But the British could not advance because our own riflemen did their business as well, and we worked our battery with as much speed, accuracy, and steadiness as could be mustered. That bridge was the choke point, and I resolved to keep it closed with cannonballs for as long as necessary.
On the opposite hilltop, the British unlimbered two guns and began sending balls toward us. For two hours the bang and echo of the cannon fire leaped across the river, one side doing so little damage to the other that the excitement of the duel soon faded into no more than a noisy day of work. But we did the job we were emplaced to do: we kept the advance units of Cornwallis’s army on the other side of the bridge, until finally we were called off, leaving only our own riflemen to guard the rear.
That night we stopped our retreat just north of Princeton, and the General sent for me. I tucked my hat under my arm and stepped into his tent. He seemed tired, but he sat behind his camp table as tall and erect as he sat his horse.
He said, “You handled your guns with great courage and skill today, Captain. A very smart cannonade.”
I thanked him and told him that I was proud of my men.
At this, he smiled, tight-lipped. “How old are you, Captain Hamilton?”
“Nineteen, sir.”
“Nineteen? So young, and yet so talented.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Keep up your discipline and your spirits.”
“I will, sir,” I said. “The liberties of America are an infinite stake.”
“They are that.” He smiled again, a bit more warmly, though he kept his mouth tightly closed. Even then, his natural teeth had been darkened by port, and he did not always wear the artificial teeth that closed the gaps where he had lost real ones. “You’ll now excuse me, Captain, but I have letters to write.”
I had no premonition that, soon enough, I would be engaged in writing more of his letters than he was.
I sent my resignation to Congress. How could I ever have Washington’s trust again, though I might explain myself with perfect logic?
But the next night I was sleeping in the arms of my wife when I was awakened by a pounding at the door. ’Twas an express rider from Washington’s camp north of Princeton.
The General was urging me to rescind my resignation. The plans of the enemy were coming clear, he said. The British were intent on driving through to the Delaware River, and he needed his adjutant general. It was as if all the unpleasantness of the previous day had been forgotten.
The next morning, I bade good-bye to Esther, who made not the least complaint. She knew how deeply
I was moved by Washington’s midnight letter, a cry for help from a friend.
The next night I reached Trenton. I had grown up there and remembered a fine little town, but now that our army had arrived, it seemed as despairing as any square of ground I had ever stood upon. Hulking shadows surrounded the campfires in the fields. Soldiers huddled against the houses to stay out of the wind. The men of Washington’s guard presented arms crisply, but their eyes were as hollow as rotted stumps, and there was not a clean-shaven man among them.
Stepping into the General’s headquarters—a farmhouse—I rehearsed my speech again. It was as well polished as my first argument before the Pennsylvania court. “General—”
“Colonel Reed.” His voice betrayed neither pleasure nor anger.
“I … I would like to thank you for the note that you sent me last night.”
“Thank you for returning.” He looked at me now, his expression flat and direct. “We need you where you can do the most good.”
I fumbled to unbutton the clasp of my cape. “I’d like to say that I’m—”
“We can’t hold Trenton, Colonel. We have to cross the river. We’ll be safe on the other side, at least until the river freezes. Then we’ll have to find other answers.”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to say—”
“If we retreat to the back parts of Pennsylvania, do you think the people will support us?”
“If the eastern counties are subdued, the back counties will surrender, sir.”
Washington brought a hand to his throat. “My neck was not made for a halter. We must plan for the long range, to retire to Augusta County in Virginia and carry on a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Allegheny Mountains and keep the men together.”
“Yes, sir.” I was still hoping to clear the air of our other matter.
But he was moving on to the logistics of our crossing. “I want you to see to the collecting of every boat on the Delaware, every boat for sixty miles.”
“Sixty miles?”
“’Tis the only way to be certain that Cornwallis will have no means of crossing after us.”
Just then Tench Tilghman came in with a letter. “Excuse me, sir. I’ve drafted your latest message to Charles Lee.”
“Perhaps Colonel Reed might go over it with you.” The General spoke without sarcasm, but implicit in that remark was a comment on my connection with Lee. It would have been the moment for me to bring the matter up, except now for the presence of Tilghman.
The General took the sheet and read aloud, “‘General Lee, I cannot but request—and this comes by the advice of all the general officers with me—that you march to join me with your whole force with all possible expedition.’”
He glanced at me, as if for approval.
I said, “It can’t be better stated than that, sir.”
He signed the letter and gave it back to Tilghman, who hurried out.
And I was left standing before him. I could have wished for an hour of private conversation, that I might
explain myself. I could have wished to obtain the letter I’d written to Lee, that I might show it to the General and defend it, point by point.
But the General said, in a most direct and uninflected manner, “Best get about your business, Joseph. There are many boats in sixty miles of river.”
I know that he was deeply hurt. He admitted as much to me in a letter the following summer: “hurt, not because I thought myself wronged by the expressions contained in a certain letter, but because the sentiments were not communicated immediately to myself.”
Our friendship was repaired by the letters passed in the succeeding eighteen months, but it might have returned to its former strength, had our misunderstanding been melted by warm conversation, rather than frozen, as it was that night.
But in those times, there were far greater worries than our petty feelings. Would Philadelphia survive? Would our army? Would we?
“Good God! Have I come from gathering laurels in other parts of the world only to lose them here?” That’s what Lee shouted at Washington’s latest letter.
But he finally took to movin’ because he realized that there’d be no glory on the east side of the Hudson. He drafted out the sickest of his men and the ones who couldn’t march because they were lame or had frostbit feet or no shoes. Left himself about
twenty-seven hundred Continentals and a militia force that we estimated around four thousand. But estimatin’ militia was like estimatin’ how many crows was pickin’ over a plowed-in cornfield. One minute there’d be a thousand, the next minute there’d be a dozen.
