by Flora Fraser
Next day the British and Hessians seized the fort and took prisoner the majority of the garrison—2,858 men comprising Maryland and Virginia regiments, militiamen, and Pennsylvania battalions. Reed, who had succeeded Gates as adjutant general in the summer, wrote to Charles Lee six days later: “General Washington’s own Judgment seconded by Representations from us would, I believe, have saved the Men & their Arms but unluckily, General Greene’s Judgment was contrary. This kept the Generals Mind in a State of Suspence till the Stroke was struck—Oh! General—an indecisive Mind is one of the greatest Misfortunes that can befall an Army.”
Now that the British had control of the Hudson, retreat from Fort Lee was inevitable. News, on the nineteenth, that barges were bearing Lord Cornwallis and 5,000 troops to the New Jersey shore hastened the evacuation. At Hackensack, Washington tallied for Hancock the British gains: “the whole of the Cannon that was at the Fort, except Two twelve Pounders, and a great deal of baggage—between Two & three hundred Tents—about a Thousand Barrels of Flour & other Stores in the Quarter Master’s department.” With the approach of winter, the loss of the tents was especially regretted by both officers and men.
In Reed’s letter of November 21, which Washington never saw, the adjutant general called on Lee to hasten to New Jersey: “I have no Doubt, had you been here, the Garrison at Mount [Fort] Washington would now have composed a Part of this Army…every Gentleman of the Family, the Officers & soldiers generally have a Confidence in you.…All Circumstances considered, we are in a very awful & alarming State one that requires the utmost Wisdom & Firmness of Mind.”
Cornwallis continued to press, and the Continentals to retreat before him. From Newark, Samuel Blachley Webb, a new aide at headquarters, wrote to Commissary General Joseph Trumbull: “You ask me [for] a true Account of our Situation.…I can only say that no lads ever showed greater activity in retreating than we have since we left You. Our Soldiers are the best fellows in the World at this Business.”
On November 30 from New Brunswick, a new refuge, Washington addressed the president of Congress: “It was the opinion of all the generals, who were with me, that a retreat to this place was requisite and founded in necessity.” The vanguard of the British army had entered Newark as his rearguard left it.
At New Brunswick, also, with the enemy within two hours’ march, Washington read Lee’s bombastic reply of November 24 to Reed. The general lamented “that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage…eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if curs’d with indecision.” Lee ruminated, “to confess a truth I really think our Chief will do better with me than without me.”
Lee, it was known, believed he should be commander-in-chief. He was needed to defend Philadelphia. But Washington was less forgiving of Reed, his former secretary, to whom he forwarded Lee’s missive. “Having no idea of its being a private letter,” he wrote, assuming it would be “upon the business of your office,” he had read the “Contents…which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to.”
The enemy were advancing. More Continental troops were going off home, the term of their service expiring. Washington was as dogged in retreat as ever, gaining first Princeton, then on December 2, Trenton. Thomas Paine, Anglo-American newspaperman, was with Washington’s army on this sorry march through New Jersey. He described “both officers and men” as “greatly harassed, and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision.” With reference to the commander-in-chief, he wrote ecstatically: “There is a natural fannels [tabernacle] in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.” During these desperate months, there was one consolation for Washington. Congress had at last heeded him and directed in October that the states raise a “standing army,” comprising eighty-eight regiments, to serve for the duration of hostilities. Furthermore, now that the united states were independent, there was hope that the French king, Louis XVI, and his ministers, inimical to British interests, would look kindly on their cause and on their quest for foreign arms and regiments.
Washington’s initial aim at Trenton, in which he succeeded, was to convey his small army over the Delaware to the Pennsylvania side of the river, taking with him or burning all boats and barges in moorings on the New Jersey side. The pursuing British and Hessians—at more than 10,000 men, an apparently insuperable adversary—had no option but to wait till the river froze. When it did, as it surely would, they would as surely cross and attack.
