by Flora Fraser
The siege had begun, the British responded, and army surgeon James Thacher recorded in his journal: “The bomb shells from the besiegers and the besieged are incessantly crossing each others’ path in the air. They are clearly visible in the form of a black ball in the day…in the night, they appear like fiery meteors with blazing tails, most beautifully brilliant, ascending majestically from the mortar…to a certain altitude.” These missiles then descended to where they were “destined to work their act of destruction.” The Continentals and the French had the best of the contest, the more so when, as aide Tilghman noted in his journal, during the night of the eleventh, “the second parallel was opened within three hundred yards of the enemy’s works with scarce any annoyance.” Once this closer parallel was complete and batteries established, the allied artillery aimed to shell the beleaguered garrison into submission. Over the following two days work on this important trench was completed.
Martha had word of some of these doings from her son in a letter of October 12, headed “Camp before York.” Jacky had joined his stepfather before Yorktown a fortnight earlier. The birth of his son provided some degree of security for the family estates, but he did not, like other Virginia Assembly delegates, join the militia. On his way south, he stayed at Pamocra, his uncle Bartholomew Dandridge’s plantation on the Pamunkey, and wrote of his maternal relations to his mother: “They are very desirous of seeing you. My grandmother wishes you to bring down both Bet and Pat”—his eldest children—“but I told her it would be too inconvenient for you to bring down both.”
Jacky’s role at headquarters was undefined. Henry Knox was later to write of him to Commissary General Clement Biddle: “his patriotism led him to camp to participate in some degree of the dangers of his amiable and illustrious father.” Custis could at least reassure his mother: “the General, though in constant fatigue, looks well.” He made inquiries about slaves from Mount Vernon and Abingdon who had run away to seek the freedom promised by the enemy in return for military service. “I fear that most who left us are not existing,” wrote the young planter. “The mortality that has taken place among the wretches is really incredible. I have seen numbers lying dead in the woods, and many so exhausted that they cannot walk.” Jacky’s own health, which had been of concern before he left Mount Vernon, was much better, he informed his mother, despite the “change in lodgings.” Though he filled the duties of an aide only to “some degree,” the young master of Abingdon slept, like Washington and the rest of the military “family,” under canvas.
Jacky brought with him to camp a letter to Henry Knox, entrusted to him by the general’s wife, Lucy. Mrs. Knox, pregnant and with a young son who clung to her in unfamiliar surroundings, had been Martha’s guest at Mount Vernon since mid-September. Now Lucy’s hostess was set to make an autumn pilgrimage to see relations. “Her return is very uncertain,” wrote Lucy Knox to her husband Henry on October 8. Martha received, a few days later, as well as Jacky’s missive of the twelfth, a long letter from Washington. Lucy Knox, who had received no communication from her own husband, noted on the sixteenth with some wonder: “he informs her of every manoeuvre, however trifling, which has taken place since the opening of the trenches.”
Allowing for the special affection that bound husband and wife, the tenor of Washington’s letter to his wife probably resembled in great part that of his wartime correspondence with his brothers and close friends not in the military line. It was now nearly thirty years since the publication of his 1754 Journal, which detailed his expedition into Ohio country and the French commandant’s refusal to cede British territory. Then as now, and on occasions earlier in this war, Washington took pleasure in giving an account of operations, once concluded. That he wrote in such detail on the twelfth is an indication that he could see an end to the siege of Yorktown.
Following receipt of her husband’s letter, Martha formed the intention to proceed, after first visiting her family in New Kent County, to Yorktown. Lucy informed Henry Knox, on the sixteenth, that her hostess, with Nelly Custis, was setting off the following day “in full expectation of being in camp very shortly.” “Bet” Parke Custis, now five, went too. Martha’s movements, once she left Mount Vernon, are thereafter for some time undocumented. Disconsolate and heavily pregnant, Lucy passed her time at Mount Vernon with her young son, Harry. She told his father on the twenty-third, the boy now ate “hominy,” or grits, “like a true Virginian.” A letter from Knox, dated “Trenches before York, 16 October 1781,” brought her cheering news: “The night before last we stormed the enemy’s two advanced works with very little loss—the fate of the enemy draws nigh.” Henry estimated that in ten or twelve days, they would, “with the blessing of heaven, terminate it [the siege].”
