by Flora Fraser
In late May the Washingtons parted. Martha, under the escort of Tench Tilghman, proceeded to Philadelphia, where she would stop on her way home. Washington moved to new headquarters at Middlebrook, a village on the north bank of the Raritan. The 18,000 British troops that Howe commanded at New Brunswick and Amboy lay a few miles southeast. The Continentals were well placed, ready to march northward if Howe made a bid to join General Burgoyne’s forces on the Hudson, or southward if Philadelphia proved to be Howe’s objective. There were between 7,000 and 8,000 troops in all under Washington’s command, forty-three regiments. Greene, Stirling, and others commanded five divisions. Furthermore, Washington could count on militia to the north or to the south to irritate the British forces, as gadflies will annoy a bull.
On an earlier visit to Philadelphia, Martha had acceded to the wish of city fathers that a ball in her honor be canceled. Now the Pennsylvania General Assembly resolved to make her an extraordinarily handsome present—“a very handsome round Bottom Crane Neck Coach made of the very best materials.” This ornamental carriage, previously property of the colonial lieutenant governor Richard Penn, Jr., and intended only for processional use, was not a very practical gift, given the vast distances that Martha traveled to be with “his Excellency.” Notwithstanding, she “politely accepted” the vehicle, which was appraised at a value of near £500 sterling, when a committee presented it to her on June 14. It was to serve, they informed her, as “a small testimonial of the sense the Assembly have of his [His Excellency General Washington’s] great and important services to the American States.”
Other assemblies and institutions were eager to honor “His Excellency” and “Lady Washington, his amiable consort.” Following the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776, Congress had authorized a medal to be struck, “George Washington before Boston.” Harvard University conferred an honorary degree on the general, whose earlier education had been truncated. Martha’s arrival in Williamsburg early in August was saluted, according to the Virginia Gazette, with “the fire of cannon and small arms,” and she was presented with a “golden emblematic medal” as testimony of the high regard in which the General Assembly held Washington, “illustrious defender and deliverer of his country.” The mayor bestowed on the general, “through his lady,” the freedom of the city.
There were elaborate celebrations in Philadelphia on July 4 to mark the anniversary of the day on which the states had declared independence the previous year. Thirteen volleys of guns and as many peals of bells were repeated many times. In the afternoon companies of sailors performed aerial displays on the rigging of vessels in the Delaware. The evening was marked by a “general illumination.” Citizens set candles in the windows of their houses, and bonfires were lit in the streets.
Washington, the man charged with guarding the cause of these celebrations, was confounded by Howe’s intentions. The British general had evacuated the Jerseys and was embarking the troops he commanded for Staten Island. Washington and the officers about him believed the enemy meant to sail up the Hudson and join with General Burgoyne in an attack on Fort Ticonderoga. In an attempt to forestall this, Washington marched his troops north through mud and driving rain and over inhospitable country. Discipline and “manual exercise”—drilling with weapons—were his watchwords, particularly the former, as he stressed, before setting out on July 6: “discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.” Sheltering in a log house in the Clove, a wild and narrow pass in the Hudson Highlands, dining on rough rations and with his aides sleeping on the floor around his bed, the general may have wondered how long his troops would submit to the discipline he advocated.
While in Orange County, New York, on July 15, Washington learned of what he described as “an Event of Chagrine & Surprize not apprehended, nor within the Compass of my reasoning.” The forts of Ticonderoga and Mount Independence had been ceded to Burgoyne on the fifth without the Continental command making any effort to defend them. Other intelligence was disturbing. Howe and his troops had boarded transports and remained in New York harbor, off Sandy Hook. Washington wrote to Hancock on the twenty-fifth, “The amazing advantage the Enemy derive from their Ships and the command of the Water, keeps us in a State of constant perplexity and the most anxious conjecture.”
