“so extremely cold, that there was no living abroad”
SHOULD THE BRITISH TAKE West Point and other American garrisons on the Hudson, patriot forces would be denied the easy access to militia, troops, and supplies that New England currently afforded. Washington had no option but to strike camp and march north. He took with him a ring, set with a tiny and fanciful image of Martha in Elizabethan ruff and hood. While still at Middlebrook, he wrote on May 28 to Nicholas Rogers, now a colonel and author of the quaint souvenir: “Difficult as it is to strike a likeness on so small a scale, it is the opinion of many that you have not failed in the present attempt.” He added dryly: “The dress is not less pleasing for being a copy of antiquity. It would be happy for us, if in these days of depravity the imitation of our ancestors were more extensively adopted—their virtues would not hurt us.”
Washington later admitted to his brother John Augustine that he was “illy enough prepared, Heaven knows,” in the month of June 1779, to defend the Hudson against British attack. Ammunition, provisions, and wagons for the journey were lacking. Troops in the different winter cantonments were dispersed over a wide area and would have to rendezvous in the north. Washington feared, moreover, that the British troops might yet double back and launch an assault on New Jersey, with Philadelphia their ultimate aim. He ordered government stores and vital papers in that city to be moved to secure locations. The pleasant conditions in camp these months past, however, and the discipline that von Steuben had introduced had had their effect. The army he led was now in comparatively good spirits.
Martha was escorted southward by her husband’s principal secretary, Colonel James McHenry. They appear to have followed a circuitous route. Both American and British commanders at different times meditated kidnap of their enemy counterparts and of key enemy generals. Irrespective of the anxiety he himself would undergo, her husband was aware that the capture of “Lady Washington”—Martha was by now firmly established in American minds as a high personage of irreproachable patriotism—would sap the morale of citizenry as well as of soldiers. It must at all costs be avoided. Unharmed, Martha arrived at Mount Vernon in late July. Her grandchildren, newly ensconced with their parents at Abingdon, now numbered three: Nelly had given birth in March to another daughter. Jacky, though a fond father, was still in want of an heir.
The young Parke Custises were struggling to establish a comfortable home. Nelly had not been in good health since she gave birth that year. At some point following Martha’s return, it would seem that she took over the care of her infant granddaughter, Eleanor Parke Custis. An English nurse, Mrs. Anderson, and the baby became resident at Mount Vernon. The elder two Parke Custis children, Bet and Pat, remained with their ailing mother and their father at Abingdon. Jacky was not finding the responsibilities of home ownership easy. He was to complain to his stepfather in December of “the great load of family business which demands my utmost attention…I have been, ever since I settled here, struggling with every inconvenience that a person could meet with, in coming to a plantation in every respect out of order and in want of every necessary house…the master’s eye is necessary in most things.” An ambitious project to drain some swampy ground caused him infinite trouble, but Jacky, optimistic to the last, concluded: “I flatter myself with having in a few years one of the best meadows in the state.”
Far away in the north, while the American army was still some way from the Hudson, grim news reached Washington. The British had captured key garrisons, Stony Point and Fort Lafayette, on either bank of the Hudson. Washington wrote to Philip Schuyler on June 9: “We have the mortification to be spectators of this and…to see it out of our power to counteract a measure, from which we must experience many inconveniences.” He established headquarters later in the month at New Windsor, six miles above West Point, a stronghold he intended to defend against all comers. Following the loss of the garrisons, festivities in camp, to mark the third anniversary of independence, were muted.