An urgent plea to Philadelphia for men at the end of November had resulted in 2,000 townsmen volunteering to form a city militia. With those volunteers, among them artist Charles Willson Peale, the Continental army at the Delaware now stood at 5,000 men. But across the river, Hessians were quartered in the garrison at Trenton. British soldiers were camped on the New Jersey riverbanks opposite “above & below us…for fifteen Miles,” Washington wrote to Lund on December 10. The enemy could at any time cross the river at several different places and attack the smaller American force; “vigilance” was the only defense.
Washington was not optimistic. It was, he told his cousin, “next to impossible to guard a Shore for 60 Miles with less than half the Enemys numbers.” Martha’s brother Bartholomew Dandridge, counselor of state, was to give vent the following month in Williamsburg to the feelings of many patriots of standing in the new Commonwealth of Virginia. It was “astonishing and will hardly be credited hereafter,” he told his brother-in-law warmly, “that the most deserving, the most favorite General of the 13 united American States, should be left by them, with only about 2500 Men, to support the most important Cause that mankind ever engaged in against the whole Power of British Tyranny.”
Washington, following eighteen months of dealings with Congress and provincial governments, was inured to the procrastination and irresolution of both. He was aware that he sank in the esteem of so many, if not that of his friends and family in Virginia, with every retreat he made. Stolidly, steadily he worked to increase the numbers on the Pennsylvania shore.
Though the atmosphere at headquarters was highly charged, Washington wrote calmly to Lund of planting “Holly trees” or “young & strait bodied Pines” on the “Circular Banks” at Mount Vernon. He had no time, nor anyone to spare, to send the horses he had promised—“Mrs Washington must therefore make the old greys serve her a little while longer.” While unwilling to buy expensive “Linnen for the Negros,” he held that “they certainly have a just claim to their Victuals and cloths, if they make enough to purchase them.” A week later the commander resumed his letter. Headquarters were now a farmhouse “ten miles above the falls.” So far they had prevented the enemy from crossing the Delaware, he wrote. “How long we shall be able to do it, God only knows, as they are still hovering about the River.”
With the British and Hessians so close to Philadelphia, Congress had taken the decision on December 12 to move south to Baltimore. It hastened its departure on learning that General Charles Lee had been taken prisoner at a Basking Ridge tavern, where he was lodging. “Unhappy man!” wrote Washington four days later, “taken by his own imprudence!” Following information from a Loyalist, a party of British light horse rode through the night and carried off the prize “in high triumph, and with every Mark of Indignity—not even suffering him to get his Hat, or Surtout Coat.”
Disaffection and “want of spirit & fortitude,” Washington told Lund on December 17, reigned in the Jerseys. “In confidence…as a friend,” he advised his cousin, “look forward to unfavorable Events, & prepare accordingly. In such a manner, however, as to give no alarm or suspicion to any one.” Washington’s papers at Mount Vernon, he directed, should be readied for dispatch westward to Samuel Washington in Berkeley County—“in case an Enemy’s Fleet should come up the River.” A week earlier he had written that the “old greys” must serve Martha. Now, with flight in mind, he was at pa
ins to see that she had a “very good set” for her chariot. With Mercer he sent southward two “exceeding good Horses…Young, the lightest of the two Bays is an exceeding tough, hardy horse as any in the World, but rather lazy—he will do well for the Postilion before.”
To his brothers John Augustine and Samuel Washington, the commander wrote nearly identical letters next day: “I have no doubt but that General Howe will still make an attempt upon Philadelphia this Winter—I see nothing to oppose him in a fortnight from this time.” The terms of almost all the troops would then expire, except those of some much-fatigued regiments from Virginia and Maryland. “In a word my dear Sir, if every nerve is not strained to recruit the New Army with all possible Expedition, I think the game is pretty near up.”
Washington had written to Martha from Philadelphia in June 1775 on his election as commander-in-chief. He had written to her when they were parted on many occasions since. According to his and Lund’s testimony, the general never failed to enclose a letter for her when he wrote to his cousin at Mount Vernon. When Mercer bore these confidential letters south, in that case, and at this time of crisis, a letter for Martha went too.
