First Founding Father

by Harlow Giles Unger

  The pamphlet contained seven letters supposedly written by Washington—one each to his wife and stepson and five to his cousin Lund Washington, whom he had appointed caretaker of the Mount Vernon plantation in the general’s absence.

  “How cruelly are my hopes in one sad moment blasted and destroyed!” Washington was accused of having written in the forged letter to Lund Washington. “I am positively ordered to wait for the enemy in our lines and, lest I should be mad enough not to obey their mandates, not a single tittle of anything I had asked for is granted. Thus has a second opportunity of rendering my country an essential service… been unwisely and in the most mortifying manner been denied me. I hardly know how to bear it.”10

  Washington responded quickly after receiving the pamphlet, opining to Lee that “the enemy are governed by no principles that ought to actuate honest men. No wonder then that forgery should be amongst their other crimes. I have seen a letter published in a handbill in New York and extracts of it republished in the Philadelphia paper, said to be from me to Mrs. Washington, not one word of which did I ever write.”11

  “My dearest love and life,” he was said to have written to Martha Washington. “You have hurt me. I know not how much by the insinuation in your last that my letters to you have lately been less frequent because I have felt less concern for you.” It was signed, “Your most faithful and tender husband.”12 Not only did Washington not use such terms in writing to his wife, Martha Washington was actually with her husband on the date shown at the top of the letter. The author of the letters remains unknown. Printed in London, they appeared in Loyalist newspapers in New York and Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 and reappeared from time to time in anti-Washington newspapers during his presidency.

  Despite concerted efforts by Washington and his friends, the author or authors managed to remain anonymous, although it is certainly possible that, given his other machinations in the twisted plot of his misadventures in America, Conway or one of his subordinates produced them.

  “These letters,” Washington mused to Richard Henry, “are written with a great deal of art—the intermixture of so many family circumstances (which by the by wanted foundation in truth) gives an air of plausibility, which renders the villainy greater, as the whole is a contrivance to answer the most diabolical purposes. Who the author is I know not. From information or an acquaintance, he must have had some knowledge of the component parts of my family, but has most egregiously mistaken fact in several instances.”13

  Conway’s bitterness over Washington’s opposition to his appointment as inspector general never lost its edge, and he used his newfound authority in 1778 to plot Washington’s ouster. While disparaging Washington and his generals with anonymous letters to Congress, he enlisted Gates into the plot by appealing to the Englishman’s ambitions and heaping scorn on Washington. “Heaven has been determined to save your country,” Conway flattered Gates, “or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it.”14

  An anonymous letter writer tried to enlist Patrick Henry in Conway’s plot:

  “The northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a general at their head,” the anonymous critic wrote to Henry. Calling himself “one of your Philadelphia friends,” he charged that “a Gates or a Conway would, in a few weeks, render them an irresistible body of men.” Warning Henry that “the letter must be thrown in the fire,” he nonetheless urged Henry that “some of his comments ought to be made public, in order to awaken, enlighten, and alarm our country.”15

  In what may have been one of the most significant and least-known decisions in his life and, indeed, of the Revolutionary War, Virginia governor Patrick Henry sent the letter by express rider to try to bolster the morale of his friends Washington and Lee. Lee was still sitting with the remnants of an impotent Congress at York, while Washington shivered at Valley Forge with the remnants of his equally impotent army. “I am sorry there should be one man who counts himself my friend who is not yours,” Henry wrote to Washington.

  The censures aimed at you are unjust.… But there may possibly be some scheme or party forming to your prejudice.… Believe me, sir, I have too high a sense of the obligations America has to you to abet or countenance so unworthy a proceeding.… I really cannot tell who is the writer of this letter.… The handwriting is altogether strange to me.… But I will not conceal anything from you by which you may be affected; for I really think your personal welfare and the happiness of America are intimately connected.16

  And to Lee, Henry wrote, “You are traduced by a certain set who have drawn in others who say you are engaged in a scheme to discard General Washington. I know you too well, but it is your fate to suffer the constant attacks of disguised Tories who take this measure to lessen you.”17

  Washington responded to Henry with thanks “in language of the most undissembled gratitude, for your friendship. All I can say is that [America] has ever had, and I trust she will ever have, my honest exertions to promote her interest. I cannot hope that my services have been the best; but my heart tells me they have been the best I can render.”18

  Washington told both Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee that he had been aware of “the intrigues of a faction… formed against me.… General Gates was to be exalted on the ruin of my reputation and influence… and General Conway, I know, was a very active and malignant partisan, but I have reason to believe that their machinations have recoiled most sensibly upon themselves.”19

  Washington thanked Lee as well for both his loyalty and friendship—and for his efforts to recruit more volunteers in Virginia. But he asked Lee to convince state legislatures to fill their regiments by drafting eligible single men. “If all the states would do this and fall upon ways and means to supply their troops with comfortable clothing… and make the commissions of officers of some value to them, everything would probably go well.” He also called on Lee to effect reforms in army departments. “Nothing [is] standing in greater need of it than the quartermasters and no army has ever suffered more by their neglect.”20

  Washington then reiterated his concern for his men at Valley Forge, hoping Lee and Henry would respond appropriately. “It is not easy to give you a just and accurate idea of the sufferings of the troops,” he wrote. “On the 23rd [of December], I had in camp not less than 2,898 men unfit for duty by reason of their being bare foot and otherwise naked.… I cannot but hope that every measure will be pursued… to keep them supplied from time to time. No pains, no efforts can be too great for this purpose. The articles of shoes, stockings, blankets demand the most particular attention.”

