Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  Suddenly they heard bugles from the woods, the contemptuous call of the kill, as if the redcoats were hunters who had taken their fox. Joseph Reed, the adjutant general, rode up, furious.

  “Damn it, we had them.” He seemed to feel personally disgraced by the calls. “Damn it!”

  Knowlton’s men could be seen running from the wood now, a few redcoats at their heels. Washington looked around, suddenly decisive.

  “We may yet. Get me…” He looked back to the troops who had formed in front of their tents at the first shots, and saw Weedon’s Virginians. “Colonel Reed, if you will have the kindness to take Colonel Weedon’s companies that are already formed? Right up Vanderwater Heights, and into their flank. Take this man as a guide.” Washington rode over to the Virginians, who cheered him. There was a different feeling in the air, even if the redcoats were still sounding their calls. He rode directly to Colonel Weedon.

  “I need your best, sir. Your very best effort.”

  George Lake was less than a musket’s length away. Washington was right in front of him, his face severe but unworried, his seat on the horse a picture of control. Washington whipped his hat off and pointed it down the hill toward another ridge and said something further as Major Lietch and Captain Lawrence came up to join the little knot. Lake cheered. Washington turned his horse away and it curveted a little and he rose, his hat still off, and looked back along their line. His eyes seemed to rest directly on George Lake for an instant. That frozen image of the general with his hat off, his horse’s front hooves raised like an equestrian statue in Williamsburg, would stay with George Lake forever.

  George cheered—they all did, it was everywhere, a wall of sound—and Major Lietch was shouting for them to go forward, and the general was gone.

  Caesar fired again, ran his hand along the bottom of his pouch and realized that he was again out of cartridges. His mouth burned from all the powder he had eaten biting the bottom off his cartridges, and no water for hours. Jim was back, long since, lying in a little hollow to his right and firing slowly. The brush and the smoke made choosing a target almost impossible, but every time he reached back for his canteen, the rebels tried another rush.

  Suddenly, there was a horse above him, and Jeremy looking down, and legs with wool breeches and sharp black gaiters like little boots moving past him in the brush. The rebels fired, and a man went down right in front of him, and then there was a roar from the redcoats all around him like a savage beast let loose, and the bugles called a “view”, as if a fox was in sight. He was fluent in this hunting language, and though the soldiers weren’t from Stewart’s company, Jeremy’s presence told him they weren’t far, and he rose to his feet.

  “Ethiopians! Forward!” and then he was pressing into the smoke, tripping over the heavy brush, and a twig of thorns tore at his leg, another lashing his hand, and then he was through the smoke and a musket fired just over his head as he fell over another wall. He rolled, his equipment tangling for a moment on his back, and rose as smoothly as he could, the butt of his musket catching a man cleanly in the side of the head and knocking him down and out, his body falling with the boneless limpness that Caesar now knew to indicate total unconsciousness, or instant death. Fowver fired at something further on and then stopped to fit his bayonet. He was yipping like a mad dog, a sound that some of the other Yoruba men made when at war.

  All the redcoats were intermingled now, and then there was firing again, coming from their left. Caesar couldn’t see anything, and he looked around for Jeremy, who was gone.

  “Ethiopians!” he called. “On me! Fall in!”

  Men began to appear out of the smoke. He continued to shout, his dry mouth forgotten. Men would be spread all over the wood by now, and his shouting seemed to rally only a dozen or so. Other voices shouted for the light companies of the Forty-second and the Sixty-fourth, and bugles sounded, confusingly, all through the undergrowth, and then the firing was almost in front of them, and a Virginian voice was ordering his men to “get in any covuh an’ shoot!”

  One of them showed himself clear, an officer or a sergeant, and Caesar raised his musket and pulled the trigger before realizing that the gun was empty and he had no more ammunition.

