“I think the game is pretty near up.”
IN PHILADELPHIA, Martha had depended on the constant comings and goings of delegates and army officers between that city and New York for delivery and receipt of her correspondence with her husband. Were Washington to have been wounded, taken prisoner, or fallen in a skirmish or battle, she would soon have heard while she was in the home of Congress. With Jacky her escort, Martha arrived home in early autumn 1776. At Mount Vernon, remote from the theater of war, the weekly post must serve as a less reliable conduit for the couple’s letters. Intelligence about the fortunes of the Continental forces would be hard to come by, as would be news of any injury to their commander-in-chief. Martha was, like every patriot, anxious about the dangerous situation in New York, but the safety of her husband was paramount.
The general had already had a narrow escape. British troops landed at Kips Bay on the East River on September 15. They harassed Continental soldiers, who were in the midst of the planned retreat northward. Washington was to write to his brother Sam in early October of the “dastardly behaviour of part of our Troops” under attack. Two brigades ran away and left the commander-in-chief, with his aides-de-camp, exposed “in the field.” He might easily have been killed. Though they succeeded in making their way to the new headquarters at Harlem Heights, this experience was fresh in his mind when Washington wrote to Lund on September 30. A tirade followed the ominous words, “If I fall…” He wished it to be known that, “under such a system of management as has been adopted,” he had not had “the least chance for reputation.”
He was smarting from the loss of New York, and stung by Congress’s refusal to allow him to burn the city prior to the retreat. It now provided, he wrote, “warm and comfortable” barracks and an impregnable base for the British army and fleet. A fire had broken out south of King’s College subsequent to Howe’s arrival and destroyed much of the surrounding area. The British commander, fearing arson, responded by placing the city under martial law. Governor Tryon was made a major general and dispatched to subdue Connecticut.
In a further letter to Lund on October 6, Washington blamed the new government of the United States for its failure of nerve. Even after declaring independence, they had clung to hopes of a reconciliation with Britain. Lord Howe, whom he termed a “thorough paced courtier,” in the guise of peace commissioner, had fueled these unrealistic expectations. In consequence, week by week, month by month, Congress had hesitated time and again to vote the funds necessary for the defense of America.
Washington had no high opinion of the different militia pressed into service for periods as short as six weeks in return for a bounty. He wrote, from headquarters, to Samuel on October 5 that they were “eternally coming and going without rendering the least Earthly Service.” He had long urged on Congress, most recently in a letter to Hancock of September 2, the need for a “permanent, standing Army—I mean one to exist during the War.” Still, men were engaged for twelve months only. He told Lund, on September 30, that he would not undertake to say whether “the unfortunate hope of reconciliation was the cause” of the refusal of Congress to entertain his scheme, “or the fear of a standing army prevailed.” He had low expectations for the future: “if the men will stand by me (which, by the by, I despair of), I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.” A few days would, he thought, determine the point, “if the enemy should not change their plan of operations.”
At Mount Vernon, Martha had returned to a home substantially improved since she left it nearly a year earlier. She now had the use of a new master bedroom in the southern extension. When Washington should come home, a study below awaited him. Further works were complete at this end of the house, now conveniently connected by a colonnade to a new kitchen and storeroom. The northern end of the house was still a building site. For all Washington’s impatience, the double-story New Room was not yet finished, and work was still ongoing to complete the northern colonnade and connecting servants’ hall for visitors’ servants and the gardener’s house.
In August, while waiting for Howe to make a move, Washington had sent Lund detailed directions for a “grove of Trees” to be planted “at each end of the dwelling.” Close to the new bedroom and study were now planted a variety of saplings. Washington wanted “all the clever kind of Trees (especially flowering ones) that can be got, such as Crab apple, Poplar, Dogwood, Sasafras, Lawrel, Willow (especially yellow & Weeping Willow).” Locust trees were in due course to be planted to the north, adjoining a new walled garden, now in place. This planting must wait till the area was no longer littered with building materials.