Heaven was kinder. The very next day the enemy signaled a parley at ten o’clock in the morning. Cornwallis suggested a “cessation of Hostilities for 24 hours” to see if commissioners could agree to terms for the surrender of the British posts at York and Gloucester. The British met the humiliating articles of capitulation that the allies proposed with protest and procrastination. As all were aware, these “articles” mirrored those to which the Continentals had submitted when Benjamin Lincoln surrendered Charleston. Cornwallis responded, on the nineteenth, to an ultimatum from Washington, and the vexed articles of capitulation were signed and in the American commander’s hands by eleven o’clock that morning.
Three hours later, the allied command awaited the surrender of the town. Marching in slow time to a British tune, more than 7,000 British and German troops, now all prisoners of war, passed between the French and American lines. Their colors were unfurled, their muskets were reversed, and a field was made ready where they would lay down their arms.
With an array of Continental generals and staff officers, Washington, distinguished by his blue sash and mounted on Nelson, awaited Cornwallis. Rochambeau, other French generals, and de Grasse with their suites formed another group. As the principal British officers reached this allied command, there was no sign of Cornwallis. The British second-in-command, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara, pleaded indispostion on his superior’s behalf. Washington, without comment, gestured his own second-in-command, Benjamin Lincoln, forward and stood aloof as the surrender was concluded.
For once the American commander was ebullient in his correspondence with Congress: “a Reduction of the British Army under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily effected. The unremitting Ardor which actuated every Officer and Soldier in the combined Army on this Occasion, has principally led to this Important Event, at an earlier period than my most sanguine Hopes.” The golden autumn victory on the Chesapeake in which the Americans and French had combined to such swift and devastating purpose did not fade easily from combatants’ minds. At the end of the month Knox wrote to his wife at Mount Vernon: “How is Hal [their young son, Harry]? Cannot you impress his memory so powerfully with the taking of Lord Cornwallis as to make the little fellow tell it to his children?”
When the British prime minister, Lord North, was brought news in London of the American and French victory, he supposedly responded, according to testimony attributed to Foreign Secretary Lord George Germain: “As he would have taken a [cannon or musket] Ball in his Breast…He opened his Arms, exclaiming wildly as he paced up and down the Apartment…‘O God! It is all over!’ ” Washington, preparing to head north for Philadelphia and winter quarters in New York, had no means of knowing what the British government’s reaction would be. He was anxious that success at Yorktown should not cause Congress or the army to relax in their efforts to dislodge the British from New York and other strongholds. Indeed, George III initially refused to allow that the American victory had been decisive, and the war continued.
In her letter of October 23 to her husband in camp, Lucy Knox at Mount Vernon wrote of her absent hostess: “She will be just in time to dance at your ball”—a Yorktown victory ball, of which there was much talk, though it never took place—“where I shoul
d like to be present.” But Martha did not join her husband before Yorktown, nor when he removed to Williamsburg in early November.
As Washington was later to tell George William Fairfax, Jacky Parke Custis was “taken sick at the siege of York.” Henry Knox, in his letter of November 11 to Biddle, confirmed that his friend’s ward “contracted the seeds of his disease” at camp, though he did not state what that disease was. “Camp fever,” or typhus, and malaria afflicted large numbers of the allied forces on the York, and hospitals in the field and in Williamsburg were crowded. Jacky was removed to be nursed and to convalesce at Eltham, thirty miles upriver. Martha and Nelly came to the Bassett house to be with him. Washington, once he had concluded a variety of pieces of business consequent on the British surrender, struck out north from Williamsburg on November 5 with a small suite, including aides John Laurens and Jonathan Trumbull, Jr.
