“To us, sir, humanity trumps legality,” James answered. “In England, it’s the other way round.”
But though he knew that nothing would temper Washington’s honest outrage, James could not help reflecting that these continuing stories of British cruelty to American prisoners were having an effect all over the colonies that the British surely did not intend. A farmer bringing a cartload of fresh vegetables into the camp one day had said it all.
“My son was taken prisoner. Why would I want to be ruled by people who treat him like an animal?”
Meanwhile, despite the winter success against the Hessians, the Patriots’ position was still perilous. When Howe had recently tempted Washington to open battle in June, Washington had avoided the trap, but one large engagement could still destroy the Patriot army at any time. Above all, Washington needed to discover what Howe’s next move would be. He was trying to employ spies. But he’d also sent James to reconnoiter around New York, and James was determined not to fail him.
So now, after a while, he put his spyglass down and sighed. The loading of ships told him that something was afoot, but he needed to find out much more than that. It was time to try other measures.
Abigail was just leaving Bowling Green with young Weston the next morning when a man came up to her. He looked like a farmer, delivering goods to the market no doubt, so she was rather surprised that he should quietly address her by her name.
Then she realized—it was Charlie White.
It did not take her long to leave Weston back at the house and return to Broadway. By the time she got there, her heart was beating fast. She was not sure what this meant, but she thought she could guess. Without a word, Charlie took her up Broadway. At Wall Street, they turned eastward and crossed to the East River. Then they walked northward up the wharfs for ten minutes until they were almost at the palisade at the top of the town. Coming to a small storehouse, she followed Charlie in. And there, sitting on a barrel in the shadows, she saw a tall figure in a greatcoat, who rose and came toward her.
A moment later, she fell into her brother’s arms.
He was wearing his uniform under his coat. The combination of the two, she thought, must have made him terribly hot. But it was important he should be in uniform, he explained, for otherwise if he were caught, he could be shot as a spy. He explained that Charlie had smuggled him into the city in a cart full of goods, but said little else about his movements. He was anxious to know all about Weston and his father, and most astonished when she told him that Grey Albion was in the house.
“Alas,” he said, “how I wish that you could tell my dear father and little Weston that you have seen me, and that I think of them every day, but I fear that you cannot do so.”
At last, however, he came to the business at hand.
“Charlie has already listened in the marketplace. It is evident that General Howe is starting to put supplies in his ships, but the townspeople don’t seem to know where he is going.”
“I shouldn’t imagine many people have been told,” she answered.
“You have no idea yourself?”
Abigail’s heart missed a beat. She looked down. Then she gazed back into his face.
“Brother, why would the general tell a girl like me such a thing?” It sounded so reasonable. And it was not a lie.
“No.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think Albion knows?”
“Perhaps, James, but he is only a junior officer. He hasn’t said so.”
“Our father?”
She hesitated a moment. What could she say? “If Father knows, then he certainly hasn’t confided the information to me.” This also was, strictly speaking, true.
He nodded, and looked sad.
And as Abigail watched him, she too was overcome by feelings of great sadness. She knew that her brother loved her. She knew that he longed to see her father, and his little son, and that he could not. Yet she could not help feeling a stab of pain that he had come to see her only to question her, to get information which, if given, would make her a traitor.
At the same time, how she longed to tell him. He must be risking his life to come here. And perhaps, despite her promise to her father and to General Howe, she might have told him, if the information could have saved his life. But it wouldn’t. It would only give help to Washington and his Patriots, so that they could prolong this unhappy business even further. James was doing his duty, she was doing hers. Nothing could be altered. She wanted to weep, but knew that she must not.
“I am sorry that Grey Albion is here,” he said at last.
She supposed her brother meant he should not wish to have to fight his friend.
“Father likes him,” she said.
“And you?”
“I admit that he is agreeable,” she answered. “But there seems to me to be a fault in his character. I think he is arrogant.”
Her brother nodded. “Such arrogance is to be expected in an English officer, I fear.” He paused. “We were friends formerly, God knows, and his father could not have been kinder to me.”
“It’s the war that makes you enemies.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that, Abby. My feelings toward England, and what Grey represents, have changed. To tell the truth, I am not sure I’d care to see him now.” He gave her a searching look. “I should be sorry if you liked him too well.”
“Then to tell you the truth, I like him very little.”
Satisfied on this account, her brother said she should not tarry long. And a few minutes later, she was walking back through the town alone.
It was later that month that General Howe finally sailed out of the harbor with a great fleet, and began to make his way down the coast. With him went Grey Albion, and the other young officers in the house. Though she and her father went to the dock with little Weston to see Albion off, Abigail did not believe she was especially sorry to see him go.
When news of the expedition finally came back, it was encouraging. General Howe’s short voyage down to the Chesapeake had been hit with bad weather, but all the same, his plan had worked. Washington, having been wrong-footed, had to double-back from the north. And although he made a brave stand at Brandywine Creek, the redcoats had taken Philadelphia. A letter came from Grey Albion to her father to say he’d be in Philadelphia with Howe for the winter.
