20
“THE GREAT SPIRIT PROTECTS THAT MAN!”
A fortnight later, across the Charles River from Boston, the Patriots were setting up their banners atop the newly dug earthworks on the southern projection of Bunker Hill known as Breed’s Hill. Providentially they learned of General Gage’s intent to occupy these heights and those on Dorchester peninsula to the south. The following day, after a prayer service conducted by Dr. Langdon, they moved swiftly and quietly onto the heights and proceeded to lay out and dig extensive interconnected trenches. All through the night they worked to prepare the fortifications that would greet the British on the sunrise of June 17, 1775.
When Gage received a report of what the rebels had done, he was enraged, and he immediately ordered a massive frontal assault. Now the cowards who had behaved so despicably on the Lexington-Concord road were going to have to stand still and fight like men, European style, instead of skulking about through the woods like a pack of savages. They were about to discover why the Royal Army was regarded as the finest, best-disciplined in the world. Once these farmers had tasted cold steel—eighteen inches of bayonet at the end of “Brown Bess,” the standard army musket—they would lose all appetite for further rebellion, and this uprising would be over!
Gage’s officers fairly rubbed their hands together in anticipation, as did their troops. Many were still smarting from the humiliation they had received two months before, which had affected the attitudes of even the Tory women toward them. Quite a few old scores were going to be settled that afternoon.
Gage, perhaps even more than the American leaders, sensed how important the impending engagement was.1 He could not be certain how many men the Americans actually had—spies and sympathetic Loyalists indicated that, spread out in a wide perimeter around Boston, there were perhaps as many as fifteen thousand—and their numbers were increasing all the time. Because Boston was situated on a peninsula, Gage could hold the city against a superior force by heavily fortifying the landward approach over Boston Neck and relying on the heavy guns of the British fleet to protect his flanks. A decisive victory now would obviously take the wind out of the rebels’ sails. If, on the other hand, they did not win a major victory . . . but that did not bear thinking about.
Gage committed twenty-two hundred men to the action—a full third of his entire force, which now included two thousand newly arrived reinforcements. As field commander he named his own second-in-command, Sir William Howe, who had fought on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec under Wolfe, the conqueror of Canada.
At about two in the afternoon, the cannon fire from the British ships in the harbor intensified, setting the village of Charlestown on fire. On the Boston side of the Charles, long columns of Redcoats were queuing up and embarking in a flotilla of small boats.
In charge of the thousand men in the redoubt on top of Breed’s Hill was William Prescott of Pepperell. Even though his troops had been digging all night, he had them keep at it, deepening and strengthening the redoubt until it was a veritable fortress of earth.
The bombardment from the ships increased as the British came ashore and began to form into long-lined detachments. General Howe stationed himself in front of his corps on the right wing, calling to his soldiers, “I do not expect any one of you to go any further than I am willing to go myself.”2 And with that, as the Charlestown church bells struck three, he unsheathed his sword and started up the long undulating hill toward the Patriot position. Behind him two lines of Redcoats, stretching all the way across the peninsula, began to advance up the open slope.
They were observed from Copp’s Hill in Boston by General John Burgoyne, affectionately known to his friends and troops as “Gentleman Johnny.” He was as elegant in prose as he was in dress:
And now ensued one of the greatest scenes of war that can be conceived. If we look to the heights, Howe’s corps, ascending the hill in the face of the entrenchments, and in a very disadvantageous ground, was much engaged. To the left, the enemy poured in troops by the thousands, over the land, and in the arm of the sea our ships and floating batteries cannonaded them. Straight before us a large and noble town was in one great blaze—the church steeples, being timber, were great pyramids of fire above the rest. Behind us [in Boston], the church steeples and heights of our own camp covered with spectators; the enemy all in anxious suspense; the roar of cannon, mortars and musketry. . . . [Howe’s forces looked] exceedingly soldier-like. . . . in my opinion, it was perfect.3
On and on came the thin red lines, supremely confident but puzzled by one thing: the silence on the part of their foes. The rebels weren’t shooting, even though they were well within range. What were they waiting for?
