Washington seldom missed an opportunity to needle the British for their emphasis on pompous ceremony. In the confused melee of the Battle of Germantown, General Howe's dog lost track of his master and deserted to the Americans. With the elaborate formalities of a flag of truce, Washington returned the wandering canine to his opponent. An exact transcript of the letter with Washington's corrections of the draft written by an aide shows he still remembered being addressed as "esquire" by that unlucky general. At the beginning of the note, Washington crossed out the word “Sir” and replace it with “General. At the end he deleted the words “His Excellency Sir William” before “General Howe.”

When misfortune befell an enemy general, Washington's instinctive generosity came to the fore. He interceded personally on behalf of "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne, captured at Saratoga, and persuaded Congress to permit him to go back to England on parole to defend himself against slanderous critics in Parliament. Washington wrote Burgoyne a letter, sympathizing "with your feelings as a soldier." Burgoyne read it before the British Parliament, and declared that though it came from an enemy, "it did credit to the human heart."

Nevertheless, Washington never forgot he was fighting for his life. No general ever learned the art of total war faster than he did during the crisis-filled winter of 1776 to 1777. What he could not win by strength he decided to win with guile - and forthwith became one of the most talented spy masters in history.

He had begun poorly in this department, too, sending amateur agent Nathan Hale to almost certain death by failing to maintain the slightest secrecy about his mission. As he retreated across the Delaware, Washington sent a rush messenger to Philadelphia for "hard money" to pay spies.

Within a matter of days he had recruited one of the cleverest agents of the war, John Honeyman, an ex-British soldier who had kept his American patriotism a secret from his neighbors. Washington ordered Honeyman to desert to the protection of the Hessian garrison at Trenton. To cover his tracks Washington issued a stern proclamation denouncing him and offering rewards for his arrest. Loyal Americans were warned, however, to take the traitor alive because General Washington wanted the pleasure of hanging him personally.

In Trenton, meanwhile, Honeyman became the personal steward and warm friend of Colonel Johann Rall, the Hessian commander. After absorbing with a soldier's trained eye every last detail of Trenton's defenses, Honeyman had himself captured by an American patrol. Washington, putting on a performance worthy of an award, sternly denounced the "traitor" to his face and then ordered the room cleared, vowing he wanted to see if he could persuade this "dirty fellow" to support the American cause.

In a half hour Honeyman told Washington all he needed to know about Trenton. Washington threw open the door of his office and ordered the guard to clap Honeyman in jail and prepare for a hanging at dawn.

Toward evening a mysterious fire broke out near Washington's headquarters. The guards rushed to extinguish it. When they returned to the jailhouse, the door was open. Honeyman was gone.

Washington had, of course, supplied him with a key. For the benefit of the guards and his staff, the General exploded with rage, swore he would have them all court-martialed, and alerted the entire camp. Honeyman legged it past blazing muskets and by noon the following day was back in Trenton telling Colonel Rall all about his narrow escape. Rall naturally asked him if anything was stirring in the American camp. Honeyman regaled him with a vivid description of how the American army was close to total collapse from starvation and defeat.

Rail, already contemptuous of Americans, blithely proceeded with his Christmas celebrating. Honeyman quietly disappeared, and twelve hours later the Hessian colonel awoke to find Washington's ragged legions swarming on his doorstep.

In succeeding months, as his army dribbled away and Congress seemed incapable of finding new recruits (in March, 1777, he had 4,500 troops to the British 27,000), Washington pulled another sort of wool over British eyes. Going into winter quarters at Morristown, Washington distributed his men two and three to a house for miles along the main road. This gave everyone the impression that there was a huge force. A few days later, a refugee New York merchant trudged into camp, wailing grudges against the British. Washington instantly spotted him as a spy. Instead of arresting him, he ordered all his officers to treat the fellow with the greatest respect.

Secretly, Washington now ordered his brigadiers to prepare new, immensely exaggerated, figures on the army's current strength and send them to his headquarters. Washington then invited the bleating merchant to dinner and arranged to have himself called away at a crucial moment, carelessly leaving his papers unguarded on his desk. The spy's greedy eyes instantly devoured the fraudulent figures on the apparently official returns.

The next morning the spy vanished. In New York, the British commander, General Howe, decided he could not dare attack 12,000 Americans entrenched in the rugged hills around Morristown, and once more Washington survived to fight another day.

A few weeks after this gambit, Washington began playing the double-agent game. He paid good money to a spy whom he knew was working for the British simply because the fellow was a convenient mouthpiece for sending in false information. He told one of his aides to keep a careful record of everything that was fabricated so that "if any other person should go in upon the same errand he may carry the same tale." Henceforth, Washington saw to it that the same fabrication reached the enemy by two, three, and even four different sources. A sample of his handiwork survives in a letter he sent a brigadier who was working with another double agent.

