“His Excellency and Mrs Greene danced upwards of three hours.”
THE TIME HAD NEARLY COME for Washington and Martha to part once more. To Washington’s chagrin, the French admiral the Comte d’Estaing did not arrive in American waters in time to give battle to the British fleet while they occupied the Delaware. Reacting with alarm to reports of the new alliance, the British in Philadelphia embarked baggage and stores. Washington surmised that Henry Clinton, recently knighted, now British commander in America, planned to make for the Hudson Highlands. There the enemy would hope to take American posts before auxiliary French troops arrived to bolster the Continental numbers. News of the Franco-American alliance had revived Congress. Those delegates who had earlier favored making terms were now among the foremost to reject the offer of peace that the British commissioners brought to Pennsylvania.
While Martha headed south to Mount Vernon, Washington’s own intention was to force an engagement on Clinton before the British forces could reach the Hudson. On June 18, upon receiving news that the evacuation of Philadelphia had taken place early that morning, Washington informed Congress at York that he had “put six brigades in motion” to follow the enemy, three, under General Lee, marching off at midday, the others following in the afternoon. The next morning, at five o’clock, he departed with the rest of the army.
On the twenty-fourth, at Hopewell, New Jersey, Washington decided to attack the enemy, an intention in which his generals supported him—except for Lee, who declared himself strongly opposed to such a plan. Indeed, Lee gave up the command of the advance divisions to Lafayette, only to demand it back a day after the marquis pressed forward. Washington wrote to the volatile general on the twenty-sixth: “it is not in my power fully to remove it [the command of the detachment sent forward] without wounding the feelings of the Marquis de Lafayette.” He placated Lee with the command of the “whole advanced body.”
Two days later Washington, with the main army, was advancing toward Monmouth Courthouse, where the British and Hessians were encamped. But the morning of June 28 had an “unfortunate and bad beginning,” as Washington later informed his brother, John Augustine. Suddenly, three miles from the courthouse, General Lee and his advance troops, 6,000 of them, appeared. They were fleeing General Cornwallis and the enemy, who were pressing hard upon their rear.
What followed owed much to the American commander’s leadership, though he wrote modestly about the role he played: “the disorder arising from it [this retreat] would have proved fatal to the Army, had not that bountiful Providence, which has never failed us in the hour of distress, enabled me to form a Regiment or two (of those that were retreating) in the face of the Enemy, and under their fire.” Washington arrested the flight of enough troops to form a body of men to repulse the oncoming British. He limited his engagement with Lee to an angry exchange, then sent the general to the rear and later had him court-martialed. “In the Morning we expected to renew the Action,” he told John Augustine, “when behold! the enemy had stole off as Silent as the Grave in the Night after having sent away their wounded. Without exaggerating,” Washington concluded with satisfaction, “their trip through the Jerseys in killed, Wounded, Prisoners, & deserters, has cost them at least 2000 Men & of their best Troops.” He ordered, in celebration of the second anniversary of the declaration of independence, on July 4, a firing of cannons and a feu de joie, or rapid rifle salute, of the whole line on the Brunswick side of the Raritan.
The pitched battle at Monmouth Courthouse represented America’s last effort in the cause of independence unaided by a foreign power. As ever, following an engagement, the commander-in-chief had been punctilious in assuring his wife that he was safe. Major General Benedict Arnold, military governor of Philadelphia since the British had abandoned the city, wrote on June 30 to Washington, “I received your Excellency’s Favour of yesterday, at 10 o Clock this morning with the Letter Inclosed for Mrs. Washington which I dispatch’d immediately by Express. I beg leave to present your Excellency my Congratulatory Compliments on the Victory you have obtained over the Enemy.”
