On March 20, the very day that Washington’s rider departed the Potts House with his sunny missive to Gen. Cadwalader about the army’s prospects, American river watchers in the north were dispatching their own messengers to Valley Forge. The communiqués contained ominous news. Scouts along the Hudson in New Jersey had observed large numbers of Redcoats, perhaps as many as 2,500, boarding over 40 troopships in New York Harbor. No one knew their design or objective, but one destination stood out as the most logical—Philadelphia.
With this, Washington’s tactical focus immediately swung from offense to defense. Despite Steuben’s constant drilling and the wisps of confidence it engendered, he knew well that the scant number of effectives he had in camp were in neither shape nor position to receive an advanced blow from the enemy. Howe was thought to have some 10,000 troops in Philadelphia, while a combination of disease, desertions, and detachments had reduced the Continental force to barely 8,000 men, with perhaps half of that number considered able-bodied. If British columns buttressed by reinforcements from New York were to march on Valley Forge before Washington could concentrate his far-flung resources, the war for independence might very well be strangled in its crib on that cold and muddy plateau in southeastern Pennsylvania. Over the next several days his strategy sessions with his kitchen cabinet were dominated by questions of immediate survival.
Sensing the tension emanating from headquarters, the cantonment was suddenly galvanized into activity. Steuben and his subinspectors escalated their drills to battle-ready maneuvers. Battalion commanders ordered all extraneous equipment piled near campfires, the easier to set it ablaze should the army be forced to retreat. Commissary officers were ordered to convert their ovens to prepare travel-ready hardtack, what the soldiers called sea bread. And from northern New Jersey, Washington recalled his cavalry regiments, now commanded by Pulaski’s replacement, Col. Stephen Moylan, one of the commander in chief’s former aides-de-camp. But Moylan’s horses were too sickly to be of much assistance, and in the end Washington decided to keep them out of harm’s way. General Smallwood, on the other hand, was alerted to prepare to evacuate Wilmington in an instant to rejoin the main force. Where that rendezvous might take place, no one could say. On Gen. Greene’s instructions Conestoga wagons creaking under the weight of emergency provisions rolled out of camp daily to bury caches of supplies in a series of depots laid along trails and roads leading west and north. In some instances, the ground was so frozen that holes had to be blasted out of the earth with precious gunpowder. In others the tides of flowing mud and drifting snow necessitated the use of surveying tools to mark where the stores had been sunk.
A few enthusiasts appeared to welcome, if ever so warily, an imminent British assault. John Laurens wrote that even if the army was forced to burn its huts and survive a fallback in tents, this would serve to make it a more elusive target. And upon hearing rumors that Gen. Howe had petitioned to be recalled to England, Anthony Wayne—the bloodbath at Paoli still fresh in his mind—informed his fellow Pennsylvanian Thomas Wharton that he could only hope that this did not occur, “untill we have an opportunity to Burgoyne him.”
Such buoyancy, however, was clearly a minority opinion. For if it was indeed to be the enemy who choreographed the opening sequences of the spring campaign, even Washington’s most seasoned fighters feared the worst. “We could hardly wish Gen. Howe in a more convenient situation to attack than he is in now,” Connecticut’s Jedediah Huntington wrote in a sneering letter to his brother. Huntington also bewailed his state’s meager contribution of reinforcements: “If every state had done like Connecticut, we would in all probability have shared the fate of Gen. Burgoine long before this.”
The mood of the Continental Congress in York similarly vacillated. Yet again the delegates’ anxiety over a British offensive overrode their adherence to the young country’s core principle of civilian control of the military. After brief deliberations, they voted to grant Washington the power to bypass state authorities and call up some 5,000 soldiers from the New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania militias. Washington accepted this responsibility without comment, but did not act on it. His hesitance was as much philosophical as practical. He viewed the United States not only as a physical nation but as an idea “cleanly if not tightly defined.” Even if Congress had decided to renege on the grand bargain it had struck with its citizenry, he knew better than to abet its momentary panic. Moreover, noting the threadbare ranks of the Pennsylvania militia patrolling east of the Schuylkill, he reminded Henry Laurens that in the past it had been difficult to muster 100 men from the state, let alone several thousand. He also told Laurens that it was not militiamen he needed, but regular-army troops, and he feared that the congressional decree would interfere with their recruitment. His dour assessment added to the bleak, tense mood that suddenly permeated Valley Forge during the last ten days of March.
