Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  That night, Greene, Lafayette, and General Anthony Wayne sent protests to Washington. Greene pointed out that the enemy line stretched for miles: the baggage train itself was twelve miles long. Light troops could make “a serious impression” on the flank and rear “without suffering them to bring us into a general action.” But the main army should be close enough to join in. “If it should amount to a general action, I think the chance is greatly in our favor.”

  Much as Washington disliked overruling a Council of War, he could no longer resist. Greatly reinforcing his skirmishers, he ordered them to attack the enemy left and rear if “fair opportunity offered.” Protocol required that he offer the leadership of so large a detachment to his second-in-command. But Lee, insisting that the plan was foolhardy, refused. Washington turned to Lafayette.

  Clinton, informed by his spies of the growing threat, shifted his line to put his crack troops on the left and rear. Washington responded by ordering another thousand men to join Lafayette. This augmented the detachment to about half the army. In came a letter from Lee, saying that, although he disapproved of Washington’s strategy, his honor required that he accept the command of what had become so major a movement. Washington recognized Lee’s “distress of mind,” but, instead of being worried by it, was glad to “ease” the concern of an old companion while at the same time gaining such experienced leadership.

  Washington’s long hesitation joined with the further delay caused by an intervening storm had created a situation where there was only one day left to attack. On June 28, 1778, the British, if not interrupted, would traverse the twelve miles between Monmouth Court House (now Freehold) and hills that would protect the rest of their march. On the night of the 27th, Lee encamped within six miles of the enemy. With the other half of the army, Washington was within nine. He ordered Lee to attack in the early morning “unless there should be very powerful reasons to the contrary.” He would advance with his own army to give any necessary support.

  The morning of the 28th was so hot and muggy that, as Washington pushed ahead with maximum speed, some of his men, stripped to the waist, dropped from the heat and did not rise again. Worried lest the British should succeed in eluding Lee, Washington listened for firing. At last: distant cannon shots and the crackle of small arms! Washington was jubilant. But then the sound of battle shredded into silence.

  Washington sent officers ahead to ascertain what had happened. Soon he encountered on the road a fifer from one of Lee’s regiments. The fifer “appeared to be a good deal frighted.” He stated that Lee’s corps was in retreat. This seemed impossible, as the sounds had indicated only the brief beginning of a battle. Lest what seemed a malicious report should discourage his troops whom he intended to hurry ahead all the faster, Washington ordered the fifer be segregated under guard.

  But soon Washington’s advance met whole regiments in retreat. The officers were confused, sure of no more than that they were obeying orders.

  Leaving Greene in command of his column, Washington charged ahead. Soon he saw, in front of more retreating regiments, a familiar scarecrow figure: Lee was chatting comfortably with his aides. Washington spurred over to him, asked, “What is all this confusion for, and retreat?” Such was the Commander in Chief’s angry vehemence* that Lee was for the moment stunned. Finally, he entered into a confused rigamarole: he had received contradictory intelligence; his orders had been disobeyed; people had been impertinent; he had found himself “in the most extensive plain in America,” where such troops as he commanded would be helpless before the enemy horse. Furthermore, the whole maneuver had been contrary to his best judgment. Washington shouted, “All this may be very true, sir, but you ought not to have undertaken it unless you intended to go through with it.”

  Washington rode away from Lee and was almost instantly informed that the British rear guard had not, after brushing Lee aside, continued their retreat, but were in close pursuit. Washington reacted with dismay. Unless the confusion with which he was surrounded could be instantly overcome, the upshot might be “fatal to the whole army.”

  Now was the time for the army’s new training to show itself, and, by God, it did! Men apparently in disarray obeyed with alacrity. “General Washington,” so testified Lafayette, “seemed to arrest fortune with one glance.… His presence stopped the retreat.… His graceful bearing on horseback, his calm and deportment which still retained a trace of displeasure … were all calculated to inspire the highest degree of enthusiasm.… I thought then as now that I had never beheld so superb a man.”

  The ground on which Washington found himself was suited to a delaying action. The road was a narrow passage between hills and a thick hedgerow. Washington stationed troops on both sides and had two cannon aimed down the road. Then he galloped back to find a more permanent defense.

  Washington came on Greene’s regiments advancing in good order. Sending Lee’s still-confused corps to the rear to re-form, he decided to make his stand with the fresh troops. The regiments were hardly in position before the men who had been engaged in the delaying action appeared, moving rapidly but in formation, firing over their shoulders. Then there was a tumultuous galloping of British horse. Two American regiments, although protected only by a fence, held their fire until they could annihilate the cavalrymen. Horses and men fell screaming.

  Next came a ponderous advance of British infantry. Unable to dent the American front, they tried to turn the left flank and, that failing, maneuvered to the right. Then, to the utter amazement of the British command, the American yokels advanced like regular troops, driving the professionals back. It was the British who had to take refuge in a strong position, and, during the night, slip silently away.