Our best soldiers were the boys from Marblehead. But just lookin’ at them would make a drunk go sober. ’Twasn’t because of their tarred breeches or that rollin’ sailor’s gait or even that they marched so many nigras. The soberin’ thing was that in three weeks their enlistments would end. And most of them were plannin’ to go back to sea. Makin’ money as a privateer seemed a lot better than the empty-bellied mud march that we were settin’ out on.
But Lee wasn’t thinkin’ about them. He was thinkin’ about Lee, and his reputation. At the Hudson crossin’, he said, “Draper, mark this. I am going into the Jerseys for the salvation of America.”
We hurried over the river, then hurried inland, to take a route that the British didn’t control. ’Course, by then, they controlled most of New Jersey. Howe had offered pardons to anyone who’d swear loyalty to the king, and plenty of folks were takin’ him up on it, some because they wanted to and some because they feared the plunderin’ that Howe’s troops brought. To the Hessians, stealin’ everything in sight was all in a day’s work, and it didn’t matter a damn that the people they were stealin’ from might be friends.
I remember ridin’ alongside Lee on a miserable sleetin’ afternoon, crossin’ a range of hills west of Newark, headin’ for the village of Chatham. ’Twas so cold that the spit froze in the fifes, but the drums beat a
steady rhythm, to keep the men puttin’ one foot ahead of the other.
Lee was payin’ more attention to the trees his dogs was pissin’ on than he was to the men. ’Twas as if he didn’t want to look at that column behind him. Maybe that was because the four thousand militia had already dropped down to two thousand, and there were fewer of them by the day.
I said, “Sir, from Chatham we should be able to reach the Delaware in three more days.”
“Reaching the Delaware is of secondary importance, Draper. We’re here to reconquer the Jerseys, which were in the hands of the enemy before our arrival.”
Most of it still was, I thought. “But, sir—”
“No buts. I have a plan we must follow if we’re to save America.” Lee stopped his horse and looked at me. “‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’ Julius Caesar.”
In that army, you couldn’t argue with Shakespeare. Only Washington was foolish enough to try. In his next letter, he ordered Lee to come, and come fast.
Lee answered: “It will be difficult, I am afraid, to join you. I believe that we can make a better impression by hanging on the enemy’s rear. Howe will not move on Philadelphia if he knows we’re in the hills, waiting to pounce. Nevertheless, I shall look around tomorrow and inform you further.”
It took a lot to make me feel sorry for Washington, but I did now. Imagine, havin’ to beg this vainglorious popinjay in a dirty shirt. It even seemed like Washington was losin’ his nerve, proof of which was his next letter to Lee: “Were it not for the feeble
state of the force I have, I should highly approve of your hanging on the rear of the enemy and establishing the post you mention. But I must entreat you to march with your whole force, with all possible expedition.”
Entreat. It never did a general any good to entreat anybody over anything.
I spent my days at Mount Vernon, doing what I could, with the devoted help of Cousin Lund Washington, to see that the plantation ran smoothly.
My joy was that Nelly had been delivered of a baby girl in August, and the child was as vibrant as the days were despairing. In all my letters to my husband, I wrote of baby Eliza. His letters spoke of many things, from the hard realities of the war to the much happier tasks of running a plantation.
“O Patsy, I wish to heaven it was in my power to give you a more favorable account of our situation. Our numbers are quite inadequate to opposing General Howe, yet I have hope of delivering a strike that will be to our benefit.”
Then he might speak of instructions he had sent to Cousin Lund, regarding the planting of holly trees at Mount Vernon. He expressed concern that the Negroes not suffer for want of clothes that winter, despite the enormous cost of them. And in one letter, he informed me that my carriage must make do with two old gray mares, as he did not have the time to send me the horses that he promised.
As if such a thing mattered to me.
What mattered far more was how deeply I felt his pain, and how I wished that by sharing it, I might relieve him of it.
Sometimes he spoke directly to me of his fear. I remember his words on the enlistment of a new army: “If this fails, I think the game will be pretty well up.” With what consequences, he did not tell me.
At other times, he sought, through circumspection, to protect my feelings.
I awoke before dawn one rainy morning to the sound of someone rummaging in the General’s study, which was directly below our bedroom. What could this be?
I slipped out of bed, and barefoot, I tiptoed across the cold floor and down the stairs. These led from our bedchamber to a narrow hallway, which led to the study.
I heard male voices, furtive voices, and lanternlight glowed from the study, brightening the gray gloom.
I slipped into the room, and there were Cousin Lund and Jacob, the oldest of the General’s bondsmen, rifling the General’s desk and bookcases.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
At the sound of my voice, Lund jumped, and a sheaf of papers skittered across the floor. I saw that they included letters, financial records, diary entries.
“Good Lord, ma’am,” said Lund, “but you scared the devil out of us.”
“Those are private!” I said. “What are you about? Lund? Jacob?”
“I’se jess doin’ what I’se told, ma’am,” said Jacob. “I can’t even read.”
I turned my eyes to Lund.
“Well, ma’am,” he began, “you see, unh … we …”
“Lund,” I said angrily, “why are you here at this hour … doing this?”
“Well, ma’am … ah, hell … the General wants us to collect his papers, have ’em ready to move, should the British come up the river.”
I all but collapsed in relief, knowing my trust in Lund was still secure. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve helped you.”
“Well, ma’am,” said Lund, “the General wrote that he didn’t want us to give alarm or suspicion to no one. I reckoned by that, he meant you.”
Very seldom did I cry for my husband. But my emotions were very strong, when I saw the care that he was taking to spare my feelings. I could only excuse myself quickly and return to my bed. I did not emerge until almost eight.
Charles Lee had some new friends, a pair of French officers who’d showed up at his headquarters in White Plains. Names was Boisbertrand and Virnejoux, a species that would become all too familiar in the Revolution—the European officer who comes to America and expects Americans to bow down, just because he’s seen a little shootin’ someplace else.
