Patriots

by A. J. Langguth

  During his unhappy stay in Philadelphia, Silas Deane had spent evenings at the mansion of the town’s military commander, Benedict Arnold. Civilians on the town council had warned Deane not to be associated with Arnold, who they were convinced was corrupt. Their most serious charge was profiteering in wartime, but the prevailing customs tended to be lax. Arnold undeniably had used army wagons to carry goods that he later sold for profit in Philadelphia. But since he reimbursed the army, the offense might seem a lapse in judgment rather than a criminal act. The civilians were also indignant about a pass that General Arnold had issued for a private cargo ship, the Charming Nancy. The circumstances suggested he might have been bribed. Arnold was giving passes for shipments from Philadelphia to New York so freely that the Congress voted to take away his right to issue them. George Washington was not likely to discipline General Arnold, even though controversies over his handling of funds went back to the Ticonderoga and Quebec expeditions. His generals were so often accused of wrongdoing by civilian authorities that Washington investigated only when the charges became official.

  —

  Washington had not prospered militarily since the battle at Monmouth Court House. Continuing his march north, he had circled New York and set up camp forty miles away, with bases stretching in an arc from Middlebrook in New Jersey through West Point in New York and Danbury in Connecticut. The Continental Army had returned to the neighborhood of White Plains, where Colonel Johann Rall’s Hessians had overwhelmed the militias of Massachusetts and New York two years earlier. Washington waited during the winter and through the spring of 1779 for Henry Clinton to attack, as he had once waited for General Gage and General Howe. It took him a while to discover that the British strategy had shifted to the South, where the ministers in London believed more Americans remained loyal to the throne. When Clinton didn’t attack, Washington considered him indecisive and foolish.

  As he was waiting, Washington was not heartened by the first engagements of his new French allies. When the French fleet arrived off Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Washington hoped they would attack the British ships in New York Harbor. But the French commander, the Comte d’Estaing, decided that his ships were too heavy for an engagement there and sailed toward Newport instead. Washington’s alternative plan was to drive the British out of Rhode Island. He put General John Sullivan in charge of all the militia Sullivan could raise and sent more men commanded by Lafayette and Nathanael Greene. John Hancock went south, making his debut as an army officer, along with Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere and his son, Captain Paul Revere, Jr. Despite Revere’s value as a messenger, the Congress had never commissioned him in the Continental Army, and he was serving now only in a Massachusetts artillery unit.

  The early stages of the maneuver went according to Washington’s plan. The French fleet landed four thousand troops for a joint assault on Newport. But when Admiral Howe’s ships appeared, d’Estaing called his men back to help him engage the British at sea. John Sullivan took his troops forward alone, expecting the French to return soon to the mainland. Instead, a storm at sea badly damaged both fleets. Howe took the British ships back to New York for repair, and despite the pleas of Lafayette and Greene, d’Estaing set sail for Boston to rebuild and refit his navy. Sullivan was left alone and, when the British mounted an offensive, was forced to escape to Providence. America’s defeat was undeniable, but there were some conspicuous examples of bravery. One Rhode Island regiment made up entirely of black soldiers—slaves fighting in exchange for their freedom—withstood three ferocious charges by Hessian troops.

  George Washington tried to make Sullivan understand that blaming the French publicly for the campaign’s failure would jeopardize an essential alliance. All the same, Sullivan and his officers published an attack on d’Estaing that reached Boston before the French fleet arrived. A melee broke out between Frenchmen and Americans, and a French lieutenant was killed. Boston’s politicians had been managing public opinion for years, and they reacted promptly. The Massachusetts Assembly voted money to raise a statue to the Frenchman’s memory. John Hancock, home again in Boston, feted d’Estaing and his officers at his mansion. And a rumor was spread throughout the town that the riot had been started by the British soldiers taken prisoner at Saratoga.

