The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  At Yorktown, the General once again was right at the front with the troops. I do believe he wanted to personally lead the charges on outlying British positions, but the General was always willing to give recognition to talent—especially if that talent supported him. He happily let Hamilton, Lafayette, and Laurens lead the last charges that made clear to Cornwallis the hopelessness of his position. I heard the speech he gave to Hamilton’s men, including the free black soldiers from Rhode Island. No one could inspire troops like the General.

  I remember a cannonball landing near us. I jumped, hoping the General had not noticed. Our chaplain, Israel Evans, urged the General to move back. The General coolly replied, “Mr. Evans, you had better carry that home and show it to your wife and children.”

  I’ll never forget the dejected looks of the British and Hessians as they surrendered while the British band, unaware of the irony, played “The World Turned Upside Down.” That most of our troops were dressed in rags while the French and British wore fancy uniforms did not diminish the glee that everyone in our ranks felt. The General’s commanders were understandably exultant after the surrender, but the General, who was less downcast in defeat, was more restrained in victory, probably because he did not believe the king would back off. Or maybe it was because of Rule 22 in those Rules of Civility he always kept on his desk, which stated: “Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy.” Whatever the reason, I heard him warn against celebration. “Let history huzzah for us,” he told us. But Lafayette would have none of that. “The play, General, is over,” he said.

  So was he a fine general?

  My great-grandchildren’s schoolteacher may believe Washington was overrated as a general. This also seems to be the view of some modern writers I have read. I can tell you the French did not believe this, and neither did the British and Hessians after Trenton and Princeton, nor did Frederick the Great or leaders of the British Parliament. No doubt future historians will point to his New York defeats or credit his successes to poor British generalship. But as Benjamin Franklin pointed out in a letter to a British friend, a copy of which he sent to the General, “An American planter was chosen by us to command our troops and continued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals, baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers.” He could have added that those five generals commanded troops that were more numerous and better trained, armed, and clothed than the General’s.

  After the war, I learned that the British had sent half of their army and two-thirds of their navy to our shores—at a time when Britain was at war with France and Spain. Overall, His Majesty sent forty-three thousand British troops to America. On top of this, they enlisted twenty-nine thousand Hessian mercenaries and twenty-one thousand American loyalists, primarily from the South. And that didn’t include the hundreds of British ships and upward of twenty thousand sailors. I suppose if you counted our various armies and all the dispersed part-time state militias, you could come up with a large number that partly closed the gap. But the British forces were under centralized command. The General never had more than twelve thousand fit men under his direction.

  The General had his failings. He let the Congress push him into defending New York, where we got whipped, and he himself pushed the overcomplicated and disastrous forays to emancipate Canada. He had the misguided view that the threatened loss of Canada would lead to a quick end to the British war on our states. He once confessed to me this was his greatest mistake in the war. “Josiah, how could I have been so stupid as to send those men on such an absurd and fruitless expedition?”

  But as I said, the General learned from his mistakes. As the war progressed, he relied less on complex battle strategies in favor of simpler ones. He overcame initial congressional meddling and his own inherited preference for gentlemen officers to make appointments based on merit rather than the British process of combining birth, connections, and merit in their appointments. I saw his attitude toward discipline change. He started out by hanging mutineers and severely whipping those he caught deserting. He never wavered regarding the first group, but midway through the war, he started pardoning returning deserters. His attitude on disciplining officers evolved. He always was in favor of court-martialing and punishing officers who did not perform, but his definition of performance changed. The value the General placed on criticism and advice, always great, even when opposed to his own or fellow generals’ plans, increased.

  The General’s appreciation of dissent and free speech was brought home to me earlier at Newburgh by the court-martial of General McDougall, the crusty Son of Liberty with the Scottish brogue whom the General trusted and respected. McDougall was accused of slandering General Heath in front of subordinates. The panel of officers convicted General McDougall and recommended a severe and public reprimand. Yet the General hesitated for weeks. When I asked him why, he would only say, “This matter potentially has implications that go far beyond whether General McDougall is reprimanded.” I could not see what he was talking about. McDougall was a fine general, certainly more able than the politically appointed General Heath, but along with criticizing Heath’s generalship, General MacDougall had called Heath “a knave” in front of junior officers and troops. How could you maintain a command structure when one officer was openly criticizing another? Maybe, I thought, the General’s reluctance was due to his personal fondness for General McDougall. There the matter rested, until weeks later when the General called me in and dictated a brisk order upholding the court-martial verdict. The General attached a footnote to the order, however, that free speech was very important if an army was to function effectively, and criticism such as that leveled by General McDougall should be encouraged, albeit not this kind of personally disparaging criticism.

