Martha Washington

by Patricia Brady

  When Martha left camp in the middle of June, she was bone weary and determined to stay home until it was time to go north again. She swore that “I suffered so much last winter by going late that I have determined to go early in the fall before the Frost sets in.” In the meantime, she asked relatives to visit her rather than undertake the journey to New Kent—“I find myself so much fatigued with my ride that I shall not be able to come down to see you this summer.” She was also worried about George’s spirits. She wrote Burwell Bassett about “the distress of the army and other difficultys tho I did not know the cause, the pore General was so unhappy that it distressed me exceedingly.” Apparently she was being discreet, since she certainly knew about the financial shortfalls, defeats, and mutinies that weighed so heavily on her husband.

  Esther DeBerdt Reed, Joseph Reed’s wife, decided that it was time for the women of America to act on behalf of their poorly supplied soldiers. In June 1780, she suggested that money should be raised for the troops as “the offering of the ladies.” The movement caught on in other states as these well-connected women wrote to their friends, inviting their involvement; newspapers reported approvingly.

  Naturally, Martha Washington became part of the effort. She contributed money herself and wrote to Governor Thomas Jefferson’s wife, another Martha, who announced a collection in the churches of mostly rural Virginia. Although the original plan was for Martha Washington to distribute the more than $300,000 collected nationwide, she was far away at Mount Vernon, so George was a poor second choice. At his suggestion for the ladies of Philadelphia, linen was purchased with the money and a large group of women led by Sarah Bache made 2,200 shirts for the soldiers.

  An American army was again in the field to oppose the British in the south, commanded by Horatio Gates at Congress’s behest. But the victor of Saratoga suffered a mortifying defeat at Camden, South Carolina, resulting in the loss of his command. Nathanael Greene later took over the leadership of an army in terrible disarray and began rebuilding it and attracting popular support while avoiding annihilation by Cornwallis.

  Bedeviled as he was, Washington suffered another blow in September on a routine visit to the Hudson River fortress at West Point, commanded by Benedict Arnold. Washington, who admired and respected Arnold as a fighting general, had secured the command for him at his request. When the commander and his party of officers and aides arrived at Arnold’s quarters, they found him mysteriously absent and his young wife, abed with their baby, hysterical and seemingly out of her mind. A day’s investigation revealed that Arnold had fled downriver to a British warship because he was about to be exposed as a traitor. The British had paid him for information, including the whereabouts of Washington when he was vulnerable to capture; Arnold had been on the verge of turning West Point over to the enemy.

  Although he took swift action to defend against any British move, Washington had time to sympathize and worry about Peggy Shippen Arnold, the traitor’s much younger wife. A winsome blonde, Peggy was a member of a prominent Philadelphia family, the cousin of Martha and George’s friend Eliza Powel, and well-known to them both. Washington, Lafayette, Hamilton, and the other officers were unanimous in their pity for Arnold’s innocent wife. They were unaware that she had been a full participant in Arnold’s plans, even an instigator, and that her hysterics were staged to trick and confuse them.

  Martha rejoined George in early December 1780 at the new headquarters in New Windsor, New York, where they stayed through June. With the turn of the year, there was fresh trouble with the troops. Although the men were now fed and clothed, the length of the war was telling on them. There was another mutiny in January, followed by desertions, and still another mutiny two weeks later.

  Safely married into the wealthy Schuyler family, Alexander Hamilton forced a quarrel on “the great man” over some hasty words, refused to accept Washington’s attempt to make amends, and resigned his position. The smooth functioning of headquarters was interrupted (Martha made a fair copy in her best hand of at least one letter for her husband, contrary to her usual habit), and social relations were strained as well. Martha had planned to accompany Betsy Hamilton to Albany for a visit with the Schuylers; the trip was canceled with a weak excuse. Despite Hamilton’s bitter complaints against his benefactor, he continued to trust in his sense of justice. After many requests, Washington did provide Hamilton with an opportunity to fight at Yorktown.

