CHAPTER 4

The Perils of Fabius

In Pennsylvania, General George Washington began encountering many of the criticisms that had dogged the original Fabius. The fugitive members of the Continental Congress, one hundred miles west of Philadelphia in the provincial town of York (population 1,700), were profoundly unhappy with their lot. Most of York spoke only German. The food varied from bad to awful. These hardships led to something close to a legislative exodus. When congressional president John Hancock arrived, he was dismayed to find only nine delegates on hand to deliberate the policies of the nation. Over the next few weeks, the number rose to eighteen—still far from the fifty-six who had issued a resolute Declaration of Independence little more than fourteen months ago.

In and around Philadelphia the local population began switching sides. The city had long been the engine of a regional economy that included the farmers of western New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and northern Maryland. In an average year, the city exported as much as 57,000 tons of wheat, plus thousands more tons of salted meat and bar iron from nearby forges. This gross domestic product frequently totaled $40 million—roughly $600 million today. The locals knew only that Washington had fought two battles and lost both and that the enemy occupied their capital. Even more importantly, the British had “hard” money, whereas the Americans could only offer the paper dollars being churned out by the printing presses of Congress. The British accelerated their declining value by counterfeiting them by the millions.

Worsening matters was the American attempt to block the Delaware with the two forts built below Philadelphia. The British lost almost 1,000 men, and two warships ran aground and were destroyed in ferocious fighting. But the enemy eventually prevailed, and Admiral Lord Richard Howe’s fleet had acquired access to the city, another defeat on General Washington’s escutcheon.

Inside the Continental Army, not a few generals—as disillusioned and discouraged as the civilians—were ready to listen to the general who had won the most recent victory: Horatio Gates. Wealthy Philadelphian Thomas Mifflin was one of the first to express his disillusion with General Washington. On October 8, 1777, he resigned as major general and quartermaster general and did not hesitate to tell members of Congress why. On November 23, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia informed Samuel Adams that Mifflin had been in York and reiterated that “the military knowledge and the authority of Gates” were needed “to procure indispensable changes in our army”¹

On November 17, Mifflin had written to Gates in even more extravagant terms. “You have saved our northern hemisphere, and in spite of our consummate & repeated blundering you have changd the Constitution of the southern campaign on the part of the enemy from offensive to defensive.” Mifflin went on to explain why the “southern campaign”—a nice way of minimizing Washington’s role—might have succeeded if Gates had remained with Washington’s army. He would have counteracted “the deep rooted system of favoritism which began to shoot forth at New York & which has now arrived to its full growth and maturity. Repeated slights and unjustifiable arrogance combined with other causes to drive from the army those who would not worship the image and pay an undeserved tribute of praise and flattery to the great and powerful. The list of our disgusted patriots is long and formidable—their resentments keen against the reigning cabal and their powers of opposition not despicable.” An explorer of this thicket of words will soon see that the men being trashed were General Washington and his two closest advisors, Generals Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox.²

GENERAL MIFFLIN was striking notes that were already reverberating through Congress. On October 26, 1777, John Adams told his wife, Abigail, that he was glad Gates had won and almost as glad that Washington and his “southern troops” had failed. Adams feared “idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded, so excessive as to endanger our liberties for what I know. Now we can allow a certain citizen to be wise virtuous and good without thinking him a deity or a Savior.”³

Another anti-Washington voice that became noticeably louder in Congress belonged to James Lovell, a devoted follower of Samuel Adams. They shared the widespread New England dislike of a regular army and a persistent preference for militia, which supposedly would not endanger American liberties. On November 27, 1777, Lovell wrote to General Gates, “Good God! What a situation are we in! How different from what might have been justly expected! You will be astonished when you come to know accurately what numbers have at one time and another been collected near Philadelphia to wear out stockings, shoes and breeches? Depend upon it for every 10 soldiers placed under the command of our Fabius, 5 recruits will be wanted annually during the war.”⁴

Lovell begged Gates to take charge of the Board of War, a hitherto inert congressional creation theoretically empowered to issue orders to everyone, including General Washington. Were it not for Gates, Lovell was convinced, our affairs would be “fabiused into a very disagreeable posture.”⁵