Lund continued to steward the plantation with anxious care. When an attack by Lord Dunmore and his regiment on Alexandria had seemed imminent that January, he had written to Washington: “I am about packing up your China Glass &c. into Barrels, & shall continue to pack into Casks, Whatever I think should be put up in that way, & other things into Chests, Trunks, Bundles &c.” Mount Vernon neighbors had offered to store the Washington rum in their cellars. “The Bacon, when it is sufficiently smoakd, I think to have put up in Cask with Ashes.” If necessary, he could then remove it, “together with some Pork which I have already put up into Barrels,” to a place of greater safety. Distractedly he wrote, “these are dreadfull times to give people so much trouble and Vexation.” In his opinion, in which his correspondent and Mrs. Washington did not necessarily concur, “Fighting and even being killd, is the least troublesome part.”
The following month Lund wrote: “I have had 300 Bushels or more of Salt put in to Fish Barrels which I intend to move to muddy Hole Barn. If it Should be destroy’d by the Enemy, we shall not be able to get more…and our people must have Fish.” Every year, during the spring running of shad on the Potomac, the barrels that he named were filled with fish and salt and emptied over the winter. Dried fish was a staple foodstuff for the plantation slaves. Their master, who could choose what he ate, was partial to it.
Now that the threat that Dunmore had represented to Virginia had gone, Martha could enjoy her china and glass with impunity in the newly established Commonwealth of Virginia. Lund tried as best he could to execute Washington’s minute instructions. The chimneypiece in the northern annex should be “exactly in the middle of it,” the commander wrote on September 30 from headquarters on Harlem Heights, “the doors and every thing else to be exactly answerable and uniform—in short I would have the whole executed in a masterly manner.” Though Lund served his cousin as best as he could, he had ambitions of his own—to purchase “a small Farm in some part of the Country where the produce of it wou’d enable me to live, and give a Neighbour Beef, & Toddy.” He had been far too busy to contemplate finding such a property while both Washingtons were away. He was no less busy now that Martha was returned.
Where the young Parke Custises would ultimately settle, with Martha’s granddaughter, baby Bet, was by no means fixed. The White House in New Kent County, Jacky’s place of birth, would pass to him only on his mother’s death. In July, Washington had written to Jacky, encouraged his acquisition of some land on the ground that it was contiguous to “a large part of your Estate, and where you will probably make your residence.” He referred to Pleasant Hill, the country seat in King and Queen County, which he had bought, on his ward’s account, three years earlier. But Jacky made no move to set up home there. His heart belonged in northern Virginia, and this June he wrote to his stepfather: “It pleased the Almighty to deprive me at a very early Period of Life of my Father, but I can not sufficiently adore His Goodness in sending Me so good a Guardian as you Sir; Few have experience’d such Care and Attention from real Parents as I have done. He best deserves the Name of Father who acts the Part of one.” By now Jacky, fond to a fault, was also almost as much attached as Nelly to her family in Maryland. For the time being, the young couple moved with indifferent ease between Mount Vernon and Mount Airy. For Martha, Jacky and Nelly afforded welcome companionship, and their child, diversion from anxiety about Washington.
Martha was as ever hospitable. The dining room with its new stucco ceiling was much in use, following tireless attention by Lund Washington the previous winter to a problematic chimney that served this and other rooms. He wrote to Washington, then at Cambridge with Martha, that the fireplaces “really smoked so Bad that the walls looked as bad as any negroe Quarter, and the Smoke from the cellar came into the other Rooms.” Lund saw Martha’s many visitors and even her disposition to charity primarily as a drain on the corn supply at the plantation. The stables already housed five horses for her chariot, as well as seven horses that Jacky kept at the house. There were, besides, Lund’s own riding horse and numerous mares and wagon horses requiring fodder. The agent was to write to his cousin dolefully: “these, added to the Visitors’ Horses, consume no small Quantity of Corn.” On January 17, 1776, he wrote that they had killed 132 hogs: “They, with the Fattening Beeves [beef cattle] ate 247 Barrels.…You will ask me what we are going to do with so much meat. I cannot tell. When I put it up, I expected Mrs Washington would have lived at Home, if you did not.” He added in justification: “Was I to judge the future from the past consumption, there would have been a Use for it. For I believe Mrs Washingtons Charitable disposition increases in the same proportion with her meat House.” In consequence, he declared, there had been no surplus the previous fall to feed hired harvesters, “& she can tell you, there was very little Salt Provision in the House for Servants, &c., all this fall Past.”
