Victory at Yorktown: A Novel

by Newt Gingrich

  Much was still to be done, to keep this army intact once the joy of this moment had passed, and the dull tedium of winter quarters, spring watch, standing guard on hot summer nights, and chill autumn rains passed, and passed perhaps yet again. Until the last of the British had left and his land was free and he free as well to place his uniform back into a cedar chest, as any true citizen of a free republic would do. Then return at last to the loving embrace of Martha, and to home, where, at this moment he prayed, he could live out his remaining years in peace, having done his service to his country.

  * * *

  Peter stared at the door, from which flecks of paint were peeling, steeled his nerves, and knocked.

  There was silence from within. Shutters were drawn in, curtains within pulled down, and his heart sank.

  He knocked, and then knocked again more insistently. No reply, no answer from within. Heart sinking he began to turn away and then he heard a bolt being unlatched.

  His disappointment of but a second before now replaced with nervousness … anguish.

  Elizabeth opened the door.

  She gazed at him in obvious disbelief and the sight of her shocked him. Her once-glowing features had paled, cheeks sunken in, eyes dark rimmed, hollow, and he recognized that look from years of winter encampments, the poor pathetic girl was malnourished, starving.

  “Peter, is that you?” she whispered in obvious disbelief.

  “Yes, Elizabeth, may I come in?”

  She opened the door wide and silently beckoned for him to enter.

  What greeted him within was a shock. The once-ornate parlor was devoid of any furniture except for a couple of straight-backed chairs. Everything, furniture, ornate wall hangings, even the brass andirons and tools for the fireplace gone.

  “What in heaven happened here?” Peter gasped.

  “Taken,” she whispered. “I was accused of harboring a known Tory after you left. One of their militia men testified against me at the hearing. My father’s sentiments were already known, of course, and he dare not return from New York to try to defend our property or me. I was declared a traitor, our property forfeited and confiscated to support our cause. It was taken the day after word arrived of our victory at Yorktown. The house has already been sold at auction; at least the buyers took pity on me, and said I could have till the end of the month to vacate and head to New York.”

  “This is infamy,” Peter snapped, his mission forgotten for the moment so bitter was this outrage.

  “This is war,” she whispered. She began to choke up. “I think I have enough tea,” she whispered, trying to appear brave and nonplussed, “would you care for a cup?”

  He followed her into the kitchen, stripped out as well, though there was a fire of a few sticks to ward off the chill, a chair drawn close to the smoldering flames where she had obviously been sitting to stay warm. A single kettle was suspended over the flame, and reaching into a near-empty cabinet, she drew out a small jar, opened it, and sprinkled the precious leaves into the kettle, then turned back to face him trying to force a smile.

  “Give it a few minutes to simmer.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Yes, Peter?”

  He had rehearsed this moment in his mind a thousand times during the long weeks of their return march. Thinking upon it while riding, trailing behind Washington and his joyous staff, lying awake at night in the open fields whether star-studded or cloud-covered and raining. He had tried to rehearse it a thousand times.

  “Regarding Allen.”

  She actually smiled.

  “Yes, Peter. He was here. I hid him that day you were here and I bless you for it,” she paused, “he was in my bedroom even as you and I spoke in the parlor and you so nobly, God bless you forever, turned and walked out the door. And Peter, I knew that you knew and have blessed you every day for your gallantry and compassion.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  Her eyes widened and he tried to force the words out but his voice broke into a shuddering sob.

  “He’s dead.”

  It was all he could say. No gentle building up, no flowery statements, no explanation, just those two words escaping from him.

  Her features paled so that he feared she would faint. He reached forward to brace her up, but she slapped his hands away.

  “How, how? My God, how?”

  “The war.”

  “How?”

  He struggled for control, lowering his head, tears streaming, dropping to the floor.

  “I killed him.”

  “What?” and even as she cried out that one word she strode forward and began to strike him again and again.

  “How? Why? My God, why?”

  He blurted out the description of what happened as if confessing the darkest of sins to a mother torn apart with grief and her blows finally ceased.

  “I had to,” he cried, finally daring to look back into her eyes. “I did it because I loved him. We played at being soldiers once, and, oh God, how different our dreams of what war is were then. We played it so many times as boys and thought it to be all glory and painless death.

  “If I had not,” and again sobs wracked him, “those bastards outside would have hanged him and after what I saw with John Andre, I would not, I could not give my friend over to that…”

  He began to cry again and now rather than blows, her arms were around him, holding him close.

  “Bless you, Peter,” she sighed, holding him close pressing his head against her shoulder. “Bless you, Peter.”

  “I had to tell you. I could not feel absolved until I told you.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then she drew in her breath.

  “Peter, I am with child.”

  Still holding her close he put his hand under her chin and raised it. Her eyes were shining with tears, but there was just the flicker of a smile, the smile nearly all women have when they know new life is within them.

  “That night, after you left us, Peter. I am with child, Allen’s child.”

  He drew her into his embrace.

  “I am more than two months along. I know no one else knows,” and she actually shuddered out a soft laugh, but then began to cry again. “Only you know, but you know what they will do. I am already accused of being a Loyalist, and now I will be branded the mother of a bastard child of a Loyalist.”

