THE MOOD IN WASHINGton’s office was grim when the letter arrived. Then, when the soaking-wet lieutenant colonel walked through the door moments later, there was laughter, relief, and even joyful tears. He was alive. Alive!
Washington, who didn’t have children of his own, called Alexander “son” and “my boy.” Yet this didn’t mean the general was warm. On the contrary, he cultivated distance from the troops he commanded to remind people who was in charge. Discipline and protocol were at the heart of military competence.
Alexander once challenged a friend of his to slap Washington on the back during a dinner party. The friend did just that. Washington sat, stone-faced, and moved the man’s hand back where it belonged. No one said a word.
Later, the friend confessed to Alexander: “I have won the bet, but paid dearly for it, and nothing could induce me to repeat it.”
That Washington wasn’t warm didn’t mean he didn’t care deeply about Alexander. If there was any coldness between the two, it came as much from Alexander, who addressed Washington as “Your Excellency.” What’s more, the general also needed Alexander’s brilliant mind and busy pen, now more than ever.
After Alexander had climbed out of the water on the far side of the river, he sent an urgent dispatch to Philadelphia recommending an immediate evacuation of the capital. Some congressmen fled because of Alexander’s warning. Fear had also been sharpened by a British attack about twenty miles away. On September 20, under cover of darkness, soldiers crept through a forest toward the light of American campfires. Absolutely quiet, they had removed the flints from their rifles to prevent accidental discharges that could alert the patriots. Shortly after midnight, the British soldiers rushed into camp and stabbed relentlessly with their bayonets. At least fifty-three Americans died in the Paoli Massacre. One American corpse had been pierced forty-six times.
Equally urgent as the imminent arrival of the enemy in Philadelphia was the matter of supplies for the troops. They lacked blankets. Clothing. Horses. To ease that crisis, Washington gave Alexander a difficult charge:
I am compelled to desire you immediately to proceed to Philadelphia, and there procure from the inhabitants, contributions of blankets and Cloathing and materials… . This you will do with as much delicacy and discretion as the nature of the business demands.
IN A WAR BEING FOUGHT FOR THE PRINCIPLES of liberty and property ownership, collecting supplies from civilians was delicate to the extreme. The army couldn’t continue without food and horses and blankets, but it risked losing support of the citizenry in demanding them, even with the permission of Congress.
Alexander brought to the job all the diligence and diplomacy he’d displayed as a young clerk. He not only kept track of the items he’d received, but also prepared receipts for residents. He excused the poor and homeless from contributions, as well as people who needed their horses for their livelihood.
His thorough and effective work equipped the rebels to fight the Battle of Germantown only weeks after his miraculous return from the dead. The Continental Army was still reeling from the loss at Brandywine, but Washington was eager to strike back. The British had taken Philadelphia, and some of the redcoats—British soldiers named for their uniforms—were headed for American forts blocking access to the Delaware River. But a reduced force of nine thousand British troops remained camped at Germantown—and Washington decided to take them on.
He had eleven thousand troops and a complicated plan of attack in mind. It would require precise timing and the cooperation of two Continental Army generals as well as a pair of detachments of state militias.
THE BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN ON OCTOBER 4, 1777, WAS A DISPIRITING LOSS FOR THE AMERICANS.
Alexander wrote Washington’s long and detailed orders.
On the night of October 3, four columns of soldiers headed off on the sixteen-mile march to Germantown. The two columns in the center, led by General Greene and General John Sullivan, would strike at General Howe’s center. They would be flanked on each side by a pair of militia detachments. They were to march all night and then attack before dawn: silent, quick, and lethal—bayonets only.
THEY WERE TO MARCH ALL NIGHT AND THEN ATTACK BEFORE DAWN.
There were problems from the start. Greene’s troops were delayed, but at five thirty in the morning, Sullivan’s troops attacked anyway, forcing Howe’s advanced guard back. About a hundred British soldiers took refuge in a stone mansion. Sullivan kept up the onslaught. Cannonade and musket fire sounded like thunder and the crackling of thorns under a pot. He forced the British troops back a mile toward Germantown, all the while struggling to see in the darkness and through a thick blanket of fog.
An hour later, Greene’s troops arrived. In heavy combat, they took part of the British camp. All felt promising despite the delay—and then it fell apart. Sullivan’s men didn’t have enough ammunition, and worse, Greene’s men accidentally shot some of them through the fog. Although they’d put pieces of white paper in their hats, they still couldn’t see each other in the darkness.
