The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

Martha was a fierce guardian not only of her husband’s image. She, who had never doubted him, was a recipient of confidences he could make to no one else. Hamilton, Lafayette, and Laurens, devoted though they were to the commander-in-chief, were young and sometimes rash. His senior aide, Fitzgerald, and Harrison and Tilghman were conscientious copyists and messengers. With Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox, both excellent officers, Washington fruitfully discussed the progress of the war, the strategy, and the needs of the army. But he had known all these officers and aides for, at best, a very few years. With Martha, his wife and close companion of nearly two decades, he could speak of a future after the war. With Martha he could share his frustrations at being kept from home and from the management of the property that meant so much to him. He concluded a long list of instructions to Lund Washington in a letter of February 28: “nothing but your having the charge of my business, and the entire confidence I repose in you, could make me tolerable easy. To go on in the improvement of my Estate in the manner heretofore described to you—fulfilling my plans—and keeping my property together, are the principal objects I have in view during these troubles.”

  Lund Washington toiled on and on in his cousin’s absence. He was eager to have work on the front of the house finished, and scaffolding taken down, before Martha should return. But, as usual, local craftsmen were laggardly. “Of all the worthless men living Lanphier is the greatest,” he wrote on April 22. “No art or temptation of mine can prevail on him to come to work, notwithstanding his repeated promises to do so.” Until this joiner finished making the window in the pediment, the scaffolding must remain.

  This was not Lund’s only concern. Washington, in March, directed him to sell two unsatisfactory slaves, Bett and Phyllis, to new masters, if the women were willing to go. Neither sale was successful. Bett was to have gone, for £200, to “a man living in Botetourt city.” Her mother, Lund wrote in early April, appeared “so uneasy about it,” and Bett herself “made such promises of amendment,” that he “could not force her to go with the man.” Phyllis, whom Lund offered for £200 to another man, “was so alarmed at the thoughts of being sold, that the man could not get her to utter a word of English, and therefore he believed she could not speak.” This transaction, too, failed.

  Lund suggested he sell at public auction these two slaves and a third—Orford—and “pay no regard to their being willing or not.” He intended coming to camp soon, when he would see his cousin’s instructions. Lund awaited the annual spring run of shad on the Potomac. Some of the fish, when netted and dried, was destined for sale to the army, following Congress’s orders for “a quantity of shad to be cured on this river.” Some, he would keep, for the use of “our own people.”

  At Valley Forge the Washingtons lived on sociable terms with many European volunteers—Lafayette, Du Ponceau, de Kalb, and von Steuben among them. In their countries, medieval serfdom was now long forgotten, though slave labor still drove the economies of the French West Indies, where Alexander Hamilton had grown up. Lafayette openly voiced his distaste for the oppression of “negroes” in America and for the public auctions at which they were often sold. John Laurens, the son of a Carolina plantation owner, had been educated in London and Geneva. He begged his father, congressional president Laurens, to cede him “a number of your able-bodied men slaves.” It was his intention, wrote John, to form from this “untried source”—slaves from the different southern states—a black light horse regiment 5,000 strong. He argued that slaves’ “habits of subordination, patience under fatigues, sufferings and privations of every kind” would serve them well as soldiers. At the same time, he argued, they would embrace military service with enthusiasm—a “proper gradation between abject slavery and perfect liberty.” The commander-in-chief, he reported, had given a cautious welcome to the project, though expressing concern for the financial loss it would constitute to the Laurens’s estate: “He is convinced that the numerous tribes of blacks in the southern parts of the continent, offer a resource to us that should not be neglected.” President Laurens squashed his son’s proposal as an “eccentric” notion. But Washington’s willingness to countenance such a venture was part and parcel of the direction his thinking was taking.

  Since December 1776 “free negroes” had been encouraged to enlist in the Continental army, and hundreds served in the militia of different states. In the late winter of 1778, when Rhode Island had few recruits to offer the army, Washington gave tacit encouragement to a plan to recruit slaves in the state. The slaves were to be “absolutely made free” and entitled to all the wages of any Continental soldier enlisting. The masters were to be compensated at a rate of £120 “for the most valuable slave” and in proportion for those of lesser value.

