Although the sun was sinking, heat still parched the soldiers’ throats, and to slake their constant thirst a private’s young wife had been fetching water from a nearby well for her husband and his fellow artillery gunners. She was Mrs. John Hays, but the men called her “Molly Pitcher.” When her husband was shot dead, Mary Hays knew his job well enough to grab a rammer and keep the gun firing. Once, as she stretched to reach for a cartridge, a cannonball passed between her legs and tore away her petticoat. Mary Hays, who had chewed tobacco with these men and cursed with them, simply looked down and remarked that it was lucky the shot had not passed higher or it would have carried away something else.
At about 6 P.M. Washington wanted to launch a counterattack, but, under the hottest sun in recent memory, his men were as spent as they had been in the bitter cold at Princeton. Henry Clinton was vastly relieved for the respite. He was outnumbered, possibly by four thousand men, and described himself as ready to go raving mad from the heat. The British had suffered about twelve hundred casualties—four times the number of the American losses.
Clinton had already lost half that number in desertions; love-struck Hessians kept creeping back to sweethearts in Philadelphia. With the odds against him, Clinton quietly left Monmouth in an overnight retreat as skillful as any the Americans had made on the many occasions they had conceded a battlefield.
By midmorning on Monday, the British reached the safety of Middletown; two days later, Sandy Hook. There, on the fourth of July, 1778, Henry Clinton’s men boarded Lord Howe’s ships and sailed to New York. After more than three years of war and two years of embattled independence, the Americans had a reason to celebrate. This time it was their army that had chased the enemy across New Jersey.
—
George Washington had been content to let Charles Lee’s erratic behavior be buried with the dead at Monmouth Court House. But Washington’s momentary show of anger had affronted Lee. From the end of the battle and all through the next day, he awaited Washington’s apology for his harsh remarks. When none came by Monday night, Lee was still seething and wrote his commander a letter:
Washington’s manner of addressing him, Lee said, implied that he had disobeyed orders, failed in his conduct or showed cowardice. Lee asked Washington to tell him which of those charges he had made so that Lee could justify himself to the army, to the Congress, to America and to the world. Lee added that since the success at Monmouth had been due entirely to his maneuvers, “I have a right to demand some reparation.” In conclusion, he attempted to be politic. Washington’s cutting remarks could only have been prompted “by some of those dirty earwigs who will forever insinuate themselves near persons in high office.”
Lee might have learned from Thomas Conway that Washington was slow to unleash his anger, but, once let free, it could be fierce. He began his response by pointing out that Lee had misdated his letter. Then Washington said he found General Lee’s language highly improper but would soon give Lee the chance he was demanding. Lee could explain why he had not attacked but instead had made “an unnecessary, disorderly and shameful retreat.”
Charles Lee exploded in fury. He wrote again, deliberately using the wrong date and claiming to welcome the opportunity for America to judge the respective virtues of her generals. Lee’s talent for invective had always been highly developed, and now he indulged it fully. “I trust the temporary power of office, and the tinsel dignity attending to it, will not be able, by all the mists they can raise, to obfuscate the bright rays of truth.” In yet another letter a few hours later, Lee called for a full court-martial, not merely a court of inquiry. Washington agreed immediately. The court began taking testimony on July 4.
Alexander Hamilton worried that Charles Lee’s gift for language would affect the outcome of his trial, and it did, but not in the way Hamilton had feared. Lee was now denouncing his commander’s behavior at Monmouth to anyone who would listen. “By all that’s sacred,” he wrote to Robert Morris, “General Washington had scarcely more to do in it than to strip the dead.” Had Lee retreated? Only when a jealous Washington sent him from the field after victory was already assured. Lee claimed that twice in the past he had saved Washington and his whole army from perdition. And now at Monmouth he had given him the only victory Washington had ever tasted.
General Lee was forcing the country to choose between him and George Washington. He soon had his answer. By late July, Lee was complaining that any attack on Washington seemed to recoil against the attacker; Lee’s fellow generals had begun to question his sanity. At the court-martial, three charges were considered: disobeying orders by not attacking, misbehavior in making a shameful retreat and, citing his letters of June 30, disrespect to the commander in chief. Lee conducted his own defense but could not salvage his reputation. When General David Forman was testifying, Lee challenged him to say whether other American retreats had been more or less disorderly than his own.
“I have seen retreats with more confusion and some with less,” Forman answered.
Lee persisted: “Where did you see a retreat with less confusion in the face of the enemy?”
“At White Plains,” Forman answered, reminding the court of Washington’s skillful escape from New York.
Alexander Hamilton testified to Lee’s instability during the battle, until Lee quoted back Hamilton’s own overheated remarks.
General Lee, who was referring to his retreat as “retrograde maneuvers,” called on the Marquis de Lafayette to speak for Lee’s self-control as the fighting began. “Did you observe in my voice, manner, appearance, air or countenance that I was the least disconcerted, or whether, on the contrary, I was not tranquil and cheerful?”