Within days Washington learned that British generals William Tryon and Thomas Garth had sailed up Long Island Sound, plundered New Haven, and burned the public stores on July 6. Three days later they burned Fairfield, Connecticut, and on the eleventh, Norwalk. Houses, barns, stores, the church, the meetinghouses, schoolhouses, courthouses, and jails alike were torched. The monetary value of what was lost was immense. The mood of even the most fervent patriots in the eastern states was soured. Washington asked General Anthony Wayne to assess the “practicability” of an assault on Stony Point: “If it is undertaken, I should conceive it ought to be done by way of surprise in the night.” A laconic entry in the commander’s accounts records the success of Wayne’s enterprise on the night of the fifteenth: “To expenses in reconnoitring the enemy’s post at Stony Point previous to the assault of it, and on a visit to it after it was taken…£10.10.” The recapture of the garrison raised spirits dramatically. Five days thereafter President Jay addressed Washington in the following terms: “General Wayne’s coup de main occasions as much joy as the barbarous conflagrations of the enemy excite indignation. The former, I hope, will lead to further successes, the latter to retaliation and resentments favourable to our independence.”
During the summer the American commander oversaw the strengthening of fortifications at West Point and in addition worked with the Board of War to standardize uniforms in accordance with regulations for the army that von Steuben had recently issued. His attention never drifted far from the dangers of campaigns to come. He wrote, on August 1, to Edmund Randolph in Virginia that they labored under the effects of “two of the greatest evils that can befall a state of war, namely, a reduced army at the beginning of a campaign which, more than probably, is intended for a decisive one, and want of money, or rather a redundancy of it, by which it become of no value.” The term of no fewer than 8,000 troops who had enlisted for three years in 1777 would expire in May 1780. It was difficult to persuade officers or men to reenlist, when their livelihoods at home were threatened by an ever-depreciating currency and when negligible army pay was no lure. But discussion of these deficiencies, both in Congress and in state assemblies, was often heated and ill tempered and more often than not productive of stasis. In Philadelphia, Henry Laurens and Robert Morris lamented the political divisions in Congress. In Paris, the French government was disturbed by reports of these differences. At West Point, Washington and his “family” and staff corresponded with all parties concerned and urged action to secure men, money, arms, powder, and stores.
Provisions at West Point—which Washington caustically named “this happy spot”—in the summer were in short supply. Having invited ladies to dine at headquarters on August 16, he begged Dr. John Cochran, surgeon general of the army, to warn his wife, who would be of the party, that the plates off which they would eat, once tin, were now “iron,” from constant use. Nor would the meal be lavish. There was generally “a ham (sometimes a shoulder) of bacon, to grace the head of the table,” he wrote, and “a piece of roast” to adorn the foot. It was probable, Washington conceded, that the cook would have “a mind to cut a figure” and offer beefsteak pies or dishes of crabs. But this menial had recently chanced upon the discovery that “apples will make pies” and, “amidst the violence of his efforts,” might substitute fruit for meat. If the commander’s humor was heavy, his hospitality in trying circumstances could not be faulted.
While she was at Middlebrook in March, Martha had told Jacky and Nelly that it was “from the southward” that they expected news. In October disastrous intelligence from Savannah reached Washington at West Point. D’Estaing and his fleet—with a French general and troops on board—had appeared in late September off the coast of Georgia. In the expectation that the French admiral would head north, Congress urged the “middle and eastern States” to furnish Washington and the foreign fleet and army with “men and provisions.” D’Estaing, however, turned his ships toward Savannah. American general Benjamin Lincoln hurried from Charleston to join him. On October 9 they made a joint assault on the British lines, which failed miserably, and in the wake of the disaster the French fleet and army withdrew once more to the West Indies. All thought of a joint attack with Washington on New York was now in abeyance, and Lincoln returned to Charleston.
Martha, resident in Virginia, was reliant on correspondence with her husband at headquarters in the north for firm news of campaigns in other southern states as well for accounts of his own travails. Erroneous reports in the Virginia Gazette of the campaign in the south raised others’ hopes. Jacky wrote to Washington on October 7, two days before the disastrous attempt on Savannah, to congratulate him on the Comte d’Estaing’s “important success in Georgia,” declaring himself “very sanguine in my expectations of a glorious close to the war this campaign, and in seeing you in Fairfax this winter.”