Martha had returned to Mount Vernon earlier that month, Lund Washington acting as her escort from Pennsylvania. She found her son newly a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly in Williamsburg. Though Jacky had earlier intended to offer himself for New Kent County, when he meant to reside there, the attractions of his birthplace had palled. Instead, he and George Mason had been elected in April by the “gentlemen of Fairfax,” the property holders of Fairfax County. “I never wished anything more in my life than to settle in this county,” he averred to Washington on May 11. “I know the people, they are better disposed than any part of Virginia.” He was satisfied, he went on, that he would live happier there “than in any other part.” He added blithely that communication with the Parke Custis lands in the south, as they lay on the water, would be “very easy, and not attended with great expense,” whenever the Chesapeake Bay was open for shipping.
Jacky, looking about for a home to buy, settled on Abingdon, a plantation twelve miles north of Mount Vernon and upriver of Alexandria. It belonged to a Fairfax County neighbor, Robert Alexander, and Washington deemed it in May “a pleasant Seat & capable of improvement.” He later wrote that his stepson’s residence at Abingdon would be “an agreeable measure to your Mother—and a pleasing one to me.” The price of the estate was, as Jacky acknowledged, “very extravagant”—£12,000. His stepfather agreed but remarked: “as you want it to live at—as it answers your’s & Nelly’s views—I do not think the price ought to be a capital object with you.” Jacky had determined to sell some parcels of his estates on the York and Pamunkey. Washington urged, on May 26, that any money secured by these sales should be “immediately vested in the funds, or laid out in other lands.” He warned his stepson: “if this is not done be assured, it will melt like Snow before a hot Sun, and you will be able to give as little acct of the going of it.…Lands are permanent—rising fast in value—and will be very dear when our Independency is established, and the Importance of America better known.”
Jacky made a very bad bargain, including paying Alexander, at the expiration of twenty-four years, the principal—£12,000—“with compound interest.” He wrote to Washington on July 15, “Nothing could have induced me to give such terms, but the unconquerable desire I had to live in the neighbourhood of Mount Vernon and in the county of Fairfax.” He intended, he wrote, to sell much of the estate he had inherited, leaving only some profitable tracts in King William and New Kent that could be looked after by a single manager.
Though he apologized for “intermeddling,” in his response of August 3, Washington did not allow Jacky’s profligacy to pass without comment: “let me entreat you to consider the consequences of paying compound Interest.…I presume you are not unacquainted with the fact of £12,000 at compound Interest amounting to upwards of £48,000 in twenty four years.” He suggested that Jacky sell the entire Parke Custis holdings in the south, advising him: “depend upon it, while you live in Fairfax you will get very little benefit from an estate in New Kent or King William, unless you have much better luck than most who have plantations at a distance.” He instanced Bryan Fairfax and other Mount Vernon neighbors as landowners possibly disposed to sell Jacky tracts contiguous to Abingdon.
There was only so much that Washington in White Plains could do to advise the young Virginian. The Franco-American operation in America was under strain. After French troopships arrived in July at Sandy Hook, a project that French admiral d’Estaing formed to attack New York foundered: the Sound proved too shallow to allow the French men-of-war passage. A joint attack on Newport, Rhode Island, on August 9, in which d’Estaing and his fleet acted in uneasy concert with General Sullivan and American troops, enjoyed no greater success. A storm brewed up before the French fleet could engage with enemy shipping. The Languedoc, the French flagship, was badly damaged, and the French admiral insisted on sailing away to have it repaired in Boston. Sullivan and his fellow officers were left to repine and expostulate that the comte’s retreat was “derogatory to the honour of France.”
Tempers rose high. American volunteer Lafayette was in Boston, about to take ship across the Atlantic, hoping to return to America with a French commission. He begged d’Estaing to attempt a new joint operation, but the admiral refused. A battle later in August, when Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene came to Sullivan’s assistance, was inconclusive, and the British remained in control of Newport. When d’Estaing’s fleet was repaired, it headed south to the West Indies, eventually to prosecute war against the British there. It had hardly been an auspicious beginning to the French alliance.
