The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

  Washington had been dangerously ill shortly before Martha reached headquarters and was still recovering. Samuel Washington, far away in western Virginia, had earlier requested a portrait of his absent brother. George growled in return on the fifteenth: “two insurmountable obstacles offer themselves—the want of a Painter—and, if a Painter could be brought hither, the want of time to Sit.” Should Sam ever get “a Picture of mine, taken from the life,” he wrote, it must be when he was “remov’d from the busy Scenes of a Camp.”

  In a time of privation at camp, Washington thanked Hancock on the twenty-ninth for a “valuable present of Fish…nothing could be more acceptable.” But even such small pleasures were a distraction from the stern work to be done. “The Genl. tho’ exceeding fond of Salt Fish,” he continued, “is happy enough never to think of it unless it is placed before him, for which reason it would give him concern if Mr Hancock should put himself to the least trouble in forwarding any to Camp on his Acc’t.” He had information that the British in New York were embarking an expedition of 3,000 men, and conjectured Philadelphia to be its object.

  Severe difficulties faced Congress and the commander-in-chief, as the “standing army” of the United States struggled to fill its ranks. Washington told his brother Sam in early April that the troops were coming in “exceedingly slow.” Whether from “an unwillingness in the Men to Enlist, or to the Idleness and dissipation of the Officers, and their reluctance to leave their friends & acquaintance,” he could not say: “it looks to me as if we should never get an army assembled.” Though the military situation was not to improve, Washington’s spirits slowly revived, following his wife’s arrival at headquarters.

  15

  Morristown and Brandywine, 1777

  “Mrs Washington is excessive fond of the General and he of her.”

  THE WASHINGTONS SAVORED their reunion at Arnold’s tavern in Morristown in the spring of 1777. It was now nine months since they had last been together, at the elegant Mortier house in New York. The evenings in New Jersey over which she now presided were more domesticated, the company less varied. Later this year one of their number wrote of being “Authorized,” in a dream, to grant the general, prey to every kind of care in Pennsylvania, “two Months’ leave of absence, or the Alternative of Sending for Mrs Washington, a generous glass of wine on your Table & riding more or less on horseback almost every dry day!” With Martha came familiar news from a home that Washington had now not seen for nearly two years. She had a way of keeping conversation flowing among those around her, a conversation to which Washington could contribute or not as he pleased.

  At Morristown, Nathanael Greene, the commander’s trusted deputy, took stock, on April 8, of the relationship between husband and wife. He informed his young wife, Caty—Catharine Littlefield Greene—who was at home in Rhode Island: “Mrs Washington is excessive fond of the General and he of her. They are very happy in each other.” These were strong words, “excessive fond” an expression more normally applied to a demonstrative couple recently matched and still a little foolish with love. The Greenes themselves, married barely a year before Nathanael went off to the war, were just such a couple. This spring Nathanael and Caty Greene’s baby daughter in Rhode Island became another namesake of Mrs. Washington. When Martha was in Cambridge the previous year, a baby in Dunstable, Massachusetts, had endured a very patriotic christening. In a dress of buff and blue, with a “sprig of evergreen” on her head “emblematic of his Excellency’s glory and provincial affection,” she was given the name Martha Dandridge.

  The Washingtons, in contrast with the Greenes, had been married nearly twenty years. Greene was by upbringing a Quaker, and the Washingtons’ courtly Virginia manners may have confounded him. While Washington was implacable and stern in the exercise of his public duties at Morristown, he was apparently happy to be affectionate in private.

  In June 1775, when called upon to command the united armies, he had told Martha that he would enjoy “more real happiness and felicity in one month with you, at home, than I have the most distant prospect of reaping abroad.” He had written of “the uneasiness I know you will feel at being left alone.” But it was Washington who stood in need of the very “fortitude and resolution” he had recommended to Martha. In the days after he crossed the Delaware and won victories at Trenton and Princeton, he wrote to Martha not once but several times, hungering for her presence at that momentous time. When at Mount Vernon, Martha had the consolation of Jacky’s company together with that of Nelly, a new grandchild to admire, and friends and neighbors to call upon. Her husband had to withstand, alone, separation from the wife who, for nearly twenty years, had been so inextricably linked with his life at the home that he loved passionately.

