George Washington

by Stephen Brumwell

  Ironically, that same British Army had provided not only a focus for Washington’s enduring resentment but a blueprint for the American regular force that he had built and ultimately led to partake of a stunning victory. The Continental Army that maintained the long war for independence, the force that Nathanael Greene believed to embody the “stamina of liberty,” mirrored the British prototype, and at Washington’s insistence.76 Just like the Virginia Regiment that he had sought to shape into a unit proficient enough to join the British Army, the Continentals were drawn from much the same strata of society as the redcoat rankers, served under harsh regular-style discipline, and took orders from a distinct caste of gentlemen officers. Given the English roots of Washington and many of his countrymen, as Baron Steuben had acknowledged, some imitation was only to be expected. But it is also clear that, despite his distinctly ambivalent relationship with the British Army, Washington never ceased to admire it as a military organization. As late as November 1780, when settling a point of administration, he referred the president of Congress to the “British Army, from whence most of our rules and customs are derived, and in which long experience and improvement has brought their system as near perfection as in any other service.” 77

  The indelible British brand on Washington’s army was clear enough to one of the thousands of royal soldiers snared at Yorktown. Now able to scrutinize the rebels at closer quarters and with greater leisure than he had been accustomed to since 1776, jäger Captain Ewald cautioned against equating them with some “motley crowd of farmers.” On the contrary, he observed, their “so-called Continental, or standing, regiments are under good discipline and drill in the English style as well as the English themselves.” At Yorktown, the Continentals were still showing the British habits that Steuben had been unable to curb at Valley Forge. Ewald, another German weaned on Prussian principles, “was greatly surprised that the Americans were not in close formation, arm to arm, but”—like the redcoats—“had consistently left a place for a man between every two men.” The captain believed that if the war against the French, who used the traditional close-order formation, should continue, the British might “come out dirty in the first affair.” Then again, Ewald hadn’t been with Brigadier Medows at The Vigie in ’78.

  Besides noting striking similarities between the rival armies at Yorktown, Captain Ewald also detected important differences. For all their crisp drill, the Americans, who were “handsome . . . well-built men,” remained lamentably clad and shod. Ewald reported: “I have seen many soldiers of this army without shoes, with tattered breeches and uniforms patched with all sorts of colored cloth, without neckband and only the lid of a hat, who marched and stood their guard as proudly as the best uniformed soldier in the world, despite the raw weather and hard rain in October.” To Ewald, here was the key distinction between the American revolutionaries and their enemies. He marveled:

  With what soldiers in the world could one do what was done by these men, who go about nearly naked and in the greatest privation? Deny the best-disciplined soldiers in Europe what is due them and they will run away in droves . . . But from this one can perceive what an enthusiasm—which these poor fellows call “Liberty”—can do!78

  When considering the motivation of the average Continental soldier, Ewald’s objective testimony is surely worth considering. As the memoirs of even that jaundiced veteran Joseph Plumb Martin make clear, material gain and patriotism were not mutually exclusive incentives for Washington’s regulars; the underlying loyalty of the exasperated mutineers of 1780 and 1781 suggests that many other men must have been motivated by a combination of both—bolstered of course by a strong measure of allegiance to their comrades. It was not the least of Washington’s strengths that he recognized, almost from the outset of the Revolutionary War, that high-flown ideology alone was not enough to sustain men—whether officers or rank-and-file soldiers—who risked their lives and livelihoods for long years while so many of their countrymen sat idly on the sidelines.

