Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (37 page)

——

Help of another kind, he hoped, would arrive from France. While he occasionally moved troops along the edge of the North River, shadowing British moves, he looked for an opportunity to strike at New York Island itself. When Clinton sailed for South Carolina in December 1779 with almost eight thousand men, Washington thought that perhaps the remaining British garrison might be defeated, a feeling that grew when, in March, a second detachment of twenty-five hundred left New York. But he feared that the British remaining across the river were powerful enough to protect New York against a weak American army.
⁹

He worried about what his enemy might do as much as he did about their number. Each army, of course, sought information about the other. From early in the war, Washington looked for information about the forces he faced. It was an essential interest, and he used every means that might lead to discovery of the full extent of the opposition. Besides questioning deserters and the civilians who crossed back and forth across the river, he relied upon spies when he had them in place, but as far as the movements of the British were concerned, he depended more on reports from small units, or the reconnaissance conducted by watchers sent out from the detachments scattered around New York. When Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot brought his squadron into New York in August 1779, Washington learned of its arrival almost immediately. Sailings of warships and transports out of the harbor were of equal concern. At such times, Washington eagerly read the reports of how many soldiers were aboard and of course attempted to learn the destination of such movements.
¹⁰

Clinton used the same types of sources, though he may have relied more on the loyalists who traveled across the lines. Such travel occurred through the use of passes both armies issued, presumably for non-military purposes—visits to the sick for example. Whatever the means, the results often proved surprisingly reliable. The British at times seemed to know exactly what the Americans planned. Washington, too, learned much about his enemy, though immediately after Monmouth he found Clinton’s strategy baffling.
¹¹

Had Washington known of the disorder in the higher command of British forces in America, he would have felt much better. William Howe, Clinton’s predecessor, had not enjoyed good relations with Lord George Germain, the colonial secretary, who held primary responsibility
for the conduct of war. The two had not communicated clearly in the years of Howe’s command, and the tangle of orders and silences in 1777 had led to the disaster at Saratoga.

Things did not improve when Clinton took over. Clinton wanted to end the war with a great battle that would leave Washington’s army in ruins and his own in control on the land while the navy dominated the sea. But the French entrance into the war deflated such desires, and Clinton soon came to favor lesser measures. At first he ordered coastal raids, their purpose being to force a scattering of Continental regiments—widely spread troops could not make a concentrated attack on New York City. A slightly varied version of such actions would have him moving heavy forces of his own up the Hudson in an apparent attempt to take the Highland forts. Given the American fear that the loss of the Highlands would split the New England states off from the South, this tactic promised much.
¹²

These were small steps in Clinton’s strategy. The big step, actually an enormous leap, entailed the major battle with Washington’s army that Clinton dreamed of. If the British could lure Washington into a large-scale combat, they would need large-scale reinforcements and naval supremacy. Naval superiority would also have to be found in the South, where Clinton envisioned another great battle.

Dreams of great battles danced in Clinton’s head until the spring of 1780, when he actually fought one: the capture of Charleston, South Carolina, in a siege of almost five months. On May 8, he accepted the surrender of about 4,500 men—2,500 of them Continentals and the remainder militia. Washington learned of the loss of the city two weeks later.

Clinton delivered this blow with the aid of the navy, under Arbuthnot, who had arrived with ships and about 3,500 troops in August 1779. Arbuthnot would not have been Clinton’s choice had he had a voice in choosing a commander of the American fleet. Arbuthnot was too old for a post that required long stretches on a ship in turbulent Atlantic waters. Nor did he overflow with imagination or a craving to bring the Americans to battle. Fatigue may have shaped his attitudes toward battle as much as indolence, but whatever the case, Clinton encountered resistance to almost all of his proposals for combined operations. Not long before the capture of Charleston, he was fretting at his difficulty in getting Arbuthnot to act with him, and soon after, when he
recognized that his hands were tied by his unreliable navy colleague, fretting gave way to rage. Of Arbuthnot, Clinton wrote in his journal, he “will LIE—NAY, I KNOW HE WILL IN A THOUSAND INSTANCES.” Shortly after this entry he wrote, “In appearance we were the best of friends, but I am sure he is FALSE AS HELL.”
¹³

British tempers and judgment at home and in America did not improve. Although Clinton complained bitterly in these months after Charleston, he seemed incapable of exerting the force he had in New York. Not surprisingly, the senior officers around him felt thwarted and even useless, and they began to go home to Britain. If they found it difficult to persuade the ministry to recall them, they agitated for orders to return.

Washington knew none of this, but watched the British with surprise and concern. Why didn’t they make a major attack on him? he wondered. In June, General Knyphausen led a large force into New Jersey while Clinton was returning from Charleston. But this was an expedition for forage, and Washington eluded what might have become a serious battle. He was not happy about the tactics he used to stay out of Knyphausen’s way, but, given his own weak forces, he could not attack.
¹⁴

While studying his enemy’s actions, Washington also thought about the coming of his friends in the French army and navy. D’Estaing no longer figured in American plans; he had disappeared into the West Indies and then returned to France. The French had promised more than they had delivered so far, but in June it seemed that they were about ready to make a second attempt at it.

