12 Besieging Boston, 1775–1776

“a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill”

IN NOVEMBER 1775, Martha and her companions stayed only a few days in Philadelphia, Joseph Reed and his wife, Esther, acting as their hosts, before resuming their journey north to Massachusetts. That stay was bedeviled by a spirited argument that developed between some of the Virginia delegates and a caucus of city fathers and Massachusetts congressional delegates, which included Sam Adams. The former were keen to mark the presence in town of the wife of the commander-in-chief, their fellow Virginian, and planned a ball, to be held on the evening of November 24 at the New Tavern. It was expected that President Hancock’s wife as well as Martha would attend. The malcontents argued, with some justification, that such a meeting would run counter to the Eighth Article of the 1774 Congressional Association.

This Eighth Article discouraged “every species of extravagance and dissipation,” including “exhibitions of shows, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.” In Philadelphia, a committee of inspection and observation enforced the Association, and Christopher Marshall, a member of this body, came to hear of the projected ball on the afternoon of the day it was to take place. Hoping to find President Hancock at the State House at the end of the congressional day, he met instead Sam Adams, the influential delegate from Massachusetts with whom he had become friendly. Marshall expressed his objections to the ball as well as “some threats thrown out” of public commotion and of damage to the tavern, should the ball take place. The populace, it would seem, saw no reason why Congress should dissipate when they were deprived of their own habitual assemblies. The committee had recently proscribed both spring and autumn fairs.

Sam Adams agreed to seek out the president and beg him to “wait on Lady Washington to request her not to attend or go this evening.” Hancock accepted the task, and Marshall triumphantly informed the ball managers that the entertainment was not to proceed. “Lady Washington,” as Marshall dubbed her, was having a somewhat weary time of it. She was first visited at the Reed house by John Hancock. Then Marshall and other members of the committee of inspection and observation required audience with her. Before proceeding to inform her of the cancelation of the ball, they expressed at some length the “great regard and affection” in which they held her as well as “the General,” her husband. Martha, according to Marshall, received the ambassadors “with great politeness,” thanking the committee for their kind care and regard “in giving [her] such timely notice” of the proscription. She assured them that “their sentiments, on this occasion, were perfectly agreeable unto her own.”

Benjamin Harrison of Berkeley, one of the Virginia delegates and a chief correspondent of Washington’s during the early stages of the war, was not so easily satisfied. Furious with Samuel Adams for using his influence to stop the ball, he burst in on Marshall and the Bostonian while they were at dinner that evening. Harrison, probably one of the ball managers, declared the assembly “legal, just and laudable.” A heated argument developed. Harrison remained unconvinced by his opponents’ arguments. Commented Marshall with satisfaction, “as he came out of humour, he so returned.”

Harrison, brother-in-law to Burwell Bassett and a wealthy planter, was unquestionably an ardent patriot, but he littered his conversation with profanities and obscenities and aroused Yankee ire in Congress. John Adams condemned him as “an indolent, luxurious, heavy Gentleman, of no Use in Congress or Committees, but a great Embarrassment to both.” The prosperous Boston merchant John Hancock was more forgiving and appointed the Virginian, a veteran of the French and Indian War, to a range of congressional military committees. Harrison may have been especially keen to honor Martha, given the recent publication in the British press and in America of an intercepted letter he had written to her husband. In the published letter, a spurious paragraph was inserted, referring to “pretty little Kate the Washer-woman’s Daughter over the Way, clean, trim and rosey as the Morning.” The paragraph writer continued with an account of how “Harrison” was deprived of the “golden glorious opportunity” that opened when the girl appeared at his door. Had he not been interrupted by the advent of another female, whom “Harrison” dubbed a “cursed Antidote to Love,” he would have “fitted” Kate “for my General against his return.”

The original letter contains no such paragraph, but many delegates, the Adams cousins included, believed it genuine. Virginians had a reputation for loose and extravagant living. Of the Virginia delegates, John Adams respected only Richard Henry Lee, with whom he exchanged views on the future government of America. That there might be other kinds of Virginians, that Washington was a virtuous husband as well as a commander of merit, was still to emerge. At least Martha’s ready acquiescence in the matter of the ball created a favorable impression. Of the fracas in Philadelphia, she made no mention when she wrote to Elizabeth Ramsay in Alexandria, merely saying, following her departure north on November 26 with two companies of light horse as an escort: “I left it in as great pomp as if I had been a very great somebody.”

