Germain’s workday came to a halt. His world came to a halt. Outside the window, London was in its usual bustle of church bells and horse-clop. But, something like two months earlier, somewhere in the wilds of North America, an entire British army had surrendered. Had such a thing ever happened before in all of English history? So much blood and treasure wasted. The strategy that he had engineered for subduing Britain’s rebellious colonies was undone.
On December 3, Germain dressed himself with his usual grim dignity, gathered his sheafs of documents, and, together with the prime minister, Lord North, marched into the chilly, echoing chamber of the Houses of Parliament. There was a regularly scheduled debate on military matters, involving questions and answers concerning the numbers of soldiers in various places. He waited until he was pointedly asked whether there was any news of Burgoyne. He rose. He said that, indeed, he had received news. He spoke plainly: a bloodless recital of facts. “. . . General Burgoyne and his army were surrounded by a force greatly superior—cut off from fresh supplies of provisions, and unable to pierce through the numbers of the enemy, so situated, he had been forced to capitulate, and had surrendered himself and his army prisoners, on condition that they should engage not to serve during the war in America. . . .” The loss of Burgoyne’s army, he told the chamber, “was a most unfortunate affair.” But, he said, he hoped the House would “not be over anxious in condemnation,” and he hoped the members would “suspend their judgments both on the conduct of the general and of the minister.”
An uncharacteristic silence seems to have fallen over the chamber at the conclusion of his statement, expressed in such calmness and coming in response to a routine question. Then Colonel Isaac Barré, one of Germain’s steadiest foes, rose. He declared himself “shocked at the easy manner” in which Germain related the fate of “the brave Burgoyne.” And he was even more shocked that Germain would attempt to deflect blame for the sorry affair away from himself by insinuating that the House might point the finger at the general. It was clear that “the man who planned the expedition was to blame. The minister alone who concerted the scheme, was obnoxious to reprehension for its failure. It was an inconsistent scheme, an impracticable one, unworthy of a British minister, and rather too absurd for an Indian chief.”
Then Barré felt the need to back up to earlier debates, when Germain had first presented his strategy to the House. He asked his colleagues to “remember how frequently, how earnestly, how sincerely, I have warned the minister of the effects of this plan.” And to Germain he fairly spat: “I foresaw the consequences. I foretold the event.” Letting his emotions unfurl as the information Germain had imparted sunk in, Barré went on: “Does the noble lord know the extent of his criminality? Does he know the resentments of this House? I believe he knows neither.”
Another Whig member, James Luttrell, rose, and used the occasion to question the very notion of waging war against the Americans. “The Americans, it is evident, will not give up their liberties, they will die first,” he proclaimed. General Howe, the overall commander of British forces in North America, he went on, with his great army, his ships and supplies, had all he needed to defeat the Americans, except for one thing: “I mean a just cause.” The Americans, he declared, had right on their side. He reached back to the thirteenth century, the time when Englishmen had won a list of individual rights from King John: “our Magna Charta was obtained by men so resolved; and the Americans have not proved themselves less deserving of their liberties, than those Britons. An American Magna Charta is what they wisely contend for; not a Magna Charta to be taxed by strangers, a thousand leagues distant.”
All the Whigs were lining up to speak now. Edmund Burke took the floor. He thanked his colleagues who had spoken first, which gave him “some time to calm the tumult and perturbation” in his breast. Then he pondered aloud: “A whole army compelled to lay down their arms, and receive laws from their enemies,” he said, was “a matter so new” that he could not think of another such instance in the whole of English history. And yet, he had to reflect on the manner in which this surrender was handled. The Americans, he said, had repeatedly been characterized by the ministry as cowards, as backwards, as morally inferior to Englishmen. But consider the conduct of the Americans who defeated Burgoyne. “Our army was totally at their mercy. We had employed the savages to butcher them, their wives, their aged parents, and their children. And yet, generous to the last degree, they gave our men leave to depart on their parole, never more to bear arms against North America.”