  The tide was turning in the south. Daniel Morgan won a conclusive, though small, victory at Cowpens, South Carolina, in January, followed by Greene’s drawn battle at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, in March. Cornwallis won in the field but withdrew before any further encounter could take place; he couldn’t afford another such costly victory. Guilford was devastating to the British; their casualties were twice as heavy as the Americans’, including several officers, and reinforcements were far away. For the Americans, the news was all good. The smallest victory gave them new hope and encouraged them to hold on. Cornwallis began his march into Virginia toward Yorktown. With an enemy that melted away only to form up again, the old cliché expressed it all: The British were winning the battles but slowly losing the war.

  Rochambeau had finally agreed to a joint attack on New York, and Washington was poised for action. Martha planned to go home in May, but she fell ill with a gallbladder attack and spent five weeks in bed. Martha Mortier, the widow of a British army paymaster (whose Manhattan house the Washingtons had lived in during their brief stay in 1776), sent a note under a flag of truce, saying that she had heard of Mrs. Washington’s indisposition through intercepted letters; accompanying the note were some invalids’ comforts, including lemons, oranges, limes, and two dozen pineapples. George feared that acceptance of these expensive gifts would appear to be consorting with the enemy and returned them with a stiff note. He was still aggrieved that Lund had negotiated with a British vessel to prevent the destruction of Mount Vernon. Without a taste of citrus fruit, the recovered Martha left camp in mid-June.

  That summer, Jack and Nelly joined her at home as they often did, although they had finally moved to Abingdon. Mount Vernon rang with the voices of Betsy and Patty, five and almost four. Because of her delicate health from several pregnancies and difficult births, Nelly frequently left little Nelly, two years old, and the new baby—a boy at last, to his papa’s relief—to be cared for at Mount Vernon by their grandmother and Eliza Foote Washington. The baby boy, born on April 30, had been christened George Washington Parke Custis, called Wash or Washy.

  Wild for joint action and be damned to the budget, Washington had the French officers for dinner several days a week. Thirty guests a day gathered at the commander’s table and missed having his wife there to oversee the meal. The camaraderie—not to speak of the beer, rum, and Madeira—boded well for future cooperation, but the French naturally criticized the cuisine. The coffee was too weak, the salad was vinegary, and the food ran together in their single plates. Surely war wasn’t a valid excuse for a one-course dinner.

  In mid-August, the news arrived: The French fleet under the command of Admiral de Grasse was on the way to the Chesapeake, with three thousand soldiers on board. Between the fleet and Lafayette’s forces, reinforced by these French troops, Cornwallis would be trapped at Yorktown. Giving up the dream of New York, Washington and Rochambeau and their armies set off for Virginia, some by boat, the others marching.

  On September 9, accompanied by two aides, George galloped sixty miles out of the way to arrive at Mount Vernon late on a golden autumn afternoon. The first sight of his cherished home in more than six years must have filled his heart with joy, as he examined the ongoing construction and noted time’s effects on frame buildings. For the first time, he set eyes on the four grandchildren, including his latest little namesake.

  He spent three nights at home, dictating letters to militia, state, and county officials to repair the road to be used by the army, to shore up the fords for the use of the wagons, and to rush supplies to t
he new front. He himself wrote to Lafayette of their imminent arrival with a gleeful postscript: “I hope you will keep Lord Cornwallis safe, without Provisions or Forage untill we arrive. Adieu.”

  The French generals and their suites followed close behind. They spent their days plotting, planning, and trying to foresee enemy action. Martha was in her element, seeing that the house servants made up sufficient beds, put out soap and towels, warmed water to clean off the dust of the road, and prepared meals that more than made up for the skimpy rations at New Windsor. Washington’s aide Jonathan Trumbull recorded, “An elegant seat and situation: great appearance of opulence and real exhibitions of hospitality and princely entertainment.”