  Lee was soon able to write that the Virginia Assembly had voted “two thousand men to be drafted from the single men to fill up the regiments. They have adopted a very extensive taxation, which will produce a large sum of money.”21

  Henry, in turn, confiscated nine privately owned wagonloads of clothing and blankets for the troops at Valley Forge. He promised Washington more of the same and pledged that “nothing possible for me to effect will be left undone in getting whatever the troops are in want of.”22

  Richard Henry Lee’s brother Arthur sent good news from Europe as well, writing, “I have pleasure to inform you that our friends in Spain have promised to supply us with three millions of livres in the course of this year.… My last advices from Bilbao assure me they are shipping the blankets and stockings I ordered.”23

  In the weeks that followed, however, officers at Valley Forge informed Patrick Henry that the food and clothing he had sent to Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin for delivery to the camp were being sold in markets in nearby towns. Henry wrote to Richard Henry Lee: “I am really shocked at the management of Congress,” he declared. “Good God! Our fate committed to a man [Mifflin] utterly unable to perform the task assigned to him!… I grieve at it. Congress will lose respect.”24

  Washington seconded Henry’s complaints with an angry note: “It is a matter of no small amount to the well-being of the Army,” he wrote to
Lee, “that the several departments of it should be filled with men of ability, integrity, and application.” He said the previous choices of adjutant and quartermaster generals had “embarrassed the movements of this army exceedingly.

  We seldom have more than a day or two’s provisions beforehand and often behind, both of meat and bread. It can be no difficult matter… for you or any other gentleman to conceive how much the movements of an army are clogged and retarded. Whilst I am upon this subject, let me add that I am convinced that the salt provision necessary for the next year… will not be provided, as the season is now far advanced, and I have heard of no proper measures being taken to lay them in.25

  Richard Henry apologized to Washington and ordered an immediate investigation: “It is greatly to be regretted that the situation of your army unfits it for vigorous action, because it is very obvious that the enemy’s possession of Philadelphia this winter and the ensuing spring may produce consequences extensively injurious.” Lee said that loyalties in both Pennsylvania and Delaware were divided and he feared that “by supplying the wants fanciful and real with all kinds of European goods… it will be no surprise if we were to find a total revolution in Pennsylvania and Delaware.”26

  Lee told Washington he had appointed a committee “to confer with the commissary general and see what can be done.… That there should be a want of flour amazes me and proves great want of attention in the commissary general, because I know that any quantity might have been got in Virginia at a reasonable price.” Like Washington, however, Lee was exhausted and warned Washington that “my ill state of health will compel me to return home in a few days.”27

  The investigation by Lee’s committee found that aides to Mifflin, a Philadelphia merchant before the Revolution, had been diverting some of the supplies bound for Valley Forge into Mifflin’s warehouses, which resold them to area merchants at handsome profits. When confronted, he confessed to participating in the Conway Cabal and resigned.

  With Mifflin’s revelations, Richard Henry Lee demanded that Congress dissolve the Board of War. It agreed and exiled Conway to a Hudson River backwater. It sent Gates back into battle and gave Washington all-but-dictatorial powers to conduct the entire war as he saw fit. He immediately persuaded his friend Rhode Island major general Nathanael Greene—also a merchant in private life—to accept the quartermaster general’s post. Within days Greene had the camp overflowing with supplies—cattle, vegetables, water, and rum—and enough uniforms and shoes to clothe twice the number of men encamped there. A new inspector general from Germany, “Baron” von Steuben, had the men marching in step and drilling like a crack European elite guard, their arms snapping confidently, their tough bronzed faces radiating invincibility.

  By early March nine states had ratified the Articles of Confederation but had ordered their delegates to Congress to propose amendments before signing it, thus forcing a renewal of the seemingly endless debate. Seven states proposed amendments, and one by one Congress rejected them. By July 9 ten states had ratified the document—enough to form a republican confederation. Congress asked Richard Henry Lee to write to leaders of the other three states, urging them to ratify the Articles.

  Meanwhile, on April 22, 1778, Conway had offered his resignation, and Congress immediately accepted it. Shortly thereafter the embittered cabalist again slandered Washington, inciting General John Cadwallader, a fierce Washington loyalist, to challenge the Irishman to a duel. Cadwallader wounded Conway badly. Believing he was about to die, Conway sent Washington a letter of apology. Although Conway recovered from his wound, he later left North America in disgrace.