  While it was by no means clear to Washington in October 1781 or for many months to come, the swift and unexpected elimination of an entire British army at Yorktown marked the real end of Britain’s attempt to deny the fact of American independence. When the news reached London on November 25, it caused widespread gloom, compounding dissatisfaction with Germain’s strategy and reinforcing opposition to an unpopular and costly struggle. On February 27, 1782, the Commons voted to suspend hostilities in America; Lord North resigned soon after. The new ministry, headed by Charles Watson Wentworth, Lord Rockingham, was committed to settling a comprehensive peace with the Americans.79

  If, in the short term, the decisive outcome of the Yorktown campaign hinged upon the help of Rochambeau and especially de Grasse, the foundations for the victory had been laid by Washington long before. Without his resilience and leadership of the Continental Army, particularly during those pivotal weeks in New Jersey in December 1776 and January 1777, the revolutionary cause would have foundered long before French intervention made such a stroke even a possibility. According to another anecdote that is impossible to verify but nonetheless rings true enough, the essence of this was acknowledged by none other than Cornwallis himself. At a dinner held after his surrender, so the story goes, the earl rose to respond to a toast and addressed Washington with these words: “When the illustrious part your Excellency has borne in this long and arduous contest becomes a matter of history, fame will gather your brightest laurels rather from the banks of the Delaware than from those of the Chesapeake.”80 Without Trenton and Princeton there could have been no Yorktown.

  Unconvinced that Britain would relinquish the struggle, and braced for a counterstroke, Washington kept his troops in fighting trim, drilling them to a peak of efficiency. Back in its old positions above Manhattan, by the summer of 1782 the Continental Army looked very different from the force that had besieged Yorktown. That September, when he attended a review at Washington’s headquarters in the Hudson Highlands, Rochambeau’s aide-de-camp, Baron von Closen, was “struck by the sight of these troops, armed, in new uniforms, and with excellent military bearing.” The baron marveled at the difference just a year could make. In the following month, that harshest of all critics—Washington himself—assured John Jay: “Our Army is better organized, disciplined, and clothed than it has been, at any period since the commencement of the war.”81

  At long last Washington had the well-tempered weapon he had always wanted; ironically, with the war winding down, there was now little prospect of wielding it against the Republic’s red-coated enemies. In the summer of 1782, however, there were hints that a reliable, regular army might soon be needed elsewhere, on the western frontier. Washington received disturbing tidings from the Ohio Country, where militiamen sent against his old enemies the Delawares and Shawnees had met with catastrophic defeat at Sandusky. The slain included Washington’s boyhood friend and later business partner Colonel William Crawford, a man for whom he “had a very great regard.” The utter failure of the expedition was bad enough, but the manner of Crawford’s death was worse still: taken captive, he had been subjected to a grisly and protracted ordeal by torture, a fate ordained in reprisal for the recent unprovoked massacre by drunken militia of ninety-six peaceful Delawares—men, women, and children—at the Moravian mission at Gnadenhütten. As Washington recognized, given their mood of exasperation, “no other than the extremest tortures which could be inflicted by savages” were to be expected by their captives. “For this reason,” he warned, “no person should at this time, suffer himself to fall alive into the hands of the Indians.”82

  Kept sheathed against the Republic’s external enemies, as peace looked ever more likely, the Continental Army remained a weapon that might be brandished elsewhere, at a Congress that continued to ignore its long-standing grievances. By October 1782, for all their smart looks and crisp drill, Washington sensed that his soldiers’ simmering frustrations and anxieties for the future were coming to the boil. In a letter to B
enjamin Lincoln, now secretary at war, he warned that the army’s patience was almost exhausted, its “spirit of discontent” higher than ever before. Unpaid, all ranks faced a “prospect of poverty and misery.” Even generals could offer their guests no better fare than “a bit of beef without vegetable,” washed down with “stinking whiskey.” Washington dreaded the consequences for civilian society of disbanding an army in which so many veterans were “soured by penury and what they call the ingratitude of the public.”83

  The anticipated unrest erupted in 1783 in a fashion that fed the most lurid fears of standing armies. Its flashpoint was the Continental Army’s final winter quarters, around the quiet village of Newburgh, just north of West Point.84 As ever, the rank and file were clamoring for their back pay, but it was the officers’ concerns that now drove events. Back in 1780, amid anxiety that Benedict Arnold’s treason might trigger a wave of copycat defections, Congress had upgraded the officers’ half-pay pensions from seven years to life. Since then, however, nothing had been done about them, fueling rumors that the anticipated peace and vociferous civilian opposition would persuade Congress to break its word. In December 1782, a group of officers led by General Alexander McDougall drew up a petition for Congress, offering to accept lump-sum severance payments in lieu of half pay. Further delays would have “fatal effects,” it warned, implying that the army would mutiny to secure its goals.