Then, on March 31, the threat overhanging the camp burst like a frozen pipe. It was midmorning when an odd message arrived from Gen. Smallwood’s headquarters in Wilmington. Smallwood’s detachment had originally been conceived as a buffer between British-held Philadelphia and the American storehouses in Maryland. But the garrison had become so bereft of food, horses, equipment, and wagons that it had virtually ceased to exist as a military component. What it could do, however, was continue to monitor the enemy’s shipping on the lower reaches of the Delaware. In that capacity several of Smallwood’s scouts observed that newly arrived British vessels appeared to contain far fewer Redcoats than had been reported departing from New York. The number was sketchy, but Smallwood informed Washington that it was certainly nowhere near the reputed 2,500. When coast watchers in southern New Jersey reported similar findings, Washington reevaluated his position. Though he was baffled by the seemingly vanished regiments—one Continental officer ventured a guess that they had been diverted to enemy-held territory in Rhode Island—his thoughts returned to the offensive.
Later that same afternoon he wrote to Gen. McDougall on the Hudson Highlands seeking advice. If his northern scouts had been anywhere near accurate in their reports, a subtraction of 2,500 troops from Clinton’s rolls would have left him with a force of some 4,000 garrisoning New York City. “What is to be done?” Washington asked McDougall. It was a rhetorical question, for he was already formulating his options. “We must either oppose our whole force in this quarter,” he continued, meaning Philadelphia, “or take advantage of [the enemy] in some other. Which leads me to ask your opinion of the practicability of an attempt upon New York.”
As he awaited McDougall’s reply, Washington was unaware that the playing field was again about to shift beneath him.
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While George III’s new instructions to his commanders in America made the slow journey across the wintry Atlantic, Washington and Congress had no idea that their fears of an imminent assault on Valley Forge stood in direct contradiction to Britain’s new strategy of conciliation with the Americans and total war against the French. Given the imperfect intelligence he was receiving, Washington’s defensive preparations for an attack had been merely the default position of military commanders from time immemorial reacting to worst-case scenarios. By early April, however, with his spies and scouts reporting no unusual troop movements in or around Philadelphia, he conceded to Henry Laurens that the state of emergency that had descended on the winter encampment over the final ten days of March “had been founded on conjecture, and by some degree misinformation.” This, however, was only a short respite.
Washington also stressed how fortunate both he and by extension the country had been to have avoided a confrontation with Gen. Howe. Regarding the Redcoats reported to have boarded the vessels in Manhattan, he confessed, “I know not certainly where they are gone.” But had the enemy moved on him in strength, he added, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland might now be in British hands. He also chided the delegates for their continued delay in acting on some of the major principles to which he and the congressional Camp Committee had agreed back in February. Where were the thousands of fresh troops he had been promised? Of equal importance, why had he received no answer regarding his proposed half-pay pensions?I
Despite Steuben’s near-magical achievements, Washington’s most experienced officers remained restless. “Scarce a day passes,” he wrote, “without two or three threatening to resign their commissions.” These included the two brigadiers from his home state, the generals George Weedon and Peter Muhlenberg, as well as 90 of their officers. Even Rhode Island’s James Varnum had requested a furlough, which Washington had declined to grant for fear that Varnum might not return. If he could not retain leaders such as these and was forced to settle for “low and illiterate Men void of capacity,” all the raw recruits in the world would stand no chance against Howe’s professionals. He concluded the communiqué with a dark flourish. The politicians would do well to keep in mind that if they failed to move forward on the military pension plan, they might well consider again relocating the capital city, this time as far south as Virginia. “Let Congress determine what will be the consequences.”
This was of course not the first time Washington had resorted to exaggerated scare tactics in the face of congressional intransigence. For in reality the atmosphere at Valley Forge told a different story. Once the panic of late March subsided and April’s first temperate breezes carried with them the scent of spring, the Continental Army’s priorities shifted from mere survival to preparing for battle. This prompted a raft of charming missives that would have been unthinkable only weeks earlier.