The British retreated into people’s homes and shot from second-story windows. The two columns of militia men didn’t perform as planned. The one on the right, a detachment from Pennsylvania, made no headway against a group of Hessians. On the far side, the men from New Jersey and Maryland arrived too late to help. Some soldiers were distracted by the redcoats in the stone mansion, which didn’t help the main cause. Washington, Alexander, and the rest of the general’s military family watched their hopes collapse in agonizing fashion.
After five grueling hours, Washington’s many troops retreated, and for eight miles the British gave such swift chase that the patriots “were flying,” one witness wrote in her journal. In the confusion, General Howe’s fox terrier darted across to the American side. Distraught as Washington was, he couldn’t resist a sad-eyed dog, and he had Alexander write a note and send the animal back to his enemy: “He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.”
The conflict left one thousand patriots dead, captured, or wounded; the broken corpses of American soldiers lay on the road. As crushing as the disorder of the American troops had been, there were some flickers of hope.
In the middle of October, British General John Burgoyne surrendered nearly six thousand men to General Horatio Gates in Saratoga, New York. The victory convinced France to ally herself with the Americans. And it also meant Washington could use some of Gates’s troops for other battles.
Finding enough soldiers for the Continental Army remained an enormous problem and a constant source of worry for Alexander. It wasn’t only that some of the soldiers were dead, ill, injured, or absent without leave. It was also that their enlistment terms had ended and that they were allowed to go home: an understandable choice, considering winter was on its way and the army was chronically short on food, clothing, and supplies.
ALEXANDER TOOK OFF ON HORSEBACK, GALLOPING SIXTY MILES A DAY FOR FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT.
Reassigning some of Gates’s men was vital to Washington, and Alexander was the man to make this happen. Yes, he was young. Yes, his rank was lower. But Washington believed Alexander could make the politically difficult case better than anyone else. To complicate matters, Gates wasn’t a fan of Washington’s leadership skills and fighting style, which avoided major conflicts on open fields. And Gates himself was considered a hero because of the huge victory over Burgoyne (although much was due to the actions of Benedict Arnold and not the gloating Gates, whom Alexander had never liked).
Washington gave Alexander two options: let Gates continue to use his troops as he saw fit if it helped the army, or redeploy men if that seemed the shrewder move. Orders clear, Alexander took off on horseback, galloping sixty miles a day for five days straight. On the way, he delivered Washington’s orders for General Putnam also to send brigades south to assist him. In return, Putnam would pick up seven hundred men from New Jersey.
Exhausted, Alexander arrived in Albany and made his case to Gates, who refused to comply. Instead, he offered the services of the weakest of the brigades he had. Alexander was incensed and thought the decision was “impudence … folly … rascality.”
Gates wouldn’t send as many troops as Washington wanted: two brigades of Continental Army troops had to stay. Both men walked away mad. Gates, offended he had to talk with such an upstart, began an angry letter to George Washington.
“I am astonished …
He thought better of that line and crossed it out. He tried another approach and crossed that out, too.
“I confess I want Wisdom to discover the Motives that Influenced the Giving such an Opinion.”
He also crossed out a whole paragraph griping about having to obey the verbal orders of an aide-de-camp who was acting like a little dictator three hundred miles from headquarters. Eventually, Gates found his way to compromise on the number of troops. He wasn’t happy about it in the least.
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s college friend Robert Troup was in Albany. So Troup, Nathanael Greene, and Alexander met for dinner at the elegant three-story Georgian-style mansion of an important New York military leader, General Philip Schuyler. It was the sort of environment Alexander had thrived in before the war, one where power and privilege parted like an ocean before his charm. Now, though, he was more than just handsome and charming. He was brave, brilliant, and instrumental to the war effort.
THE SCHUYLER MANSION IN ALBANY, NEW YORK, IS WHERE ALEXANDER FIRST LAID EYES ON HIS FUTURE WIFE.
At that dinner party, Alexander met Schuyler’s three attractive daughters. One of them was a dark-eyed, dark-haired, petite charmer named Elizabeth.
Alexander didn’t know it at the time, but he’d just met his future wife.
HIS RETURN TRIP WAS ROUGH. GENERAL PUTnam had failed to send the men he’d promised, and Alexander went berserk at the betrayal. On November 9, Alexander fired off an enraged letter.
GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM THOUGHT ALEXANDER WAS A HORRID UPSTART.
