by Ron Chernow
That April it momentarily seemed as if an early chapter of the Revolutionary War would be written in Virginia. Lord Dunmore feared that one of the new militia companies might grab gunpowder stored in a Williamsburg magazine. To forestall this possibility, he had marines who were attached to the armed British schooner Magdalen empty fifteen barrels of gunpowder from the magazine, load them on a wagon, and abscond to a man-of-war anchored off Norfolk. To universal disbelief, Dunmore contended that he had removed the gunpowder to deal with a slave revolt and vowed to bring it back if needed to defend the colony. When enraged patriots threatened to invade the governor’s palace, George Washington counseled caution and advised the five independent companies under his command not to march on Williamsburg. The young James Madison, twenty-four, condemned Washington and his ilk for having “discovered a pusillanimity little comporting with their professions or the name of Virginian” and blamed the fact that their “property will be exposed in case of civil war.”57 As a military man, Washington knew how indomitable the British military machine was and how quixotic a full-scale revolution would be. As he later said of America’s chances in the spring of 1775, “It was known that . . . the expense in comparison with our circumstances as colonists must be enormous, the struggle protracted, dubious, and severe. It was known that the resources of Britain were, in a manner, inexhaustible, that her fleets covered the ocean, and that her troops had harvested laurels in every quarter of the globe . . . Money, the nerve of war, was wanting.” But the colonists had something much more precious: “the unconquerable resolution of our citizens, the conscious rectitude of our cause, and a confident trust that we should not be forsaken by heaven.”58
PART THREE
The General
George Washington at Princeton, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1779.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Glorious Cause
BEFORE SETTING OUT for the Second Continental Congress, Samuel Adams and John Hancock decided to spend a quiet weekend in hiding in Lexington, Massachusetts. On April 14, 1775, General Gage received instructions from London to arrest these ringleaders of the insurgency, and he planned to seize a powder magazine in nearby Concord as well. Patriotic forces were tipped off to this raid, whereupon Paul Revere galloped off to alert Adams and Hancock. When overwhelming British forces descended on Lexington Green on April 19, they were confronted by a small but doughty band of volunteers. The historic shots were fired, killing eight Americans and wounding ten more before the British, having lost only one horse, moved on to Concord. When the redcoats marched back to Boston, however, they were suddenly engulfed on all sides by armed farmers, known as Minute Men, who shot with deadly accuracy, shielded by trees, buildings, and fences. By the time the frantic British troops had scrambled back to town, 273 had been killed or wounded versus only 95 colonials. As John Adams proclaimed with self-evident truth, “The battle of Lexington on the 19th of April changed the instruments of warfare from the pen to the sword.”1
George Washington was sobered and dismayed by the shocking news; there was nothing bloodthirsty in his nature. As he lamented to George William Fairfax, “Unhappy it is . . . to reflect that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s breast and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.”2 He fathomed the full import of what had happened. As he had already regretted to a friend a year earlier, he wished “the dispute had been left to posterity to determine, but the crisis is arrived, when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us.”3
As the colonies submitted to a frenzy of military preparation, young men everywhere grabbed muskets and formed militias. Like others committed to the cause, Washington brushed up on warfare and dipped into military volumes. For all his frontier experience, he was still a neophyte when it came to large-scale conflict. In the weeks before he left for the Second Continental Congress, the early leadership of the Continental Army began to coalesce on his doorstep, as if power were already shifting toward him. Charles Lee came for dinner, as did another, unrelated Lee named Henry—later celebrated as Light-Horse Harry Lee—who was nineteen and had graduated from Princeton the previous fall, specializing in Latin. Another military figure spending the night at Mount Vernon was Horatio Gates, a British officer who had been wounded during the Braddock campaign. He was a ruddy, thickset man, with a large, aquiline nose and long hair flowing over his shoulders from a receding hairline. After rising to the rank of major in England, he had returned to Virginia and bought a plantation in the Shenandoah Valley. As Washington was to discover, Gates had more than a trace of egotism and duplicity in his nature.
On May 4, 1775, George Washington climbed into his chariot, which was guided by a coachman and a postilion (an elegant conveyance for the future leader of a revolutionary army), and sped north. He was probably joined by his friend Richard Henry Lee, a talented orator and fellow burgess. In his diary Washington recorded drily, “Set out for the Congress at Phila.” and described the spring weather as “very warm indeed, with but little wind and clear.”4 Had he foreseen the many tempestuous years that would elapse before he again set eyes on his cherished estate, he might have gazed back longingly. En route to Baltimore, Washington and Lee encountered other coaches hastening to the same destination, a swelling column of southern delegates that included Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Joseph Hewes and Richard Caswell of North Carolina. Previewing things to come, Baltimore’s citizens asked Washington to review four volunteer companies on the town common. The southern delegates must have already felt a palpable crescendo of excitement as they approached Philadelphia, for six miles outside of town they were greeted by a throng of five hundred people on horseback—officers, town dignitaries, and curiosity seekers—who had ridden out as a welcoming party. Two miles from town they were embraced by a lively patriotic band and a spirited honor guard of foot and rifle companies, so that they streamed into Philadelphia enfolded in an extemporaneous parade. On the same day John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Adams rolled in from the north.