GEORGE WASHINGTON never mentioned his supposed historic model, Quintus Fabius Maximus, in the eight long years of the Revolution. His version of protracted war differed significantly from the Roman general’s. The original “Cunctator” would have deemed much too risky the “strokes”—fierce attacks such as Trenton, Princeton, and Germantown—that Washington constantly looked for an opportunity to make. Virtually from the start of his generalship, Washington saw he had to keep up the morale of American civilians as well as soldiers. He understood that he was fighting a war in which public opinion was crucial. His use of the militia as auxiliaries to the Continental Army’s regulars was even more inventive. One scholar who compared Washington’s generalship to Fabius’s concluded that Washington was not an imitator; he was a new and original Fabius in his own right.⁶

This did not prevent other members of Congress from condemning him. New Jerseyan Jonathan Sergeant wrote to Lovell, “We want a general. Thousands of lives and millions of property are yearly sacrificed to the insufficiency of a commander-in-chief. Two battles he has lost for us by two such blunders as would have disgraced a soldier of three months standing.” Sergeant said he agreed with fellow New Jerseyan Congressman Abraham Clark, who declared, “We may talk of the enemy’s cruelty as we will. But we have no greater cruelty to complain of than the management of our army.”⁷

In his letter to Gates, General Mifflin saw the situation in equally dark terms. “We have had a noble army melted down by ill judged marches—marches that disgrace their authors & directors and which have occasioned the severest and most just sarcasm and contempt of our enemies. How much are you to be envied my dear general? How different your conduct and your fortune!” Mifflin mentioned a half dozen high-ranking officers who were contemplating resignation. “In short this army will be totally lost unless you come down and collect the virtuous band who wish to fight under your banner and with their aid save the southern hemisphere. Prepare yourself for a jaunt to this place. Congress must send for you. I have 10,000 things to tell.”⁸

The insight that Washington adapted, rather than copied, Fabius’s strategy gathers weight when we watch him deal with Horatio Gates. The commander in chief well knew that Gates participated willingly in the intrigue to replace him as commander in chief. Instead of reporting General John Burgoyne’s surrender to Washington, as would be expected in any well-organized army, Gates sent his report to Congress via his talkative aide, James Wilkinson. Almost a full month passed before Gates mentioned the great event in a letter to Washington, adding that he supposed the commander in chief had already heard the news.

In response to this performance, Washington dispatched his aide, Alexander Hamilton, to Albany to request—if necessary, to insist—that Gates send most of his army to Pennsylvania without delay. The choice of Hamilton is interesting. Washington had several older, more mature aides, such as Tench Tilghman of Maryland. But they lacked Hamilton’s brashness. Gates, perhaps sensing he had gone too far in ignoring Washington, had already dispatched Daniel Morgan and his men, plus a brigade of Continentals, to the main army when Hamilton arrived on his doorstep in early November 1777, after riding three hundred miles in five days. Hamilton pronounced himself dissatisfied with General Gates’s detachments in the bluntest imaginable terms. Gates, in a letter he decided not to send, protested his peremptory style. Some historians have censured Hamilton for a lack of deference and pointed out that Washington’s orders to him made no such extreme demands. But it seems equally likely to this writer that the orders were an artful cover. At the very least, Hamilton reflected what Washington and his headquarters staff thought of Gates’s insulting behavior. Hamilton’s report of his combative visit oozed sarcasm. “I found insuperable inconveniences in acting diametrically opposite to the opinion of a gentleman whose successes have raised him to the highest importance.”⁹

WASHINGTON MARCHED his reinforced army to Whitemarsh, twelve miles northwest of Philadelphia. There he was protected by two commanding hills. The army’s generals debated a surprise attack on the British in Philadelphia, which Howe had ringed with redoubts to prevent another Germantown. A majority voted against it. Nathanael Greene, rapidly emerging as Washington’s favorite general, wrote, “The probability of a disappointment is infinitely greater than that of success. We must not be governed in our measures by our wishes.”¹⁰

On December 3, a committee from Congress arrived to report an almost unanimous vote in favor of an immediate assault. Washington showed them the opinions of the generals, and they reluctantly changed their minds. The Pennsylvania state government, also fugitives from British-occupied Philadelphia, met in Lancaster and informed Washington that they too wanted action. All these politicians, oblivious of Washington’s strategy, were also unaware of the deterioration of the army’s equipment. Almost half the Continentals lacked blankets. The constant marching had worn out shoes and uniforms.