It was a time of national crisis, and one in which information, especially in the south, was at a premium and swiftly disseminated, however unreliable or out of date it might be. From Williamsburg, on December 20, 1776, William Fitzhugh of Chatham, a member of the new Virginia legislature, wrote by “a very indifferent fire by candlelight and with a very weak eye” to inform his uncle, Landon Carter, “The accounts yesterday from Philadelphia are bad indeed. The enemy within a few miles of that city and our worthy General Washington flying before them with a few fatigued and shattered troops.” Fitzhugh expected soon to hear that Philadelphia was in ashes or occupied by the enemy. “If the latter, I fear almost a total disaffection will be the consequence, and if the former what a loss must America sustain.” Wrote this wealthy man, “I would with pleasure part with my last shilling to procure my liberty.”
The twentieth brought about a change in the fortunes and dispositions of the armies. Continental reinforcements arrived, and Howe ordered his troops into winter quarters. Washington made a decision to launch a surprise attack on the garrisoned Hessians. He wrote to Reed on the twenty-third, “Christmas day at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton. For Heaven’s sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us.”
Two nights later, in freezing weather, Washington assembled 2,500 troops at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware. Officers, men, and ordnance were embarked in flat-bottomed boats for the New Jersey shore. He later informed Hancock: “the quantity of Ice, made that Night, impeded the passage of Boats so much, that it was three o’clock before the Artillery could all be got over, and near four, before the Troops took up their line of march.” Though it was now snowing hard, the Continentals rapidly covered the nine miles that lay between the ferry on the New Jersey shore and Trenton. They surprised the sleeping Hessians before light dawned on the twenty-sixth. In a short engagement, they took more than a thousand of the German mercenaries prisoner and escorted them back across the river.
For once Washington was satisfied with his officers and men: “their Behaviour upon this Occasion, reflects the highest honor upon them. The difficulty of passing the River in a very severe Night, and their March thro’ a violent Storm of Snow and Hail, did not in the least abate their Ardour. But when they came to the Charge, each seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward.” Any patriots who still questioned the general’s skills as a commander were soon silenced. On the night of January 2, 1777, Washington outmaneuvered Sir William Howe, who was advancing on Trenton, and took Princeton on the third. Howe, now nineteen miles away from Philadelphia when he had been six, relinquished his plan to seize it.
From Pluckemin on the fifth, on his way to Morristown, New Jersey, Washington wrote an account of the victory at Princeton for Hancock. He dispatched his letter “open” for Robert Morris at Philadelphia to read and forward to Baltimore. Though the fighting was brief, it had been bloody. In one melee Hugh Mercer, Fredericksburg apothecary turned brigadier general, was savaged with seven bayonet thrusts after his horse had been killed from under him. “One of these wounds is in his forehead, but the most alarming of them are in his belly,” wrote physician Benjamin Rush, who attended Mercer at the Princeton field hospital. Washington was on his way to Morristown, which he deemed the place “best calculated of any in this quarter, to accommodate and refresh” the army. He could send only messages of support to the officer who had once supplied so many nostrums for Patsy Parke Custis. Fatally wounded, Mercer was to die in agony on January 11.
At Pluckemin, Washington waited for nearly a thousand troops to arrive who could not “through fatigue and hunger” keep up with the main body of the army. In Hackensack in November, Thomas Paine had written in his pamphlet American Crisis: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” The recent victories were brittle. The Pennsylvania militia had left their blankets at Burlington. Many on the icy roads were “entirely barefooted,” Peale, at Pluckemin, wrote in his diary. He got a raw hide to make these men moccasins, “but made a bad hand of it, for want of a proper needle or awl.”