Held in the immediate aftermath of Lexington and Concord and favored with fine spring weather, the Second Continental Congress was supercharged with an atmosphere of high drama that made the first seem somnolent in comparison. Many delegates were already in a warlike mood. On May 9 a Loyalist named Samuel Cur-wen stayed up till midnight talking with Washington, whom he found “a fine figure and of most easy and agreeable address,” and they discussed ways to block British ships from coming up the Delaware River to occupy Philadelphia. As he recorded sadly in his journal, he found a determined Washington, in no mood to bend to the British: “I could not perceive the least disposition to accommodate matters or even risk.”5
For this Congress the delegates met in a lofty ground-floor chamber of the red-brick State House, surmounted by a high steeple, today known as Independence Hall. In this gracious neoclassical setting, the president’s chair was flanked by fluted pilasters, and the doors were topped by pediments. Whereas the First Congress had dwelled on diplomatic niceties, this one turned briskly to matters of war. Meeting in secret sessions, delegates heard reports that Great Britain had rebuffed conciliatory overtures from the earlier Congress and that more British troops were crossing the Atlantic. They also learned that Massachusetts was prepared to raise 13,600 soldiers, and that New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut would contribute troops in the same proportion; already patriotic militias and volunteers from across New England had congregated on the Cambridge Common outside Boston. There was no talk as yet of a commander in chief, for the simple reason that the Congress still regarded itself as representing a collection of colonies, not a sovereign nation.
In this civilian conclave, Washington stood out for his martial air and naturally majestic aura. As if to signal his availability for military duty and with an instinctive sense of theater, he came clad in the blue and buff uniform o
f the Fairfax militia, sewn by Andrew Judge, an indentured servant at Mount Vernon. More than a militant statement, it was an inspiring sign of southern solidarity with New England soldiers. People were transfixed by Washington’s lean, virile presence. “Colonel Washington appears at Congress in his uniform,” wrote John Adams, “and by his great experience and abilities in military matters is of much service to us.”6 Washington had the inestimable advantage of fully looking the part of a military leader. As Benjamin Rush stated, “He has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.”7
Clearly, for these rank amateurs in warfare, Washington’s military résumé was neither sketchy nor irrelevant—and he was suddenly deemed the fountainhead of wisdom. A marginal figure at the earlier Congress, Washington was drafted onto nine committees and inserted into every cranny of decision making. Some of Washington’s committees dealt with purely military questions, such as how to defend New York, while others reflected his broad range of knowledge, such as how to print a new American currency. Each day he dined at the City Tavern with eight other delegates, helping to expand his circle of admirers.
The Congress still lacked a consensus about declaring independence from Great Britain, favoring a purely defensive posture instead of initiating hostilities. The delegates were both thrilled and flustered by news that colonial troops, spearheaded by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, had overrun a British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in upstate New York, producing a huge windfall of cannon and military stores. An ambivalent Congress vowed to return the fort to Great Britain after “the restoration of the former harmony” that the Congress “so ardently wished for.”8 The northern colonies protested, regarding the fort as a necessary bulwark against a British invasion from Canada. As evidenced by his uniform, Washington was dubious about reconciliation, but he continued, at least for the record, to support measures to resolve the conflict amicably. Chances for a happy outcome dimmed on May 25 when the frigate Cerberus, bearing thirty-two guns, arrived in Boston Harbor, and three major generals in the British Army—John Burgoyne, Henry Clinton, and William Howe—stepped ashore. Washington clung to the wistful hope that Parliament, not the king, was to blame for these measures, telling George William Fairfax on May 31 that “we do not, nor cannot yet prevail upon ourselves to call them the king’s troops.”9
On May 24 Peyton Randolph had to return to the Virginia assembly and was replaced as president by John Hancock of Massachusetts. When the Congress agreed in early June to buy gunpowder “for the Continental Army,” the ragtag forces facing the British in Boston were still composed exclusively of New England militias.10 Then on June 14 the Congress gave the conflict a more sweeping complexion by authorizing ten companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to march north and reinforce those regional troops. There arose a sudden need for a commander to direct the disparate units and meld them into an effective fighting force. The senior figure in Cambridge was then Artemas Ward, a storekeeper from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, whom Charles Lee ridiculed as “a fat old gentleman who had been a popular churchwarden.”11 While not everybody was so dismissive of the Harvard-educated Ward, few beyond New England considered him the ideal man to shoulder the burden of the patriotic cause.
