by Bob Drury
Washington recognized that restocking the ranks of the regular army in such a manner was far from optimal. It was, however, “perhaps the best our circumstances will allow.” Moreover, if the pension plan was adopted, at least there would also be in place a stable of veteran officers to train and shape the rotating draft classes. He even left the draftees an out by suggesting that should any men’s “disposition and private affairs make them irreconcilably averse to giving their public services,” they would be excused if they were able to “procure a substitute in [their] stead.”
As Hamilton and John Laurens stood off to the side of Moore Hall’s great room taking in their imposing commander in chief’s oration, it surely must have dawned on them that they were witnessing history writ large. Washington—as always, the tallest man in the room—was declaring his own colonial army obsolete, ineffective, and doomed to failure. And though neither aide left personal reminiscences about the meeting, it is easy to imagine the excitable Laurens barely able to contain himself during the scene he was witnessing, and to envision the more cerebral Hamilton calmly fixing his gaze on one delegate after another as the powerful message he had composed struck home.
A Representation to the Committee of Congress ticked off the commander in chief’s exigencies like Homer cataloging the Achaean ships. His overtures to the national legislature ranged from the sweeping—a complete expansion and the reorganization of the cavalry service by adding some two dozen horsemen to each of the army’s four mounted regiments—to a comprehensive facilitation of the minutiae of military command. He argued that the current limit of 100 lashes for recidivist deserters be raised, and pressed for an overhaul of a promotional system that rewarded political connections over valor in the field. He detailed intricate plans for streamlining a bedraggled battalion system stretched so thin by losses that regiments varied in size from larger than brigades to, in one case, a single unit consisting of three dozen men commanded by a corporal. He delineated the ranks of general officers who were to be put in charge of brigades, battalions, and divisional battle lines. And he suggested the institution of one of the first forms of military police—a mounted “Provost Marshalcy,” he called it, to watch over the good order of the army, in camp, in quarters, or on the march and “to silence all quarrels, tumults, and riots, detect and hinder every species of marauding—prevent straggling and other unsoldierlike licenses among the troops—to apprehend spies, or persons, whose not being able to give a good account of themselves may render them suspicious—to establish and inforce good regulations among the suttlers, seeing that the articles they offer for sale are good in quality and at reasonable prices.”
Addressing the matter of black troops, Washington warned against the induction of slaves, as they were too likely “to desert to the enemy to obtain their freedom” while taking Continental Army wagons and supplies with them. He did, however, implore Congress to consider hiring African American “freemen” from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina to replace the expensive and arrogant civilian teamsters currently hauling the army’s provisions. And in order to counterbalance the enemy’s use of “savages” against his troops, he asked “would it not be well to employ several hundred indians” as scouts and stealth skirmishers in the ensuing American campaigns. To that end he volunteered his friend Dan Morgan, who, he said, could be counted on to round up a party of Cherokee from Virginia, adding that he also knew a local clergyman whose influence among some more northerly tribes would be sufficient to fill in the remainder. He even invited Congress to consider differentiating each state’s soldiers by subtle changes to the colors of their uniform as well as the cut of their collars and cuffs in order to improve morale.
If there was a single theme that permeated A Representation to the Committee of Congress, it was Washington’s emphasis on the subtle perils of continuing to wage war, particularly a Fabian war, with nonprofessional soldiers. Discipline and subordination, he argued, had not yet had time to completely infiltrate the psyches of “a young army, like ours.” At heart these men maintained a civilian’s frame of mind, particularly acute to any slight that carried a whiff of injustice. These patriotic soldiers, Washington said, would fight, and fight well, but they must receive food, clothing, pay, and arms equal to their sacrifice.
The commander in chief had opened his position paper with due deference to the political body shaping the young nation. In its first paragraph he offered his hope that the delegates would see fit to consider his proposals as mere suggestions “conducive to remedying the Evils and inconveniences we are now subject to and putting the Army upon a more respectable footing.” The underlying tenor, however, was more Hamiltonian in its substance—firm and obvious. The Continental Army that existed at its inception 30 months earlier could not be sealed in a bell jar. It was Washington’s intention to create a modern American army from its fragments. He reminded the committeemen that they had been appointed by Congress “in concert with me” to reorganize his forces, while reiterating “the numerous defects in our present military establishment.” The same accommodating opening paragraph climaxed with an insistent ultimatum—“Something must be done.”
Throughout his analysis Washington had somewhat tempered the dire predictions enumerated in his “starve, dissolve, or disperse” proclamation. But his report also made clear to the delegates that the recommendations therein meant the difference between an army prepared to confront and defeat the British and “a feeble, languid, and ineffectual” force easily defeated come spring. In his conclusion Washington drove home the point that painting such a “disagreeable picture is a just representation of evils equally melancholy and important; and unless effectual remedies be applied without loss of time, the most alarming and ruinous consequences are to be apprehended.”