I always let these fellers know I’d been with Braddock, so I’d seen the way a European army acted when things went bad. And when you think about it, they couldn’t have been much as soldiers, considerin’ that this was the army they chose to join, and this was the time they chose to join it.
Well, in the second week of December, Lee decided he and his friends needed a little rest. We were camped at a place called Vealtown, takin’ our own sweet time gettin’ to the Delaware. Our numbers were down to twenty-seven hundred. If we waited long enough, we’d have nothin’ left when we got to Washington. Maybe that was Lee’s plan.
He knew of a widow by the name of White, an Irish lady, who kept a tavern about four miles away, at Basking Ridge. Said there’d be soft beds there, and if they were lucky, soft girls in the soft beds … for a price, of course.
He rode off that afternoon with the Frenchmen, his aide Will Bradford, and a guard of fifteen men.
’Tisn’t hard to imagine what went on that night. All I know is that the next mornin’ I went to get Lee movin’. The day had come up sunny but cold enough that the road wasn’t turnin’ to mud, so the army had already marched.
Two of Lee’s guard were stationed at the front door of the tavern. Four more were around back. The rest of the boys was in a barn nearby, sleepin’ off their rum. And of course, there were dogs here and there, snufflin’ and snoozin’ and humpin’ each other like old-dog friends.
Mrs. White, a grinnin’ old harpy with breath like the bottom of an ale cask, greeted me in the entry, took one look at my uniform coat, and said, “You’ll find the general in the taproom.”
And there he was, still in bed slippers and blanket robe, wearin’ a shirt so dirty you’d think he was one of his own bedraggled soldiers. He was sippin’ a cup of tea and dictatin’ a letter to Bradford.
“Ah, Draper, good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Not so good as yourself, sir,” I said, “from the looks of things.”
’Twas a dark room, with a smoky fire on the hearth, but once my eyes cooled down from the bright snow, I saw the two Frenchmen, pawin’ a pair of jills in a corner. Leanin’ against the bar was a lieutenant I recognized as Jamie Wilkinson, an aide to Horatio Gates. And another jill was lollin’, half asleep and half drunk, in a snug on the other side of the room. She had one foot upon the table and her big toe stickin’ out from a hole in her stockin’. And Lee’s dog, Spada, was under the table, sniffin’ up her leg.
“I slept very well,” said Lee. “I had angels to sing me to my rest.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “time for them to be singin’ you to your horse.”
“Worry not. I’ll finish this letter for General Gates and be along presently.” Then he turned to his aide, “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. ‘Entre nous’”—he gave his French friends a little wink—“‘a certain great man is most damnably deficient. He has thrown me into a situation where I have my choice of difficulties. If I stay in the province, I risk myself and my army, and if I do not, the province is lost forever. In short, unless something which I do not expect turns up, we are lost.’”
“Entre nous”? I knew what that meant. “A certain great man”? Had to mean Washington. And if he wanted to keep his opinion private, why did he speak it for all of us in that taproom to hear? I turned to the window and looked out at the snow. Thought it might do me some good to look at somethin’ clean.
That was when I saw them. At first they were no more than a few glints of brass and a few flashes of
color on the snow. Within seconds they were a whole company of British dragoons in their short green coats, gallopin’ up the lane to the tavern.
“General,” I said, “best write your farewells. We have guests.”
At that, the two Frenchmen jumped up, all but droppin’ the jills on the floor. Lee scuttled to the window. And those dragoons came poundin’ right into the dooryard, sabers swingin’. Our two sentries did what you’d expect smart soldiers to do—they ran. But for all their brains they were ridden right down and skewered like slow pigs.
Then I got a look at the British commander. Thought he was a girl, he had such a soft face and such thick red lips. But he turned out to be maybe the most hated man in the Revolution, a cruel little rat by the name of Banastre Tarleton. He shouted to his men, “Fire into the house!” And before you could draw another breath, glass and bullets was flyin’ everywhere.
The two jills on the floor screamed and dove under a table.
I fired through the broken window. Bradford and Wilkinson did the same. And one of the Frenchmen went scuttlin’ into the foyer with Spada barkin’ behind him. I cursed him, figurin’ he was runnin’, but he showed more spine than most Frenchmen I’d known and started firin’ out the front door.
’Twas Lee whose spine was wobblin’. He shouted, “For God’s sake, where is the guard? Damn them, why don’t they fire?”
And ’twas like Tarleton could hear him outside, because he shouted, “Run down the guard. Cut up as many of them as you can!”
The jill in the snug was up on her feet, shoutin’, “General! General! We have to hide you, General!”
Lee looked at her, then turned to me. “Draper, do go and see what has become of the guard.”
Well, sir, I thought, thank you for the privilege of saving your sad ass. Then I went runnin’ down the hall to the back door, while Lee scrambled upstairs after the girl, and old Mrs. White put her hands to her head and went shoutin’ “Oh-dear-Oh-God-Oh-Jesus-Christ-Almighty!” from one room to another, with the bullets flyin’ in the windows and the stupid dog chasin’ her now, nippin’ at her heels like this was some kind of game.
At the rear door I found four muskets, but no guards attached to them. The guards were runnin’ across the field. And then one of the Frenchmen came from somewhere in the house, almost knocked me down, and went runnin’ after them. Before you could say “God damn the king,” the guards were shot down and a dragoon laid open the Frenchman’s skull like a watermelon.
Decided I’d take my chances in the house. So I ran upstairs.
Spada by now had figured out this was no game, so he was runnin’ from room to room, barkin’ for his master, and the bullets were comin’ through the windows so fast ’twas a wonder—and a pity—that he wasn’t filled with holes.
I found Lee before the dog did, in the end chamber, lookin’ down at the slats on a bed, while his half-drunk whore held back the mattress and said, “Lie on the slats and I’ll cover you. They’ll never—”
“’Tis an embarrassment,” said Lee, wrinklin’ his nose.
“No more of an embarrassment than bein’ caught here,” I shouted.
Lee peered out the window and down the road. “Reinforcements, Draper? Could there be reinforcements?”
