As Washington suffered with and for his troops at Valley Forge, it was made increasingly clear to him that he was menaced by what he considered an effort to “exalt” General Gates “on the ruins of my reputation.”
The surprising aspect of the agitation to replace Washington as commander in chief is not that it took place, but that it had taken so long to develop. Washington had again and again been defeated, but he had never defeated the main British army. (At Trenton and Princeton he had beaten up outposts.) If he were not losing the war—which was very open to question—he was surely failing to win it. He had started out by offending New England and then, as he lost his provincialism, had shifted into what seemed to many leaders a worse fallacy: the belief that the United States was not an alliance but a nation, one and indivisible. Although admittedly not allied with the conservatives, he had outraged many a radical by protecting all conservatives who could be persuaded to go along with the cause. And many congressmen remained worried by his insistence on such a long-term united army, trained to obey an expert officer corps, as weakened the soldiers’ state ties and seemed a possible instrument of tyranny.
Utopian thinking backed the political preferences of state leaders by postulating that the best fighting force would be made up of militiamen who exerted their God-given natural gifts as they took turns defending their fields. Suspicions that it was Washington’s personal incompetence that made him insist that he could not win with such an army were encouraged by the fact that much of Gates’s triumphant force had been militia. It was only too easy to conclude that if Gates could thus beat Burgoyne he could thus beat Howe.
Thomas Conway, the Irish-Frenchman whom Washington hated more than he ever hated any other man (Engraving reproduced in James Bennett Nolan’s George Washington and the Town of Reading in Pennsylvania)
Although the foreign officers in the American service could not agree with the more radical members of Congress on the glories of militia, many of them were only too glad to testify that the American General—he did not obey the correct rules of war—was incompetent. The most vociferous such critic was that Irish-born Frenchman Brigadier General Thomas Conway. The movement to remove Washington is called (somewhat inaccurately) the Conway Cabal.
Conway, who could never forget that he had served under Frederick the Great, announced himself as the most experienced officer in Washington’s army, and made no bones about admitting that he was there because, if he became a major general in the American service, he could become a brigadier when he returned to the superior French service. The catch was that he was a junior brigadier in America, and the blockhead Washington would not agree to his being promoted over the heads of a flock of other American blockheads. Nor was his voice listened to with adequate deference at Councils of War, where he was so dictatorial that Washington found him unbearable.
To congressmen already unhappy about Washington, Conway communicated that his own services were desperately needed to counteract the deficiencies of the Commander in Chief. However, an officer of his merit could not accept humiliation. He would be forced to resign if not given his rightful rank as major general. Eventually, Richard Henry Lee, one of the congressmen who most distrusted Washington, informed the Commander in Chief that Congress intended to promote Conway.
Washington’s reply reveals how tight his nerves were drawn. To raise an officer “without conspicuous merit” over the heads of many senior brigadiers would, he wrote, “give a fatal blow to the existence of the army.” And then, for the first time in his Revolutionary service, Washington hinted that he might himself resign: “It will be impossible for me to be of any further service if such insuperable difficulties are thrown in my way.”
This letter revealed to Washington’s opponents that in Conway they had a lever which might be used to pry the Commander in Chief loose.
The next development was a drunken indiscretion blurted out by Gates’s favorite aide, Colonel James Wilkinson. Washington, on being notified by some of his own supporters of what Wilkinson had said, wrote Conway laconically:
“Sir: A letter I received last night contained the following paragraph: ‘In a letter from General Conway to General Gates, he says, “Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad councillors would have ruined it.”’
“I am, Sir, your humble servant, George Washington.”
By now, an experienced politician was gathering up the various strands of opposition to Washington. Thomas Mifflin had been one of Washington’s four first advisers. He had felt in himself great potentialities as a warrior, and his influence on Congress had brought him high rank, but he was a hysterical soldier, and Washington had kept him dealing with supply as quartermaster general. Finally, he had high-tailed from the army, leaving Washington with no quartermaster general.
Mifflin realized that Washington’s magic was still so great that Congress would not vote to discharge him. Better not to raise any definite issue, but to put Washington in a position which would force him to resign. Towards this end, Mifflin and Richard Henry Lee perverted two suggestions Washington had himself made. Washington had wished to have a semi-permanent Board of War substituted for the ever-shifting congressional committees that supplied the army. And he had asked that he be empowered to appoint as inspector general an experienced foreign officer who would help him establish a uniform system of drill and maneuver.
Mifflin and Lee changed the conception of the Board of War. Far from being limited to supplying the army, it was to have the top military authority, outranking the Commander in Chief. And the inspector general would not be just an adviser on European technical skills. He was to supervise all Washington’s commands and acts, reporting directly to the Board of War. It was now only necessary to man this structure with the right people. The president of the Board of War, who was informed unofficially that his mission was the “total reform and regulation” of Washington’s army, was, of course, Gates. Mifflin put himself on the board, which he filled with other critics of Washington. But the real stroke of genius was the choice of the inspector general: Washington’s enemy Conway was advanced to major general and appointed to rule over him.