More welcome at White Plains than all this news was the gift of a fine chestnut horse, property of Thomas Nelson of Yorktown. The patriot, determined that his favorite mount should go to war, sent an accompanying note to Washington: “He is not quite reconciled to the beat of Drums, but [with] that he will soon be familiarized.” The American commander wrote to thank the donor for this new horse, which he named Nelson. He was pragmatic about the Franco-American alliance: “The arrival of the French Fleet upon the Coast of America is a great, & striking event; but the operations of it have been injured by a number of unforeseen & unfavourable circumstances—which, though they ought not to detract from the merit, and good intention of our great Ally, has nevertheless lessened the importance of their Services in a great Degree.” Washington mused: “I do not know what to make of the enemy at New York.” If their stay there were not from necessity—“proceeding from an inferiority in their Fleet—want of Provisions—or other causes, I know not”—it was, he wrote, “profoundly mysterious, unless they look for considerable reinforcements and are waiting the arrival of them to commence their operations. Time will show.”
A month later the British designs were no clearer. Washington marched the army in mid-September to Fredericksburg, New York. From this vantage point it could, as needs be, support posts on the Hudson or, alternatively, defend French ships in Boston harbor from attack. In pursuit of the enemy, the troops endured a wearying series of autumnal marches and countermarches up and down the North River.
In the early autumn Jacky paid a visit to headquarters and secured Washington’s consent to the sale of almost all the dower lands. Claiborne’s only was excepted. Jacky aimed to sell the land he owned there outright as well, all but the White House estate. In return for the loss of the dower land income, Jacky was to pay his stepfather—and his mother, if she survived her husband—an annuity of £2,100 in silver coin. The payment and value, in paper dollars, of this annuity were, over the course of the following years, to be the subject of altercation between debtor and creditor. For the moment Washington only urged Jacky to reinvest his gains in land: “our paper currency is fluctuating…by parting with your lands you give a certainty for an uncertainty.” In Virginia, Martha had made her own visit of inspection to Claiborne’s. She found fault with a great deal and gave specific orders, all of which she reported to her husband. On October 27 he wrote to reproach James Hill, manager of the diminished Parke Custis estates: “I have understood that, till Mrs. Washington was at my Plantation at Claiborne’s in August & directed or rather advised the Beeves [cattle] and Corn to be Sold, no steps were taken to do it; in short, that you were very seldom at or gave yourself much trouble about the Plantn.”
Not only did Martha direct “Beeves and Corn” to be sold in Washington’s absence, she insisted that Jacky rent the property from Washington and take it in hand himself. Burwell Bassett, at Martha’s wish, appraised land, slaves, and stock at Claiborne’s, so as to find a rental value that would be fair to his brother-in-law and to Jacky. Washington wrote to Bassett from Fredericksburg on October 30: “Mrs Washington in a late letter informs me that you have been so obliging as to assure her that you would readily render me any services of this kind in your power.” He offered his brother-in-law in thanks one of the “choice Bull-calves…descended from Mr [John] Custis’s English bull” at Claiborne’s. Martha’s insistence that the farm be retained is striking. The whimsical young Parke Custises now seemed settled at Abingdon. On her husband’s principle of land for land, should she face widowhood, she could parlay Claiborne’s for a home near them.
Washington at Fredericksburg anxiously examined spies’ accounts of British movements. “We still remain in a disagreeable state of suspense respecting the enemy’s determinations,” he told Bassett. There were “circumstances and evidence” leading to suspicions that the British meant to evacuate New York. “A few days must, I think, unfold their views.” Four days earlier he had written irritably to his brother John Augustine: “If I was to hazard an opinion upon the occasion, it would be, that they do not leave it this Winter. If I was to be asked for a reason, I should say because I think they ought to do so they having almost, invariably run counter to all expectation.” Looking ahead, he continued: “I begin to despair of seeing my own home this Winter, & where my Quarters will be, I can give little acct of at this time.”
