Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (35 page)

There proved to be no fully satisfactory resolution to the problems of inflation and depreciated currency. Washington settled for a single but effective resolution to his need to pay what he owed and to collect what his debtors owed him. He would pay and collect on the terms that had prevailed when these financial obligations were made. Since he was owed far more than his debts, he had found terms that protected his own interests, provided of course that the men in debt to him agreed to pay back on the terms they had originally agreed to.
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Washington’s ruminations and ultimate decisions on his finances were made while he had to fight a war that seemed to offer no end. His early belief was that when the French joined the United States openly, the British would have to pull their forces off the American continent. By late 1778 this belief had evaporated. Getting out of Philadelphia did not mean that the British army, soon concentrated in New York, would take off for the West Indies—a likely destination, many American officers believed. To be sure, the British did carry thousands of men to the islands of the Caribbean and a lesser number to Florida. When these events occurred, Washington hoped to drive the British from New York, but to his dismay, his enemy managed to remain formidable in New York while coping with the French and using its strength in the new theater in the Carolinas.
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Given the strategic situation in the autumn of 1778, with concern rising about what the British army was going to do, to say nothing of the French naval force of d’Estaing, the annoyances presented by Congress and some of his own officers were minor. Congress offered the most interesting array of irritations, dithering for months at a time and ignoring the problems Washington faced as the army’s officers pressed for more money—in their current pay and in pensions when they retired. These officers also demanded better medical treatment, and they insisted that they needed an allowance for uniforms.
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Recruiting was still a challenge as well. Drafting soldiers in the states was hard, and Congress did not really try. It did increase the bounty it would pay, authorizing Washington’s regiments to offer twenty dollars above the usual amount. But this sum was not enough; the states and counties that raised militias paid more, and service in the militias was always of shorter duration. Almost no one wanted to remain in arms for three years or the duration of the war, the length of time Washington favored.
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There were some officers who wished to remain in the army despite inflation of prices and the depreciated currency. Congress, however, could not keep them all, because the reorganization it had agreed upon at the beginning of 1778 called for consolidating regiments, that is, reducing their number. This would require fewer officers, and what was to be done with those who had served in regiments going out of existence? Congress gave one answer in its silence: The officers who could not find billets in other regiments would go home.

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While Congress and the army were trying to adjust to the reorganization of the army, the British government, in a strange twist of policy, decided to try to wean the “colonies” from rebellion by sending a commission armed with an offer of what it called peace. This initiative, the Carlisle Commission, arrived in June. Headed by Frederick Howard, the Earl of Carlisle, this group soon demonstrated that it had no real authority and need not be taken seriously. The North administration, in sending it, had not bothered to reveal the planned evacuation of Philadelphia, an indication of a lack of interest in the commission’s work. The commission’s own flaws would have crippled it even if its instructions had allowed genuine negotiations. Before it was through in America, Lafayette had challenged Carlisle to a duel—the commission had issued a statement describing the Franco-American alliance as unnatural and insisting that France was the enemy of liberty. Carlisle was not a dishonest man, but his colleague George Johnstone, once governor of Florida, was. Johnstone offered a bribe to a delegate from Pennsylvania; exposed in this clumsy and dishonest attempt, he drew scorn upon himself and the commission. The only really able member of the commission, William Eden, could do nothing on this mission of futility but cool his heels in frustration until the group departed, almost a year after its arrival. Throughout this affair Washington watched quietly, certain that this latest British effort would fall on its face.
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The French, despite all the reassurance d’Estaing had offered concerning joint action with his American ally, soon disappeared, leaving Boston for the West Indies to forestall British action there. Before leaving the North American coast, d’Estaing took his ships to the South, intending to destroy the British in Savannah and elsewhere in Georgia and the Carolinas. He failed and—to Washington’s dismay when in November he learned of the dismal news of French failure—sailed off for French possessions in the West Indies.
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Washington had his own problems with his enemy, ensconced in New York. Late in 1778, he asked his generals what they recommended for 1779, in the campaign ahead. The senior officers in the army, as always, had ideas—in this instance, another campaign. As usual, they did not agree among themselves on taking action but, as always, agreed that the army should act, if act it must, with caution. Washington’s question
had been posed just as news arrived of d’Estaing’s debacle off Rhode Island and his retirement to the protection of Boston’s waters. Washington saw immediately that the French had unwittingly created another problem. The British, he speculated, might force their way into Boston Harbor, where the French, bloody and battered by the storm, might not be able to defend themselves. This situation had an ominous meaning for the Americans, who wished to protect their new ally. If Washington felt obliged to cover the French from the land—the British commanded the sea—he might weaken his forces that held the British in place in New York City. The British, if they should sense a diminished army, would thrust their army up the Hudson, thereby breaking New England’s communications with the rest of the union. What Burgoyne had failed to do, the French would unwittingly make possible.
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The American council of generals had little knowledge of such possibilities when they answered Washington’s request for advice on the campaign ahead in 1779. They were almost always inclined to go along with anything he proposed, and in the face of a future even more inscrutable than usual, they fell into a line of support for the plan he laid out in early September for the year 1779.
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That plan prescribed an unusual disposition of his forces, which would now be stationed in an arc of cantonments from Danbury, Connecticut, to Middlebrook, New Jersey. Washington had long felt uneasy about British intentions regarding the corridor up the Hudson, and he now resolved to add to the detachments on both sides of the river near West Point. He had regarded cantonments with suspicion the year before, but now he saw the necessity of dividing his army. The arc of garrisons from Connecticut to New Jersey was intended to give protection to the French in Boston, and it had another advantage as well, for it created sites from which supplies might be sent to the French. Besides feeding his own army, he believed that he faced the prospect of needing to provide rations for d’Estaing’s fleet, some twelve thousand sailors and soldiers. He did not complain at the size of this requirement, though it was probably well beyond his means. It remained, however, only a prospect, for d’Estaing stayed only as long as it took to repair his fleet in Boston and then sailed in early November to face the British at St. Lucia.