  Martha had never made any bones about her devotion to her husband. A Virginia matron, writing home in May from Morristown, noted of the commander-in-chief: “his Worthy Lady seems to be in perfect felicity while she is by the side of her Old Man as she calls him.” Though dressed in buff and blue and aged forty-five, General Washington in 1777 still had the patrician good looks and strong, sinewy figure that had distinguished the younger soldier in a blue coat faced with red who had come courting her on the Pamunkey. In Virginia, where the Washingtons were so long established as a couple, Martha’s fondness for her husband had escaped remark. In the close confines of headquarters, where were gathered so many from states where very different manners obtained and even some from Europe, this passion came under scrutiny, and—an engaging anomaly in so level-headed a personage—attracted attention. The following January a French officer, the Marquis de Lafayette, was to write home confidently of Martha from Washington’s headquarters in Pennsylvania. Though he knew her only by reputation, he told his wife that Mrs. Washington was “a modest and respectable person, who loves her husband madly.” It was an unlooked-for, if welcome, concomitant of the war that Washington so appreciated Martha’s worth. Perhaps for the first time in their long marriage, he yearned for her when she was absent and delighted in her company when she was present.

  Martha’s stay at headquarters, for all that, was likely at any point to be truncated. General Howe and the troops under his command were recuperating from the autumn campaign at Brunswick and on board transports at Amboy. These troops, 10,000 in number, were “well Officerd, well disciplined, and well appointed,” Washington wrote to Robert Morris on March 2, 1777. The Continental army, ranged across New Jersey in opposition to the enemy, numbered at best 4,000 men—“raw Militia, badly Officered, and ungovernable.” Washington was convinced that Howe would seek to strike at Philadelphia as soon as the weather favored an assault. “All the heavy Baggage of the Army—their Salt Provisions—Flour—Stores—&ca—might go round by Water,” he conjectured. “With what propriety…can he miss so favourable an opportunity of striking a capital stroke against a City from whence we derive so many advantages, the success of which wou’d give so much eclat to his Arms, and strike such a damp upon ours?”

  Once Howe made the move that Washington was convinced was inevitable, Martha must return to Virginia, while the Continental army, however inadequate, proceeded to defensive positions in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, headquarters in Morristown were lively, though Arnold’s tavern on the green was a modest establishment. Caleb Gibbs continued to command the general’s guard, and continued, too, a faithful steward of the household accounts, while Mrs. Thompson kept house. Sixteen-year-old Thornton Washington, Samuel Washington’s eldest son, was convalescing following inoculation against smallpox. Once he had recovered, the boy was to proceed home to Charles Town, Virginia, and enlist as ensign in a regiment recently raised.

  There were several aides who were new to the military “family” since Martha had last inhabited her husband’s headquarters in the salubrious Mortier house on the Hudson in New York. Alexander Hamilton, a young graduate of King’s College, New York, originally from the West Indies, had distinguished himself as a young artillery officer at Princeton, covering the Con
tinental retreat with a barrage of fire. Since the New Year he had proved himself an invaluable letter-writer for the commander at Morristown. Tench Tilghman was proving a reliable assistant secretary who took over much of Harrison’s work. Though son to the Crown attorney general of Pennsylvania, he had enlisted at the outbreak of hostilities. Since the previous autumn, he had been serving, in a voluntary capacity, as aide to the commander.