Martha wrote on November 2 to her brother Bartholomew Dandridge that she was “very uneasy,” having “some reason to expect that I shall take another trip to the northward. The poor General is not likely to come to see us, from what I hear—I expect to hear certainly by the next post.” If she were to be so happy as to stay at home, she added, “I shall hope to see you with my sister[-in-law] here as soon as you are at leisure.” Their mother, who now lived with her son, had been very ill. “I wish I was near enough to see you and her,” Martha wrote to Bartholomew, and she sent love to “my sister Aylett.” Their younger sister, Betsy, had recently lost her husband and both her sons. She enclosed, in “a bundle for my mama,” a pair of shoes for “little Patty,” her brother’s daughter and her namesake: “there was not a doll to be got in the city of Philadelphia, or I would have sent her one.” She would soon have ample opportunity to make further purchases herself in that metropolis. Shortly after she wrote this letter, Washington deputed his senior aide, the Virginian John Fitzgerald, to oversee Martha’s journey north as far as Philadelphia. By the time she arrived in that city, the commander hoped to have determined where the army would winter.
At home, life at Mount Vernon was comfortable and full of small pleasures. Nelly was expecting again, and Jacky was occupied with readying Abingdon for occupation in the new year. Martha’s journey to Philadelphia was not easy. She had been delayed on the road when the springs of her traveling carriage were found wanting. Earlier repairs to this chariot had not been entirely satisfactory, and Washington had hoped to acquire a new carriage. Merchant John Mitchell, who served under Greene as a deputy quartermaster, cast about for one in Philadelphia without success: “none of them appears to me fit for your service or such as would please Mrs Washington. They are all carriages which have been long used and refitted up to serve the purchasers that now own them.” Four days later Mitchell offered a chariot, “Mrs Montgomery’s,” for £750. It was, he wrote, “the best to be got here, and as reasonable as can be expected from the very extravagant price of every article and the folly of people in general giving into these prices.” Though Washington declared an interest in acquiring this handsome vehicle, Martha ended by traveling in her own untrustworthy chariot. On hearing that new springs had been dispatched to her on the road, Washington begged Mitchell for news of her arrival in Philadelphia. The commander still did not know when his winter quarters would be fixed. He had therefore, “under the uncertainty of her stay in the city,” politely declined Mitchell’s offer that Martha lodge with him and his wife. He cited “the trouble of such a visitor (for more than a day or so) being too much for a private family.” Wherever either Washington went now, august and stately addresses and visitations from the great and good were to be expected. Mitchell, instead, was commissioned to obtain for Martha “good lodgings” and see to it that her horses be stabled.
Washington was now satisfied that the British did not mean either to evacuate New York or to mount a winter assault on his army. The activity in the city in October had proved preliminary to the dispatch of a convoy with troops to the south, Sir Henry Clinton commanding. As yet ignorant of their precise destination, Washington must rely on General Benjamin Lincoln, American commander in the south, to make the best defense possible of Charleston and Savannah, both in American hands. In late November he ordered the army under his own command into winter quarters.
Washington had determined that he and his military “family” would winter, with seven of the thirteen brigades that constituted the army in the north, at Middlebrook, New Jersey. He was pleased with what he found when he arrived there on December 11. The location of the winter cantonment on the Raritan River allowed for an easy chain of supply from Philadelphia. Immediately to the north rose the heavily wooded Watchung Mountains, which afforded a liberal source of timber for hutting the army. Greene had secured as headquarters a number of rooms in a house about four miles west of the main camp. Its owner, Philadelphia merchant John Wallace, remained in occupation, somewhat inconveniently, of other rooms. At Pluckemin, still farther west, Henry Knox took up residence and mounted cannons in an artillery park. The flat Raritan plain was ideal ground for drilling, and a grand parade—or parade ground—was easily accommodated, as well as lodgings for Baron von Steuben. Greene and his wife, Caty, rented a house at Bound Brook, on the eastern bank of the Raritan. It was a world away from the rigors and hardship that had characterized the previous winter cantonment at Valley Forge. “The soldiers are very comfortable,” wrote Nathanael Greene to John Hancock on December 20. All that was wanted, from Washington’s point of view, was the domestic comfort that his wife represented.