The British might yet sail up the Hudson, or instead make for the south and sail up the Delaware to attack Philadelphia. They might even, he suggested, sail toward that city in a “deep feint,” only to turn away. Washington recommended to Hancock that militia “of the neighbouring counties” in Pennsylvania be called upon. Should the British make a “sudden and rapid push” for the city, the militia could at least retard and check enemy operations “ ’till other succours can arrive.” He himself and the Continentals he commanded adopted positions on the New Jersey bank of the Delaware. From there they could respond to an attack either on Philadelphia or on Putnam’s forces in the north.
The call to action came on July 31. Washington wrote to Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., governor of Connecticut: “At half after nine o’clock this morning, I received an express from Congress advising—that the Enemy’s Fleet consisting of two hundred and twenty eight were at the Capes of Delaware yesterday in the fore noon.” By that evening he was lodged in the City Tavern in Philadelphia. The Continental regiments he commanded—11,000 strong—were encamping between Germantown and the Schuylkill Falls, five miles north of the city.
The Marquis de Lafayette, graduate of an elite French military academy, had recently come out to America to volunteer for the Continentals. He described the troops as ill armed and ill clothed, and many of them were, as he described it, almost naked: “The best clad wore hunting shirts, large grey linen coats common in the Carolinas.” Their knowledge of military tactics was, he observed, rudimentary. It was not made trial of immediately. Intelligence came on August 1 that Howe and his shipborne army had sailed away again, their destination unknown. Forgetting that he had earlier suspected Howe capable of a “deep feint,” Washington railed to Governor Trumbull: “the conduct of the Enemy is distressing beyond measure, and past our comprehension…nobody doubted but that Philadelphia was the immediate object of their expedition, and that they would commence their operations as soon as possible.”
While the whereabouts of the British fleet were unknown to Washington, he had at least the satisfaction of hearing news of Martha in Virginia. Her brother Bartholomew Dandridge wrote to him from Williamsburg on August 22 to say that Martha was “in perfect health” at Eltham with the Bassetts, where there was something of a family gathering. Jacky, too, wrote from Williamsburg, with news in early August that the harvest promised “a plentiful crop” at Washington’s land in Frederick County and throughout the state. In a further letter, of September 11, he was bursting with plans for his future and that of his young family. He meant to sell the plantation on the Mattaponi that Washington had purchased on his behalf following Patsy’s death. Jacky cited, among the estate’s drawbacks, “an insufferable quantity of mosquitoes.” He was also hoping in the next election to the General Assembly to be selected as delegate for New Kent County. To that end he was taking steps to repair the White House on the Pamunkey, where he had been born. It wanted, in his optimistic view, little but whitewashing and plastering. An annex “with two good rooms above and below stairs” would make the Parke Custis house “very comfortable though not elegant, and we shall have room to entertain our friends who will favour us with their company.” Should he be elected a delegate, he wrote earnestly, he meant to serve “on true Independent Principals to the best of my abilities.” Martha added a fond but matter-of-fact postscript: “My love, the silver cup I mentioned to you in my letter by the last post—W[eigh]t 113 oz.” The vessel to which she referred is not identifiable.
Though Jacky expressed buoyant confidence in his stepfather, on the very day he wrote Washington suffered the first of several defeats. Howe and his army had at last disembarked. Landing near Head of Elk in Maryl
and, they marched northeast. In Pennsylvania the Brandywine River lay between them and Philadelphia. The same day that Jacky wrote, September 11, Washington and his generals offered battle at Chadd’s Ford and at contiguous crossings of the river. But Howe and troops under the command of Lord Cornwallis outwitted and outflanked the Americans and crossed at unguarded fords to the north. Battle ensued around a tavern and around a Quaker meetinghouse within whose walls Friends prayed, undeterred. Over the course of the day the British gained the advantage. Retreating to Chester, Washington wrote to Hancock: “we have been obliged to leave the enemy masters in the field.”
Plans for a reprisal on September 17 foundered. Severe rain the previous night rendered the arms of the Continental troops, Washington told Thomas Nelson, “unfit for use, and destroyed almost all the Ammunition in the men’s pouches.” The enemy continued to advance on Philadelphia. “It is probable some of their Parties have entered the City,” Washington wrote, “and their whole Army may, if they incline to do it, without our being able to prevent them.” The Continental troops’ “distress for want of Shoes” was, he added, “almost beyond conception,” and rendered both “operations” and pursuit “impracticable.”