“I told you, General, your army’s marched.”
Just then we heard the front door slam open, and old Mrs. White went screamin’ outside and threw herself on her knees in front of Tarleton. “Oh-dear-oh-God-oh-Jesus-Christ-Almighty!”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here,” said Tarleton. “What is it?”
“Don’t kill me. Please. And don’t kill General Lee. He’s in the house.”
“So we’ve heard.” Tarleton stood in his stirrups and shouted up at the windows. “If General Lee does not surrender in five minutes, I’ll set fire to the house and put everyone in it to the sword!”
Lee said, “For God’s sake, Draper, what shall I do?”
“General, you’ve got us in a very tight spot. There’s no way out.”
When I put it to him that way, Lee took his fate like a man. Told the girl to put the mattress back where it belonged. Sent me down to surrender.
Soon’s I stepped out the door, Tarleton pointed his sword at my chest. “General Lee once commanded our unit. You, sir, are not General Lee.”
“Nor do I hope to be him, sir. But you shall have him presently.”
Then Lee appeared behind me, still in his slippers and blanket robe. Straightaway he was thrown onto his horse. Then they dragged the Frenchman out, along with two other guards they found hidin’ under a tub.
But what about Wilkinson and Bradford?
Lee said to Tarleton, “Could I have my clothes, and my dogs?”
“Of course, General,” answered Tarleton with the elaborate politeness that a British officer shows to a captive officer. Then Tarleton looked down at me. “You there, be a good valet and bring out your commander’s uniform.”
I went back into the house, past the door to the taproom, up the stairs to Lee’s room, all the while tryin’ to figure out how in the hell I’d get out of this. And where were the others? Got the clothes, went back down, and noticed, in the taproom, that Will Bradford was wearin’ the long leather vest of a tavernkeeper and wieldin’ a broom on all the broken glass.
He made a little motion with his head, pointin’ to a hook on the wall, where the shirt and waistcoat of a tavern servant was hangin’. Well, nothin’ ventured, nothin’ gained. I shed my hat and coat and turned myself into a servant. Then I went outside and handed the clothes up to Tarleton.
He wrinkled his nose, whether at the smell or the stains, I don’t know. Then he looked down at Mrs. White and said, “Thank you, madam. You have rendered us up the only man in America who might do us any harm.”
And by God but he was so intent on gettin’ away with Lee, and so damn glad he’d captured him, he forgot about the officer he’d sent after the clothes.
I went back into the taproom and watched from a window as they rode away, with Spada and three other dogs barkin’ after them. Then I asked Bradford, “Why is it so damn smoky in here?”
As if to answer, Wilkinson dropped from the chimney, took a drink of ale, grabbed the entre nous letter, and rode off to rejoin General Gates, who was supposed to be hurrying to Washington’s side.
And that, or so I thought, would be the last we’d see of Charles Lee.
Christmas came on, racing winter to see which would arrive first.
And my husband sent me the bad news about General Lee. “Taken by his own imprudence, going three or four miles from his own camp and within twenty of the enemy.”
’Twas melancholy intelligence, but there was little he could do about it, so he turned attention to his troubles: “Patsy, I tremble for Philadelphia. It is next to impossible to guard a shore for sixty miles, as we have endeavored to do. In truth, we may have to continue our retreat. Should it come time to fall back to the Alleghenies, I will want you with me. But I shall not quit or resign, no matter what. I cannot entertain an idea that our cause will finally sink, though it may remain for some time under a cloud.”
I trembled for my husband.
Once Charles Lee was gone and General Sullivan took command, we set to marchin’ hard and fast. No more of that three-miles-a-day business. ’Twas ten, then fifteen. Hard-poundin’ miles. My feet hurt, my legs … spine, too.
And the worst part was, the nice boots I started out with in the summer, there was holes wore through both. Plugged ’em with tree bark. Second worst thing was that we was marchin’ to join Washington. And I always worried he might reco’nize me. Third worst was Willard Walt, my new friend. Lord, did he complain, steady as the beatin’ of the drum that kept us walkin’. His shoes was wore out altogether. So he wrapped his feet—imagine this—in the skin of a steer slaughtered the day before.
On top of that, ’twas usually snowin’ or rainin’. And when the sun come out, it brung on the thaw, and that brung on the mud.
Willard would say, “We’re sailormen, Matt. What’s the reason for us to be marchin’ like this? And all with cow flesh squishin’ ’tween our toes?”
“A war,” I’d say. “And buy better boots.”
“Hell and damnation but there’s a war at sea, too, a privateerin’ war where a man can make some money. Our enlistments is up in what? Twelve days? December 31. So why are we goin’ south, when we’ll be turnin’ home so soon?”
“A war,” I’d say.
“Hell and damnation,” he’d say.
By the time we reached the Delaware, just afore Christmas, Washington had crossed to the Pennsylvania
side and spread his army up and down the bank like rancid butter. The British had gone back to New York till fightin’ season started again, leavin’ the Hessians hunkered down in posts all across Jersey, includin’ them fine warm barracks at Trenton.
When we come into camp, Washington was sittin’ his horse, watchin’ us, and I heard him say to Sullivan, “You’ve only brought two thousand? Two thousand? General Lee promised five.”
“I came as quick as I could, sir,” said Sullivan, “before we lost more.”
I shouldn’t have been lookin’ at him as I went by, ’cause the General noticed me. He give me a glance. Then he looked back like he knew me from somewhere. At least that’s what I thought. Then he said somethin’ to Billy Lee.
I just put my head down and went on walkin’.
The General said, “Billy, who was that black boy who just went by?”
I admit it. I lied: “I don’t know, sir. Never saw him before in my life.”
Some other time the General would’ve sent me ridin’ after him. But not that cold afternoon. He had too much on his mind. He was already turnin’ to Sullivan. “You’ve done a job we appreciate, sir. We’ll wait upon General Gates and the Ticonderoga regiments. Fifteen hundred more.”