A Representation to the Committee of Congress was a masterly amalgamation of distillation and presentation. The pension plan, for instance, had begun as a germ of an idea submitted by Gen. Greene, much as the expansion of the cavalry corps had been originally presented by Gen. Pulaski. Even the consolidation of the regiments had been suggested by the officers of the nine North Carolina battalions whose commands had been so thinned by attrition that they barely resembled robust fighting forces.
Given the broad contours of their mandate, the manifesto was, in all, quite something for the five delegates to digest. The commander in chief’s singular tenacity was the trait that had set him above his peers on the battlefield. Now this same persistence was on display in the political arena. As the hours passed that evening, a significant fact became clear—Washington the soldier-statesman had captured the hearts and minds of the visiting delegates. They began work on his proposals immediately.
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I. In late 1776 the First Continental Congress voted to hold a convoluted national lottery to raise money that, in essence, resembled nothing so much as a Ponzi scheme. After various iterations, the first drawing was finally offered to the public in May 1778. It proved an utter failure.
II. Or around $600 in 2018 dollars, though it hardly mattered. The New England troops dispatched to Pennsylvania from Peekskill in September, for instance, had not been paid since leaving New York.
III. The delegation now consisted of Francis Dana of Massachusetts, Gouverneur Morris of New York, Joseph Reed of Pennyslvania, Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire, and Virginia’s John Harvie.
IV. This “Baal,” the “King of Hell” in seventeenth-century occult writings, is usually spelled Bael and is a separate entity from the god of fertility worshipped by the ancient Canaanites.
V. In fact, 576 officers are believed to have left the army during the Valley Forge encampment.
VI. One of Gen. Horatio Gates’s first proclamations upon his appointment to head the Board of War was directed to regular-army recruiters in Massachusetts. In it he forbade them to enlist “any deserter . . . nor any stroller, Negro, nor any under eighteen years of age.”
TWENTY
“HOWE’S PLAYERS”
By late January 1778, the Pennsylvania campaign of the American Revolution had reached an awkward impasse. At Valley Forge, what one historian describes as “a sense of inaction, restlessness, and drift” continued to fester among the men, particularly the officer corps. Washington continued to field a succession of plaintive petitions from idle subordinates of all ranks, the bane of any active military force with no immediate antagonist. The commander in chief prided himself on being the “common guardian” of each soldier’s interests no matter how trivial the complaint, and personally dealt with these eruptions as best he could. Yet even his powerful personality found the restiveness difficult to quell.
Several New England generals who felt their honor besmirched by the failed invasion of Canada two years earlier now found the time to demand that Washington open public hearings on their conduct in order to clear their names. At the other end of the spectrum, a clique of artillery officers delivered a searing letter to the Potts House protesting the promotion of a French captain within their ranks.I A substantial contingent of troops from upstate New York, officers and enlisted men alike, asked to be transferred back to Albany, an appeal the commander in chief summarily denied without comment. His reaction was softer when a group from Virginia’s 13th Regiment, having been promised service closer to home upon their enlistment, applied to be relocated to Fort Pitt. Washington, perhaps feeling more sympathy for his fellow Old Dominion regulars, went out of his way to visit their officers’ quarters and patiently outline his reasons for retaining them at Valley Forge. When this kind of reasoning proved ineffective, he relied on courts-martial. Washington’s daily General Orders reveal that military trials nearly tripled that winter, for offenses ranging from desertion, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, drunkenness on duty, theft, disobeying orders, dueling, and even the playing of cards and dice, “shameful vices” that Washington abhorred.
Although daily lashings became a regular occurrence on the camp’s parade grounds—usually in accordance with the biblical “forty stripes save one”—divisional and regimental commanders charged with maintaining discipline also devised innovative punishments to break the monotony. Some offenders found guilty of minor crimes were sentenced to level to the ground the stumps of trees felled to build huts. More egregious transgressors were dismissed from the service in an elaborate ceremony that involved turning the offending soldier’s coat inside out, tying his hands behind his back, and literally drumming him out of camp. While a rotation of generals and sometimes colonels presided over the daily courts-martial, Washington insisted on reviewing sentences of death for crimes including murder and trading with the enemy. In the latter case it was not unusual for the commander in chief to concur with the verdict before, at the last minute, commuting a hanging to lashes and banishment. Such was his universally respected integrity that even the most insurrectionist troops came to consider him a fair and balanced arbiter.
As with foot soldiers from the beginning of time, the fractious Continentals at Valley Forge felt it their God-given right to grouse about how their superiors were botching the war. It was not unusual for platoons and even companies to descend on an officer’s tent or hut and demand to know why they were not taking the offensive. The oft-voiced sentiments invariably involved preferring to die on a battlefield as opposed to wasting away in a disease-riddled hellhole. The clamor for some kind of military action intensified when word began to spread through the cantonment that Gen. Gates had persuaded Congress to mount a northern military expedition. His plan called for no less than the occupation of Canada, with the Marquis de Lafayette at the head of the conquering army.