  Ten yards away in the smoke, George Lake never knew how close his death had been, and shouted for his men to keep in line and look for targets when they fired. He shouted again. An arm’s length away, Bludner was pushing some new recruits with his musket, shoving them to the exact position where he wanted them. He never turned his head to look at the enemy. He heard the enemy trying to rally and knew they had the redcoats at a disadvantage. His glance caught George Lake’s and they both smiled in the same instant, as if sharing the secret. They were winning.

  “Crawl!” Caesar suited actions to words and began to burrow back toward the stone wall where he had started the action. A volley crashed out behind them, and he hoped all his men had been down on the ground, although a few low balls flung wood splinters and gravel around them. He moved as quickly as he could, and there it was, the little wall, and he was over it and on the trail. He wasn’t lost; his head cleared, and he felt as if he could see the whole action in his mind like the chase of a fox or a deer at Mount Vernon. The rebels were all along their left, but not strong on their front.

  He looked down the ruined wall and saw that some of the men had never gotten up to join the first rush. He had seen enough action to know that not every man was brave every day, and he waved to them.

  “Time to go, Ethiopians!” he yelled, and started down the trail at a crouching run. He stopped twice to look back and see that they were with him, and they were. Another volley crashed out behind him, too far to hurt them. He had “gone away” like a smart fox on a spring day, whipping the prize out from under the nose of the hunter. He couldn’t see Stewart or Jeremy at the wood edge, and he knew that their horses would make them prime targets in the woods, but they weren’t his concern. He waited as men he knew tumbled out of the wood on his heels, the stream becoming a trickle after about twenty-five. There were several men from the Fortieth and two from the Sixty-fourth. They looked a little bemused to find themselves with a body of black men, but they stayed silent.

  “Anyone has more than one cartridge, give it to your mate. Load! Now!”

  They were shuffling around, unformed and worried. They thought the enemy was right behind them. Caesar could see it all so clearly in his mind and he forgot that others could not.

  “Ain’t no one behind you right now. Them Virginny boys is shootin’ at trees. You stay with me, lads. I’ll see you right.” Excitement robbed him of his hard-won accent, but he could feel the fight shaping in the wood as the British swung more men to their flank and steadied their line in the center of the wood. It was all in the balance, and he could see it, he could save it if only these men would load their muskets and follow him.

  Muskets were coming up as men got their bullets rammed down on to the powder and replaced their rammers. The regulars looked like they were on parade, already making a line, while many of the blacks who had never served in the Ethiopians in Virginia loaded casually, their musket butts on the ground. Virgil slapped a cartridge into his hand and he primed his pan and cast about, careful of the eighteen-inch bayonet. He was the last man to load, and by the time he returned his ramrod he had his plan.

  “We’re going left ‘round this wood. As soon as we see rebels, we form a front and give fire. If we have the number, we’re goin’ right at them.”

  Some of the men looked uneasy at that. By no means did all the blacks have bayonets.

  “You men follow me. We’ll have ’em,” Caesar said, looking hard at one of the regulars who seemed like he might protest. The man just shook his head. Caesar began to jog off to the left. He could see a column coming up from the south, grenadiers with two artillery pieces, but they would be too late for the wood whatever happened. He looked back and saw that his men were coming well, a long single file with the redcoats in the middle
. He turned the corner of the wood and could see all the way down the ridge and up the other side, where a column of rebels was shaping up, and he spotted an officer in blue and buff sitting just at the base of the wood, less than a quarter mile away, and he knew he was right. The whole rebel line was just in those woods and he was now on their flank. The fox had turned and bitten the hunter, and now the hunter was ready to bite back.

  “Form front!” he called, and they did, but his voice alerted someone in the wood, and there was a scramble in among the trees as someone flinched away. In a moment the edge of the wood was full of men, right in their front.

  Caesar watched it as if in slow motion. He had time. He was calm, even happy, his plan proven correct.

