The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  As the mutiny loomed, I remember retiring on Wednesday evening confused, nervous, and excited about what would follow on Thursday.

  Chapter Four

  DAY FOUR—THURSDAY

  Councils of War

  Reflections on Generalship

  How does the lustre of our father’s actions,

  Through the dark cloud of ills that cover him,

  Break out, and burn with more triumphant brightness!

  His suff’rings shine, and spread a glory round him;

  Greatly unfortunate, he fights the cause

  Of honour, virtue, liberty, and Rome.

  —Portius, Cato, Act I, Scene 1

  On Thursday the General did not make his usual morning rounds. I was sent to fetch numerous officers to meetings with him, and they came and went all day. Generals Knox, Rufus Putnam, McDougall, and Hand; Colonels Brooks, Glover, and Ogden; Majors Shaw and Davis; and Captains Howard and McReynolds were just some of the officers who met with the General. I do not remember their names, but there were six or eight others. Many returned for second meetings.

  The General did not even pause for the usual three p.m. dinner, much to the annoyance of Lady Washington and Mrs. Hamilton, the Washingtons’ housekeeper.

  The meetings themselves did not seem unusual, although the fact that the General was meeting with officers individually or in groups of two or three did. It was the General’s habit to seek advice at meetings attended by many of his commanders, sometimes calling in junior officers and even privates on occasion. That was something that both pleased and irritated his commanders. It was not something generals did back then, although I am told that the practice is now encouraged at West Point. Certainly his British counterparts did not do this. The notion that Generals Gage, Howe, Clinton, or Cornwallis would hold a council before acting on any crucial matter was laughable. I thought it was one of the General’s virtues and a practice you would not guess from his sometimes imperious manner. Of course, the meetings I’d attended over the past seven years had left me wondering if the General was really seeking advice or if he was guiding the meeting to a view he already held, the better to solicit the enthusiastic support of his commanders, who then believed they had been part of the decision.

  There was one other thing that was highly unusual about Thursday’s meetings. None of the General’s aides, including me, were included. This, I admit, annoyed me. I was present at most of the General’s meetings and afterward was frequently directed to draft a letter or an order, but not on that day. I had never seen the General so secretive. I had no doubt the meetings concerned the coming Saturday meeting and the circulating letters, but beyond that I was left to speculate. Despite my curiosity, I did not ask the General to let me attend. I almost never addressed the General unless asked and neither did the other aides at Newburgh.

  Benjamin Walker, David Humphreys, and I were left sitting at the big table in that dark main room wondering what the officers were planning behind the study door. I couldn’t help wondering what questions were now being discussed. How to derail the gathering forces of mutiny at or before the Saturday meeting? Perhaps, but since the General had indicated in his Tuesday order that he would not attend, how was this to be accomplished? Or was the discussion over how to channel the Saturday meeting toward the General assuming leadership of the mutiny and a coming march on Philadelphia? That the officers summoned were those most loyal to the General seemed beyond question. With the possible exception of Nathanael Greene, who was down in the Carolinas; Hamilton, who, now a member of the Congress, was in Philadelphia; and Lafayette, who was back in France, those meeting with the General had most loyally followed him and backed him from the early days of the war.

  Loyalty to the General did not characterize the attitude of all the commanders. You had to understand that Congress appointed many of Washington’s top commanders based on politics or what the Congress conceived to be its military expertise. And often officers used their congressional backers to lobby for their promotions.

  In some cases, these military climbers were generals with their eyes on General Washington’s place. There was Charles Lee, the former British officer who aspired to the top commander’s role and was a favorite of congressmen early in the war. I respected Lee’s military judgment, but it was hard to take seriously a general who liked dogs more than people—Lee always had a pack of dogs on a leash following him. Anyway, the Lee movement disintegrated when he was captured by the British in flagrante delicto with a madam in a tavern. The British exchanged him in a prisoner swap, which fueled the rumors that Lee had advised his captors on military strategy against our forces. How else to explain the swap for junior officers? I couldn’t imagine the British swapping Lafayette or Greene. Anyway, the General could be very forgiving—or perhaps he was assuaging potential congressional allies. He welcomed Lee back, at least until Lee refused to lead the charge at the Battle of Monmouth, and the General dismissed him right there on the field and replaced him with Lafayette. That old fool Lee thought he could count on his congressional influence and demanded a court-martial to clear his name. He was convicted of refusing to follow orders, resigned in disgrace, and went off to his estate in the Shenandoah Valley to breed dogs and horses.

  To my embarrassment, the man who had introduced me to the General, Joseph Reed, sent a letter to Lee implying support for his bid to replace Washington as commanding general. Lee’s response arrived while Reed was away, and the General, thinking it was a message from one of his commanders, mistakenly opened the letter and discovered Reed’s disloyalty. The General, in a deft touch, had me write a letter to Reed in which the General apologized for opening the letter. When he received the General’s letter, poor Reed, realizing the General knew all, profusely apologized for his disloyalty and sent his resignation to Congress.