Lund lamented, in this letter of January 17, “I am by no means fit for a House keeper, I am afraid I shall consume more than ever, for I am not a judge how much should be given out every Day—I am vex’d when I am called upon to give out Provisions for the Day. God Send you were both at Home—and an End to these troublesome times.” Now Martha was home, she supervised the spinning women at their wheels and made the daily distribution of salt, supplies, and medicine.
Elsewhere in Virginia, Fredericksburg was unrecognizable from a year earlier. In addition to the gun manufactory funded by Fielding Lewis, there was now an arsenal, naval dockyards, and a hospital for soldiers, marines, and seamen. October saw, with concomitant festivities, the General Assembly of the new Commonwealth of Virginia meet for the first time in Williamsburg. Martha’s brother Bartholomew Dandridge was a counselor of state. Patrick Henry was ensconced as governor in the palace that Lord Dunmore and other British peers and commoners had formerly occupied. But Martha remained on the Potomac in northern Virginia. The incoming post on Thursdays to Alexandria sustained her with newspaper accounts of the war’s progress and with letters from her husband. The outgoing post on Sundays offered an opportunity to convey both fortitude and fears to him.
Washington had written to Lund at the end of September: “I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.” He was very much alive when forced by the British from Harlem Heights in mid-October. He regrouped with his troops at White Plains, north of Manhattan Island in New York, where he hoped to withstand attack by General Howe. A letter that he wrote to Martha from here on the twenty-fifth was among other correspondence from headquarters that fell into the hands of the British three days later. A careless dispatch rider, in whose charge it was, stopped at a Pennsylvanian public house, which also served as post office. In the “bar room” of the inn, in a district inhabited by numerous Loyalists, he opened his “bundle.” Extracting a letter that required forwarding, he stepped out of the inn for a moment, leaving the other correspondence on a table inside. As Hancock informed Washington by express the same day: “on his return the whole of his Letters were carried off & no person could give any account of them…he is here without a single Letter.” The dispatch rider was incarcerated, the publican deprived of his office of postmaster, and the bartender closely questioned. The stolen correspondence reached British headquarters, as all at headquarters and in Congress had supposed it would. General Howe, now Sir William Howe, knight of the Bath, sent back to Washington his letter to his wife of October 25. The covering note, written on November 11, ran: “I am happy to return it without the least Attempt being made to discover any Part of the Contents.” Washington told Hancock three days later: “I conclude that All the Letters which went by the Boston Express have come into his possession.”
He was correct. The “bundle” had reached Howe on November 5, and his private secretary, Ambrose Serle, made notes on the content of the letters. The Continental officers were, Serle observed, “(to use Mr Washington’s own Words) ‘dreaming, sleepy-headed’ Men.” The American commander had also written that discord existed between “the Eastern & Southern Colonists,” and that the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in particular, could raise neither men nor money. In short, Serle summarized in his diary in December, the general and his military “family” entertained “the strongest Fears, respecting their Success, and of the Consequences of a Disappointment.”
When Serle made his notes, the Continental troops were long gone from White Plains. The “strongest fears” of those at headquarters had proved justified. On October 28—the same day that the “bar room” incident took place in Pennsylvania—Howe attacked Washington’s troops. Though the battle was inconclusive and a large-scale exchange of prisoners followed, Washington abandoned the position and made for “General Greene’s quarters” at Fort Lee on the New Jersey shore. With him, he wrote to Hancock on November 14, came “the whole of the troops”—bar one garrison—“belonging to the States which lay South of Hudsons River and which were in New York Government.” New York might be lost to the Continentals. New Jersey would not fall if the men, quartered at Brunswick, Amboy, Elizabethtown, Newark, and about Fort Lee—Washington’s own location—were ready to “check any incursions the enemy may attempt in the neighbourhood.”
Washington left 3,000 troops at Fort Washington, on an eminence above the Hudson, on Manhattan Island, and opposite Fort Lee. Nathanael Greene, whom Washington trusted, believed that the former position could be held against enemy attack. It had sufficient cannon and range to do useful damage to British shipping in the river. Washington was irresolute. “The movements and designs of the Enemy are not yet understood,” he told Hancock. He thought the enemy might well succeed if they attempted to invest the fort. Later Washington was to acknowledge to Joseph Reed, who was with him at Fort Lee, that there was “warfare in my mind and hesitation,” as he sought to find a way forward. But he gave no order to evacuate the Manhattan garrison.