What they were awaiting was the command to fire. Colonel Prescott, a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, had sternly admonished his troops: “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. No one fires until I give the command.”
Finally, he gave it, and the whole top of the hill erupted in a sheet of flame. The effect was devastating: great swaths were cut in the ranks of the Redcoats. Those left standing withdrew in disorder. As Howe struggled to re-form his lines, company after company in the front rank reported losses of six, eight, even nine out of ten.
In remarkably short order, Howe managed to get his lines ready, which spoke well of both his generalship and the truly impressive discipline of the British regulars. Once again the drums beat out the call to advance, and once again the thin red lines began to move. Back up the hill they marched, their ranks tight and even, their eyes straight ahead as they stepped over the bodies of their comrades that covered the hillside.
This time Prescott let them get twice as close as before—barely thirty yards away—before swinging down his sword and crying out, “Fire!”
Practically the entire British front rank was destroyed in the first volley. And again, after stubbornly hanging on in the face of the subsequent murderous fusillade, the British broke and ran down the hill to the boats. Prescott told his men that their enemies “could never be rallied again, if they were once more driven back.”4
Although several of his aides had been shot dead on his right and left, Howe was nevertheless calm and collected as he sent for reinforcements and prepared to mount a third attack. But now he changed his tactics. Feinting another wide frontal attack, he ordered a bayonet charge on the redoubt, first having his soldiers discard their 120-pound field packs.
Up in the redoubt, Prescott’s men had gotten so low on powder that they broke open old artillery shells and shared what scanty amount there was. The third assault was a repeat of the first two, but this time the powder did not hold out. Though the British line was stunned and staggered, it did not break and fall back as before.
Now the Redcoats came on the run, bayonets leveled, and the ragged fire of the last few Yankee rounds was not enough to stop them. As the first wave came over the parapet, Prescott shouted to all those of his troops who had bayonets to meet them, while those who had any powder left were to go to the rear of the redoubt, where they would have room to take aim. Those with neither bayonets nor powder used their muskets as clubs.
Finally, as they were about to be overwhelmed, Colonel Prescott gave the order for retreat and was himself one of the last to leave. Burgoyne later attested in a letter to British authorities that “the retreat was no rout; it was even covered with bravery and military skill.”5
Two enlisted men also wrote accounts of that action. The first was our friend Amos Farnsworth, who was now a corporal in the Massachusetts militia and whose diary entry for that day reads:
We within the entrenchment . . . having fired away all [our] ammunition and having no reinforcements . . . were overpowered by numbers and obliged to leave. . . . I did not leave the entrenchment until the enemy got in. I then retreated ten or fifteen rods. Then I received a wound in my right arm, the ball going through a little below my elbow, breaking the little shellbone. Another ball struck my back, taking a piece of skin about as big as a penny. But I got to Cambridge that night. . . . Oh, the goodness of God in preserving my life, although they fell on my right hand and on my left! O may this act of deliverance of thine, O God, lead me never to distrust thee; but may I ever trust in thee and put confidence in no arm of flesh!6
The other account is also by a believer, who knew how much God’s hand had been in the afternoon’s proceedings and who had an equally grateful heart. This is by Peter Brown in a letter to his mother:
The enemy . . . advanced towards us in order to swallow us up, but they found a chokey mouthful of us, though we could do nothing with our small arms as yet for distance, and had but two cannon and nary a gunner. And they from Boston and from the ships a-firing and throwing bombs, keeping us down till they got almost round us. But God, in His mercy to us, fought our battle for us, and although we were but few and so were suffered to be defeated by them, we were preserved in a most wonderful manner, far beyond expectation, to admiration.
Had Howe pressed on after the retreating New Englanders, he could easily have taken Cambridge (which lay only two miles away) and imprisoned thousands of Patriots. Everyone expected him to follow through, and General Sir Henry Clinton urged him to do so, but Howe concluded he should not pursue any further. His men were “too much harassed and fatigued to give much attention to the pursuit of the rebels,” he later reported to General Gage.7 (British blindness in missing golden opportunities to turn costly victories into decisive routs would become a hallmark of their military operations during the Revolution.)