Martha no doubt was a good deal less sanguine. Besides, there were troubles at Mount Vernon that summer and autumn to oppress her. A long drought in northern Virginia engendered a poor harvest at the plantation, and the finances of the estate were less than sound. Following Williamsburg legislation designed to cure the currency crisis, Washington was offered in his absence by debtors a shilling or even sixpence in the pound. Furthermore, a British proclamation in June had offered the slaves of “rebels” everywhere their freedom and even land, should they cross to the enemy lines. A good many slaves were not slow to seek their liberty. Though none had as yet fled Mount Vernon, the Virginia Gazette was crowded with advertisements from other plantation owners giving details of runaways.
News from Europe trickled through to Washington at West Point. He learned in October that, following “improvident delay” in Congress, applications for “clothing and military stores” had been dispatched to the French government only in the late summer. It was to be hoped that Laurens’s son John, now secretary to Benjamin Franklin, minister plenipotentiary at the court of Versailles, could expedite the applications. The earliest that these foreign cargoes could arrive was the following January or February. Henry Laurens asked, “Can the several [American] states supply the necessary wants and in proper time for saving our brave fellow citizens from another Valley Forge scene?”
John Adams had left Paris for London, with orders to initiate negotiations for treaties of peace and commerce with Britain, should that government recognize the United States as “sovereign, free and independent.” No great expectations of success attended Adams’s embassy. Its aim was to persuade Europe that the United States were fighting a defensive and just war.
Don Juan de Miralles, for his part, sent Washington an enormous sea tortoise and lemons from Havana, and confirmation of reports that Spain had declared war against England. John Jay, who had ceded his place as president of Congress to Samuel Huntington of Connecticut so as to negotiate with Madrid, would, with luck, persuade the Spanish government to come into the American war as well. Washington, thanking de Miralles on October 16 for the intelligence and for the gifts, was sure that his wife would receive “with gratitude and pleasure” Don Juan’s compliments, which he would convey in his next letter to her: “you stand high in her estimation.”
Martha had good reason to fear “another Valley Forge scene.” But she was set on joining her husband, wherever he might settle for the winter, and eager to travel, as Washington noted in a letter to John Mitchell, “before the roads get bad and weather severe.” He asked Mitchell to hire “lodgings in some genteel (but not a common boarding) house in Philadelphia.” By the end of the month, Mitchell had secured apartments at “the late Mr. Israel Pemberton’s house”—Clarke Hall—which included “a handsome front parlour, a good bed chamber, kitchen and rooms for servants.” On November 10, Washington told an officer in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that Martha was setting out “immediately” for the north. Jacky and Nelly must fend for themselves and Lund take pains to ensure that no slave escaped to an alluring enemy. Though Martha exchanged the privacy and comfort of her Virginia home for what would no doubt be, in due course, rude lodgings and severe weather at headquarters, she did not hesitate. It was enough that her husband counted on her coming. The assiduous Mitchell promised her “some of the best tea, sugar, coffee, etc” while she stopped at “Mr Pemberton’s house” in Philadelphia, and volunteered that he and his wife would do all “to render her accommodations convenient and agreeable.”
While still at West Point in late October, Washington took the decision to concentrate most of the army at Morristown, New Jersey. He knew the locality well from when he, Martha, and the “family” had occupied the tavern on the town green in the spring of 1777. The countryside would be a source of flour, among other essentials, though its price was exorbitant—now at £60 a hundredweight. The army was weakened, following the recent dispatch of regiments to reinforce Lincoln’s southern army, and few new recruits were coming in to replace those whose enlistment was concluded. News that a large-scale embarkation was in preparation at New York, its likely object Charleston, forced Washington to consider sending a “further reinforcement to the southward.” On October 30 he wrote to Greene, who was already at Morristown, that the quartermaster general was to lay out the ground at “the position back of Mr Kemble’s”—a wood known as Jockey Hollow, in the vicinity of Morristown. Given the likely future reduction of forces already weakened, it was now incumbent on the army, he advised, to “seek a more remote position than we would otherwise have done.” Six hundred acres of timber at Jockey Hollow, in his estimation, would furnish log cabins to accommodate all. He ended by asking Greene to order him a late dinner the following day, when he would reach the township. He understood that headquarters were to be at Mrs. Ford’s.