  Then she did, indeed, begin to cry, long wracking sobs, for her lost Allen, her baby who would be branded the bastard of a traitor.

  At that moment, somewhere in the depths of his heart he sensed that he knew this all along. That on the night he had turned away from her doorstep, to spare the life of his friend from the rope, to spare his distant cousin from the humiliation of harboring a Tory, he somehow knew why this had happened after all. That Allen sensed the result of that one night together and thus his final appeal, just before Peter drew careful aim and then snuffed out his life to spare him.

  He leaned down and kissed her all so gently on the forehead.

  “No, Elizabeth.”

  She looked up at him confused.

  “No, Elizabeth. You carry my child.”

  “What?”

  “My war is over. I asked my general for leave after six years of service and he granted it to me. I think someone, God bless him, told him the truth of what happened between Allen and me. Washington bade me to sit with him and I told him everything.”

  He struggled to control his emotions as he remembered how his general had reacted only the night before when he had been ordered to report. Washington had drawn his chair closer and put a fatherly hand on his shoulder, then asked him to speak plainly about all that had transpired.

  “You did the right thing,” Washington said softly as Peter, voice breaking, finished his narrative. “I could not have spared your friend, you know that. It would have been horrible, ghastly. You spared him that out of love for an old friend. And yes, I recall as well your friend as a man of honor, with a brother, who alongside you was crucial to our vi
ctory so long ago at Trenton.”

  Not a word was shared for several minutes as Peter broke down in front of his general, and then Washington had placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’ve been in the army how long now?” he asked.

  “Since I was seventeen, sir, I joined back in ’76.”

  “And this young woman you spoke of, who hid your friend?”

  “Elizabeth Risher,” he replied woodenly.

  Washington sat back, and nodded.

  “Go to her.”

  “Sir?”

  “You have done splendid work, Peter, and you must know that I have dozens of others who did and still do such work for me as well.”

  “Sir?”

  “She has always been a Patriot, Peter. She was crucial in giving us information while Philadelphia was occupied, and if she stands accused now of being a Tory, that is false and you must help her.”

  Washington smiled.

  “This war is over for you, young sir. You have done enough, as has she. You will hold your commission until the army is demobilized, but I think it is time you went home to rest, and to peace.”

  “What are you saying, Peter?”

  He smiled and drew her close in an embrace.

  “It is our child, Elizabeth. I have always loved you. Remember my one feeble attempt to dance with you so many years ago before this war, and you said I was a clumsy oaf?”

  She actually smiled and nodded.

  “I have loved you from that day. And I loved Allen, the brother I never had.”

  “Peter, do you know what you are saying?”

  He smiled.

  “Of course I do dear, Elizabeth. We leave for my home in Trenton and will marry tomorrow. He will be our child, Elizabeth. The war is over for us and young Allen will be born an American.”

  Epilogue

  FRAUNCES TAVERN

  NEW YORK CITY

  DECEMBER 4, 1783

  The room where he had asked to be alone for a few moments to gather his thoughts and prepare for the brief ceremony ahead was quiet, at least relatively quiet, when compared to the tumult just outside his third-story window. General of the Armies of the United States George Washington had to stand several feet back from the window, because if observed by the jubilant crowd on the street below, there would be renewed calls for a speech, something he felt absolutely incapable of doing on this most emotional of days.

  The war had ended at last.

  It was just over two years to the day since he personally gave his report to Congress in Philadelphia of the triumph at Yorktown. There had been wild prophecies by some, claiming that the war was over then and there.

  The months after Yorktown had been heralded as the beginning of the end, but as a student of history and war, he knew better than most how many times a final victory had been snatched away at the negotiating table.

  The news of Yorktown, of course, echoed resoundingly across Europe, and members of the British Parliament, some of whom had defiantly and openly expressed support of the American cause from the start, now called for an end to it all. Serious negotiations in Paris had at last begun, but it had taken nearly two years of that to see it through to this conclusion today.

  For two more winters, his army, nearly as ragged and poor as before Yorktown, waited it out. The infusions of cash by Robert Morris, which had kept the flame of liberty alive on the march down to Yorktown, had totally exhausted any reserves left throughout the thirteen states. His men endured two more cold winters of scant rations, many of them shoeless, uniforms in tatters, after a grueling five-month campaign and nearly a thousand miles of marching. What he had feared might be a fatal blow that would reverse everything gained over the previous year were the orders from Paris the following spring, recalling his staunch ally Rochambeau and the entire French navy to Europe or deploying them to cover their possessions in the Caribbean. Rochambeau had openly wept with shame when he presented his orders to withdraw, and their parting had been a sad and bitter one, the parting of two comrades. Never would he forget the French general’s proud and haughty gesture when offered Cornwallis’s sword. He had refused it, pointing to him and announcing, “There is the commander of this army, present your surrender to him.” It was not just an acknowledgment of Washington himself; it was an acknowledgment of a new nation.

