Patriots

by A. J. Langguth

  In March 1758, when Colonel Washington was twenty-six, he began to cough as persistently as Lawrence had done, and he traveled to Williamsburg for a medical diagnosis. The doctor gave him a reassuring report, and Washington left the capital in better spirits. On his return trip, he took advantage of the Virginia gentry’s openhanded hospitality and spent the night at a large residence famous for its six chimneys. His hostess was Martha Dandridge Custis, who had been widowed for seven months.

  Washington’s feeling for Sally Fairfax clearly would come to nothing. On trips to New York he had paid court to a young heiress, Eliza Philipse, who was bright and spirited and considerably more sophisticated than her suitor. Martha Custis resembled Miss Philipse in only one way: she too was rich. Her late husband’s father had been a cranky miser who kept his son a bachelor into his middle years. He had opposed Daniel Custis’ engagement to Martha Dandridge because she wouldn’t bring a sufficient dowry. But he had died before the wedding, and Daniel had inherited two fine estates and 17,500 acres of Virginia land. The bride had been nineteen, and in their seven years of marriage she had borne him four children. Two had survived. The widow Custis, now twenty-six, was tiny, barely five feet tall. She was only a few months older than George Washington, and she was modest. When she described herself, she settled for the word “healthy.” Although she was plump, she danced nimbly, her smile reflected a sweet disposition, and she could afford any second husband she wanted.

  Martha Custis had known Washington long before she was free to consider him for marriage. By now he had grown into a broad-shouldered, small-waisted man, a little thick at the hips from his constant riding. His eyes were gray and widely set, his abundant hair brown, his features regular. In conversation Washington was deferential; sitting silently, he was dignified; and he was graceful in the way he moved. He kept his mouth closed as much as he could. Martha Custis had beautiful teeth; his own were already going bad.

  Washington’s campaign was ardent and brief. Within a week of his first stay, he was back again, giving the Custis servants ten times his usual frugal tips and being amiable with Martha’s two children, a boy four years old and a girl of two. Washington began to expand the simple farmhouse at Mount Vernon to prepare for a family and raised the roof to allow for a second story.

  The couple were engaged within months, but Colonel Washington wanted one last chance at military glory before he resigned himself to life as a wealthy planter. William Pitt in London had ordered the British to drive the French from Fort Duquesne. Washington failed to get a commission with the regulars, but he decided to go along as a militia colonel. Besides putting together a fighting force three times the size of Braddock’s expedition, Pitt had eased resentments among the militia by ruling that their officers could be commanded only by British regulars of a superior rank. That meant Washington would suffer no indignities from British majors and captains.

  Before leaving for Ohio, Washington wrote two letters that mirrored the division in his heart. Placidly he reminded Martha Custis of the happy hour when they had made their pledges to each other and described himself as her faithful and affectionate friend. But when Sally Fairfax wrote to tease Washington for becoming a “votary of love,” he erupted with chagrin. Why, he demanded, did she write about his anxiety to possess Mrs. Custis “when—I need not name it—guess yourself.” He admitted that he was a votary of love, but not for the reason she had given. “I acknowledge that a lady is in the case—and further confess that this lady is known to you.” To Sally Fairfax, Washington also recalled their past times together—“the recollection of a thousand tender passages.” Then came a confession that caused Sally Fairfax to preserve a letter Washington must have expected her to burn: “You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather have I drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple fact—misconstrue not my meaning—’tis obvious—doubt it not, nor expose it—the World has no business to know the object of my love—declared in this manner to you when I want to conceal it.

  Martha Washington in a likeness her husband carried in a gold locket around his neck throughout the Revolution

  MOUNT VERNON LADIES’ ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION

  “I dare believe you are as happy as you say,” wrote George Washington, who had recently become engaged. “I wish I was happy also.”

  The campaign at Duquesne ended in anticlimax. The French withdrew from the fort and set it on fire before the English could arrive. The only shots came when Washington and one of his junior officers got confused in the woods and fired on each other. He didn’t record the episode, but British officers observed that Washington’s sole enemy casualties had come from his own ranks.

  Before he left Virginia, Washington had been elected to the House of Burgesses after two defeats. Returning home, he ignored the pleas of his loyal regiment, resigned his commission once more and took his seat in the legislature. On January 6, 1759, he married Martha Custis at her second estate, the White House on the York River. They spent their honeymoon at her Six Chimneys House in Williamsburg. Then Washington took his bride to Mount Vernon to begin their plantation life together.

  Eleven years later, on a trip west, George Washington negotiated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to buy the Great Meadows, including the site of Fort Necessity. Dear in blood, the property was cheap in money. Washington paid thirty pounds for it, which was less than what he spent that same year for a slave named Will.