It was to be several months before “Lady Washington” came to Middlebrook. In the latter half of December, her husband was summoned to Philadelphia, where she was now lodged. A congressional committee of conference, numbering Henry Laurens among its members, was charged with consulting the general about a Canadian expedition, which the French were urging, and about campaigns to succeed the winter encampments. Evading militia, light horse, and others who had hoped to greet him, Washington slipped into the city on December 22, and was reunited with Martha. Their residence—until February 2, 1779, when they left together for Middlebrook—was the town house on Chestnut Street, close to the State House, that Laurens and his wife occupied.
Laurens had recently resigned as president, in turbulent circumstances, and New York lawyer John Jay served in his place. All Philadelphia flocked to the house on Chestnut Street, seeking to fête and honor the southern delegate’s illustrious guests. Washington, however, was much in conference at the State House. He was of John Jay’s mind, that French ambitions in Canada were to be checked. Not all agreed. John Laurens wrote privately to his father, Henry, that he hoped no heed would be paid in Congress to the Marquis de Lafayette’s romantic visions of heading north in command of an allied expedition: “He lays down as self-evident that Canada cannot be conquered by American forces alone: that a Frenchman of birth and distinction at the head of four thousand of his countrymen, and speaking in the name of the Grand Monarque, is alone capable of producing a revolution in that country.” But some in Congress favored an expedition, so as to please the French; still somewhat amazed by the alliance itself, they were nervous that Franklin, recently joined by John Adams in Paris, might yet fail to ratify the treaty. A recent public breach between Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, lately American commissioners in France, had damaged Congress’s standing not only in France but also in Spain and Holland, whose friendship—and resources—America sought. In the unsettled atmosphere, there were those in Philadelphia who held that it would be unwise to deny America’s new ally its Canadian ambitions.
Besides, there were few in Philadelphia who were not impressed by Monsieur Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, Louis XVI’s minister plenipotentiary to the United States of America. Upon his arrival in the city in July, installing himself in a commodious house in Market Street, he had lavished entertainment on delegates and on city dignitaries. The forms and protocol on which Gérard insisted as due a representative of his royal master awed these citizens. Many of them inhabitants of meager lodgings, they were hard-pressed to reciprocate. But they made the attempt, spending hundreds of pounds on banquets in taverns. The presence of General and “Lady” Washington in the city, and the advent of the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, only drove the populace to new heights of extravagance. Early in 1779 Nathanael Greene, who came from Quaker stock, reported that he had sat down to a dinner in the city that boasted 160 dishes.
The dinners “abroad” to which the general and Martha were constantly bidden left the commander in no good humor. He was to tell General Schuyler in February that he had enjoyed “few moments of relaxation” while in Philadelphia. Even visits to Robert Morris and his wife, with whom the Washingtons dined on January 4, were not entirely comfortable. The Laurenses, their hosts, and the Morrises were on opposite sides of the Deane–Lee controversy. But these dinners afforded Martha—pragmatic, sociable, and tasteful—good reason to patronize Simpson’s tailors and other modish emporia, if not as extensively as she had two summers before, when prices were lower. Philadelphia was also a good source of children’s toys. She told Jacky and Nelly in March 1779 that she had a “pretty new doll” for her eldest granddaughter, Bet.
On Twelfth Night—January 6, 1779—two evenings after they had dined with the Morrises, Washington was for once in good humor. He and Martha attended a ball at the elegant home of Samuel Powel, former mayor of the city, and his wife, Elizabeth Willing Powel. Benjamin Franklin’s daughter, matron Sarah Bache, was of the company and some days later wrote to her father, in Paris, of her conversation with the general: “he told me it was the anniversary of his marriage. It was just twenty years that night.”