Charles James Fox spoke next, and he took aim directly at Germain. “An army of 10,000 men destroyed through the obstinate, wilful ignorance, and incapacity of the noble lord,” he cried, “called loudly for vengeance.” He demanded an inquiry.
On and on it went, with one opposition member after another denouncing both Germain and the war. Germain listened. He had no choice. He stood like a colossus, seemingly fancying himself, as he weathered the attacks, as the last pillar holding up the edifice of the British Empire, defender of the notion that colonies were dependents, which had obligations to the home country. He was motivated, he said, by “the supreme authority of Parliament over the colonies.”
Eventually, Lord North was called on. “As to the noble lord in the American Department,” the prime minister said, he believed that he had “acted on the soundest principles of candour and deliberation.” But his backing of Germain was not quite wholehearted. He had been in favor of going to war over the matter of taxation, but, he said, he had been “dragged” into what had been his own government’s policy “against his will.” He didn’t explicitly say who had dragged him, but there weren’t many candidates.
The staggering news of the Battle of Saratoga became public. The stock market plummeted. The criticism expanded and became more personal. It was Minden all over again. George Germain, his enemies claimed, who had nearly been executed for treason at the infamous battle during the now long-ago Seven Years’ War, had used the American rebellion as a means of achieving personal redemption. He had manipulated generals, whole armies, as if they were pieces on a game board. He had been ruthless in his zeal, Charles Fox asserted, employing “the most violent, scalping, tomahawk measures” against the Americans. And now: disaster. Lord George Germain, Fox declared, was “solely responsible in the first degree.”
As December wore on, more bad news came. Howe wrote from Pennsylvania, asking permission to resign his command. Burgoyne was gathering documents and preparing a defense of his behavior, in which he would certainly point blame at the American Secretary.
Then, on January 15, Diana, Germain’s wife of twenty-three years, died after an attack of measles. She had stood by him in his early days, through the universal public disgrace of the Minden trial, when it had appeared that his career was over before it had even begun. Her last days had been robbed of solace by this new disgrace. Her death was a primal loss to him, and also a bracket. It gave definition to his life. It put everything in context: his childhood at Knole, his loping years as a proud warrior on the Continent, the tenacious period of rebuilding his public persona, culminating with the commission to save Britain’s greatest prize, her American colonies. Diana’s death very neatly set all of it in a category: “the past.”
Nine days after her death, Germain turned sixty-two years of age. He believed he had truly done his best in his capacity as American Secretary, acting not out of personal motivations but with regard to his notion of the law and of Britain herself. He had tried with all his might to be a good steward of empire.
He picked up a pen and wrote his colleague, William Knox, that he was ready to leave office, saying that “if my being permitted to retire answers any publick end, I shall rejoice in having proposed it. A man at my time of life, depress’d by misfortune, will make a bad figure in an office that requires vigor of mind, activity and diligence.”
The king, on hearing that his American Secretary would offer his resignation, was elated, calling it “a mos
t favourable event,” for, as he noted, Germain “has so many enemies.” His Majesty had been trying to figure out how to remove him without causing too much of a stir. “Now,” the king remarked, “he will save us all the trouble.”
Chapter 14
WHITE FREEDOM
John Coghlan left his wife shortly after he had all but forced her to marry him. He was a soldier, after all, and his regiment was sent off to New Jersey, to take part in a series of raids meant to harass George Washington’s army.
Just like that, then, Margaret Moncrieffe—who was now Margaret Coghlan—was free again. She settled into life more or less as it had been: with her father and other families of the regiment, which was now stationed on Long Island. The year 1777 wore on and news came in. They learned of the battle near the Oneida village of Oriska, at which, in alliance with the British, Cornplanter led Senecas in one of the bloodiest assaults of the war. Margaret was surely pleased to hear that George Washington, who had been so condescending to her, had been outwitted at Brandywine Creek by General Howe.
