Washington, now that he knew that a French fleet was expected, was anxious to open all alternatives. He began drawing up plans for an attack on the South should New York City not prove vulnerable. However, he continued to broadcast word that New York City was menaced. This was regarded by the French (and subsequently by many historians) as an indiscretion. Actually it served two purposes: it encouraged American enlistment and frightened Clinton into ordering Cornwallis to send two thousand men back to New York. Abandoning his effort to subdue Virginia, Cornwallis fortified, as a base for what army he had left, a besiegable position on the Virginia coast at Yorktown. Thus Washington’s strategy set the trap which Rochambeau’s secret plans were to close.
It was July 6, 1781, when Rochambeau’s army moved in beside Washington’s some twelve miles north of Manhattan in the neighborhood of Dobbs Ferry. Social problems excruciating to the Americans instantly arose. Officers in faded and torn uniforms or no uniforms at all had to hold up their heads in the presence of officers spotless, gold-braided, brightly colored, bemedaled, beplumed. Using their hard money to buy plentiful supplies, the French entertained sumptuously, but when the Americans entertained back, they could hardly scratch up enough food to postpone hunger.
Herculean efforts of procurement enabled Washington to give dinner to thirty Frenchmen a day. They complained that the coffee he served was weak and the salad dressing merely vinegar. Furthermore, since each guest was given only one plate, everything had to be sloshed together. They were amazed by the informality of the American headquarters, at how long everyone sat at the table, and at how much Washington enjoyed the dinners. He and his fellow American officers cracked hickory nuts by the hour, the conversation “free and agreeable,” the toasts jocose and often ribald. Since Washington did not himself drink heavily, a French nobleman concluded that this conviviality was an emotional release from the problems that forever assailed him.
Trying to find some European conception which would fit the ragged American army, various officers compared them with the picturesque brigands who were then swashbuckling around in pre-romantic literature. Von Closen wrote more seriously, “It is incredible that soldiers composed of men of every age, even of children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and stand fire so steadfastly.” He credited “the calm and calculated measures of General Washington, in whom I daily discover some new and eminent qualities.… He is certainly admirable as the leader of his army, in which everyone regards him as his father and friend.”
On August 14, Washington received from his French “subordinates” news that was a command. De Grasse was expected to arrive with a major fleet and thirty-two hundred soldiers on September 3, but he would not come anywhere near New York, either to menace that base or to carry the American and French armies southward in his ships. He would steer directly for the Chesapeake. He could not stay beyond the middle of October. The armies on the Hudson would have to march four hundred and fifty miles to meet him.
Washington was deeply disturbed. Since patriot affairs were “in the most ruinous train imaginable,” he believed it extremely dangerous “to embark in any enterprise wherein, from the most rational plan and accurate calculations, the favorable issue should not have appeared as clear to my view as a ray of light.” If the arduous march ended in disaster or even just frustration, patriot morale might collapse irrevocably.
The strategy which Rochambeau had forced upon him was packed with uncertainties, any one of which could overturn the whole. Most serious, de Grasse might not arrive. He might change his mind, be stopped by contrary orders, be blocked by one of those storms that were so destructive to fleets of sailing vessels, be driven into cautious withdrawal or even defeated by the stronger British fleet which, so rumor reported, was being ordered up from the Indies to counteract the French move. The French cannon were in Newport and too heavy to be transported overland: they could only be carried south if the little fleet attached to Rochambeau, which had never yet dared challenge British superiority in the local waters, were able to slip secretly by the vessels watching them. To get the Continental Army—to say nothing of the French—from the Hudson to the mouth of the Chesapeake would strain the vanishing patriot resources to the breaking point or beyond. And even if everything else worked, if the two armies and de Grasse’s fleet did converge, the bird might have flown.
Washington now knew that Cornwallis was fortifying Yorktown as the base for his army, but Washington also knew there was no force available in Virginia to hold Cornwallis in these fortifications. If warned of his danger, he could escape from the trap merely by marching inland. How was he to be kept from being warned? The allied armies could not march off under (so to speak) Clinton’s nose without Clinton noticing it, and if Clinton realized they were going south, he would guess that they were to meet de Grasse there. A dispatch boat sent from New York would, ocean travel being so much the quicker, reach Cornwallis before the trudging armies could. The only hope was to get well on the way before the British had any inkling of the allies’ destination.
This was possible since an attack on the British position in New York from the rear, via Staten Island, could involve marching two thirds of the distance across New Jersey. Allowing spies laboriously to achieve glimpses of presumably secret papers, Washington persuaded Clinton that de Grasse was coming north to cooperate in an operation against Staten Island. Washington sent out engineers to prepare in New Jersey what looked like a major camp, even building ovens capable of baking thousands of loaves of bread. The ruse was successful. The two armies got to the Delaware before Clinton guessed.
The plan was to travel by water down the Delaware to a point from which it was only a twelve-mile march to the head of the Chesapeake, where more boats would be waiting. But there was a shortage of boats and of everything else. As Washington sped around to procure necessities, his nerves were harassed by conflicting reports concerning the different operations which would have to key together if the result were not to be catastrophe.