  The Americans began a military campaign in May 1779, but their victories were sharply limited. Soldiers under Anthony Wayne took a British fort at Stony Point, on the Hudson, which Washington decided not to hold. A young major from Virginia, Lighthorse Harry Lee, successfully raided a British post in New Jersey across from the lower end of Manhattan Island. Washington also sent John Sullivan out along the northern frontier to raze the villages of Indians who had been attacking white settlers.

  In December 1779 Washington took his army to winter quarters in a mountainous area called Jockey Hollow, three miles southwest of Morristown. In January a storm broke over the camp, and snows six feet deep ended the supply of food. For a week the men lived like Benedict Arnold’s soldiers on their doomed drive to the north—eating black birchbark, roasting old shoes, killing and eating a favorite dog. Life at Morristown became even harsher than at Valley Forge two winters before. Desertions ran high, but General Washington held to his strict discipline. To stop their screams, men who were being whipped until their wounds bled bit down on a lead bullet. After the beating stopped, they spit it out, crushed flat. For the worst offenses, men were flogged over a number of days, so that their newly inflamed skin would be more tender and they would have two or three nights to dread what was in store.

  The spring brought no relief to the shortages. When all the meat was gone and the officers had put themselves on bread and water, two Connecticut regiments broke into open mutiny. Colonel Walter Steward tried to shame them out of the rebellion. The ladies of Philadelphia called young Steward “the Irish beauty,” but he was grim as he faced the men and said, “You Connecticut troops have won immortal honor to yourselves the winter past by your performance, patience and bravery. And now you are shaking it off at your heels.” The uprising died away, but, because of the number of men involved, Washington had no choice but to pardon everyone except the few men who had actually left camp.

  Just when General Washington’s fortunes seemed at their lowest, he heard that Henry Clinton had once again tried to take Charleston and this time had succeeded.

  —

  Whenever the army was in winter quarters, Martha Washington came north to pass the idle months with her husband—“the old man,” she called him. At Morristown she too had been distressed by the cold temperatures that brought Washington’s cadre of eighteen officers and servants into the warmth of her small kitchen. She was also troubled by the anxieties gnawing away at her husband more persistently than ever before. And lately he had been without the consolation of Lafayette’s company. The marquis had returned to France on indefinite leave after the debacle at Newport. He had begun to question America’s future, but never the grandeur of her commander in chief. From France, Lafayette assured Washington that he had “a wife who is in love with you” and invited Washington to visit them whenever the war was ended.

  Lafayette’s letter was one that Washington didn’t turn over to Alexander Hamilton or the other aides who lightened his load of correspondence. Going to France in peacetime would be the greatest pleasure, Washington responded. “But remember, my good friend, that I am unacquainted with your language, that I am too far advanced in years to acquire a knowledge of it, and that to converse through the medium of an interpreter upon common occasions, especially with the ladies”— Washington underlined the word—“must appear so extremely awkward, insipid and uncouth that I can scarce bear it in idea.”

  As a Virginian, General Washington loved to dance, and he put together a dancing assembly with thirty-four other officers. They persuaded girls from the neighboring farms to struggle out through the snow, and, with the women there, the officers danced night after night until 2 A.M. Washington often sought out pretty Kitty Greene,
her husband Nathanael watching complacently with Martha Washington as the couple danced three hours at a time without sitting down.

  Occasionally the merriment could threaten the commander’s dignity. One night several officers decided that a civilian named George Olney was sneering at them for drinking so much. In return, they set out to get him as drunk as they were. Olney tried to escape by joining the ladies. When the officers voted to pursue him, Washington volunteered to lead a raid to bring him back, by force if necessary. It all seemed to be a good-natured scuffle, until Olney’s wife screamed at Washington, “If you do not let go my hand, I will tear out your eyes or the hair from your head.” Washington might be a general, she added, but he was still a man.

