by Gore Vidal
As the General passed me, I saluted. I was still in civilian clothes but then so were most of the army.
As Washington returned my salute, I looked up into his face: the yellow pock-marked skin was lightly covered with powder; the gray eyes sunk in cavernous sockets were lustreless; the expression was grave but somewhat vacant. I thought him old as God. Yet he was only forty-three!
Slowly the General rode toward a makeshift cabin of sailcloth in front of which a pair of drunkards were trying to kill one another to the delight of a number of equally drunk onlookers.
I followed the General, curious to see what he would do. Most officers would have looked the other way. Sober, the American soldier is not easily managed; drunk, he can be murderous.
“Stop!” Raised in command, the deep voice was thunderous. There was a brief murmur of dazed, rummy interest from the spectators. Then they turned back to the fight. One howling man was now trying to choke the other who seemed to have bitten off most of his adversary’s ear.
For a moment Washington resembled one of those equestrian monuments that currently decorate so many of the republic’s vistas. Horse and rider were motionless until it was plain that Washington was not going to be obeyed. Then majestically he dismounted, and as if at the head of a stately procession he walked toward the two men grunting and writhing in the dirt. For a large, rather ungainly man (he had the hips, buttocks and bosom of a woman), Washington could move with brutal swiftness. He fell upon the two men. One large hand encircled the strangler’s throat. The other seized the matted hair of the cannibal. He dragged the men to their feet; held them aloft; shook them like rats. All the while a series of sky-rending oaths emerged from the broad yellow face now brick-red beneath its powder. If he was not heard all the way to Boston, he was certainly heard by most of the encampment.
Aides hurried to support their commander. A sergeant put the two terrified men under arrest. The revellers even tried to come to attention as Washington mounted his horse, affecting a serenity that was truly marvellous except for someone next to him, as I was, who could see the trembling of the hand with which he held the reins. He must, secretly, have been terrified. After all, he had had no experience of modern warfare, while his exploits as an Indian fighter were a good deal less than glorious despite the legends that he and the Virginians used so relentlessly to circulate. But no matter what his military short-comings, at least he looked like a general.
President Hancock described to me most amusingly Washington’s first appearance at Philadelphia. As a hint to the recently convened Congress, the delegate from Virginia insisted on wearing the same red and blue uniform he had worn during his skirmishes with the Indians a dozen years before. But although he made an excellent martial impression, it was also noted by certain irreverent delegates that a tendency to corpulence had now made him rather too large for the old uniform he was wearing.
“One expected,” said Hancock, “the sound of ripping and tearing every time he rose from dinner at Barnes’ Tavern, and waddled forth to mount his long-suffering horse.”
Hancock went to his grave furious that it was Washington and not he who had been chosen to command the Continental Army. Narrowly to miss such greatness is a bitter thing; and greatness seemed inevitable that summer. At Lexington and Bunker Hill we had held our own in the face of the best army in the world. Also, the British were 3,000 miles from home and forced to fight in a wild country-side where their specialty, the fixed battle, was of no use to them against the strategy they most feared, the constant sniping of invisible riflemen.
Despite our green confidence at Cambridge, Washington himself must have wondered if it was possible to make an army out of such unlikely human material. Beside the river Charles were assembled thieves, ruffians, wild men from the forest, murderers, Negroes run away from their southern owners, European adventurers … every sort of scoundrel save one, the soldier. Hardly a man cared about the issue of England. The majority had enlisted because they wanted money, paid in advance. Even the non-mercenary patriots were of little use to Washington, particularly those New Englanders who saw themselves as generals to a man and refused to serve in the ranks. Yet we thought it would be a brief war.
As Washington rode off, a stocky youth turned to me and made some observation about His Excellency’s language. We both laughed; and together walked toward the river.