A Rhode Island physician, noting that the last of the troops inoculated against smallpox had finally recovered, whimsically complained that the most urgent hardship his unit now faced was an acute shortage of grog. A lieutenant colonel from the same state, pining for his newlywed bride, described the solace he took traversing the “beautiful meadows” along the banks of the Schuylkill on his twice-daily constitutionals. Even the chronically vexed Albigence Waldo was moved to commit to his diary a bit of doggerel that began, “The day serene—joy sparkles round; Camp, hills and dales with mirth resound.” And a Virginia officer assigned to Steuben as a brigade inspector captured the martial spirit animating the encampment when he wrote to his brother that the Continentals “were 50 times in better order this spring than we were last to receive the Enemy.”
There existed of course more cynical souls whose tactile instincts left little room for either whimsy or wishful thinking. General Greene in particular held little hope that Congress would accede to Washington’s half-pay pensions, and predicted that the delegates would slough off this responsibility to the individual state legislatures. It would be in the state capitals, he wrote, where the proposal would “dye and sink into forgetfulness.”II Greene also chafed at the sluggish arrival of regular-army reinforcements, and wondered if news of the American victory at Saratoga had left his fellow patriots too complacent to bother to meet the quotas set by the Camp Committee. Greene’s evident consternation was shared by a cadre of officers who, unaware of Washington’s private deliberations with his inner circle, muttered over the lack of planning for a spring campaign. Their grumblings, however, were soon to be answered when, in mid-April, the Crown’s tentative new Bills of Conciliation reached Valley Forge.
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Washington was instantly suspicious. When they sent the Bills of Conciliation to Valley Forge and York under flags of truce, the British had simultaneously also published the contents in several Philadelphia newspapers and handbills. This was accompanied by a direct address from Lord North imploring the rebellious colonists to cease their “disorders” and return to the British fold where, in essence, all would be forgiven. The prime minister promised that the repressive Coercive Acts would be repealed, Parliament would abandon any right to tax the colonies, the Continental Congress would be recognized as a legal body, and the Americans might even be allowed to elect representatives to the House of Commons. Washington sensed that the concessions, particularly the renunciation of direct taxation, would have a “malignant influence” on the Continental will to continue fighting.
Lord North’s peace overture, Washington wrote to Henry Laurens, “is certainly founded in principles of the most wicked and diabolical baseness, meant to poison the minds of the people & detach the wavering from our cause.” He urged the delegates to counter the enemy’s disingenuous feint with a strong political dismissal of North’s propositions, and to unequivocally reject any hint of a negotiated settlement. “Nothing short of Independence can possibly do,” he wrote. Much to his satisfaction, Congress replied that its stance had not changed—it would welcome the arrival of the Crown’s representatives as soon as every British soldier and sailor had withdrawn from American shores and England officially recognized the independence of the United States. In the meantime, the delegates added, any person seeking to strike a bargain with the British would be labeled a traitor.
On the military front, Washington recognized that the clearest sign to any vacillating soldiers that the revolution would continue was to finally share his plans for the upcoming campaign. On April 20 he summoned the 11 general officers then in camp as well as Baron Steuben, still technically a foreign volunteer, to an unofficial meeting at the Potts House. The generals included Lafayette, only just returned from Albany and back in command of his division of Virginians. The marquis remained embarrassed and exasperated by the foolishness of the stillborn Canadian excursion, and wrote to Henry Laurens that while he was delighted to be back on Pennsylvania territory, “I wish I had never seen the northern ones. By that expedition (besides what disagreement it brings in itself) I have only got many enemies [and] much trouble.” He was nonetheless excited to be joining his fellow general officers to plan for a real fight.
As the field commanders filed into the Potts House that morning, a few noticed the absence of Charles Lee, who had been returned several days earlier in exchange for a British general virtually kidnapped from his mistress’s bed in Rhode Island. The British had held Lee in custody in comfortable Manhattan quarters, where they had treated him as military royalty, plying him with fine food and drink. There were in fact suspicions, not proved until decades later, that Lee had collaborated with the enemy by sharing Continental strategies and suggesting countermeasures. Pending his release, he had been transferred to Philadelphia, and Washington had sent a guard to greet him on the Germantown Highway with the pomp customarily extended to a conquering hero.