  Washington believed that at the Battle of Monmouth he had been cheated of a major victory by General Lee. Lee insisted that he had saved his force from being eaten alive by the more expert British. The result was an acrimonious controversy, during which Lee revived the old charges of incompetence against Washington. Washington forgot his affection for Lee. He had never, he stated, felt more than “common civility” towards a man whose “temper and plans were too versatile and violent to attract my admiration.” Lee was eventually discharged from the army and wounded in a duel by one of Washington’s aides.

  Masses of evidence brought forward at the time and in controversies subsequently staged by historians have obscured the truly basic issue: to what extent was Washington’s new army able to stand up against European regulars? On this issue, General Clinton gave his silent testimony by preferring, during the rest of his command, to fight where the Continental Army was not.

  After the Battle of Monmouth, the British hurried behind their fortifications at New York. For once, Washington felt no need to follow them quickly. He gave his men time to rest on the way. Exhibiting the usual eighteenth-century fear of the danger of bathing, he ordered his sergeants to see that the troops did not swim in the heat of the day or remain long in the Raritan River.

  He himself stayed in various well-appointed houses en route, enjoying the songs of pretty daughters, and watching his aides flirt with patriot belles exiled from New York. Events everywhere seemed to be moving favorably. Nine states had ratified the Articles of Confederation, which were a step towards creating a single unified nation that would match the single, unified Continental Army Washington had already created. And a French fleet under Count d’Estaing appeared at Philadelphia, revealing that France intended to become an active belligerent on the American side of the ocean.

  With his army relaxed around him, looking from those high cliffs, the Palisades, across the Hudson to where the British were strengthening their New York ramparts, Washington commented, “It is not a little pleasing nor less wonderful to contemplate that after two years maneuvering and undergoing the strangest vicissitudes that perhaps ever attended one contest since the creation, both armies are brought back to the very point they set out from, and that that which was the offending [offensive] party in the beginning i
s now reduced to the use of the spade and pickax for defense. The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations—but it will be time enough for me to turn preacher when my present appointment ceases, and therefore I shall add no more on the Doctrine of Providence.”

  * Every type of American has wished to make Washington an exemplar of his favorite activity, and thus it has been often repeated that on this occasion Washington established a record for eloquent profane swearing. The many eyewitness accounts describe fury but no oaths.

  SEVENTEEN

  Hope Abroad and Bankruptcy at Home

  (1778–1779)

  Since North American products tended to compete with England’s economy rather than supplement it, the sugar islands in the West Indies were the more profitable to the British Empire: thus, many statesmen considered defense of the islands more important than regaining the North American colonies. And being near French islands, the British Indies were particularly vulnerable to amphibious attack. Clinton had abandoned Philadelphia in preparation for obeying orders to send away eight thousand men—about a third of his command—mostly to the British Indies. This reduction in his force, added to the warning of new patriot possibilities he had received at Monmouth, made him move with extreme caution. Except for an occasional raid on a carelessly guarded American post, and one major foraging expedition into New Jersey too well planned to offer Washington any opportunities, Clinton remained, for the rest of the 1778 campaign, quiescent in New York.

  Washington’s principal excitement after mid-July was due to the presence of d’Estaing’s fleet, which had given the American side what it had never before possessed: naval superiority in the coastal waters. This was known to be temporary. Thirteen British ships of the line under Admiral John Byron (“Foul Weather Jack,” the poet’s grandfather) were rushing across the ocean. But while the supremacy lasted, six thousand Hessians, who were camped at Newport a mile off the Rhode Island mainland, were in peril.

  D’Estaing had brought four thousand marines. He landed them and a considerable patriot force on the island near the Hessians. Then, suspecting that Byron was in the offing, he gathered up his marines and sailed away, leaving the patriot force stranded. Only the Americans’ skill at escaping from a jam saved them from a severe drubbing.

  After the troops had escaped, Washington had to deal with a potentially worse danger. The American citizenry, not forgetting their long history of warfare with France, were furious at having their soldiers placed in a dangerous position and then deserted. When d’Estaing reappeared and anchored in Boston Harbor, riots culminated in the killing of a French officer as he tried to defend a French bakery. Was the new alliance to be upset before it really got started?

  Washington was himself angry, all the more because the Frenchmen in his own army were (despite the downfall of Conway) continuing to condescend to him and his American generals. “I most devoutly wish,” he could not resist writing privately, “that we had not a single foreign officer among us except the Marquis of Lafayette.” However, in his official capacity, Washington sprayed out soothing letters to civilian leaders and peremptory commands that his officers conciliate their powerful ally. All had become peaceful again (at least on the surface) when d’Estaing sailed off, without condescending to confide to Washington where he was going or whether he intended to return.