Then, as she was sitting one evening with her father, the door opened and in walked her husband. She had not gotten a single letter from him in all the months he had been gone, so she had allowed herself to believe he might not return. She froze. Her father, however, welcomed his son-in-law and got ready to hear of his exploits. But while Coghlan did indeed have news, he didn’t want to talk about the war. In fact, he was done with it. He announced that he had sold his officer’s commission and planned to sail at once for England. His wife would come with him.
Things happened terribly fast now. A military convoy would leave in a month, and they would sail with it. Where to? To what kind of new life? Margaret got little information, only that her husband was done with the military and looking forward to getting home. In the meantime, Coghlan took temporary lodgings in New York and Margaret went with him. Now that the two of them were alone together, Coghlan began revealing more of himself, and she liked him even less. He took her to nightclubs that soldiers frequented. He introduced her to prostitutes, with whom he was clearly on familiar terms. When she asked how his father—a respected merchant—felt about his decision to leave the army, he freely admitted that the old man disapproved. To be a commissioned officer in the army was to possess a certain status in the empire. Selling one’s commission, as if it were a mere commodity, while legal, was tawdry, and his leaving the service in the midst of war was not a step that would reflect well on Coghlan Senior.
But John Coghlan had had enough of the military life. His career had begun, against his will, in 1772, when his father had gotten him a commission in the British navy and arranged to have him serve as midshipman to his friend, Captain James Cook. His first assignment was aboard the Resolution, taking part in Cook’s second attempt to circumnavigate the globe. It was a grand and historic mission, and serving under the great commander might have been an honor for most sailors, but though Coghlan was still a teenager he showed himself to be unruly. Twice at sea he was punished for fighting; once, as they were nearing the Cape of Good Hope, he pulled a knife on the cook. A shipmate described him as “wild & drinking.” After the ship’s return to England in the summer of 1775, his father, still committed to taming the boy, bought him his commission into the army and shipped him off to America. He had thus spent his early adulthood battling first Antarctic ice and then American rebels, neither of which he gave a damn about. Now he had gotten free. He was twenty-three years old, and he was determined to start enjoying himself.
On February 8, 1778, Margaret said farewell to her father, and to America, and boarded a ship in New York Harbor that was bound for Cork. She was leaving all that she knew, and the only person she had for company was the man she considered her captor. The weather was icy as the ship set sail, but she was suffering less from cold than from fear. And the war she was leaving behind, a historic conflict that had comprehensively upended her life, was the least of her worries.
On the day Margaret Coghlan’s ship was sailing out of New York Harbor, George Washington was making disciplinary decisions. A Lieutenant Grey, who had sneaked out of camp and committed theft—“behavior unbecoming the character of an officer and gentleman,” in Washington’s estimation—was sentenced to “have his sword broke over his head.” Thomas Butler, a civilian found guilty of attempting to carry flour into Philadephia to sell to the enemy army, was to receive 250 lashes. Another civilian who was caught hauling “eight quarters of mutton and a bull beef” to the enemy was fined 50 pounds and locked up.
Washington was staying in the stone farmhouse of a miller named Isaac Potts, along the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania. There was an iron forge nearby, so the place was called Valley Forge. Stepping outside, he could see the rows of wooden huts that housed his army. It all looked rather orderly now, but it had been a hellish winter. With Howe’s army in Philadelphia, Washington had had to find a place outside the city to sustain his men. He marched them up to this plateau, which he figured would be a good vantage point. Just getting here was hard work, given the pitiable state of the army. One-third of the men were shoeless; the sight of bloody footprints in the snow filled him with anger at the way Congress had mismanaged military procurement. A sleety winter set in. His men slept on the frozen ground until they got the huts built. Supplies dwindled and they were reduced to eating “fire cakes” made of flour and water. Yet they submitted to his drilling, and as they took on more and more the aspect of a professional fighting force, they complained less and less, and he found himself overcome with emotion, thrilling in his heart at the feeling that he was becoming one with them.