The marquis had been studying English diligently and knew enough to avoid being helpful. “It seemed to me by your voice and features,” he said, “you were then as you are in general.”
The court found Charles Lee guilty on all three charges, although the word “shameful” was deleted from the description of his retreat. Fellow officers noted that of the three indictments, the disrespect to George Washington had been taken the most seriously. In pressing for a court-martial, Lee had exposed himself to a sentence of death. Instead, he was suspended from any command in the army for twelve months.
Like Conway, Lee had insulted George Washington and had paid the price. And, like the Conway affair, the incident ended in a duel. Both Baron von Steuben and General Anthony Wayne demanded satisfaction for aspersions they had detected in his letters and testimony. Lee apologized and turned away their challenges. But one of Washington’s young aides, John Laurens, whose father had replaced John Hancock as president of the Congress, claimed that Lee had impugned Washington with the grossest abuse and insisted on dueling. Lee mocked him for taking it on himself to defend Washington’s honor. He said Laurens was reviving the medieval custom that permitted any knight to champion “old women, widows and priests.” But he agreed to the match.
Congress upheld the court-martial. Samuel Adams carried Massachusetts for Lee, but Georgia cast the only other vote for his acquittal. Two and a half weeks later, Charles Lee met Laurens in a wood four miles outside Philadelphia. The men fired from fifteen feet, and Lee received a slight wound. He said to Laurens, “You may fire at me all day, sir, if it will amuse you. What I have said I am not disposed to recall.” Both men were preparing for a second shot when they were stopped by the protests of Laurens’ second, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton.
Benjamin Franklin welcomed at a French reception, 1778
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Paris
1778–79
WHEN JOHN ADAMS found himself living in Paris in the spring of 1778, he was half thrilled and entirely censorious. He had been sent to France to replace Silas Deane, whom the Congress had ordered home for an accounting when Arthur Lee’s vendetta against Deane became impossible to ignore. The members wanted a man of inflexible integrity to replace him and elected Adams while he was on leave in Massachusetts. Abigail
Adams bitterly lamented that after being apart for three years they now faced another prolonged separation. She worried about raising their four children alone, especially since the three boys needed a father’s example. John Adams had his own qualms about making the trip. He assumed that the British would find out about the appointment and try to capture him on the seas and send him to Newgate Prison. He would take whatever risk his country asked, but he would not allow Abigail to go with him. As a compromise, he took their eldest son, John Quincy.
The six-week crossing was rough but not as daunting as the ordeal that introduced John Adams to Parisian society. On his second night off the boat, an elegant young married woman turned to him flirtatiously at a supper party. Adams spoke no French, so her remarks were put through an interpreter.
“Mr. Adams,” she began, “by your name I conclude that you are descended from the first man and woman, and probably in your family may be preserved the tradition which may resolve a difficulty which I could never explain: I never could understand how the first couple found out the art of lying together.”
That was how her pleasantry was translated to him, but Adams suspected that the phrase she had used for making love was a more energetic one. American women—modest, sensitive, dignified—would never have posed so indelicate a question. John Adams felt himself blushing. But he had come to France to represent America and he was determined to conceal his discomfort.
Through the interpreter, Adams replied that he thought the answer must be instinct. When a man and a woman came within striking distance, they flew together like the needle toward the pole—like two objects in an electrified experiment.
“Well,” the woman replied, “I know not how it was, but this I know: it is a very happy shock.”
Adams sat back satisfied with his performance, except he wished that after “striking distance,” he had added “in a lawful way” to show her that he was speaking only about attraction within marriage.
He had come to France girded against any moral corruption. Although he admitted that the Paris Opéra was cheerful and sprightly, he refused to live in Silas Deane’s house or to use his carriage; he found instead a modest apartment near Benjamin Franklin. Once they were alone, Franklin told Adams about the grievances that had split the American delegation. Franklin’s version painted Arthur Lee as one of those men who went through life quarreling with one person after another until they went mad. Lee had been one of Samuel Adams’ closest allies for most of the decade, and John Adams said only that he regretted the quarreling and was determined to stay aloof from it.
As Adams began his diplomatic rounds, he was repeatedly dismayed when Frenchmen told him how honored they were to be meeting the famous Monsieur Adams. Each time, John scrupulously explained that he was not Samuel. He spent every spare moment studying the French language, but was torn between pride and mortification when John Quincy learned more French in a day at school than his father had learned in a week. Adams was comforted that Benjamin Franklin, for all of his social triumphs, spoke a most ungrammatical French. But the French seemed to forgive Franklin even that. When he made errors in gender, Franklin apologized by saying that for sixty years the matter of genders had been bothering him and he still found the French feminines a plague. Once, asked to attend a speech, Franklin thought he had devised a way to protect himself. He watched a Frenchwoman with similar political views, and every time she applauded he joined in. Afterward, his grandson informed him that whenever a speaker had praised the glories of Benjamin Franklin he had clapped longer and louder than anyone else.