Washington proved himself so able in meetings with the Committee of Conference that, before the new year, he had won his object. No invasion of Canada would be attempted. Discussions about other campaigns to come were protracted but ended again with Washington’s will prevailing. For want of money, operations, except against marauding Indians in the West, should be defensive. He was well aware that his stock had risen following his powerful performances in committee, but he inveighed against the public mood when he wrote, late in December, to Benjamin Harrison, now a state counselor in Virginia, “If I was to be called upon to draw A picture of the times—& of Men—…I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation & extravagance seems to have laid fast hold of most of them.…Party disputes & personal quarrels are the great business of the day whilst the momentous concerns of an empire—a great & accumulated debt—ruined finances—depreciated money & want of credit…are but secondary considerations & postponed from day to day—from week to week as if our affairs wore the most promising aspect.” He continued:
In the present situation of things I cannot help asking—Where is [George] Mason—[George] Wythe—[Thomas] Jefferson, [Robert] Nicholas—[Edmund] Pendleton—[Thomas] Nelson—& another I could name [Benjamin Harrison himself]?…Your Money is now sinking 5 pr Ct a day in this City.…And yet an assembly—a Concert—a Dinner, or Supper (that will cost three or four hundred pounds) will not only take Men off from acting in but even from thinking of this business, while a great part of the Officers of your army, from absolute necessity, are quitting the Service and the more virtuous few, rather than do this, are sinking by sure degrees into beggary & want.
Washington added soberly: “I feel more real distress on acct of the present appearances of things than I have done at any one time since the commencement of the dispute.” As he had done before when matters seemed hopeless, he would trust in “Providence.” Either “Providence” or his haranguing had its effect in one quarter. Harrison and Nelson, among others, resumed office as delegates to Congress in the spring.
Besides congressional calls on his time, Washington had to receive delegations from numerous bodies with addresses. That of the magistrates of the city ran in part: “you have defeated the designs of a cruel invading enemy, sent by the unrelenting King and Parliament of Britain to enslave a FREE PEOPLE. By the vigilance and military prowess of your Excellency and the brave Army under your command, we now in this city enjoy PEACE FREEDOM and INDEPENDENCE; and we hope, worthy Sir, that you will see the same compleatly established throughout the Thirteen United States, which will redound immortal honour to you, Sir, and to your country for so great and good a man.” If they did not match this florid prose, Alexander Hamilton and others of Washington’s “family” with him in Philadelphia became adept at framing suitable responses for the general to deliver.
In January, the Supreme Executive Council, with Joseph Reed at its head, requested of Washington his full-length likeness, to be taken by Charles Willson Peale, for their council chamber. In addition, Peale had commissions for portraits of the commander from both M. Gérard, who wished to send one to His Most Christian Majesty the King of France, and from Don Juan de Miralles, the Spanish agent in Philadelphia, who had his own royal master in mind. Though Martha appears to have been an enthusiast for the project, for once Washington escaped a duty he disliked. Owing to pressure of other business, sittings were deferred.
The commander was, by January 29, fretting to leave Philadelphia, citing, in a letter to President Jay, the “many inconveniences to the common business of the army” that his long stay in the city had occasioned. Jay did not acquiesce in his request without extracting his pound of flesh. With the Washingtons’ departure set for February 2, the previous morning the general and Jay visited artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière at his house. The commander, the artist noted, “condescended with great good nature to sit about three-fourths of an hour” for a profile in black lead, “form of a medal.” Du Simitière profited from the sitting with a number of engravings. The delegates and populace of Philadelphia continued to feud and feast. George and Martha departed, as planned, the following day and on February 5 reached Middlebrook.