Next day the British and Hessians seized the fort and took prisoner the majority of the garrison—2,858 men comprising Maryland and Virginia regiments, militiamen, and Pennsylvania battalions. Reed, who had succeeded Gates as adjutant general in the summer, wrote to Charles Lee six days later: “General Washington’s own Judgment seconded by Representations from us would, I believe, have saved the Men & their Arms but unluckily, General Greene’s Judgment was contrary. This kept the Generals Mind in a State of Suspence till the Stroke was struck—Oh! General—an indecisive Mind is one of the greatest Misfortunes that can befall an Army.”
Now that the British had control of the Hudson, retreat from Fort Lee was inevitable. News, on the nineteenth, that barges were bearing Lord Cornwallis and 5,000 troops to the New Jersey shore hastened the evacuation. At Hackensack, Washington tallied for Hancock the British gains: “the whole of the Cannon that was at the Fort, except Two twelve Pounders, and a great deal of baggage—between Two & three hundred Tents—about a Thousand Barrels of Flour & other Stores in the Quarter Master’s department.” With the approach of winter, the loss of the tents was especially regretted by both officers and men.
In Reed’s letter of November 21, which Washington never saw, the adjutant general called on Lee to hasten to New Jersey: “I have no Doubt, had you been here, the Garrison at Mount [Fort] Washington would now have composed a Part of this Army…every Gentleman of the Family, the Officers & soldiers generally have a Confidence in you.…All Circumstances considered, we are in a very awful & alarming State one that requires the utmost Wisdom & Firmness of Mind.”
Cornwallis continued to press, and the Continentals to retreat before him. From Newark, Samuel Blachley Webb, a new aide at headquarters, wrote to Commissary General Joseph Trumbull: “You ask me [for] a true Account of our Situation.…I can only say that no lads ever showed greater activity in retreating than we have since we left You. Our Soldiers are the best fellows in the World at this Business.”
On November 30 from New Brunswick, a new refuge, Washington addressed the president of Congress: “It was the opinion of all the generals, who were with me, that a retreat to this place was requisite and founded in necessity.” The vanguard of the British army had entered Newark as his rearguard left it.
At New Brunswick, also, with the enemy within two hours’ march, Washington read Lee’s bombastic reply of November 24 to Reed. The general lamented “that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage…eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if curs’d with indecision.” Lee ruminated, “to confess a truth I really think our Chief will do better with me than without me.”
Lee, it was known, believed he should be commander-in-chief. He was needed to defend Philadelphia. But Washington was less forgiving of Reed, his former secretary, to whom he forwarded Lee’s missive. “Having no idea of its being a private letter,” he wrote, assuming it would be “upon the business of your office,” he had read the “Contents…which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to.”
The enemy were advancing. More Continental troops were going off home, the term of their service expiring. Washington was as dogged in retreat as ever, gaining first Princeton, then on December 2, Trenton. Thomas Paine, Anglo-American newspaperman, was with Washington’s army on this sorry march through New Jersey. He described “both officers and men” as “greatly harassed, and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision.” With reference to the commander-in-chief, he wrote ecstatically: “There is a natural fannels [tabernacle] in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.” During these desperate months, there was one consolation for Washington. Congress had at last heeded him and directed in October that the states raise a “standing army,” comprising eighty-eight regiments, to serve for the duration of hostilities. Furthermore, now that the united states were independent, there was hope that the French king, Louis XVI, and his ministers, inimical to British interests, would look kindly on their cause and on their quest for foreign arms and regiments.
Washington’s initial aim at Trenton, in which he succeeded, was to convey his small army over the Delaware to the Pennsylvania side of the river, taking with him or burning all boats and barges in moorings on the New Jersey side. The pursuing British and Hessians—at more than 10,000 men, an apparently insuperable adversary—had no option but to wait till the river froze. When it did, as it surely would, they would as surely cross and attack.
An urgent plea to Philadelphia for men at the end of November had resulted in 2,000 townsmen volunteering to form a city militia. With those volunteers, among them artist Charles Willson Peale, the Continental army at the Delaware now stood at 5,000 men. But across the river, Hessians were quartered in the garrison at Trenton. British soldiers were camped on the New Jersey riverbanks opposite “above & below us…for fifteen Miles,” Washington wrote to Lund on December 10. The enemy could at any time cross the river at several different places and attack the smaller American force; “vigilance” was the only defense.