  Washington’s admiration for Lafayette included faith in his disciple’s patriotism: the Frenchman’s first loyalty would, of course, not be to the United States but to France. He was thus bothered when Lafayette suggested a Franco-American attack on Canada, the French to take the ruling stronghold of Quebec. Congress was enchanted and encouraged their French major general to sail home to promote the idea. Washington, who had fought to drive the French from Canada, suspected (research reveals wrongly) that his disciple’s scheme had been inspired from Paris. More cautious than the civil authorities to whom foreign affairs were entrusted, Washington warned that, whatever they might promise, the French would, if they got hold of Quebec, never let go. “Possessed of New Orleans on our right, Canada on our left, and seconded by the numerous tribes … whom she knows so well how to conciliate,” France would, after the defeat of England, “have it in her power to give law to these states.” On December, 1778, he posted to Philadelphia to block the move, as he successfully did. But his affection for Lafayette was not diminished.

  Although the winter of 1778–1779 would surely see no military action, Washington wished to make his stay in the capital as brief as possible. “Were I to give in to private conveniency and amusement, I should not be able to resist the invitation of my friends to make Philadelphia (instead of a squeezed up room or two) my quarters for the winter, but the affairs of the army require my constant attention and presence … to keep it from crumbling. As peace and retirement are my ultimate aim, and the most pleasing and flattering hope of my soul, everything advancive of this end contributes to my satisfaction, however difficult and inconvenient in the attainment, and will reconcile any place and all circumstances to my feelings whilst I continue in service.”

  However, efforts to work out with Congress practical expedients held him in Philadelphia for almost two months. This period was among the most educational of his life, although much of what he learned was not to be applied until he became President. Had Jefferson been a pupil beside him, Washington’s Presidency would surely have been less tempestuous.

  While the British lay still, a new enemy was on the move, more insidious because it struck everywhere, invading the very huts of the soldiers. That enemy was inflation. Washington asked, “When a rat in the shape of a horse” could not be bought for less than two hundred pounds, “what funds can stand the present expenses of the army?”

  Since it was hard to procure food with any currency the seller would accept or to hire wagons that would transport supplies any distance, Washington had not dared to quarter his army, even shrunken as it was, in a single camp. The troops were hutted for the winter on both sides of the Hudson in a zigzag line stretching some seventy miles through New York and New Jersey. But this dangerous decision helped only a little. The soldiers remained miserably supplied, and what pay they could send home would not buy enough to support their families. Add that the bounties offered for enlistment had too little real value to attract recruits.

  Washington was himself in danger of bankruptcy. He felt it his duty, as the most conspicuous leader of the cause, to put his prestige behind the currency by accepting the almost worthless stuff at face value in payment of what was owed him, even old debts contracted before the Revolution. But those from whom Washington had to buy had no such scruples: they demanded vastly enlarged payments which reflected the actual value of the paper. The squeeze finally became so great that Washington irritably instructed his estate manager not to consult him about accepting paper currency. He should do whatever the most patriotic neighbors did.

  Philadelphia was the capital and the grinding mill of the inflation. On his arrival there, Washington’s reaction was a farmer’s and soldier’s outrage at the luxury engaged in by the moneymen—often suppliers of the army—who knew how to turn the fluctuations of the currency to their own advantage. While the value of money was sinking five percent a day until it might cease to circulate altogether, dances, concerts, and dinners, displaying the greatest expense and elegance, were, so Washington complained, absorbing attention to the exclusion of the problems of the nation. Washington could not help enjoying a good party, but, as General Greene wrote, the “luxury and profusion” gave him “infinitely more pain than pleasure.” Revisualizing the death agonies he had seen on battlefields, remembering his starving men shivering in nakedness, Washington thundered, “Speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men.”

  Then, as was na
tural for him, Washington put his mind on analyzing the problem. For some time (since March, 1777) the future brilliant financier Alexander Hamilton had been on his staff. However, there is conclusive evidence that Washington had not discussed national financial problems with the youth, then still in his early twenties and somewhat naïve on the subject. In Philadelphia, Washington turned to Robert and Gouverneur Morris, the men who were later to educate Hamilton. The two Morrises (who were not related) became Washington’s intimate friends.

  Under the Morrises’ tutelage, the planter-warrior began to learn about currency. As an acceptable expedient, governments printed money on the understanding that it would be brought back for cancellation by tax revenues. This was, in effect, a method for anticipating taxes. The Continental Congress had printed money because it had no other way of paying for anything. But the states, unwilling to diminish their own power, had refused the central body the right to tax. It was agreed that the tax revenues needed to bolster or retire the Continental paper were to be supplied by the states, but once state officials got their hands on any cash, they were unlikely to let it go. Thus Congress was left, as time passed, with no resource except to create more and more paper behind which there were no assets whatsoever. Again, as in the necessary strengthening and reorganizing of the army, state jealousy of national power stood strongly in the way of victory.