  —

  As George Washington headed for Cambridge to forge a mass of men into the Continental Army, he was accompanied by four members of his new military family: a young man named Joseph Reed to serve as his secretary; Thomas Mifflin, a thirty-one-year-old aide-de-camp to write his speeches; and Philip Schuyler and Charles Lee, two major generals newly commissioned by the Congress. Along the way, Washington crossed the Rappahannock River to Fredericksburg to see his mother. Instead of going directly to Ferry Farm, he stopped at a nearby inn to send her a message that he was coming. The servants knew how Mary Washington would react if she saw her son in uniform and were afraid to deliver his note. But Mrs. Washington heard talk from her neighbors and sent for him. Washington went immediately. He hadn’t yielded to her pleading twenty years ago and she couldn’t dissuade him now. But, after some resistance, she agreed to move from Ferry Farm to a safer cottage at Fredericksburg.

  As the third session of the Continental Congress opened in Philadelphia in mid-September 1775, an indiscretion by John Adams turned a political quarrel into a personal one. He had entrusted his letters, including the one with his exasperated remarks about John Dickinson, to a courier who was picked up by British sailors in Rhode Island. In a postscript to his wife, Adams had broadened the attack on his colleagues: “I wish I had given you a complete history from the beginnings to the end of the behavior of my compatriots. No equal to it. I will tell you in the future, but you shall keep it secret. The fidgets, the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstitions, the irritability of some of us is enough to—” Adams broke off there. General Gage got his letters and had them widely distributed. When Adams passed Dickinson for the first time on their way to the new session, he bowed and took off his hat. Dickinson cut him. From that time on, the men spoke only on the floor of the Congress.

  John Adams had grown even closer to his cousin, and before leaving Massachusetts for their return to the third session he had persuaded Samuel Adams to take up horseback riding at the age of fifty-three. John found a very small and gentle horse and taught Samuel how to mount without two servants boosting him into the saddle—grasp the bridle with his right hand, place his left foot firmly in the stirrup, twist his left hand into the horse’s mane halfway between his ears and shoulders and give a vigorous jump. The first day of riding was agony. Samuel Adams was able to continue only because his landlady that night sewed a pair of well-padded linen underdrawers for him so that his blister could heal. Now that he had been coaxed into it, Samuel’s competitive spirit turned him into a good horseman. By the tim
e they reached Philadelphia, on September 12, 1775, John Adams was writing in mock chagrin that men said Samuel rode fifty percent better than he did.

  With Congress in session, Samuel Adams watched as John Hancock consorted with the Southerners who were most congenial to his nature. Adams’ former protégé was becoming “King Hancock,” traveling with twenty-five horsemen in front of his coach with their sabers drawn and another twenty-five behind. John Adams discovered that when Hancock dined at inns around Philadelphia the owners were expected to be grateful for the honor of serving him, and his entourage often rode off without paying their bills. John Adams mourned the example that Massachusetts was setting, and Samuel Adams was aghast that honest country folk enjoyed watching Hancock’s display.

  John Hancock’s defenders, men like Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, liked him even better as he lost favor with his own radical delegation. But presiding over the Congress required work as well as pomp, and Hancock was soon complaining that he was worn out. His gout returned, and eye trouble drove him to buy glasses. During the six-week adjournment through August and early September 1775, Hancock had gone to claim his reward. Dorothy Quincy had not written often, not even when he had begged for letters or after he had sent gifts—hosiery, shoes, an airy summer cloak, a pretty hat. But she had agreed to marry the president of the Continental Congress. After a subdued ceremony that suited the times, Hancock returned to Philadelphia with his bride. Pleading ill-health, he missed the opening session.

  The new Congress had to confront two procedural questions of a wide significance. For months some members had spoken of moving the Congress to Connecticut—either Hartford or New Haven—so that members would be closer to the fighting. They made their suggestions outdoors to keep them from being formal resolutions that would require a vote. So far, a majority was against the move, and Congress remained in Philadelphia. But with Washington’s departure, it was clear that the center of America’s crisis had shifted to the battleground. That was confirmed for John Adams when he traveled part of the way out of Philadelphia with the commander in chief and his two major generals. Watching the military display that accompanied them, Adams could see that their swords would soon be more acclaimed than his pen. “I, poor creature,” he wrote to Abigail Adams, “worn out with scribbling for my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown; others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.”

  Peyton Randolph’s return to Philadelphia raised another question. Most members had assumed that John Hancock would occupy the president’s chair only while Randolph was in Virginia. But the bridegroom on his working honeymoon showed no sign of stepping down. John Adams claimed to be particularly upset by Hancock’s breach of good manners. Then, within six weeks, the issue was resolved without a vote. A stroke caused Randolph to choke over his dinner, and he died not long afterward.

  —

  Soon after George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge on July 2, 1775, he had been decked with the laurels John Adams had predicted for him. Abigail Adams wrote to tell her husband how impressed she had been by the new commander. She summed him up as having “dignity with ease” and said that modesty marked every line and feature of his face. Washington reminded her of lines from Dryden, which she copied out for John Adams—“He’s a temple sacred by birth” was one of them. If her rapture stirred a twinge of jealousy in her husband, Abigail Adams considered it his own fault. She had grown tired of the public quality to his letters and had warned him, “I want some sentimental effusions of the heart.”