“I’m Captain James Wilkinson from Maryland.” He introduced himself. I was filled with envy. Here I was an experienced nineteen-year-old man of the world while Captain Jamie Wilkinson was an eighteen-year-old boy with a face that had yet to know the scrape of a razor. Jamie had enlisted in the army at Georgetown, after a short career studying medicine. “Now I want to see fighting. But where? When?” He indicated Boston in the distance—and the British headquarters. He shook his head. “A sweet situation.”
We got on well from the beginning and Jamie always said that from that day he had found in me the best friend he was ever to have. Would that I had been his enemy!
“Indian shoes for sale!” Sitting cross-legged in the dust, a pale fat frontiersman displayed several pairs of crudely made moccasins to a crowd of idlers. It was a bit like a fair, those early days of the encampment before Washington’s discipline was felt.
A bare-foot farmer bought himself a pair, the salesman talking all the while. “There’s a lot of wear in them shoes, I promise. Made ’em myself. Tanned ’em, too.” All around us a good deal of mysterious giggling as the moccasins were passed from hand to hand and carefully examined. Mysterious until we realized that these Indian shoes were just that.
“I shot me two braves on the way here from Frankfort where I live. Well, after I shot ’em, I took a good look at these two sizable bucks just layin’ there. A shame, I said to myself, to let all that fine meat go to waste. So I skinned ’em both from the waist down and cured their hides in the sun. I’m a tanner by trade. And then I made up these nice shoes that are every bit as good as cow. See?” He held up one of the moccasins. “Here’s some bristles left, a proper memento, you might say. Oh, it’s real Indian hide, I promise.”
At the bridge over the Charles River, we found General Washington and his aides. The General was staring at the far bank of the river where a number of men were bathing, entirely naked. With happy cries, they showed themselves off to a number of interested Cambridge ladies.
“He’ll never make an army of this riffraff.” Wilkinson thought that the men in their anarchy would prove stronger than Washington. But Wilkinson was wrong. In a matter of minutes, the bathers were driven up-stream by sergeants with muskets. The next day one colonel and five captains were broken. The following day, at the centre of the camp, appeared “The Horse,” a notorious contraption to which culprits were tied and flogged. Washington had taken command.
The next week both small pox and the bloody flux began to go through the camp. General Washington maintained that the flux came from drinking new cider. But the cider-drinking continued, and so for that matter did the flux, which is a terrible death, the bowels emptying out one’s life in bloody spasms.
I took to my bed with a fever that lasted two weeks. Matt and Jamie looked after me as best they could: I have never been so wretched. I had, in effect, run away from home to join the army but so far had found no way of joining it.
“It’s your size.” Matt fed me cabbage soup. “You look ten years old!” This was an exaggeration but I did look younger than the other officers, including Jamie whose youthful belly gave him an undeserved dignity. Yet I was confident that I was well-suited to the military life. I was a fair shot, good with horses and, I was fairly certain, good with soldiers, too. After all, I had the natural authority of the born pedagogue. I also wanted glory—a desire that must surely add a cubit to even the smallest stature.
Unable to sleep (the heat within me and the heat without for once unbearable), I heard Matt talking to friends in the next room. “They’ll need at least a thousand volunteers.”
“He
re’s one!” Another young voice. “I don’t intend to stop the rest of my life in Cambridge.” We found it mysterious that Washington seemed interested only in drilling the men and digging “necessaries” while within sight of our encampment beside the Charles, the British army at Boston each day stood formation like so many dangerous scarlet toys in the green distance.
Washington did nothing because, unknown to us, his supply of powder was limited, his artillery non-existent, his troops unproven. Washington’s view of war was simple and invariable: do nothing until you outnumber the enemy two to one. So he waited for Congress to send him more men and to give him more supplies. Considering that the British forces were far from home and considering that there were over two million Americans in the colonies, it ought not to have been difficult for us to overwhelm them in every way. But difficult it was, always, for Washington to maintain an army. The rich tended to be pro-British while the poor were not interested in whether or not American merchants paid taxes to a far-away island. The truth is that except for a handful of ambitious lawyers, there were very few “patriots” in 1775. By the time the long deadly war came to an end, there were hardly any to be found. The best died; the rest grew weary.