  The officers’ petition was swiftly identified as a valuable weapon by those members of Congress, known as the “nationalists,” who wanted a far stronger central government than that established under the Articles of Confederation ratified in 1781, one with the power to impose the taxation necessary to satisfy the officers. Even though it was just two years since angry, mutinous soldiers had marched on Philadelphia, Congress refused to be intimidated and rejected the petition. News of that development reached Newburgh on about March 8. Colonel Walter Stewart, who delivered the tidings, poured fuel on the flames by adding that Congress aimed to disband the army without settling its accounts. Stewart began seeking the assistance of a high-ranking officer capable of increasing pressure on the politicians. Such a role had already been suggested to Washington by his former aide, the brilliant, ambitious Alexander Hamilton, now a Congressman and vocal nationalist. On February 13, Hamilton wrote: “It appears to be a prevailing opinion in the army that the disposition to recompense their services will cease with the necessity for them, and that if they once lay down their arms, they will part with the means of obtaining justice.” Hamilton, himself a veteran of the fighting from Long Island to Yorktown, regretted “that appearances afford too much ground for their distrust.” While the army’s unease might certainly prove useful in lending weight to Congress’s drive to establish “general funds” capable of satisfying the Republic’s creditors (not least, its soldiers), it would be difficult to keep “a complaining and suffering army within the bounds of moderation,” he added. Washington’s influence must be employed to “guide the torrent,” channeling the pent-up anger for the greater good.85

  But Washington shunned such a role. While sympathetic to his officers’ plight, he considered the army “a dangerous instrument to play with.” His second in command at Newburgh, Major General Horatio Gates, was more amenable to calls for concerted action against Congress. Gates had no liking for the nationalists, who numbered several old enemies, but he was badly in debt and believed in an effective protest campaign. Whether Gates was merely a “tool” of the politicians or followed his own agenda is a debatable point, but Washington swiftly came to believe that his former rival was behind the growing disaffection. In a clear reference to the “Conway Cabal,” he wrote to Hamilton on March 4: “The source, may be easily traced as the old leaven, it is said, for I have no proof of it, is again, beginning to work, under the mask of the most perfect dissimulation, and apparent cordiality.”86

  While there is no hard evidence that Gates aimed to usurp Washington’s position or was planning a coup d’état to overthrow Congress, he undoubtedly took a prominent role in the agitation. Acting without Washington’s authorization and against military regulations, he seemed heedless that his actions might go beyond the settling of legitimate scores and ignite a full-blown military revolt against civilian authority. With Gates’s approval, his close friend and aide, John Armstrong junior, issued anonymous addresses to the officers, implying that the time was ripe to take matters into their own hands; these were copied and distributed by another of Gates’s associates, Captain Christopher Richmond.87

  The first of the “Newburgh Addresses,” which surfaced on March 10, called for a meeting of general and field officers the next day to secure “redress of grievances.” It urged them to resent “the slightest mark of indignity from Congress.” After all, whatever the “political event the army has an alternative”: if peace came, only death could disband it without a just settlement; should the war drag on, the army could seek the direction of its “illustrious leader,” Washington, then “retire to some unsettled country” in the west, leaving America helpless to its fate.88

  Armstrong’s wording implied that Washington backed the address. In fact, he was appalled, concluding that it was “not only planned, but also digested and matured in Philadelphia.” He responded swiftly and decisively, using official General Orders of March 11 to deplore “such an irregular invitation” and to announce a meeting of his own on March 15 “to hear the report of the committee of the army to Congress” and to draw up a plan of action “best calculated to attain the just and important object in view.” This move not only wrested the initiative from Armstrong and his supporters but also bought time, both for his own response and to allow emotions to cool, giving his officers “leisure to view the matter more calmly and seriously.” Nothing daunted, Armstrong reacted with a second address, approving this change of plan and once again attempting to convince his readers that Washington approved of the steps already taken.89