Just as Mr. Wallace had done at Middlebrook, so the widowed Mrs. Ford remained in her home, a mile or so east of the township, after it became headquarters for the army in the north. There was only one kitchen to accommodate both Ford domestics, who served their mistress and her two children, and army servants as well as cooks. An ancillary kitchen was begun, but the logs cut for it lay fallow on the ground. Winter came early this year to New Jersey, and there was little labor to be spared for the provision of such amenities.
Washington himself arrived on a day that the gathered regiments had suffered a “very severe storm of hail and snow all day.” Two weeks later army surgeon James Thacher wrote that snow on the ground at Jockey Hollow—“this wilderness…where we are to build log huts for winter quarters”—was “about two feet deep.” The lack of shoes, blankets, tents, and wagons—all long the subject of correspondence between Washington and Greene, on the one hand, and Congress and the states on the other—was much felt. Drillmaster von Steuben was later to write of the New York brigade in particular: “they exhibited the most shocking picture of misery I have ever seen, scarce a man having the wherewithal to cover his nakedness, and a great number very bad with the itch [scabies].”
Many officers as well as men slept on “brushwood thrown together” on the frozen ground. In mid-December Washington addressed the governors of the former middle colonies—New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania—in strong terms. Unless aid was given swiftly, he warned them, “there is every appearance that the army will infallibly disband within a fortnight.” Supplies came fitfully if at all. Washington was to tell Philip Schuyler later that the soldiers ate “every kind of horse food but hay.” The horses peeled bark off trees for sustenance. There were further snowstorms on the sixteenth and eighteenth and again on the twenty-eighth. The freezing conditions did not abate.
The army did not disband. The soldiers continued to fell the oak and walnut trees around them. The log cabins multiplied, offering reprieve from the bitter conditions to more and more men who had been sleeping on the ground or under canvas. On December 29, despite the snowstorm the previous day, Washington wrote that the work was “nearly completed.” The warmth and shelter of the huts were of inestimable value in raising morale, though so much else was wanting. Once again it seemed, the army had endured and survived.
Before Martha’s arrival, Washington had paid £15 “for a band of music” to play at headquarters on Christmas Day. On the last day of the old year, she arrived at Mrs. Ford’s. Twelfth Night—January 6, 1780—would see the twenty-first anniversary of the couple’s wedding. In the short interval between New Year’s Eve and that date, calamity again descended on the camp. A prolonged and violent snowstorm, during the night of January 3, left the ground four feet and in some places six feet deep in snow. Several officers still under canvas had their marquees “torn asunder and blown down” over their heads. “Some of the soldiers were actually covered while in their tents and buried like sheep” beneath the enveloping powder, wrote Dr. Thacher. Blankets, baggage, stores had to be dug out. Roads within and outside the camp were impassable, not only rendering wagons useless but also cutting off Jockey Hollow from Morristown, headquarters, and supply routes. “For six or eight days it has been so extremely cold, that there was no living abroad,” wrote General Greene, during the days that succeeded the storm. The freezing conditions continued. Officers and men alike, Washington told Schuyler on January 30, were “five or six days without bread, at other times as many days without meat, and once or twice two or three days without either.”
The crisis was little less acute where the men’s clothing was concerned. Many of them did their duty in the snow without benefit of shoes or stockings. Even breeches were sometimes lacking, a captain in Stark’s Brigade writing, on February 6, of “many a good lad with nothing to cover him from his hips to his toes save his blanket.” The ravages of the smallpox epidemic at Morristown in the spring of 1777, the cries of “No bread, no soldier” at Valley Forge—where at least the winter had been largely mild—were expunged from the minds of veterans as the conditions continued. There appeared no sign, though the weeks and months passed, of a thaw. Washington was to remark in March: “The oldest people now living in this country do not remember so hard a winter.” An attempt in mid-January to take advantage of the freeze, cross the ice at Amboy over to Staten Island, and attack British troops failed dismally. The enemy had got word of the intended assault and repelled the Americans.
