by Howard Fast
The Council of Safety, still in the city and still hoping that the city would be closely defended, opposed this move. But both Washington and Cadwalader realized that if the river were once crossed by the British, any defense of the city would be impossible. Cadwalader informed Washington that the militia would indeed leave Philadelphia, and that evening Washington ordered him to lead the troops to Bristol and to join Colonel Joseph Reed there.
Before he went to sleep on the evening of the fourteenth of December, Washington had news from Stirling concerning Lee’s army, but the account of Lee’s capture was still very confused and the incident itself was surrounded by the wildest rumors.
[25]
ON SUNDAY, THE FIFTEENTH, Washington was still preoccupied with the desperate need to turn his sick, defeated and disorganized rabble into some semblance of an army.
He had already taken two sizable sections of his troops and assigned them to other parts of the river under the commands of Cadwalader and General Ewing. Now his attention focused on the problem of forming some sort of viable army under his own command. As yet the full possibility of such an army remained in the future, for Lee’s troops under the leadership of General Sullivan had not yet arrived. Nevertheless, Washington knew they were on march toward his encampment, and he could begin the process of going through his own sick and dispirited forces to see what he might depend on.
So low had the fortunes of the Continental army sunk that at this moment, that is, on the day of December fifteenth, Washington could find no more than six or seven hundred men whom he could place under his own command with the honest stipulation that they were fit for duty.
If we are to accept the fact that the core of the army consisted of those troops who were under his direct command as Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces, then we can comprehend the utter desperation of his position.
At this juncture the Virginian also faced the indignity of being attacked by anti-Washington cabals, made up of his fellow Americans. Cahal is an interesting, old-fashioned word that the dictionary defines as a small or restricted group that is secretly promoting its own interest. Perhaps because we live in an age when many groups promote their own interests, the word cabal has fallen out of usage. But in post-Revolution writing and discussion there were a great many words written on the subject of anti-Washington cabals. Perhaps the piousness with which such discussions were framed is owing to the fact that Washington was so early enshrined, robbed of all the human weaknesses that underline the humanness of a man, and turned into an improbable figure of unyielding stone and implacable righteousness.
He was none of these things but a man facing defeat, groping in a world of chaos for some sustenance, for some way to retrieve his own fortunes and the fortunes of the cause he led. His virtues were those one finds in a decent and honest human being who, placed in awful circumstances, refuses to surrender to those circumstances.
In December of 1776, his failings were perhaps far more apparent than his virtues.
“… A motion had been made in that body [Congress] tending to supersede him [Washington] in the command of the army. In the temper of the times, if General Lee had anticipated General Washington in cutting the cordon of the enemy between New York and the Delaware, the Commander in Chief would probably have been superseded. In this case, Lee would have succeeded him.”
Wilkinson wrote this, and he was biased. Yet an element of truth exists in his observation.
Subsequent generations of historians have traced the beginning of a cabal in the motion mentioned above and perhaps rightly. All through December and perhaps through the preceding October and November, motions to replace Washington were made in Congress. Certainly there were groups in the Congress who regarded Washington with great distaste. There were equalitarian cliques, men whose thinking was shaped by New England historical circumstances and by a good deal of puritanism, who regarded Washington’s way of life as deplorable. And there were other groups, of course, who felt that the situation wanted a professional military man, trained in Europe, of whom there were a good many, the two most outstanding being General Charles Lee and General Horatio Gates.
None of these resentments need have been a cabal, but they moved toward polarization and sectarianism. These were responses to the moment; for a lack of success brings with it a lack of confidence, and in all likelihood by December 16 General Washington’s support in the exiled Congress was possibly less than lukewarm. There was also a tendency to blame Washington for the capture of Lee, for the congressmen refused to accept the fact that so brilliant and much-touted a soldier as Charles Lee could have walked into so silly and stupid a trap.
There were also some men in the Congress, supporters of Washington, who immediately leaped to the conclusion that Lee was a traitor and had been in cahoots with the British all the time and had betaken himself to the isolated inn in order to fulfill the conditions of a capture arranged in advance.
But there is absolutely no evidence in history for this kind of thinking, and the only explanation for Lee’s capture is the foolish and petulant behavior that led him to it, although there is a serious question as to whether he did not enter into a treasonable arrangement with the British during or after his capture.
Washington at this point in his life gives one the impression of a man whose unwillingness to accept defeat has reached such proportions that if put to it, he will go on with the struggle with that handful of staff officers who were his close friends. On the sixteenth, he called a meeting of these staff officers, and out of this discussion came the proposal to empower all of his officers to recruit troops from the countryside and to promise a bonus both to those who raised the troops and to the new soldiers.
There was no money to draw upon; and to this extent the plan was dubious, although Washington and a number of his officers had in the past paid military expenditures out of their own pockets.