But now, at least, the dull days for a few of us were over. Candle in hand, Matt sat on the edge of my sweat-soaked bed and told me that “We’re going to invade Canada.”
I was surprised. “Why not invade Boston? It’s much closer, and most of the British army is there.”
“Washington thinks the British are going to come down from Canada and cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. So he wants us to anticipate them. Volunteers are wanted for a battalion and at least three companies of riflemen.”
My fever broke that night, never to return. On September 6, I enlisted in the company of Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Greene. On September 13, Colonel Greene’s detachment left Cambridge for Newburyport. A new and eager soldier, I went on foot. Matt sensibly took a carriage.
On September 16, eleven hundred of us—mostly Virginians and Kentuckians with one company of New Yorkers (demanding, as usual, their pay in advance) were drawn up at attention to be reviewed by our commander, Colonel Benedict Arnold, the first hero of the Revolution.
I have a vivid recollection of Arnold that day, standing tall and bulky against a bright sky. Hair black as ink; face a curious deep olive colour, as though stained with walnut juice; eyes marvellously strange like those of an animal or some predatory bird, pale as ice, unblinking: the Indians called him Black Eagle. Restless, brave, entirely lacking in judgement except on the battle-field, he was a fascinating figure, given to quarrels.
Arnold spoke to us briefly. Then he presented the various officers. Among them was Dan Morgan of Virginia, a famed Indian-killer in fringed jacket; nearly forty years of age, Morgan was the oldest of the officers. Arnold himself was about thirty-four. Although he had authority, he did not inspire awe the way Washington did. Arnold was more like the best athlete among boys; the one who holds most easily the centre of the stage. In fact, none of our officers looked particularly military except for Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Enos, who was to lose us Canada.
Until May 1775, Benedict Arnold had been an apothecary in New Haven. After news came of the fighting at Lexington, he shut up shop, raised a company of soldiers and put himself at the disposal of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. From the beginning it was his strategy to take Fort Ticonderoga from the British in order to open the way into Canada. He did take Fort Ticonderoga but was forced to share the glory with Ethan Allen (a contentious figure whose eventual capture by the British was a relief to the American command). Allen and Arnold promptly fell out with one another. Worse, the Massachusetts Assembly declared that they had no interest in Canada; apparently the only reason for capturing Fort Ticonderoga was to acquire much-needed artillery. Declaring himself ill-used and betrayed, Arnold resigned his commission at Watertown in August. Washington promptly commissioned him a colonel and then, “His Excellency did me the honour of accepting my strategy for the conquest of Canada.”
In the church at Newburyport, Arnold addressed his officers from the pulpit. “I do not think we have lost too much by waiting. I had wanted to go straight on to Canada after I took Ticonderoga.” Matt Ogden and I exchanged glances. It was our first experience with a military hero. Apparently, quite alone, the military hero reduces cities and makes history. “But that proved not to be possible.” Arnold had sufficient sense not to denounce to his officers the magnates of Massachusetts who had stopped him.
A staff captain produced a map of Canada and tacked it onto the pulpit. We leaned forward in our hard pews while Arnold explained to us the route. The next day, we would board eleven transports and proceed to Gardinierstown at the mouth of the Kennebec River. There we would find 224 bateaux.
“In these flat-bottomed boats we shall make our way up the Kennebec River.” A thick finger traced the route on the map. “At the head-water we cross over land some twelve miles to the Dead River. Meanwhile another force under General Schuyler will be moving from Fort Ticonderoga to Fort St. John to Montreal. Once Montreal is ours, General Schuyler will join us at Quebec. My best intelligence assures me that in all of Canada there are only seven hundred British troops, and no fleet. I shall begin the siege of Quebec no later than October fifteenth.”
I record this speech from memory in order to give an idea of the vaingloriousness of certain of our commanders in the early days of the fighting. Yet I must say Arnold was able to convince us that before the first snow fell we would be the liberators of Canada. How could we fail? The Canadians themselves were with us. The province had been ceded only twelve years earlier to England by France, to the great distress (so we were told) of the French colonials who were waiting impatiently for our arrival and “freedom.” I’m afraid we all believed this nonsense.
