The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  After the General’s appointment came the long trip north to Boston. The General told me that he did not like ceremonies, but he stopped at every town to review troops and receive the assembled people’s blessings. Why, he even stopped for a whole afternoon in New Haven to review three companies of Yale students. His speeches to the New York and Massachusetts legislatures, which I helped draft, struck just the right note. There was the appeal to patriotism and his becoming modesty in assuring the people who had suffered under British generals that he was no military tyrant. “When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen” was one of my better phrases, and the legislators practically swooned. Whatever doubts they had about this new commander from Virginia vanished.

  And the General did need to woo state legislatures, who tended to appoint militia commanders for their political connections. Even the General’s political skills did not stop the legislators from initially appointing eight major generals to please their constituents, along with the Congress foisting foreign officers on him with high ranks and little military experience but whom the congressmen found amiable. Fortunately, the General still had the powers of promotion, and he quickly moved up those officers who showed merit. Throughout the war, the General had to protect his forces from political interference, and you can well understand there were many hurt feelings as a result.

  Fortunately, the junior officers and enlisted men shared the General’s views that appointments should be based on merit—even the Massachusetts militia, which initially elected their own officers, came around to this view—and their opinions filtered back to the congressmen and state legislators. The General occasionally moaned to me about the politically appointed officers, but he always kept his calm and showed great deference when dealing with the Congress.

  As we stood on the Dutch stoop in the back of the headquarters, the General told me that he had learned in the French and Indian War to hold his temper on such matters. As Congress had done in this war, the royal Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie had then appointed the General’s senior commanders and upbraided him for his protests, for his strategy, and for aggressively demanding pay for his men. The General (then a state militia colonel) had resigned in protest. When he told me about this, he looked down to the Hudson and then said, “Josiah, I learned to hold my temper on appointments in the last conflict. I will not let my feelings now betray this cause.” Congress, the governors, and the state legislators never stopped trying to influence the General’s strategies or appointments, and every one of the General’s decisions was scrutinized, but the General held his temper.

  So was he a great general? The answer, I felt then and still feel now, over a half century later, depends on which campaigns you look at. Is it the successful siege of Boston, the disaster in New York, the bold triumphs after crossing the Delaware, the long series of defensive battles after Valley Forge, or the final victory at Yorktown?

  Then again, maybe it was not the battles at all but his relationship with our ragtag army that made him a great general—a relationship that would play such a great role at Newburgh that week.

  I. SUCCESS AT BOSTON

  The first great challenge was at Boston. With all the earthworks filling in the bay to enlarge the city these days, it is easy to forget that Boston was then a peninsula, only connected to the mainland by a thin gated neck. The Massachusetts militia was guarding this point to keep the British bottled up within the city.

  We arrived in Cambridge on July 2, 1775, and moved into the home of the Harvard president, whom we stuck in a bedroom. That only seemed appropriate for the president of a university with so many loyalist faculty. There was much pressure to immediately attack General Gage’s forces in the city. Congress had decreed that there be twenty-three thousand troops, but when you counted those who actually were sent by the states—generally for one-year terms instead of the whole war as the General had requested—minus those who deserted or were too sick to fight, the number was not even twelve thousand. Still, this number was perhaps equal to the better-trained and -armed British troops in Boston and was as close as we would come to numerical parity until Yorktown.

  Many in the New England militia were eager to fight. The General took a different view after seeing our undisciplined companies shooting at each other’s sentries; the lack of food and sanitation; and, most importantly, the shortage of powder—there were only three cartridges for every soldier. While the General may not have been impressed with the unruly troops, he merely commented that “their spirit exceeds their strength,” leaving me with the impression that he had encountered similar challenges twenty years earlier. He did remark to me, “This supply situation is lamentable but no worse than in the last war.” He closed his eyes, then said in a quieter voice, “Though we didn’t have to buy the flintlocks of departing soldiers then just to stay armed.”

  After watching the New England troops in several skirmishes, the General opined hopefully (in a letter I sent to his cousin Lund) that they could be dirty and nasty but fought well when led by good officers. The newly arrived Virginian riflemen—carrying rifles, not muskets—were more skilled and proud of their marksmanship, claiming that they could hit a point on a target at three hundred yards. When I passed on this claim, the General chuckled in disbelief but said, “It won’t hurt if the British hear such boasts and believe them.”

  The General set out to establish more sanitary camps and institute training. The stench was overwhelming, and simple bathing and waste disposal practices had to be started. Overall, the men and officers responded well to the General’s efforts to create discipline. The General used court-martials and punishment to enforce discipline over both enlisted men and officers, but I noticed that he blended punishment with persuasion. When Lady Washington arrived in early December of 1775, she arranged dinners for scores of officers so the General could inculcate the new standards of discipline and the officers, in turn, could set the example among their men.