Six hundred men. That’s all Horatio Gates brought. He then beat a personal retreat to the town of Bristol, claimin’ he had the dysentery, leavin’ Washington in the lurch, right when he could use some help. Always thought the men called him Granny because of his round shoulders and his spectacles. I was beginnin’ to think it had more to do with his backbone.
A few days later I visited Washington in his little farmhouse headquarters. Two smoky candles were burnin’ on the table, a smoky fire sputtered on the hearth. He looked up from his writin’ and looked me over with eyes as red as a bloodhound’s.
Figured ’twas the smoke … or cryin’. Wouldn’t have blamed him. Any man would cry who’d watched his army starve, freeze, and all but dissolve on a monthlong retreat. Any man would cry whose two closest generals were down, one for dysentery and the other because he was billygoat-randy. And any man would cry if he knew that those generals had been writin’ entre nous letters and that both thought they’d make a better commander in chief than him.
His voice seemed as bloodshot and tired as his eyes. “What do you want?”
No sense in beatin’ ’round the bush. “A command, sir … I … I hear that you’re reorganizin’ the troops.”
“You’ve heard wrong. I can’t reorganize what’ll disappear in eight days.” He went back to his writin’. “I’ll be down to fourteen hundred effectives soon, most of them sick, dirty, so thinly clad as to be entirely unfit … . The Hessian commander calls us country clowns.”
“But the new Virginia units, sir … I’d rather be
marchin’ with them than ridin’ with General Lee or retreatin’—”
“Retreating?” He looked up like I’d prodded him with the tip of my sword. “I’m sick of retreating, Draper, of being pushed from place to place, of acting with fear, with … with a fatal supineness that will destroy us as surely as defeat in battle. Sick of it.”
All I wanted was to put some distance ’twixt myself and Lee. And here he was, showin’ me the face behind his mask, the face of a man who’d been gettin’ beat for most of the last five months, a face as sad as a freezin’ mud puddle.
I took a step closer to the table and noticed that he wasn’t really writin’. He was playin’ with his pen on little strips of paper, like an idle-minded shop clerk. After a bit, he said, “We must defend Philadelphia, Draper, or we lose the loyalty of Pennsylvania, just as we’ve lost New Jersey. Do you know that Jerseymen tie red rags to their doors to show that they’ve signed Howe’s pledge of loyalty?”
“I saw such on the march, sir.”
He dipped his pen again and went on with his little scratchings. “We must use what strength we have, what faith is left in us. There’s still hope for a stroke against the enemy.”
“That’s why I’d like a command, sir.”
“There may be something. You’ll know soon.”
“Thank you, sir.” I turned to leave, and as I did, I swept a slip of paper onto the floor. Naturally, I picked it up, and snuck a look at what he’d written. ’Twas the words “Victory or death.”
He saw me do it and said, “Yes, Draper. ‘Victory or death.’ Password and countersign for an attack upon the Hessian post at Trenton.”
I was shocked at the boldness of the plan, and shocked that he’d trust me.
“‘Victory or death.’ Reveal it under pain of death.”
He’d been beat, but not beaten. Backed into a corner, all but alone, blinkin’ bloodshot eyes in a dank little farmhouse, but not beaten. Never thought he was.
I knew the country up and down the Delaware as well as any, and so the General had dispatched me to scout, to observe, and to act as his representative with General Cadwalader, who had brought out the Philadelphia militia.
After several days, I wrote to the General: “Our affairs are hastening fast to ruin if we do not retrieve them by some happy event. Delay with us now is equal to total defeat.”
His response, delivered to me at Bristol, sent a chill down my spine: “Christmas night is the time we have fixed for an attempt on Trenton. For heaven’s sake, keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us; our numbers, sorry am I to say, being less than I had any conception of; but necessity, dire necessity will, nay must, justify my attack.”
Immediately, I rode to Trenton to give him my advice on the terrain around the town. I hoped as well that I would be given an assignment in the assault.
A correspondent of mine was Benjamin Rush, congressman and physician. In December he went out as a volunteer surgeon for Cadwalader’s militia, and he described for me a journey he took with Colonel Reed to Washington’s headquarters on the Delaware, nearly opposite to Trenton.
Rush said that along the way, Reed recited instances of Washington’s want of military skill and ascribed most of the calamities of the campaign to it. Reed concluded by saying, “Doctor, I fear that Washington is only fit to command a regiment.”
This, from Washington’s closest aide, was no encouragement.
After listening most politely, though rather coolly, to my advice, Washington dispatched me back to Bristol and Cadwalader, saying my services could best be rendered there. Our job, in the coming attack, would be to cross the Delaware well downstream and move against the Hessian outpost at Mount Holly, which was commanded by Count von Donop. The attack was merely a diversion. I left disappointed, knowing that Washington’s trust in me was shaken, but resolved to do my duty.
The boys sensed somethin’ was up when they were assembled in small groups so that we could read Tom Paine’s latest to them. ’Twas called The American Crisis: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
I watched the faces of the men. Didn’t see them brighten. ’Twas too cold, and there was eight inches of fresh snow on everything. And for most of those boys, the time for shakin’ fists at fancy words was gone. But a few were noddin’. And there were others who usually stood with their eyes on the ground, and they were lookin’ right at me, listenin’ hard, takin’ it all in, and takin’ it back to their tents with them.
Next mornin’, Christmas Day, the orders come down. We were to parade our men behind the hills approachin’ McKonkey’s Ferry, startin’ at four in the afternoon.
Washington had ordered me to the Fifth Virginia Regiment under Adam Stephen. That’s right, Stephen from the French and Indian War, still a big Scots blusterer with a bad taste for barleycorn and a boomin’ temper, drunk or sober. Washington had given Stephen’s men the honor of crossin’ the Delaware first.