As it turned out, the French colonials liked us rather less than they liked the English, whom they actually preferred to their own corrupt French governors. More important, they were quite aware of the hatred Americans have for their church. On reflection, it is very odd that Washington could ever have hoped to appeal to the French Canadians when hardly a day passed that in our press or in the Congress there was not some attack on the Roman Catholic Church and its diabolic plots to overthrow our pure Protestantism in order to make bright a hundred village greens with the burning of martyrs. This insensitivity to other people’s religion and customs has been a constant in the affairs of the republic and the author of much trouble, as Jefferson was to discover when he blithely and illegally annexed Louisiana with its Catholic population.
At Gardinierstown the famed bateaux were waiting. Made of green pine in great haste, they sank like stones when loaded with cargo. With considerable effort, we made a sufficient number river-worthy. Then on a bright September morning, we set out to conquer Canada.
Like Napoleon Bonaparte, Benedict Arnold was too great a man to notice weather. Neither understood that autumn is invariably followed by winter and that in such northern latitudes as Russia and Canada winter is invincible. But then none of us anticipated what was ahead—like the grasshopper in the parable we enjoyed the warm September days, and dreamed of glory amongst the northern lights.
It soon developed that Arnold’s map was inaccurate. The Kennebec River was wilder and swifter than we had been led to believe. Some thirty times we were forced out of the river and into the forest, carrying those infernal bateaux on our backs. Spirits plummetted. Nights were cold. Wolves howled. We saw few people, except at Fort Western, a small depressing outpost (now known as Augusta in the state of Maine).
A huge bear was chained outside the stockade at Fort Western. There were sores on his legs where the chains chafed. That sight stays in my memory. Also, damp odour of pine needles and dark earth. The flash of mica in gray rock. The cursing of men trying to keep their horns of powder from getting wet as we forded streams, took shelter from the cold rain.
On land I usually
travelled with young Jonathan Dayton (a future speaker of the house and New Jersey senator); we shared the same rations; slept at night beside the same fire. Matt was with the forward company.
When we went by water, Colonel Arnold would travel in state aboard his own dug-out, manned by two Indians. At first there were good-natured jokes about our commander’s unerring ability to find a settler’s cabin for the night, denying himself the pleasure of sleeping like us al fresco. But when disaster struck, the jokes turned to curses and only the power of his formidable personality kept the men from open mutiny.
On October 8, we reached the head-water of the Kennebec River. We were exhausted but knew that we must hurry on into settled territory for the fire-red, sun-yellow leaves were turning brown, were falling, and there was a smell of snow on the north wind. Grasshopper weather was over.
It took us eight days to move over-land to the well-named Dead River. Sullen, swift deep black water twisting through a pristine forest that must have looked the same at the world’s beginning. So deep was the water that we could not pole the bateaux and so had to pull them along with ropes, men doing the usual work of horses. Already the New Yorkers were talking about the beginning of the new year in ten weeks’ time, and the end of their enlistment.
On the night of October 24, the Dead River flooded. We lost half our provisions and bateaux and most of our confidence. I spent the night with Jonathan Dayton in a tree. At dawn we looked with wonder at a vast lake stretching in every direction through the dark coniferous forest. As the waters began to recede into the earth, we assembled in the mud and tried to make sense of the disaster.
Just as Colonel Arnold joined us, snow began to fall. He promptly held a council beneath the trees. “I leave it to you,” he said to the men, “whether we go on or turn back.”
There was much debate despite the swirling snow which made it hard for us to see one another in that awful whiteness. But Arnold cleverly led the discussion, forcing those who wanted to turn back to admit that it was most unlikely that any of us could survive the journey with half our provisions gone, most of the bateaux scattered throughout the forest and the snow mounting even as we spoke. It was decided to press on.