  Military and personal embarrassments always seemed to befall potential rivals of the General, particularly when some in Congress were lobbying to replace him. Take General Horatio Gates—the Old Leaven to the General and Old Granny to his troops—who, I was convinced, was behind the Armstrong letter. I’ll give Gates his due: the victory over General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777 had brought the French into the war. Still, the officers I spoke to gave most of the credit there to Benedict Arnold for both the strategy and combat leadership. (Two years later, Arnold tried to hand over West Point to the British and lost credit for even his good deeds.) I admit I never respected Gates after I saw him refuse to accept a major command from the General before Trenton so that he could go off to Philadelphia to lobby his congressional friends for a promotion.

  Gates had powerful supporters. An effort was instigated after Saratoga by that congressional appointee, the French-Irish General Thomas Conway, to get Congress to replace the General with Gates. Conway and a former aide to the General, Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin, tried to use the Board of War to achieve their purposes. (Enemies of the General came from all sides: Conway was one of those congressional appointees, but Mifflin, like me, was an ex-Quaker from Philadelphia and a former aide of the General’s.) Lafayette and Laurens put a stop to the maneuvering, the former by threatening to resign and go back to France and the latter by writing his father, who was president of the Continental Congress.

  Reed and Mifflin, mind you, were the exceptions. In my experience, almost all the General’s aides were loyal, maybe too loyal. They were always challenging the General’s detractors to duels, which was ironic, given how the General disapproved of dueling. I am told in his youth he went to great lengths to avoid duels, even apologizing to one potential opponent. Anyway, both the Conway and Lee affairs got the General’s aides’ dueling pistols out. (Not mine, mind you, although I offered encouragement.) Laurens challenged Lee to a duel, which ended with Lee writing the General a letter of apology, and one of the General’s former aides, John Cadwalader, challenged Conway to a duel and wounded him. Cadwalader would have killed him in another duel, but Conway wrote a letter apologizing to
the General and then resigned and returned to France.

  The Conway Cabal crushed, the General, as was his fashion, forgave Gates, the intended beneficiary of the “Cabal,” who still had strong support in the Congress. But Gates could not escape one of those events that always seemed to thwart the General’s rivals. At Congress’s insistence, Gates was promoted and given command of the Southern Army. In August 1780, he led his army into a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Camden and then disgracefully fled the field. Congress set up a special inquiry to investigate charges of cowardice, and Gates was suspended from command.

  After the suspension was lifted, the General welcomed Gates back. He probably thought Gates would be grateful and follow the General’s orders. Given this week’s letter by Gates’s aide Armstrong, I thought the General had made a big mistake, unless, of course, the letter was at the General’s bidding.

  With all the rivalries—which the citizenry knew little about—it did make one reflect on the abilities of the various generals and the ability of General Washington himself. Was he a great general, as some of my fellow aides believed, or was he overrated, as the teacher told my great-grandchildren? That week at Newburgh I reflected on that question as I have many times since.

  The General’s role as commander in chief all started with his appointment by Congress in 1775, which probably mystified the many who aspired to that command. The General always said that he did not seek out or campaign for the appointment. “Josiah, I did not solicit command but accepted it after much entreaty. I did not seek this burden.”

  Knowing the General and the conflict between his ambitions and his modesty—or at least his attempt at projecting modesty—I suppose there may be some truth to this, but I also had my doubts. The General, unlike other delegates, wore his red-and-blue French and Indian War military uniform to the 1775 Congress. Along the way from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia he went out of his way to review the militia regiments that had been assembled. To what purpose, you may ask, if not to call attention to his military experience? The General once implied to me that he did this to show Virginia’s willingness to fight, but I was not completely convinced.

  During the previous Congress, the General got himself appointed to all the committees that dealt with a military solution to our quarrel with Britain. He was on the committee to organize supplies, the committee to procure weapons and manufacture gunpowder, and the committee to explore financing of the war. I was told that during these meetings the General spoke rarely and briefly, although, since he was the only member with military experience from the French and Indian War, his words were heard respectfully.

  Charles Willson Peale, the artist, told me that the General’s brevity was a great asset because most of the delegates indulged in long speeches, wearying of the lengthy orations of others but enjoying their own. When someone spoke without eloquence or adornment, the delegates were subconsciously impressed. “That Washington makes sense” was a common refrain. According to Wilson, the General never boasted of his past military exploits, which further impressed the delegates, who were all trying to impress one another.

  Stories of the General’s exploits certainly affected the congressmen. From all I could tell, however, while his experiences in the French and Indian War may have been legendary, they said more about the General’s bravery than they said about his generalship. Yes, he had defeated a small force of less than fifty French soldiers, but there were rumors that the French commander was on a diplomatic mission. The General had been forced to surrender Fort Necessity, and I have heard secondhand stories that he picked a poor location to defend that fort.

