George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  Gates’s letter to Washington ignored the substance of Conway’s statements, choosing neither to repudiate those sentiments nor to express support for Washington. Instead, he portrayed himself as the victim in the situation, complaining that his correspondence had been revealed. He pressed for Washington’s assistance in exposing the culprit who disclosed the letter and might again betray secret matters. Gates demanded to know how Washington learned of Conway’s letter. By fretting over the act of disclosure but remaining silent about the criticisms of Washington, Gates came close to admitting complicity with Conway (and Mifflin). Surely Washington thought so. He delayed his reply to Gates, leaving the nation’s new Achilles to stew in his own juices.14

  Shortly thereafter, Inspector General Conway presented himself at Washington’s headquarters in order to begin his new duties. Washington was all frosty civility and noncooperation. He noted that Congress had directed the Board of War to provide instructions for Conway, but the board had not done so. Without instructions, Washington explained, Conway could not begin his work, so Washington denied him access to the army. Conway responded with a fervent letter protesting the “cool reception” and making a sneering comparison between Washington and Frederick the Great of Prussia, then considered the finest soldier in Europe.15

  The battle for control of the army was joined. Reports of the cabal spread, still mostly whispered but more frequent and more insistent. Lafayette called Conway “an ambitious and dangerous man” scheming against Washington. Dr. Craik, Washington’s old friend, singled out Mifflin: “He is plausible, sensible, popular and ambitious, [and] takes great pains to draw over every officer he meets with to his own way of thinking.”16 Others shared Craik’s suspicions. Congress President Henry Laurens’s son, John, an aide to Washington, wrote to his father about “a certain party, formed against the present commander in chief, at the head of which is General Mifflin.” Another aide also targeted Mifflin, charging that he was taking “great pains . . . to swell the character of the Northern hero [Gates] and to depreciate that of our worthy general.” Gates, the aide insisted, “is but a puppet.” Newspaper articles celebrated Gates’s military genius; others published forged letters that purported to show Washington disloyal to the patriot cause.17

  Washington’s counterattack included an objection by nine brigadier generals to Conway’s promotion. In a stern statement to Henry Laurens, Washington defended his chilly treatment of Conway: “My feelings will not permit me to make professions of friendship to a man I deem my enemy.”18

  Conway proved an unfortunate ally for Mifflin and Gates. In a contest of subtle maneuvers, his tongue and pen were too sharp, his attitude too haughty, and his friends too few. By one account, he referred to Washington’s military talents as “miserable indeed,” and he accused the commander of subjecting him to “an odious and tyrannical inquisition.” Such personal gibes repelled those who knew Washington. The commander in chief might be portrayed as ineffective, but not as despotic. Henry Laurens determined that the European officers disliked Conway, while Washington’s allies denounced the Irishman. “A man of much intrigue and little judgment,” sniffed Nathanael Greene, while Hamilton called him “vermin.”19

  In early January, Washington answered Gates, explaining that he had initially assumed that the northern commander had intended to warn him “against a secret enemy,” meaning Conway. With mock regret, the commander in chief added, “in this, as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken.” What could Gates answer? His letter in early December had blithely ignored any injury to Washington from the Conway episode.20

  On February 10, Washington received his most welcome visitor of the season: Martha arrived with her enslaved servants. Although not even headquarters was comfortable at Valley Forge, Martha likely enjoyed the change of scene. Her favorite sister, Anna Maria Bassett, had died two months before, another hard loss after the wrenching death of daughter Patsy. The headquarters already overflowed with the large general, his five aides, and a stream of visitors and messengers. Washington allotted an upstairs room to Martha, where she could receive the wives of the senior officers. For dinners and evening conversation, Washington had a log dining room built as an annex. There was no dancing, no card playing, “no amusement of any kind, except singing.” Visitors were coaxed to offer a song or two.21

  While Martha settled in, Gates and Mifflin and Conway used their new powers at the Board of War to press two initiatives. The first went swimmingly; they persuaded Congress to adopt a reorganization of the failing quartermaster department that gave the board control of that key function. Called a “power grab” in a recent study, the change left Washington at the board’s mercy for transport whenever he wished to move his troops.22 The second initiative, however, contributed to the board’s undoing: a plan to invade Canada. Lafayette, Washington’s favorite, would be the nominal leader of the invasion, but Conway was to control it.

  * * *

  The American assault on Quebec in late 1775 had involved a punishing winter march with a high desertion rate and then a failed assault, followed by captivity for survivors. The decision to repeat the exercise two years later was mystifying. Pointing to the first assault on Quebec and General Burgoyne’s failure at Saratoga, delegate Francis Dana of Massachusetts asked why anyone would want to mount another “distant expedition[] across an inhospitable wilderness where there is but one road by which to advance or retire? Is not the very season against us?” Nevertheless, Gates, Mifflin, and the Board of War embraced the plan.23

  From Albany, Lafayette was to lead 3,000 men in sleds across frozen Lake Champlain, then on to Canada! With Lafayette as the expedition’s figurehead, French-speaking Canadians were supposed to rally to the American cause. As second-in-command, Conway was to be the real leader. The Canadian conquest would show that only Washington’s fatal caution was preventing American arms from sweeping the British into the sea.24