Sir, I cannot forbear Confessing that I am astonishd. and Alarm’d beyond measure, to find that all his Excellency’s Views have been hitherto flustrated, and that no single step of those I mention’d to you has been taken to afford him the aid he absolutely stands in Need of, and by Delaying which the Cause of America is put to the Utmost conceivable Hazard.
In Putnam’s defense, two brigades hadn’t been paid—the funding problem was a cancer to the cause. But Alexander cut Putnam no slack and insisted he send all his Continental Army troops to Washington straightaway. In doing this, Alexander was operating under the principle that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Washington hadn’t given him any such order. But Alexander had gambled shrewdly. Washington was pleased with his initiative. No forgiveness was required after all.
The ordeal ravaged Alexander’s health. He had to stop his travels and recuperate. As he shivered with a fever and severe pain, he sent word to Washington explaining the delay. Despite his health, he tried to keep pressure on Putnam to send men. But by the end of November, Alexander was bedridden.
On November 23, Captain Caleb Gibbs sent word that Alexander was near death. His limbs were cold and remained so for two hours. Alexander rallied. But when the symptoms returned two days later, the doctor caring for him expected him to die.
Alexander was stronger, though, and he beat the illness. As soon as he could move, he set out again to join Washington and the rest of his military family—although he collapsed near Morristown just before Christmas. Washington’s men had arrived at their camp in Valley Forge a few days earlier, and supplies were so low they had nothing for Christmas Eve dinner but rice and vinegar. Alexander joined them there in late January 1778.
The camp’s location on the west bank of the Schuylkill River about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia offered some protection in case of a British attack. But against all other enemies—hunger, cold, disease—it was vulnerable to the extreme. The darkest, most miserable days of the Revolutionary War had arrived.
WASHINGTON AND HIS TROOPS SUFFERED MISERABLY AT VALLEY FORGE DURING THE WINTER OF 1777–78.
Alexander and the rest of the aides stayed with the general and sometimes Mrs. Washington in a modest two-story stone house with windows and fireplaces. Soldiers slept on rickety bunks in tiny log cabins warmed by small fireplaces. The ground was covered in snow and the corpses of hundreds of decomposing horses, as well as blood from the feet of men who had to use rags for shoes. The lack of shoes was so dire that Washington had earlier offered a $10 reward to the person who came up with the best substitute using rawhide.
In the center of camp lay the artillery park, an open field where the men stored and repaired their cannons and where they would drill for hours on end if they weren’t too ill.
Alexander was miserable. The war effort seemed like it could unravel at any second, and a group of rivals had been plotting behind Washington’s back to have him removed as the head of the army. Alexander also had to put up with accusations that he’d stolen correspondence from one of Washington’s rivals, which he hadn’t done. Alexander, hating the man who’d questioned his honor, came up with a suitable insult for his accuser: “vermin bred in the entrails of this chimera dire.”
THE ARMY WAS BLEEDING MEN.
And Washington was so irritable all the time! Martha Washington confided to a friend that she had never seen her husband so anxious. Even as Alexander hated bearing the brunt of Washington’s moods, he understood the stress the general was under. Congress was pressuring Washington to attack, but the troops had nothing to eat and not enough clothing. It was all well and good for members of Congress to criticize from their warm seats by the fire, but the lack of supplies was literally killing the army.
When Alexander and the rest of the men started their six-month stay in Valley Forge, the Continental Army had eleven thousand soldiers. By the end, two thousand had starved, frozen, or died of disease: smallpox, typhoid, pneumonia, dysentery, and typhus—known as putrid fever. The army was bleeding men in other ways. About two thousand men had deserted their posts; the situation was so urgent Washington threatened to shoot the men running away. Often, though, people left legitimately. Their terms of service were ending, and there was often not enough money to pay soldiers what they were owed. Even Washington’s own state, Virginia, had lost nine regiments this way. It was increasingly hard to make the case for continued rebellion in the face of a better-organized, better-paid, better-equipped enemy.
Exhaustion was real. So was ambivalence. By some estimates, a third of the Americans were committed patriots. Another third were neutral and wanted stability. The final third were loyalists. A French-born brigadier general in the Continental Army thought the Americans lucky that the British had made errors and were sluggish. The Americans weren’t used to the hardship of war:
It is easy to see that if their privations increase to a certain point, they will prefer the yoke of England to a liberty which costs them the comforts of life… . There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for this revolution in a single cafe in Paris than in all the united colonies.