In the crucible of Philadelphia politics, Martha had undergone something of a transformation. She left Mount Vernon a Virginia planter’s wife. Now she was “the amiable consort of his Excellency General Washington,” or even, as Christopher Marshall had dubbed her, “Lady Washington.” The first ship in commission in the recently established Continental navy was purchased in the month Martha passed through Philadelphia; the following spring a row galley, Lady Washington, joined the fledgling fleet.

Martha had received the congressional president and given audience to the Philadelphia subcommittee. These individuals, as much as her military escort on leaving the city, had left her in no doubt that she was indeed “somebody” in these bewildering and unprecedented revolutionary times. That the term “Congress” denoted no meeting of minds, even among those who came together as delegates from the same colony, she was also now aware.

Martha had been confident all her life, and she accepted the new attentions as part and parcel of Washington’s command. As Miss Dandridge, she had charmed old John Custis. As “the widow Custis,” she had corresponded with London tobacco agents. As Mrs. Washington, she had made a new life far from home in northern Virginia. In the past few months she had adamantly refused to leave Mount Vernon despite reports of possible kidnap. She had dealt with her husband’s accounts and rents and guarded her home and her husband’s papers and possessions against all comers, be they his cousin Lund or Mrs. Barnes. But all this she had done as a private individual. Now she embarked on a life in which every action of hers would be closely watched—and judged.

“This is a beautiful country, and we had a very pleasant journey through New England, and had the pleasure to find the General very well,” she wrote from Cambridge to an Alexandria correspondent at the end of December. With General Horatio Gates’s wife, Betsy, and her companions from home, she had reached headquarters on the eleventh of that month. Martha made no mention of her husband’s earlier frustrations and anxieties, but they had been manifold, not least in the matter of his aides-de-camp and secretaries. Washington had written to Reed in Philadelphia on the twentieth, begging him—to no avail—to return to the “family.” The commander was, at Cambridge, well supplied with willing young men who could ride, act as couriers, and deliver oral orders. General Charles Lee was to deride the secretarial capabilities of these energetic centaurs: “you might as well set them the task of translating an Arabick or Irish Manuscript as expect that they should in half a day copy a half sheet of orders.”

Washington wrote of aide-de-camp George Baylor that he was “not, in the smallest degree, a penman.” He was initially chary of Robert Hanson Harrison, who had abandoned the law in Alexandria to serve as his secretary. By late January 1776 he was living on terms of “unbounded confidence” with the young man and his other principal secretary, Stephen Moylan. Whatever their shortcomings, Martha took a lively interest in the young men who attended on her husband, who lived with them and Jacky and Nelly, and who dined with them and other guests at headquarters.

In advance of Martha’s arrival at Cambridge, Moylan had sent for limes, lemons, and oranges from a cargo on board a British brig inbound from Antigua. The vessel, heading “for the use of the army and navy at Boston,” had been captured and was soon to be added to the fledgling Continental fleet. “The General will want some of each, as well as the sweetmeats and pickles that are on board, as his lady will be here today, or tomorrow,” wrote the secretary. On December 11, Ebenezer Austin, the steward at the Vassall house, recorded in his cash book that “ten baskets of oysters,” for which Martha had had a fondness all her life, were purchased. Though the army lacked powder and shirts, Austin’s accounts show that the Massachusetts Bay and its hinterland supplied the household with ample quantities of fish, roast and boiled meats, “gammon” (salt pork), and “fowls.” Purchases that he made following Martha’s arrival at the Vassall house—a dozen “cups and saucers”—may reflect her wish to dispense genteel hospitality, even amid the administrative mayhem at headquarters.

The presence of fellow Virginians was undoubtedly congenial to Martha in this unfamiliar New England town and in this military context. She informed Miss Ramsay, her Alexandria correspondent, in her budget of news on December 30: “Your friends Mr [Robert Hanson] Harrison and [David] Henley [another aide and Alexandria resident] are both very well and I think they are fatter than they were when they came to the camp.” She added: “the girls may rest satisfied on Mr Harrison’s account. He seems too fond of his country to give his heart to any but one of his Virginia friends.” Aides-de-camp in search of romance at headquarters labored anyway under this disadvantage: “there are but two young ladies in Cambridge, and a very great number of gentlemen, so you may guess how much is made of them.” Martha dismissed them: “but neither of them is pretty, I think.”

Coincidental with Martha’s arrival in Cambridge had been that of two exotic travelers, Messieurs Pliarne and Penet, Frenchmen respectively from Cap François, a trading post on the island of Hispaniola, and from Nantes, a busy port in France. As they spoke no language but French—and in the case of M. Penet from Nantes, Latin—conversation with the Washingtons, who had neither language, was restricted. Their proposals, however, were welcome. Without the knowledge of the French government, they wished to supply the Continental army with arms and ammunition from France and with other supplies from the Caribbean in return for tallow, tobacco, and other American goods.

