. The 9,000 troops under his command gained and crossed the East River successfully.

  Washington apologized to President Hancock, on the morning of August 31, for a delay in informing him of the retreat. For forty-eight hours he had hardly been off his horse and had never closed his eyes till he reached New York. He was thus, he regretted, “quite unfit to write or dictate” till now. Within days it became clear that further mortification and humiliation were to be his lot. Intelligence came that the British intended to “enclose” the American forces on Manhattan, taking up a position at the northernmost part of the island and securing the harbor to the south with their ships. At a council of war on September 7, the painful decision was taken to evacuate New York. The new aim was to establish “strong posts” on the upper part of the island and on the Jersey shore opposite.

  From new headquarters in Harlem Heights, Washington wrote to his cousin Lund on the thirtieth that all comfort and happiness eluded him: “such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings.…I see the impossibility of serving with reputation, or doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command, and yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow from the distraction that will ensue.” He told his cousin, “…I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.”

  Martha could no longer linger in Pennsylvania. All hope of rejoining her husband was extinguished with British occupation of New York. Now they would be eager to overcome Washington’s forces on the Hudson and sweep through New Jersey, with Philadelphia their next goal. She set out southward, bound for home.

  14

  Retreat to the Delaware, 1776–1777

  “I think the game is pretty near up.”

  IN PHILADELPHIA, Martha had depended on the constant comings and goings of delegates and army officers between that city and New York for delivery and receipt of her correspondence with her husband. Were Washington to have been wounded, taken prisoner, or fallen in a skirmish or battle, she would soon have heard while she was in the home of Congress. With Jacky her escort, Martha arrived home in early autumn 1776. At Mount Vernon, remote from the theater of war, the weekly post must serve as a less reliable conduit for the couple’s letters. Intelligence about the fortunes of the Continental forces would be hard to come by, as would be news of any injury to their commander-in-chief. Martha was, like every patriot, anxious about the dangerous situation in New York, but the safety of her husband was paramount.

  The general had already had a narrow escape. British troops landed at Kips Bay on the East River on September 15. They harassed Continental soldiers, who were in the midst of the planned retreat northward. Washington was to write to his brother Sam in early October of the “dastardly behaviour of part of our Troops” under attack. Two brigades ran away and left the commander-in-chief, with his aides-de-camp, exposed “in the field.” He might easily have been killed. Though they succeeded in making their way to the new headquarters at Harlem Heights, this experience was fresh in his mind when Washington wrote to Lund on September 30. A tirade followed the ominous words, “If I fall…” He wished it to be known that, “under such a system of management as has been adopted,” he had not had “the least chance for reputation.”

  He was smarting from the loss of New York, and stung by Congress’s refusal to allow him to burn the city prior to the retreat. It now provided, he wrote, “warm and comfortable” barracks and an impregnable base for the British army and fleet. A fire had broken out south of King’s College subsequent to Howe’s arrival and destroyed much of the surrounding area. The British commander, fearing arson, responded by placing the city under martial law. Governor Tryon was made a major general and dispatched to subdue Connecticut.

  In a further letter to Lund on October 6, Washington blamed the new government of the United States for its failure of nerve. Even after declaring independence, they had clung to hopes of a reconciliation with Britain. Lord Howe, whom he termed a “thorough paced courtier,” in the guise of peace commissioner, had fueled these unrealistic expectations. In consequence, week by week, month by month, Congress had hesitated time and again to vote the funds necessary for the defense of America.

  Washington had no high opinion of the different militia pressed into service for periods as short as six weeks in return for a bounty. He wrote, from headquarters, to Samuel on October 5 that they were “eternally coming and going without rendering the least Earthly Service.” He had long urged on Congress, most recently in a letter to Hancock of September 2, the need for a “permanent, standing Army—I mean one to exist during the War.” Still, men were engaged for twelve months only. He told Lund, on September 30, that he would not undertake to say whether “the unfortunate hope of reconciliation was the cause” of the refusal of Congress to entertain his scheme, “or the fear of a standing army prevailed.” He had low expectations for the future: “if the men will stand by me (which, by the by, I despair of), I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.” A few days would, he thought, determine the point, “if the enemy should not change their plan of operations.”

  At Mount Vernon, Martha had returned to a home substantially improved since she left it nearly a year earlier. She now had the use of a new master bedroom in the southern extension. When Washington should come home, a study below awaited him. Further works were complete at this end of the house, now conveniently connected by a colonnade to a new kitchen and storeroom. The northern end of the house was still a building site. For all Washington’s impatience, the double-story New Room was not yet finished, and work was still ongoing to complete the northern colonnade and connecting servants’ hall for visitors’ servants and the gardener’s house.