And at first, the news from the North seemed equally good for the Loyalist cause. As planned, Johnnie Burgoyne had struck south from Canada and soon taken back the fort of Ticonderoga. He’d got the Indians with him too. Four of the six Iroquois nations had agreed to join the British side.
“The Patriots will love us for that,” John Master remarked drily.
“Are the Indians so cruel?” Abigail asked.
“They have their customs. In King George’s War, thirty years ago, the British colonel of the Northern militias paid the Iroquois for every French scalp they brought him, women and children included.”
“I hope we would not do such a thing now.”
“Don’t count on it.”
By September they expected to hear that Burgoyne had secured Albany and was on his way down the Hudson River to New York. But then other rumors began. The local Patriot militias with their sharpshooters were slowing him down. He was stuck in the northern wilderness. The Indians were leaving him. A force of redcoats was sent up the Hudson to see if they could help him.
Then, late in October, a swift boat came down the great river bearing an astounding message. Her father brought the news to the house.
“Burgoyne’s surrendered. Upriver. The Patriots have taken five thousand men.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Saratoga.”
The news of the British defeat at Saratoga burst upon the British like a thunderclap. Her father, however, though grave, was not surprised.
“Just as I warned Howe,” he said grimly. “An overconfident general, in terrain he does not understand.” The Patriots’ woodsmen’s tactics of felling trees in his pa
th, driving away livestock and removing any food had left his men demoralized up in the huge wilderness. The two Patriot generals, Gates and Benedict Arnold, had, after two engagements at Saratoga, worn him down. And though Burgoyne’s British and Hessian troops had fought bravely, without reinforcements from the South they’d been hugely outnumbered by the seventeen thousand men of the Patriot militias.
“Saratoga sends the signal,” John Master judged. “It shows that, however many troops the British field, there will always be local militias to outnumber them. And still more important, it tells the only people who really matter, that the Americans can prevail.”
“What people are those?” Abigail asked.
“The French.”
If Saratoga was a cause for Patriot rejoicing, James could see little sign of it in Washington’s army that December. Congress had moved out of Philadelphia, Howe had moved in, and the Patriot army, now reduced to twelve thousand men, was out in the open countryside as winter descended. Washington had already chosen their quarters, however.
Valley Forge. The place had its merits. With the high grounds named Mount Joy and Mount Misery close by, and the Schuylkill River below, Valley Forge was defensible, and at under twenty miles from Philadelphia, it was a good place from which to keep an eye on British movements.
The Patriot army had started building the camp right away. Stout log cabins, more than a thousand of them in the end, stood in clusters as a sprawling city of huts emerged. At least this activity kept all the men busy, and they soon became rather proud of their efforts. But James often had to take parties of men for miles to find the timber to chop down. The key, Washington insisted, was to ensure that the roof was well sealed.
“For it’s a Philadelphia winter we have to contend with,” he reminded them, “not a northern one.”
It wasn’t long before Yankee troops discovered what he meant. For instead of a covering of northern snow, which seals in everything it falls upon, Valley Forge was suffering through a different kind of winter. Snow there was, from time to time, and freezing sleet, but it would soon melt. Then it would rain, so that the water seeped its way through every crack and crevice, before it froze again. The dry cold of the North might kill a man who had no shelter, but the cold, damp winds and clinging chills of Valley Forge seemed to seep into the marrow of men’s bones.
Log cabins or not, their clothes were in tatters, many still had no boots, and everyone was half starving. The commissary did a magnificent job. There was fish from the river. Occasionally there was meat. Most days, every man was given a pound of decent bread. Most days. But sometimes there would be only firecake, as they grimly called the tasteless husks of flour and water the cooks might have to give them. And sometimes there was nothing. James had even seen men trying to make soup out of grass and leaves. Some weeks, a third of the army was unfit for any duties at all. Their horses looked like skeletons and frequently died. There was nothing left to forage, not a cow within miles. And when James was sent out to the small towns of the region to see if he could buy more provisions, the only money he had to offer were the paper notes offered by Congress, which most traders were suspicious of.
Each day, they buried more men. As time passed, the deaths mounted into hundreds, passed a thousand, reached two thousand. Sometimes James wondered if they’d ever have made it at all without the camp followers—about five hundred of them, mostly wives or female relations of the men. They were given half-rations and half-pay, and they did their best to care for their menfolk. In February, they were joined by Martha Washington. Washington always put on a brave face to his men, but James spent enough time in his company to see that in private he was close to despair. Though he and the other junior officers did all they could to support their chief, he remarked to Mrs. Washington once: “The general’s saved the army, and you’ve saved the general.”
One other person gave Washington comfort. A young man sent from France by the indefatigable Ben Franklin. He’d arrived some months before. Though only twenty years old, he had several years of service in the Musketeers. Arriving in America, he was immediately made a major general.