Washington was not optimistic. It was, he told his cousin, “next to impossible to guard a Shore for 60 Miles with less than half the Enemys numbers.” Martha’s brother Bartholomew Dandridge, counselor of state, was to give vent the following month in Williamsburg to the feelings of many patriots of standing in the new Commonwealth of Virginia. It was “astonishing and will hardly be credited hereafter,” he told his brother-in-law warmly, “that the most deserving, the most favorite General of the 13 united American States, should be left by them, with only about 2500 Men, to support the most important Cause that mankind ever engaged in against the whole Power of British Tyranny.”
Washington, following eighteen months of dealings with Congress and provincial governments, was inured to the procrastination and irresolution of both. He was aware that he sank in the esteem of so many, if not that of his friends and family in Virginia, with every retreat he made. Stolidly, steadily he worked to increase the numbers on the Pennsylvania shore.
Though the atmosphere at headquarters was highly charged, Washington wrote calmly to Lund of planting “Holly trees” or “young & strait bodied Pines” on the “Circular Banks” at Mount Vernon. He had no time, nor anyone to spare, to send the horses he had promised—“Mrs Washington must therefore make the old greys serve her a little while longer.” While unwilling to buy expensive “Linnen for the Negros,” he held that “they certainly have a just claim to their Victuals and cloths, if they make enough to purchase them.” A week later the commander resumed his letter. Headquarters were now a farmhouse “ten miles above the falls.” So far they had prevented the enemy from crossing the Delaware, he wrote. “How long we shall be able to do it, God only knows, as they are still hovering about the River.”
With the British and Hessians so close to Philadelphia, Congress had taken the decision on December 12 to move south to Baltimore. It hastened its departure on learning that General Charles Lee had been taken prisoner at a Basking Ridge tavern, where he was lodging. “Unhappy man!” wrote Washington four days later, “taken by his own imprudence!” Following information from a Loyalist, a party of British light horse rode through the night and carried off the prize “in high triumph, and with every Mark of Indignity—not even suffering him to get his Hat, or Surtout Coat.”
Disaffection and “want of spirit & fortitude,” Washington told Lund on December 17, reigned in the Jerseys. “In confidence…as a friend,” he advised his cousin, “look forward to unfavorable Events, & prepare accordingly. In such a manner, however, as to give no alarm or suspicion to any one.” Washington’s papers at Mount Vernon, he directed, should be readied for dispatch westward to Samuel Washington in Berkeley County—“in case an Enemy’s Fleet should come up the River.” A week earlier he had written that the “old greys” must serve Martha. Now, with flight in mind, he was at pains to see that she had a “very good set” for her chariot. With Mercer he sent southward two “exceeding good Horses…Young, the lightest of the two Bays is an exceeding tough, hardy horse as any in the World, but rather lazy—he will do well for the Postilion before.”
To his brothers John Augustine and Samuel Washington, the commander wrote nearly identical letters next day: “I have no doubt but that General Howe will still make an attempt upon Philadelphia this Winter—I see nothing to oppose him in a fortnight from this time.” The terms of almost all the troops would then expire, except those of some much-fatigued regiments from Virginia and Maryland. “In a word my dear Sir, if every nerve is not strained to recruit the New Army with all possible Expedition, I think the game is pretty near up.”
Washington had written to Martha from Philadelphia in June 1775 on his election as commander-in-chief. He had written to her when they were parted on many occasions since. According to his and Lund’s testimony, the general never failed to enclose a letter for her when he wrote to his cousin at Mount Vernon. When Mercer bore these confidential letters south, in that case, and at this time of crisis, a letter for Martha went too.
It was a time of national crisis, and one in which information, especially in the south, was at a premium and swiftly disseminated, however unreliable or out of date it might be. From Williamsburg, on December 20, 1776, William Fitzhugh of Chatham, a member of the new Virginia legislature, wrote by “a very indifferent fire by candlelight and with a very weak eye” to inform his uncle, Landon Carter, “The accounts yesterday from Philadelphia are bad indeed. The enemy within a few miles of that city and our worthy General Washington flying before them with a few fatigued and shattered troops.” Fitzhugh expected soon to hear that Philadelphia was in ashes or occupied by the enemy. “If the latter, I fear almost a total disaffection will be the consequence, and if the former what a loss must America sustain.” Wrote this wealthy man, “I would with pleasure part with my last shilling to procure my liberty.”