As the time drew near for their arrival, Washington’s concern grew that his forces would not be strong enough for combined operations with them. He had observed a number of the soldiers d’Estaing had brought in 1779, and he knew of the reputation of the French army as a smart and effective fighting machine. What did he have to offer in an effort to act with them? The prospect of showing off his troops to the well-turned-out fighting machine that was the French army troubled him. He told Congress, “We have no Shirts.” His men lacked more than shirts and other items of clothing; they also lacked powder and lead. More than appearance, comfort, and gunpowder was involved in
the deplorable state of the army, for it was still badly undermanned. “Not a single draft has yet joined the army,” he told Congress, “and here we are in the middle of June.”
¹⁵

Washington made a part of his appeal to Congress through a committee on cooperation, a body of delegates intended to cut through the usual bureaucratic delays. The best intentions underlying this group remained intentions, not much more than hopes. A few weeks later Washington wrote Joseph Reed, the president of the Pennsylvania Council, asking for 250 wagons. He considered Reed an old friend and a reliable official who would recognize the army’s need for transportation. Wagons remained in short supply, but Reed provided words, not wagons.
¹⁶

Then the Comte de Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, with 5,500 soldiers, arrived on July 10, 1780. With him were Admiral Louis d’Arsac de Ternay and six ships of the line. This contingent of ships and men seems to have stirred some action among Americans, and soon after their arrival small numbers of troops came to Washington from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. New Jersey’s came burdened with restrictions that limited their potential, for the New Jersey legislature insisted that only officers from New Jersey should command these men—all militia—rather than allow them to be incorporated into states’ Continental battalions. Although Washington predicted “ill consequences” from this arrangement, he had no choice but to accept it.
¹⁷

Such requirements were not confined to New Jersey’s troops. At least New Jersey sent men to Washington; not all of the states responded to his appeal. A common practice among the states, he noted in a letter to his brother-in-law, Fielding Lewis, was to delay sending any until they discovered what other states did. There was no eagerness to fill the allotments he requested anywhere, and Congress was engaged not in exerting itself to compel action by the states but rather in ceding powers to them. His opinion of Congress, expressed a number of times throughout 1780, was that it was losing its best men. Effective leaders in the states did not wish to take themselves away from provincial precincts, and it followed that men of inferior quality attended Congress, if any men at all showed up.
¹⁸

Congress’s ceding of its power to the states was not a subject that he discussed with the French. Yet he did not disguise his weakness in responding to Rochambeau’s request for a meeting. Rochambeau
wanted to form his own impression of his American ally; he had heard the admiring statements made by his French colleagues. Most of these officers who had come to America were aristocrats, but Rochambeau’s origins were in a midlevel family, not a great one. Whatever his beginnings, he had mastered the vocabulary of admiration favored by French aristocrats in their greetings to Washington. He had come “with all the submission, all the zeal, and all the veneration I have for your person and for the distinguished talents which you reveal in sustaining a war forever memorable.” There were still other compliments in Rochambeau’s letter, though his effusions never attained the extravagance of d’Estaing’s. They also included a request for a meeting.
¹⁹

In what he said and what he wanted, Rochambeau was typical of French visitors to the Continental Army, who were all curious about Washington. By this time the war had lasted more than five years, and Washington had led the Continental Army throughout the entire period. Knowledge of his service, his refusal to profit from command, and his steadfast determination not to yield, even though his army was already overmatched by imperial forces, gradually began to contribute to a widespread impression of him as a man not just of courage, but of character. Lafayette helped spread this impression, and there were others who began to see Washington as a perfect representative of a nation created in the name of liberty and equality.

Rochambeau, now on the scene in America, gained a fresh sense of Washington’s fame and was determined to see him as soon as possible after his arrival. He had crossed the Atlantic with his naval counterpart, the Chevalier de Ternay, who had come under orders from his superiors not to take chances with his ships. Only a few weeks after Rochambeau arrived, the British admiral Thomas Graves sailed into New York, an event that assured British naval superiority by adding his ships to those of Admiral Arbuthnot. Even before the reinforcement by Graves, de Ternay had rejected any notion that he would seek out the British naval force in New York waters. His refusal to challenge the British dampened Washington’s spirits; Washington’s desire for a decisive battle for New York had reached a high level before the French arrived. He saw immediately that with the coming of Graves, the balance of strength on the sea had again shifted back to the British. He could not know that de Ternay had come to America under orders not to take chances with the French fleet. De Ternay was out
of sorts anyway and lived with a frayed temper, intensified by a wish to be elsewhere. America was not for him—he preferred taking on the British in European waters.
²⁰

Though Washington knew nothing of de Ternay’s orders, he realized that he needed French help, and that no need surpassed that which the French navy could provide. But he delayed leaving his camp to meet his allies because, as he explained, the condition of his army threatened dissolution. He did not conceal its fragile character and in early September even wrote the Comte de Guichen, the admiral who commanded the French fleet in the West Indies, about the depletion of American strength. There was no point in hiding such conditions—the army was losing men, the Congress could raise little money, and, he might have added, the people’s faith that victory was likely no longer existed. The American and French causes were inseparable, he told de Guichen, an assessment the French might have wanted to deny at this time, so enervated their American ally seemed. Washington asked de Guichen to sail the French fleet to the aid of the American army in the southern states, a request de Guichen ignored.
²¹

Had the year been younger, Washington would have made his plea on behalf of his own army, with New York and General Clinton providing the target for attack. There was no possibility that Rochambeau would agree to such a venture late in the year, especially with an ally whose army was shrinking to the point of extinction. By mid-September, despite the miserable condition of his prospects, Washington saw that he could no longer delay a meeting with Rochambeau. The site chosen for the gathering was Hartford, roughly halfway between the two principals, and on September 7 he set off on horseback to meet his French ally. Though the autumn colors were still weeks away, much of the countryside was lovely. Washington found the villages he rode through on his way to Hartford handsome, and the countryside in the Connecticut Valley probably proved of even greater beauty.