  In response to his requests, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island sent more troops, and New Jersey sent a secret arms shipment—secret because of fears that the local citizenry along the way would steal the powder. Governor Trumbull of Connecticut sent both troops and 1,391 barrels of flour. Along with the flour was a note saying, “May the God of the Armies of Israel shower down the blessings of his Divine Providence on you as He did on Moses and Joshua.”

  It was the first of many missives I opened comparing Americans to the ancient Israelites, King George to Pharaoh, the newly formed states to Egypt, and the General to Moses. It occurred to me then and later that Moses was not just a general but the ruler of his people. The General sent a note thanking the governor for the flour, but he did not mention Moses. Nor did he directly respond when others made the comparison. I always thought, however, that these constant comparisons must have had some effect on the General, and especially so during that week in Newburgh when he must have contemplated becoming our new country’s ruler.

  Meanwhile, although we surrounded Boston, the British navy controlled the seas. Several Massachusetts and Maine coastal towns appealed to the General to divide his forces and give them protection against British raids. The General’s replies, which I drafted, said no in the most diplomatic way possible and encouraged the towns to raise militia for their own defense. Pressure grew as the British ships that October burned Falmouth to the ground.

  I suppose the British felt that such violence and terror would break the will of Americans—they even had a German name for this approach, Schrecklichkeit—but it had the opposite effect. The General made clear to me that he was not going to divide and weaken his forces, so as to let the British break the siege of Boston.

  Why the British, with their superior firepower and training, did not try to break out of the siege is puzzling. Perhaps this was because the General had letters sent to patriots in Boston exaggerating our strength. I did not know at the time why he did this, but now I believe he knew the letters would be interc
epted by the British and would deter them from trying to break through our surrounding forces.

  With pressure building for us to attack, the General convened councils of war with his commanders. Here I first encountered a routine I would see again and again throughout the war: the General advocating the launching of a major offensive and his officers talking him into waiting and preparing further (which I believed was his intention all along).

  The congressional committees—I can’t remember how many—came and visited. Their main message was one of impatience for action. Being from other states, they seemed little concerned about the destruction of Boston and the killing of its inhabitants that would ensue. Not so the General. But I wondered what he would do. Yes, the health and training and even the supply of powder had increased. The General’s exaggerations of our strength may have discouraged the British from breaking the siege, but it also encouraged the congressmen to believe that victory was imminent—if only the General would stop being so cautious and attack. Congress was of two minds: wait and see if the British would yield to petitions, and move to attack at once.

  Meanwhile, the rough numerical parity of our forces was threatening to disappear. Most of these men had short-term enlistments. The Connecticut and Rhode Island troops’ enlistments expired in December of 1775; the New Hampshire and Massachusetts troops’ enlistments expired in January. As some men departed, others arrived from these states. The numbers dipped to eight thousand, then rose back up to twelve thousand. This didn’t exactly help training. It seemed like every day in December the General was out addressing another regiment, urging the men to continue until the end of the Boston siege. Nothing irritated the General more than the states’ unwillingness to enlist men for long periods.

  That December, as we sat by the fire in his Cambridge headquarters looking out at the freezing Charles River, his frustration at the states erupted. “Josiah, they are so enraged at the British troops that have been quartered here that they will not support a standing army. Do they realize the average British private has served and trained for years? And they expect me to drive these troops out of Boston without powder while disbanding one army and recruiting and training another, all within musket shot of twenty British regiments. If I had the power”—there was an uncomfortable pause as there always was when the General talked about what he would do if he had the power—“we would establish a national standing army.”

  “If I had the power . . .” The General used that phrase hundreds of times, and I kept thinking of those words during that week in Newburgh.

  The General’s irritation at the huge turnover would continue throughout the war, but with the help of cash bounty and land grant offers, and improving prospects, we were able to enlist men for longer terms, some for the duration of the war.

  General Gage, the first British commander in Boston, was the only British commander who personally irritated the General. The cause of the irritation was General Gage’s insistence on treating American prisoners of war as common criminals and putting them in jail. This treatment was extended to American officers because Gage would not recognize any rank not given by the king. To the General, this violated not only the rules of war but the treatment expected by those of English descent. The General did not respond in kind to the British prisoners we held, despite the urging of many subordinates and congressmen. “We will not, Josiah, sink so low. Our struggle must be based on the principles that Englishmen have adhered to for centuries.”

  It was in the early months of 1776 that there occurred a series of events that the General’s admirers attributed to his skill, his critics attributed to either luck or British incompetence, and the General attributed to Providence.

  First General Knox was able to drag almost sixty captured mortars and howitzers from Fort Ticonderoga in New York all the way to the outskirts of Boston. This was an outstanding feat, but Knox’s movement of artillery was helped when the roads, usually muddy in the spring, mysteriously froze.