By May, John Adams was finding that Franklin was far too occupied with his rounds of pleasure to bother with the tedious details of their assignment. Adams felt only compassion for Franklin’s age—he was seventy-two—and he was perfectly content to take on all of the commission’s drudgery if only Franklin would allot a few minutes each day for business. Adams began to keep a record of Franklin’s indulgences. He noted that Franklin always slept late. Then, after breakfast, carriages began arriving at Passy filled with philosophers, scholars and economists. There were French translators at work on Poor Richard, and women and children who came to gape and boast of having seen the great man’s bald head. By the time Franklin had obliged them all, it was time to dress for dinner. He had an invitation for every day and never turned one down. Adams was usually included but begged off, pleading business or his study of French. Franklin went nowhere without an appointment book in his pocket to keep track of his many engagements. Arthur Lee claimed—and Adams agreed—that the only job Franklin was punctual at was keeping the book up-to-date. After dinner, Franklin visited the French ladies who competed ruthlessly for his company, some so eager to impress him that they learned to make English tea. After tea came amusements. Ladies sang or played the piano while Franklin played checkers or chess. He usually went home anywhere from 9 P.M. to midnight.
Adams became irritated enough to set down the names of four of the French ladies pursuing Franklin, but he might have added many more. Franklin sent Madame Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, the wife of a treasury official, little stories that he called his bagatelles. He called her “my daughter,” but she enjoyed the idea that they were provoking a scandal. “People have the audacity to criticize my pleasant habit of sitting on your knee,” she wrote to him, “and yours of always asking me for what I always refuse.” Franklin tried to make a match between his grandson Temple and her eldest daughter, Cunegonde, but Madame Brillon considered the boy too young and too poor.
One of Madame Brillon’s leading rivals lived a few kilometers away. Madame Anne-Catherine Helvétius, still beautiful as she approached sixty, had once scolded Benjamin Franklin for not calling on an evening she expected him. Franklin had apologized, “Madame, I am waiting till the nights are longer.” Adams was aghast to find that Madame Helvétius surrounded herself with three or four young priests, chosen more for their good looks than for their piety. At least one of them lived at her house. “Oh, mores!” Adams groaned to himself and vowed that such customs would never reach America.
There was one feminine heart Franklin did not flutter. Queen Marie Antoinette couldn’t fathom why the young and pretty women of her court were drawn to him. One of them, the Duchesse Yolande de Polignac, had flaunted so often her medallion of Franklin wearing his fur hat that the king sent her another of Franklin’s portraits, placed at the bottom of a Sèvres chamber pot.
—
Back in Philadelphia, Silas Deane’s reception by the Congress was markedly hostile. Deane had John Hancock’s support, which only damned him further in the eyes of Samuel Adams and his allies. Benjamin Franklin had written a letter of support for Deane, but Arthur Lee had insinuated that Franklin was Deane’s partner in profiteering. John Adams sent a private letter from France saying that Deane was neither the savior of America nor a villain but had rendered useful service.
Last page of Treaty of Alliance signed in Paris, February1778
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Deane’s homecoming was more melancholy because his wife had died while he was abroad, and his personal finances were badly strained. He had also damaged his reputation by naively granting commissions in the American Army to many French and other European officers. For every Lafayette or Steuben, there had been many volunteers who made extravagant demands for rank and salary and yet brought none of the skills General Washington required. Worst of all, Deane had left France so hurriedly that he had neglected to bring the vouchers to substantiate his claims.
The Congress kept Deane waiting a month before permitting him to report in mid-August 1778. He spoke and answered questions for four days. Another month passed, and Deane was informed that he had been charged publicly in France with the misapplication of public money. Arthur Lee wrote that he and John Adams had tried to make sense out of the accounts that Deane left behind, which Lee called “studied confusion.” He added, “All we can find is, that millions have been expended, and almost everything remains to be pai
d for.”
By November 20 the Congress still had not acted on Deane’s detailed defense. In desperation, he took his case “to the free and virtuous citizens of America” with a letter published in early December in the Pennsylvania Packet. Deane not only attacked the Lee brothers but also accused Arthur Lee of revealing American secrets to an English earl and other British agents. Thomas Paine sided with Arthur Lee and under the pen name “Common Sense” argued that Deane’s attacks on the Lee brothers had disqualified him from public service. Paine’s choice of pseudonym was not much of a disguise, and after the article appeared one of Deane’s supporters caught and whipped him on a Pennsylvania street.
The controversy continued into the new year. France’s recently appointed minister to the United States criticized Paine’s article for revealing that Vergennes had been secretly supplying America with war materials long before a treaty was signed. The French protest resulted in Paine’s dismissal as secretary of the Committee for Foreign Affairs. It was not until August 6, 1779, that Congress voted on the Deane affair, and then the members neither cleared nor censured him. They awarded Deane $10,500 for the thirteen months he had spent waiting for resolution of the charges and permitted him to return to France as a private citizen to tend to his business affairs. Deane sailed from America resentful that, despite his many services to America, Arthur Lee had succeeded in tarnishing his name.
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