by Flora Fraser
Though he apologized for “intermeddling,” in his response of August 3, Washington did not allow Jacky’s profligacy to pass without comment: “let me entreat you to consider the consequences of paying compound Interest.…I presume you are not unacquainted with the fact of £12,000 at compound Interest amounting to upwards of £48,000 in twenty four years.” He suggested that Jacky sell the entire Parke Custis holdings in the south, advising him: “depend upon it, while you live in Fairfax you will get very little benefit from an estate in New Kent or King William, unless you have much better luck than most who have plantations at a distance.” He instanced Bryan Fairfax and other Mount Vernon neighbors as landowners possibly disposed to sell Jacky tracts contiguous to Abingdon.
There was only so much that Washington in White Plains could do to advise the young Virginian. The Franco-American operation in America was under strain. After French troopships arrived in July at Sandy Hook, a project that French admiral d’Estaing formed to attack New York foundered: the Sound proved too shallow to allow the French men-of-war passage. A joint attack on Newport, Rhode Island, on August 9, in which d’Estaing and his fleet acted in uneasy concert with General Sullivan and American troops, enjoyed no greater success. A storm brewed up before the French fleet could engage with enemy shipping. The Languedoc, the French flagship, was badly damaged, and the French admiral insisted on sailing away to have it repaired in Boston. Sullivan and his fellow officers were left to repine and expostulate that the comte’s retreat was “derogatory to the honour of France.”
Tempers rose high. American volunteer Lafayette was in Boston, about to take ship across the Atlantic, hoping to return to America with a French commission. He begged d’Estaing to attempt a new joint operation, but the admiral refused. A battle later in August, when Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene came to Sullivan’s assistance, was inconclusive, and the British remained in control of Newport. When d’Estaing’s fleet was repaired, it headed south to the West Indies, eventually to prosecute war against the British there. It had hardly been an auspicious beginning to the French alliance.
More welcome at White Plains than all this news was the gift of a fine chestnut horse, property of Thomas Nelson of Yorktown. The patriot, determined that his favorite mount should go to war, sent an accompanying note to Washington: “He is not quite reconciled to the beat of Drums, but [with] that he will soon be familiarized.” The American commander wrote to thank the donor for this new horse, which he named Nelson. He was pragmatic about the Franco-American alliance: “The arrival of the French Fleet upon the Coast of America is a great, & striking event; but the operations of it have been injured by a number of unforeseen & unfavourable circumstances—which, though they ought not to detract from the merit, and good intention of our great Ally, has nevertheless lessened the importance of their Services in a great Degree.” Washington mused: “I do not know what to make of the enemy at New York.” If their stay there were not from necessity—“proceeding from an inferiority in their Fleet—want of Provisions—or other causes, I know not”—it was, he wrote, “profoundly mysterious, unless they look for considerable reinforcements and are waiting the arrival of them to commence their operations. Time will show.”
A month later the British designs were no clearer. Washington marched the army in mid-September to Fredericksburg, New York. From this vantage point it could, as needs be, support posts on the Hudson or, alternatively, defend French ships in Boston harbor from attack. In pursuit of the enemy, the troops endured a wearying series of autumnal marches and countermarches up and down the North River.
In the early autumn Jacky paid a visit to headquarters and secured Washington’s consent to the sale of almost all the dower lands. Claiborne’s only was excepted. Jacky aimed to sell the land he owned there outright as well, all but the White House estate. In return for the loss of the dower land income, Jacky was to pay his stepfather—and his mother, if she survived her husband—an annuity of £2,100 in silver coin. The payment and value, in paper dollars, of this annuity were, over the course of the following years, to be the subject of altercation between debtor and creditor. For the moment Washington only urged Jacky to reinvest his gains in land: “our paper currency is fluctuating…by parting with your lands you give a certainty for an uncertainty.” In Virginia, Martha had made her own visit of inspection to Claiborne’s. She found fault with a great deal and gave specific orders, all of which she reported to her husband. On October 27 he wrote to reproach James Hill, manager of the diminished Parke Custis estates: “I have understood that, till Mrs. Washington was at my Plantation at Claiborne’s in August & directed or rather advised the Beeves [cattle] and Corn to be Sold, no steps were taken to do it; in short, that you were very seldom at or gave yourself much trouble about the Plantn.”