  In more populous Virginia, no such scheme was suggested. Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment, which slaves had run away to join, still rankled with plantation owners. Moreover, Washington would have regarded £120 as a low return for “property,” when even women slaves went for more. Nevertheless, he had long regarded the slave workforce at Mount Vernon as “stock” expensive to maintain. Clothing, rice, rum, and shoe leather were the least of it. Doctors’ and midwives’ bills were a constant drain on the estate. Above all, overseers in every “quarter” were required to threaten a labor force reluctant and lacking in incentive to work. When he could, Washington paid hirelings to supplement the less than satisfactory efforts of his “negroes.” In August 1778 he was to write to Lund of a new plan he had conceived. He had it in mind to barter, for land that he wished to acquire, “Negroes (of whom I every day long more & more to get clear of).” He wrote of other acreage: “For this Land also I had rather give Negroes—if Negroes would do. For, to be plain, I wish to get quit of Negroes.”

  There is no evidence that Martha shared Washington’s wish to “get quit of Negroes” or his repugnance about selling them at public auction. Bett, Phyllis, and Orford were all sold at auction the following year. A Mount Vernon peopled by waged workers was as yet as much a pipe dream as was John Laurens’s plan for the regiment of black light horse. For Martha, the dower slaves were property, like the land at Claiborne’s, in which she had a life interest. On her death she fully intended that those slaves who survived her would revert to the Parke Custis estate.

  As slaves were subject to their masters and mistresses, so was their comfort subject to the wishes of their owners. That February Washington’s mother in Fredericksburg had required a slave, Silla, to be sent to her from Mount Vernon. “I believe she will be very unwilling to go,” wrote Lund on February 18, “she having cooper Jack for a husband, and they appear to live comfortable together.” In March he wrote of Jack: “He cries and begs, saying he had rather be hanged than separated.” But Mary Washington’s comfort was paramount, and go to Fredericksburg Silla surely did. Meanwhile Washington’s body servant, Will Lee, and Martha’s maids—house slaves from Mount Vernon—served their master and mistress at Valley Forge.

  In early April, Charles Lee, who was on parole, soon to be exchanged with a British officer, was received in camp with full honors. The general’s earlier foolhardiness, in venturing so near the enemy at Basking Ridge as to be captured, was passed over. By the approaching exchange, Washington would gain an experienced general who could play a part when the enemy again began their military operations. Washington “received General Lee as if he had been his brother” and escorted him to headquarters where Martha was waiting. Following a dinner, as usual dubbed “elegant,” in the log annex, Lee was assigned a room “back of Mrs Washington’s sitting room, and all his baggage was stowed in it.” The allocation of this chamber in the cramped house was a mark of favor, and Washington assigned to Lee in due course command of the right wing of the army. If he thought that, by these attentions, he had propitiated his volatile subaltern, he was mistaken.

  The high command of the Continental army, soon to include Lee, held numerous councils of war that spring at Valley Forge. On each occasion they judged it inadvisable to
launch an attack on Philadelphia. They would wait, rather, until the British moved against them or, indeed, against American positions on the Hudson. Von Steuben continued to drill officers and men, Knox, to train the artillery, and Greene, to muster supplies of horses, wagon teams, and tents for the field. But across the Atlantic the British government was working to suppress American rebellion, while in Paris, Benjamin Franklin and other envoys were pressing Louis XVI and his government to support the patriot cause.

  The same day that Lee received his full exchange, April 21, Washington wrote: “The enemy are beginning to play a game more dangerous than their efforts by arms.…They are endeavouring to ensnare the people by specious allurements of peace.” Copies of draft parliamentary bills that reached Valley Forge on April 18 made clear that Lord North, the British prime minister, was sending peace commissioners to offer terms to Congress at York. These emissaries were to offer pardons and more equitable taxation to the American “rebels” in exchange for a cessation of hostilities.