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The scheme must have struck Gates as a potential threefold triumph. First, a successful midwinter campaign would establish a political precedent for the Board of War’s involvement in future military directives. This in turn would lead to a personal triumph, as a successful Canadian “irruption,” as he phrased it, would scratch the congressional itch to take the offensive somewhere, anywhere, against the British. That this would polish his own strategic bona fides, particularly when placed in relief to his rival’s inactivity at Valley Forge, would not go unnoticed. Finally, in a sort of coup de grâce, his sly appointment of Lafayette to lead the invasion would shunt offstage one of Washington’s key personal and political allies. Gates had convinced Congress that the Catholic Frenchman was the perfect vehicle to inspire his many coreligionists in the would-be fourteenth state to rise in rebellion. Naturally, such a Canadian embrace of the American cause was also certain to catch the attention of the court at Versailles, still livid at having had to cede New France to the hated British. Gates knew that if he was to eventually ascend to the post of commander in chief, good relations with the French were imperative.
When the mail packet arrived at the Potts House from York on January 24, it contained the congressional ratification of Gates’s invasion plan as well as orders for Lafayette to depart immediately for Albany, where the invasion force was to be gathered. To twist the knife, the marquis was informed that his second in command on the expedition would be none other than Gen. Thomas Conway. It was a wily maneuver. Enduring the harrowing misery of Valley Forge had only strengthened the bond that Lafayette and Washington had formed during the fall campaign. Their mutual affinity was evident to anyone who watched Washington’s famous hauteur fall away when the two interacted. Washington had even taken to gently chiding Lafayette for his failure to bring his family to America, teasingly inquiring if the reason for his wife Adrienne’s absence might be the Frenchman’s fear that she might throw him over for a certain older gentleman who happened to command an entire army.
Gates’s letter to Washington, written on “War Office” stationery, incorporated the customary courtesies due a commander in chief, including an overture to Washington to suggest any tactical components of the invasion strategy. “Should your Excellency think any Steps are wanting or any Directions omitted which may be necessary upon this important Enterprize,” Gates wrote, “the Board will be happy on this, as well as every other occasion, to receive your Opinion and Advice.” In other words—please do give us your thoughts about my operation. In his Judas kiss, Gates had refrained from informing Washington about the route of the offensive or the number of troops involved, although he hinted that new recruits from New England would make up the bulk of the invading army.
Yet again, John Laurens was among the first to see through the ploy. Four days after Gates’s letter arrived at Valley Forge, he penned a short note to his father. In it he derided the very idea of attempting to occupy Canada while the British fleet still controlled the eastern seaboard. He also argued that to rely on volunteer New England militiamen to swell the invasion ranks was mad. Even if a few towns or enemy fortifications across the border were to initially fall, he wrote, there were not enough Continental troops to hold them. He then turned to the subject of Conway, doubtless seeing the appointment through Washington’s eyes. “It is feared that the ambition and the intriguing spirit of Conway will be subversive of the public good,” he told his father. “While he will proceed securely behind the shield of his commanding officer, taking to himself the merit of everything praiseworthy and attributing every misfortune to [Lafayette].”
Like Laurens, the visiting delegates at Valley Forge considered the Canadian campaign the height of recklessness. They voiced their vehement objections in a letter to their colleagues in York, specifically citing the twin debacles of America’s first attempt on Quebec as well as Gen. Burgoyne’s failed expedition “across the inhospitable wilderness” of northern New York in comparatively milder weather. Washington, on the other hand, took no public stance other than to approve the board’s request to dispatch north a regiment of largely Canadian troops from the rolls at Valley Forge. It was a prudent measure, removing from camp not only nearly 500 mouths to feed, but an equal number of potential headaches. He was sorry to see Lafayette depart, but the invasion was not scheduled to kick off for severa
l weeks, which he knew bought him enough time to adjudge exactly where Gates’s new adventure might lead, both militarily and politically.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the tumult at the Continental Army’s winter cantonment, some 20 miles to the southeast events were playing out in a much more serendipitous manner.
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With Gen. Howe having convinced himself that he would make quick work of Washington’s common ruck come spring, a sense of aristocratic complacency had settled over the British army’s winter billet. As a precaution, Howe had ordered a score or so of houses on Philadelphia’s periphery burned lest they provide cover for Continental sharpshooters. And he occasionally sent small companies of dragoons galloping through the city’s near suburbs as a pro forma measure to protect Loyalist civilians on their way to and from the marketplace. But only when it became apparent that American control of the sweeping area east of the Schuylkill had greatly deteriorated did Howe direct larger parties of Redcoats and Hessians into Bucks County to harass the few remaining Whigs.
