Patriots (67 page)

The officer in whom Wilkinson confided hurried back to his own chief, Lord Stirling. Washington and Stirling had little in common other than the same enemies, including Conway and Benjamin Rush. Dr. Rush, the army’s surgeon general, had told friends that the blunders Washington had been making “might have disgraced a soldier of three months’ standing.” And after an inspection tour that past autumn, Rush had denounced Stirling as “
a proud, vain, ignorant drunkard.” On the evening of November 8, 1777, while still at White Marsh, Washington received a letter from Stirling about a number of housekeeping matters. It concluded with an account of Wilkinson’s version of General Conway’s remark.

The disparagement didn’t surprise Washington. He had first encountered Conway the preceding May and had written an amiable note of introduction for him to the Congress. Born in Ireland, Conway had joined the Americans by way of Paris, where he had served in the French Army. Silas Deane, who was constantly searching out military talent, had promised Conway a high rank if he went to America, and Conway had shown skill and courage while serving under John Sullivan at the battle of Brandywine. Within two weeks he was pressing John Hancock to upgrade his commission from brigadier to major general on the grounds that
Deane had guaranteed him the higher rank. Before the matter could be resolved, Conway had seen action at the battle of Germantown. He said afterward that George Washington had been befuddled and indecisive and had let junior officers overrule his orders. Then, when he came to York to argue for his promotion, Conway widened his criticism to include Lord Stirling, who, he said, was not only ignorant but no good to anyone after he had had his drinks at dinner. Dr. Rush and some members of the Congress saw in Conway a man of perception and integrity. They thought he embodied the military genius of Charles Lee, who remained a British prisoner, without Lee’s vices or his dogs. “He is, moreover, the idol of the whole army,” Rush assured his friends; if anyone deserved credit for the American showing at Germantown, it was Conway, not Washington.

In the past, Washington had been too busy and too proud to respond to gossip that he considered inevitable. The most he would do would be to write to a friend or relative that he at least knew the purity of his own heart. But even before the letter to Gates, Washington had realized he would have to take a stand on Conway. He wrote to Richard Henry Lee in the Congress that Conway’s merit existed more in his imagination than in reality and that promoting him to major general would be “
as unfortunate a measure as ever was adopted.” Lee’s answer was not reassuring. The Congress might not promote Conway but instead name him inspector general. In that role, as Washington knew, Conway could be a malignant nuisance. It was during that politicking at York that Washington got the news of Conway’s letter to General Gates.

During the night, Washington considered his response. Then he sent Conway a cold but correct message. It simply said that Washington had received a letter that quoted General Conway to General Gates. Washington repeated the line about Heaven saving America from a weak general, added no further comment, and signed the note, “
I am, Sir, Yr. Hble Servt.”

Thomas Conway and Horatio Gates had clearly indicated what they thought of George Washington, but he remained the commander in chief. In his response, Conway denied that any such sentiment had appeared in his letter to Gates. “
My opinion of you, Sir,” said Conway, “without flattery or envy is as follows: You are a brave man, an honest man, a patriot and a man of good sense.”
He added that, due to modesty, Washington sometimes let himself be influenced by men who were not his equals.

Horatio Gates took a different tack. Instead of simply disavowing the sentiment, Gates asked for Washington’s help in unmasking the sneak who had been reading his letters.

Washington didn’t reply to Conway, and for a time it looked as though he were rid of him, anyway. In mid-November, Conway submitted his resignation to Washington, citing the refusal of his request for promotion. Washington wrote back that since Congress had commissioned him, only Congress could accept his resignation. Washington’s letter was a model of gracious restraint, ending with hopes for a favorable crossing to France and Conway’s happy reunion with his family and friends. But the Board of War, a committee appointed by the Congress, refused to accept the resignation.

By that time, both John Adams and Samuel Adams were taking a respite in Massachusetts and weren’t in the Congress to offer Conway their support. And yet each of them had welcomed a challenge to Washington. John Adams was still disturbed by America’s veneration of the commander in chief he had nominated. He was almost superstitious about it, suggesting to Abigail that if Washington had been the man to defeat Burgoyne, the resulting idolatry might have jeopardized the nation’s very liberty. “
Now we can allow a certain citizen to be wise, virtuous and good without thinking him a deity or a savior,” John Adams said.