  For all that the former colonies named themselves states, statehood would be officially conferred upon them only when final ratification of Articles of Confederation, signed the previous November, took place. Notwithstanding their unofficial standing, from when they were first mooted these articles provided a serviceable framework for national and international government. Virginia had promptly ratified the articles in December, and most of the other former colonies soon followed suit. Final ratification by Congress was to take place only in March 1781, Maryland being the last province or state to approve them. The emissaries must fail if Congress held firm to these articles, which set the United States of America on the path to a firm and independent footing. There were those within Congress and without, however, who wavered at the thought of peace.

  In a highly charged atmosphere at camp, welcome news from Europe was received. Evading British navy ships, the Sensible, a French frigate of thirty-six guns, had docked at Casco Bay in Maine. Passenger Simeon Deane, brother to one of the United States’ three commissioners in Paris, bore dispatches for Congress. Treaties of commerce and alliance between France and America had been signed in the French capital in February. Louis XVI’s government was assembling a fleet and troops to come to the aid of the United States of America. The victory of Gates at Saratoga had done much to persuade the French to recognize the new nation across the Atlantic.

  At Valley Forge, so recently the scene of hardship and deprivation, a “grand military fete and jubilee” took place on May 7. The chaplain attached to the “Jersey service”—the regiments from New Jersey—preached at a service that George and Martha, with other officers and their wives, attended. Thereafter Washington reviewed the whole army and dined in public with all its officers, while a military band played. “Long live the King of France” was among the toasts made. When the commander took his leave, “there was a universal clap, with loud huzzas” and “a thousand hats tossed in the air. His Excellency turned round with his retinue and huzzaed several times.” Opponent Sir William Howe, who had resigned as British commander-in-chief, sailed for England later this month. General Washington, whose spirits had recently sunk so low, whose leadership had been doubted, was restored to grace.

  17

  Philadelphia and Middlebrook, New Jersey, 1778–1779

  “His Excellency and Mrs Greene danced upwards of three hours.”

  THE TIME HAD NEARLY COME for Washington and Martha to part once more. To Washington’s chagrin, the French admiral the Comte d’Estaing did not arrive in American waters in time to give battle to the British fleet while they occupied the Delaware. Reacting with alarm to reports of the new alliance, the British in Philadelphia embarked baggage and stores. Washington surmised that Henry Clinton, recently knighted, now British commander in America, planned to make for the Hudson Highlands. There the enemy would hope to take American posts before auxiliary French troops arrived to bolster the Continental numbers. News of the Franco-American alliance had revived Congress. Those delegates who had earlier favored making terms were now among the foremost to reject the offer of peace that the British commissioners brought to Pennsylvania.

  While Martha headed south to Mount Vernon, Washington’s own intention was to force an engagement on Clinton before the British forces could reach the Hudson. On June 18, upon receiving news that the evacuation of Philadelphia had taken place early that morning, Washington informed Congress at York that he had “put six brigades in motion” to follow the enemy, three, under General Lee, marching off at midday, the others following in the afternoon. The next morning, at five o’clock, he departed with the rest of the army.

  On the twenty-fourth, at Hopewell, New Jersey, Washington decided to attack the enemy, an intention in which his generals supported him—except for Lee, who declared himself strongly opposed to such a plan. Indeed, Lee gave up the command of the advance divisions to Lafayette, only to demand it back a day after the marquis pressed forward. Washington wrote to the volatile general on the twenty-sixth: “it is not in my power fully to remove it [the command of the detachment sent forward] without wounding the feelings of the Marquis de Lafayette.” He placated Lee with the command of the “whole advanced body.”

  Two days later Washington, with the main army, was advancing toward Monmouth Courthouse, where the British and Hessians were encamped. But the morning of June 28 had an “unfortunate and bad beginning,” as Washington later informed his brother, John Augustine. Suddenly, three miles from the courthouse, General Lee and his advance troops, 6,000 of them, appeared. They were fleeing General Cornwallis and the enemy, who were pressing hard upon their rear.