A few days later, on December 5, two-thirds of the British army marched out of Philadelphia and paraded before Whitemarsh, virtually daring the Americans to attack. After the frustrations and disappointments of the last months, not a few officers and men in Washington’s ranks hungered to make an all-out charge. But Washington refused to issue the order. He knew that some politicians would soon denounce his decision in York and Lancaster. Letters about it would fly to Horatio Gates in Albany. But he calmly, steadfastly declined to attack. After looking at the men and guns on those two commanding hills for most of the week, General Howe marched glumly back to Philadelphia.¹¹

THE GENERALS now began debating where the Continental Army should spend the winter. Some favored places far from Philadelphia—Reading or more distant cities, where the troops could rest and receive new equipment and clothing. But Washington decided this would enable the British to export their influence throughout the entire region around Philadelphia. To retain the loyalty of the citizens in this populous and wealthy quarter, the Continental Army must seem determined to continue the war. It would have to camp close enough to Philadelphia to be poised to deliver a blow.

On December 19, 1777, beneath lowering grey skies, with snow swirling in a savage winter wind, the 11,000-man Continental Army trudged to a mix of wooded tableland and forbidding hills called “the Valley Forge.” There the men began building a veritable village of log cabins, while the commissary department frantically sought food to feed them. Philadelphia was only twenty miles away, enabling Washington to patrol the roads around the city with fifty-man detachments of picked troops and arrest farmers caught selling the British food for their army. He also set up an espionage system that enabled him to learn well in advance of British plans for an attack. Valley Forge was on high ground, easily fortified, and Washington made sure the redoubts and trenches were strong enough to discourage General Howe from an assault.

Washington now had time to deal with the generals who were backing Gates as his replacement. Along with General Mifflin, a French volunteer, General Thomas Conway, was especially outspoken. He had written Gates a fawning letter, which Gates’s aide, Lieutenant Colonel Wilkinson, described during a late-night drinking session with William Alexander, the New Jersey major general also known as Lord Stirling. Infuriated by Conway’s treachery, Stirling reported the letter to Washington, writing down the contents as he remembered them. The commander in chief sent a copy of this message to Conway, asking for an explanation.

Conway replied sneeringly and warned Gates that someone was stealing his private correspondence. Undone, the Saratoga victor lashed out in several directions. He wrote to Washington wondering if Alexander Hamilton were the thief and wondered how the commander in chief could tolerate such conduct. Washington coolly replied that the man who had revealed the contents of Conway’s letter was Gates’s talkative aide, Lieutenant Colonel Wilkinson.

IN CONGRESS General Washington’s critics remained determined to embarrass him into resignation. They revived the Board of War, empowering it to launch campaigns and review the army’s policies without consulting the commander in chief. They appointed Gates the board’s chairman, named General Mifflin as his right-hand man, and made Lieutenant Colonel Wilkinson the board’s secretary.

With considerable power at their fingertips, the conspirators decided to launch a military campaign without so much as consulting General Washington. After considerable discussion they decided on their target: Canada. Who would conduct this winter campaign? They chose a general for whom they were sure it would have great personal appeal—the Marquis de Lafayette. He would be instantly popular with Canada’s French majority. Already active in the Continental Army was a regiment of Anglo-Canadians who had joined the Revolution. They would supplement’s Lafayette’s popularity with his fellow Frenchmen. Best of all, practically no British soldiers remained in Canada. Little more than 2,500 to 3,000 well-equipped troops could conquer the vast territory.

At first thrilled by the proposal, the young marquis was far less enthused when he discovered that General Conway was to be his second in command. Lafayette flatly declined to serve with the man who was blatantly disloyal to General Washington. Next, the plotters learned that Lafayette would not report to them about the exploits of the expedition. All his letters would go to General Washington, with copies to the Board of War. The squirming Gates and Mifflin could only agree to these conditions, barely concealing their discomfiture.

Lafayette headed for Albany, where he was supposed to find men, guns, and supplies. He was soon a very distressed general. Instead of 2,500 enthusiastic Continentals, he found 1,200 troops shivering in summer uniforms, many as shoeless as their fellow soldiers at Valley Forge. New Hampshire’s John Stark, supposed to be eager to summon hundreds of his aggressive militiamen, had nothing but questions about how to feed these men and supply them with ammunition and winter uniforms. Soon an enraged Lafayette was writing wild letters to the new president of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, denouncing Gates and Mifflin. Laurens swiftly forwarded them to George Washington. General Gates’s reputation as a brilliant planner was soon in tatters. Even more decrepit were his hopes of becoming commander in chief.