Though the British wound up in possession of the hill at the end of the day, they paid a fearful price. Of the 2,200 British soldiers engaged, nearly half—1,054 officers and soldiers—had been killed or wounded. “A dear-bought victory,” General Clinton observed. “Another such would have ruined us.” And Gage himself admitted, “The loss we have sustained is greater than we can bear.”8
On the other hand, the Americans, who had lost 441 men out of around 3,000 who saw combat, knew just as surely that they had won. Wrote Sam Adams to James Warren: “I dare say you would not grudge them every hill near you, upon the same terms.”9 They had proven to the British—and more importantly to themselves—that they could stand and fight with the best of them, trading volley for volley and giving as good as they got.
But if the wine of victory had caused America to get a bit tipsy before, now it very nearly ruined her.
A mature, sober head and a steady hand was badly needed to assume the leadership of the military, and as always, God had just the man in mind. Fortunately, John Adams of Boston had made the same choice. Adams was known to be a shrewd judge of character, and along with Ben Franklin, he was one of the most persuasive members of Congress. The man he wanted in charge of the new Continental Army was the only man qualified who did not want the job. As Adams put it, “Mr. Washington, who happened to sit near the door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his usual modesty darted into the library room.”10 But to Adams’s mind, that very selflessness and abhorrence of position were two of the things that most recommended him.
The motion was formally presented, and George Washington was unanimously chosen. In accepting the position, he declared that he would serve without pay. Characteristically, he closed his brief acceptance remarks with: “I beg it to be remembered by every gentleman in this room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity that I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”
On the morning of June 23, as word of the victory of the Battle of Bunker Hill spread throughout Philadelphia, a throng of admirers assembled around Washington, who was about to leave to take command of the Continental army at Cambridge. His extraordinary popularity with ordinary people would remain constant throughout his life in public service. He was a quiet man, not given to easy, backslapping friendships. And his popularity, when he was made aware of it at all, invariably astonished him—which only made him the more appealing.
This humility and popularity, coupled with a truly supernatural gift of wisdom, would evoke jealousy from colleagues in Congress and the military. But the affection of the people never wavered, and this morning, the tall, blue-eyed Virginian was positively resplendent in his brand-new general’s uniform with its blue coat and cream-colored breeches and waistcoat. Embarrassed at the fuss being made over him by the gathering of officers and delegates and the band playing in his honor, Washington quickly swung into the saddle, waved good-bye, and set off at a brisk trot.
Who was this statuesque horseman riding off into the destiny of every American? Those present at his departure would have seen a large-boned, firm-jawed, well-muscled man, who was described by Captain George Mercer, Washington’s aide in the Virginia militia, as “straight as an Indian . . . [with] a pleasing and benevolent though a commanding countenance.”11
Years after the Marquis de Lafayette first met Washington, he would write, “I thought then, as now, that I had never beheld so superb a man.” And Abigail Adams, after being introduced to the Virginian, commented to her husband, John: “You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me.” And his step-grandson, George Custis, recalled that “he rode, as he did every thing, with ease, elegance, and with power.”
Power was a word that easily came to mind when people encountered George Washington’s physical strength. Noted artist Charles Willson Peale remembered a visit to Washington’s home at Mount Vernon in 1772, when he and several other young men were competing to see who could toss an iron bar the farthest. Washington appeared and asked them to point out the mark of their best toss. “Then smiling, and without putting off his coat, held out his hand for the missile. [His toss landed] far, very far beyond our utmost limits.” As he walked away, he left this parting comment: “When you beat my pitch, young gentlemen, I’ll try again.”12
Controversy among modern historians has swirled about him, but in the hearts of ordinary Americans, he has shared the place of top affection with only one other president—Abraham Lincoln. Surprisingly little is known about Washington’s boyhood, and stories like the one about the cherry tree seem to be apocryphal attempts to fill the void.