At this time Washington could have done as he wished, for he had sufficient dictatorial powers granted to him explicitly by the Congress, and in other instances relinquished to him by tacit surrender of responsibility by many people in official positions. Yet he could not break himself of his daily habit of reporting to those he continued to consider his civilian superiors and to the private people to whom he felt he had a debt of responsibility. Thus he wrote to Congress on December 16th, concerning his emergency recruiting measures:
“It may be thought that I am going a good deal out of the line of my duty to adopt these measures or to advise this freely. A character to lose, and a state to forfeit, the inestimable blessings at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse.”
Pleading, begging, entreating—these were attitudes foreign to Washington—yet here on the sixteenth of December, he is at one of the very lowest moments of his existence.
After he had finished his letter to Congress, he wrote another letter to his brother Augustine, of whom he was very fond, and to whom he felt he could turn in his worst moments. He told his brother of the circumstances of Lee’s capture and then added: “the more vexatious, as it was by his own folly and imprudence, and without a view to effect any good, that he was taken.”
This is about as severe as Washington’s public criticism of Lee was at the moment. About a year later, under very different circumstances, Washington would launch a stream of direct and personal invective at Lee almost beyond description, but that would be in the heat of the Battle of Monmouth and understandable under the circumstances.
In the same letter to his brother Augustine quoted above, Washington added:
“If every nerve is not strained to recruit the army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up. You can form no idea of the perplexity of my situation. No man, I believe, ever had a greater choice of evils and less means to extricate himself from them.”
So desperate was Washington’s situation that he instructed all brigade commanders to plead with their troops for six weeks more of service, that is, with those
whose enlistments were expiring daily. He ordered them to promise such troops a bounty of ten dollars for the six weeks, but he had no money outside of his personal funds with which to pay them. He was prepared to pawn all he owned to meet this obligation. At the same time, he promised an increase of their pay by twenty-five percent.
If he were forced to carry out both these promises, it could result only in his own financial ruin. His behavior here is much like that of a man so close to destruction that he feels that nothing he does to survive can be subject to criticism.
One crumb of sustenance was offered to General Washington before the wretched day of December 16th was finished. General Sullivan and Lord Stirling had brought Lee’s army across the Delaware to the west bank at Easton. From Easton, Sullivan sent a messenger to Washington. The messenger arrived at Washington’s headquarters at the Keith house late on the sixteenth.
When he went to bed at long last on the sixteenth of December, Washington knew that Sullivan’s troops were safe in the momentary security of Pennsylvania.
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THE CONTINENTAL YANKEE—and perhaps his descendants as well—had a penchant for exaggeration and a hopeless fascination for the profession of spying. Perhaps because never before had they found a product so easy to merchandise and so simple to create as information, and when they weighed the small, mean reality of actual information against the grand splendor of manufactured intelligence, they appeared always to choose the latter. A shrewd and equivocal Yankee—and they existed in abundance—knew full well that if he entered a British encampment and sold them the story of two Continental deserters on their way home, it would fetch him most likely a kick in the pants or a whip across his back in payment. On the other hand, if he turned the two deserters into a full column and changed the direction of their march so that it made sense, the information was worth a shilling at least. A full regiment on the march for forage or horses or to set up an ambush was worth a half-crown, and a brigade marching to attack might fetch a full pound.
But in the latter case, he had to be careful, for the British were likely to hold onto him until they had a chance to test his story and then take back their pound and give him a good beating in the bargain.
So the Yankee merchant of information preferred to deal in small tidbits, which he sold to both sides. He found that a base of reality was preferable to total invention, and if he sold information about a battery of eighteen pounders, he felt more certain of his ground if he had actually seen at least one five pounder.
On the tenth day after Washington and his broken army had reached the Delaware River and crossed it—that is, on the seventeenth of December—neither he nor the British knew what he intended. For Washington, the future was desperate and bleak; the enlistment period of three-quarters of his army was running out, and in exactly two weeks the Continental Army of the Thirteen American Colonies would cease to exist as a meaningful or viable force, that is, considering that nothing of great moment happened. And the only contingency that held promise of great moment, a victory over the British, was hardly even a vague possibility. Yet, he had to move or perish.
Washington knew this. Major General Sir James Grant, whom Howe had left in command of the containing force, and whose headquarters were at New Brunswick in Jersey, knew this—and practically everyone in New York, Philadelphia and all the country in between was aware of it. It was the greatest heyday for the information market that America had ever seen, and since it was winter time, with neither plowing nor reaping to be done, practically every other farmer, tradesman, merchant and peddler in New Jersey became a part-time spy.
The market was good. Both Grant and Washington bought everything offered with a sense of desperation. Washington had to know what Grant intended to do, and Grant had to know what Washington intended to do. The British paymaster had what was euphemistically called an “information fund”; Washington and his general officers paid out of their own pockets.
To this point, the following exchange of letters is most interesting, both as to the quality and amount of information sold.