  What followed owed much to the American commander’s leadership, though he wrote modestly about the role he played: “the disorder arising from it [this retreat] would have proved fatal to the Army, had not that bountiful Providence, which has never failed us in the hour of distress, enabled me to form a Regiment or two (of those that were retreating) in the face of the Enemy, and under their fire.” Washington arrested the flight of enough troops to form a body of men to repulse the oncoming British. He limited his engagement with Lee to an angry exchange, then sent the general to the rear and later had him court-martialed. “In the Morning we expected to renew the Action,” he told John Augustine, “when behold! the enemy had stole off as Silent as the Grave in the Night after having sent away their wounded. Without exaggerating,” Washington concluded with satisfaction, “their trip through the Jerseys in killed, Wounded, Prisoners, & deserters, has cost them at least 2000 Men & of their best Troops.” He ordered, in celebration of the second anniversary of the declaration of independence, on July 4, a firing of cannons and a feu de joie, or rapid rifle salute, of the whole line on the Brunswick side of the Raritan.

  The pitched battle at Monmouth Courthouse represented America’s last effort in the cause of independence unaided by a foreign power. As ever, following an engagement, the commander-in-chief had been punctilious in assuring his wife that he was safe. Major General Benedict Arnold, military governor of Philadelphia since the British had abandoned the city, wrote on June 30 to Washington, “I received your Excellency’s Favour of yesterday, at 10 o Clock this morning with the Letter Inclosed for Mrs. Washington which I dispatch’d immediately by Express. I beg leave to present your Excellency my Congratulatory Compliments on the Victory you have obtained over the Enemy.”

  Martha had returned to Mount Vernon earlier that month, Lund Washington acting as her escort from Pennsylvania. She found her son newly a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly in Williamsburg. Though Jacky had earlier intended to offer himself for New Kent County, when he meant to reside there, the attractions of his birthplace had palled. Instead, he and George Mason had been elected in April by the “gentlemen of Fairfax,” the property holders of Fairfax County. “I never wished anything more in my life than to settle in this county,” he averred to Washington on May 11. “I know the people, they are better disposed than any part of Virginia.” He wa
s satisfied, he went on, that he would live happier there “than in any other part.” He added blithely that communication with the Parke Custis lands in the south, as they lay on the water, would be “very easy, and not attended with great expense,” whenever the Chesapeake Bay was open for shipping.

  Jacky, looking about for a home to buy, settled on Abingdon, a plantation twelve miles north of Mount Vernon and upriver of Alexandria. It belonged to a Fairfax County neighbor, Robert Alexander, and Washington deemed it in May “a pleasant Seat & capable of improvement.” He later wrote that his stepson’s residence at Abingdon would be “an agreeable measure to your Mother—and a pleasing one to me.” The price of the estate was, as Jacky acknowledged, “very extravagant”—£12,000. His stepfather agreed but remarked: “as you want it to live at—as it answers your’s & Nelly’s views—I do not think the price ought to be a capital object with you.” Jacky had determined to sell some parcels of his estates on the York and Pamunkey. Washington urged, on May 26, that any money secured by these sales should be “immediately vested in the funds, or laid out in other lands.” He warned his stepson: “if this is not done be assured, it will melt like Snow before a hot Sun, and you will be able to give as little acct of the going of it.…Lands are permanent—rising fast in value—and will be very dear when our Independency is established, and the Importance of America better known.”

  Jacky made a very bad bargain, including paying Alexander, at the expiration of twenty-four years, the principal—£12,000—“with compound interest.” He wrote to Washington on July 15, “Nothing could have induced me to give such terms, but the unconquerable desire I had to live in the neighbourhood of Mount Vernon and in the county of Fairfax.” He intended, he wrote, to sell much of the estate he had inherited, leaving only some profitable tracts in King William and New Kent that could be looked after by a single manager.