As he worked the army, he developed a professional staff, and, as with the army as a whole, he found his heart opening up to some of the officers who served him so fervently. He had become skilled at spotting talent and binding smart young men to him. Five months earlier, as the army was preparing to attack Howe at Brandywine Creek, an outrageously foppish twenty-year-old French aristocrat named Gilbert du Motier rode improbably into their midst, requesting a commission. Like many other ardent young Frenchmen of his generation, he had become intoxicated by Enlightenment ideas of individual freedom. Unlike most, he was fabulously wealthy, and had purchased a ship in order to sail to America to participate in its war of independence. Washington liked him. The Marquis de Lafayette, as he was titled, had substance in his character to go with his enthusiasm. He had had some military training in Europe, and showed himself ready to learn. He wasn’t in the least put off by the dismal state of the Continental Army. Washington assigned him to a division, and he got shot in the leg in the loss at Brandywine Creek, but the injury only bound him all the more to the cause. Washington for his part was disarmed by the combination of the young man’s aristocratic bearing and his utter personal devotion to him. Lafayette’s father had died when he was only two; not long after entering Washington’s army, he was likening himself to the general’s son. And Washington, who had never had a son of his own, seemed surprised by the feelings that opened up inside him toward the young Frenchman, the heat of war having melted some of the aristocratic reserve in his nature. Despite his precious upbringing, Lafayette rode headlong into the muddy countryside, and proved capable at recoinnoitering the enemy and gathering intelligence. By now, February 1778, he was a fixture.
Washington had also recently brought onto his staff a short, slender, fox-like young officer named Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was about the same age as Lafayette, and equally as smart and resourceful. Washington was communicating daily with the Congress, with generals scattered all over the country, with members of the various state legislatures and a long train of miscellaneous others; he desperately needed someone to help him deal with correspondence. Hamilton, who had performed valiantly in battles in New York, took the job of aide-de-camp, and quickly became the general’s right arm. Like Lafayette, he was tireless in his will to learn and serve, but where the French aristocrat was able to give Washington his heart and so
ul, Hamilton, who had been born illegitimately on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean and was determined to pull himself up from his hard early life, had too much pride to fawn over the commander in chief. Washington didn’t care. “Hamilton has informed me . . .”; “I have sent Colo. Hamilton . . .”; “Colo. Hamilton, one of my Aids, is up the North River doing all he can . . .”: Washington had found an aide whose meticulousness, intelligence and zeal made him indispensable.
As Washington waited out the winter at Valley Forge, several men from Haddam, Connecticut, where Venture Smith had settled, were heading off to join the cause, to serve under him or General Gates. Despite Washington’s own misgivings, free Africans had been serving in the Continental Army in one capacity or another since 1775, but Smith had never seen that as his path. He had other things on his mind. He was rooting himself. He had bought land. Now he needed to build a house.
He chose a location on the eastern edge of his tract, just up the bank from the languorous Salmon River Cove. The house would look out on the one flat piece of his otherwise steeply sloping land, which would be his farm. And so he began. He was a big man and he wanted his house to be nice and roomy, so he measured it out amply: 36 feet by 20. He dug a foundation, built a central chimney out of stone. He erected the walls with his own wood. After thinking deeply about the exact location of the house, he had made an idiosyncratic decision, to build it into a hillside, which gave protection from winter winds. The finished home had three levels: a main floor, an attic and a cellar. Because he had tucked the house against the hillside, the upper room, which he called his office, had its own door that opened onto a path at the top of the hill, while the door from the main room opened at a lower level, facing his farmland. He didn’t build stairs: you reached the upper floor and the cellar via ladders. When the house was finished, he began work on other structures: a barn, a forge for blacksmithing and a wharf on the cove.
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