  Kitty Greene sprang furiously to Washington’s defense. It took her husband to separate the two women. By that time, General Washington had disappeared, leaving his aides to smooth things over. Nathanael Greene took the Olneys into another room and explained that the whole fracas had really been George Olney’s fault. In the future, Olney should be less blunt in refusing to drink with the commander in chief.

  Betrayal

  1780

  IN AUGUST 1780, General Washington learned that English ships had blockaded the French fleet at Brest, which meant that the French wouldn’t be reaching America in time for a further offensive that year. Also, Horatio Gates had not been able to repeat his spectacular triumph at Saratoga and had been beaten decisively by Lord Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina. Charles Lee had jeered from the sidelines when his friend Gates first took on the Southern mission: “Take care lest your Northern laurels turn to Southern willows.” The defeat had been total and humiliating, possibly the worst of the war.

  Alexander Hamilton hoped that the disaster might finally convince the Congress to replace Gates in the South. And for God’s sake, he added, let the replacement be Nathanael Greene.

  Benedict Arnold’s life in recent months had been a mix of pleasure and anxiety. In an army court-martial early in the year, the court had cleared him of the charges that civilians in Philadelphia had first brought against him, but found him guilty of improperly issuing a pass for the Charming Nancy and of an imprudent use of army wagons for his own commercial trade. His punishment was to be a reprimand from His Excellency the commander in chief, who had lately found Arnold overbearing and presumptuous. But Washington respected his courage as a soldier and phrased his reproach tactfully. The affair of the wagons, Washington wrote, was indeed improper, and he would rather have bestowed “commendations on an officer who has rendered such distinguished service to his country.”

  While serving as military commander of Philadelphia, Arnold had cut a dashing figure despite lingering pain from his injured leg. He spent money extravagantly and took over Mount Pleasant, the mansion William Howe had occupied. Arnold drove through the streets in a fine carriage with attendants wearing livery and bought wine at a thousand pounds a pipe. After the death of his estranged wife, Arnold had married another Margaret, the beautiful eighteen-year-old blond daughter of the loyalist Edward Shippen. As her father knew, Peggy Shippen was not a girl to let war interfere with pleasure. Arnold’s marriage to a girl almost twenty years younger had caused his expenses to mount still higher. His spinster sister came to live with the couple and look after Arnold’s three sons. Hannah Arnold’s disapproval of her new sister-in-law had less to do with Peggy’s taste for luxuries than with her susceptibility to any attentive man.

  Washington had been forced to reprimand Arnold, but he regarded him as toughened and tested in battle. When Arnold asked urgently to be named commander of a critical fort at West Point, New York, Washington had accepted Arnold’s argument that his crippling wounds fitted him for the less strenuous duty there. Before she joined him at West Point, Peggy Shippen Arnold wrote her husband amusingly malicious letters about Philadelphia’s social life, and what she didn’t tell Benedict Arnold his sister filled in. Hannah Arnold wrote that if she were more inclined to mischief, she could tell him about his bride’s many assignations and billets doux. But Hannah eventually accepted Arnold’s devotion to his wife. With the child Peggy Arnold gave him and his new post at West Point, Benedict Arnold’s happiness seemed complete.

  There was one brief tremor. A report reached Philadelphia that Washington had offered General Arnold command of the army’s left wing in the coming military campaign. When Peggy Arnold heard the news, she went into one of her fits of hysteria, even though friends explained that the offer represented a promotion. Arnold managed to stay on in command of West Point, and his wife joined him in a house across the river from the fort.

  Washington was looking forward to a stopover there in September on his way back from a conference in Connecticut. Food and lodging at West Point would be especially welcome, since currency these days was so debased. The eight thousand dollars Washington’s entourage had raised for the trip would barely pay for rooms at an inn for two nights. In Connecticut the night before, the party had been relieved when a tavern owner told them that the governor had ordered the state to pay their expenses.