  With Hamilton, Tilghman, and other aides, Washington was at work to provision the officers and men currently serving, to augment the army, and to plead the case to Congress for an improved hospital department. That April Dr. William Shippen, Jr., in Philadelphia, was to assume full powers as director general of a reorganized hospital department with innumerable subdivisions and provision for a “flying hospital,” or field hospital. In addition, when Martha joined him, Washington was still overseeing an emergency project that he had initiated in February, mass inoculation of the army. He wrote on February 5 to Hancock: “The small pox has made such Head in every Quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro’ the whole Army in the natural way. I have therefore determined, not only to inoculate all the Troops now here, that have not had it, but shall order Docr Shippen to inoculate the Recruits as fast as they come in to Philadelphia.”

  It was imperative that the British should not learn of the medical procedures taking place at Morristown. Though the mass inoculation was ultimately successful, at any one time many hundreds of troops lay invalid. Washington had chosen his winter headquarters well. The inhabitants of Morristown and its neighbors, settlements protected by the Watchung Mountains to the east and by the Ramapo Hills running north, were strongly Presbyterian and favored the “rebel” cause.

  No word apparently reached the British of the weakened health of the Continental troops. During Martha’s first weeks at headquarters, the church on the green in Morristown and the church in nearby Hanover were still serving as crowded, makeshift hospitals. Washington and Nathanael Greene sought to maintain good relations with the population through the intercession of the ministers of both parishes. General orders to the army included directives each Sunday for troops to attend divine service if in town—services were held outside, while the churches still served as hospitals—and for regimental chaplains to deliver sermons to those cantoned further off. Washington told Hancock on March 14 that there were about a thousand troops under inoculation at Morristown, Princeton, and elsewhere: “the whole of our Numbers in Jersey fit for duty at this time, is under Three Thousand. These (981 excepted) are Militia & stand engaged only till the last of this Month.”

  The churches in Morristown and Hanover slowly emptied of invalid soldiers. Encouraged by the success of the experiment, following an outbreak of smallpox in the Mount Vernon area that spring, Washington gave orders for the three hundred slaves on the plantation to be inoculated. In Morristown and Hanover, nevertheless, the graveyards filled. The majority of the local inhabitants had rejected all offers of inoculation, and whole families died from the disease, as the bills of mortality for these months show.

  Congress had voted Washington, in October and December 1776, the authority to raise and officer a number of new regiments. Aide George Baylor, who had the glory of bearing the Hessians’ captured standard to Congress in Philadelphia, raised a regiment of light horse in his native Virginia. Young Thornton Washington, Washington’s nephew, and his cousin George Lewis, now a captain, joined a regiment headed by Colonel Charles Minn Thurston. Washington instructed both Baylor, in Williamsburg, and Thurston, in western Virginia, to inoculate the troops as fast as they came in. He wrote in April to Governor Patrick Henry that smallpox was “more destructive to an Army in the Natural way, than the Enemy’s Sword.…I shudder when ever I reflect upon the difficulties of keeping it out.”

  Difficulties faced Washington wherever he turned. Congress was resistant to his pleas for a more ready response to his demands for cash to pay the troops. Demurrals from relatives, friends, and patriots in Virginia who had been counted on to supply officers for the new regiments included an account of a mother’s lachrymose opposition to her son’s enlistment under Baylor. Washington replied in April: “a Mother’s tenderness and Fears too often interpose, & check the ardour of our Youth.” If Jacky Parke Custis was in his mind, the young man was still a valuable escort for his mother between Mount Vernon and headquarters. There remained, also, the task of fathering an heir for the Parke Custis estates. When once he had delivered Martha to Morristown this March, Jacky returned to Virginia and resumed his conjugal duties with enthusiasm. By the late spring Nelly was pregnant again.