For his part, Clinton, now fully in charge of the army, had not
felt strong enough to attack anywhere. Lord Howe had given up his naval command to Vice Admiral John Byron and sailed for home in late September 1778. Byron had brought only thirteen ships, a number that strengthened British naval power in America, but not to the point of establishing superiority on the sea.
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Byron was only a temporary replacement, in any case, and Clinton refused his offer to attack d’Estaing while the French were repairing their ships in Boston.

Washington learned of the change in British naval command soon after it was made. By this time he had almost concluded that the British intentions were to stay on the American continent, and though in September he had described British intentions as “mysterious,” his most pressing fear then was that they might throw their naval and military power on d’Estaing where he sat locked up in Boston waters.
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When d’Estaing repaired his ships, he did not seek out Washington for joint operations. By early autumn he had fresh instructions from his French superiors, and he proceeded to carry them out without informing Washington of his intentions. In a sense, d’Estaing’s actions were as mysterious as those of Clinton. The winter that followed was much easier than the previous one at Valley Forge, for American troops were now spread out in several posts. There was enough food to prevent hunger; the hospitals, though busy, did not overflow with sick soldiers; and the number of soldiers lost as enlistments were completed did not diminish the army’s power.

Spring 1779 brought hope and the news that Spain had entered the war against Britain. Washington of course received this report with pleasure, but he still wondered what to do in making another campaign. He lacked the strength to drive the enemy from New York, but he knew that troops lying idle in garrison would lose their fighting edge. The question was how to use his army without losing it.

The British themselves gave him an answer to that question in the new year. Henry Clinton, always suspicious and fearful of the future, had by early 1779 thought through the problems he faced with his diminished army, and had conceived a plan for bringing his enemy to a campaign—perhaps even a major battle—in which the British army would destroy Washington’s force and end the rebellion.

Clinton would begin his effort by raiding the Virginia coast. The
navy was amenable to such an activity. Admiral Richard Howe’s permanent replacement had not arrived yet, but the navy in and around New York was commanded by a man respected and liked by Clinton, Commodore Sir George Collier. In early May 1779, the fleet transported an expedition under Major General Edward Mathew to Portsmouth, Virginia, on Chesapeake Bay, where they swept in, surprising the Americans, and proceeded to take supplies, destroying much they were incapable of removing to New York. The whole business took about two weeks.
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Clinton did not allow his soldiers to remain idle for long. His next step was intended to draw Washington into vulnerable territory, up the Hudson River. As May ended, Clinton moved against Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point, both of which the Americans had been fortifying, but not with large numbers of troops. Washington, long sensitive to the Hudson River corridor, had given more of his attention to West Point, a position that commanded the entrance to the northern reach of the river in a way Verplanck’s and Stony Point did not. Clinton’s troops captured both with ease, and their commander hoped this would draw Washington into a major battle to reclaim them. Washington saw the intended trap and responded with care by strengthening West Point.

Clinton expressed no surprise at his enemy’s caution. His plan at this point depended upon reinforcements from Britain, but the failure of such a force to come in June—they actually arrived in late August—ruined his hopes for a major battle with Washington. He did not take his enemy lightly, and he concluded that without a larger army he could do little more than appease loyalists, who wanted action, and General Tryon, the former governor of New York, who shared this desire, by authorizing raids along the Connecticut coast. Tryon’s raiders included a number of soldiers from the points just captured on the river.
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The raids accomplished little, and throughout June Clinton waited expectantly for reinforcements. Washington waited, too, but then decided that he might strike a blow by retaking Stony Point. He first ordered Anthony Wayne to find a way to evaluate British defenses; Wayne sent a young Delaware officer into the fort, disguised as a workman in the company of an American lady in search of her son. The officer, Allen McLane, discovered the fort’s weaknesses, and Washington himself followed up with close reconnaissance a few days
later. Satisfied that his troops could capture the fort, he sent Wayne to assault it. Wayne led twelve hundred men through a network of abatis and trenches. This striking force, in two columns, did its tasks with skill and bravery—most carried unloaded muskets, but with bayonets attached. There would be no overeager firing by the Americans that might give the alarm to the enemy, who were surprised and soon defeated. Wayne’s troops captured almost five hundred enemy soldiers and then withdrew. At the time, all agreed, including British officers, that it had been a brilliant strike. The British also praised their American enemy for not putting the garrison to the bayonet; as it was, about fifty British soldiers died before the garrison surrendered.
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Washington, without regret, ordered Wayne’s force out of Stony Point—he saw no point in staying, for he held reinforced positions above on the river, which, now strengthened, could help keep the enemy from breaking the American hold on the Hudson River–Canadian corridor.

But he was not through responding to the initial British move, and on August 19 Major Henry Lee—called Light-Horse Harry by his friends—led a special detachment against a British fortification on Paulus Hook, a prominent point extending into the North River across from New York Island. There was no intention of holding this post once it was taken, and Lee’s men, about three hundred in all, made short work of the attack. Stealth characterized this assault, just as it had the month before in the success at Stony Point. The American attackers resorted to the bayonet, again emulating the Stony Point force, and killed fifty of the enemy. The British commander surrendered most of the remaining defenders, 158 in total. Only two Americans died; three others suffered wounds. Lee left about fifty Hessian soldiers in a small blockhouse when they refused to yield. Taking this small fortification would not have been worth the cost in lives.
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