Mifflin managed to get all this through Congress, not because that body was hostile to Washington but because no one paid any attention. The watchword, until Washington’s letter of resignation lay safely in hand, had to be “hush.” Mifflin was thus greatly concerned when Washington’s letter to Conway revealed that information was leaking. Whether by chance or by expert strategy, Washington had given his opponents no hint as to the means by which he had been informed concerning Conway’s correspondence with Gates. Mifflin assumed that some agent of the Commander in Chief’s—perhaps Hamilton—had secretly raided Gates’s files. He warned Gates.
Gates took it for granted that his files had actually been tampered with. He wrote Washington, sending copies to Mifflin and officially to Congress, a letter in which he by clear implication accused Washington of instigating dishonorable acts. Washington thereupon revealed his source as the blabbering of Gates’s own aide.
Conway was soon also engaged in public controversy. When he had appeared at Valley Forge, immensely pleased with himself and bearing his commissions from the Board of War, Washington used a technicality to brush him aside. Conway thereupon wrote Washington two insulting letters. By mocking the Commander in Chief as an amateur soldier—“I do not pretend, sir, to be a consummate general, but … an old sailor knows more about ships than an admiral who has never been to sea”—Conway in effect claimed superiority for all the European volunteers over the native American officers.
What Mifflin had hoped would be a subtle maneuver behind the scenes had now come most gaudily into the light of day. Rumor buzzed through the army camps, galloped from crossroad to crossroad to report that Washington had been insulted, that an underhand effort was being made to force him to resign. Men who had been passionate in criticism of Washington flew to his defense with twice the passion.
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Washington’s opponents were soon in full flight. Conway found that those who had egged him on were refusing even to speak to him; he was forced out of the army. Gates lied to Washington about his correspondence with Conway and expressed a hope that the whole matter might be dropped. Mifflin announced publicly that Washington was the best friend he ever had in his life.
Washington was not easily appeased. In order to keep from encouraging the enemy and dispiriting his own followers, he had hidden from the world the shortages from which he had suffered, accepting criticism for what he considered not his fault. For the sake of the unity of the cause, he had bowed his head to many an insult. But the end of his control had come: his anger poured out with all the fury of a flood long restrained by a dam. He encouraged his supporters to harass his enemies with threats of duels. He expressed amusement that Mifflin had to do some fancy footwork to keep from a bloody engagement with the grim, martial General John Cadwallader. Cadwallader actually fought Conway, wounding him in the neck and mouth. Thinking he might die, Conway wrote Washington an abject letter which Washington did not answer. Conway recovered.
The Conway Cabal achieved exactly the opposite of what had been intended. Like a lightning rod, it released harmlessly fears, doubts, and resentments that might otherwise, as the long years of indecisive war rolled on, have massed until Washington was struck down. The threat that he might be eliminated made Americans visualize the leadership without him. Supposing he were replaced by the noisy controversialist Gates, who fostered and was fostered by a radical clique in Congress? That would clearly be, whatever the military result, a disaster for national unity: faction would rise to fight faction. And if not Gates, who else? The answer was that there was no one else. Washington was recognized as the indispensable man. Until the fighting was almost over, his leadership was not again seriously challenged.
* Historians like to blame Burgoyne’s debacle on Howe’s failure to move to his support up the Hudson, but allover British strategy had designed Burgoyne’s army to act independently. Howe was not violating the British strategic plan when he sailed for Philadelphia.
SIXTEEN
The Road Turns Upward
(1778)
Valley Forge was the very image of misery only during the first two of the army’s six months there. At about the time that the Conway Cabal misfired, by mid-February, 1778, food became, if not delectable, adequate. The men had all moved from cold and smoky tents to cabins of their own building; leaks had been plugged and chimneys adjusted to draw efficiently. Firewood abounded. Furthermore, long enlistments had populated the “spacious city” with men mutually congenial: all were temperamentally attuned to military service. The prevailing lack—clothes—was not serious when the inhabitants of each hut could assemble one complete costume for whoever was called to duty out in the cold. Nakedness became a joke. A French volunteer remembered a dinner party to which no one was admitted who possessed a whole pair of trousers. By combining their rations the guests feasted on tough steak and potatoes, with hickory nuts for dessert. With “some kind of spirits” they made a salamander, “set the liquor on fire and drank it up, flame and all. Such a ragged and at the same time merry set of fellows were never before brought together.”
Washington shared the prevailing high spirits only when he did not think ahead. Although his army was outnumbered by a well-supplied and expert enemy, Congress seemed to be doing nothing. In mid-April, he exploded to his civilian masters, “I shall make no apology for the freedom of this letter.… My agreement with the committee entitled me to upwards of forty thousand Continental troops.” In all the American army posts there were hardly fifteen thousand.
