Being George Washington (9 page)

It’s easy to get lost in the grandeur of Washington’s accomplishments: commander, war hero, president, Founding Father—he was almost mythical, larger than life. But his accomplishments are not what make him great: it was his small, nearly unnoticed acts that did. His simple faith in God, his desire to be a man of virtue in everything he said and did, his focus on the tiniest of character traits all accumulated over time and formed an unshakable, virtuous character built on solid rock. He could not be bought off, tricked, or beaten into submission by the world around him.

You may not lead an army of men onto the battlefield. You may not
ever help to found a country or serve as president, but you can
absolutely
be every bit as great as George Washington. Be great in your own city, your own neighborhood, and, most important, your own family. Be someone who relies on character and honor to lead and there will be no bounds to what you can accomplish.

December 21, 1777

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

It was, by the calendar, four days before Christmas and, by the map, eighteen miles northwest of Philadelphia—though nothing about this forlorn place and time suggested anything resembling Christmas festivities or the traditional urban comforts, like taverns, well-stocked shops, or a busy harbor ushering in fine wines and silks.

There was no luxury at all upon this barren, windswept countryside.

General Washington, his breath billowing into little clouds of steam against the late December air, tugged at his great chestnut steed’s reins, bringing the animal to a halt. Washington’s officers recognized his cue and instantly barked commands to their ragged troops, their mismatched uniforms threadbare, their once spit-shined boots and shoes long reduced to filthy leather tatters. One by one, eleven thousand cold, tired men, trudging in a column that seemed to stretch from one defeat to the next, stopped in place.

Washington surveyed the woodlots and farmsteads that surrounded him. It was good, solid farm country, but, at that moment, farming was the furthest thing from his mind.

They called this place they had come upon a valley, but it was not. And that was good. A valley would merely act as a trap for an army trying to settle into its winter quarters while its enemy, General William Howe, lurked dangerously within striking distance. This place, this “Valley
Forge,” as they called it, was instead a high ground bounded by a brace of creeks and the Schuylkill River. If Howe was determined to attack, Washington thought, his own ragged Continental Army might at least enjoy some advantage of terrain.

But terrain, Washington realized, might be his sole advantage. His magnificent triumphs at Trenton and Princeton, though less than a single year ago and but a few dozen miles away, now seemed like victories from the worn history books that he had read as a child—books of battles won by ancient Greece and Rome, of ancient republics that had long since fallen to ruin and despotism.

Washington’s army had recently faced its own ruins. General Howe, not satisfied with merely holding New York, had set sail southward, to seize Philadelphia, capital of the upstart colonists. Washington resolved to stop him, but it was not to be. At Brandywine, south of Philadelphia, Howe and his assistant, General Charles Cornwallis, along with their British and Hessian troops, had dealt Washington a stinging defeat. The armies of the Crown marched into cobblestoned Philadelphia, causing the Continental Congress to pack up and flee west to Lancaster, and then even farther westward, to York. It seemed the Congress could not run far enough.

Washington leaned forward in his saddle. He saw a snowflake fall upon his heavy blue woolen sleeve and he felt the cold wind upon his cheeks. This Valley Forge contained little of value to shelter an army with a Pennsylvania winter fast approaching. Not only was it not a valley, but it no longer even contained a forge. Beyond that, the British had already moved through the area, stripping it bare of what little provisions it may have once contained. Its inhabitants were largely Quakers and, being pacifistic, had little urge to aid any armed rebellion. There was no appreciable lodging nearby—only a few scattered farmhouses—so enough shelter to quarter eleven thousand men would have to be built quickly.

Eleven thousand men, thought Washington. That would make this isolated encampment the fourth-largest city in the colonies. He caught himself: No, not the “colonies”—the states. Washington pondered all this as he caught a glimpse of the area’s lone sawmill. The Valley Creek upon which it stood was already frozen solid. It would be of no help to Washington or his men in building their city of wretched little huts.

He looked to the west of Valley Creek, through the gray wintry clouds already buffeting the midday sky and saw one of the two peaks that bounded the area. Its name alone should have foretold what this winter would bring for Washington and his thousands of men.