  In August, while waiting for Howe to make a move, Wa
shington had sent Lund detailed directions for a “grove of Trees” to be planted “at each end of the dwelling.” Close to the new bedroom and study were now planted a variety of saplings. Washington wanted “all the clever kind of Trees (especially flowering ones) that can be got, such as Crab apple, Poplar, Dogwood, Sasafras, Lawrel, Willow (especially yellow & Weeping Willow).” Locust trees were in due course to be planted to the north, adjoining a new walled garden, now in place. This planting must wait till the area was no longer littered with building materials.

  Lund continued to steward the plantation with anxious care. When an attack by Lord Dunmore and his regiment on Alexandria had seemed imminent that January, he had written to Washington: “I am about packing up your China Glass &c. into Barrels, & shall continue to pack into Casks, Whatever I think should be put up in that way, & other things into Chests, Trunks, Bundles &c.” Mount Vernon neighbors had offered to store the Washington rum in their cellars. “The Bacon, when it is sufficiently smoakd, I think to have put up in Cask with Ashes.” If necessary, he could then remove it, “together with some Pork which I have already put up into Barrels,” to a place of greater safety. Distractedly he wrote, “these are dreadfull times to give people so much trouble and Vexation.” In his opinion, in which his correspondent and Mrs. Washington did not necessarily concur, “Fighting and even being killd, is the least troublesome part.”

  The following month Lund wrote: “I have had 300 Bushels or more of Salt put in to Fish Barrels which I intend to move to muddy Hole Barn. If it Should be destroy’d by the Enemy, we shall not be able to get more…and our people must have Fish.” Every year, during the spring running of shad on the Potomac, the barrels that he named were filled with fish and salt and emptied over the winter. Dried fish was a staple foodstuff for the plantation slaves. Their master, who could choose what he ate, was partial to it.

  Now that the threat that Dunmore had represented to Virginia had gone, Martha could enjoy her china and glass with impunity in the newly established Commonwealth of Virginia. Lund tried as best he could to execute Washington’s minute instructions. The chimneypiece in the northern annex should be “exactly in the middle of it,” the commander wrote on September 30 from headquarters on Harlem Heights, “the doors and every thing else to be exactly answerable and uniform—in short I would have the whole executed in a masterly manner.” Though Lund served his cousin as best as he could, he had ambitions of his own—to purchase “a small Farm in some part of the Country where the produce of it wou’d enable me to live, and give a Neighbour Beef, & Toddy.” He had been far too busy to contemplate finding such a property while both Washingtons were away. He was no less busy now that Martha was returned.

  Where the young Parke Custises would ultimately settle, with Martha’s granddaughter, baby Bet, was by no means fixed. The White House in New Kent County, Jacky’s place of birth, would pass to him only on his mother’s death. In July, Washington had written to Jacky, encouraged his acquisition of some land on the ground that it was contiguous to “a large part of your Estate, and where you will probably make your residence.” He referred to Pleasant Hill, the country seat in King and Queen County, which he had bought, on his ward’s account, three years earlier. But Jacky made no move to set up home there. His heart belonged in northern Virginia, and this June he wrote to his stepfather: “It pleased the Almighty to deprive me at a very early Period of Life of my Father, but I can not sufficiently adore His Goodness in sending Me so good a Guardian as you Sir; Few have experience’d such Care and Attention from real Parents as I have done. He best deserves the Name of Father who acts the Part of one.” By now Jacky, fond to a fault, was also almost as much attached as Nelly to her family in Maryland. For the time being, the young couple moved with indifferent ease between Mount Vernon and Mount Airy. For Martha, Jacky and Nelly afforded welcome companionship, and their child, diversion from anxiety about Washington.

  Martha was as ever hospitable. The dining room with its new stucco ceiling was much in use, following tireless attention by Lund Washington the previous winter to a problematic chimney that served this and other rooms. He wrote to Washington, then at Cambridge with Martha, that the fireplaces “really smoked so Bad that the walls looked as bad as any negroe Quarter, and the Smoke from the cellar came into the other Rooms.” Lund saw Martha’s many visitors and even her disposition to charity primarily as a drain on the corn supply at the plantation. The stables already housed five horses for her chariot, as well as seven horses that Jacky kept at the house. There were, besides, Lund’s own riding horse and numerous mares and wagon horses requiring fodder. The agent was to write to his cousin dolefully: “these, added to the Visitors’ Horses, consume no small Quantity of Corn.” On January 17, 1776, he wrote that they had killed 132 hogs: “They, with the Fattening Beeves [beef cattle] ate 247 Barrels.…You will ask me what we are going to do with so much meat. I cannot tell. When I put it up, I expected Mrs Washington would have lived at Home, if you did not.” He added in justification: “Was I to judge the future from the past consumption, there would have been a Use for it. For I believe Mrs Washingtons Charitable disposition increases in the same proportion with her meat House.” In consequence, he declared, there had been no surplus the previous fall to feed hired harvesters, “& she can tell you, there was very little Salt Provision in the House for Servants, &c., all this fall Past.”