Not only did Martha direct “Beeves and Corn” to be sold in Washington’s absence, she insisted that Jacky rent the property from Washington and take it in hand himself. Burwell Bassett, at Martha’s wish, appraised land, slaves, and stock at Claiborne’s, so as to find a rental value that would be fair to his brother-in-law and to Jacky. Washington wrote to Bassett from Fredericksburg on October 30: “Mrs Washington in a late letter informs me that you have been so obliging as to assure her that you would readily render me any services of this kind in your power.” He offered his brother-in-law in thanks one of the “choice Bull-calves…descended from Mr [John] Custis’s English bull” at Claiborne’s. Martha’s insistence that the farm be retained is striking. The whimsical young Parke Custises now seemed settled at Abingdon. On her husband’s principle of land for land, should she face widowhood, she could parlay Claiborne’s for a home near them.
Washington at Fredericksburg anxiously examined spies’ accounts of British movements. “We still remain in a disagreeable state of suspense respecting the enemy’s determinations,” he told Bassett. There were “circumstances and evidence” leading to suspicions that the British meant to evacuate New York. “A few days must, I think, unfold their views.” Four days earlier he had written irritably to his brother John Augustine: “If I was to hazard an opinion upon the occasion, it would be, that they do not leave it this Winter. If I was to be asked for a reason, I should say because I think they ought to do so they having almost, invariably run counter to all expectation.” Looking ahead, he continued: “I begin to despair of seeing my own home this Winter, & where my Quarters will be, I can give little acct of at this time.”
Martha wrote on November 2 to her brother Bartholomew Dandridge that she was “very uneasy,” having “some reason to expect that I shall take another trip to the northward. The poor General is not likely to come to see us, from what I hear—I expect to hear certainly by the next post.” If she were to be so happy as to stay at home, she added, “I shall hope to see you with my sister[-in-law] here as soon as you are at leisure.” Their mother, who now lived with her son, had been very ill. “I wish I was near enough to see you and her,” Martha wrote to Bartholomew, and she sent love to “my sister Aylett.” Their younger sister, Betsy, had recently lost her husband and both her sons. She enclosed, in “a bundle for my mama,” a pair of shoes for “little Patty,” her brother’s daughter and her namesake: “there was not a doll to be got in the city of Philadelphia, or I would have sent her one.” She would soon have ample opportunity to make further purchases herself in that metropolis. Shortly after she wrote this letter, Washington deputed his senior aide, the Virginian John Fitzgerald, to oversee Martha’s journey north as far as Philadelphia. By the time she arrived in that city, the commander hoped to have determined where the army would winter.
At home, life at Mount Vernon was comfortable and full of small pleasures. Nelly was expecting again, and Jacky was occupied with readying Abingdon for occupation in the new year. Martha’s journey to Philadelphia was not easy. She had been delayed on the road when the springs of her traveling carriage were found wanting. Earlier repairs to this chariot had not been entirely satisfactory, and Washington h
ad hoped to acquire a new carriage. Merchant John Mitchell, who served under Greene as a deputy quartermaster, cast about for one in Philadelphia without success: “none of them appears to me fit for your service or such as would please Mrs Washington. They are all carriages which have been long used and refitted up to serve the purchasers that now own them.” Four days later Mitchell offered a chariot, “Mrs Montgomery’s,” for £750. It was, he wrote, “the best to be got here, and as reasonable as can be expected from the very extravagant price of every article and the folly of people in general giving into these prices.” Though Washington declared an interest in acquiring this handsome vehicle, Martha ended by traveling in her own untrustworthy chariot. On hearing that new springs had been dispatched to her on the road, Washington begged Mitchell for news of her arrival in Philadelphia. The commander still did not know when his winter quarters would be fixed. He had therefore, “under the uncertainty of her stay in the city,” politely declined Mitchell’s offer that Martha lodge with him and his wife. He cited “the trouble of such a visitor (for more than a day or so) being too much for a private family.” Wherever either Washington went now, august and stately addresses and visitations from the great and good were to be expected. Mitchell, instead, was commissioned to obtain for Martha “good lodgings” and see to it that her horses be stabled.