  As he neared West Point, Washington sent Major James McHenry and another aide ahead to tell the Arnolds that his party would be arriving soon and, if it was convenient, would appreciate being offered breakfast, a prospect that brightened Washington’s spirits. Riding with him was the Marquis de Lafayette, who had returned from France. At one point Washington turned off the direct road to inspect a fortification, and Lafayette called to him that he was heading the wrong way. Washington replied that he knew all young men were in love with Mrs. Arnold and wanted to get to her as quickly as possible. If Lafayette wished, he could go ahead with Major McHenry. Lafayette smiled and stayed with Washington.

  They reached the Arnolds’ house at about 10:30 A.M., but neither the general nor his wife was there to greet them. An aide apologized on behalf of General Arnold, who, he said, had been called across the river to the fort after receiving Washington’s advance party. Arnold had promised to be back in an hour to meet with His Excellency. Mrs. Arnold was still in her room. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Varick, Benedict Arnold’s chief aide, had been confined to bed with a fever, but he got up briefly to welcome the visitors. Washington’s immediate concern was breakfast. After they ate, he announced, they would inspect the fort. If General Arnold had not returned, they would see him there.

  Only after Washington and his officers had finished their meal and been rowed across the Hudson were they puzzled by Arnold’s absence. At the fort, they were told that he hadn’t been seen all morning. Washington was nettled by Arnold’s apparent lack of respect, and his inspection of the fort did not improve his disposition. The entire outpost was in appalling disrepair and suffered from many evidences of bad judgment. One section of the fort had been so crudely built of dry wood that the first British shells would ignite it. Another position had been left nakedly vulnerable to attack from a nearby hill. It would take months of work to make West Point an effective fortress.

  The inspection lasted two hours. Washington returned to the Arnold house with vague misgivings. Dinner had been delayed until 4 P.M., and there was still no sign of General Arnold. As Washington prepared for dinner, Alexander Hamilton, who had stayed behind at the house during Washington’s inspection, came to his room and handed him a packet of letters. Washington skimmed through them, cried out and immediately sent Hamilton to ride at full speed down the river.

  As he waited for Hamilton’s return, Washington was told that Mrs. Arnold had gone berserk. She had been shrieking in her bedroom all morning that her husband was gone, gone forever! Now she was raving about a hot iron burning into her head. She claimed that only General Washington could lift it from her. He must come at once.

  Hamilton had returned with another letter for the commander. He joined Washington and Lafayette as they went to see their hostess. They found her with her blond hair uncombed and streaming down her back. The nightgown she wore was so sheer she was almost nude. Wailing, Mrs. Arnol
d strode back and forth, sometimes clutching up her baby to her breast. When Washington was announced, she screamed that the man in front of her was not the general but instead was the man who had come to kill her baby. Peggy Shippen Arnold had become hysterical before when thwarted, but Washington had no way of knowing this, and in any event he had reason to trust her mad ranting. Benedict Arnold was gone forever.

  —

  The papers Alexander Hamilton had passed to Washington that afternoon had been pried the previous day from the boot of a man traveling as John Anderson. He had been riding south on the east side of the Hudson toward Tarrytown when he was accosted by three men playing cards as they loitered by a stream. Gangs of highwaymen had begun roaming the neutral ground in Westchester County between the two armies, confiscating the property of any enemy they captured; the patriot bands were called “Skinners,” the loyalist bands “Cowboys.” One of these groups had stopped aristocratic John Anderson in his wine-colored coat and civilian’s beaver hat.

  Since one man wore a British Army coat, Anderson addressed the group confidently. “I hope, gentlemen, you belong to the lower party”—a reference to the British-occupied southern area, Manhattan and Long Island.

  “We do,” said one of the men.

  “So do I,” Anderson said with relief. “I am a British officer on business of importance and must not be detained.”

  But one of the men was already taking Anderson’s watch, brandishing a musket and telling him to get down from his horse. Apparently the gang had deceived him—they were patriotic Skinners. The supposed loyalist was wearing a coat he had stolen from a British corpse.