On February 19, 1778, Gates capitulated to Washington. In a labored letter he disowned General Conway and the congressional critics. He vowed that he had never promoted dissension in Congress or anywhere else. He closed this catalog of lies with a whopper: “I heartily dislike controversy even on my own account.” Gates added the hope that Washington would not allow “his own suspicions or the prejudices of others” to prolong the quarrel.¹²

With his congressional critics reeling, Washington greeted a five-man committee from Congress sent to Valley Forge. Their mission, in James Lovell’s nasty words, was “to rap a demigod over the knuckles.” Washington presented them with a 16,000-word report, ghostwritten by Alexander Hamilton, analyzing the army’s problems in the quartermaster and commissary departments, both of which Congress had badly mishandled. The head of the committee, Francis Dana, had been Lovell’s Harvard roommate. After Dana had time to read the report, which recommended, among other things, that officers be promised half pay for life, Washington invited him to dinner. After the meal, Dana joined him for a stroll outside his headquarters. Abruptly, Washington said, “Mr. Dana—Congress does not trust me. I cannot continue thus.”¹³ The staggered Dana replied that a majority of Congress had not lost faith in him. Soon the congressman was a Washington ally. Back in York, to the consternation of Lovell and the other critics, he supported all Washington’s reforms. Before long a man Washington trusted, General Nathanael Greene, was head of the quartermaster department, guaranteeing new energy in finding food for the army. Other men chosen by the commander in chief took over the commissary department.

Even more important than these breakthroughs was another change Washington persuaded the members of the camp committee to support: pensions for his officers. During the Valley Forge ordeal, over three hundred officers had resigned. Washington had decided that only a solution the British army had long since adopted would keep qualified men in leadership positions: half pay for life. He was aware that this change directly challenged the New Englanders’ insistence that patriotic virtue alone should motivate men to bear arms in the revolutionary cause. Necessity had forced them to yield this illusion when it came to recruiting men in the ranks. But for officers to require the incentive of so much cold cash was certain to infuriate the opinionated Yankees and their allies in other colonies. The proposal stirred a violent debate in Congress. After weeks of impassioned oratory, the pro-Washington wing of Congress suggested a compromise: half pay for seven years. It passed, six states to five, with two state delegations deadlocked. Did Washington realize this topic would haunt the rest of his military and political career? If so, he was prepared to face it.

THE ARMY’S military training was by no means neglected at Valley Forge. In charge of it was another foreign volunteer, former lieutenant general Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. The title was imaginary. In fact the baron had never been more than a captain in the German army, although he had a wealth of knowledge derived from experience as a general staff member of the Prussian army. It was the greatest deception for a good cause in history. Endorsed by the French minister of war and promoted by Benjamin Franklin, he was introduced to Washington as a lieutenant general, which greatly enhanced his actual credentials. The baron proceeded to create a new training system for the American army. For the first two years of the war, the Americans had followed the British system, in which sergeants drilled the men, and officers had very little to do with them. Under the baron’s tutelage, the officers drilled the men and devoted not a little time to winning their affection as well as their obedience. Steuben’s approach was revolutionary and would make a huge difference not only in future battles in this war but in the future of the US Army.¹⁴

With General Greene as quartermaster and commissaries who reported to General Washington rather than Congress, the last few months of the Valley Forge encampment were almost pleasant for both officers and men. New recruits poured in as the various states improved their drafting systems; Washington’s manpower soon reached 15,061. On April 30, astounding news arrived via a courier from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The letter writer told the American commander that he was en route from Paris to York to deliver to Congress copies of a treaty signed with France, creating an alliance in which King Louis XVI guaranteed the independence of the United States. Washington rushed the letter to the president of the Continental Congress, saying, “No event was ever received with more heart-felt joy.”¹⁵

A week of celebrations followed. Washington began telling correspondents there was a good possibility that the war would end soon. “The game, whether ill or well played hitherto,” he wrote, “seems now to be verging toward a favorable issue.”¹⁶ He would soon discover that the game was far from over. Within two months the Continental Army that Baron von Steuben had trained to near perfection would be fighting for its life, and the commander in chief would face another challenge to his leadership—one that did not merely criticize his Fabian tactics but dismissed the whole idea of a trained regular army.