George Washington

by Stephen Brumwell

  Washington’s manpower headaches never were resolved, but at Valley Forge the supply situation slowly began to improve, helped by the appointment of competent administrators to two crucial jobs: Jeremiah Wadsworth, a rich Connecticut merchant, became head of the commissary department, while Washington’s right-hand man, Major General Nathanael Greene, reluctantly swapped his field command for the onerous and distinctly inglorious staff appointment of quartermaster general. But by then, corruption and inefficiency had already exacted a far higher toll upon the Continentals than Howe’s redcoats and Hessians: in the six months following the army’s arrival at Valley Forge, about 2,500 men—almost a quarter of the army—died as exposure and malnutrition exacerbated the customary campground killers of dysentery and typhus.9

  Washington’s standing as a commander whom Congress could work with—indeed, whom it couldn’t work without—was consolidated by another crisis during the trying winter of 1777–78. It arose from grumbling, both within and outside the army, about Washington’s style of leadership. Such criticism was scarcely surprising given the disappointing results of his Pennsylvania campaign, which looked lamer still alongside Gates’s decisive victory over Burgoyne. For example, while admiring Washington’s bravery and devotion to the cause, Brigadier General Anthony Wayne and Major General Johann de Kalb both complained about his tendency to defer too readily to the opinions of councils of war, rather than following his own good sense. Such gripes were not without foundation; although Washington had known since March 1777 that “it never was the intention of Congress, that he should be bound by the majority of voices in a council of war, contrary to his own judgment,” by then the habit of doing so was already ingrained.10

  Inside Congress, John Adams, who had been instrumental in securing Washington’s elevation to commander in chief in 1775, was now concerned at his near-deification. Indeed, for many Americans, Washington’s emergence as the symbolic figurehead of their new republic had invested him with a quasi-royal status; the title “Father of his Country” first appeared in print in 1778. Such popular veneration, which threatened to replace one King George with another, rubbed against the republican grain of men like Adams. As he confided to his wife, Abigail, another reason to offer thanks for Saratoga was that the “glory of turning the tide of arms” did not belong to Washington. Had it done so, he cautioned, “idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded,” even to the extent that American liberties might be endangered. Adams added: “We can allow a certain citizen to be wise, virtuous, and good, without thinking him a deity or a savior.”11

  Despite their criticisms, none of these men suggested that Washington should be supplanted as commander in chief. One prominent revolutionary who did urge such a drastic measure was the outspoken Dr. Benjamin Rush, now surgeon general of military hospitals in Washington’s own Middle Department. An ardent admirer of Washington when the war began, before the end of 1776 Rush was already turning against him. By the following autumn, his attitude had hardened into outright opposition. On October 21, 1777, in a letter to John Adams, he extolled his good friend Horatio Gates at the expense of Washington: “Look at the characters of both!” Rush exclaimed. “The one on the pinnacle of military glory—exulting in the success of schemes planned with wisdom, and executed with vigor and bravery . . . the other outgeneraled and twice beated [sic].” Rush then proceeded to quote another soldier he greatly admired: Brigadier General Thomas Conway, an Irish-born French Army officer now in the American service. In “a letter to a friend,” Rush reported, Conway had said that: “A great and good God has decreed that America shall be free, or __________ [Washington] and weak counselors would have ruined her long ago.”12

  Conway’s “friend” was none other than Gates. This surprising intelligence reached Washington some weeks later in roundabout fashion. The officer charged with carrying the Saratoga victory dispatches to Congress was Gates’s aide-de-camp, the Trenton and Princeton veteran Colonel James Wilkinson. Stopping at Reading en route to York, Wilkinson fell into company with other officers belonging to the “family” of Major General Lord Stirling. It was a convivial occasion, with his Lordship reminiscing, at some length, about his adventures during the Battle of Long Island.13 As the drink and conversation flowed, Wilkinson divulged Conway’s criticisms of the commander in chief. These reached Stirling via his aide Major William McWilliams. A staunch Washington devotee whom Conway had recently derided as a drunkard, his Lordship felt duty-bound to expose “such wicked duplicity.” As forwarded to Washington, Conway’s words read: “Heaven has been determined to save your country; or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it.”14