"Copy it," Washington told him, "in an indifferent hand, preserving the bad spelling." The letter, a series of questions and answers, supposedly from a friend in the Continental camp, finished with a flourish, "When he left me he went strait to W's headquarters."

During the nearly disastrous winter at Valley Forge, Washington again bamboozled General Howe about the American army's strength and plans. This time he used an even bolder deception. He sent an agent to Howe with an offer to supply him with secret papers from "Washington's own files." Howe instantly swallowed the bait. For the next few months Washington industriously composed fraudulent returns on the army's strength, added memoranda about plans to attack Philadelphia and New York, and described other totally impossible stratagems. Because the "stolen" papers were in Washington's handwriting, Howe devoutly believed them. Washington and Major John Clark, the officer who supervised the comings and goings of the agents, seemed to have enjoyed themselves immensely as they wove this web of falsehood around their befuddled opponents. At one point, reporting on a particularly warm reception from Howe, Clark wrote to Washington, "This will give you a laugh."

By the time the war was three years old, Washington was operating as many as three separate spy networks inside the British lines in New York. (A key man in one of them was none other than James Rivington, publisher of Rivington's Gazette, a violently pro-British paper that was constantly lambasting the patriots.) Washington also developed his espionage technology. Sir James Jay, brother of New York patriot John Jay, developed a "sympathetic" writing fluid that remained totally invisible on white paper and could be made visible only by brushing it with another chemical solution. All of Washington's spies were using this device by late 1779. They usually wrote the secret message at the bottom of sensible business letters, always addressed to known Tories to make the bearer look extra loyal.

These New York spies played a vital role in avoiding a potential disaster. In 1779, Sir Henry Clinton planned to attack the French troops who had just landed in Newport, Rhode Island. Working with frantic haste, one of Washington's networks got word to his headquarters in New Jersey written with the invisible ink. Washington instantly arranged to have "secret" papers captured by loyalist irregulars. The papers contained elaborate plans for an attack on New York, and the British hastily abandoned their expedition to Newport.

Washington never let a spy down. Once, Tory raiders captured the secret papers and codes of one of Washington's espionage colonels. Washington instantly wrote, "The person most endangered by the loss of your papers is one Higday . . . who lives not far from the Bowery on the island of New York. I wish you would endeavor to give him the speediest notice of what has happened." An agent slipped into New York, warned Higday, and Higday had a cover story ready when the British arrested him. He survived to spy some more.

No wonder the British called Washington "the old fox."

Another, equally unknown Washington is the shrewd controversialist who fought and defeated a vicious, well-organized conspiracy to deprive him of his command. It began, ironically, in the fall of 1777 with an act of generosity on Washington's part. Although he was battling the British for the American capital, Philadelphia, he dispatched 3,000 of his best troops, including Daniel Morgan's Virginia riflemen, to assist Major General Horatio Gates, who was confronting another British army at Saratoga.

Washington lost his battles to save Philadelphia. Gates won at Saratoga. Almost from the moment of victory, Gates began scheming for Washington's job. Backing him was the group of disgruntled New Englanders in Congress who had regretted choosing Washington from the start. John Adams, while not one of these petty schemers, was typical of those who were alarmed by the adulation heaped on Washington by some of his admirers. After Saratoga, he wrote his wife, "Now we can allow a certain citizen to be wise, virtuous and good, without thinking him a deity or a savior."

Gates did not even bother to send Washington, his commander-in-chief, news of the victory. Washington learned about it only when one of his aides stopped a dispatch rider carrying the news to Congress and borrowed the letter to show the General. Washington's first reaction was typical of the man he had become. There were already rumors among his aides that Gates was intriguing against him. Yet when he saw that the British had surrendered at Saratoga, he passed the letter to one of his aides, signifying that he wished him to read it aloud. As the aide finished it, all eyes turned to Washington. Colonel Timothy Pickering, who often told the story, always recalled his amazement to discover on Washington's face nothing but the most unfeigned joy. Although Pickering declined to call Washington a great general, he never from that moment denied he was a great man. He used to say that for him Washington represented "humanity in its noblest grandeur - a man to whom self was nothing, his country everything."

Washington was far too realistic not to see Gates and his friends were out to destroy him. Again, we see remarkable evidence of Washington's growth. Instead of lashing out at his tormentors, he said and did exactly nothing and let them make the first mistake.