The letters moved between General Grant and Colonel von Donop. There were two encampments of Hessians on the Delaware River during that December, one at Trenton under the command of Colonel Rahl and the other at Bordentown under the command of Colonel von Donop. The first message is from Von Donop to General Grant, and dated the seventeenth:
In accordance with my communication of yesterday, I have the honor to advise you, my General, that the patrol has been sent out and seen nothing of the enemy. They found near the bridge between Mount Holly and Morristown a quantity of cannon ball and shells which they threw into the water. According to the reports of the country people the enemy must be at Coopers Creek with a force of four thousand men and General Putnam who commands them must be busy in collecting stores. If I did not know that the heavy artillery were to arrive today or tomorrow I would be very desirous of marching with three batallions and making a call on Mister General Putnam. I will follow out your orders on this subject as soon as possible. Yesterday evening a farmer came to say that General Washington had crossed the river at Vessels’ Ferry* with a large force on the right flank of Colonel Rall [sic] for the purpose of uniting with the corp of General Lee. The man however has disappeared after telling his story to the Mayor of Burlington. If this news is true the troops which have crossed must be the corp of General Stirling, who has his quarters at Beaumonts about two miles above the ferry. The six chasseurs who were lately driven from the house near the river at Trenton were again attacked yesterday morning by a detachment of the enemy which crossed in three boats under the protection of the eighteen pounders in their batteries. We were not able to prevent them from landing and were obliged to retire until Colonel Rall [sic] brought up a force to their assistance. After this the rascals went off taking away as their only prize a pig which had just been killed by the Chasseurs. The two which came near me here and which I made mention of yesterday, I believe have gone down the river to await me at Burlington. I have the honor to send you two orders issued by General Putnam. It is evident that we will have to make a siege of it. At this moment I have just received the news sent yesterday evening of a patrol of six dragoons to Pennington, which has not yet returned and one of these dragoons has been seen ten miles from Trenton mortally wounded.
The above communication is fascinating both because of the valid intelligence and misinformation the Hessian commander had obtained. Putnam commanded no force of four thousand men, nor was he at Cooper’s Creek. The news that he received from a farmer that General Washington had crossed the river to join the force of General Lee was utterly without foundation. Either the farmer was peddling manufactured information, or he had enough wit to mislead the enemy. Even the mention of General Stirling’s quarters is incorrect, for on that day General Stirling was quartered in the Thompson-Neely house. As for the eighteen pounders that the Continentals purportedly had across the river near Trenton, this was the most interesting of the fictions. Not only did the Continental army have no such guns on either the east or the west bank of the Delaware River, but they would hardly waste their small and precious store of ammunition throwing cannonballs aimlessly across the river.
On the same day, General Grant replied to Von Donop, dating his letter Brunswick, seventeenth December, 1776:
I have just received your report of this day’s date … I could hardly believe that Washington would venture at this season of the year to pass the Delaware at Vessels Ferry, as the repassing it may on account of the ice become difficult. I should rather think that Lee’s corp has proceeded to Philadelphia, for we have heard nothing of them, since Lee was made Prisoner, and prior to that the intention was to march to East-town in order to cross the river.
Putnam’s handbills and Lee’s account differ exceedingly about the intentions of the Rebels with regard to Philadelphia. For Lee declared that they are determined to burn the Town, if they cannot prevent its falling into our hands. General M
atthew marched this morning to Plackhemin where he fell in with a small body of rebels; they fledon his approach-he had taken a few prisoners-Some Arms and stores, his guide was wounded in the foot, that was all the loss we sustained. General Leslie marched this morning to Springfield and is to proceed from thence by Bound-brook to Prince Town. I have had no report from him, and cannot expect any until tomorrow.
It can be seen from the above that General Lee talked freely after his capture and that he had been privy at least to the plans of whatever party in Philadelphia was promoting the notion of burning the city. One should not confuse the suggestion of burning Philadelphia to the ground with the modern strategy of the scorched earth. There was no question of scorched earth or of putting the British into a position where they faced a severe winter with no shelter. Already they were in occupation of New York City, and housing there was ample for all of their needs. Apart from this, there were a hundred hamlets such as Trenton that they could occupy. The burning of Philadelphia was the sort of grotesque plan that grows out of desperation, short-sightedness and the kind of hysterical necessity that must effect something of a dramatic nature regardless of what the incident might accomplish.
It is also interesting to note the overestimation of the Continental forces by the British. The British were never able to forget their first taste of American warfare during their bloody retreat from Concord and afterward at the Battle of Bunker Hill outside of Boston. The horror of the awful toll taken of them there lingered, and even though they were able to inflict defeat after defeat upon the Continental army, they were not willing to give up completely their initial picture of American power and determination.
*Vessels’ Ferry, as the British called it, is the same as McKonkey’s Ferry.