  “Make ready!” he called. The regulars didn’t really know where to stand in the Ethiopian line, but the order stiffened them and they obeyed automatically. The rebels were close, emerging from the trees and scrambling in the thick brush at the wood’s edge.

  “Present!” he bellowed and the rebels began to flinch away, the race lost. They weren’t the Virginians, as he had hoped, but other troops in neat blue coats. He owned them. They were caught in the brush, clear of the cover afforded by the wood’s edge. Behind them, other units were suddenly at the edge of the woods too, and halfway down the hill he could see the Virginians and that same tall ugly man he had wanted to kill at Brooklyn when they fought in the little redoubt, but there had been no time.

  “Fire!” he said, with finality. For just a moment he saw the rebels to his front frozen, their faces slack, as if life had already left them, and then the volley slammed into them like the collapse of a burning barn.

  Off to his right, a horse burst from the woods and Captain Stewart, hatless and bleeding, rode up beside him.

  “Bloody marvelous!” he shouted, and thumped Caesar on the back, before starting to call for his men to form their front.

  George Lake pulled himself free of the raspberry tangle at the edge of the wood and held his musket in the air yelling for his men to rally. They were different today. They ran back, yes, but they leapt into the ranks. No one ran past. They had licked the redcoats in the woods, got on their flanks and clawed them hard, and the woods were full of redcoat bodies. George Lake knew they were fighting light infantry, the very best the redcoats had to offer.

  Certainly, they had taken a whack in their turn, but they had seen the backs of the regulars for the first time. They were learning.

  He got his men formed and found that his company was the foremost in the field. The Marylanders who had been on his right in the wood had vanished and suddenly he saw why, with two companies formed on his flank. He and Bludner didn’t try to form to meet the new threat. They were veterans now.

  “Back!” they yelled, and the men ran again. And again, when they yelled for the company to rally, it did, facing the right way, a good space of a musket shot between them and the redcoats. George thought that he might have seen the blacks again before he had to pull back, but he wasn’t sure. He waited with his company, and other companies from the Third Virginia came and formed on them. The British formed too, but no one came on. Their ranks looked thin. George looked at his own and knew he had lost men, too. Men around him called taunts at the British, and he let them.

  They were learning.

  Morris House, New York, October 1776

  General Charles Lee had not changed. He had won a famous victory, repulsing Clinton’s ships at Charleston, South Carolina, and he had dazzled Congress on his road north, stopping in Philadelphia to proclaim his own success and to convince the doubting that there was no other path for General Washington than the one on which he had embarked.

  He was still well groomed, wore his coat with most of the facings unbuttoned, like the younger British officers, and his little Nirvenois tricorn was worn rakishly aslant on his head. He tossed his reins to an aide and embraced Washington, to everyone’s surprise. It smacked of theater, but then so did a great deal about Charles Lee.

  Washington, a man whose bad teeth dictated that he should smile as little as possible, smiled for Charles Lee. Lee smiled back, and gave a bow.

  “Welcome back, General. We ought to have a bower decorated in laurel for you.”

  “Nonsense, sir. A small matter of logistics. A few wellsited forts and many brave young men.”

  “Perhaps the laurels should be for your dealings with our masters in Congress.”

  The assembled staffs laughed together. Lee raised his hand for quiet, another theatrical gesture. Washington could tolerate his posturing, indeed, would tolerate almost anything to have Lee back.

  “General Washington,” he said, making sure he would be heard by the whole assembly, “I have nothing but contempt for the Congress. I do not mean one or two of the cattle,” he paused for emphasis, “but the whole stable.”

  There was a shocked silence. Washington hid his darkest feelings about the Congress from his staff, and they in turn rarely shared their frustrations with the line officers and soldiers who made up the army. Here was Charles Lee, the hero of the hour, speaking to their private, outraged thoughts. Congress, who refused to burn New York City, refused to raise the regular regiments to prosecute the war, tied their hands, held back money, appointed incompetent commanders, pandered to privilege and money. The whole stable.