It took Lee less than 24 hours to wear out his welcome at Valley Forge. After a celebratory supper at the Potts House, he was given his own bedroom behind Martha Washington’s sitting room. The next morning he arrived for breakfast late, unwashed, and noticeably disheveled. It was subsequently discovered that he had used a back door to smuggle in his mistress, the wife of a British sergeant. Martha Washington was not amused. Lee subsequently found it expeditious to leave for York to meet with Congress before heading home to his Virginia tobacco plantation for several weeks of “recuperation” from his ordeal as a prisoner. It is doubtful that he was now missed as Washington addressed his senior officers.
In his opening remarks the commander in chief couched his call to arms as a response to the “injustice, delusion, and fraud” of the British peace terms. He assured his guests that the enemy’s offer represented nothing so much as a sign of desperation. Congress was of a similar mind, he continued—the proof was the delegates’ acceding to Gen. Gates’s request to return to a field command. Even as they met here at Valley Forge, Washington said, Gates was preparing to ride to Fishkill to place the northern army on a war footing.
Washington also disclosed that his spy network in Philadelphia had uncovered interesting information—the same packet ship that had carried the Bills of Conciliation to America had also delivered to Gen. Howe a letter stating that his resignation had been accepted. He guessed—correctly as it would happen—that Howe would be succeeded by the more bellicose Gen. Clinton. With this in mind he then presented to his subordinates the alternative campaigns he had been pondering for weeks—Philadelphia or New York. If they leaned toward the latter, he asked, should it occur “by a coup de main, with a small force? Or shall we collect a large force and make an attack in form?” He then put forth a third option for consideration—to remain at Valley Forge until all the states had met their recruitment commitments. He asked his generals for written responses. He received them within a week.
Four of the officers—Massachusetts’s John Patterson, the Ulster-born New Jerseyan William Maxwell, Anthony Wayne, and Lord Stirling—voted for a siege of Philadelphia, with Lord Stirling adding in a footnote to his comments that his first preference was simultaneous expeditions against Philadelphia from Valley Forge and against New York City from the Hudson Highlands. Four others—Rhode Island’s James Varnum, Enoch Poor of New Hampshire, Massachusetts’s Henry Knox, and Virginia’s Peter Muhlenberg—were keen to fall in with the Highlanders and march on New York. The three New Englanders, no doubt weighing the outcome at Saratoga against the engagements at Brandywine and Germantown, all noted the assistance Washington could expect from the northern militias should he opt to move the theater of war to the Hudson.
Finally, of the remaining four, two of the three foreigners—Steuben and the French engineer Louis Duportail—joined Gen. Greene in expressing a preference to bide their time at Valley Forge until a refortified army was strong enough to move on either target. Curiously, Lafayette was the only general officer to withhold an explicit opinion. In a long letter to Washington that constituted his response, he called the three options “the most difficult to resolve” since he had landed in America. He did evaluate each one in detail, but the closest he came to offering a solid suggestion was his recommendation that a move on either Philadelphia or New York would require at least 25,000 troops. This large number, he had determined, would be needed to counteract the reinforcements that Adm. Howe’s vessels would be sure to rush from British strongholds in Rhode Island, Canada, and perhaps even the Floridas.
It crossed no one’s mind that the elder Howe’s ships might be otherwise engaged. For not a man in the room that morning could have been aware that only days earlier, on April 13, a French war fleet had sailed west from the port of Toulon. The armada, under the command of Lafayette’s dashing 48-year-old cousin-in-law Adm. Comte Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Henry-Hector d’Estaing, consisted of four frigates carrying 4,000 French soldiers and 12 ships of the line, including the 90-gun Languedoc. It had been provisioned for nine months. Its destination was the United States.
I. Incredibly, a full 70 years before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their Communist Manifesto, John Laurens was advocating that Congress enact a luxury tax “which would be felt only by the rich” in order to fund the military pension program. “I would wish the burthens of society as equally distributed as possible,” he wrote to his father on April 11. “That there may not be one part of the community appropriating to itself the summit of wealth and grandeur, while another is reduced to extreme indigence in the common cause.” (“John Laurens, Letter to Henry Laurens, 11 April 1778,” in Simms, The Army Correspondence of John Laurens 1777–1778, p. 156.)
II. Greene was almost correct; an attempt by Congress to defer the question of half-pay pensions to state politicians was narrowly voted down by the delegates at York.