  Without verifying this unauthenticated gossip, Washington immediately took the offensive, writing Conway a terse note quoting what he was alleged to have declared. That same day, November 5, 1777, Conway replied, conceding that he had written a congratulatory letter to Gates, in which he had spoken his mind “freely” but denying using the words attributed to him and offering to have the original retrieved as proof. Conway’s letter to Gates is now lost, but judging by a surviving paraphrased extract, it was scarcely complimentary to the commander in chief. Conway now took the opportunity to clear the air by offering his opinion of Washington, “without flattery or envy,” writing “you are a brave man, an honest man, a patriot, and a man of great sense.” He added a less flattering rider that nonetheless echoed the sentiments of some other senior officers: “Your modesty is such, that although your advice in council is commonly sound and proper, you have often been influenced by men who were not equal to you in point of experience, knowledge or judgment.”15 In a subsequent letter to Washington, written after his olive branch had been brushed aside, the indignant Irishman pointed out that in Europe it was common for officers to express frank criticisms of superiors in their personal correspondence: indeed, it would be ironic if such “an odious and tyrannical inquisition” should be introduced by the commander of an army “raised for the defense of Liberty.”16 Had Conway known of Washington’s persistent attempts to undermine his own commander, John Forbes, in 1758, he might have added hypocrisy to his charge of despotism.

  Despite his anger, Washington had no wish to escalate the quarrel and so highlight damaging rifts within the Continental Army at a critical time: that was achieved, albeit unwittingly, by Congress. On November 7, it appointed Thomas Mifflin, the former quartermaster general, to the reorganized Board of War. On Mifflin’s recommendation, Congress soon after chose Gates as president of the board; and on December 13, it selected Conway to fill the new staff post of inspector general to the army, with promotion to major general. Although founded on Conway’s reputation as an experienced professional soldier and effective drillmaster who came strongly recommended by Major General Sullivan, this posting and jump in rank immediately made him a focus for jealousy and resentment among the other brigadiers who had been passed over and raised suspicions that his new influence would be wielded against Washington and his henchmen.

  While historians have discredited the existence of a conspiracy to replace Washington with Gates—alliteratively dubbed the “Conway Cabal”—given the timing of Congress’s appointments, that is precisely how things appeared to him and his devoted followers.17 For example, Washington’s old friend the army physician Dr. James Craik wrote on January 6 to warn him that “a strong faction” was forming against him “in the new Board of War and in the Congress.” Craik believed that General Mifflin was among the most “active” of those “secret enemies who would rob you of the great and truly deserved esteem your country has for you.” At the same time, Lafayette was warning Henry Laurens against attempts to discredit Washington by “Gates’s faction, or Mifflin’s forces.” Laurens was quick to reassure the marquis that criticism of Washington within Congress amounted to “little more than tittle-tattle.” He added: “I think that the friends of our brave and virtuous general, may rest assured that he is out of the reach of his enemies, if he has an enemy, a fact which I am
in doubt of.”18

  In fact, Washington certainly had detractors inside Congress, notably James Lovell of Massachusetts, whose private opinions reflected civilian distrust of professional soldiers in general and of the commander in chief’s close-knit and prickly military entourage in particular. For example, after Congress allowed Washington extra staff officers, Lovell wrote to Sam Adams complaining that it seemed the “13 United States” together could not supply enough “honest men” as “aides de camp, secretaries and privy councilors to one great man, whom no citizen shall dare even to talk about say the Gentlemen of the Blade.”19

  Yet the only prominent revolutionary to actively call for Washington’s replacement was former congressman Dr. Rush. On January 12, 1778, he rashly sent an anonymous letter to Virginian delegate Patrick Henry: “The northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a GENERAL at their head,” he wrote. “The spirit of the southern army is no ways inferior to the spirit of the northern. A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway would in a few weeks render them an irresistible body of men.” Rush then quoted the now infamous words attributed to Conway that he had first cited to John Adams three months earlier. Henry sent the letter to Washington, who swiftly suspected the identity of its author.20