The patriots who stayed might not have expressed the enthusiasm of Parisians sipping wine in cafés. But they did endure great suffering. Starvation. Frigid weather. Sickness compounded the clothing problem because soldiers who got ill had to discard their clothing to prevent the spread of disease, which was rampant. It was no small thing to replace clothes. Not only were they scarce, but they were expensive —and getting more so by the day. The Continental Army was paid in paper Continental money, whose value was being eroded by inflation. A general was paid $332 per month. A pair of pants cost $1,000—if they could be had at all. This was the peril of global economics during wartime, which disrupted normal trade.
ALEXANDER AND GEORGE CLINTON, NEW YORK’S GOVERNOR, WOULD BECOME POLITICAL ENEMIES.
As Alexander filled spare moments in the stone staff house at Valley Forge, he threw himself into mastering the intricacies of finance during that long winter. He pored over two massive volumes he carried with him: Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Each book was the length of his forearm and several inches thick. This was information that he intended to master. There could be no nation without a stable economy that included manufacturing as one of its components.
But it wasn’t just the cost of goods and the instability of the currency that dogged the patriots. Supplies of any sort—even food for men and their horses—were elusive because of management challenges. The person in charge of supplies and logistics for the army had resigned in August. His subordinates were angry about their pay; they’d wanted to get a percentage of everything they acquired for the army, but they’d been denied. They quit after he did, with disastrous results for the soldiers. Even if Congress had taken care of the situation, though, there weren’t wagons to deliver the supplies, because the men who had teams of horses wanted more pay for the work.
Alexander, who’d been sending regular reports and insights back to his friends and colleagues in New York, drafted a lengthy letter to George Clinton, the state’s governor. Washington signed it on February 16, 1778.
A part of the army has been a week, without any kind of flesh, & the rest for three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been, ere this, excited by their sufferings, to a general mutiny or dispersion… . If you can devise any means to procure a quantity of cattle, or other kind of flesh, for the use of this army, to be at camp in the course of a month, you will render a most essential service to the common cause.
FROM HIS SEAT AT THE CENTER OF WAR, Alexander saw clearly that defeat could ride up on many horses. And though he still craved the chance to fight with gunpowder and steel, he also threw himself into battle against his bloodless foes at Valley Forge. The situation was beyond critical.
Washington agreed, and worried that if help did not arrive soon, the army would disband.
Washington, Alexander, and a few other key staff members dug deep. Washington saw to it that medical conditions were improved. Nathanael Greene took over management of supplies. Alexander lobbied Congress, frustrated that state leaders were more powerful than congressional ones and were seeing to their own first. On January 29, Alexander sent a report to Congress outlining ways to improve the organization of the army and its recruitment, promotion, and compensation practices. He wanted Congress to ask France for help solving the problem of clothing. And he detailed plans to get food for horses. The poor creatures were starving, just like the men.
Soon afterward, a critical ally arrived at camp: one self-titled Baron Frederick William Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, a Prussian military veteran who had been a staff officer during the Seven Years’ War and an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. Von Steuben had been accused of improper same-sex relations, and as a result was unable to find a military position in Europe. That’s where he met Benjamin Franklin, who was scouting European military talent. Franklin recommended him to the Continental Army. On February 23, 1778, he reported to Washington for duty as a volunteer.
BARON VON STEUBEN SEEMED TO ONE OF HIS SOLDIERS LIKE “THE GOD OF WAR.”
Von Steuben and Alexander became fast friends. Though he was no taller than Alexander, von Steuben cut a larger-than-life figure, reminding one soldier “of the ancient fabled god of war.”
The baron didn’t speak English, but he knew enough French to converse with Alexander and Laurens. Von Steuben’s first task was to create a prototype model army.
With his Italian greyhound at his side, von Steuben ran the soldiers through drills twice a day. He taught them how to line up in columns, how to march, and how to load and operate weapons with efficiency and speed. He cursed at them in several languages and was willing to work with the men directly—a break from traditions of other leaders of the Continental Army, who considered that beneath them.
HE CURSED AT THEM IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES.
This and the swearing boosted his popularity among the troops. Still, there was some culture shock when it came to delivering orders. In Prussia, it had been different. “You say to your soldier, ‘Do this, and he doeth it,’” he explained to a Prussian ambassador. But with the Americans, “I am obliged to say, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that,’ and then he does it.”
The men had a long way to go. They sometimes didn’t even remember to bring their bayonets with them. “The American soldier, never having used this arm, had no faith in it and never used it but to roast his beefsteak, and indeed often left it at home,” von Steuben said.