The twentieth brought about a change in the fortunes and dispositions of the armies. Continental reinforcements arrived, and Howe ordered his troops into winter quarters. Washington made a decision to launch a surprise attack on the garrisoned Hessians. He wrote to Reed on the twenty-third, “Christmas day at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton. For Heaven’s sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us.”
Two nights later, in freezing weather, Washington assembled 2,500 troops at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware. Officers, men, and ordnance were embarked in flat-bottomed boats for the New Jersey shore. He later informed Hancock: “the quantity of Ice, made that Night, impeded the passage of Boats so much, that it was three o’clock before the Artillery could all be got over, and near four, before the Troops took up their line of march.” Though it was now snowing hard, the Continentals rapidly covered the nine miles that lay between the ferry on the New Jersey shore and Trenton. They surprised the sleeping Hessians before light dawned on the twenty-sixth. In a short engagement, they took more than a thousand of the German mercenaries prisoner and escorted them back across the river.
For once Washington was satisfied with his officers and men: “their Behaviour upon this Occasion, reflects the highest honor upon them. The difficulty of passing the River in a very severe Night, and their March thro’ a violent Storm of Snow and Hail, did not in the least abate their Ardour. But when they came to the Charge, each seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward.” Any patriots who still questioned the general’s skills as a commander were soon silenced. On the night of January 2, 1777, Washington outmaneuvered Sir William Howe, who was advancing on Trenton, and took Princeton on the third. Howe, now nineteen miles away from Philadelphia when he had been six, relinquished his plan to seize it.
From Pluckemin on the fifth, on his way to Morristown, New Jersey, Washington wrote an account of the victory at Princeton for Hancock. He dispatched his letter “open” for Robert Morris at Philadelphia to read and forward to Baltimore. Though the fighting was brief, it had been bloody. In one melee Hugh Mercer, Fredericksburg apothecary turned brigadier general, was savaged with seven bayonet thrusts after his horse had been killed from under him. “One of these wounds is in his forehead, but the most alarming of them are in his belly,” wrote physician Benjamin Rush, who attended Mercer at the Princeton field hospital. Washington was on his way to Morristown, which he deemed the place “best calculated of any in this quarter, to accommodate and refresh” the army. He could send only messages of support to the officer who had once supplied so many nostrums for Patsy Parke Custis. Fatally wounded, Mercer was to die in agony on January 11.
At Pluckemin, Washington waited for nearly a thousand troops to arrive who could not “through fatigue and hunger” keep up with the main body of the army. In Hackensack in November, Thomas Paine had written in his pamphlet American Crisis: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” The recent victories were brittle. The Pennsylvania militia had left their blankets at Burlington. Many on the icy roads were “entirely barefooted,” Peale, at Pluckemin, wrote in his diary. He got a raw hide to make these men moccasins, “but made a bad hand of it, for want of a proper needle or awl.”
Robert Morris in Philadelphia had occupied a crucial role since Congress’s departure for Baltimore in Maryland. He and a few others, remaining behind, formed an executive committee with the authority to forward supplies to Washington and fulfill other much-needed services. In addition, he himself made loans to Washington that were applied, in particular, to the payment of bounties for troops who stayed on beyond the end of their prescribed service. In his covering letter of January 5 to Morris, accompanying his dispatch to Hancock, Washington added: “Your sending the Inclosed [letter] for Mrs Washington to the Post Office (if in time for the Southern Mail) will much oblige, Dear Sir, Your Most Obedient servant.”
The fortunes of Washington’s wartime correspondence with Martha and Lund continued vexed. From Morristown, over a week later, the commander was to beg the Philadelphia financier, as a favor, to obtain at the post office and forward to him “as opportunity offers” such letters as came “by the southern mail…A Letter or two from my Family are regularly sent by the Post, but very irregularly received, which is rather mortifying, as it deprives me of the consolation of hearing from home on domestic matters.”