Correspondence with his cousin Lund at Mount Vernon and with Jacky over the course of this winter had brought Washington no solace. Before he left for Philadelphia, he had written to Lund, “I am afraid Jack Custis, in spite of all the admonition and advice I gave him against selling faster than he bought, is making a ruinous hand of his Estate.” He had touched then on the depreciation of current money, or Virginia money—as the paper bills now issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia and denominated in pounds, shillings, and pence, were indifferently known—against the Spanish silver dollar.1 Pondering, in Middlebrook, on February 24, 1779, the sale of his slaves “at public vendue,” or auction, Washington was irresolute: “if these poor wretches are to be held in a state of slavery, I do not see that a change of masters will render it more irksome, provided husband & wife, and Parents & children are not separated from each other, which is not my intention to do.” But the depreciation of the currency was yet again paramount in his mind. Being at such a distance, he could not judge when the “tide of depreciation” had turned, and it was the optimum time to sell. It was a point of such nicety, he wrote, that the longer he reflected upon the subject the more at a loss he was. Before the war an adult male slave of working age might have commanded a price of a hundred pounds. While his cousin agonized at headquarters, Lund had, in January, sold on his behalf nine slaves, including Phyllis, Bett, and Orford, for a total of £2,303 19s.
At Middlebrook, where George and Martha remained from February till early June 1779, the weather was consistently mild and moderate. The hutting and the heavily wooded site afforded the troops a degree of comfort and warmth. But the depreciation of the currency had alarming consequences both for the provisioning of the current army and for the recruiting of future regiments. Washington wrote to President Jay toward the end of April: “a waggon-load of money will scarcely purchase a waggon-load of provisions.” A week later he wrote to New York delegate Gouverneur Morris, referring to the reluctance of both officers and men to soldier for the beggarly sum that was their pay: “Our army, as it now stands, is but little more than the skeleton of an army; and I hear of no steps that are taking to give it strength and substance.”
Martha shared other of his anxieties with Jacky and Nelly, writing from Middlebrook in March: “all is quiet in this quarter. It is from the southward that we expect to hear news. We are very anxious to know how our affairs are going in that quarter.” A British expeditionary force from New York had launched a successful attack on Savannah late the previous year, and General Lincoln feared for the patriot garrison at Charleston.
At Middlebrook, as in other winter encampments, Washington had officers of the different regiments on duty to dine at his table together with his chiefs of staff, his aides and secretaries. and other guests. Now that Martha was with him, Lucy Knox and Caty Greene, living close by at Pluckemin and Bound Brook respectively, were often of the party. When Massachusetts army surgeon John Thacher dined at the Wallace house on February 25, no hint of the difficulties facing Washington was vouchsafed. Searching in his host’s countenance for “some peculiar traces of excellence,” Thacher found it “fine, cheerful, open” and expressive in conversation. But writing of the “veneration and respect” and even love that Washington commanded, he added: “He is feared even when silent.” Washington’s silences could unnerve the most confident. In conversation, Thacher further observed, “a placid smile is frequently observed on his lips, but a loud laugh, it is said, seldom if ever escapes him.” The general, he noted, while attentive to all, left his guests “after the compliment of a few glasses.” The Washingtons were adept and efficient hosts and, unlike at Philadelphia, could retire at leisure. Of Martha, Thacher remarked that she was uncommonly dignified as well as affable, if displaying “no striking marks of beauty.” He heard, too, from the “Virginia officers” that she was honored for her benevolence and charity, ever “seeking for objects of affliction and poverty that she may extend to the sufferers the hand of kindness and relief.” Thacher went away with exactly the degree of confidence in the commander that these dinners were designed to engender.
There was, in fact, a new energy about Washington. Following his impressive performance before the Committee of Conference, Congress had effectively ceded to him direction of the grand strategy of the war. A year earlier this had been the precinct of Gates and an obstructive Board of War. Now the general, with “Lady Washington” at his side, and the Knoxes and Greenes willing accomplices, embarked on a series of successful enterprises in the rustic setting of the Raritan valley. They convinced Congress that Washington should also be vested with the power to conduct direct joint operations with the French in America. The first of these enterprises was a vastly expensive entertainment, a belated celebration of the first anniversary of the alliance with France, that Henry Knox hosted on February 18 in the academy at the artillery park at Pluckemin. Knox later described the occasion to his brother with some pride: “A most genteel entertainment given by self & officers—everybody allowed it to be the first of the kind ever exhibited in this state at least—three to four hundred gentlemen and above seventy Ladies—all of the first ton in the State.” Fireworks and elaborate allegorical transparencies—large scenes painted on glass or translucent cloth, back-lit—occupied a part of the evening, and Washington led off the dancing with Lucy Knox. Washington, meditating further entertainment, sent to Mitchell in February for a service of “Queen’s china” (Queen’s ware), the creamware from England off which they dined when en famille at Mount Vernon.