  Washington’s forces continued weak and small in number. Recruiting officers in all states met with a tepid response from those they canvassed. Stories of hardship at the front from those returned had their effect on some. Fear of harsh treatment at the hands of the British if captured, and pessimism about the outcome of the war, disinclined others to commit to the patriot cause. Unaccountably, however, Howe made no decisive move toward Philadelphia. At the beginning of April, Washington wrote to Hancock: “By the latest accounts from Brunswick, it looks as if the Enemy were projecting an embarkation, they have been stripping the Buildings of Boards and cutting small Timber and transporting them from Brunswick to Amboy. It is imagined this is to build Berths in their Transports.” He believed the British would soon make by water for Delaware Bay. But the activity slowed, and no embarkation took place.

  Slowly Continental troop numbers augmented, and Washington, with generals Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox, began to feel greater confidence in the army’s ability to resist a British attack. The spring weather afforded opportunities for outings. New York general William Alexander played host at his estate at Basking Ridge, fifteen miles away. An enterprising soldier of fortune, he was generally addressed as Lord Stirling, though his claim to the earldom of that name had been unsuccessful. He and his wife and their daughters—“Lady Mary” and “Lady Kitty”—enjoyed an aristocratic life at the estate, and stocked an “English park” with deer. A profitable ironworks and money that “Lady Stirling” had inherited from her father, Philip Livingston of Livingston Manor, Albany, helped to fund this splendor.

  Lady Stirling’s brother, New Jersey governor William Livingston, and his family, had fled the British and also lodged at Basking Ridge. They joined the Washingtons and the military “family” in afternoon riding parties. Mrs. Bland, wife of a Virginia colonel, wrote home to a sister-in-law: “At such times General Washington throws off the Hero—and takes on the chatty agreeable companion—he can be down right impudent sometimes—such impudence, Fanny, as you and I like.” The Blands visited at headquarters “twice or three times a week by particular invitation—Every day frequently from inclination.” Caleb Gibbs, by Mrs. Bland’s account, was “a good natured Yankee who makes a thousand Blunders in the Yankee stile and keeps the Dinner table in constant Laugh.”

  Martha, providing tea and conversation to visiting officers and their ladies, members of Congress, and provisional assemblymen, forged close links with her husband’s aides who were, according to Mrs. Bland, “all polite sociable gentlemen who make the day pass with a great deal of satisfaction to the Visitors.” Francophone Alexander Hamilton, in particular, was invaluable when numerous French officers without a word of English appeared at headquarters. With these foreigners came letters of introduction from Silas Deane in Paris, whom Congress had deputed to seek from the French government financial aid and arms for the cause. Washington—who had not a word of French—was reliant on others to explain to these enthusiasts that there was no regimental command to offer them.

  Martha sometimes took a hand in domestic affairs, as is evident from an item in the accounts for April: “To cash paid for vegetables which Mrs Washington bought.” Usually the supervision of the household at Morristown, as at all headquarters, was a matter for those paid from the public purse. In early May, Caleb Gibbs, captain of the commander’s personal guard, procured at Ph
iladelphia cloth, buttons, and trimmings. New breeches and waistcoats were to be tailored in Morristown for Will Lee, the Mount Vernon slave who valeted for the commander. Two pounds of “scented best” hair powder for Martha and a chest “to put public papers in” were among other acquisitions, which included loaf sugar, green tea, pepper, lime juice, and bacon. Washington wanted Gibbs to find in the city a steward or a man of experience who had been employed “as a butler in a gentleman’s family.” Such a majordomo might check the lower servants at headquarters in their “extravagance and roguery, in making away with liquors, and other articles laid in for the use of the family.” Though Washington’s jaundiced view of the lower servants’ probity did not alter, Martha interfered at this time to good effect. Mrs. Thompson, who had until recently served as housekeeper, had been let go. “Mrs Washington wishes I had mentioned my intention of parting with the old woman, before her, as she is much in want of a housekeeper,” Washington told Gibbs on May 1. Mrs. Thompson returned, made the Washingtons’ quarters relatively comfortable, and aided different stewards and cooks, over the next several years, in serving up dinners for as many as thirty. Fowls, both turkeys and chickens, eggs, veal, and mutton were staples at the headquarters dinner table.