  Among the plan’s flaws was its assumption that Lafayette, who lusted after glory, was easily manipulated. Though young, Lafayette was a titled aristocrat who thought for himself and cherished the commander in chief. Even before the Canada plan surfaced, Lafayette had written angrily to Washington about “stupid men who without knowing a single word about war undertake to judge you . . . they are infatuated with Gates.” He smelled the trap at once.25

  Washington publicly shrugged off the Canadian expedition as a project of the Board of War. To Gates, he wrote that he wished success for the effort, but knew so little about it that “it is not in my power to pass any judgment on the subject.” To a friend, he confided that the idea was “the child of folly,” but “as it is the first fruit of our new board of war I did not incline to say anything against it.”26

  Lafayette accepted the command, but rejected Conway as his second. If Conway were retained, he threatened, he would return to France to inform “the world at large . . . of the unmerited insult offered the general and commander-in-chief.” The Board of War and Congress blinked; they replaced Conway.27

  When Lafayette arrived in Albany, he discovered such poor preparation that his howls could be heard at the Board of War in York. He had found, Lafayette wrote, a “hell of blunders, madness and deception.” He denounced Gates as “the greatest poltroon in the world,” who knew less about America’s northern forces than Lafayette himself had learned in two days. Promised 2,500 soldiers, Lafayette found fewer than half that number, mostly boys or men past sixty. Of the eight hundred sleds needed, he had fifty. There were, however, “an immense number of debts,” combined with “the want of clothing, want of men, want of everything indeed to be wanted.” The expedition, Lafayette concluded, was “madness and treachery.”28

  Gates, Mifflin, and Conway looked like fools. Worse, they discovered that while they had been planning the Canada frolic, Washington had been winning congressional support. By early March, Congress killed the Canada expedition; thereafter, Congress reversed itself a
nd stripped the Board of War’s control over the quartermaster function.29

  * * *

  One step in winning congressional support involved a wound Gates inflicted on himself and his co-schemers. When Gates took over the Board of War in mid-January, he brought with him the item that first brought the cabal to Washington’s notice: Conway’s letter disparaging Washington. Though Gates had assured Washington that the letter was “perfectly harmless,” President of Congress Henry Laurens disagreed. After reviewing the letter, Laurens confirmed that Conway did not write the precise words quoted in Lord Stirling’s note to Washington; rather, Laurens reported that the actual letter was “ten times worse in every way.” Gates’s credibility with Laurens and Congress declined precipitously.30

  Though Laurens and Washington had spent little time with each other, they shared a mutual respect. The South Carolinian had grown rich trading in guns, rum, rice, indigo, and slaves. John Adams praised him for “a clear head and a firm temper . . . as good a member as any we ever had in Congress.” After serving as a delegate for only four months, Laurens was unanimously voted president of Congress. By chance, or perhaps by design, he and Washington shared a connection through John Laurens, Washington’s aide. In letters to his father, John deplored Gates, Mifflin, and Conway, and praised the commander in chief.31

  The elder Laurens needed little persuading about Washington’s merits, or the perfidy of those scheming against him. “His virtues are the only present props of our cause,” Laurens wrote before Brandywine, and that defeat did not shake his view. In early January, he assured his son that the general’s “magnanimity, his patience will save his country and confound his enemies,” then scorned Washington’s opponents in Congress as “prompters and actors, candle-snuffers, shifters of scenes and mutes.” The elder Laurens called Conway a “first rate rascal.”32

  By late January, Gates was backing away from Mifflin and Conway. In a letter to Washington, he protested that he had “hardly the smallest acquaintance” with Conway, though still insisted that Conway’s letter was harmless. He never did, however, show the letter to Washington.33

  The commander’s grudging response came two weeks later. By concealing Conway’s letter, he noted, Gates had allowed people “to conjecture the worst.” Washington unloaded on Conway, who combined the “malignity of detraction, and all the meanness of intrigue, to gratify the absurd resentment of disappointed vanity, or to answer the purposes of personal aggrandizement, and promote the interests of faction.” Most of the army’s officers remained steadfast behind Washington. As one wrote in April, “the most distant hint against his excellency is looked upon as treason, and resented by almost every officer.” Through February, congressional sentiment turned sharply against Gates and his partners.34

  Gates’s star further dulled when the terms of the British surrender at Saratoga turned out to include unwise and expensive elements. Then came the harebrained Canadian invasion. If that was the best idea the Board of War could offer, it should not command a platoon, much less the entire army. Nathanael Greene gloated in early February that the schemers “begin to be most horribly frighted.”35

  Gates gave up the game in a February 19 letter to Washington. “I solemnly declare,” he wrote, “that I am of no faction” and had written nothing “offensive to your excellency.” Washington agreed to bury the matter in oblivion, “as far as future events will permit.” In other words, Washington would be watching Gates, very closely.36