As was intended, private accounts as well as newspaper paragraphs giving details of this distinguished compliment to France inclined M. Gérard, in Philadelphia, to take a kindly view of the American high command. At Middlebrook the Washingtons and the “family” and other officers and ladies got up another, more private, entertainment. General Greene wrote to a friend on March 19: “We had a little dance at my quarters a few evenings past. His Excellency and Mrs Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk.”
News came in April that M. Gérard himself, together with Don Juan de Miralles, had accepted Washington’s invitation to review the army at Middlebrook. Though the review was deferred until May 2, Henry Laurens was one of many from Philadelphia who made a point of traveling to New Jersey to be among the company on the day. On a stage erected in a “spacious field,” Martha, Lucy Knox, and Caty Greene, preeminent among the other ladies, took their places. The whole of the army was paraded “in martial array” on the field. Thirteen cannons then signaled the approach of Major Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee—cousin to the Lees of Stratford Hall—and his dragoons. Behind followed Washington, his aides, the “foreign ministers” or envoys and their retinues, and general officers. Once these dignitaries had reviewed the ranks and received full military honors, they joined the ladies on the stage, while the army performed wondrous “field manoeuvres and evolutions, with firing of cannon and musketry.”
If the review impressed upon the Europeans that the American army was a credible fighting force, it was only a lure. During the conferences and dinners that followed, Washington wished to return to the project of joint operations with the Comte d’Estaing and his fleet, which had come to such a resounding halt the previous summer. He wished also to pay proper respect to the Spanish agent, de Miralles. Though it was not news as yet to be shared with the public, he knew from President Jay that Spain aimed to ally with France against Great Britain, with the object of recovering Gibraltar and other territories lost in the Seven Years’ War. Under the terms of the proposed treaty, Spain would enter the American war as France’s ally.
Martha, it would appear, struck Don Juan’s fancy during the foreign envoys’ stay in Middlebrook. From Philadelphia he was to shower her, in proper diplomatic fashion, with luxuries from Havana and other Spanish possessions. Washington’s conversations with Gérard also bore fruit. When the minister plenipotentiary wrote home to the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, for the first time he praised an American. With Washington, he favored rekindling the joint operations with the Comte d’Estaing’s fleet.
Those whom the Washingtons courted would not always be as suave as Gérard and Don Juan. The outlandish and ragged appearance of some Delaware Indian chiefs, who this same month came to pay their respects to Washington while en route to Philadelphia, provoked much mirth in Middlebrook. But the commander treated them with as much courtesy as he had the Europeans and led them on a review of the troops. Their support would be crucial in summer operations against the British and Indians in the West, which he had entrusted to John Sullivan.
At last Washington heard that the British had come out of New York and were heading up the Hudson. He had to move fast to defend West Point and other key positions on the river. Martha left for Virginia, Washington was to tell a Mount Vernon neighbor later in the month, “so soon as I began my march from Middlebrook,” that date being June 3. The couple could not know the time or place of their next meeting. They could pride themselves on having restored to some degree, on the Raritan plain, the reputation of America in the eyes of the world that was France and Spain.
1 Like everyone else, the American commander-in-chief avoided, when he could, transactions in the Continental dollars issued by Congress. While Virginia currency depreciated alarmingly against the Spanish dollar, the Continental dollar was rapidly becoming all but worthless. In 1777 $115 Continental currency had had a value of a hundred dollars cash. In May 1779, $1,215 Continental currency secured the same sum. A year thence a hundred Spanish dollars would be equivalent to $4,600 in Continental money.