It was called Mount Misery.

This encampment, Washington saw, would need everything. And it needed it fast.

He swung down from his horse. “Pitch our tents here,” he ordered. “This is where we will stay.” Then came another command. “Summon my general staff, if you would. We cannot survive long protected by mere canvas!”

Quickly a wagon rolled toward General Washington. Soldiers scrambled to pull a great white linen tent down from it, to hoist sturdy ropes skyward and to hammer iron stakes into the rocky ground. Orderlies rustled to set up Washington’s folding wooden camp table and low stools.

“Roll out that map of the area, Colonel Hamilton, if you would,” Washington said matter-of-factly. “Now, look, there,” he continued, drawing imaginary lines on the document before him. “We will erect roads, here, here—and there. Here will be a line of barracks. As well as here—and here. General Knox’s artillery brigade will be here. A guardhouse there. And the outer defenses, trenches and forts, will form lines there—and there. Our parade ground shall be in the center.” Again there was a sharp jabbing of his index finger to indicate the location of his plans. “And let us not forgot hospitals. Two hospitals for each brigade.”

Some of the junior officers marveled at how Washington had so quickly absorbed the lay of the land to reach such logical conclusions. But Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s brilliant young chief of staff, knew better. He knew that his commander had unrolled his maps before ever arriving at Valley Forge. He knew that he had consulted with his officers and sought advice from the locals as he rode to this destination. George Washington’s genius, Hamilton knew, rested not only on good judgment, but on good listening and detailed preparation.

But Hamilton also knew something else: they would all need a lot more than listening and preparation to survive a winter in Valley Forge.

• • •

A cart that seemed to be from hell itself rolled and lurched down the heavily rutted mud-and rock-strewn path that passed for a road, leading south out of the portion of Valley Forge that sheltered the Marquis de Lafayette’s encampment.

Instead of being piled high with provisions or armaments, it was stocked with corpses—rotting, vermin-infested, stinking corpses. Some with their eyes wide open, staring heavenward, others with their mouths agape, their gums blackened from sickness and malnutrition. This cart—and the one that closely followed it—reeked of death. Not of heroic battlefield death, but rather of the stench of death from gnawing, ever-present hunger and horrible sickness.

A shoeless body, dressed in blue rags, tumbled from the cart down into the mud. With this sorry remainder of what had once been a farmer, a husband, a father—a soldier—came a rat. And when both corpse and rat landed upon the winter’s ground, the rat, as ravenous as Washington’s surviving troops, flew right back toward the dead man—Private Joseph Hawthorn of the First Massachusetts Infantry—and sunk his teeth once more into what had recently been the deceased’s right hand.

December 31, 1777

Philadelphia

“Another glass of claret, my dear?” asked General William Howe, the fifth Viscount Howe.

“No, thank you, Your Excellency,” coyly replied the woman before him. Her name was Betsy Loring and she was the beautiful, blond wife of the stocky Loyalist commissary of prisoners, Joshua Loring. Even without another glass of claret, however, the twenty-five-year-old Mrs. Elizabeth Loring was really enjoying this wonderful masked ball. Gossips whispered—and they were probably for once correct—that this splendid affair had cost at least three thousand guineas.

If it did, Mrs. Loring thought, it was well worth it.

A chamber orchestra played the latest music from England—no rustic colonial tunes would annoy the patience of this crowd. Officers in silks and ladies in satins and high white wigs curtsied and danced. The finest
foods and liquors were served. If this was what occupations were like, then the current occupation of Philadelphia was going very well indeed for the half-German General Howe and his three thousand redcoats.

For his part, General Howe was enjoying not only Philadelphia, but Mrs. Loring, as well. After all, Betsy had been his mistress—and rather openly so—since his occupation of Boston. The genial but corrupt Mr. Loring’s official duties kept him in New York for long stretches of time. General Howe saw to that.

“Excuse me, General, but may I have a word with you?”

The voice belonged to the local superintendent-general of police and head of Philadelphia’s civil government, Joseph Galloway. Galloway was no ordinary Loyalist. He had served with Washington in the First Continental Congress and had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania House. But Galloway had drawn back from independence and cast his lot with London.