On September 5, Rochambeau and his staff were drifting down the Delaware when they saw on the waterfront at Chester, Pennsylvania, a tall man in blue and buff regimentals dancing up and down, waving a hat and a handkerchief. It looked from a distance as if this jumping jack were His Excellency, George Washington. Indeed it was. He was yelling that de Grasse’s fleet had actually arrived. According to the Duke de Lauzun, “I never saw a man overcome with more great and sincere joy.” The Duke de Deux Ponts recorded that Washington behaved like “a child whose every wish had been gratified.” Washington even went so far as to embrace Rochambeau “warmly.”
Now, as if miraculously, everything fell in place. Cornwallis, unwarned until he was actually menaced by the approaching allied armies, chose not to march out of his fortifications but to strengthen them. The weak French fleet from Newport, having escaped British observation, sailed in, bringing not only the cannon but ships of shallow enough draft to ferry the troops down the Chesapeake. The British naval reinforcement proved, on its appearance, not as strong as had been expected or as ably commanded: the famous Admiral Rodney had been taken ill. After an inconclusive skirmish with de Grasse, the British navy retired, leaving de Grasse in control of the water and Cornwallis immured at Yorktown.
As always when the British were in trouble, patriots came flocking: Washington soon had ninety-five hundred effectives. The French troops, those commanded by Rochambeau plus those de Grasse had brought, numbered eighty-eight hundred. The safety of Cornwallis’s men, estimated at five to six thousand, depended altogether on their fortifications. These had been expertly designed by British engineers—but there was counterexpertise. Rochambeau, who boasted that he had been present at fourteen sieges, told Washington that, from here on, the sequence of moves was dictated by military science, and unless an unexpected British reinforcement turned the tables, the result was inevitable: the Yorktown defenses would fall and Cornwallis would surrender.
The initial step was to start a trench so far beyond British cannon range that troops could enter it unscathed. The trench was extended towards the fortifications at an angle that prevented it from being enfiladed by enemy cannon fire. After this “first parallel” had advanced the intended distance, sunken bases were built for the reception of heavy cannon. Gangs of crouching men pulled in the heavy guns. These would then batter the Yorktown walls until the British cannon were silenced.
The softening-up process being completed, a “second parallel” would be advanced so close to the walls that cannon in new positions could lob their shells over the fortifications into the enemy encampment itself. Two British redoubts had been placed to bar the way of a second parallel. These would have to be stormed, but, since they were separated from the main fortification and could not hold many men, they would surely be taken.
At some point, the honor of the British army would require a sortie from behind the walls into the Franco-American trenches, but the balance of power was such that this maneuver, like the defense of the redoubts, could yield nothing but piles of dead and wounded men. And once the British encampment and the town behind the walls were open to cannon fire, the time of surrender depended only on how many casualties Cornwallis was willing to accept.
Washington was impressed by this scenario as it was described to him, but he was also puzzled. Cornwallis surely understood the sequence as well as did the French. Since Washington himself could not possibly await without action almost inevitable disaster, he could not conceive that Cornwallis would do so. Surely Cornwallis would make an effort, however dangerous, to break away, and it seemed to Washington that he had an available route.
The York River, which flowed by the back of the Yorktown fortifications, penetrated westward into Virginia. A little British fleet was huddled against the walls. Although many of the ships drew too much water to go upriver, enough were usable so that Cornwallis could evacuate his men with a favorable wind on a dark night. He would, of course, have to leave behind most of his artillery and supplies, but that did not seem to the Commander of the Continental Army an insuperable difficulty. If Cornwallis could get free in Virginia, he might, proceeding in the manner of Washington’s own army, find his way to safety.
Washington described this possibility to de Grasse, and urged that several French frigates, taking their own advantage of darkness and wind, slip by the Yorktown defenses and block the river. The French admiral laughed at the whole idea. The risk to his own frigates would be too great and Cornwallis would not be that crazy.
De Grasse’s worries (which also became Washington’s and were, in fact, Cornwallis’s hopes) were that the British fleet would be, as some reports indicated, reinforced, and would return again to challenge French control of that part of the ocean. Or that unforeseen difficulties would so slow the siege that the admiral’s other commitments would force him to return to the Indies before Yorktown was reduced.
As it turned out, no British fleet appeared, and the siege proceeded according to schedule. Every morning, Washington attended a conference during which he was instructed by the French experts on what the American army should do that day. When the first parallel was completed, he was invited, as the titular Commander in Chief, to fire the first gun. It was a French gun, brand-new, containing perfectly fitted ammunition, manned by trained artillerymen. Washington was amazed to see the ball strike the exact spot on the British walls that had previously been pointed out to him. The American ragtag and bobtail artillery was utterly outclassed.