For once Martha failed to lift her husband’s spirits. Washington was hard-pressed and irritable, and the conditions at the crowded Ford house were hardly conducive to repose and ease. He complained to Greene on January 22, “I have been at my present quarters since the 1st. day of Decr. and have not a Kitchen to Cook a Dinner in, altho’ the Logs have been put together some considerable time by my own Guard; nor is there a place at this moment in which a servant can lodge with the smallest degree of comfort. Eighteen belonging to my family and all Mrs Ford’s are crowded together in her Kitchen and scarce one of them able to speak for the colds they have caught.”
He had been unusually curt and dismissive two days earlier in response to a letter from Jacky the previous month, requesting a deferral of the annuity payable on January 1. An offer to pay him in “paper money” elicited the response that his stepson might as well pay him in old newspapers and almanacs. If, as Jacky complained, he had been “unfortunate” in his crops, Washington was sorry for it. The debt “may lie till my wants, or your convenience, is greater,” he conceded. As Jacky may have calculated in making his request, there were matters of more urgency to occupy the commander than what was due him from his wayward stepson.
Washington’s anxieties about the men in Jockey Hollow as well as about the southern campaign communicated themselves to Martha. For once she was to admit a kind of defeat, following her return to Mount Vernon, in a letter of July 18 to her brother-in-law Burwell Bassett: “we were sorry that we did not see you at the camp. There was not much pleasure there [from] the distress of the army and other difficulties, though I did not know the cause. The poor General was so unhappy that it distressed me exceedingly.” Washington thanked Robert Morris in Philadelphia at the beginning of February for a promised gift of wine: “Should it arrive in good order, I shall be able to give my friends a glass of such as I could wish.” If Morris himself should do him “the favour to partake of it” at Morristown, he would be most happy. On such red-letter days as a visit from a friend, Washington informed the financier, he felt the want of good wine. Otherwise, he wrote dourly, he had long resolved to be content with grog, “should it even be made of North East rum, and drunk out of a wooden bowl, as the case has been.”
Martha joined him in grateful thanks for the Morrises’ offer of hospitality, Washington added, should they this winter visit Philadelphia. For once, the Virginian who had, before the war, frequented dinners, balls, assemblies, and race meetings—and enjoyed the best of wine—was to the fore. Washington admitted to an inclination for “relaxation of this kind” and “social enjoyments.” But he brought himself up sharply. Public duty and private pleasure being “at variance,” he continued, “I have little expectation of indulging in the latter while I am under ties of the former. Perhaps,” he ended on a dismal note, “when the one ceases, I may be incapable of the other.”
A visit to Philadelphia with Martha might, in fact, have increased his distress and certainly would have taxed her wardrobe, elegant though it was. While the men at Jockey Hollow wanted for food and clothes, in early March New Jersey delegate John Fell commented on the dissipation and extravagance in the city as “beyond conception.” He added, “The dress of the ladies in paying their visits is quite equal to the dress of the ladies that I have seen in the boxes in the playhouses in London, and their dress in general even along the streets resembles in a great degree the actresses on the stage.”
Washington, nevertheless, knew the value of a good appearance. Late in March he ordered Mitchell to procure him a new chariot for four horses: “please to have my arms and crest properly disposed of on the chariot. I send them for this purpose.” Though, in Boston, George III’s coat of arms was torn from the State House, Washington, like many other Americans, continued to appreciate some aspects of his English heritage. Just over a week later he added: “it may not be amiss to ornament the mouldings with a light airy gilding.” The harness too should be ornamented. “The pocket money which Mrs Washington has, and some I can borrow here,” he wrote, would cover the costs, until specie from Lund Washington arrived.