The authors were particularly interested in sorting out the arguments about his religious views, which began shortly after his death. Enthusiastic Christians have traditionally claimed that Washington was a committed Christian, while secular historians have pointed out that these enthusiasts are prone to claim that anyone who ever alluded to God was a believer. They have argued that Washington’s indirect references to God smack of the Deism that was at that time popular with people like the pamphleteer Thomas Paine.
Was George Washington a Deist?
It is a serious question, because in the three centuries of American history that this book covers, only four other people played as pivotal a role as Washington—Columbus, Bradford, Winthrop, and Whitefield. In the lives of all four, the measuring rods of their ability to carry out their divine callings had been trust in the God of the Bible, sacrifice, and selflessness.
In the thirty-two years between the first and second editions of this book, the authors have carefully researched the spirituality of the man who would be called the Father of His Country—and reached the conclusion that he was not a Deist.
Deists believed in a God who was impersonal and absent from his creation, but Washington mentioned the providential activity of God in history some 270 times. For Washington, the word Providence was interchangeable with a personal God and did not denote some impersonal force. For example, in a letter to the Hebrew congregation of Savannah, Georgia, he wrote:
May the same wonder-working Deity . . . whose Providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation, still continue to water them [the Jews] with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.13
Washington obviously saw God as the Jehovah of the Old Testament, who directly intervened in the affairs of human beings. In a letter to his friend Reverend William Gordon of Boston, he declared: “No man has a more perfect reliance on the all-wise, and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks His aid more necessary.”14 (Only a God personally involved in His creation “gives aid.”)
Deists did not believe in the divinity of Christ, but Washington explicitly referred to Jesus as “the Divine Author of our blessed religion.”
Deism rejected God’s revelation of truth in the Bible, whereas Washington stated that America was richly blessed by “the benign light of Revelation” and referred to the Bible more than two hundred times.
Further, there is no record of Washington ever using the words Deism or Deist.
A less well-known confirmation of his Christian orthodoxy occurred in 1769, when Washington, as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, was named to the Committee on Religion. Also serving on the committee were Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, both outspoken Christians.15 The Burgesses had formed the Committee on Religion because they were concerned about the inroads that Deism was making in the colony through the teachers at the College of William & Mary. Bishop William Meade wrote that there were some Virginia Patriots “who had unhappily imbibed the infidel principles of France; but they were too few to raise their voices against those of Washington, Nicholas, Pendleton, Randolph, Mason, Lee, Nelson, and such like.”16 Surely the burgesses would not have put George Washington on this committee had he been a Deist.
Those who have argued that Washington was not an orthodox Christian have pointed out that he rarely used the names of Jesus or God, instead employing euphemisms and indirect references to the Deity. But in point of fact, he used the word God more than a hundred times and made explicit reference to Jesus Christ at least twice. His reluctance to use the names of Jesus or God was typical of eighteenth-century Virginia Anglicans, even among the clergy. The avoidance was not out of unbelief, but from a reverence for the sacred names and a desire to keep them from being profaned.17 Indeed, Martha Washington, a devout Christian, almost always used other names for God or Jesus, even in her private correspondence.
Compounding the difficulty of making categorical statements about Washington’s spirituality is the fact that for Virginia Anglicans of this period, any “enthusiasm” about Christian belief was considered unseemly, even rude. Outward displays of religious fervor were not part of the Anglican way. A gentleman was expected to hide his devotion as well as his emotions.18
Washington certainly conformed to these standards, and he was also an intensely private man. Throughout his adult life, he made a conscious effort to avoid personal expressions of his religious faith. His biographer Benson Lossing said: “It was a peculiar trait of his character to avoid everything, either in speech or in writing, that had a personal relation to himself.”19 And more than three decades after Washington’s death, Bishop William White wrote in 1832: “I knew no man who so carefully guarded against the discoursing of himself, or of his acts, or of anything that pertained to him. . . . His ordinary behavior, although exceptionally courteous, was not such as to encourage obtrusion on what he had on his mind.”
