Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

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Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Page 33

by Richard R. Beeman


  The other recurring theme in his reports to the Congress was his frustration at the obstacles to achieving discipline and “due Subordination.” Washington pronounced the New England articles of war as “Relaxed, and unfit . . . for the Government of an Army.” It would take nearly a year before the Congress discarded the New England articles of war and replaced them with a system much more closely modeled on a virtually exact replication of the rules of war used by America’s British adversaries.8

  More generally, a congress composed of delegations of varying size spread widely across the expanse of mainland North America was hardly the ideal governmental structure to oversee a military enterprise of the scale soon to engulf America. But in the absence of a legitimate “continental government” and lacking even an extra-legal governmental structure that included a proper chief executive, the Continental Congress was the only body in America remotely capable of taking on the job. During the course of the year 1775, the Congress appointed no fewer than fifty-nine committees focusing on military issues, some charged with the tasks of drafting addresses and petitions, but increasingly, to manage the practical affairs of carrying out an undeclared war and managing the day-to-day business of keeping an informal continental union among the colonies together. In the very first few days of its meeting in September 1775 alone, the delegates would elect more than a dozen committees to manage the war, among them a committee of accounts to pay the bills; a committee to manage the office of the commissary general, which was responsible for supplying provisions to the army; a committee to study the state of trade within America; a committee to purchase woolen goods for the army; and perhaps most important, a committee charged with answering General Washington’s countless letters filled with requests and complaints about the state of the American army!

  Government by committee would prove to be a messy and often inefficient way of accomplishing the business of the “united colonies.” Over time the delegates would become more knowledgeable in their voting for the members of these committees, gradually developing a better understanding of the skills and experience of their colleagues in making their choices for committee assignments. But the committees were too often shaped by concerns about regional balance or personal rivalries. For better or for worse, this would remain the way the Congress carried out its business until well after the colonies formally declared their independence. Eventually, the Congress would begin to create more permanent structures of continental governance, but even then, influenced by their legacy of distrust of executive power as embodied in their former king, both the Congress and the people at large would resist granting power to a chief executive. In the absence of a strong chief executive, congressional committees would continue, often ineffectively, to carry out most of the tasks of governance. By 1776 the number of committees created by Congress had increased to 233, and over the course if its existence, until it expired with the initiation of operations of the new federal government in 1789, it created a grand total of 3,249 committees. The Americans’ experience with royal government had given them a healthy suspicion of concentrations of power in the hands of a few, but the practical consequences of dispersing that power to thousands of committees had their own disadvantages.9

  That September the delegates took small steps to regularize oversight of the army. They appointed a few standing committees such as that on “Accounts” and on supervising the office of the commissary general, staffed by individuals who might over time develop some expertise in overseeing the conduct of the war, although the relatively frequent rotation of delegates in and out of the Congress undercut some of the stability of these standing committees. The Congress elected one of the most important of those, the so-called Secret Committee, on September 19, to take responsibility for the purchase and distribution of arms and ammunition. That committee, so named because of the importance of keeping strategic military decisions secret from their British adversaries, would eventually function as an informal Department of War. But standing committees making decisions from afar were only slight improvements over their predecessors.10

  Washington continued to bombard the Congress with requests and complaints about poor discipline, poor supplies and the chaotic organization of the officer corps. On September 29, responding to those complaints, the Congress decided to appoint a three-person committee to travel to Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge and, after conferring with Washington and officials from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, to make recommendations on “the most effectual method of continuing, supporting, and regulating a continental army.” The following day the delegates, voting by ballot, elected Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch and Benjamin Harrison to serve on the committee. On that same day the Congress appointed yet another committee to draw up instructions for the three-person committee, and on October 2, the delegates agreed to a set of instructions that limited the committee’s authority to making “inquiries” and then reporting back to the Congress. This method of oversight, ultimately involving the entire membership of Congress in the details of the prosecution of the war, was an archetypical example of congressional governance in action. In the case of this particular committee, the results would be positive ones, for when the three men traveled to Cambridge, their interactions with General Washington were supportive and helpful. But over the course of a long war, such harmony would not always be the norm.11

  John Adams was not at all sure that the three men—particularly the southerners Harrison and Lynch—would be sufficiently supportive of the urgent need to do everything possible to support military action in his home colony. In a letter to James Warren that he sent via a courier traveling with the committee of three to Cambridge, he expressed his fear that the two southerners had formed “some unfavourable Impressions from Misrepresentations concerning our Province.” Cousin Sam was more sanguine. Also writing to Warren, he had nothing but good things to say about the trio of emissaries and expressed his confidence that “this embassy . . . will be attended with great and good Consequences.” The tone of both of the Adamses’ letters suggested, however, that provincial, rather than continental, concerns were uppermost in their minds.12

  The three committee members arrived at Washington’s headquarters on October 15. Washington was no doubt uneasy, perhaps unhappy, about the prospect of the committee’s arrival. He was already faced with the conflicting ambitions and egos of an excessive number of congressionally appointed generals—and frustration, bordering on outrage, at the poor discipline of the militiamen whom he had inherited and the difficult but vitally important task of appointing subordinate officers. Now he had to greet a committee charged with assessing not only the military situation, but also, no doubt, his performance.