Howe, clearly resenting this interruption of his conversation with Mrs. Loring, gruffly nodded for Galloway to begin.

“Your Excellency,” Galloway said, becoming more and more excited as he spoke, “my spies have returned from Valley Forge. They have seen everything, and they all report the same: The rebels have no supplies. They are naked, dressed in rags. They are shoeless. Their enlisted men pack up and leave as their enlistments expire.” His voice was now rising to fever pitch and speed. “Thousands—yes, thousands!—of their men lay sick at hospitals. This is an army on the verge of extinction. If we move against them now, not only will they be in no position to resist, they may very well not even possess the strength to flee. We might sweep up the whole lot of them—once and for all! Even Washington himself!”

“Even Washington?” responded Howe, his eyes widening, his eyebrows arching. Galloway had finally piqued his interest.

“Yes,” said Galloway.
“Even Washington.”

The ground beneath George Washington’s high boots was white and brown and red.

It was white for the drifts of snow and ice that remained upon it.

It was brown for the sodden mud born of wildly fluctuating weather, from warm spells that had punctuated freezing cold, melting snow and
ice and creating the mire that clogged the primitive roads in Valley Forge. It would have been better had the snow remained, since one might then drive sleighs upon the hard-packed snow. But the mud ensured that nothing could pass upon these wretched thoroughfares, these lattice works of impenetrable ruts that snapped axles and shattered wheels and hobbled horses. These excuses for roads brought no clothing, no food, no medicine, no muskets or ammunition—only carts of corpses; corpses that were responsible for the final color beneath Washington’s boots: blood red.

Crimson streaks marred Valley Forge’s patches of whitened ground—the red painted by bleeding, shoeless, frozen feet, frostbitten extremities soon to feel the agony of a surgeon’s sharpened blade.

Yes, white and brown and red were the colors of Valley Forge. White and brown and red were, this season, the very colors of hell.

January 5, 1778

Valley Forge

George Washington silently dismounted and walked steadily away from the crowd of ragged militiamen who eyed his arrival, past a gently sloping wooded hillside and into a small clearing, where, at this hour of day, a shaft of light might illuminate his view—and his soul. He was alone. No one accompanied him in these moments.

Washington looked skyward. Despite the winter’s cold he removed his woolen tricornered hat and held it before him as he pondered the terrible nature of the burden he had placed upon himself. In more ways than one, he held in his hands the life and fortunes of every soldier in his command. But that wasn’t his only burden, for he also knew that the fate of this great experiment in human freedom and dignity depended on their success. If it—
if he—
failed, it might never be repeated.

Mankind’s history had, after all, revealed its remarkable tolerance for tyranny. But maybe, he thought, these men here today might prove different. Perhaps this place, this Valley Forge, might now forge not iron but a world made anew. But if a new order of the cosmos were to be forged, George Washington knew he could not do it alone.

And so, in the solitude of a snow-covered Pennsylvania clearing, George Washington knelt—and he prayed.

In nearby Reading, General James Wilkinson was downright drunk.

Good and drunk.

Wilkinson did his drinking at the headquarters of the wounded general Lord Stirling. Stirling had originally been a New Yorker with the far more modest name of William Alexander but had gotten it into his head that he was Scottish nobility and so, not long before the revolution erupted, he’d assumed the vacant title of “Lord Stirling.” Whether Stirling was nobility or not wasn’t of much concern to the shifty and pudgy Wilkinson. He was far more concerned with pouring his guts out to his aide-de-camp, Major William McWilliams. And those guts, it seemed, contained equal quotients of admiration for his superior, General Horatio Gates, the recent the hero of Saratoga, and contempt for General George Washington.

Wilkinson was hardly alone in his opinions. In Congress, similar sniping circulated. The Continental Congress’s president, South Carolinian planter Henry Laurens, had even found an anonymous anti-Washington pamphlet,
Thoughts of a Freeman
, openly circulating among its members. The knives were out for George Washington. He had not won a battle since Princeton and now he was refusing calls from Congress’s armchair generals hiding in York to attack Howe in Philadelphia.