Washington directed the foreign adventurers on to Congress to meet with the Secret Committee of Correspondence, which had recently been established to explore support in Europe. Benjamin Harrison and Benjamin Franklin were among its members, as was the wealthy New York lawyer and delegate John Jay. Martha had a good return for her Cambridge hospitality, when the adventurers wrote to Washington to offer bounty. Secretary Moylan translated the letter from the French: “Deign, Sir, we pray you, to prevail on Madam Your Lady, to accept of Some of the Fruits of our [French West Indian] Colonies, to which we have added, one bottle of Martinique Liqueur—two bottles of Ratafia, three [left blank in translation] of fruit preserved in brandy—one dozen of Oranges, and fifty Small Loaves of Sugar.”

The French colonial produce was pressed into immediate service. In occupied Boston, British general Henry Clinton inhabited John Hancock’s fine house on Beacon Hill. Meetinghouses were made into riding schools, and churches became barracks. Bostonians who had fled the city and Massachusetts patriots all came calling at the Vassall house. One cleric and his wife who visited on December 19 were “Treated with oranges and a glass of wine,” and urged to stay to dine. Washington’s mood during the first weeks Martha was with him was somber. Enlistments for the new year stood at only 5,253 on the day she arrived in camp. A month earlier there had been more than 14,000 troops enlisted, but Connecticut troops who had performed bravely at Bunker Hill had recently disgraced themselves. Having pledged to remain till the new year when new troops would enlist, they made for home at the end of November, when their service officially ended. Some departed even before the month was up, taking with them arms and blankets badly needed for those still in camp.

Writing of this “scandalous conduct” to Hancock in Philadelphia in early December, Washington stated that he had called in 5,000 Massachusetts and New Hampshire militiamen as a stopgap measure. But he stressed that “the Same defection is much to be apprehended, when the time of the Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, & Rhode Island Forces are expired”—on December 31. If more troops did not come in at the new year, the diminished Continental army would find it hard to withstand the British, should they launch an attack in January.

During anxious days at the end of 1775, the Washingtons dined out at the quarters occupied by “Old Put,” as Major General Israel Putnam from Connecticut was known. This veteran of the French and Indian War and hero at Bunker Hill had command of divisions be-
tween Prospect Hill and the Charles but proved powerless to prevent his countrymen from making for home.

They dined out, too, at Medford with General Charles Lee, a Continental offcer, once of the British army, well known to both Washingtons. Lee, at Mount Vernon over New Year 1775, had engaged Washington in discussions about American independent companies. He also borrowed a sum of money so as to travel to his next port of call. This was a debt that he had not to date repaid.

Washington valued Lee’s military record in Europe as well as in America and was well aware that the presumptuous officer believed his experience should have secured him the post of commander-in-chief. Abrasive, eccentric, and foul-mouthed, Lee, however, was not the kind of man to endear himself to Congress.

Washington’s adjutant general, Horatio Gates, was another professional soldier who might have aspired to become commander-in-chief. Twenty years earlier Gates, like Lee and Washington—and, indeed, Thomas Gage, until lately in command of the British forces in Boston—had taken part in the ill-fated Braddock expedition. Unlike Washington, Gates had served in the French and Indian War until its close, and thereafter in Minorca during the wider conflict. But, like Lee, Gates was an Englishman and, like Lee, he had served in America as a regular British officer. Admittedly, since 1772 he had been living, with his wife, Betsy, in western Virginia. Lee too had recently been peregrinating around America. Notwithstanding, neither man’s greater military experience nor current residence could vanquish Washington’s trump card as commander-in-chief of the Continental army: he was American born and bred. Though he had so wished for a regular commission, his service in the colonial forces in the French and Indian War was now a badge of honor.