  When the generals rejoined their troops on the march, Jack Custis decided to go along. Family lore and nineteenth-century romanticism to the contrary, Jack doesn’t seem to have been appointed as an aide. Rather, he was an observer without duties, free to visit family and friends in the neighborhood. He spent a night at Pamocra, visiting his uncle Bat Dandridge and his grandmother Fanny Jones Dandridge, who lived with the family; she had started to show “her great Age [seventy-one].” He also looked in on his aunt Betsy Dandridge Henley and inquired after runaway slaves from Mount Vernon, many of whom had died of want in the Williamsburg neighborhood. His sole comment on the siege of Yorktown, begun on September 28, was that “the General tho in constant Fatigue looks very well.”

  Washington may have been cheated of the attack on New York, but Yorktown turned out to be a fine replacement. For once, fortune smiled: the French fleet and both American and French troops arrived at the same time at the same place, and they besieged Yorktown, where Cornwallis and his army were securely trapped. This time, the British navy wasn’t able to come to the rescue. On October 17, after less than three weeks of bloody bombardments, attacks, sorties, scant rations, and lack of reinforcements, an enraged Cornwallis signaled for terms to end a hopeless situation. Two days of negotiation ensued, with the British attempting to dictate terms while Washington put them firmly in their place.

  On October 19, Cornwallis and his eight thousand men marched out—the officers to be sent home in exchange for captured American officers, the soldiers to be imprisoned in camps in Virginia and Maryland. A treasure trove of weapons, ammunition, artillery, equipment, boats, and Cornwallis’s literal war chest filled with hard money fell into American hands. Yorktown was the culminating moment of the American Revolution. After that, it was all over but the shouting—but not anytime soon.

  Disposition of American brigades, British and German prisoners, the wounded of both sides, and all the booty; reports to Congress, far-flung military officers, and state officials; inspection of all the work in progress; plans for the future—Washington didn’t stop for days on end. That summer, Congress had sent peace commissioners Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and Henry Laurens to join John Adams in France. Besides sending a copy of the capitulation and “a summary return of prisoners and cannons” to Congress, Washington sent another copy directly to Franklin in Paris on a French frigate dispatched by de Grasse to avoid delay. As he wrote, “Recent intelligence of Milit[ar]y Transactions must be important to our Ministers in Europe at the present period of Affairs.”

  Sometime during the siege, Jack Custis contracted a “camp fever,” probably typhus, which was endemic in the crowding and filth of army camps. Washington had him taken to nearby Eltham to be nursed by the Bassetts. Typhus was nowhere near as dangerous as smallpox, and his stepfather probably wasn’t particularly worried as he continued preparations to return north. Far from recovering, however, Jack sank deeper into illness and fever. A messenger was sent to Mount Vernon to fetch Martha and Nelly, who rushed to his bedside.

  Washington finished off his many tasks and left for Eltham to visit Burwell Bassett on November 5. To his surprise, his wife and daughter-in-law were there. He barely had time to see Jack Custis one last time before the young man died, three weeks short of his twenty-seventh birthday. Jack hadn’t achieved much in his short life. He hadn’t done well at his studies or farming and had never considered a profession or the military. In the years since he had taken over his great estate, it had fallen considerably in value through his own inept management and through the dishonesty of a trusted friend. His three years’ service in the General Assembly had been undistinguished.

  But he was a loving and lovable son and husband, and his mother and wife grieved deeply for him. Although frequently exasperated by his fecklessness, George also cared for Jack, and his sorrow was intensified by worry for Martha, who was stunned at the loss of her last child. To outlive all four of her children was a terrible burden for such a loving mother.

  There was no question of Washington’s leaving for Philadelphia until he had taken care of his wife. Congress would have to wait. Jack was buried in the private cemetery at Eltham, with the family in attendance. Martha’s brother Bat agreed to administer the estate for Nelly; George couldn’t take on that responsibility during wartime. The sad cortege returned to Mount Vernon while George took a side trip to Fredericksburg to call on his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since before the war.