Washington was now satisfied that the British did not mean either to evacuate New York or to mount a winter assault on his army. The activity in the city in October had proved preliminary to the dispatch of a convoy with troops to the south, Sir Henry Clinton commanding. As yet ignorant of their precise destination, Washington must rely on General Benjamin Lincoln, American commander in the south, to make the best defense possible of Charleston and Savannah, both in American hands. In late November he ordered the army under his own command into winter quarters.
Washington had determined that he and his military “family” would winter, with seven of the thirteen brigades that constituted the army in the north, at Middlebrook, New Jersey. He was pleased with what he found when he arrived there on December 11. The location of the winter cantonment on the Raritan River allowed for an easy chain of supply from Philadelphia. Immediately to the north rose the heavily wooded Watchung Mountains, which afforded a liberal source of timber for hutting the army. Greene had secured as headquarters a number of rooms in a house about four miles west of the main camp. Its owner, Philadelphia merchant John Wallace, remained in occupation, somewhat inconveniently, of other rooms. At Pluckemin, still farther west, Henry Knox took up residence and mounted cannons in an artillery park. The flat Raritan plain was ideal ground for drilling, and a grand parade—or parade ground—was easily accommodated, as well as lodgings for Baron von Steuben. Greene and his wife, Caty, rented a house at Bound Brook, on the eastern bank of the Raritan. It was a world away from the rigors and hardship that had characterized the previous winter cantonment at Valley Forge. “The soldiers are very comfortable,” wrote Nathanael Greene to John Hancock on December 20. All that was wanted, from Washington’s point of view, was the domestic comfort that his wife represented.
It was to be several months before “Lady Washington” came to Middlebrook. In the latter half of December, her husband was summoned to Philadelphia, where she was now lodged. A congressional committee of conference, numbering Henry Laurens among its members, was charged with consulting the general about a Canadian expedition, which the French were urging, and about campaigns to succeed the winter encampments. Evading militia, light horse, and others who had hoped to greet him, Washington slipped into the city on December 22, and was reunited with Martha. Their residence—until February 2, 1779, when they left together for Middlebrook—was the town house on Chestnut Street, close to the State House, that Laurens and his wife occupied.
Laurens had recently resigned as president, in turbulent circumstances, and New York lawyer John Jay served in his place. All Philadelphia flocked to the house on Chestnut Street, seeking to fête and honor the southern delegate’s illustrious guests. Washington, however, was much in conference at the State House. He was of John Jay’s mind, that French ambitions in Canada were to be checked. Not all agreed. John Laurens wrote privately to his father, Henry, that he hoped no heed would be paid in Congress to the Marquis de Lafayette’s romantic visions of heading north in command of an allied expedition: “He lays down as self-evident that Canada cannot be conquered by American forces alone: that a Frenchman of birth and distinction at the head of four thousand of his countrymen, and speaking in the name of the Grand Monarque, is alone capable of producing a revolution in that country.” But some in Congress favored an expedition, so as to please the French; still somewhat amazed by the alliance itself, they were nervous that Franklin, recently joined by John Adams in Paris, might yet fail to ratify the treaty. A recent public breach between Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, lately American commissioners in France, had damaged Congress’s standing not only in France but also in Spain and Holland, whose friendship—and resources—America sought. In the unsettled atmosphere, there were those in Philadelphia who held that it would be unwise to deny America’s new ally its Canadian ambitions.