  While he was making his social rounds, Washington also moved quickly to strengthen the army’s defenses. It wasn’t the first time he had been put in charge of undisciplined men, but he was forced to depend on them to prevent the British from breaking out of Boston and into the countryside. Washington estimated that the numbers favored him. General Gage’s forces now totaled about twelve thousand against Washington’s sixteen thousand, including the sick and the missing. But Washington had to maintain a circle around Boston of eight or nine miles, which the British could push and test at any weak point. He believed strongly in reliable intelligence reports and overcame his natural frugality to pay well for them. From agents he heard that the British were running out of food and were slaughtering their milk cows for beef. The number of Tories who had stayed in Boston or had taken refuge there was only about sixty-five hundred; fourteen thousand Bostonians had fled to the countryside. The Tories worried that as soon as the last patriot escaped from Boston the American Army would set fire to the town, and they persuaded Gage to go back on an earlier promise and stop anyone else from leaving.

  George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes, the veteran of the Tea Party, had to go fishing for the British for several weeks before he and his friends could slip away to the town of Lynn and then to Cambridge. Washington came out to the yard of his headquarters to hear about their adventure. The men took off their hats in respect, but Washington told them to put them back. He was only a man, he said, smiling. When Hewes finished his rollicking story, he found that Washington “didn’t laugh, to be sure, but looked amazing good natured.”

  Privately, the commander was less genial about the character of his New England soldiers. In a letter to Virginia, he described them as “exceedingly dirty and nasty people.” Samuel Adams wouldn’t have disagreed. He had heard that some of his colony’s officers and men were disgracing the name of Massachusetts, and he wanted to improve the army’s public reputation. He suggested that whenever a man of real merit appeared, every anecdote about him should be touched up and widely circulated. Any exaggerations, he added, should go only so far as decency permitted.

  —

  When Washington heard a full account of the battle of Breed’s Hill, he sided with the survivors who claimed that the Americans might have won had the men been led properly. He authorized eight courts-martial for cowardice and corruption, and Samuel Gerrish was among those tried. Joseph Matthews, who was found guilty of selling a gun that his town had issued to him, was sentenced to ten lashes on his bare back. On Washington’s order, Matthews was flogged in front of his company.

  Over a lifetime of dealing with slaves, Washington had developed his own rules and penalties. He had encouraged them to marry, be faithful and attend church, although he expressed his own faith more comfortably out of doors. When slaves had become troublesome or run away, Washington sold or traded them, sometimes for rum or limes. He did not allow them to be whipped. Soldiers were treated differently. They were also expected to avoid profanity and drunkenness; Washington signed orders that any cider that came into the camp would be confiscated. His soldiers were not to be bawdy. A man named Daniel Davids was confined for the exhibition he had made while he was bathing.

  “The general does not mean to discourage the practice of bathing while the weather is warm enough to continue it,” one of Washington’s orders explained, “but he expressly forbids it at or near the bridge in Cambridge, where it has been observed and complained of that many men, lost to all sense of decency and common modesty, are running about, naked, upon the bridge whilst passengers, and even ladies of the first fashion in the neighborhood, are passing over it, as if they meant to glory in their shame.”

  Washington believed that, by enlisting, the soldiers had made a commitment and should be held to it. He asked the Continental Congress for the same right to hang deserters that he had sought from the Burgesses twenty years before. Permission was slow in coming, and as he worked to improve discipline, Washington’s aides told him that the men wanted the right to decide which officers to serve under and were insisting that the officers come from their own colony.

  The Continental Congress had been sensitive to those regional loyalties and had been guided by political considerations in picking Washington’s subordinates. Philip Schuyler, a delegate to the Congress from New York, was also a rich man with military experience. Artemas Ward and Israel Putnam were kept on to reassure New Engl
and. Charles Lee had become a favorite of both Samuel Adams and John Adams because he was a former British officer who had become fervent about America’s cause. Lee delivered mesmerizing accounts of his past exploits and tended to behave rudely with civilians. James Warren had once met him in Massachusetts and had written to John Adams with misgivings. Adams reassured him that Lee’s oddities were merely those of a great man. “He is a queer creature,” Adams admitted, “but you must love his dogs if you love him, and forgive a thousand whims for the sake of the soldier and the scholar.” One of those whims was that Charles Lee knew far more about waging war than George Washington did.

  Washington’s most pressing problem, however, was the shortage of supplies. He was consulting with his generals when aides interrupted with an urgent private message: Someone had miscalculated the army’s reserve of gunpowder. Washington had been told there were four hundred and thirty barrels when there were only thirty-eight. Each of his men had fewer than nine rounds of ammunition to keep the British blockaded in Boston. When he had heard the report, Washington sat for half an hour without saying a word. Then he wrote immediately to the Congress appealing for more powder. But Washington didn’t even tell his generals how desperate the situation was. He feared spies. Early in October 1775 one of those spies was unmasked, and his identity astonished everyone.

  In Newport, Rhode Island, a woman called on a man named Wainwood shortly after the battle at Lexington. She had a letter addressed to a British major on General Gage’s staff and asked Wainwood to deliver it to friends who would then forward it to the major. Wainwood agreed, but he wanted no trouble. When the woman left, he opened her letter. It was written in code. He puzzled over the message and put it aside. But when the woman wrote asking anxiously whether Wainwood had delivered it, he went to Cambridge and requested a meeting with General Washington.