  Ironically, given his own role in stirring up the unrest, it was Gates, as senior ranking officer under Washington, who chaired the assembly on March 15. When it opened, in a newly constructed building called the “Temple of Virtue,” Washington made a lengthy address of his own. This emphasized his consistent advocacy of the army’s interests and warned against rash actions that would not only “sully the glory” they had won but “open the flood gates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood.” In counterpoint to this horrifying scenario, Washington was convinced that Congress held “exalted sentiments” of the army’s services, merits, and sufferings and would render it justice. But the workings of Congress were slow, he cautioned, and the men must be patient.90

  At the close of his speech, which met with a stony silence, Washington delved into his pocket, unfolded a supporting letter from Congressman Joseph Jones, and started to read it. Then he hesitated, rummaged in his pocket again, and produced a pair of glasses. Washington’s officers had no idea that he needed them. “Gentleman, you will permit me to put on my spectacles,” he apologized, “for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” Washington’s simple gesture and words achieved what the droning phrases of his carefully written speech had failed to do. The mood of the officers changed immediately. Men who had been surly, cynical and resentful were now choking back sobs and wiping away tears as they recalled the dangers and hardships they had shared under Washington’s unwavering leadership. Whether his action was spontaneous or calculated is unclear, but beyond doubt he had played a masterstroke; it has been characterized as a “virtuoso performance,” even his “finest hour.”91

  When Washington quit the “Temple of Virtue,” his officers adopted a memorial affirming their “unshaken confidence” in Congress and condemning the anonymous addresses. The crisis was over. Having persuaded his officers to put their faith in Congress despite so many disappointments, Washington immediately resumed his campaign to ensure that his own trust hadn’t been misplaced. Three days after the decisive
meeting, he wrote to Elias Boudinot, the latest president of Congress, “entreating the most speedy decision” to settle the officers’ grievances. Washington left no doubt of what his own feelings would be if the sufferings and sacrifices of his officers were not properly rewarded: “Then shall I have learned what ingratitude is, then shall I have realized a tale which will embitter every moment of my future life,” he grimly pronounced. In a letter that same day to Congressman Jones, he warned that, while the “storm which seemed to be gathering” had “dispersed,” there was no room for complacency. Those who now assumed that the danger of mutiny had passed should be wary, as men who believed themselves dealt with “ungratefully, and unjustly” were capable of anything, especially as “characters are not wanting, to foment every passion which leads to discord.”92 Congress didn’t need Washington’s prompting: shaken by the escalating threats and unaware of the dramatic turnaround at Newburgh, it enacted a plan commuting half pay for life into full pay for five years.

  By personally taking control of the situation rather than surrendering the initiative to militants bent upon confrontation, Washington ensured that he would continue to champion the army’s cause as he always had, by persistent, respectful lobbying. His strong leadership at Newburgh was expressed as a voice of moderation, not the bullying ranting of a military dictator. Despite his immense and, by 1780, unrivaled prestige, Washington never succumbed to the temptation of grasping supreme power—like Oliver Cromwell before him and Napoleon Bonaparte after—even though some officers fervently believed that he should. When Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote to Washington in May 1782, suggesting that it would be in America’s best interests if he declared himself king, he received short shrift: “Banish these thoughts from your mind” came the uncompromising reply. Indeed, Washington had warned that Nicola’s proposed American monarchy, with a new King George supplanting the old one in London, was “big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country.” It was a notion that he felt obliged to regard “with abhorrence and reprehend with severity.” For all his promotion of a reliable, standing army and his determination to keep it in being until it was no longer needed, Washington never deviated from his belief that the military should remain subordinate to the civil power: he had no more desire to become a dictator at Newburgh in March 1783 than at Trenton in December 1776.93