The boys thought he did it because he was partial to Virginians. But he’d been doin’ his damnedest to show that he wasn’t partial to anybody. Fact was, those
boys hadn’t been in the field as long as most, so most officers still had uniforms; most men still had shoes and blanket coats. I reckoned Washington knew the first units across would be waitin’ the longest in the weather, so he picked the ones who might stand the cold the best.
’Twas a bad evenin’, fixin’ to get worse. Clouds were so low, if a mounted man stood in his stirrups, I swear, his head would disappear in the mist. There was a raw wind blowin’ out of the northeast, and blowin’ harder as we come down to the ferry landin’. And if the weather wasn’t enough to make you cold, all you had to do was look at that river. ’Twas the color of liquid lead, flowin’ fast, carrying cakes of dirty ice, some so big they looked like white steers in a stampede.
And the boats that would take us across, they was called Durham boats. Big, strange-lookin’ things. But Colonel Glover and his Marblehead lads were swarmin’ about the landin’, and I reckoned they’d get us through.
We never seen nothin’ like them Durham boats. They was built for the Delaware River trade … carryin’ pig iron downstream, haulin’ goods back up. Forty or fifty feet long, with eight-foot beams that made ’em ride steady and flat. They didn’t draw more than two feet loaded, which was the beauty of ’em. Meant they could carry fifteen tons, or a damn lot of men, in shallow water. And they was curved,
bow and stern, like big black canoes, so you never had to turn ’em ’round, which made ’em good for ferryboats.
But you didn’t row ’em. You poled ’em, from narrow platforms runnin’ along the gunwales. Polin’ was the best way to move upstream in a river with a strong current and a shallow bottom. But we wasn’t rivermen. We was seamen. We knew sails and oars, not poles. I said as much to Willard Walt.
He said, “Hell and damnation, when you’re a cocksman and you come upon a woman, you don’t ask, Is she fat or skinny? You ask, How do I fuck her? Well, we be boatsmen, and these be boats. So how do we pilot ’em?”
Then he hopped aboard a boat and grabbed a pole, and before long, we was movin’ the Fifth Virginia across the river. We was boatsmen, sure ’nough.
Even after we reached the far bank, you could hear Henry Knox shoutin’ to hurry up the loadin’. Big belly. Big voice. He was directin’ the loadin’ and pushin’ hard, but he had to. Not only were we plannin’ to move two thousand four hundred men. We were bringin’ all eighteen of our field pieces, because there was snow in the wind and a musket is not the most reliable weapon when wet.
Washington’s plan—almost as ambitious as the one at Boston—called for us to cross the river nine miles upstream of Trenton, then to march into position and attack from three directions at once before
daybreak. Too complicated by half, but timing was the genius of it. A man who’s filled his belly with Yuletide cheer in the night is never at his best in the dark before dawn.
By seven o’clock we was already behind schedule, and that Henry Knox was bellerin’ louder than ever. It had took us that long to get Stephen’s regiment across. And things was gettin’ worse. That northeast wind was blowin’ snow. Ice was gettin’ thicker. And my hands felt like they was froze permanent to my pole.
I pulled my hat low to keep out the wind. Didn’t do much good, but it made it harder for Washington to see me, whenever our boat come to the landin’ and we come into the torchlight.
But I couldn’t be worried ’bout Washington, not when I had that current to fight. I lost one pole to a chunk of ice that snapped it right in half. ’Nother time, a chunk hit the boat in the middle of the river and I thought we’d tip over. Made a thund’rous crunch, and all the soldiers in the middle of the boat, they let out with big shouts.
“Hell and damnation!” cried Willard Walt. “’Stead of bawlin’ like babes, grab sticks and start fendin’. Make yourselves useful.”
I was a little behind the General, just to his right, ready to do what needed to be done. He was sittin’ his horse, watchin’ the lads come down to the ferry, and some sad, sorry sights there was to be seen. Sick men, coughin’ men, frostbit fingers, and every regiment that went by left bloody footprints on the snow. Yes, sir, red blood on white snow. I swear it. I seen it.
’Bout the time the last of Stephen’s men was boardin’, a messenger come ridin’ up with a letter.
“Letters?” said the General. “What a time to be handin’ me letters.”
“Sir, General Gates sent me.”
“General Gates? Where is he?”
“I left him in Philadelphia this morning.”
“What was he doing there?”
“On his way to Congress, sir.”
“On his way to Congress?” Then the General looked at Henry Knox and said it again, “On his way to Congress.” That was all. Didn’t sound mad or disappointed or nothin’, but you knew that was how he felt.
Granny Gates was too sick to help, but he felt good enough to go tell some tale to Congress. I got a bad smell from him. And I have a good nose.
Just after that, the General decided to cross the river, like he was too mad to sit still. ’Twas hell wrasslin’ our horses aboard the boat, because that snow was comin’ steadier now, and it warn’t meltin’. Wherever it landed, it left an ice glaze so slick the men went slippin’, never mind the horses. And the worst part was that you could
barely see, ’cause we was only usin’ a few lanterns, all masked, in case there was spies on the other side of the river.
I stood at the stern, on the planks laid across the boat for the horses. The General stepped over to a seat just forward of me, and he looked down at the water, which was damn near sloppin’ over the sides.
“Don’t worry, General,” said a skinny little feller workin’ a pole on that side. “These boats is so steady, we can load ’em almost to the gunwales.”
“Then load ’em, Mr.—”
“Walt. Willard Walt, and that Negro feller standin’ right beside you there, that’s Matt Jacobs. He saved my life on Long Island, sir.”
Willard was tellin’ the General my life story, and tellin’ him my name, too!
“Yes, sir,” he said, “Matt Jacobs … Never liked Negroes till I met him.”
Washington give me a squint, but that was all.
He was too busy actin’ like the wind and snow wasn’t botherin’ him, like the weather hadn’t been made yet that could bother him. But when he set down by the lantern, I saw that his nose was red, just like any white man’s nose who’s been out in the cold. And the snow was collectin’ on his brows, just like it collects on any man’s face, black or white.