The perversion of the inspector-generalship to the ends of the Conway Cabal had blocked Washington’s desire to have a foreign officer teach his men the conventional military skills that would enable them to stand up against a foreign army in open battle. That the solution had arrived was far from clear when there rode into camp a seemingly toplofty German volunteer who announced himself as Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Baron von Steuben, and who claimed to have held high rank under Frederick the Great. It soon developed that Steuben was not a baron and had held no high military rank. But the impostor proved both an able drillmaster and open-minded enough to appreciate the peculiarities of American troops. No European army, the bogus nobleman pointed out, would have held together under equivalent hardships. “The genius of this nation,” he wrote a European comrade, “is not in the least to be compared with the Prussians, the Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it, but I am obliged to say, ‘This is the reason that you ought to do that,’ and then he does it.”
In cooperation with American officers, Steuben worked out a simplified manual of arms pragmatically suited to American needs. He taught the soldiers how to use bayonets. He taught them how to maneuver in ranks, thus curing their tendency to advance in single file which had forced Washington into complicated maneuvers that would permit several columns to strike at once. And Steuben made the whole thing fun by his ebullient temperament: ecstasy when maneuvers went well, and at mistakes hysterical rages, which the troops came to expect and relish.
Drilling with Steuben became the favorite sport at Valley Forge. While engaging in what could almost be a more complicated square dance, the men learned skills that had previously escaped them. Keen competition grew up between the different corps. Delinquent officers were fined quarts of brandy.
Early in May, Washington learned that France had recognized the independence of the United States, a move that seemed to dictate war between France and England. In excitement, Washington wrote, “Calmness and serenity seems likely to succeed in some measure those dark and tempestuous clouds which at times appeared ready to overwhelm us. The game, whether well or ill played hitherto, seems now to be verging fast to a favorable issue.” Embroiled in Europe, the British might well abandon their American effort. Washington visualized himself back in Mount Vernon, enjoying, in peace and prosperity, American independence.
Britain’s American endeavor was indeed in turmoil. The capture of the rebel capital had achieved little beyond creating a brilliant social season for the Tory girls who had remained in Philadelphia. The rebellion flowed almost unhindered around the occupied city, and the British were unable to sortie into the countryside without being surrounded by clouds of guerrilla fighters. Howe’s hope of recruiting a large corps of Americans disillusioned with the rebel cause had been frustrated by Washington’s gentleness to Tories and the mostly good behavior of the Continental Army. When Howe was recalled to England, his officers and their girls fittingly said farewell with a grand ball.
Howe was succeeded by his second-in-command, the dour, neurotic, self-righteous Sir Henry Clinton, who was an audacious planner and a hesitant doer. As soon as Clinton arrived from New York, the word was that Philadelphia would be evacuated. Washington waited eagerly for reports that the transports were being fitted for a long ocean voyage to the Indies or to Europe. But the navy carried the army’s baggage to New York. The troops were clearly going to march there through the lowlands of New Jersey.
In mid-June, the washerwomen who were among Washington’s most effective spies, reported that the British officials in Philadelphia had ordered their linen delivered at once, “finished or unfinished.” It followed that the march was about to start. Sure enough, on the 18th, the enemy force crossed the Delaware. Again, as when Boston was evacuated, there was the opportunity for a triumphal parade with the Commander in Chief at the head. Again, there was no such parade. Washington was busy trying to decide how to react to the British move.
Owing to the prevalent practice of exchanging prisoners, Washington had been reunited with an old colleague: General Lee had come riding back from the British lines. Washington did not know that Lee had, during his captivity, made suggestions for British action that could well be considered traitorous to the American cause. Washington, of co
urse, remembered that Lee had been insubordinate to him personally. Yet he was glad to have the military wizard back again.
He looked forward particularly to showing Lee how, with Steuben’s help, he had in a year and a half improved the discipline and the skills of the army. Lee was not impressed. Washington’s efforts to develop a force that could stand up to the British in open battle seemed to Lee pure idiocy. Washington, Lee stated, was “not fit to command a sergeant’s guard.” Lee was so publicly critical of the weakness of the Continental Army that Washington, having pointed out that much was irremediable, asked that criticisms be limited to discussions at headquarters.
Washington was on the horns of a dilemma. He had prepared his army to attack the British. The British were now available, but in open country where they fought best. And the total situation was breaking so well for the Americans that it seemed foolhardy to take a risk. Regretfully, Washington limited his active intervention with the British march to sending skirmishes against their flanks. He would lead his main army parallel with the enemy through the New Jersey uplands. When the enemy reached their bases in New York, he would reinforce the defenses on the Hudson.
As if for the purpose of tantalizing Washington (actually because they found bridges torn down and paused to rebuild them in style), the British moved across New Jersey with an excruciating slowness. On June 24, Washington called a Council of War. The enemy, he reported, numbered nine to ten thousand. The Americans had 10,684, not counting twelve hundred regulars and twelve hundred militia hovering on the British flanks. Might not an attack be staged? Lee was instantly on his feet. He insisted that the inexpert Americans were merely a morsel for the British. Why, when a French alliance was impending, risk disaster? Behaving (so wrote Washington’s brilliant young aide Alexander Hamilton) in a manner which “would have done honor to the most honorable society of midwives,” the council voted against any major action.
Washington- The Indispensable Man Page 13