The British were indeed in possession of the Pennsylvania capital. Lord Cornwallis was the first of the British to enter the city, on September 26, to the triumphant accompaniment of fife and drum. The population usually numbered forty thousand, but he found only a quarter of the inhabitants in residence. The Pennsylvania Assembly had adjourned to Lancaster. Congress, pausing only briefly there, had reconvened, at a still greater distance from the enemy, at York, Pennsylvania, on a tributary of the Susquehanna River.
Though the British held Philadelphia, Washington launched, on the fourth of the month, a surprise attack on a British garrison, 9,000 strong, in nearby Germantown. This engagement, he later told his brother Samuel, “had every appearance (after a contest of two hours and 40 Minutes) of deciding in our favour.” But visibility was much reduced by the clouds of artillery smoke as well as by foggy conditions. Two American columns were on the point of driving out the British in separate attacks. “Unhappily,” Washington wrote the following day to congressional delegate Benjamin Harrison, “…each took the other for fresh troops of the enemy, and retreated precipitately.” One thousand Continental troops, he later told his brother John Augustine, were killed or wounded or had deserted. The enemy had suffered too: “the hospital at Philadelphia and several large meeting houses are filled with their wounded.…In a word it was a bloody day—would to Heaven I could add that it had been a more fortunate one for us.”
Washington’s reputation, the “honour” he held so dear, could gain little from such encounters. But he was busy supervising the defense of forts on the Delaware still in American hands. General Horatio Gates, newly commander of the army in the north, enjoyed more success. Burgoyne and 6,000 British and Hessian troops surrendered to him at Saratoga, New York, on October 17. The north was in American hands. Washington, imparting this “important and glorious news” to John Augustine next day, deemed the surrender as a “signal stroke of providence.” The British general and his troops would now be embarked for Europe and lost to Howe. Washington was perturbed that Gates had sent him no word of the victory. He had instead to rely on unconfirmed reports and copies of Gates’s communications to Congress. But the parlous situation at hand was uppermost in his mind.
From Mount Vernon, on the twenty-sixth, Jacky wrote: “from the favourable reports circulating among us, I am in hopes shortly to hear that Howe is in the same situation with Burgoyne.” Jacky had it in mind to transact numerous land bargains with his stepfather, and he hoped Washington might soon be free to come home. He had been checked by his mother in one transaction he had earlier proposed. Washington himself was agreeable to his stepson’s renting Claiborne’s, a dower property with good grazing in King William County. The affair must be postponed, Jacky told Washington: “Mamma seems to have some objections to renting it during her life. When I first wrote to you I thought she had no objections, but since I received your letter, I have talked to her on that subject and it does not appear to be perfectly agreeable to her.”
Washington had deferred to Martha in much of her children’s upbringing. In the matter of the Parke Custis lands that came to her second husband by marriage, it would appear she had a veto and was not afraid to use it. “It is not my wish to let it for any longer term than your Mama inclines to,” the commander confirmed in due course. Should Washington predecease Martha—and it was not improbable that on some “bloody day” soon he might fall—Mount Vernon would pass to Washington kin. For good reason she wished her husband only to rent out for his own life a property a short distance upriver from the Bassetts at Eltham. Upon its reversion to her, it might afford a comfortable dower house across the Pamunkey from the White House in New Kent County.
If Howe should remain at large, Jacky wrote on October 26 from Mount Vernon, he himself would have the “pleasure of visiting camp.” He hoped he and his stepfather could transact other business there. Washington informed his brother Samuel, on the twenty-seventh, that Fielding Lewis had bought him some lots at Warm Springs: “it was always my intention to become a proprietor there if a town should be laid off at that place.” As commander and not as land speculator, he ended his letter: “The situation of the two armies is shortly this—the enemy are in Philadelphia—and we hovering round them, to distress and retard their operations as much as possible.”