  In the face of the perceived threat, Washington’s most loyal supporters, men like Greene, Lafayette, and Hamilton, closed ranks in what amounted to a “cabal” of their own. When General Conway appeared at Valley Forge to assume his duties as inspector general, he received a reception as frosty as the weather. After Washington explained that Conway must await instructions from the Board of War before starting work and hinted that his promotion was unjustified, the quarrelsome Hibernian countered with a letter sarcastically comparing “the great Washington” to Frederick the Great of Prussia.21

  Whatever his personal feelings at such slights, as commander in chief Washington was unable to resent them privately by issuing a challenge to a duel, particularly as such conduct was banned under the Continental Army’s Articles of War. But there was no lack of men willing to pick up a sword or a brace of pistols on his behalf. Conway discovered this soon enough. He had swiftly been cold-shouldered by his colleagues, including his former friend Lafayette, who now disowned him as “an ambitious and dangerous man”;22 when Congress appointed the marquis to lead another proposed “irruption” into Canada, he refused to accept Conway as his second in command. In April, the exasperated Conway offered Congress his resignation; to his chagrin it was promptly accepted. But the matter didn’t rest there. In July, before Conway left for France, an angry exchange with another Washington loyalist, Brigadier General John Cadwalader, prompted a duel. In the ensuing encounter Conway was shot in the mouth; the ball emerged from the back of his neck, beneath his pigtailed hair. Apparently convinced he was dying, Conway took the opportunity to make Washington a fulsome apology, acknowledging him to be a genuinely “great and good man.”23

  Neither was Washington inclined to let Horatio Gates off the hook. Even though Gates had done no more than receive an unsolicited letter from Conway, he’d made no attempt to defend Washington against criticism. The two generals exchanged a series of letters that did neither of them credit. Gates’s outraged appeal for help in tracking down the miscreant who had rifled his private correspondence did nothing to dispel Washington’s impression that he was implicated in intrigue with “a dangerous incendiary.” Beaten down by Washington’s reproaches, Gates finally expressed his innocence of any conspiracy: “I solemnly declare that I am of no faction,” he wrote, adding, “I cannot believe your Excellency will either suffer your suspicions or the prejudices of others to induce you to spend another moment upon this subject.” Washington agreed to bury the hatchet, consigning the controversy “as far as future events will permit” to “oblivion.”24

  Without doubt, Washington emerged from the affair stronger than ever, with an enhanced standing inside Congress. In addition, the vociferous reaction of Washington’s partisans against those suspected of plotting against “His Excellency,” which has been compared by one respected historian to a “witch hunt,” served notice that future critics would be swiftly silenced: there’d be no more talk of replacing Washington with Gates—or with anyone else.25

  Both the Conway episode and the shared hardships of the Valley Forge winter fostered the emergence of an officer corps that increasingly conformed to Washington’s vision of the type of men he had always wanted to lead the Continental Army. Unlike many of the amateur officers who had served against the British at Boston and New York in 1775–76, these long-term professionals came mostly from the propertied ranks of society; they saw themselves as “gentlemen” and expected to be treated as such. Just as the rank and file of the Continental Army had changed since 1776, with those men signed up for “three years or the duration” increasingly resembling the redcoats they viewed down the barrels of their muskets, as the war dragged on, so Washington’s officers drew closer to the British model in background, outlook, and aspirations. Above all, they were concerned with two intertwined concepts that had driven Washington since his youth: status and honor.