  But whatever Washington’s reservations, he impressed his visitors. When Franklin, Lynch and Harrison returned to Philadelphia on November 2, they advocated everything that Washington had asked of them. When the Congress acted on their report on November 4 and November 7, it agreed to every one of the committee’s recommendations. In addition to strengthening the army in Boston, Congress ordered three battalions to be sent to South Carolina and one to Georgia in anticipation of British military campaigns in the South and voted for additional arms, ammunition and supplies for the army. And it included both carrots and sticks to improve the discipline and morale of the army. It promised pay raises for officers and enlisted men, which Washington had sought in an effort to keep them from leaving the army after their initial, short-term enlistments had expired. And it approved a lengthy set of new rules and regulations for the army, including severe punishments for soldiers found guilty of violating them, even going so far as to stipulate that any soldier or officer who left his post in search of plunder during an engagement with the enemy—apparently a frequent occurrence—would not only be “drummed out of the army with infamy,” but also whipped with no fewer than twenty nor more than thirty-nine lashes. Thomas Lynch conveyed the news of Congress’s actions to Washington. Ref
erring to the congressional agreement to pay raises for the officers—raises that went beyond even what Washington had requested—Lynch commented, “Being now paid, [the soldiers] must do their Duty & look as well as act like Gentlemen.”13

  Of course, voting for additional troops and stricter rules of discipline was not the same as actually providing those troops or enforcing that discipline, and Washington would continue to struggle to fill the ranks of his army; to feed, clothe and equip it; and to enforce the new rules of discipline. However much America’s political leaders would boast about the ideological virtues of a “citizens’ army,” as opposed to England’s professional “mercenary” army, the reality of short-term enlistments, combined with the natural instincts of obstreperous young men who were unused to subordinating their desires to a superior authority, would prove a constant source of frustration to General Washington. His complaints about poor discipline would continue to the end of the war.

  But for all his complaining in private, his public behavior, reserved and formal, was always in the service of the well-being of his men. By his self-conscious and public support of his troops, he came to be seen by nearly all of his officers and enlisted men, as not only their leader, but their champion. Quite extraordinarily, soon after he took command of the army, he began to be referred to both in official correspondence and by those addressing him as “His Excellency.” As historian Joseph Ellis has observed, “His Excellency” was perhaps one notch lower than “His Majesty,” but it was a designation that nevertheless placed Washington head and shoulders above any other man in America.14

  The Creation of an American Navy

  Once warfare with the British had erupted, the American colonies found themselves confronted not only by a powerful, professional army, but, perhaps even more unsettling, by what was possibly the most formidable naval force in the world. It was a force capable of blockading all of America’s principal ports, virtually putting an end to all American commerce, as well as bombarding American residents from the sea. On October 5, the Congress appointed a committee of three—John Langdon of New Hampshire, Silas Deane of Connecticut and John Adams—to prepare a plan for intercepting two British ships known to be carrying arms and ammunition. Without a navy, such actions would require arming American merchant ships to carry out any such attacks. In the coming weeks, the Congress appointed additional committees dealing with naval affairs and, by October 30, was moving forward with the idea of arming American merchant ships to defend the American coastline. But by now, many in Congress and in the individual colonies believed they needed to create an American navy capable of protecting American commerce and of thwarting British naval attacks on New England coastal towns.15

  The New England colonies, because of their jagged coastlines, which presented a nearly infinite number of opportunities for British naval incursions, would lead the push for an American navy. While the Congress was in recess, the Rhode Island legislature had formally requested that it take the necessary steps for “building and equipping an American fleet.” On October 5, the delegates began to debate the wisdom of the Rhode Island recommendation. Samuel Chase of Maryland was adamantly opposed, calling the proposal the “maddest idea in the World,” one which neither the colonial nor continental governments could ever afford. The South Carolina delegates, whose port of Charleston was extremely vulnerable to British attack, generally supported the Rhode Islanders. Christopher Gadsden, the one South Carolinian who consistently favored militant measures to oppose the British in almost any context, argued that some form of naval defense was “absolutely necessary,” and his South Carolina colleague John Rutledge, taking something of a middle ground, argued that the Congress needed at least to take stock of how many ships would be required and what the cost of building them would be. The majority of the delegates probably agreed with Rutledge, and for that reason the Congress deferred action on creating a navy for the moment. But they would soon be compelled by the exigencies of war to take at least incremental steps in that direction.16