Congress rammed through an insulting resolution forbidding Washington to withdraw more than 2,500 men from Gates's army. Another patriot, Benjamin Rush, who flattered Washington to his face, sent out a flood of anonymous critical letters calling for Washington's replacement. Gates himself began slyly approaching other generals, murmuring about the dissatisfaction with Washington in the main army and the danger to the cause. Soon the web of conspirators included Thomas Conway, a French-trained Irishman who bad won a brigadier general's commission from Congress. A born flatterer, he wrote Gates a series of letters criticizing the American army, including such apostrophes as "what a pity there is but one Gates."

For all their clacking, the conspirators did not accomplish much. One of Rush's unsigned hate letters was forwarded to Washington by Patrick Henry, now governor of Virginia. "I am sorry," Henry wrote, "there should be one man who counts himself my friend who is not yours." When Gates murmured his hints about replacing Washington to Colonel Daniel Morgan, he got for an answer, "I have one favor to ask of you which is never to mention that destestable subject to me again; for under no other man than Washington will I ever serve."

Gates's supporters soon realized they did not have enough strength in Congress to oust Washington. They contented themselves with making Gates president of the "Board of War," a quasi-legislative body that was supposed to coordinate the war effort on a continental scale. Gates, meanwhile, used Conway's critical letters as a screen, circulating them freely among his cronies in the hope that they spoke for themselves. Still Washington did nothing.

Then came the indiscretion he was waiting for. One of Gates' aides, James Wilkinson, had dinner with General Lord Stirling, who was totally loyal to Washington. Wilkinson got drunk and proceeded to repeat several passages from Conway's letters. Stirling promptly forwarded them to Washington.

Washington sat down and wrote a two-sentence letter to General Conway.

Sir: A letter which I received last night contained the following paragraph.

"In a letter from General Conway to General Gates he says heaven has been determined to save your country or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it.”

I am, sir, your humble servant,
George Washington

This simple query hit the conspirators with the impact of heavy cannon shot. Conway rushed to Washington and denied writing those particular words. Gates, hearing from others that Washington was on his trail, became completely rattled and shot the ground out from under Conway by writing a blustery letter admitting the whole correspondence but accusing Washington of hiring a spy to copy off his private mail.

Washington, playing his hand like a professional card shark, wrote acidly to Gates. "I never knew that General Conway, who I viewed in the light of a stranger to you, was a correspondent of yours, much less did. I suspect that I was the subject of your confidential letters." He went on to say that his original impression, since Gates' aide had supplied the information, was that Gates was sending him a friendly warning against a "secret enemy."

Then with whiplash sarcasm, he added, "But in this, as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken."

Washington sent a copy of his letter to Congress and sat back to watch the conspiracy collapse into something very close to farce. Everyone involved began accusing everyone else of lying. Gates denounced Wilkinson to the Board of War and was challenged to a duel by his garrulous former aide. When they met on the street, Gates broke down and wept and Wilkinson accepted his apology. Conway went home to France.

For two more years Gates continued to snipe at Washington from his theoretically lofty position on the Board of War. Then he rode south to rescue the Carolinas from a rampaging British army led by Lord Cornwallis. Relying largely on militia, Gates challenged Cornwallis at Camden, North Carolina, and within an hour lost both his army and his reputation. Riding the fastest horse he could find, he did not stop retreating until he was 160 miles behind the lines. There were hoots of laughter and demands for a court-martial from many Americans, but Washington never said a word that could be used against his fallen adversary. It took two years for a dawdling Congress to clear Gates of any blame. Immediately, Washington offered Gates command of the right wing of the American army. He accepted and served loyally until the end of the war.

When we realize that Washington was grappling with this conspiracy while simultaneously trying to preserve the remnants of an army in the freezing hell of Valley Forge, his self-control is even more remarkable. It was during these same discouraging months that Washington performed an extraordinary act of generosity for his old friend Bryan Fairfax. By now Bryan had become an acknowledged Loyalist. At a time when the British were tempting patriots such as Elias Boudinot with 10,000 pounds and a dukedom, Washington risked a great deal to see Bryan at all. The Gates men could have used it as a canard to question his loyalty. Yet Washington received Bryan with all the friendship and hospitality he invariably showed him during the years of peace at Mount Vernon and gave him a safe-conduct pass through the Continental lines to British-held New York. There Fairfax was so discouraged by the attitude and demands of His Majesty's officials, he returned to Virginia and wrote a letter that was perhaps the finest tribute anyone paid Washington's genius for friendship.

That at a time when your popularity was at the highest and mine at the lowest, and when it is so common for men's resentments to run high against those who differ from them in opinion, you should act with your wanted kindness towards me has affected me more than any favor I have received; and could not be believed by some in New York, it being above the run of common minds.