We got the order and the boat kicked out from the landin’. One of the horses whinnied and shied some,
and I done some shyin’ of my own, tryin’ to keep out of the General’s view. ’Twasn’t easy, seein’ as my job was to dig in my pole amidships and walk back along that little platform till I reached the stern, pushin’ the boat for’ard as I went. Meant I had to walk past Washington twice every minute or so, all the way across the damn river.
There was four of us workin’ the poles, and eight or nine fellers fendin’ off the ice cakes. Problem was that now there was more ice cakes than clear black water. You’d get hold of one cake, and whilst you was tryin’ to lever it away, another would hit it from behind and knock it loose. Then you’d have two cakes comin’ at you, and the polemen would pull their poles out of the water to hold the ice off, and when they done that, the boat could swing into the current, and before you knew it, you could be ridin’ the nine miles downstream to Trenton, which for certain would spoil the surprise.
We was halfway across with the General, and things was goin’ good. I was thinkin’ nothin’ but good thoughts. Thinkin’ about summer. Thinkin’ about stew.
Then I heard Willard shout, “See the ice. Matt! See the—”
And wham! A chunk of ice hit us amidships. Just like that. I lost my step on that skinny little platform. I slipped. I felt the pole diggin’ into the mud and tryin’ to lever me off the boat.
“Leave go of the pole!” shouted Willard Walt.
And I did, but I was fallin’ still. Figured I was headin’ for that slick black water, or right between two cakes of ice, headin’ for a drownin’ or a crushin’ or maybe both. But then a strong hand grabbed me
by the collar and pulled me back and held me till I had my balance.
’Twas Washington his very self, sayin’, “Stand steady, boy. Stand steady.”
I looked him in the face, and even though ’twas dark and the snow was makin’ my face look as white as his, I could see it in them small, hard eyes. He knew me. He knew where I come from.
But what he said was, “Well, Matt Jacobs … is it victory?”
I didn’t know what he meant, so I just started yammerin’.
So he said, “Victory or … ?”
“Death, sir?”
“Victory or death. Let’s make it victory, Matt Jacobs. Stay in the boat.”
’Twas a blowin’ blizzard now, but I was sweatin’, you can bet.
Finally somebody shoved a pole into Matt’s hands, and the boy got hisself back to work. None too quick if you asked me. And we got to the other side of the river, none too quick neither.
There was torches burnin’ around the ferry-house, like you’d expect. But no campfires. General said campfires would throw a glow into the sky and give us away. So the men stood or crouched where they could, keepin’ out of the wind.
The General watched our boat pull away as another came slippin’ in.
And I said, “You want your horse, sir?”
“No. And Billy, the Negro, the one I asked about, I found out his name.”
“Sir?”
“Matt Jacobs … from Marblehead.”
Well, you know how he don’t show nothin’? ’Tis easier to do in the snow and cold. He didn’t show me nothin’ about his thinkin’ right then. But he knew who that boy was. And he knew that I knew and that I’d probably knew all along.
Time grew short, and the storm grew sharper. The floating ice in the river made the labor almost impossible. But it was as if the men on those boats took their perseverance from the General.
By two o’clock in the morning, the troops were all on the Jersey side; in another hour, the last of our field pieces and Henry Knox reached the landing.
By then we were four hours behind schedule and the snow was turning to a bitter sleet.
The General called to Knox. “Is that it, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir.” Knox pointed to his watch. “But we’ll never reach Trenton before daybreak.”
“Henry,” he said, “we can’t retreat without being discovered. Having the Hessians attack us while we’re recrossing the river would be more dangerous than striking them now. We’re pushing on at all events.”
Those words were like hot tea in my frozen belly. I wanted no retreating after all we had gone through.
None of us had ever seen Washington so determined.
In the most calm and collected fashion, he delivered orders to Generals Greene and Sullivan to prepare their divisions.
The cry of “Shoulder firelocks!” was heard up and down the line.
I called to my men to prepare their limbers, and our frozen army stepped off into the howling storm.
That night was as dark as the inside of a hat.
Washington ordered that there be no flames, except in masked lanterns. No talkin’ in the ranks. And no steppin’ out of the line of march.
Every man added a few rules of his own: Don’t raise your head into the sleet; instead, follow the tracks right in front of you. No sittin’ if the column stopped, because those who sat might freeze in place. No closin’ your eyes and tryin’ to sleep on your feet, because it couldn’t be done. No complainin’ at the lad who stepped on your heels, because he was just keepin’ close enough to you to block the wind, and you were doin’ the same to the lad in front of you. And no despair, because that could kill you as quick as the weather.
And you know, for how miserable it was, for how wet and heavy that damnable snow was, for how tired those boys were, they kept on, through the darkest, wettest, snowiest woods that ever I’d seen.
And the whole time, Washington went ridin’ back and forth, urgin’ the men along and, when they straggled, tellin’ em, “For God’s sake, stay together. Stay with your officers.”
The column split at Bear Tavern. Sullivan’s unit went right, Greene’s unit, with Washington and the Virginians, went left. Washington liked his complicated plans. If they worked, they made a general look like a genius. But most of the time, in battle, nothin’ works the way it’s planned, particularly if the plan calls for officers to work from watches all set to the same time. And at Bear Tavern, we all set our watches to six o’clock.
A bit more than an hour till light. But it would be a grim, gray dawn when it came. All the better for us. And that boomin’ wind and blowin’ sleet, they was allies, too, no matter how miserable. They muffled the sound of our limber wheels. And they lulled sleepin’ Hessians into sleepin’ on.
Mean bastard fighters, those Hessians, but fighters for pay. They couldn’t understand what would bring men out into a storm like this. They couldn’t understand that some men fought for ideas, or that some ideas were grand, like freedom, and some were personal, like keepin’ a good reputation or rescuin’ one about to sink under the weight of five weeks of runnin’.