  The General knew when to withdraw, when to defend, and when to attack. He generally concentrated rather than divided his forces, a lesson he first learned from General Braddock’s mistakes and then again from his own in New York. He could be bold without being suicidal. He knew there were times to be cautious, as he was for most of the war, but also times to be daring, as he was at Trenton and Princeton. Perhaps the British generals were slow to follow up on their successes and really pursue our forces, but the General took advantage of their slowness. I do not recall the General ever criticizing individual British generals, although once he wryly observed that, as a group, they were better generals during battles than between battles. But then the General rarely criticized anyone outside his command. I suspect he knew that criticizing British generalship would diminish his own reputation for both generalship and modesty.

  Above all, the General held together our army at its darkest hours when no one else could have. As Lafayette remarked after the Battle of Brandywine, “With his stately appearance and dignified courage, no one else could provoke such waves of enthusiasm among our troops.” But would these qualities enable the General to overcome the challenge on Saturday?

  Chapter Five

  DAY FIVE—FRIDAY

  Final Preparations

  And let me perish, but in Cato’s judgment,

  A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty

  Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

  —Cato, Cato, Act II

  It is not now a time to talk of aught

  But chains or conquest, liberty or death.

  —Cato, Cato, Act II

  There were twenty-four hours until the Saturday meeting, and I could feel the tension rising throughout the camp. When I rode out across the various bivouacs, officers and men avoided my glances, and their conversation focused on whether it would rain that day, a subject that rarely received so much attention. No one asked how the General was doing, no one asked about the status of treaty negotiations, and no one mentioned the meeting the following morning.

  I observed the General make his usual morning round of the troops, and there was no doubt this time�
�the huzzahs were muffled. This did not seem to deter the General, who calmly made his observations to commanders on the men’s appearance and what drills were planned for the day.

  The General retired to his study around noon. I remember opening the door to pose a question about some inconsequential order regarding the furnishing of regimental colors to the regiments that did not possess them. The General was at his desk reading Cato.

  What did this portend? Cato had said, “Would Lucius have me live to swell the number of Caesar’s slaves, or by a base submission give up the cause of Rome?” Cato had then committed suicide rather than abandon his republican beliefs in Ancient Rome.

  Again, I concluded it was unlikely that the General would avoid tomorrow’s meeting by committing suicide. After all, Cato faced capture by Caesar’s allies, and the General did not face capture by the British or by Gates’s allies, at least not yet. But did the reading of Cato foreshadow opposition to the mutiny so as to preserve our own nascent republic? Perhaps, but it might be too much to imply from the General’s fascination with Addison’s play. After all, standing on the General’s desk were two other favorites, biographies of Caesar and Alexander, and these men, while possessing noble traits, were military dictators whose example might lead the General in the opposite direction. The only other books in evidence were the usual Rules of Civility, Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary, Arthur Young’s A Course of Experimental Agriculture, and Humphrey Bland’s Treatise of Military Discipline. (The General had earlier commended Bland’s Treatise to his officers but had come to believe that Bland—commander in chief of the British army in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden—was too attuned to the mores of European armies fighting pitched battles, something the General had learned to avoid.)

  Of one thing I was sure—the General had a tremendous ability to blot out extraneous, even significant, matters when faced with a truly important political or military decision. Before the war, his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter Patsy had died from epilepsy. I was told Martha had worn mourning clothes for months. While the General had been moved—I once thought I saw him with tears in his eyes when Patsy was mentioned—and had gone out of his way to comfort Lady Washington, he never spoke to me of Patsy during the war.

  At Yorktown, the General’s twenty-six-year-old stepson, Jacky, had joined him. I am sure this pleased the General, as Jacky had never volunteered for duty during the war. Jacky served as an aide—a rather undistinguished one, in my opinion—but while at Yorktown, he contracted a camp disease that led to his death at his uncle’s nearby estate a few weeks later. The General had joined his wife for several days of grieving at Mount Vernon and planning for the raising of Jacky’s and his wife Eleanor’s four children, with the General and Martha adopting the two youngest, Wash and Nellie. The General, however, was soon back with the troops at Newburgh. The deaths of Lady Washington’s children, just as the failure to have their own, were subjects that Lady Washington and the General avoided while going about their respective duties. Lady Washington doted on her family and, with the death of her two remaining children, focused her attentions on her grandchildren. The General did as well, but never to the detriment of civic or military duty. I always felt that Lady Washington, even when she was tending to the needs of the troops, did so because she felt that was what the General wanted.

  I wondered if the General talked with Lady Washington about the pending meeting. I never heard them discuss it, but I assumed they did, based on what seemed like an amiable, respectful relationship where confidences were shared, albeit out of the sight or hearing of others.

  The General never revealed much of his emotions, but when I told him I was contemplating marriage, he expressed enthusiastic approval. “It is a wonderful state, marriage, and all should enjoy it.” That he enjoyed marriage, I have no doubt, but he seemed reluctant to express any intimate details of his own enjoyment of that institution, just as he seemed reluctant to express his feelings to me on the Saturday meeting. I had no idea what advice Lady Washington would have given the General, as she had never given advice on a subject of this nature to him in my presence or, so far as I knew, in anyone else’s.