  By the time the army encamped at Valley Forge, many officers felt that they had been slighted by their civilian masters in Congress on both counts. Not only were they often denied the promotions they believed they’d earned by hard service, but their pay, which was increasingly devalued by rampant inflation, provided small compensation for lost civilian incomes; such cavalier treatment was bitterly resented, not least by Major General Benedict Arnold. In an attempt to address their financial problems, officers again looked to British precedent and demanded the right to half pay for life—essentially a pension for retired officers—to commence at the war’s end. When first approached with the notion in November 1777, Washington was doubtful, aware that congressmen suspicious of standing armies would resist such a move on ideological grounds. But faced with a mounting wave of resignations from disenchanted officers, Washington swiftly changed his mind. Resurrecting the desperate arguments that he had used in the summer of 1776, when urging solid material incentives for recruits, in his detailed address to Congress’s Camp Committee Washington underlined the need for realism: “Motives of public virtue” were no longer enough; if his officers’ “languishing zeal” was to be revived, their “private interest” must also be considered: half pay was the only answer. Conscious that the Continental Army was now the torchbearer of American liberty, in May 1778, Congress approved the pensions, although limiting them to seven years. Even this partial consent was grudging, with accusations of antirepublicanism and extortion only salting the wounds of officers who already believed their precious honor had been impugned.26

  As Thomas Conway could testify, one consequence of a heightened sense of personal reputation among officers who considered themselves “gentlemen” was a mania for duelling.27 Unsurprisingly, the volatile mixture of touchy young men, lethal weapons, and an unbending code of conduct ensured that dueling was already endemic within European armies: for example, jäger Captain Ewald soldiered through the American War of Independence with just one good eye: he had lost the other in 1770, when, as a young lieutenant in the Leib Regiment, a night of revelry in Cassell’s “Hof von England” inn led to a disastrous encounter with a drinking companion.28 Although proscribed under the Continental Army’s British-based Articles of War, “affairs of honor” were nonetheless common: just like his counterpart serving King George, the American officer who refused a challenge faced the social stigma of cowardice. Continental Army surgeon James Thacher was often required to attend such “meetings” and patch up the survivors: in August 1780, after duels on successive days sacrificed “two valuable lives . . . to what is termed principles of honor,” he railed against “this fashionable folly, this awful blindness and perversion of mind, this barbarous and infernal practice, this foul stain on the history of man!”29 Yet such appeals to rationalism fell on deaf ears: in coming years, dueling would add a dangerous edge to po
litics in the young American Republic; in the southern states it would linger on into the middle decades of the nineteenth century, another “peculiar institution” to set alongside slavery.30

  The growing distinctiveness of Washington’s honor-conscious officer caste—Lovell’s “Gentlemen of the Blade”—was exemplified by an extraordinary theatrical performance at Valley Forge. In an expression of group solidarity and as a mark of esteem for Washington, they presented an amateur production of his favorite play, Addison’s Cato. It was Cato that Washington had quarried to express the true depth of his feelings for Sally Fairfax in 1758 and his admiration for Benedict Arnold in 1776. This was an exclusive event, for officers only. Underlining the social gap between leaders and led, it also indicated the growing gulf between American soldiers and civilians, incurring the derision of men like Sam Adams, who considered such performances as a decadent and un-Republican imitation of the plays often staged by British Army officers.31

  That same month, in fact, the British officer corps in Philadelphia gave a very different but no less remarkable performance as a farewell for Sir William Howe, who was being replaced as commander in chief in North America by Henry Clinton. This elaborate “Mischianza” (from the Italian for “medley”) reflected a growing interest in the medieval “Gothic” past, with rival teams of mounted officers in fancy dress—the “Knights of the Blended Rose” and the “Burning Mountain”—fighting mock combats to champion the honor of their chosen ladies. Given Washington’s own love of horses and his youthful penchant for knight-errantry, this lavish and colorful echo of the age of chivalry would surely have appealed no less than the sterner fare of Cato. Captain Peebles of the Black Watch certainly enjoyed himself. The spirited tourney was followed by a spectacular firework display, after which the carefree company relished “a very elegant supper” and “danced and drank till day light.” But with the rebels still ensconced nearby at Valley Forge, others considered the elaborate and costly celebration to be ill timed and tasteless. Lord Howe’s secretary, Ambrose Serle, observed sourly: “Our enemies will dwell upon the folly and extravagance of it with pleasure.”32