That progress came to an abrupt halt the same evening at Bird’s Ordinary, an inn only sixteen miles or so north of Williamsburg. Trumbull wrote in his journal: “General goes to Colonel Bassett’s where Mr Custis is very ill.” The aides were unaccustomed to idleness when with “the General,” but no word, no direction or orders came from Eltham. “6th,” wrote Trumbull. “Still at Bird’s—nothing from Bassett’s till noon.” The following letter from Washington at Eltham, received at the inn about midday, broke the silence:
My dear Sir,
I came here in time to see Mr Custis breathe his last. About eight o’clock yesterday evening he expired. The deep and solemn distress of the Mother, and affliction of the Wife of this amiable young Man, requires every comfort in my power to afford them. The last rites of the deceased I must also see performed—these will take me three or four days; when I shall proceed with Mrs Washington & Mrs Custis to Mount Vernon.
As the dirty tavern you are now at cannot be very comfortable, and in spite of Mr [Laurence] Sterne’s observation, the house of mourning [Eltham], not very agreeable, it is my wish, that all the Gentlemen of my family—except yourself—may proceed on at their leisure to Mount Vernon, & wait for me there. [Trumbull was directed to join the general at Eltham.] My best wishes attend the Gentlemen & with much sincerity & affection I remain—Yr very Hble Ser.
Jacky Parke Custis, hale and hearty so recently, roaming the woods around Yorktown, writing cheerfully to his mother in mid-October, was dead. Washington, informing Lafayette of “this unexpected and affecting event,” described Martha and Nelly Calvert Custis as in “deep distress.” While Jacky’s mother and wife reeled, his stepfather, no less moved, made burial arrangements. For once private obligations were a priority, as he informed John Hanson, McKean’s successor as president of Congress: “an event which I met with at this place (very distressing to Mrs Washington) will retard my arrival at Philadelphia a few days longer than I expected, which I hope Congress will have the goodness to excuse as I am not conscious that any important public duty will be neglected by it.”
During the night of November 6 Jacky’s wasted body was dispatched to the “family burying place” at Queen’s Creek, close to Williamsburg. His sister Patsy’s grave was in the garden at Mount Vernon, where Martha sometimes walked. Jacky was to lie with his Parke Custis ancestors, with his siblings Daniel II and Fanny, and with his father, Daniel. At the interment that followed next day Washington was chief mourner among those who assembled to mourn the young man named by Knox a few days later as “the amiable Mr Custis.” Three days later by stages the Washingtons, Nelly, and five-year-old Eliza, all in mourning garb, left Eltham and turned for home.
It was not a home where Martha could easily give way to grief. Mount Vernon was once more an army headquarters. The mansion was crowded with American aides and generals, copying, consulting, and awaiting the general’s orders to head north. Congress waited at Philadelphia to hail the victor of Yorktown. From there Washington would head for winter quarters at Newburgh on the North River,
Martha might have remained at home, after her husband and staff were gone, and mourned her last remaining child in some degree of privacy. She might have wished to provide some degree of comfort for her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Williamsburg lawyer Bartholomew Dandridge was, in the Washingtons’ view, the natural person to act as his late nephew’s executor and as administrator of the Parke Custis estates. George wrote to him from Mount Vernon on November 19: “The purchase of Alexander’s Land will, I fear, be the most difficult and perplexing matter of all. I shall commence my journey for the Northward tomorrow. Mrs Washington goes with me.”
Any consolation there was for Martha lay with her husband, who had shared her grief when Patsy died, and who had stood in place of a father to her son. Washington was to tell a former aide, mourning his father, that he rarely attempted to console the bereaved. He was “of Sterne’s opinion,” expressed in Tristram Shandy: “Before an affliction is digested, consolation comes too soon—and after it is digested—it comes too late.” Washington also abjured fond recollections of the departed: “it would only be a renewal of sorrow by recalling afresh to your remembrance things which had better be forgotten.” Whether Washington kept to these stern prescriptions in the case of his grieving wife, he himself was much affected by the young man’s death. Before proceeding to Pennsylvania, he replied to an address from “Citizens of Alexandria,” many of them friends of long standing: “The present prospect is pleasing, the late success at York Town is very promising, but on our own Improvement depend its future good consequences.…A Relaxation of our Exertions at this moment may cost us many more toilsome Campaigns, and be attended with the most unhappy consequences.” He ended on a personal note: “Your condolence for the loss of that amiable youth Mr Custis, affects me most tenderly. His loss”—as Fairfax County delegate—“I trust will be compensated to you, in some other worthy Representative. Amidst all the Vicissitudes of Time or Fortune, be assured Gentlemen, that I shall ever regard with particular Affection the Citizens and Inhabitants of Alexandria.” Martha had, as emblems of her own loss, Jacky’s and Patsy’s miniatures, made by Peale and mounted by a jeweler the previous winter. These images of Jacky, bursting with health, and of his sister, forever wan, were to remain with their mother until her death.