  A few days later, Washington allowed himself to enjoy his adversaries’ troubles. Gates, he wrote to an aide, was tangled in “the most absurd contradictions,” while Mifflin had to explain his actions as quartermaster general (“a scrape he does not know how to get out of”). Conway was in Albany on the Canadian expedition, “which all the world knew . . . was not practicable.” In April, Conway submitted his resignation from the army; Congress accepted it on the day it was received. Gates moved from the Board of War to a quiet command in Boston. Challenging Washington had not turned out well for any of them.37

  Some historians have concluded that however much Mifflin and Conway and Gates maneuvered, they posed little threat to Washington. Some contemporaries thought that the cabal had small influence in Congress.38

  Washington, however, bitterly resented the schemers. The plan, he wrote, was for Gates to be “exalted, on the ruin of my reputation and influence,” while Mifflin “bore the second part in the cabal” and Conway “was a very active, and malignant partisan.” An aide reported that the cabal haunted Washington. “I have never seen,” he wrote, “any stroke of ill fortune affect the General in the manner that this dirty underhanded dealing has done.”39

  Washington had moved deliberately against the cabal, recognizing that Congress would decide the contest and relying on the influence of President Laurens and other delegates.40 One key to Washington’s success was his quick response to the early November warning from Lord Stirling, when Washington implicitly called on Conway to explain himself. Gates and Conway never could find an honorable explanation for denigrating the commander in chief. Equally important, Washington never overplayed his hand. Holding his temper and staying at his post, he steadily gained a credibility advantage until his adversaries undid themselves. It was a deft political triumph.

  * * *

  While fending off the cabal, Washington also was contending with his second adversary: the misery of the army. He had to find food and clothes for “our sick naked, our well naked, our unfortunate men in captivity naked!” He worried about rising desertion and weak recruitment. Officers demanded to go home or bickered over promotions. At the same time, he had to prepare the army for the 1778 campaign. He needed a victory to hold the army together and quell his critics. Another defeat might doom the cause.41

  Chapter 34

  The Second Adversary: “This Fatal Crisis”

  Washington called it “this fatal crisis.” It began in the second week of February 1778 when numbing cold moved into Valley Forge, followed by heavy snow, then torrential rains. Roads became swamps. Streams flooded. Nothing moved in or out of camp. The clanking gears of the army’s supply system seized up. For days, thousands ate no meat.1

  When the starving time began, Washington reported that “the murmurs on account of provisions are become universal,” and the “spirit of desertion among the soldiery never before rose to such a threatening height.” A week later, he struggled for words to capture his desperation. “For some days past,” he wrote, “there has been little less than a famine in camp.” Officers wondered whether the army would end with a final spasm of desertions, or a bloody mutiny.2

  The soldiers’ needs extended beyond food. Almost 4,000 of them, more than a third of the camp, were unfit for duty due to lack of clothes or shoes. Freezing men stripped clothes from the sick and the dead, heedless of diseases that might come with the garments. Officers paraded in coats fashioned from blankets.3 Angry men confronted officers. The wonder was that so many men stayed, performed their duties, and hoped for better days. Washington honored them. “Naked and starving as they are,” he wrote, “we cannot eno[ugh] admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been, ere this, excited by their sufferings, to a general mutiny and dispersion.”4

  When the roads dried out, drastic measures were needed. The countryside had to feed and clothe the army. Washington hated taking from private citizens. It inflicted suffering on the old, women, and children, making them resent the army, while also fostering among soldiers “a disposition to licentiousness.” He deplored the contradiction between fighting for the people’s liberty and taking their property. But he had no choice.5

  Washington turned, as he often did, to Nathanael Greene, sending him with 2,000 men to forage through New Jersey. The pickings were slim. “The country has been so gleaned,” Greene cautioned, “that there is but little left in it.” The Continentals were not the only soldiers scrounging
for food. When ice in the Delaware River interrupted shipping, the British, too, needed forage for animals and food for soldiers. Nevertheless, if Greene failed, the war effort might whimper to an end. While his expedition lasted, at least there would be 2,000 fewer mouths to feed in camp.6

  Greene disliked the assignment. “The inhabitants cry out and beset me from all quarters,” he reported, but “like Pharaoh I harden my heart.” He scoured forests and swamps for hidden livestock and wagons. His men left receipts for what they took so long as the items had not been concealed; he did not reimburse for anything that had been hidden. After several days, he began sending provisions to camp.7

  Greene, like Washington, lauded the soldiers’ fidelity. After “seven days without meat and several days without bread,” he recalled, their “patience and moderation . . . does the highest honor to the magnanimity of the American soldiers.” On the seventh day, “they came before their superior officers and told their sufferings in as respectful terms as if they had been humble petitioners for special favors.”8

  With the provisions sent by Greene, with the weather relenting and the roads opening, the Continental Army took a step back from dissolution. By March 1, Washington even inserted a small joke in his daily orders. “Occasional distress for want of provisions and other necessities is a spectacle that frequently occurs in every army,” he wrote, then added, “perhaps there never was one which has been in general so plentifully supplied in respect to the former as ours.”9 Neither wry remarks nor expeditions like Greene’s were substitutes for reliable supplies of food, clothing, and equipment. Washington had to repair the system.