Though Martha had an “unhappy” husband to comfort, she remained a consummate hostess. She took an interest, moreover, in all the military “family,” and she amused them when she named a tomcat “Hamilton.” Her husband’s young aide from the West Indies was notably amorous. This February, however, the taming of Alexander Hamilton ensued. Philip Schuyler’s daughter Betsy came to stay in Morristown with her aunt and uncle, Gertrude and John Cochran. Miss Schuyler was an heiress, which was necessary, as Hamilton had no means or expectations. She was also pretty and intelligent. The Washingtons, when dining with the Cochrans, watched the romance develop with an indulgent eye. Martha on one occasion sent Betsy “some nice powder” in return for “very pretty” cuffs which she had received, and for which she was much obliged. Philip Schuyler, persuaded by Washington’s high opinion of his aide, and perhaps by Hamilton’s oratory when he requested Betsy’s hand in marriage, agreed in April to an engagement.
Entertainment of a more public kind occupied the Washingtons and the “family” at headquarters on one occasion. Thirty-five subscribers, Washington heading the list, sponsored a series of assemblies, held at Arnold’s tavern on the green. Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene wrote to Joseph Reed on February 29: “From this apparent ease, I suppose it is thought we must be in happy circumstances. I wish it was so, but, alas, it is not.” The currency was worthless, forage scarce, and ammunition lacking. “We have been so poor in camp for a fortnight, that we could not forward the public dispatches, for want of cash to support the expresses.” Nevertheless, the freezing conditions and consequent difficulties that had absorbed so much of Washington’s attention by degrees eased. Finally, the hard winter gave way to spring.
The grand parade at Jockey Hollow was clear of snow when the Chevalier de La Luzerne, new French envoy to the United States, visited headquarters in the latter part of April. Every effort was made to show him that the American army was an ally worth supporting. He was accorded, on his entry into camp on the nineteenth, full military honors and was treated thereafter to a battery of parades and cannon salutes. He was to be the guest of honor at a grand review to be held on the twenty-fourth. Though the parlous state of supplies and provisions was not hidden from him, de La Luzerne praised to Washington “the good order and discipline of the troops.” He expressed himself in a letter to the French government as convinced “more than ever, of the very great advantage which the republic derives” from the services of its commander-in-chief.
With de La Luzerne on the nineteenth had come Martha’s admirer from Havana, Don Juan de Miralles. On the day of the grand review, he was “confined at headquarters…dangerously sick of a pulmonic fever.” While the Washingtons entertained de La Luzerne below, the exotic dignitary, who had courted and been courted by Washington and Martha to such good effect, languished in an upstairs room. De La Luzerne departed for Philadelphia. In the upper chamber Don Juan lingered between life and death. To the consternation of all, he died, far from his island home and family, on the afternoon of April 28, 1780.
Washington had the task of arranging a burial the following day. It must satisfy Don Juan’s family and the Spanish government that due honor had been accorded the deceased, though his coffin must lie in the Presbyterian church graveyard at Morristown, for want of a Catholic burial ground. As chief mourner with his aides and staff, the American commander followed the open coffin. Don Juan’s corpse had been attired in tricorne and peruke wig and scarlet coat embroidered with gold lace. A costly watch, in addition, and “a profusion of diamond rings” on the stiff fingers were among the valuables committed to the earth with the coffin, once a Spanish chaplain had commended the Don’s soul to heaven. A guard was placed to prevent looting. Washington had lost an enthusiastic supporter, though one who was never fully acknowledged by Madrid as its envoy to the United States. Don Juan’s death, coldly viewed, paved the way for the Spanish government to send official representation to America.
It was virtually impossible, had Washington either energy or inclination, to keep his wife apprised of the many anxieties that oppressed him this winter and spring. While Miralles yet languished upstairs, the commander had written a private letter to his former aide John Laurens. Back from France, Laurens was now with General Lincoln and the 5,000 American troops who defended Charleston. Since early April, 14,000 British troops had been besieging the town. Washington opined to Laurens that the loss of the town and garrison must soon occur, and that any attempt to defend them ought to be “relinquished.” Being at a distance, Washington hesitated to give Lincoln the firm order to do so. A plea by Laurens that Washington himself head the army in the south elicited the admission that he should not “dislike the journey.” But a congressional committee was expected in camp. Besides, should Clinton and his troops take Charleston, the British commander would almost certainly return to harry the north, which must be at the ready to respond to attack. Though the “dangerous crisis” in the south was much in his thoughts during subsequent weeks, he remained at Morristown.