21
Uncertainty and Disaffection, 1781–1783
“this long and bloody contest”
THE WASHINGTONS TOOK UP residence in a handsome house on South Street in Philadelphia late in November 1781. Congress paid tribute on the twenty-eighth to the commander they had so often failed to fund and supply. The following month the French ambassador, de La Luzerne, hosted an oratorio on December 11. The addresses were endless, the visits and dinners, inevitable. The thirteenth, a day set aside for prayer and thanks, was filled with so much ceremony as to leave little time for either. Washington, when not otherwise engaged, worked with the secretariats of the Finance and War Departments to prepare for campaigns in the year to come. He and Martha were to leave Philadelphia for Newburgh only late in March 1782. Throughout the months in Pennsylvania, Washington warned, in Congress and outside it, against “languor and relaxation” following victory at Yorktown. Peace—the word now whispered with increasing volume throughout the country—might well come. Until official intelligence came that treaties were signed at Versailles, it was his duty to try and regain Charleston in the south and to wrest New York from Clinton.
On Christmas Day 1781 George and Martha permitted themselves a measure of “languor and relaxation,” and dined with Robert Morris and his wife, Mary. The following February the Comte de Rochambeau, wintering with the French army, wrote, on the tenth, of his intention to honor Washington’s fiftieth “anniversary” with “a great ball” at Williamsburg the next day. The American commander was appreciative of the honor done him, though he himself kept his birthday on the twenty-second, New Style. He was less happy with one of several advances of age. His eyesight was faltering, and he needed spectacles for reading. By degrees, too, his chestnut hair was turning gray. The strai
n of being occupied, over so many years, for hours on end, in conference and correspondence had had other effects. His pleasant smile, formerly commonplace, he now kept for a select few. Light conversation, with which he had earlier whiled away many evenings at home and elsewhere, was also at a premium. He was pensive and often silent in company. With Martha and a few intimates only, his contracted features relaxed and took on their previous open cast. For all the want of exercise, his tall figure remained strong, his seat on a horse admirable. Whatever the future held, the commander-in-chief was fit for business.
Martha, like Washington, was changing physically. Her hazel eyes, white teeth, and fine complexion were still attractive, but as she grew stout with age and acquired a pronounced double chin, her caps became larger and whiter, her clothes, though still of the best quality, plainer. Washington continued to admire his wife for her confidence and affable energy. For Martha there were resonances in the preamble to her husband’s November remarks to the “Citizens” of Alexandria: “The great Director of events has carried us thro’ a variety of Scenes during this long and bloody contest in which we have been for Seven Campaigns, most nobly struggling.” The different winter headquarters had indeed represented for Martha, who had never previously left Virginia and Maryland, “a variety of scenes.” Sociable and curious, she had enjoyed that variety and playing some small part in the “long and bloody contest.”
The usual tenor of life at winter headquarters resumed, upon the Washingtons’ arrival in late March 1782 at Newburgh, on the Hudson. A small Dutch farmhouse, belonging to a Mr. Hasbrouck, was their new temporary home. Lucy Knox, with her children, was with her husband Henry at Newburgh and a frequent guest at headquarters. The Washingtons were by now well used to the restrictions of camp life. A visitor later in the year complained of the dining room, formerly Mr. Hasbrouck’s parlor, that there was little vent for the smoke from the fireplace. A smaller room served as parlor, where the company assembled before dinner. This same visitor wrote, “when the hour of bedtime came, I found that the chamber, to which the General conducted me, was the very parlour I speak of, wherein he had made them place a camp-bed.” During breakfast the following morning, the bed was folded up, and the erstwhile bedchamber became once more a parlor.