Even the British noted this trait. During Washington’s presidency, British diplomat Edward Thornton would write to the British Foreign Office: “He possesses the two great requisites of a statesman, the faculty of concealing his own sentiments, and of discovering those of other men.”20
Cumulative historical evidence leads to the conclusion that George Washington was a low-church, orthodox, eighteenth-century Virginia Anglican, who confessed a Trinitarian Christianity, anchored by his belief that the Holy Son of God, Jesus Christ, died for his sins on the Cross and rose from the dead to win for him eternal life.
No less a witness than the renowned Bishop Francis Asbury would pay tribute to Washington’s Christian faith at the time of his death: “Matchless man! At all times he acknowledged the providence of God, and never was he ashamed of his Redeemer.”21
His mother, Mary Ball Washington, had been a strong source of spiritual life in his early years. On the day he left home to begin a lifetime of serving his country, she said to him: “Remember that God only is our sure trust. To Him, I commend you.” Then she added, “My son, neglect not the duty of secret prayer.”22 His discipline of private prayer was to stand him in good stead in the years to come.
Entering the Virginia militia as a young officer, Washington distinguished himself in combat during the French and Indian Wars. The campaigns in which he served included the Battle of the Monongahela, fought on July 9, 1755. In this action the British forces under General Edward Braddock were decimated, with the commander himself being killed. Fifteen years after this battle, Washington and his lifelong friend Dr. Craik were exploring and surveying the wilderness territory in the Western Reserve. Near the junction of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers, a band of Indians came to them with an interpreter. The leader of the band was an old and venerable chief who wished to have words with Washington. A council fire was kindled, and this is what the chief said:
I am a chief and ruler over my tribes. My influence extends to the waters of the great lakes, and to the far blue mountains. I have traveled a long and weary path, that I might see the young warrior of the great battle. It was on the day when the white man’s blood mixed with the streams of our forest, that I first beheld this chief. I called to my young men and said, “Mark yon tall and daring warrior? He is not of the red-coat tribe—he hath an Indian’s wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do—himself alone is exposed. Quick let your aim be certain, and he dies.” Our rifles were leveled, rifles which, but for him, knew not how to miss. . . . ’Twas all in vain; a power mightier far than we shielded him from harm. He cannot die in battle. I am old, and soon shall be gathered to the great council fire of my fathers in the land of shades, but ere I go, there is something that bids me speak in the voice of prophecy: Listen! The Great Spirit protects that man, and guides his destinies—he will become the chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him as the founder of a mighty empire.23
Confirmation of this episode can be found in Bancroft’s multi-volume definitive nineteenth-century history of the United States. At that same battle, according to other sources as well as Washington’s journal, the twenty-three-year-old colonel had two horses shot out from under him and four musket balls pass through his coat.24 There was nothing wrong with the Indians’ marksmanship.
“Death,” wrote Washington to his brother, Jack, “was leveling my companions on every side of me, but by the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected.”25 This conviction was further shared by Samuel Davies, the famous Virginia Presbyterian evangelist, who wrote, “To the public I point out that heroic youth [Washington] . . . whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.” Indeed, such was Washington’s fame that across the ocean, Lord Halifax was to ask, “Who is Mr. Washington? I know nothing of him, but that they say he behaved in Braddock’s action as bravely as if he really loved the whistling of bullets.”
This was God’s man, chosen for America’s hour of greatest crisis.
General George Washington rode hard for Cambridge that June of 1775, compelled by a sense of urgency. God’s Spirit was urging him on, for while he was not yet aware of it, America’s intoxication from the wine of victory had slid from tipsy self-confidence into boastful arrogance. Arnold and Allen, who had taken Fort Ticonderoga, now wanted to take all of Canada. Each was convinced that he was the man to do it, and Congress, caught up in the exuberance of successive victories, reversed its policy of only defense and gave its approval.
With America about to undertake its first campaign of territorial acquisition, responsible and God-fearing leadership of the army was needed immediately.