How early Martha knew of her husband’s transformative victories at Trenton and Princeton, and that he was safe and, if much harassed, well, is unclear. But Washington replied later in January to a letter of Jacky’s of the seventh: “Providence has heretofore saved us in a remarkable manner, and on this we must principally rely. Every person, in every State, should exert himself to facilitate the raising and Marching the New Regiments to the Army with all possible expedition.” He wrote matter-of-factly, discussing New England regiments, of “that hunger, & thirst after glory which spurs on…to distinguished Acts.” His own hunger for glory was slaked for the time being. He wanted instead pledges from the different states of recruits for the “standing army”—eighty-eight regiments in all—now forming and that, come the summer, he would command. From Williamsburg his brother-in-law Bartholomew Dandridge wrote in January: “I have the pleasure to inform you that the business of recruiting goes on well, and that we have a fair prospect of raising our new Regiments in good time.” Owing to pressure of business, Bartholomew had not seen his sister Martha. John Augustine Washington visited his sister-in-law at Mount Vernon and sent the general, on the twenty-fourth, a pleasing account of her. Above all, Washington wanted his wife with him. In February, the British were established in New York and in Rhode Island. Martha’s residence at Morristown became feasible.
Some years later, submitting “Lawful” wartime accounts to Congress, Washington would include “Mrs Washington’s travelling Expenses in coming to and returning from my winter quarters annually.…The money to defray which being taken from my private purse and brought with her from Virginia.” He wrote: “in the commencement of them”—when she first traveled to join him in Cambridge—these expenses “appeared at first view to wear the complexion of a private charge,” and he was in doubt about “the propriety” of charging them to the public account. But, he noted, he was obliged by “the embarrassed situation of our [national] affairs” continually to postpone the visit home that he “every year contemplated between the close of one campaign and the opening of another.” He had ended by judging Martha’s traveling expenses, “incidental thereto and the consequence of my self-denial,” “just with respect to the public” and “convenient” with respect to himself. In the accounts he submitted, he included an account for sixty-one-odd Continental dollars, comprising Mrs. Washington’s journey to Morristown “when the army lay there.”
On March 6, 1777, he wrote impatiently to “The Commanding Officer” in Philadelphia: “Being informed that Mrs Washington was to set out from Virginia for Philadelphia on Monday the 24th Ultimo [February], I presume she must be, e’re this, in that City.” Martha’s journey from Mount Vernon to Morristown, with Jacky as her escort, had been far from smooth. When she passed through Baltimore, she found some members of Congress packing up the lodgings that they had occupied while Howe threatened Philadelphia. The roads were busy, and Philadelphia itself was in a state of some chaos as other, more prescient delegates made haste to secure quarters. Martha lodged in the city, as she had the previous year, at Benjamin Randolph’s on Chestnut Street. On March 15 the Continental Journal informed its readers that “His Excellency” had “the satisfaction of his amiable lady’s company.” Martha had arrived at Morristown that day. At Cambridge and at New York the Vassall house and the Mortier house had provided elegant lodgings, and there had been families of standing in the locale for company. At Morristown headquarters were the tavern on the green, and the military “family” formed the principal society.
Washington had been dangerously ill shortly before Martha reached headquarters and was still recovering. Samuel Washington, far away in western Virginia, had earlier requested a portrait of his absent brother. George growled in return on the fifteenth: “two insurmountable obstacles offer themselves—the want of a Painter—and, if a Painter could be brought hither, the want of time to Sit.” Should Sam ever get “a Picture of mine, taken from the life,” he wrote, it must be when he was “remov’d from the busy Scenes of a Camp.”
In a time of privation at camp, Washington thanked Hancock on the twenty-ninth for a “valuable present of Fish…nothing could be more acceptable.” But even such small pleasures were a distraction from the stern work to be done. “The Genl. tho’ exceeding fond of Salt Fish,” he continued, “is happy enough never to think of it unless it is placed before him, for which reason it would give him concern if Mr Hancock should put himself to the least trouble in forwarding any to Camp on his Acc’t.” He had information that the British in New York were embarking an expedition of 3,000 men, and conjectured Philadelphia to be its object.
Severe difficulties faced Congress and the commander-in-chief, as the “standing army” of the United States struggled to fill its ranks. Washington told his brother Sam in early April that the troops were coming in “exceedingly slow.” Whether from “an unwillingness in the Men to Enlist, or to the Idleness and dissipation of the Officers, and their reluctance to leave their friends & acquaintance,” he could not say: “it looks to me as if we should never get an army assembled.” Though the military situation was not to improve, Washington’s spirits slowly revived, following his wife’s arrival at headquarters.