Betsy Gates was a seasoned army wife and a pleasant companion at headquarters who accompanied Martha on numerous outings. Nelly Custis, who might have been of their party, was apparently still “getting well,” following the earlier loss of her child. She appeared infrequently, much later apparently confessing that the “bombs” that came over the river from the British had alarmed her greatly. Martha confirmed in her letter to Miss Ramsay in late December 1775 the existence of these missiles: “some days we have a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill,” she wrote, “but it does not seem to surprise anyone but me; I confess I shudder every time I hear the sound of a gun.” But her enthusiasm for “the cause”—and her curiosity—overcame any fears she might have had for her personal safety. She made an excursion to Prospect Hill, which Putnam’s forces had taken in June. From that eminence Martha “took a look at poor Boston and Charleston,” as she informed Miss Ramsay. The latter settlement, which the British had torched, was in ruins, with “only a few chimneys standing in it.” There seemed to be a number of very fine buildings in Boston, wrote this eyewitness from afar, but how long they would stand, she wrote, “God knows.” Of the harbor she had a clear view and could see that the British were pulling up all the wharves for firewood. “To me that never see [saw] anything of war, the preparations are very terable [terrible] indeed,” she confided. But she endeavored, she wrote, to keep her fears as much to herself as she could. In this she was successful. “Lady Washington” appeared calm, just as her husband’s public utterances gave every indication that he expected a successful outcome. This was far from the case.

Not the least of the troubles to contend with was an epidemic of smallpox that developed in and around Boston. Dr. Morgan supervised the inoculation of all troops who had not had the disease. His wife, Mary, who had come with him to Cambridge in November 1775, was much at headquarters while her husband was occupied. She wrote later to her own mother that Martha and Nelly had been “as a mother and sister” to her, “Mrs Gates the same.”

Meanwhile, Congress had been slow and parsimonious in answering Washington’s call for funds. He wrote to Hancock on Christmas Day 1775: “The Gentlemen by whom you Sent the money are arrived. The Sum they brought, tho’ Large, is not Sufficient to answer the demands of the Army, which at this time are remarkably heavy.” He informed, cajoled, and exhorted Congress by turns. The clothing sent to Thomas Mifflin, quartermaster general, was not sufficient to put half the army into regimentals, he wrote on New Year’s Eve. He hoped they would sanction his decision to reenlist those “free negroes” who had already served in the Continental army. He had feared that, if they were dismissed, they would seek employment with the enemy forces. No issue was too small for him to consider. He wrote of the need to continue the butter allowance to the troops. Always in the guise of a respectful servant, he pressed Congress to respond. The stark truth was, as he wrote to Hancock on New Year’s Eve, that the army that would enlist the following day, January 1, 1776, numbered 9,650 men. Congress in June had authorized the raising of 20,000.

Washington’s task in these days would have overwhelmed a commander with fewer organizational skills. “It is not in the pages of History perhaps, to furnish a case like ours,” he was to write to Hancock in Philadelphia on January 4, 1776, summarizing his burden, “to maintain a post within Musket Shot of the Enemy for Six months together, without [powder].” He had to disband one army and, at the same time, recruit another. The same day he wrote in similar vein to Reed at Philadelphia: “For more than two Months past I have scarcely immerged from one difficulty before I have plunged into another—how it will end God in his great goodness will direct, I am thankful for his protection to this time.”

Before Martha’s arrival, Washington had on several occasions observed, at the “meeting house” in Harvard Square, the Puritan form of worship that most held to in New England. Christ Church, the Anglican church on Cambridge Common, had lost both minister and parishioners when the occupants of Tory Row vacated the town in 1774. It had of late been used as a barracks for Virginia and Maryland riflemen. With their passage into winter quarters, the church on the Common, though battered and with a broken organ, resumed its former function on at least one occasion. Aide-de-camp Colonel William Palfrey wrote to his wife on January 1, 1776: “What think you of my turning parson? I yesterday [New Year’s Eve], at the request of Mrs Washington, performed divine service at the church at Cambridge. There was present the General and lady, Mrs Gates, Mrs Curtis [Custis], and a number of others, and they were pleased to compliment me on my performance.” Martha had made a good choice of her “parson.” In civilian life Palfrey had been an able adjutant to John Hancock in his mercantile business in Boston and was now in demand as a competent aide-de-camp. Currently serving General Lee, he was soon to be purloined by Washington. “I made a form of prayer, instead of the prayer for the King, which was much approved,” he wrote.

The “Prayer for the King’s Majesty,” in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, increasingly presented a difficulty. Sunday after Sunday, ever more disenchanted with the monarch, the Washingtons and other Anglican patriots in America responded “Amen” to the following: “strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies.” The earlier belief that the king was innocent, that his ministers were responsible for crimes against the colonies, was fading. Palfrey’s prayer effectively substituted Washington for the king as the focus for prayer: “Be with thy servant, the Commander-in-chief of the American forces. Afford him thy presence in all his undertakings; strengthen him, that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and grant that we may, in thy due time, be restored to the enjoyment of those inestimable blessings we have been deprived of by the devices of cruel and bloodthirsty men, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” The assembled company appreciated the rousing and seditious prayer, and Martha asked if she might have it. “I gave it to Mrs Washington…and did not keep a copy, but will get one and send it you,” the gratified aide told his wife on January 2.