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was a rich young aristocrat, with a fine ancestral estate. His young wife, whom he left behind in France, was the daughter of a duke. An ancestor had served with Joan of Arc. And he had slipped out of France in search of one thing, and one thing only. La Gloire. He wanted to be famous.
Believing that this might further good relations with the French, Washington had taken him onto his staff. And then discovered to his surprise that he had acquired a second son.
Lafayette had no illusions about his own lack of experience. He’d take on anything asked of him. He also proved to be competent and intelligent. At Brandywine, he’d fought well and been wounded. But in addition to all this, his aristocratic upbringing and his sense of honor had given him the very qualities that Washington most admired. Slim and elegant, he had exquisite manners, was completely fearless—and he was loyal to his chief, which was more than could be said for most of the other Patriot commanders. When Gates and other generals schemed against Washington behind his back, the young Frenchman came to know of it, and warned Washington at once. They tried to get him out of the way by sending him up to Canada, but he soon got out of that, and rejoined Washington at Valley Forge, where his Gallic charm helped to lighten the grim realities of daily life.
James liked Lafayette. In London, since an educated gentleman was supposed to speak the language of diplomacy, he’d learned to speak a little French. Now, with plenty of time on their hands at Valley Forge, Lafayette helped James improve his mastery of the language considerably.
But Lafayette was not the only man Ben Franklin sent across. His other and still greater gift arrived in the new year. And if Lafayette had brought a touch of Gallic charm to Washington’s army, the Baron von Steuben was to change it entirely.
Baron von Steuben was a middle-aged Prussian officer and aristocrat. He’d served under Frederick the Great. A lifelong bachelor, he turned up with an Italian greyhound, a letter from Franklin, and an offer to give the ragged Patriot troops the same training as the finest army in all Europe. And in his own eccentric way, he was as good as his word.
For now at Valley Forge, first in the snow and slush, then the mud, then in sight of the snowdrops and finally during the sunny days when the green buds appeared on the trees, he drilled them as they had never been drilled before. Instead of the motley collection of manuals from different militias, he produced a single, classic drill book for the whole Continental army. Next he trained a cadre of men who would act as instructors. Then, in full dress, he would stride from one training ground to another, supervising and encouraging them all with a stream of curses in German or French, which his orderlies would precisely translate—so that by the end of their training, every soldier in the Patriot army possessed a broad vocabulary of profanities in three languages.
At first they thought him mad. Soon they came to respect him. By the end of spring, they loved him. He taught them to drill, to march, to maneuver in battle, to rapid-fire. Finding that hardly a man knew how to use a bayonet, except to roast meat over the fire, he taught them the bayonet charge and told them: “I will teach you how to win a battle without any ammunition at all.”
By the time he was finished, they were good, by any standards. Very good.
“We needed a German to teach us how to fight the Hessians,” Washington remarked wryly to James one day in spring.
“The British can employ Germans, sir,” James answered with a smile, “but we’re the real thing.”
“I’m getting word,” Washington told him, “that we may soon expect fresh recruits who’ll sign on for three years.”
But the news that really ended the agony of Valley Forge came soon after this conversation.
Ben Franklin had done it. The French had declared war on Britain. At Valley Forge, on Washington’s instructions, Baron von Steub
en organized a huge parade.
Grey Albion’s invitation to Abigail came on the first day of May, in a letter to her father from Philadelphia.
“He confirms the rumor I’ve been hearing. General Howe’s been recalled.” Master shook his head. “It’s a shameful business. When London heard about the Saratoga surrender, Parliament was so furious that the ministry employed newspaper writers to blame it all on Howe. So now he’s recalled. It seems that Howe’s young officers in Philadelphia are determined to honor him before he goes. There’s to be a ball, and I don’t know what else. Even a joust. Albion’s one of the knights. He wonders if you’d like to go.”
The invitation was so unexpected that she hardly knew what to say. With all the pretty girls in Philadelphia to choose from, she was surprised that he should have thought of her, but she had to acknowledge that it was kind of him. And indeed, when she thought of the festivities, and the joust, and the chance to be in gracious Philadelphia, she decided that perhaps there would be no harm in going.
But by the next day, her father had had second thoughts.
“It’s a long way, Abby, and you never know who may be out there on the road. I can’t easily go myself. Who’d go with you? If you encountered Patriot soldiers, I don’t think they’d do you any harm, but I can’t be sure. No,” he concluded, “it’s kind of young Grey to think of you, but it won’t do.”
“I expect you’re right, Papa,” she said. If Mr. Grey Albion wants to ask me to a ball, she thought to herself, he’ll just have to do it again, some other time.
If the catastrophe at Saratoga the previous October, and the entry of the French against them this spring, caused despondency among the British, for loyal John Master, the world began to change during that long summer of 1778. It was a subtle change. He did not even see it coming. It took place in his mind and heart.
New York Page 36