  When he discovered that Mary Washington was out of town on a visit, he left five guineas for her and went on home. Although she publicly complained of her poverty with the most embarrassing regularity, George was always generous with his mother, and she was very comfortably fixed in her town house. While she finally thanked her son for the money, the letter was otherwise a model of selfishness. Without a mention of Yorktown, she begged him to build her a cabin over the mountains. She did send her love to Martha, adding, “I would have wrote to her but my reason has jis left me.” She didn’t mention Jack’s death.

  George stayed at Mount Vernon for a week before leaving for Philadelphia, where he planned to meet with congressmen and other politicians. As he wrote Nathanael Greene, “I shall attempt to stimulate Congress to the best Improvement of our late Success.” Otherwise, he feared that they might “fall into a State of Langour and Relaxation.” Despite the great victory, George III might prove as obstinate as ever. The war wouldn’t be over until a treaty was signed.

  Yorktown was on every American’s lips. Rather than stay at home in her sorrow, Martha decided to go with her husband for the comfort of his presence. This trip was a reprise of 1775, with escorts, addresses, and cheering crowds. Philadelphia, as usual, outdid every place in its welcome. In addition to the usual celebratory illumination of lanterns and candles placed on windowsills, large transparent paintings, lit from behind, covered many windows like glowing shades. Patriotic and allegorical themes ran riot.

  Washington’s meetings with Congress were generally successful, as they heeded at least some of his advice about improved military and civilian organization. They agreed to keep and supply an army in the field for the immediate future. The British still held two of the new nation’s largest ports—New York and Charleston. Everyone wanted to entertain the hero. Martha also attended some functions, but without her usual zest. George described these “parties of pleasure” as “nearly of a sameness” and “too unimportant for description.” He was there to prevent any congressional backsliding before peace was actually achieved.

  Business finally accomplished, the Washingtons and their escort left Philadelphia on March 22, 1782, stopping at several encampments before arriving at headquarters a week later. Their new home was a sturdy Dutch farmhouse, a one-story building of stone, at Newburgh, New York, on a hill with a beautiful view of the Hudson River. The largest room in the house was a dining room. To a French visitor, a smoking fireplace and the oddity of the room—seven doors and only one window—were worthy of comment. During the day, a small room was used as a parlor; with the addition of a cot, it became a guest room.

  Martha went home in midsummer to look after her grandchildren and widowed daughter-in-law. George hoped to join her there later in the year but found the temper of the army too sullen to allow him to leave. Guests st
opped for a visit at Mount Vernon as freely as ever.

  Washington’s hoped-for summer campaign came to nothing in 1782. He had too few troops, and the French fleet was defeated by the British, with de Grasse taken prisoner. The British Parliament voted against further war, opening peace negotiations with the American commissioners and withdrawing troops from the inland south. Only on the frontier did the violence continue. In November, a preliminary peace treaty was signed; and in December, the British evacuated Charleston. But they still had an army in New York.

  During 1782 and 1783, negotiations for the final treaty dragged on endlessly in Paris, with both British enemies and French allies attempting to hobble the new nation and her potential for full independence and growth. Washington would not abandon his post until a treaty was officially signed and ratified. Frustrated and bored, he sent for Martha to keep him company; in December 1782, she came back to the same Dutch farmhouse in Newburgh. All was anticlimax and tedium. One by one, the aides resigned and returned to their own affairs. As Washington wrote, “Time passed heavily on in this dreary mansion in which we are fast locked by frost and snow.” A month or two could easily pass without news from Paris. Their mission accomplished, the French troops went home after emotional farewells.

  Neither Congress nor the states had done well by their soldiers and officers. Accepting the sacrifice of years of their lives, civilian authorities hesitated to take unpopular measures to raise money to pay the military back wages (sometimes very far in arrears), assure promised pensions, or care for the disabled. There had been several mutinies or near mutinies by enlisted men in the last couple of years, but now even some officers were starting to murmur about asserting themselves while they were still armed and had troops under their command. On March 10, 1783, an unsigned address was circulated among the officers, calling for a meeting to assert their right to fair treatment. A pamphlet was also distributed that was a virtual call to use military force against Congress.