After the first parallel had served its deadly purpose, the redoubts in the way of the second parallel were effectively stormed. The expected British sortie passed ineffectually with the expected number of casualties. The guns placed in the second parallel set fire to the little British fleet in the York River and pounded the town. Deserters reported that Cornwallis was cowering in a “grotto” with the hopeless despair of a rabbit while the ferrets dug ever closer. Finally, as the blood and destruction above his shelter became completely unbearable, Cornwallis gave a convulsive twitch: he made and then abandoned an effort to ferry his army across the York River. On October 17, he sent a messenger to Washington proposing a twenty-four-hour truce “to settle terms for the surrender.”
During the surrender negotiations, Washington, not wishing victory to be marred by persecution, agreed to a subterfuge which enabled the British to spirit away American Tories, who would otherwise be arrested, and American deserters to the British army, who would otherwise be hanged. Captured slaves were to be returned to their owners, and the British army would become, without reservations, prisoners of war. But one grievous issue did arise: Washington’s insistence that “the same honors shall be granted to the surrendering army as were granted to the garrison of Charleston.”
When Charleston had fallen, Clinton had expressed his disdain for the rebels by refusing them “the honors of war” traditionally accorded a defeated army which had fought well. In addition to other humiliations, the American army had not been allowed to march to the surrender ceremony with their flags flying. If the same strictures were applied to Cornwallis, his army would be disgraced before all Europe. But Washington was adamant.
Cornwallis thereupon decided that he was personally too sick to attend the surrender ceremony. His representative, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, did his best to hand his sword not to Washington but to some French officer. Washington then refused to accept the sword. If Cornwallis was to be represented by a deputy, so would he be. O’Hara was forced to surrender to General Lincoln, who was the officer Clinton had insulted at Charleston.
Popular history equates Cornwallis’s surrender with American victory in the Revolution. But Washington, who still mourned that de Grasse’s cooperation had not resulted in smashing the British bastion at New York, wrote that the capture of Yorktown was “an interesting event that may be productive of much good if properly improved, but if it should be the means of relaxation and sink us into supineness and [false] security, it had better not have happened.”
True, the bag at Yorktown was larger than Washington had expected: 7,241 soldiers and 840 seamen, 244 pieces of artillery and thousands of small arms. But the British had lost only a quarter of their might on American soil. The enemy forces in various bases from Halifax to Charleston still outnumbered by several times the Continental Army. And de Grasse hoisted his sails and returned to the Indies, restoring to the British the control of the American ocean.
TWENTY-TWO
A Gulf of Civil Horror
(1781–1783)
Although the war would go on, no further major action was indicated for the rest of 1781—and Washington was in Virginia, not far from Mount Vernon. During almost seven years his mind had been perpetually “on the stretch.” He looked forward to at least several weeks of a relaxing vacation. But it was not to be.
His stepson, John Parke Custis, had sat out most of the war, an indolent, self-indulgent rich young man who had not scrupled to take advantage of his stepfather’s absence to cheat him in little ways. But the possibility of associating outside Yorktown with aristocratic French officers had filled Custis with sudden martial ardor. He attached himself to Washington as a volunteer aide. This would have caused no more than irritation had not the soft young man, who had not been exposed to any of the camp diseases, sickened. On the very day that Washington intended to start his vacation, John Parke Custis died. Washington was unable to express any personal grief. However, his beloved wife was completely desolated.
Mount Vernon, where he had hoped to find some quiet, was turned, as he expressed it, into “the House of Mourning.” Washington became glad to take Martha to Philadelphia, away from the place where every object reminded her of her loss.
He intended soon to join his army beside the Hudson, but he was held in the capital for four months. The basic military problems were now more than ever grounded in the civilian sphere. Despite the still powerful British presence, there was a gener
al feeling that the Revolution was as good as won. This portended so much more neglect of the already extremely neglected army that, should Clinton or his government decide to undertake another serious military effort, the Continental force might be helpless. And there was also the possibility that the American soldiers, embittered by indifference to their needs, would themselves destroy, in one way or another, the freedom for which they had fought.
The financial difficulties—no money available to give bounties to or to support and pay the existing army—were symptoms of a more serious rot. The thirteen colonies had been driven into close cooperation by a crisis which gave them the alternatives Benjamin Franklin had so aptly described: if they did not hang together, they would hang separately. But even on the heights of the crisis, the states had argued for years before they could agree on Articles of Confederation, which did little more than create a loose alliance. Now that the crisis seemed to be fading, the states were becoming increasingly indifferent to the Continental Congress and the combined effort it fostered.
Under Washington’s urging, the Congress appropriated for the next campaign eight million dollars. Although this was barely enough to keep the core of an army in the field and although Washington wrote hortatory letters to the various governors, the states did not supply Congress with money enough to pay even the interest on already outstanding debts.
The obvious and necessary solution was that the central body be allowed to raise money in its own right. Washington’s hopes and the anticipations of the troops came to depend on the proposition that Congress be empowered to collect customs duties. However, the Articles of Confederation had so rigorously preserved local sovereignty that federal taxation could only be authorized through unanimous agreement of all the states. As winter dragged into the spring of 1782 and on towards autumn, the matter was considered by the various state legislatures. Favorable votes were reported, but the fact remained that if any laggard voted no or refused to act, the army would surely not receive its past and present dues.
Washington- The Indispensable Man Page 18