Robert Morris in Philadelphia had occupied a crucial role since Congress’s departure for Baltimore in Maryland. He and a few others, remaining behind, formed an executive committee with the authority to forward supplies to Washington and fulfill other much-needed services. In addition, he himself made loans to Washington that were applied, in particular, to the payment of bounties for troops who stayed on beyond the end of their prescribed service. In his covering letter of January 5 to Morris, accompanying his dispatch to Hancock, Washington added: “Your sending the Inclosed [letter] for Mrs Washington to the Post Office (if in time for the Southern Mail) will much oblige, Dear Sir, Your Most Obedient servant.”
The fortunes of Washington’s wartime correspondence with Martha and Lund continued vexed. From Morristown, over a week later, the commander was to beg the Philadelphia financier, as a favor, to obtain at the post office and forward to him “as opportunity offers” such letters as came “by the southern mail…A Letter or two from my Family are regularly sent by the Post, but very irregularly received, which is rather mortifying, as it deprives me of the consolation of hearing from home on domestic matters.”
How early Martha knew of her husband’s transformative victories at Trenton and Princeton, and that he was safe and, if much harassed, well, is unclear. But Washington replied later in January to a letter of Jacky’s of the seventh: “Providence has heretofore saved us in a remarkable manner, and on this we must principally rely. Every person, in every State, should exert himself to facilitate the raising and Marching the New Regiments to the Army with all possible expedition.” He wrote matter-of-factly, discussing New England regiments, of “that hunger, & thirst after glory which spurs on…to distinguished Acts.” His own hunger for glory was slaked for the time being. He wanted instead pledges from the different states of recruits for the “standing army”—eighty-eight regiments in all—now forming and that, come the summer, he would command. From Williamsburg his brother-in-law Bartholomew Dandridge wrote in January: “I have the pleasure to inform you that the business of recruiting goes on well, and that we have a fair prospect of raising our new Regiments in good time.” Owing to pressure of business, Bartholomew had not seen his sister Martha. John Augustine Washington visited his sister-in-law at Mount Vernon and sent the general, on the twenty-fourth, a pleasing account of her. Above all, Washington wanted his wife with him. In February, the British were established in New York and in Rhode Island. Martha’s residence at Morristown became feasible.
Some years later, submitting “Lawful” wartime accounts to Congress, Washington would include “Mrs Washington’s travelling Expenses in coming to and returning from my winter quarters annually.…The money to defray which being taken f
rom my private purse and brought with her from Virginia.” He wrote: “in the commencement of them”—when she first traveled to join him in Cambridge—these expenses “appeared at first view to wear the complexion of a private charge,” and he was in doubt about “the propriety” of charging them to the public account. But, he noted, he was obliged by “the embarrassed situation of our [national] affairs” continually to postpone the visit home that he “every year contemplated between the close of one campaign and the opening of another.” He had ended by judging Martha’s traveling expenses, “incidental thereto and the consequence of my self-denial,” “just with respect to the public” and “convenient” with respect to himself. In the accounts he submitted, he included an account for sixty-one-odd Continental dollars, comprising Mrs. Washington’s journey to Morristown “when the army lay there.”
On March 6, 1777, he wrote impatiently to “The Commanding Officer” in Philadelphia: “Being informed that Mrs Washington was to set out from Virginia for Philadelphia on Monday the 24th Ultimo [February], I presume she must be, e’re this, in that City.” Martha’s journey from Mount Vernon to Morristown, with Jacky as her escort, had been far from smooth. When she passed through Baltimore, she found some members of Congress packing up the lodgings that they had occupied while Howe threatened Philadelphia. The roads were busy, and Philadelphia itself was in a state of some chaos as other, more prescient delegates made haste to secure quarters. Martha lodged in the city, as she had the previous year, at Benjamin Randolph’s on Chestnut Street. On March 15 the Continental Journal informed its readers that “His Excellency” had “the satisfaction of his amiable lady’s company.” Martha had arrived at Morristown that day. At Cambridge and at New York the Vassall house and the Mortier house had provided elegant lodgings, and there had been families of standing in the locale for company. At Morristown headquarters were the tavern on the green, and the military “family” formed the principal society.