  Lund lamented, in this letter of January 17, “I am by no means fit for a House keeper, I am afraid I shall consume more than ever, for I am not a judge how much should be given out every Day—I am vex’d when I am called upon to give out Provisions for the Day. God Send you were both at Home—and an End to these troublesome times.” Now Martha was home, she supervised the spinning women at their wheels and made the daily distribution of salt, supplies, and medicine.

  Elsewhere in Virginia, Fredericksburg was unrecognizable from a year earlier. In addition to the gun manufactory funded by Fielding Lewis, there was now an arsenal, naval dockyards, and a hospital for soldiers, marines, and seamen. October saw, with concomitant festivities, the General Assembly of the new Commonwealth of Virginia meet for the first time in Williamsburg. Martha’s brother Bartholomew Dandridge was a counselor of state. Patrick Henry was ensconced as governor in the palace that Lord Dunmore and other British peers and commoners had formerly occupied. But Martha remained on the Potomac in northern Virginia. The incoming post on Thursdays to Alexandria sustained her with newspaper accounts of the war’s progress and with letters from her husband. The outgoing post on Sundays offered an opportunity to convey both fortitude and fears to him.

  Washington had written to Lund at the end of September: “I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.” He was very much alive when forced by the British from Harlem Heights in mid-October. He regrouped with his troops at White Plains, north of Manhattan Island in New York, where he hoped to withstand attack by General Howe. A letter that he wrote to Martha from here on the twenty-fifth was among other correspondence from headquarters that fell into the hands of the British three days later. A careless dispatch rider, in whose charge it was, stopped at a Pennsylvanian public house, which also served as post office. In the “bar room” of the inn, in a district inhabited by numerous Loyalists, he opened his “bundle.” Extracting a letter that required forwarding, he stepped out of the inn for a moment, leaving the other correspondence on a table inside. As Hancock informed Washington by express the same day: “on his return the whole of his Letters were carried off & no person could give any account of them…he is here without a single Letter.” The dispatch rider was incarcerated, the publican deprived of his office of postmaster, and the bartender closely questioned. The stolen correspondence reached British headquarters, as all at headquarters and in Congress had supposed it would. General Howe, now Sir William Howe, knight of the Bath, sent back to Washington his letter to his wife of October 25. The covering note, written on November 11, ran: “I am happy to return it without th
e least Attempt being made to discover any Part of the Contents.” Washington told Hancock three days later: “I conclude that All the Letters which went by the Boston Express have come into his possession.”

  He was correct. The “bundle” had reached Howe on November 5, and his private secretary, Ambrose Serle, made notes on the content of the letters. The Continental officers were, Serle observed, “(to use Mr Washington’s own Words) ‘dreaming, sleepy-headed’ Men.” The American commander had also written that discord existed between “the Eastern & Southern Colonists,” and that the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in particular, could raise neither men nor money. In short, Serle summarized in his diary in December, the general and his military “family” entertained “the strongest Fears, respecting their Success, and of the Consequences of a Disappointment.”

  When Serle made his notes, the Continental troops were long gone from White Plains. The “strongest fears” of those at headquarters had proved justified. On October 28—the same day that the “bar room” incident took place in Pennsylvania—Howe attacked Washington’s troops. Though the battle was inconclusive and a large-scale exchange of prisoners followed, Washington abandoned the position and made for “General Greene’s quarters” at Fort Lee on the New Jersey shore. With him, he wrote to Hancock on November 14, came “the whole of the troops”—bar one garrison—“belonging to the States which lay South of Hudsons River and which were in New York Government.” New York might be lost to the Continentals. New Jersey would not fall if the men, quartered at Brunswick, Amboy, Elizabethtown, Newark, and about Fort Lee—Washington’s own location—were ready to “check any incursions the enemy may attempt in the neighbourhood.”

  Washington left 3,000 troops at Fort Washington, on an eminence above the Hudson, on Manhattan Island, and opposite Fort Lee. Nathanael Greene, whom Washington trusted, believed that the former position could be held against enemy attack. It had sufficient cannon and range to do useful damage to British shipping in the river. Washington was irresolute. “The movements and designs of the Enemy are not yet understood,” he told Hancock. He thought the enemy might well succeed if they attempted to invest the fort. Later Washington was to acknowledge to Joseph Reed, who was with him at Fort Lee, that there was “warfare in my mind and hesitation,” as he sought to find a way forward. But he gave no order to evacuate the Manhattan garrison.