  The General’s military reputation at the time of his appointment really rested on one of the worst defeats in British military history. In the summer of 1755, a few hundred French and Indians ambushed and routed thirteen hundred well-armed troops commanded by the British general Braddock. Braddock was on his way to capture the French Fort Duquesne, the site of the present village of Pittsburgh. Braddock had recruited a twenty-three-year-old colonial aide, George Washington, one of the few soldiers with experience in the region. While the battle was a debacle, Washington emerged a hero. Captain Brown, who claims to have been there, told me the General, while ill from dysentery, rallied the troops during the ambush, took four bullets through his coat, and had two horses shot out from under him. After he was reported killed, the news of the General’s survival, when most British and colonial troops had perished, added to his reputation. It was widely believed that General Braddock had ignored the General’s advice about the impending ambush and that Braddock, realizing his error, had, while dying, bequeathed his manservant and horse to the General. That story I first heard from a soldier who had heard it from his father, but then I also heard it from others.

  I once asked the General his opinion of General Braddock. “He was a brave and good officer, Josiah. He tried to rally his troops in the most adverse circumstances, but while our colonials fought well, his British troops fought poorly.” When I pursued the matter and asked if General Braddock had ignored his advice, the General would only say that Braddock’s experience had been on the battlegrounds of Europe, but he would go no further. This may have been due to General Braddock expressing a high opinion of the General, who was always loath to criticize others, especially those who spoke well of him.

  Then there was the story that the Indians had stopped shooting at the General during Braddock’s defeat because they were convinced the Great Spirit looked over the General. Nobody ever confirmed that story for me.

  Going back to the French and Indian War, I was left wondering whether the stories were factual, fictitious, or just embellished. But the Congress and now his troops did not wonder. All the General would tell me about his experiences in the last war was that spending hours in the freezing Allegheny River Valley of the Pennsylvania backcountry made Valley Forge seem almost idyllic. That the General rarely boasted to me or others of his feats just made people believe them and admire him all the more.

  I remember thinking that, even if most of these stories were true, and Congress believed every one of them, how did this qualify the General to command an army of thousands of men? Still, no one else could claim the distinction of having been a colonel who had led hundreds of Americans in battle. In the end, who else could the delegates have chosen? The commander of New England’s troops, Artemus Ward, had acquitted himself well at Bunker Hill, but he was an elderly and obese shopkeeper. Lee had experience but was British-born and considered eccentric. Gates, who had not served as a delegate or in colonial legislative bodies as the General had, did not inspire confidence or trust.

  In the end, I think, along with his military experience and the incredible stories of derring-do, what made the Congress select the General as the supreme commander was that it knew him as a fellow delegate who had served for years in a colonial legislative body. The General confessed to me that he spent more time listening to delegates at dinners and nodding than he spent preparing for the Congress’s work. I believe the congressmen wanted one of their own whom they could trust to show the Congress deference.

  I was told that, as president of the Congress, John Hancock expected his fellow New Englander, John Adams, to nominate him as commanding general. So Hancock was shocked when Adams nominated the General and Adams’s cousin Samuel seconded the nomination. Hancock must have been deluded to believe the Congress would appoint a merchant just because he was president of the Congress, when his only military experience was marching a silk-stocking company on the Boston Common.

  Naturally, the General played his reluctance to take command to the hilt. In commenting on an aide’s aspirations to run for Congress, the General once told me that the lesson he learned from his first unsuccessful effort to run for the Virginia House of Burgesses was that a reluctance to put oneself forth was both modest and effective in getting others to campaign for you. I am not so sure this is as true now in the 1840s as it was back then—or if it was just true for G
eneral Washington. In any event, others such as Lee, Gates, and Hancock lobbied for the commanding general position, but the General not only didn’t lobby but I am told he made a show of not doing so. The day before the Congress’s decision, the General told me he had asked Edmund Pendleton, a fellow Virginian, to talk him out of accepting the appointment. Then I heard he fled the room when he was nominated, to show his modesty. Patrick Henry reported that, after the General’s unanimous selection, the General told him, “Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you. From the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.” I know Henry repeated this statement to one and all, which just increased Congress’s opinion of the General’s modesty and patriotism. When he addressed the Congress after his appointment, he told that body he was not worthy and not equal to the task, which was probably wise, given their high expectations and what was to follow.

  Today everyone believes that after Congress appointed the General, and certainly after the early battles around Boston, we were in an all-out war with Great Britain. This was not true. Many congressmen hoped that the General’s appointment, his dispatch to Boston, and a show of strength would bring the British to their senses and avert or stop the war. The General himself was ambivalent. He told me he did not want war and reflected that “a Brother’s sword sheathed in a Brother’s breast and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America drenched with blood” was not a desirable outcome. But, with the alternative of becoming slaves and losing our rights as Englishmen, how “can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?”

  The British, as it turned out, made the choice quite easy. By the following year, after many battles and several fruitless petitions by the Congress to the king, all hope of peace had vanished.

  After the General’s appointment, there were the letters to Lady Washington, his stepson, Jacky, and his mother. I have read those and many others, and they are certainly full of affection—although perhaps not the General’s letter to his mother. (She was rumored to be a Tory and kept complaining to all that her most illustrious son was treating her shabbily, although from what I knew about the house in Fredericksburg the General had bought her and the money I kept sending her, this was hard for me to believe.) Every one of the General’s letters explained that he really did not want the assignment but that he feared that refusing would dishonor him and irreparably damage his reputation. Perhaps the General really believed this or perhaps this was a pose. I wasn’t sure back then. Maybe it was a little of both. The General certainly did care about his reputation.