  Then the General ordered our troops, under cover of darkness, to seize the surprisingly unoccupied Dorchester Heights that loomed above Boston. With the help of covered wagon wheels and salvos from our troops elsewhere, the British neither saw nor heard the operation—a fog enshrouded the lower parts of the Heights—and were unable to stop us. With no fog at the top of the Heights, in one night thousands of our troops dug fortifications and entrenched our newly arrived cannon. I heard the General exhorting the New Englanders, “Remember, it is the fifth of March [the anniversary of the Boston Massacre]. Avenge the deaths of your brethren.” I watched those nearby pass the General’s words to the men out of earshot and imagined the message spreading throughout the troops.

  The next morning, with the weather fine, the General and I climbed the Heights again to see what the troops had accomplished. It was exhilarating to see Boston and the British troops spread out beneath the Ticonderoga cannon and the General standing among our dirty, triumphant men.

  I later heard from a captured British officer that General Howe, who had replaced General Gage, looked through his telescope in the morning and remarked, “The rebels have done more in one night than my whole army could do in months.” The British told the citizens of Boston that a force of ten thousand had dug such fortifications in one night. Actually, it was less than two thousand, but with the General’s words of urging and praise ringing in their ears, they may have dug like ten thousand.

  With the guns looking down on them, the British started sending troops by boat across the Charles River to mount an assault on the Heights. Again, however, another of those providential events occurred. The fine day suddenly turned stormy; wind and fog wrecked many boats and drove others back. As night fell, so did snow and sleet. At that point, the British realized they faced a devastating bombardment from above, to which they could not respond, and started negotiations. Their message essentially was: “Give us safe passage by ship out of Boston; in return, we will not harm any inhabitants or buildings in Boston.”

  The General readily agreed. “Josiah, we not only save the city from destruction and give assurance to other seaboard cities the enemy may occupy, but this withdrawal will be regarded by the public both here and across the seas as a great victory.”

  He was right. The British people looked on the withdrawal as a huge defeat—Blundering Tom was the label they applied to poor General Gage—but the colonists marveled at how Boston had been reclaimed with so little loss of life.

  As I’ve mentioned several times, the General would probably have denied it, but I don’t think he made a decision without considering what today we are starting to call public opinion.

  In the intervening years, I’ve read that every commander in our army who attended the council of war claimed credit for the Dorchester Heights strategy. It is true that the General first advanced the idea of a frontal assault and then was gradually persuaded to mount the move on the Heights. I remember the General at the time commending his commanders for their wisdom, but did they really convince him? Or did the General just allow them to bring him to the decision he favored all along? With the General, I never could be sure.

  Yet I don’t think it was just that the General used smart military tactics at Boston. It was how he knitted the forces from many states together. I told you how he broke up the brawl between the Massachusetts and Virginia regiments. I vividly remember another incident that showed the General’s political rather than military touch. When the British evacuated, and the General had sent a letter congratulating the Congress, the General let Massachusetts’ General Ward lead his regiments into Boston while the General and other troops trailed behind. Massachusetts’ troops exulted, but the citizens of Boston knew to whom they owed their rescue and newfound freedom, and influential citizens like Abigail Adams, whose house in nearby Braintree had shaken with the cannon blasts, marveled and spread exaggerated tales of the General’s modesty. I can assure you the General was not modest. I never saw a man more vain about his public appea
rance and public perception. He just appreciated that the citizens would view him more favorably if he appeared modest.

  The General retained this humble demeanor—and his sense of humor—when Harvard, no longer a hotbed of loyalist professors, gave him an honorary degree. Since I believe it was the first degree Harvard ever gave to a military officer, it just further enhanced the General’s reputation for modesty. After the entry to Boston, we attended a church service where we heard a sermon on Exodus by the Reverend Abiel Leonard comparing us to the ancient Israelites and implying again that the General was Moses. The General sat quietly in his square pew, surrounded by the joy and admiration of men and minister.

  II. DISASTER IN NEW YORK

  The unfortunate aftermath of the victory at Boston was that it raised expectations—many congressmen and their constituents expected quick, bloodless victories that would end the war. They were soon to be disillusioned by the campaign in New York. By the end of that campaign, the British appeared to be on the verge of winning the war, and the General’s reputation appeared to be in tatters.

  When the British sailed out of Boston for Halifax, most everyone expected that after refitting, the British navy would return to New York with troop reinforcements. It was understood that the Continental Army would move down to New York to meet them. The General was dubious about defending New York City. In a complete reversal of the situation in Boston, the British would not be bottled up; they would have the ability to strike whenever and wherever they wanted. Not only would the British have a large numerical advantage but they would have us surrounded rather than vice versa.