Revolution Song

by Russell Shorto

  So off she went, across the English Channel to Calais, partly convinced that she had sinned and was in need of reform. But the convent scared the hell out of her. She recoiled at the “melancholy habits of its superstitious inhabitants.” Her disgust turned to terror on All Saints Day, when she was forced to attend a midnight mass at which the bones and skulls of the dead were piled up to be venerated.

  When, out of the blue, Thomas Clinton showed up one day, she all but fell into his arms. He bribed the abbess to let her go and took her back to England. Once again he set her up in London. Yet again General Gage found her. This time he used a different tactic: he informed her that her father had fallen into a state of “misery” and despondence over her waywardness. This hit her hard. As had been the case since she was a child, her feelings for her father comprised a mix of slavish devotion and something close to hatred. But the devotion, the longing to appease and delight him, had always won out, and it did once again. She pronounced herself “unable to endure the thought of afflicting the tenderest of parents, whom I most affectionately loved.” She had grown up in a world in which calls for freedom rang out in the air, inspiring whole armies. She had been foolish enough to think that some portion of this freedom might apply to her. She was wrong. She was a stupid girl who had shamed her father. She gave up, decided to “forego those visionary and fatal schemes of happiness, which my imagination had formed.”

  Gage set her up in the home of a respectable family near Grosvenor Square in London, where she lived quietly for a time. The attacks by General Washington’s northern army under Sullivan on the Iroquois homelands made news in England during this time. So did a vote of the Irish parliament to imitate the Americans in embargoing British-made goods, setting off British fears that the Irish might eventually rebel too. People in England were feeling closed in, vulnerable. The king gave a speech to Parliament in which he called on Whigs to rally around the government as it faced an “unjust and unprovoked war” against not only America but France and Spain and was “contending with one of the most dangerous confederacies that ever was formed against the Crown and people of Great Britain.”

  Then one day Margaret received a letter from Mrs. Gage. It contained news more shattering than anything the king of England could deliver. After long consideration, Margaret’s father had decided that she had brought such shame and dishonor on herself that he was no longer willing to claim her as his daughter. He had decided to disown her. She would not be receiving money from him; she would not be in his will. He advised her to learn a trade, to take up “mantua making”: to become a sewer of ladies’ robes.

  Her first reaction was indignation. Then, through yet another intermediary, she pleaded with him. She was frightened at the thought of being financially on her own, but even more at the prospect of permanently losing his affection. Her father, however, had made up his mind. The finality settled in, and led her to a conclusion: “the actual dishonour of a beloved daughter pleads sufficient excuse for any harshness which I may have experienced from him.” Translation: it was all her fault.

  But self-blame gave her no solace. Instead, her father’s desertion of her made her “almost frantic.” She ran back to Thomas Clinton, who took her in again. Clinton was at this moment campaigning for the House of Commons seat for the city of Westminster. His opponent was the renowned Whig Charles James Fox. Margaret Coghlan chanced to meet Mr. Fox at an event, and she thrilled at the man’s wit and rhetoric. He was short, dark and plump, certainly not to be compared with Aaron Burr, but something in him captivated her. It was also true that she was still reeling from the shock of her father’s abandonment of her. She needed to find a way forward. Virtually on the spot, she dropped her protector, Lord Clinton, for his archenemy—who also vanquished Clinton in the political contest—and she and Charles Fox became lovers.

  In a short time she had gone from wandering alone and desperate in the Welsh mountains to permanently losing her father’s affection to being a fixture of London society. The freedom she had insisted on when she had first rejected John Coghlan had been a vague thing in her mind. For a man its features were clear: power, career, the ability to travel the world at will. But for a woman, what was freedom exactly? She had a few guides and models. There had been Mrs. Loring in New York, the mistress of General Howe, who had presided over the occupied city like a queen in some fanciful universe, one in which women did not need marriage to win respect. But even then Elizabeth Loring had needed a powerful man. That, Margaret understood, was the only logical course. Here in London, the mistresses to aristocrats and members of Parliament projected elegance and confidence. Some were also celebrated actresses, which seemed only appropriate—were they not also acting in real life? Margaret believed she could play that role.

  Besides, she was genuinely intrigued. She had never before encountered such a person as Charles James Fox. He had a somewhat piggish face but a hypnotic zeal. Fox was famed for his orotund denunciations of the American Secretary, Lord George Germain, whom he decried for “willful ignorance” and “incapacity” in exercising his office, and famed for his impassioned support of the Americans’ quest for liberty. She had also never before appreciated the cause of America in philosophical terms. She learned from Fox something of the historic roots of the American cause. He also reinforced what she had intuited in New York, how freedom was not a cold abstraction but a hot and human desire. “The war of the Americans is a war of passion,” Fox had told Parliament not long before he took up with Margaret. “It is of such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful virtues, love of liberty and of country . . .” and for this reason, he warned his colleagues, “such a war is without end” for it “inspires a spirit that is unconquerable.”

  Fox didn’t stop there in his championing of liberty. He denounced as well the barbaric American practice of human slavery, and called for religious toleration in England. There was, he understood, a great, historical transformation in human values underway. America—in its rebellion, if not in its practice of slavery—was on the right side of it, and England was not.