Samuel Adams had spent a lifetime studying the vagaries of public opinion and had learned when to bow to its will. He knew that Washington was revered by much of the army, and that desertions would be even more widespread if he were replaced. Horatio Gates had sounded out Daniel Morgan on the subject before the first battle of Saratoga by saying that many officers seemed to want Washington removed. “
I have one favor to ask of you,” Morgan had answered, “which is, never to mention that detestable subject to me again; for under no other man but Washington will I ever serve.”

Samuel Adams knew that civilians also idolized Washington in the way his cousin deplored. A politician had to be careful not even to insinuate that he didn’t support the commander in chief, and lately that was the charge that John Hancock had been making
against Samuel Adams. They had fallen out again, and this time their rift looked permanent. When Hancock stepped down as president of the Congress to return to Massachusetts, the Adamses had even tried to dissuade members from voting him a resolution of thanks. They argued unsuccessfully that a man need not be thanked for simply doing his duty.

Hancock coveted the governorship of Massachusetts and was hinting to Bostonians that Samuel Adams was scheming against General Washington. During his trip home Adams assured his comrades at the Green Dragon Tavern that he still supported Washington wholeheartedly.

As John Adams had observed, the Congress had changed drastically since George Washington left it for Cambridge. Only six remained of the members who had voted for him then. The current Congress was being criticized for its decline over the past three years in eloquence, wisdom and simple patriotism. Congress now seemed to be vacillating and wasting its energies on partisan feuds. Even so, Washington’s opposition did not have the votes.

The Conway affair sputtered out over a period of weeks. Horatio Gates remained on the sidelines, ready to assume the high command should his supporters be able to install him. Washington treated Gates’s letters scornfully, pointing out their errors in logic and coherence. Gates even tried to shift the blame entirely to Brigadier General Wilkinson. No one believed him, and Wilkinson challenged his former patron to a duel. He and Gates met on a field of honor behind the Episcopal church in York. Before the shooting could begin, General Gates took Wilkinson up a back street, burst into tears, called him his dear boy and denied ever speaking against him. The duel was called off, but Wilkinson wrote to the Congress accusing Gates of treachery and resigned his new post as secretary to the Board of War. Thomas Mifflin, a major general who had been a mediocre quartermaster general, also quit the board and departed indignantly from York, saying he was outraged by stories—possibly true—that he had been active in the cabal against Washington.

Dr. Rush tried to fan the dying embers in an unsigned letter to Governor Patrick Henry in Virginia, urging that General Gates be made supreme commander. Henry sent the letter at once to
George Washington, who recognized Rush’s handwriting and rebuked him bitingly. Thomas Paine sprang to the defense of Washington’s reputation and warned detractors that no slur to the commander in chief would escape his notice.

During the controversy, Thomas Conway was finally promoted and named inspector general. A majority of the Congress believed he was influential enough in France that any slight to him might stop Louis XVI from sending aid to America. As inspector general, he twice called on George Washington and complained to the Congress afterward that he had been coolly received. He was not exaggerating. As a leader of men, Washington had cultivated a certain reserve, and to that he now added an icy disdain. His officers did their best to emulate their general—until Conway told friends that the army couldn’t bear the sight of him. In his own letter to the Congress, Washington explained that he had treated General Conway with the respect his title deserved but could hardly receive him as a warm and cordial friend. He was not capable, Washington added, of the arts of dissimulation.

Again Conway resigned, and this time the Congress accepted his resignation so enthusiastically that Gates chastised the members for not paying proper respect to Conway’s service in America. Before he could return to France, Conway challenged General John Cadwalader to a duel over an insult to him. Cadwalader’s shot struck Conway in the mouth. Thinking he was about to die, Conway wrote a letter of apology to Washington, assuring him, “
You are in my eyes the great and good man.” But Conway recovered and in time sailed for France. The halfhearted attempt to depose General Washington was over, but it was soon exaggerated by the title “the Conway Cabal.” Thomas Conway always insisted afterward that until he came to America he hadn’t even known what the word “cabal” meant.