  On October 13, the Congress authorized the purchase and arming of two ships, the Andrea Doria and the Cabot, to be used against British merchant ships that were attacking American merchant vessels on the high seas. A few weeks later it commissioned another ship, the USS Alfred, and a week later passed a resolution calling for the raising of two battalions of marines to serve with those ships. But these were seen as only temporary measures in response to specific threats. Each time the delegates debated whether to arm a ship, not to mention the innumerable other strategic military decisions with which they were faced, made glaringly obvious the inefficiency of leaving such decisions to a body of fifty or more delegates, with widely varying knowledge of military operations and tactics but with each possessing strong opinions about military strategy. Indeed, if General Washington had been present to hear some of the armchair military strategizing occurring in the Congress during those months, he might well have given up in despair.17

  By the end of November of 1775, the Continental Congress had made enough ad hoc decisions strengthening the colonies’ naval defenses that it had, even without formally acknowledging it, effectively created an American Navy. On November 28, the delegates unanimously adopted an elaborate set of rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies, and on December 13 they authorized the fitting out of thirteen additional ships with naval armaments to defend the coasts and harbors of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. It was a navy pathetically weak in comparison to the formidable and intimidating character of the British naval forces, but it represented at least the beginning of an attempt to coordinate American military efforts on land with modest efforts on the seas.18

  The challenges of organizing a military response to a vastly superior British force would not only strengthen the position of those who were arguing against a precipitous American move toward independence, but they would also reveal once again the significant limitations of the governing structure of the Congress itself. Although no doubt some in the Congress enjoyed their time micromanaging the details of the escalating military conflict with the British, many others were gaining appreciation of the importance of a continental, as opposed to a purely provincial, vision of how the government needed to be organized and empowered if the “united colonies” were to be eventually successful in becoming the “United States.” Not surprisingly, many of those same men would be in the forefront of the movement in 1787 to create a governmental structure vastly more effective—and significantly more powerful—than the ad hoc structure of a Continental Congress.

  SEVENTEEN

  WAITING FOR KING GEORGE III

  THE AMERICANS WERE not the only ones confronting difficult challenges as the conflict between the colonies and their mother country expanded. In London, the British ministry and King George III were wrestling with the same two tasks occupying the attentions of the American Continental Congress. On the political front, the king and Parliament were being forced to confront the fact that their various pronouncements asserting the principle of parliamentary supremacy over the colonies were having the effect of only strengthening the Americans’ resolve to deny that supremacy. On the military front, as it became clear that the colonists would rather fight than submit to Parliament’s attempts to tax and punish them, Britain’s political leaders were being forced to take further steps to bolster their effort to forcibly suppress what was becoming a widespread colonial rebellion. Achieving these twin challenges would have been a formidable task for even the most able and farsighted British politicians, but the crew confronting those challenges in London in the fall of 1775, while neither hopelessly stupid nor deliberately evil, was obviously not up to that task.

  Although Lord North was the primary object of the American patriots’ scorn, George III had been anything but a passive bystander. In his refusal even to read the petition from the First Continental Congress, he had given a pretty clear signal that he was hardly
a sympathetic supporter of the colonists’ cause. And as the situation in America deteriorated, he became even more actively involved in the discussions among his ministers about how to deal with what was rapidly escalating from a minor rebellion to outright war.

  Our images of King George III are distorted by the lenses of history. In particular, the fact that in his later years he suffered bouts of “madness” ensured that the retrospective view of this king would be anything but charitable. But during the period of Great Britain’s imperial crisis with her North American colonies, George III was neither a tyrannical despot nor insane. Although it is easy in retrospect to point to some of the weaknesses in his character and intellect that made him far from the ideal British sovereign to deal with the American imperial crisis, these failings may not have been so obvious at the time.

  George was the third in a line of Hanoverian British kings, members of the royal family in Hanover, in what is today Germany. They had gained their right to rule in Britain by a complicated Act of Settlement following the death of Queen Anne, who had died childless. George’s great-grandfather and grandfather were born in Germany, and both spoke English only haltingly. As a consequence, neither played an active role in the governance of England, letting British ministers such as Sir Robert Walpole and Thomas Pelham, the First Duke of Newcastle, do much of the day-to-day work of running the empire.

  George was the first Hanoverian king to be born in England, to speak English as his first language and, most important, to attempt to play an independent role in leading his empire rather than merely delegating all power to his ministers. He had been greatly influenced by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and his 1749 work The Idea of a Patriot King. In that essay, Bolingbroke exalted the concept of a virtuous and impartial monarch capable of transcending the quarrels and intrigues that had marked the behavior of members of Parliament and the king’s ministers. But George would not find it easy to turn Bolingbroke’s theory into practice. And though George was by no means the dullard some of his critics made him out to be, neither was he the brightest candle in the chandelier, and his studious nature, which helped him keep informed about the issues facing his empire while he was monarch, was at time undermined by his lack of self-confidence and judgment.1

 

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