  In Fox’s company Coghlan began to feel a bit of lightness opening up inside her. She was only seventeen: she had a life ahead of her. Fox mentioned that he knew the great playwright Richard Sheridan. The plays she had seen in New York had captivated her, the bright lights of the stage contrasting so vividly with the darkness of the city under military occupation. She blurted out that she felt “a natural inclination for the stage,” and Fox promptly introduced her to Sheridan. She began making plans. The following season, she would, with any luck, make her debut as an actress at the Drury Lane Theater, which Sheridan owned.

  Moving through London with Fox, attending events at his side, Margaret Coghlan was moderately alarmed by his fondness for gambling and drink, but delighted in the constant stream of political discourse. At around this time Fox took part in a debate in the House about suspicions that George Germain had profited from his post of American Secretary. Fox gleefully resurrected the Battle of Minden, declaring to Germain’s face that he was “a coward, and always had been.” That sort of boldness was part of what thrilled her about him.

  She thrilled him as well, but only for a time. It hurt when he pushed her aside and moved on, but she so admired him that she worked out a calculus of his rejection of her that made sense to her. “The giddiness of extreme youth, and remarkable levity of my disposition,” she decided, were “not calculated to secure the attachment of this illustrious character.” Besides, she had kept herself mindful of the fact that she had been playing a role, that eventually the play would end.

  Yet again, then, she was on her own. And there was one other thing now. She was pregnant.

  Affection didn’t come naturally to George Washington. It took war to bring it out in him. Now, in the full throes of conflict, with his young country finding itself surrounded by blood and pain, as he was suffering alongside his soldiers in the cold and heat, he was feeling and expressing personal fondness as
never before. He had forged warm relationships with his men and the officers on his staff. And in the wider world—in America and beyond its shores—an affectionate image of him had formed. In September 1780 he met the leader of the French forces that had been sent to aid him—Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau—at Hartford, Connecticut, in order to plan what he hoped would be a joint offensive against the British. Washington’s fame had grown throughout Europe, and Rochambeau’s officers found that the American general lived up to their expectations. He was dignified but without the stuffiness of the Old World; they saw that his men clearly adored him. So did the people of a local village; one French officer marveled at how they “pressed so closely around us that they hindered us from proceeding” and addressed Washington as “father.”

  Washington didn’t get what he had wanted from Rochambeau. The aristocrat seemed to suggest that a French fleet would not be in a position to mount a full attack until the following year, which almost certainly meant the war would drag on. This was frustrating because Washington knew that across the ocean pressures were mounting on his inexorable antagonist, George Germain, so that a decisive blow might end things. But he needed the French to help deliver it.

  Washington’s next stop after his meeting with Rochambeau was an inspection of the military fortress at West Point on the Hudson River. The most pleasing part of this excursion would be the small get-together that had been set with another of the younger officers for whom he had developed an emotional attachment. Benedict Arnold had endured a great deal in the war. He had fought bravely and brilliantly at Saratoga, had been unjustly denied a promotion by Congress and had been crippled by a battle injury. Washington felt for the man, and looked forward to spending time with him and his wife, Peggy, at the mansion on the east bank of the Hudson where they were staying. But when he got there for a scheduled breakfast meeting, they weren’t in. He changed his plans and returned to meet them for dinner, but, again, the couple didn’t show.

  Washington was puzzled. He was resting in his own room in the mansion a short while later when Alexander Hamilton burst in and thrust a packet of letters at him. Lafayette appeared as well, breathless to see what was up. A British spy named John André had been caught nearby; these papers were found hidden in his boot. Washington read with an enveloping sense of dread. “Arnold has betrayed us!” he gasped at length. He looked at his two closest aides and asked, “Whom can we trust now?”

  As his disgruntlement over being denied promotion grew and festered, Arnold had come to wonder whether the British might value him more. He contacted Sir Henry Clinton; eventually he wrote directly to George Germain, suggesting, as had others, that Washington himself might be willing to switch sides if offered “a title.” What Washington held in his hand was an account, copied out by Arnold, of Washington’s own directions to the army, and of the fortification of West Point. Arnold was assisting the enemy in an attempted takeover of the American headquarters on the Hudson.

  What amazed him was not that an officer of his had turned traitor. Such things happened in war. But Arnold was one of those he most trusted. The revelation shook his confidence in his intuition. He told Hamilton to find Arnold.

  The revelation didn’t seem to dampen Washington’s feelings for those in his immediate circle. He had become dependent in particular on the long talks he had with Hamilton: about military strategy, about the French and whether they would ever truly come to their aid, about the unworkability of the Articles of Confederation, which Congress was voting on and which was already proving a cumbersome foundation for a national government. Washington marveled at Hamilton. The man had had far fewer advantages than he, but he had made excellent use of his brilliant mind. He was still in his early twenties and was on his way to becoming an outright expert on military science, on government, and especially on finance. Washington found himself swayed by Hamilton’s argument that Congress needed to have the power to tax, that a national tax was the only firm basis for a stable government and thus the only means to ensure individual liberty.