Unlooked for but wholly welcome during this anxious time was the news in early May that Lafayette had returned to America from France. He wrote from Boston harbor, on April 27, that he was looking forward to being once more one of Washington’s “loving soldiers” and had “affairs of the utmost importance” to communicate. He assured Washington that “a great public good” would derive from the news he brought. On a personal note, before embarking, the marquis had commissioned the Prince de Poix to “put together a tea service,” which he meant as a gift for Martha. It was, he instructed, to be “very white, fine Sèvres, and the spoons of gold plate.”
Lafayette reached headquarters at Morristown on May 10. He informed Washington that six French ships of the line and 6,000 French troops, destined to leave for America in early April, should be in Rhode Island by June. They had orders to participate in joint operations with Americans to seize New York. This was the prize, above all others, that Washington wished to secure.
Lafayette left for Philadelphia to inform Congress and de La Luzerne of his news. But could the army in the north hold out until June? Would Charleston fall, as seemed all too likely? Could America provide supplies for an additional 6,000 French troops when it was hard put to supply its own army? With these questions and others Washington grappled. “Providence,” he told Lund Washington on May 19, “has always displayed its power and goodness, when clouds and thick darkness seemed ready to overwhelm us.” The hour was now come, he wrote, when they stood “much in need of another manifestation of its bounty”—adding, as though to propitiate Providence itself, “however little we deserve it.”
Providence indeed appeared to have deserted the American army in the days that followed. Want of meat at Morristown since May 21 drove two regiments of the Connecticut Line to mutiny on the twenty-fifth. Though that revolt was efficiently suppressed by officers, Washington wrote the following day to Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut, that there was not only no meat to feed the troops but no money to pay them. There was, as there had been before, a very real danger that the army might disband. Lafayette, when he returned from Philadelphia at the end of May to resume his place at Washington’s side, wrote to Joseph Reed in Philadelphia: “An army that is reduced to nothing, that wants provisions, that has not one of the necessary means to make war…however prepared I could have been to this unhappy sight by our past distresses, I confess I had no idea of such an extremity.”
Strenuous attempts to make Congress and the states see the absolute necessity of supplying the troops with food and pay continued, despite an unhappy diversion. An extraordinary edition of the Loyalist Royal Gazette, printed on May 30, brought intelligence that had fallen to the British on the twelfth. Others might wail and gnash their teeth. It was an outcome that Washington had expected. Now he must prepare for the return of Clinton. The British commander-in-chief sailed for New York on June 5, leaving Lord Cornwallis to command troops in the south.
At Morristown the Washingtons soldiered on. But their tenure of the Ford house was to come to an abrupt end. While Clinton was still at sea on his way to New York, General von Knyphausen and British troops crossed during the night of June 6 from Staten Island to Elizabethtown Point. Next morning they had advanced nearly as far as Springfield, only ten miles southeast of Morristown. Martha left promptly for Philadelphia, while Washington and the troops under his command were unexpectedly forced into action. By the afternoon of the seventh, the American troops were skirmishing with the enemy and successfully forced them back. During the British retreat, a soldier shot dead a reverend’s wife where she sat, surrounded by her children, at home in Connecticut Farms.
This atrocity, and the subsequent burning of Springfield, attracted much indignation in the patriot press. Washington could be thankful that the British had not penetrated Morristown, where the artillery as well as baggage and horses had remained. Suspecting that an attack on West Point was in the offing, he put the army under marching orders for the North River. While on his way there, he received the welcome news that Admiral Chevalier de Ternay and a French fleet had arrived at Newport. An experienced general, the Comte de Rochambeau was in command of the 5,000 troops aboard. Washington continued the journey north. Martha was making by stages for Virginia and home. They had both lived to fight another day.