In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Ron Chernow discusses GW’s submitting a bill for his expenses to Congress in Washington, p. 445. In a Jan. 1, 1784, letter to Richard Varick, GW thanks him for assembling his volumes of correspondence while making the claim that “I am fully convinced that neither the present age nor posterity will consider the time and labor which have been employed in accomplishing it, unprofitably spent,” in WGW, 27:289–90. Joseph Manca cites GW’s joke in “George Washington’s Use of Humor During the Revolutionary War,” https://allthingsliberty.com/2015/02/george-washingtons-use-of-humor-during-the-revolutionary-war/. GW’s Nov. 2, 1783, “Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States” are in WGW, 27:223–25. GW’s Nov. 6, 1783, letter to Alexander Hamilton, in which he complains of how Congress adjourned “without bringing the peace establishment or any of the many other pressing matters to a decision,” is in WGW, 27:232. Sam Willis describes the exodus of loyalists and free blacks from the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War as “the largest movement of ships and people in the history of the British Empire” in The Struggle for Sea Power, p. 471. In Liberty’s Exiles, Maya Jasanoff cites the British officer’s observation that American people “know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them,” p. 6. Edwin Burrows cites the statistics about deaths during the American Revolution in Forgotten Patriots, pp. 200–204; see also Holger Hoock’s Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth, pp. 215–24. On the likelihood that James Rivington served as a British spy, see Todd Andrlik’s “James Rivington: King’s Printer and Patriot Spy?,” https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/03/james-rivington-kings-printer-patriot-spy/. Benjamin Tallmadge’s account of GW’s farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern is in his Memoir, pp. 63–64. GW’s Dec. 23, 1783, “Address to Congress on Resigning his Commission” is in WGW, 27:285. Gordon Wood cites King George’s prediction that if GW retired to private life “he will be the greatest man in the world” in “The Greatness of George Washington,” p. 197. For GW’s Sept. 27, 1781, letter to de Grasse about how “a great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices,” see Correspondence, pp. 48–54. For his Oct. 17, 1777, letter to Richard Henry Lee about his efforts “to harmonize so many discordant parts,” see WGW, 9:389. For Abigail Adams’s July 12, 1789, letter to Mary Smith Cranch, in which she writes of GW’s ability to inspire “love and reverence,” see Found Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed. C. James Taylor (Boston: Massachusetts Hist. Soc., 2018), www.masshist.org/apdez/. For GW’s Aug. 28, 1778, letter to William Heath claiming “[I]t is our duty to make the best of our misfortunes and not suffer passion to interfere with our interest and the public good,” see WGW, 12:365. For GW’s June 7, 1781, letter to Joseph Jones, in which he speaks of working on “the great scale,” see WGW, 22:179. My thanks to the historian Peter Henriques for bringing GW’s comments about the importance of serving “the general good,” as well as Abigail Adams’s remarks about GW, to my attention.

  EPILOGUE ◆ AFTERMATH

  On Benedict Arnold, see Clare Brandt’s The Man in the Mirror, pp. 254–79. On Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, see Mary Kimbrough’s Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, pp. 190–216. On Sir Guy Carleton, see Maya Jasanoff’s Liberty’s Exiles, pp. 198–209. On François Jean de Beauvoir Chastellux, see Howard Rice’s introduction to Chastellux’s Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781 and 1782, pp. 17–25. On Sir Henry Clinton, see William Willcox’s Portrait of a General, pp. 445–91. On Baron von Closen, see the introduction by Evelyn Acomb in von Closen’s Revolutionary Journal, pp. xxvii–xxxvi. On Lord Cornwallis, see Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s The Men Who Lost America, pp. 282–85. On Johann Ewald, see Joseph Tustin’s introduction in Ewald’s DAW, pp. xxvii–xxxi. On Bernardo de Gálvez, see Thomas Fleming’s “Bernardo de Galvez: The Forgotten Revolutionary Conquistador Who Saved Louisiana,” www.americanheritage.com/content/bernardo-de-g%C3%A1lvez. On Horatio Gates, see Paul David Nelson, General Horatio Gates, pp. 276–97. On George III and George Germain, see O’Shaughnessy’s The Men Who Lost America, pp. 43–46, 200–203. On Comte de Grasse, see Charles Lee Lewis’s Admiral De Grasse and American Independence, pp. 288–312. On Thomas Graves, see the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=2431. On NG, see Gerald Carbone’s Nathanael Greene, pp. 221–35, and Terry Golway’s Washington’s General, in which appears Alexander Hamilton’s claim that NG’s “universal and pervading genius . . . qualified him not less for the Senate than for the field,” p. 314. On Alexander Hamilton, see Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, pp. 187–731.

  On Samuel Hood, see Colin Pengelly’s Sir Samuel Hood and the Battle of the Chesapeake, pp. 194–226. On Thomas Jefferson, see Michael Kranish’s Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War, pp. 290–331. On Henry Knox, see Mark Puls’s Henry Knox, pp. 183–257, and Alan Taylor’s Liberty Men and Great Proprietors, pp. 37–47, 244–45. On Lafayette, see Laura Auricchio’s The Marquis, pp. 92–307, and James Gaines’s For Liberty and Glory, pp. 192–450. On Duc de Lauzun, see the Appendix by C. K. Scott Moncrieff in Lauzun’s Memoirs, pp. 223–25. On Henry Lee, see Charles Royster’s Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution, pp. 57–252; Lee’s funeral oration describing GW as “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen” is cited at web.archive.org/web/20120228192657/http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/exhibit/mourning/response.html. On Benjamin Lincoln, see David Mattern’s Benjamin Lincoln and the American Revolution, pp. 150–218. On Joseph Plumb Martin, see the introduction by James Kirby Martin in Martin’s Journal, pp. xiii–xv, and Taylor’s Liberty Men and Great Proprietors, pp. 244–49. On Daniel Morgan, see John Buchanan’s The Road to Guilford Courthouse, which includes the words he reputedly told the doctor on his deathbed, pp. 399–401. On Robert Morris, see Charles Rappleye’s Robert Morris, pp. 358–530. The description of Charles O’Hara as the “Cock of the Rock” appears in Revolutionary War Almanac by John Fredriksen, p. 550. On Rochambeau, see Arnold Whitridge’s Rochambeau, pp. 233–321. On George Rodney, see David Spinney’s Rodney, pp. 413–30. On Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis, see Granville Hough’s “Spanish Heroes of the American Revolution: Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis,” http://www.somosprimos.com/hough/hough.htm#SAAVEDRA. On Friedrich von Steuben, see Paul Lockhart’s The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, pp. 285–302. On Banastre Tarleton, see Robert Bass’s The Green Dragoon, pp. 185–454. GW writes of his “anxious desire to quit the walks of public life, and under the shadow of my own vine, and my own fig tree,” in an Oct. 11, 1783, letter to Chastellux in WGW, 27:189. See also Benjamin Latrobe’s account of his 1796 visit to Mount Vernon in his Virginia Journals, 1:172, as well as Henry Wiencek’s An Imperfect God, which cites GW’s prediction “that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union,” p. 362, and Ron Chernow’s Washington, which recounts the circumstances under which GW wrote his will and his conversation with Dr. Craik on his deathbed, pp. 799–804, 807–9.

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