  Once in a while, if she did not approve of what the General was doing, Lady Washington would reach up and grab him by the lapels—she was at least a foot shorter than he was—and address him as “General.” But these infrequent occurrences generally referred to matters of the household, servants, or supplies. They rarely involved military matters, except when Lady Washington had arrived outside Boston. There she’d told the General that from then on she was going to direct and oversee the repair of socks and leggings through organizing ladies’ groups and was henceforth to supervise the distribution of clothing and blankets and monitor their quality. The General had smiled and quickly acquiesced, which was a smart move on his part.

  Everywhere the army went, Lady Washington organized local ladies into sewing and knitting groups—small brigades fighting the relentless wear and tear of the war. Our army suffered from shortages of clothing throughout the war, but the holes in what clothing the men wore were promptly attended to by Lady Washington and her female volunteers. Needless to say, Lady Washington was exceedingly popular with the troops. One regiment even called itself “Lady Washington’s Dragoons.”

  I always marveled at how and why Lady Washington stayed with the General for most of the war. Unlike the General, I don’t believe she had ever traveled beyond Virginia and Maryland before. She certainly could not have enjoyed staying in our camps during the freezing winters, but I never heard her complain, not even when she suffered from jaundice in 1781 and the Washingtons returned a gift of fruit sent under a flag of truce by the widow of a British paymaster. I would not have dreamed of asking my Prescilla to join me during those times. I sometimes wondered if Lady Washington even enjoyed those interminable dinners she hosted for our officers and visiting dignitaries. You would never know from the way she guided the conversation, generally with the purpose of creating bonds between junior officers and spouses from different regions. She was more articulate than the General at such affairs. He would occasionally stammer, which led some visiting foreigners to believe that Lady Washington was the brighter of the two. I can’t imagine she enjoyed camp life, but I was told that she enjoyed listening to military music. She seemed to turn up whenever the fifers played. Having learned chess from my fellow aide, Benjamin Walker, she enjoyed playing the game.

  Often I wanted to ask Lady Washington her reaction to camp life. But I never could. It might have seemed impertinent, and besides, I always thought there was a big gulf between us, much more so than the gulf between the General and me. I looked on her as a Virginia plantation mistress, and I knew that her upbringing and attitudes on everything from women to food to manners to slavery were far different than mine. She was no Abigail Adams when it came to publicly expressing opinions on the events of the day. Yet, like the General, she had an instinct for the democratic gesture, as when she invited the workmen fixing their quarters in the winter of 1777 to have lunch with her. Sometimes I thought her personality was more inscrutable than the General’s; she seemed to play a role set out for her by either the General, herself, or both. I have heard the spouses of presidents lately referred to as “First Ladies.” Lady Washington acted as First Lady years before we had presidents.

  A little later, when I opened the door to ask the General about honoring Virginia’s Governor Harrison’s request to ship some hard French currency (the General being the American leader entrusted by the French to handle the proceeds of their loan), I found the General staring out the window at the snowy slope leading down to the Hudson River. Perhaps he was praying for guidance, but while praying, meditation, and Bible reading were much favored by Lady Washington, the General never seemed to join her. I have read that the General was a Deist, but if that means someone who believes in a God who leaves the world alone, that does not describe the General. He was always talking about Providence, the
Almighty, the Great Disposer of Events, and the Divine Ruler who intervened in the affairs of man and whom he believed had intervened many times during the War for Independence. From the fog that had shrouded the movement up Dorchester Heights outside Boston, to all the British bullets at close range that had missed the General, to the winds that had foiled Cornwallis’s escape at Yorktown, the General believed that thanks was due the Ruler of the Universe.

  I believe he saw himself acting as the servant of Providence, although he certainly believed in individual responsibility. Often he would recite the line from Cato, “’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more . . . we’ll deserve it.”

  This is not to say that the General was a Christian in the sense that Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams was, or I am. Unlike Lady Washington, who prayed daily, the General never prayed outside a church to my knowledge. Nor did I ever see a letter of his that invoked the name of Jesus. But then again, the General did not write essays to disprove the divinity of Our Savior the way Jefferson did. He did serve on the vestries of two Anglican churches near his home in Virginia, but this was as much a civic as a religious duty. Back in those days of established state churches, serving on a church vestry meant directing the building of roads, ferries, and bridges.

  With religion as with so many other endeavors, it was hard to separate the General’s private life from his public one. We aides used to joke among ourselves as to which church service the General was going to attend any given Sunday. One time it was Roman Catholic, another it was Dutch Reformed, another it was Baptist. I have Jewish friends in Philadelphia who tell me the General wrote letters to many different Hebrew congregations, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the General attended Hebrew services too.