  But Washington smiled and gave Lee his hand again, leading him toward Morris House, in which he lodged.

  “Charles, I had forgotten what it was like to have you about.”

  And in that moment, the shocked silence turned again to laughter.

  They rode along the new lines while Washington described the campaign to date, its many reverses and his plans for the next action. Lee listened in silence, his concentration bent on Washington’s report.

  “Are we losing the war, General?” he asked, turning to Washington suddenly. They had pulled ahead of their staffs, and had what counted as privacy among the great.

  Washington shook his head. “I couldn’t say. This isn’t the war I expected. It is less about battles than about desire. The war of words is as vital as the war in the field. Losses shake men’s faith in the cause, and gains strengthen that faith. It is there that the war is being fought.”

  Lee nodded. “It is a new kind of war. But our enemies adapt as quickly as we do. In the south, they have offered to free slaves who come to the army. They deride our notions of liberty.”

  “That will lose them any friends they had among men of property.”

  “Perhaps, General. But what of Parliament? What will our supporters there say when someone of the stature of Burke or Wilberforce denounces slavery instead of praising our resolution for Liberty?”

  Washington looked over his horse’s head for a few strides, and nodded. “Slavery is an issue of property not liberty. But I see how it could be used in other ways.” He pointed at a set of ridges in the distance. “That’s where I intend my magazines and winter quarters, beyond those hills. May I take it you wish a command?”

  “You know me, General. I do.”

  “Welcome back, Charles.”

  Jackson House near New York City, October 18, 1776

  Captain Stewart had met Sir William Howe on several occasions, but the Howes represented the very top of the Whig aristocracy and John Julius Stewart was the son of a Scots merchant. He did have the advantage that both he and his wealthy father were Whigs, that is, men who felt the good of the realm lay in liberal government and the House of Hanover, not conservative government and the House of Stewart. In Scotland, this last was often the more important argument, as blood had been shed there in living memory. But in the south, in England, the issue between Whig and Tory was about liberty, the protection of property, and the rights of men.

  Sir William and his brother Richard were joint commanders of the entire war effort. Sir William had the army, and Richard had the fleet. They were famous men from a famous family and many Americans remembered the family name with fondness. Their brother, Ge
orge Augustus Howe, had died at Ticonderoga in 1758 fighting alongside many Americans. The Howes had not been sent to win a war this time, but to find an end to it as quickly as possible, and they were both capable men who understood politics and war and the dangerous middle ground between the two.

  Sir William was dressed for the cold, in a dark blue velveteen hunting coat trimmed in red. He wore heavy riding boots and was leaning back in a deep settle in front of the house’s main fireplace when one of his aides stepped in and said softly, “Captain Stewart of the Second Battalion light infantry, Sir William.”

  Sir William rose, and bowed slightly.

  “The hero of the hour.”

  “You are too kind, Sir William.”

  “Nonsense, Captain. By all accounts, your quick action and that of this company of black men prevented a very ugly situation.”

  “Thank you, Sir William. The men did the fighting. The black men…”

  “Yes, I’ve read your report and that of your brigade major. I needn’t tell you, Captain, that a less impetuous advance might have prevented the whole situation. The damned rebels say they’ve seen our backs, now. And where’d I have been left if I had lost both of my light infantry battalions?”

  Stewart thought that he had come to be praised, but Sir William’s tone was now very uncomfortable for him, and he stood straight, as if ready for a blow, but Sir William changed tack suddenly, his voice changing, his chest relaxing. In the next room, a woman was humming and then singing a tune.

  “I’m of a mind to grant your request to have this group of Africans embodied formally. I note that your petition to that effect is signed by General Clinton, by your own major, your regiment’s colonel, as well as John Simcoe from the regulars and Beverly Robinson from our Loyalist volunteers.” Whigs to a man, thought Stewart, and with votes in Parliament.