Since Virginia was the most populous colony, it seemed logical that the perfect commander would hail from that state. Rich and ambitious John Hancock hoped to use the Congress presidency as his springboard to the top military job, but even some fellow New Englanders believed that, for the sake of political unity, a Virginian made eminently good sense. Both John and Samuel Adams regarded Washington’s appointment as the political linchpin needed to bind the colonies together. Many southerners feared that the New Englanders were a rash, obstinate people, prone to extremism, and worried that an army led by a New England general might someday turn despotic and conquer the South. The appointment of George Washington would soothe such fears and form a perfect political compromise between North and South.
John Adams enjoyed the curious distinction of being Washington’s most important advocate at the Congress and one of his more severe detractors in later years. Rather small and paunchy, with a sharp mind and an argumentative personality, Adams was a farsighted prophet of independence, the curmudgeon who spoke uncomfortable truths. He later worried that when the history of the American Revolution was written, he would be consigned to the role of spear carrier, while George Washington and Ben Franklin would be glorified as the real protagonists of the drama. No less driven than Adams, Washington kept his ambition in check behind a modest, laconic personality, whereas Adams’s ambition often seemed irrepressible.
In 1807 John Adams would write a scathingly funny letter in which he listed the “ten talents” that had propelled George Washington to fame in June 1775. The first four dealt with physical attributes—“a handsome face,” “tall stature,” “an elegant form,” and “graceful attitudes and movements”—traits that the short, rotund Adams decidedly lacked.12 Two others concerned Washington’s extraordinary self-possession: “He possessed the gift of silence” and “He had great self-command.”13 Since Adams was neither guarded nor silent, he would have been especially sensitive to these traits. He also saw that Washington exerted more power by withholding opinions than by expressing them. Still another advantage was that Washington was a Virginian, and “Virginian geese are all swans.”14 It also helped that Washington was wealthy—almost everyone at the Congress was mesmerized by his willingness to hazard his money in the cause: “There is nothing . . . to which mankind bow down with more reverence than to great fortune.”15 The ideology of the day claimed that property rendered a man more independent, which presumably made Washington immune to British bribery.
When comparing Washington with other rivals for the top position—especially Horatio Gates and Charles Lee—one sees that he had superior presence, infinitely better judgment, more political cunning, and unmatched gravitas. With nothing arrogant or bombastic in his nature, he had the perfect temperament for leadership. He was also born in North America, which was considered essential. Endowed with an enormous sense of responsibility, he inspired trust and confidence. A man of the happy medium, conciliatory by nature, he lent a reassuring conservatism to the Revolution. Smoothly methodical and solidly reliable, he seemed not to make mistakes. “He is a complete gentleman,” Thomas Cushing, a Massachusetts delegate, wrote about Washington. “He is sensible, amiable, virtuous, modest, and brave.”16 The delegates favored Washington as much for the absence of conspicuous weaknesses as for his manifest strengths. Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut captured Washington’s steady presence: “He seems discreet and virtuous, no harum-scarum, ranting, swearing fellow, but sober, steady, and calm.”17 The hallmark of Washington’s career was that he didn’t seek power but let it come to him. “I did not solicit the command,” he later said, “but accepted it after much entreaty.”18 No less important for a man who would have to answer to the Congress, he was a veteran politician with sixteen years of experience as a burgess, ensuring that he would subordinate himself to civilian control. Things seldom happened accidentally to George Washington, but he managed them with such consummate skill that they often seemed to happen accidentally. By 1775 he had a fine sense of power—how to gain it, how to keep it, how to wield it.
ON JUNE 14 the Congress officially took charge of the troops in Boston, giving birth to the Continental Army and creating an urgent need for a commander in chief. By this point the delegates were so impressed by the self-effacing Washington that his appointment was virtually a fait accompli. As a Virginia delegate wrote that day: “Col. Washington has been pressed to take the supreme command of the American troops encamped at Roxbury and I believe will accept the appointment, though with much reluctance, he being deeply impressed with the importance of that honorable trust and diffident of his own (supe
rior) abilities.”19 The only serious competitor was Hancock, who had little military experience and was hobbled by gout. When John Adams rose to speak and alluded to Washington, the latter jumped up from his seat near the door and with “his usual modesty darted into the library room,” recalled Adams.20 Expecting Adams to nominate him, Hancock watched with smug satisfaction until Adams named Washington instead—at which point the smile fled from his face. “Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them,” Adams said. “ . . . Mr. Hancock never loved me so well after this event as he had done before.”21 That Washington handled the moment with such tact, even as Hancock gave proof of patent egotism, only made his circumspect manner the more appealing.
The delegates deferred the final vote until the next day, when they passed a resolution “that a general be appointed to command all the continental forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty.”22 In the ensuing debate, the only credible argument leveled against Washington was that the New England troops deserved one of their own. But with both John and Sam Adams placing his name in nomination, Washington was the tailor-made compromise candidate. “In the meantime,” recollected John Adams, “pains were taken out of doors to obtain a unanimity and the voices were generally so clearly in favor of Washington that the dissenting members were persuaded to withdraw their opposition.”23 Washington was nominated by Thomas Johnson of Maryland and elected unanimously, initiating a long string of unanimous victories in his career.