To the relief of Washington, the British in Boston, now under the command of General William Howe, did not attack. The American regiments slowly filled, and in general orders, Washington named the new force “in every point of View…entirely Continental.” A measure of relief—even hilarity—was felt by all in camp when the British mistook a new-minted standard for a flag of surrender. But such emotions were short-lived. Copies of the speech that the king had given in London on the opening of Parliament on October 26 circulated early in the new year. “The rebellious War now levied is become more general,” the speech read in part, “and is manifestly carried on for the Purpose of establishing an independent Empire.…It is now become the Part of Wisdom and (in its Effects) of Clemency, to put a speedy End to these Disorders by the most decisive Exertions.” The speech told of the increase of the naval establishment, of ground forces, and of offers of support from foreign allies. An expeditionary force would soon be dispatched across the Alantic. The monarch was confident of victory, and the speech ran on: “When the unhappy and deluded Multitude, against whom this Force will be directed shall become sensible of their Error, I shall be ready to receive the Misled with Tenderness and Mercy.” Enclosing a copy of the document, Washington wrote to Hancock on January 4, “It is full of rancour & resentment, and explicitly holds forth his Royal will to be, that vigorous measures must be pursued to deprive us of our constitutional rights & liberties…Majesty,” he reflected bitterly, was “a name which ought to promote the blessings of his people & not their oppression.”

On the seventh Washington asked John Adams, who was then at Watertown, to share “pot luck” at headquarters. It was anticipated that the British expeditionary force would strike first at New York. The commander wished to dispatch Charles Lee from Massachusetts to shore up defenses there. Washington established, with Adams, that the original scope of his commission from Congress—to take command of the army at Cambridge—had widened. He was commander-in-chief of the Continental army, wherever it was posted. Washington duly dispatched Lee. The possibility of British reinforcements from England rendered the security of the Boston Bay area perilous. Mercy Otis Warren, wife of James, newly Massachusetts Provincial Congress president, wrote to Martha, offering a safe haven at Watertown, farther inland. In reply—in the third person—Martha was polite but firm: “If the exigency of affairs in this camp should make it necessary for her to remove, she cannot but esteem it a happiness to have so friendly an invitation as Mrs Warren has given.” For the time being, she remained at her husband’s side.

In mid-January Washington wrote to Reed of experiencing “many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in Sleep.” At a council of war on the eighth, it was agreed that the New England colonies should be called on to supply thirteen regiments of militia to reinforce the new Continental army. Even before they could be mustered, on New Year’s Eve news came of disaster at Quebec. Besieging the Canadian city, American General Richard Montgomery had been killed, and his fellow general, Benedict Arnold, severely wounded. Accordingly, three of the new regiments forming were diverted north to aid in the continuing siege. Ammunition in the American lines facing Boston was in no greater supply than troops. Were he to overcome the innumerable difficulties he faced, Washington averred, “I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the Eyes of our Enemys; for surely if we get well through this Month, it must be for want of their knowing the disadvantages we labour under.” He was determined to attack, as soon as the harbor froze over and troops could traverse the ice from Dorchester and Roxbury to Boston.

Washington sought support and aid wherever he might find them. Toward the end of the month, he and Martha dined at Thomas Mifflin’s in Cambridge. Six or seven Cagnawawa sachems (chiefs) and warriors were of the company and pledged support. The New Englanders present were somewhat at a loss. The commander-in-chief was familiar, from colonial military service and earlier, with the customs of Native Americans. He introduced John Adams, who was in the company and now of the Massachusetts General Court, as a member of the “Grand Council.” The visitors looked on the lawyer with new respect.

Martha continued resilient, whether at her husband’s side on social occasions or overseeing the various needs of the household at the Vassall house. “Nelly Custis…I believe, is with child,” she wrote to her sister Nancy Bassett at the end of January. Nelly was indeed in the early stages of pregnancy and would give birth in Virginia to a second child in August. Cautious following the early death of Nelly’s first child the previous summer, Martha wrote, “I hope no accident [miscarriage] will happen to her in going back.” She continued: “I have not thought about it much yet. God knows where we shall be.” She supposed there would be “a change” in the military situation soon, but when she could not pretend to say. The winter continued mild, she added: “the rivers have never been frozen hard enough to walk upon the ice since I came here.”