  The announcement triggered fears that France might fold at the negotiating table and thus encouraged, England would just decide to let the war drag on forever by keeping a garrison in New York until hell did, indeed, freeze over. Bitter conflict still flared in the Carolinas and Georgia. One of the victims at this late stage, killed in some senseless skirmish, was his trusted aide, the son of the president of the Confederation, Colonel Laurens. Just as dead if he had fallen leading a “glorious charge” at Monmouth or Princeton, but instead gunned down in an ambush on a back-country lane, that would have no bearing on the outcome of this conflict, but dead, nevertheless. Some congressional representatives from New England had whispered that conceding the three most southern states to England in exchange for independence for the other ten might not be such a bad deal after all. He thanked heaven for men such as Benjamin Franklin, who had at this moment of renewed crisis pushed the negotiations forward in Paris. Franklin conveyed the impression to King George that even if standing alone again, America would be a wound that could never heal, would consume if need be a hundred million more pounds and fifty thousand more troops, with the other powers of Europe sitting back and smiling as English power was sapped away by this interminable struggle that could go on for generations. If they wanted another Ireland or Scotland, this one a hundred times worse, then let the struggle go on.

  The threat worked. Even while negotiations in Europe dragged out, through “indirect” communications with General Carleton, who had replaced Clinton in New York City, an “understanding” was reached, that if one did not seek aggressive action the other would refrain as well, and let the diplomats sort it out.

  Within his own ranks a true crisis had come during the winter of ’82–’83. A group of officers, actually loyal to him, had hatched a plot to simply give power to their commander, march on Philadelphia, throw Congress out on its heels, and just let Washington handle whatever was to come, starting with pay for those still in the ranks and supplies to keep them alive. It became known as the “Newburgh Conspiracy.”

  He felt he could always recall that moment now with true pride in his response. If ever there was a temptation, the offer of a Faustian bargain such as Cromwell and so many others had grabbed hold of, it was that moment. Of course, the temptation was there to play along in innocence as others paved the way for him to be Cromwell or Caesar, but it was impossible. Men such as Cincinnatus and the hero of his favorite play, Cicero, had been his models since childhood, not Caesar.

  He had rebuffed the “Cabal of Newburgh” with a simple gesture. When a brief speech denouncing the plot failed to draw the response he sought. Washington resorted to a bit of “stagecraft” by drawing from his breast pocket his spectacles. Few, except his closest aides, had ever seen him wearing them, a symbol appropriate for an intellectual such as Franklin, or an aging minister, statesman, or scholar, but certainly not for a general still robust and apparently in his prime.

  The room had fallen silent at the sight of this gesture and with true humbleness he had said, “As you can see, I have gone old and near to blind in service to my country. I did not fight George the Third to become George the First.”

  The potential rebellion had collapsed before he had even left the room.

  As much as the memory of so many battles fought filled him at this moment with a sense of pride, it was turning aside that ultimate offer of power that he felt he could be proudest of.

  Come spring, when it was clear that negotiations in Paris were coming to a successful conclusion, Congress ordered him to start the demobilization of his army. He knew it was to cut expenses, but there were some lingering doubts as well that he just might c
hange his mind about the offer of an army, giving him the power of dictatorship. That any would believe such of him after so many years of service was an insult, but, as always, he obeyed.

  As each regiment mustered for the last time, under their faded, shot-torn standards that they had carried before them in victory and preserved in times of bitter defeat, Washington had stood before them. His voice often choked with emotion, extolled them to return to their homes as free men, as honest men, that their pay was the glory they had won on so many battlefields, and the honor that they would be held in by all generations of Americans to come. They had heard him and gone home with barely a word of protest. He had clasped the hands of many thousands in those months, and could never forget the look in the eyes of so many. Poor, ragged, worn after eight years of war, they were free men, men of honor and pride, who looked him straight in the eye as he thanked each for their service to America.

  Now it was time for him to go home as well.

  Word had arrived on November 24 that the treaty of peace had been signed in Paris. A secure America, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, had been won.

  The proper protocols and messages had been exchanged between him and General Carleton with the arrival of the notice of this Treaty of Paris. The final act would be the last British soldier embarking by the morning of December 4 for England.

  The evening before he crossed the Harlem River via the “Kings Bridge” to the tip of Manhattan isle with his army, now less than a thousand men under arms. Shallow sunken graves still pockmarked the land, from the battles fought back in 1776, a final resting place of many a Patriot.

  Dawn had come bright and clear, with early winter weather, but with the promise of a springlike warmth by midday as they marched down from the wooded heights, past farmsteads, some overgrown and abandoned by Patriots who had fled the British occupation and were now following along to reclaim their land and rebuild. As they came off those heights, in the distance, in the upper bay between Staten Island and Manhattan, all could see a small convoy of ships taking on the last of the British army, which had arrived here more than seven years ago with boasts that in three months’ time they would crush the rebellion and be back home by Christmas. If the wind was swift and fair, they just might make it back at last for this Christmas. Mingled in with them were thousands of tragic refugees, who, at this moment, he no longer bore ill will toward. Refusing to accept or trust in the treaty that promised insurance of their property rights (for those who even still held property), the Loyalists were now going into exile, most to Canada, some all the way back to England.