Two days after von Steuben started his program, Washington liked it well enough that he started using it on all the soldiers at Valley Forge. And he soon appointed von Steuben as the inspector general of the army. Laurens, Greene, and Alexander became unofficial advisers to von Steuben. He’d run his plans by them, and they’d suggest adjustments. The order and discipline was exactly what Alexander loved.
There were some difficult moments. Americans with more seniority and higher ranks bristled at von Steuben’s presence. This jealousy was a threat, Alexander told a congressman from New York.
Also, the troops weren’t sure about von Steuben’s taste in food. “My good republicans wanted every thing in the English style,” von Steuben wrote later, “and when I presented a plate of saurkraut dressed in the Prussian style, they all wanted to throw it out of the window. Nevertheless by the force of proving by ‘God damns’ that my cookery was the best, I overcame the prejudices.”
Within a month, this force of nature—along with Alexander, Washington, Laurens, and Greene—had transformed the army. The men in their smart, matching uniforms could march together, work together in multiple battalions, and fire their guns faster. And it wasn’t just their on-the-ground skills that were changing.
Before von Steuben, most military camps had been laid out haphazardly. (Alexander’s and Greene’s were exceptions; their men pitched tents in neat rows.) Von Steuben insisted on orderly camp layouts for all. Also, instead of relieving themselves anywhere, men would use latrines located downhill and far from the kitchen. They also took care to dispose of animal carcasses, instead of letting the bones rot wherever they’d flayed the meat off them.
The difference this made was huge in health, in appearance, and in morale. Reflecting on it years later, Alexander said, “’Tis unquestionably to his efforts we are indebted for the introduction of discipline in the army.”
Meanwhile, on February 6, the French had recognized American independence. They signed commercial and military treaties with the states—a huge development.
Von Steuben and Alexander worked closely together. Von Steuben asked him strategic questions, which Alexander answered in French as though he were talking to a favorite uncle. He didn’t just answer the baron’s questions, though. He inferred von Steuben’s strategy and explained why it wouldn’t work. “I think I see the reason for these questions. You wish the army to gain ground in the Jerseys. This is a highly desirable thing, if only we had enough wagons to transport not only our army, but our invalids, munitions &c; but we haven’t enough for all that.”
ALEXANDER HAD BECOME A MILITARY LEADER IN HIS OWN RIGHT.
Alexander had become a military leader in his own right. He helped von Steuben write the nation’s first military manual—Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, the army’s Blue Book—which became an indispensable tool for organizing men into an effective fighting machine.
Although the winter at Valley Forge in many ways had been disastrous for the troops, the army hadn’t fallen apart. It had grown stronger. And as winter became spring, the states had the beginnings of an allegiance with France—one that would inevitably send a fleet of ships to help America in its cause.
Fearing a French blockade, England’s General Henry Clinton, who had recently taken over the British command from General Howe, evacuated Philadelphia, moving nine thousand men with fifteen hundred wagons slowly across New Jersey. He made himself into such a plump target that Washington wanted to attack with the von Steuben–trained troops. If they won, the Americans could end the war.
Alexander wrote up Washington’s orders to leave Valley Forge on June 17, 1778. In Hopewell, New Jersey, Washington called a council of war and explained his plan to harass the enemy. As Alexander took notes, he could barely conceal his disgust at the spectacle of second-guessing and fear. The men were acting unmanly.
General Charles Lee didn’t like the plan. Lee didn’t think the underfed, underarmed troops were ready. Better to wait for the French. Lee, who traveled everywhere with his dogs, was known for his temper; the Mohawks had called him Boiling Water during the French and Indian War. The general also didn’t respect Washington’s leadership, and he liked to poke fun at the baron and Alexander.
Irritated, Washington called for a vote. Other officers, including Henry Knox, who had been Alexander’s superior when he was an artillery captain, sided with Lee. Lafayette, Nathanael Greene, and General “Mad Anthony” Wayne agreed with Washington, who decided to move ahead.
The plan was to harass the British Army from the rear with the first corps of soldiers. The rest of the army would cover as necessary. Alexander was to help Lafayette lead six thousand troops. For two days, Alexander rode day and night gathering intelligence so plans could be updated as necessary.
When Lee saw the ultimate size of the advance force, however, he insisted Washington give him the command, not wanting to lose the job to “the little French boy.” Washington did.