George Washington had met duplicity and bad faith with anger and a gift for withering sarcasm. Men who had seen his fury were able to appreciate afterward the power of Washington’s self-control.

—

The Congress sent Jonathan Austin of Boston to Versailles to tell the French about the victory at Saratoga. He sailed from Long
Wharf on the last day of October 1777 and landed in Nantes one month later. Benjamin Franklin had been waiting impatiently to know whether Philadelphia had been attacked, and Silas Deane was equally anxious for news from America, since he and Beaumarchais had slipped out seven shiploads of arms from Le Havre the previous year to aid in the campaign against Burgoyne. On Thursday, December 4, Austin arrived at Versailles, spent an hour there and, just before noon, rode to the Hôtel Valentinois at Passy. Silas Deane and Arthur Lee were now getting along so badly that they communicated only in writing. But all three American commissioners rushed into the mansion’s courtyard to greet Austin as he stepped from his carriage.

Franklin was the first to speak. “
Sir,” he asked, “
is
Philadelphia taken?”

“It is, sir,” Austin answered, and Franklin turned away to recover himself.

“But, sir,” Jonathan Austin called after him, “I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war.”

—

His listeners greeted Austin’s news according to their temperaments. Beaumarchais had been visiting at Passy, and he raced off so hastily to spread the tidings in Paris that his carriage tipped over. He cut his arm and almost broke his neck but ignored the discomfort, saying, “The charming news from America is a balm to my wounds.” The spy Dr. Edward
Bancroft left for London, where he had investments; he suspected that Burgoyne’s defeat would probably cause stocks in Britain to fall. Thomas Hutchinson heard the news in London, where he was in mourning for his daughter, Peggy, who had died at twenty-three after a long battle against consumption. Burgoyne’s surrender ended Hutchinson’s dream of returning to Massachusetts. “
Everybody is in a gloom,” he wrote of his fellow exiles. “Most of us expect to lay our bones here.”

William Pitt, Lord Chatham, had been lecturing Parliament again, even before he heard of the surrender, “
My lords, you
cannot conquer America.
” If he were an American and foreign troops were in his country, Chatham said, “I would never lay down my arms! Never! Never! Never!” Hearing of Burgoyne’s defeat, he urged
Britain to make peace with America before France was drawn into the conflict. The Parliament’s last motion on ending the war had been defeated 199 to 28, and members didn’t seem more receptive to Chatham’s advice now.

Yet across the Channel he was being proved right. Two days after Jonathan Austin’s arrival, Count Vergennes sent his congratulations to Franklin, Deane and Lee and invited them to renew their request for a formal alliance. Franklin drafted a proposal on December 7 and had his grandson Temple deliver it the next day. On the twelfth, a coach called secretly for the Americans and took them to a house half a mile from Versailles, where Vergennes was waiting for them.

The count explained that France could join the war openly only if Spain agreed. Vergennes could have a courier to Madrid and back within three weeks. The Americans returned to their quarters prepared to wait. But five days later an official from the French Foreign Office came to Passy to report that the king’s advisers had agreed to a formal alliance with America, though they wouldn’t announce it until the Spanish court had sent its decision. With that assurance, Franklin was able to brush aside a British agent’s appeals that the Americans travel to London to negotiate a cease-fire based on the status of the two countries before 1763. Franklin said America would never accept a truce without independence.

Spain declined to enter the alliance, but Louis XVI sent his word that he would still authorize a treaty between France and America. The king asked in return only that America pledge not to make a separate peace with England. The details of the pact took two weeks to work out, but on February 6, 1778, the parchment copies were ready for signing. America and France agreed mutually that neither would lay down arms until America’s independence had been won. On the trip to Paris for the signing, Benjamin Franklin wore a blue coat that was noticeably old and worn. Silas Deane asked why he had chosen it.