Martha, writing from Mount Vernon on November 18 to her sister Nancy Bassett, confirmed her husband’s activities: “The last letter I had from the General was dated the 7th of this month—he says nothing has happened since the unsuccessful [British] attack upon our forts on the Delaware.” Martha’s two nephews, Burwell Junior and John, who had been inoculated with the smallpox at Mount Vernon, were now returning home. She told her sister that they had been “exceeding good boys indeed and I shall hope you will let them come to see me whenever they can spare so much time from school…the doctor’s charge is very high but I did not say a word—as he carried the children so well through the smallpox.” In other family news, she wrote that her daughter-in-law and granddaughter had been “over the river”—at Mount Airy in Maryland—for the past three weeks. “Jack is just come over—he tells me that little Bet is grown as fat as a pig.”
Days later in Pennsylvania, Washington wrote to John Augustine with less cheerful news. The enemy had taken Forts Mifflin and Mercer on the Delaware and removed the chevaux-de-frise in the river that had previously obstructed their shipping. Now “their provisions, stores, etc” could come upriver, and the British could be expected to winter in Philadelphia. He himself was now looking for a winter cantonment for the Continental troops. An attack on the British in Philadelphia for the moment was out of the question. The Continental troops were exhausted by the grueling marches, countermarches, attacks, and retreats that had marked this punishing summer and autumn campaign. Moreover, they still desperately wanted clothing, shoes, and food. Congress—in exile at York—lacked the wherewithal to supply these necessities.
Washington settled in December, for a winter cantonment, on an area known as Valley Forge, a maze of disused ironworks twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia at the mouth of Valley Creek on the Schuylkill. The terrain was such that they could at least fend off any surprise raid. At Valley Forge they must regroup and recover, in preparation for further campaigns. Ragged force though they were, this army must withstand, in the new year, attempts by the British in Philadelphia to march on Congress in York and win new territory elsewhere.
Martha told her brother-in-law Burwell Bassett on December 22, “he cannot come home this winter but as soon as the army under his command goes into winter quarter he will send for me. If he does, I must go.” Washington and the army under his command had in fact reached Valley Forge two days earlier. Martha’s letter was one of condolence. Following invalid years, her beloved sister Nancy
—“the greatest favourite I had in the world”—had died. Martha wrote wistfully to widower Bassett, “I have often wished that fortune had placed us nearer to each other.” She had a suggestion to make in her letter: “My dear sister in her lifetime often mentioned my taking my dear Fanny”—the Bassetts’ ten-year-old daughter—“if she [Nancy] should be taken away before she grew up.” She made this offer to her brother-in-law: “If you will let her come to live with me, I will with the greatest pleasure take her and be a parent and mother to her as long as I live.” If her husband did not call for her, if her brother-in-law acceded to her request, she could come and fetch her niece early in the new year. Bassett was mourning also his eldest son, Billy, who had died in November. It was a practical suggestion. Martha waited only for the birth of a new grandchild, expected imminently, and for her daughter-in-law’s recovery.
Over the holiday period Martha was hospitable. Lund Washington complained to Washington on Christmas Eve: “you, sir, may think (as everyone would) that in your absence we live at a less expense than when you are at home but it is the reverse, it is seldom that this house is without company—our stable always full of horses.”
Nelly gave birth on New Year’s Eve 1777 to another daughter, Martha Parke Custis, to be known as Pat and later as Patty. But Martha did not go south to Eltham to fetch her niece. The call had come from Washington for her to join him. Jacky wrote to his stepfather in mid-January, apologizing for not escorting his mother, “Nelly will not be in such a situation as I could leave her.” One of his toes, besides, Jacky noted, was not recovered from “an ugly frost bite I got some time ago.”
Washington replied at the beginning of February 1778: “Your Mamma is not yet arrived, but if she left Mount Vernon on the 26th Ultimo as intended, may, I think, be expected every hour.” He added, aware of the danger of his letter falling into enemy hands: “We are in a dreary kind of place, and uncomfortably provided.” Conditions at Valley Forge were, in fact, not far from desperate, as Martha discovered upon her entry into camp on February 5.