Besides, there were few in Philadelphia who were not impressed by Monsieur Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, Louis XVI’s minister plenipotentiary to the United States of America. Upon his arrival in the city in July, installing himself in a commodious house in Market Street, he had lavished entertainment on delegates and on city dignitaries. The forms and protocol on which Gérard insisted as due a representative of his royal master awed these citizens. Many of them inhabitants of meager lodgings, they were hard-pressed to reciprocate. But they made the attempt, spending hundreds of pounds on banquets in taverns. The presence of General and “Lady” Washington in the city, and the advent of the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, only drove the populace to new heights of extravagance. Early in 1779 Nathanael Greene, who came from Quaker stock, reported that he had sat down to a dinner in the city that boasted 160 dishes.
The dinners “abroad” to which the general and Martha were constantly bidden left the commander in no good humor. He was to tell General Schuyler in February that he had enjoyed “few moments of relaxation” while in Philadelphia. Even visits to Robert Morris and his wife, with whom the Washingtons dined on January 4, were not entirely comfortable. The Laurenses, their hosts, and the Morrises were on opposite sides of the Deane–Lee controversy. But these dinners afforded Martha—pragmatic, sociable, and tasteful—good reason to patronize Simpson’s tailors and other modish emporia, if not as extensively as she had two summers before, when prices were lower. Philadelphia was also a good source of children’s toys. She told Jacky and Nelly in March 1779 that she had a “pretty new doll” for her eldest granddaughter, Bet.
On Twelfth Night—January 6, 1779—two evenings after they had dined with the Morrises, Washington was for once in good humor. He and Martha attended a ball at the elegant home of Samuel Powel, former mayor of the city, and his wife, Elizabeth Willing Powel. Benjamin Franklin’s daughter, matron Sarah Bache, was of the company and some days later wrote to her father, in Paris, of her conversation with the general: “he told me it was the anniversary of his marriage. It was just twenty years that night.”
Washington proved himself so able in meetings with the Committee of Conference that, before the new year, he had won his object. No invasion of Canada would be attempted. Discussions about other campaigns to come were protracted but ended again with Washington’s will prevailing. For want of money, operations, except against marauding Indians in the West, should be defensive. He was well aware that his stock had risen following his powerful performances in committee, but he inveighed against the public mood when he wrote, late in December, to Benjamin Harrison, now a state counselor in Virginia, “If I was to be called upon to draw A picture of the times—& of Men—…I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation & extravagance seems to have laid fast hold of most of them.…Party disputes & personal qua
rrels are the great business of the day whilst the momentous concerns of an empire—a great & accumulated debt—ruined finances—depreciated money & want of credit…are but secondary considerations & postponed from day to day—from week to week as if our affairs wore the most promising aspect.” He continued:
In the present situation of things I cannot help asking—Where is [George] Mason—[George] Wythe—[Thomas] Jefferson, [Robert] Nicholas—[Edmund] Pendleton—[Thomas] Nelson—& another I could name [Benjamin Harrison himself]?…Your Money is now sinking 5 pr Ct a day in this City.…And yet an assembly—a Concert—a Dinner, or Supper (that will cost three or four hundred pounds) will not only take Men off from acting in but even from thinking of this business, while a great part of the Officers of your army, from absolute necessity, are quitting the Service and the more virtuous few, rather than do this, are sinking by sure degrees into beggary & want.
Washington added soberly: “I feel more real distress on acct of the present appearances of things than I have done at any one time since the commencement of the dispute.” As he had done before when matters seemed hopeless, he would trust in “Providence.” Either “Providence” or his haranguing had its effect in one quarter. Harrison and Nelson, among others, resumed office as delegates to Congress in the spring.
Besides congressional calls on his time, Washington had to receive delegations from numerous bodies with addresses. That of the magistrates of the city ran in part: “you have defeated the designs of a cruel invading enemy, sent by the unrelenting King and Parliament of Britain to enslave a FREE PEOPLE. By the vigilance and military prowess of your Excellency and the brave Army under your command, we now in this city enjoy PEACE FREEDOM and INDEPENDENCE; and we hope, worthy Sir, that you will see the same compleatly established throughout the Thirteen United States, which will redound immortal honour to you, Sir, and to your country for so great and good a man.” If they did not match this florid prose, Alexander Hamilton and others of Washington’s “family” with him in Philadelphia became adept at framing suitable responses for the general to deliver.