MAJOR GENERAL CHARLES LEE, NICKNAMED “BOILING WATER,” LED A DISASTROUS ATTACK AT MONMOUTH.
Lee’s initial orders were to attack the rear flank as soon as he got intelligence that they were on the move. In further orders delivered by horseback, Lee was to send several hundred men up to observe the enemy. If redcoats left, he was to send word. Otherwise, he was to skirmish, holding them there until the rest of the Americans caught up.
At 5:00 a.m. on June 28, the intelligence came. General Lee set out with the rest of the advance guard. The main body did the same. By seven, it was ominously hot already, and summer thunderstorms had pounded the roads into sticky mud. Confusion reigned on the battlefield, thanks to Lee’s ambivalence. At one in the afternoon, Alexander heard the crack of small-arms fire, and Washington sent him ahead to investigate.
“I WILL STAY HERE WITH YOU, MY DEAR GENERAL, AND DIE WITH YOU!”
When Alexander arrived, he found chaos. There were fewer than a thousand enemy troops, which made the prospect for an attack good, but Lee’s men were on the run. What’s more, no one had sent word to Washington that this was happening. Alexander snapped into action when he found Lee: “I will stay here with you, my dear General, and die with you! Let us all die rather than retreat!”
Alexander ordered the fleeing brigade to attack with their bayonets. Fighting wildly, he lost his hat in the fray.
When Washington arrived astride a white horse, he cursed Lee so soundly the leaves on the trees in the surrounding forest trembled.
Lee sniveled. “The American troops would not stand the British bayonets.”
Washington was unimpressed. “You damned poltroon, you never tried them!”
He stopped the runaway soldiers and rallied them once more to the cause. “Stand fast, my boys, and receive your enemy. The southern troops are advancing to support you.”
Washington’s beautiful horse died in the heat, so he switched to a chestnut mare and quickly reorganized the troops. As Lord Stirling’s men covered the left, Greene’s the right, and Lee’s soldiers under Wayne the center, the British struck back. Stirling’s men took the first blows. Then Greene’s. And then Wayne’s.
Henry Knox’s artillery men volleyed cannonballs through the scorching air. The redcoats returned fire. At one point a British cannonball blew through the petticoats of a woman assisting her husband at his cannon. She glanced at her ruined skirt and carried on; a soldier noted in his journal: “It was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else.”
The heat was merciless. Many men fought without shirts. One army private described it as combat in “the mouth of a heated oven.” Dozens of soldiers on both sides died of heatstroke. Women on the battlefield brought pitchers of water to the men.
Alexander’s horse was shot out from under him by a musket ball. He was “much hurt” in the fall. Aaron Burr and John Laurens also lost horses this way, and Burr became so overheated he contracted sunstroke. Soon afterward he resigned from the military.
By early evening, both sides had exhausted themselves. The British Army escaped, having lost more men than the American side to injury or death, although the battle overall was considered a draw.
Alexander, who’d struggled with Washington’s moods and with his own yearning to lead on the battlefield, saw his general in a new light. Unlike Gates, who had sat back and let Benedict Arnold win the Battle of Saratoga, Washington had been a hero. Alexander wrote to his friend Elias Boudinot, “America owes a great deal to General Washington for this day’s work; a general route dismay and disgrace would have attended the whole army in any other hands but his.”
What’s more, the training Alexander and von Steuben implemented had transformed the army. The soldiers’ performance impressed Alexander, who gained a certain amount of fame for his own battlefield exploits. On July 16, the Pennsylvania Packet carried an excerpt of a letter from Washington’s aide James McHenry to Elias Boudinot: “He was incessant in his endeavours during the whole day, in reconnoitering the enemy and in rallying and charging; but whether he or Col. Laurens deserves most of our commendations is somewhat doubtful—both had their horses shot under them and both exhibited singular proofs of bravery. They seemed to course death under our doubtful circumstances and triumphed over it as the face of war changed in our favour.”
After Lee requested a court-martial to clear his name, Alexander placed him under arrest for disobeying orders and making a shameful retreat. He worried a court-martial wouldn’t be enough to bring Lee to heel. “A certain pre-conceived and preposterous opinion of his being a very great man will operate much in his favour,” he wrote. “Some people are very industrious in making interest for him.”
In many ways, Alexander’s premonition was correct. A court-martial would not be enough to shut Lee up—and it would also be too much. The ensuing dispute touched off a series of events that would, by year’s end, culminate in a bloody duel for the honor of George Washington.
Alexander would be in the thick of it.