  With Washington restored to full command of the war, Arthur Lee in Paris urged the French court to declare war against Britain. He told Foreign Minister Vergennes that “the interests of France and those of the United States [were] upon an equal footing… that Great Britain cannot make head for a year against the united… force of the house of Bourbon and the United States of America.” He told Vergennes that the time had come for France and the United States “to make common cause” against Britain.

  On May 1 a messenger rode into Washington’s headquarters with a letter signed by Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee in Paris. They had been officially received in the Palais de Versailles by His Majesty Louis XVI, who then named a minister to the United States and signed two treaties with the new nation.

  “We have now the great satisfaction of acquainting you and the Congress,” they exulted, “that the Treaties with France are at length completed and signed. The first is a treaty of amity and commerce… the other is a treaty of alliance, in which it is stipulated that in case England declares war against France… we should then make common cause of it and join our forces and councils, etc. The great aim of this treaty is declared to be ‘to establish the liberty, sovereignty, and independency, absolute and unlimited, of the United States, as well in matters of government as commerce’; and this is guaranteed to us by France.… The preparations for war are carried on with immense activity and it is soon expected.”28 Indeed, the French were putting together a fleet and planning to send an expeditionary force to fight alongside the Americans in the struggle to expel British forces from American soil.

  On May 6 Washington issued a general order: “It having pleased the Almighty Ruler of the Universe to defend the cause of the United American States, and finally to raise us up a powerful friend among the princes of the earth, to establish our liberty and independency upon a lasting foundation; it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the divine goodness and celebrating the important event, which we owe to his divine interposition.”

  Washington went on to proclaim an official day of “public celebration,” beginning with morning religious services and followed by “military parades, marchings, the firings of cannon and musketry.”29 One officer described the event in his diary: “The appearance was brilliant and the effect imposing. Several times the cannons discharged thirteen rounds.” The ceremony… closed with an entertainment, patriotic toasts, music, and other demonstrations of joy.”30

  Steuben’s training had imbued the troops with confidence. They swaggered as they marched, firing the traditional feu de joie, or “fire of joy,” with precision, with each musketeer in a long line of musketeers firing a single shot in rapid succession, to produce a long, continuous, and thunderous sound. Washington responded accordingly: “The Commander-in-Chief takes great pleasure in acquainting the army that its conduct afforded him the highest satisfaction. The exactness and order with which all its movements were formed, is a pleasing evidence of the progress it has made in military improvement, and of the perfection to which it may arrive by a continuance of that laudable zeal which now so happily prevails.”31

  Richard Henry Lee’s joy over the news from France came to an abrupt end, however, with news that “my very dear brother Thomas Ludwell Lee expired… after a severe and very long illness of six weeks and three days.” Three years older than Richard Henry, Thomas had studied in England as a boy and earned his law degree there but had been a firm, if quiet, supporter of the American Revolution. Unlike Richard Henry, however, Thomas had eschewed fame and settled happily on the land he had inherited from their father in Stafford County, upriver from the palatial family estate at Stratford Hall.

  Elected to the House of Burgesses, Thomas had joined Frank and the other Lees in the House to support Richard Henry’s every legislative battle for individual rights and independence. Beloved by his colleagues in the Virginia legislature for his warmth and understanding of all political points of view, he won appointment as one of four lawyers to rewrite Virginia’s laws after independence, then won election to one of the five seats on Virginia’s first supreme court. His death left Richard Henry charged with caring for a widow and seven children, two of them youngsters—a ten-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl—for whom Richard Henry became a second father.

  News that a French fleet might sail to America with an invasio
n force convinced the British to consolidate their northern armies at their main base in New York City. Accordingly, British troops evacuated Philadelphia on June 18, 1778, and began the march northward through New Jersey to New York at the head of a long wagon train of arms, ammunition, and provisions.

  “I cannot help congratulating you, Sir, on the enemy’s abandoning Philadelphia,” Lee, still languishing in York, wrote to Washington at Valley Forge. “Let their motives be what they may, this step evidently proves their prospect of conquest here is vanished.… Should Great Britain be engaged in war with the [French royal] Bourbon family, it will furnish us an opportunity of pushing the former quite off this northern continent, which will secure to us peace for a century.”32

  With the British evacuation of Philadelphia, Washington had hoped to harass the British rear, but he and his men remained put.

  “Our situation here on account of the sick and stores is embarrassing,” he lamented to Richard Henry Lee. “I dare not detach [troops] to harass the enemy in… the Jerseys before they have actually crossed the Delaware, and then it will be too late as their distance to South Amboy [and the narrow crossing onto Staten Island] will be much less than ours.… Were it not for the number of our sick (upwards of 3,000 in camp) and security of stores… I could take such a post in Jersey as would make their passage through that state very difficult.”33

  By the end of May, however, the supplies and troops that Patrick Henry had sent from Virginia and that Richard Henry Lee had requisitioned from other states arrived at Valley Forge. Once resupplied, Washington ordered his men off the Valley Forge plateau to chase the retreating Redcoats. After a week the Americans caught up with their British foes. Exhausted by the daily tramp in the blistering New Jersey heat, the British encamped for what they hoped would be a long, restful sleep at Monmouth Courthouse in central New Jersey.