  But Washington’s very reliance on Hamilton had blinded him to the younger man’s growing unhappiness. Hamilton longed to distinguish himself in battle; he had soaring ambitions beyond the war. He took one step in advancing his career by marrying Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of Philip Schuyler, who remained a force in New York politics. But because he was so valuable to Washington, Hamilton had been overlooked for promotions and reassignments. As he stayed confined to a job that he considered to be beneath his abilities, he became bitter, and the more openly Washington expressed warmth toward him, the more closed he became toward the general. He wrote to his father-in-law about Washington, declaring, with a young man’s grim fervor, that “for three years past I have felt no friendship for him and professed none.”

  Washington remained oblivious to his aide’s distress until it burst forth in one childish incident. Washington had ordered Hamilton to attend him; Hamilton kept him waiting for ten minutes. The general, who was not used to having to wait for his subordinates, upbraided him: “I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect.” Hamilton shot back: “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you thought it necessary to tell me so, we part!” Washington was unprepared for his secretary to quit his service over a trifle. He took the unusual step of reaching out to the junior officer to try to make amends. But Hamilton would not reconsider. Washington eventually reassigned him. Once again, he was flummoxed by the vagaries of human affection.

  At almost the same time, he was blindsided by yet another personal blow. Benjamin Harrison, the head of the Virginia House of Burgesses, sent him a letter saying that he had received a petition for financial assistance from Washington’s mother. With the onset of the war Washington had let his testy and painful relationship with his mother go dormant. He didn’t write her a single letter. Nor did she contact her son. He had bought her a house in Fredericksburg and arranged that a cousin would oversee her needs. But dating back to his boyhood, his mother had exerted a dark, downward pull on him; he had too many demands on his attention to allow himself to be dragged into the kind of battle that she favored. But she found a way to get at him. Her letter to the burgesses, declaring that she was destitute and in need of assistance, seemed calculated to embarrass him. It did. He wrote a fumbling, awkward reply to Harrison, detailing all the care he had devoted to establishing his mother’s comfort, and concluded: “I request, in pointed terms if the matter is now in agitation in your assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped.” It must have begun to seem to him that, in comparison with the complexity of human relations, war was a rather simple business.

  It had been clear to Washington for some time that George Germain planned to make the South his primary target. The British were now using Charleston, South Carolina, as a base. After the taking of that city, Sir Henry Clinton had shifted back to New York, leaving General Cornwallis in command in the South. Then, in August, Cornwallis had annihilated Horatio Gates’s army at Camden, South Carolina, forcing Congress to admit its mistake in choosing Gates for the position. After the loss, Congress finally enlarged Washington’s powers, giving him authority over the South. Washington picked Nathanael Greene to command there. Greene had a much smaller force to work with than did Cornwallis, but he set about a series of deft maneuvers, splitting up his forces and launching surprise attacks, and so began chipping away at the British advantage.

  Still, the numbers were against the Americans. To compound the problem of lack of soldiers, in the first week of January 1781, unable to endure their horrendous living conditions, 2,000 Pennsylvania soldiers mutinied. Washington desperately needed to raise troops. Calls went out to the states for new recruits.

  Among the towns that answered the call was Haddam, Connecticut. On January 29, a gangly group of local men mustered under their new commanding officer, Captain Caleb Baldwin, who had until recently been a schoolmaster and town clerk. Of the 330 men in the second Connecticut regiment
, about 10 were black. One of these was Cuff Smith, Venture Smith’s twenty-two-year old son, who had enlisted for service a month before. Venture and Meg Smith and their six-year-old son Solomon said their goodbyes, and Cuff marched off with the town’s other new recruits into the landscape of a New England winter. Like his father, Cuff was tall and uncommonly strong, and he was in excellent physical condition from hauling timber on his father’s estate and from the work he sometimes did at the local stone quarry. But Venture and Meg had to feel the sting of the parting. They had already lost two children in difficult circumstances; they knew they might never see him again.

  Cuff Smith and his fellow enlistees marched 100 miles west, made camp at a desolate spot east of the Hudson River, and spent the rest of the winter there. They built huts and drilled, but otherwise didn’t do much of anything. Within weeks of joining the Continental Army, they found themselves hungry and threadbare, waiting interminably through freezing days and nights for something to happen.

  Then, as spring broke, orders from General Washington arrived. They were to march south, following the Hudson. Washington had two possible courses of action. Either he would attack Clinton’s forces in New York, and try to retake Manhattan, or he would pull the army south toward Virginia and mount an all-out assault on Cornwallis. As he seemed to favor the attack on Manhattan, they camped near Dobbs Ferry, just 10 miles from the northern tip of Manhattan. Here Cuff Smith got an experience he had been waiting for: not battle, but a sighting of their leader. The soldiers gazed at General Washington—erect in the saddle and with his uncommon bearing, eyes slitted as he surveyed them, lips tightly compressed—as an almost superhuman being. An officer who arrived in camp at this time noted that Washington appeared somehow on a different plane from everyone else: “calm . . . calculated . . . admirable . . . the leader of his army.”