Around six-thirty, a rider come from Sullivan’s column with a message. He said, “Sir, General Sullivan sends his compliments.”
“What is it?” snapped Washington. There was nothin’ in The Rules of Civility on how to act durin’ a forced night march through a sleet storm.
“General Sullivan says his men have wet flints and flashpans. He doesn’t think their muskets will fire.”
“Then tell him to use the bayonet,” said Washington. “Tell him to advance and charge. I’m determined to take Trenton.”
And even though we didn’t attack till after eight o’clock, full daylight, the surprise was complete.
The Fifth Virginia drove in the Hessian pickets. Then we heard the beatin’ of drums and the blast of a bugle at the west end of town. That was followed by the low thumpin’ boom of a field piece—the signal that Sullivan’s men were in position.
Washington’s face lit up brighter than a box of candles in a house fire.
And now the wisdom of bringin’ all eighteen cannon came clear.
Brave men on a bright summer day can lose their nerve before a cannonade. Imagine a Hessian with a rum-drunk headache, hearin’ the boomin’ of big guns and the screamin’ of his sergeant at dawn. He comes tumblin’ into a sleet storm, half dressed and half asleep. The muzzle flash of the cannon clears his mind. So he tries to form up and fight. But the iron balls start comin’ at him like he’s a ninepin on a rich man’s lawn, while the grapeshot tears up the half-dressed men in his half-dressed ranks.
And all around him, at the head of every street, on his flanks, inside the houses, and runnin’ from door to door, are dark masses of men … rebels in rabble who’ve appeared from the storm, not like soldiers at all, but like feral dogs come to tear him apart, or maybe like dark angels come to send him to hell.
’Twas more than enough to convince twelve hundred Hessians to ground their arms.
When it was over, Henry Knox shouted, “What a glorious morn! The hurry, fright, and confusion of those poor fellows, ’tis what I expect to see when the last trump shall sound.” He talked that way, big and blustery and full of holy blasphemy, but his
cannon had earned him the right to talk any way he wanted.
Within a few days, Hessians were withdrawin’ from their posts all along the Delaware.
And Jerseyites—good patriots and smart weathercocks all—started pullin’ the red rags from their doors, like they’d never meant to put them up in the first place.
C.D.—Washington had made the stroke he hoped for. He had given Americans a victory, however small. He had given them hope. Then he recrossed the Delaware, to give his men rest, rum, and a fair accounting of all they had seized from the Hessians.
Congress gave him, for a term of six months, “full, ample, and complete” powers to organize and supply his army. It was like making him dictator.
But he wrote to Congress: “Instead of thinking myself freed from civil obligations by this confidence, I shall bear in mind that as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first to be laid aside.”
But his victory had done little to stem the tide rising to destroy his army.
On January 1, hundreds of enlistments were to end. And though the victory at Trenton had brought local militia flocking to the cause, his military concoction needed the gluten of veteran troops. So once more he crossed the Delaware.
Students of warfare are sometimes befuddled by Washington’s decision to bring his army back to Trenton.
I admit that I urged him to do it. In reconnoitering the Jersey side, I had found the Hessians had all but deserted the state. And there was, as yet, no indication of retaliation from the British. It seemed that we were throwing away an opportunity to regain all the territory we had surrendered.
I was most gratified at Washington’s response: he had already made the decision. The regiments were on the way. He would try to retake the Jerseys. And he hoped that in returning to the scene of their victory, his men would be moved when he entreated them to stay past their enlistments.
I waited for the General to send someone to arrest me, someone to come and take me back to Mount Vernon. But I didn’t run. I was through runnin’. ’Sides, where would I run to? I figured, if the General sent me back, I’d get to see my mama and papa, then run away again.
But the way things was headed, I don’t reckon the General was plannin’ on arrestin’ anyone who could shoulder a musket.
A few days before New Year’s, he brought us back to Trenton. Then he ordered two New England
regiments—maybe eight hundred men—into the orchard on the east side of town.
We knew what this was about. ’Twas mostly New Englanders whose enlistments was endin’. Colonel Glover already told the General we was leavin’, and nothin’ would change our minds. We was damn-near wore out from marchin’, and we wanted some of that privateerin’ money, too.
Washington sat on his horse and watched us march in. He had his staff with him, a line of drummer boys, too. He barely moved his head as we went past, but I looked right at him. Wasn’t hidin’ my face no more. No, sir.
I tried to find a place to stand where the snow was trampled, so it wouldn’t get in the holes in my boots. ’Twas all I was worried about, ’cause my mind was made up, like everybody else’s. I was goin’ back to Marblehead.
After we was in position, Washington come forward on that big horse, so’s he could look out over us. You didn’t see him give speeches much. And he wasn’t one to mix with his men. There was generals, and they rode horses, and there was soldiers, and they walked. Simple as that.
But he sat there, and with a voice that maybe half the men could hear, he told us what a fine job we done in the battle, and how he ’preciated it, and if we’d stay just six more weeks, we’d all get a bounty of ten dollars.
Willard Walt whispered, “Is that Continental paper or gold?”
I said, “Paper, I reckon.”
“Then I don’t want it. They keep printin’ that money, pretty soon it won’t be good for nothin’ but cartridge rollin’.”
Washington said, “Now, men, step out and show your patriotism.”
“I’d step out,” Willard whispered, “but my feet is killin’ me.” He’d gotten rid of the beef skins. Now he was wearin’ boots that was too small. Pulled ’em off a dead Hessian.
The drummers made a roll that went echoin’ off the buildings of the town. But not a man of any company stepped out. ’Twas so silent I thought we was standin’ in a graveyard, ’stead of an orchard.
But Washington’s face didn’t change a bit. Only thing I noticed was that the steam from his breath seemed to come a little faster.
Then a wind blew over. First it rattled in the trees; then it fluttered the scarves of them lucky enough to have scarves. The lad to my right shivered. Somebody else coughed. Those boys was plain done in.
Willard Walt whispered, “I’m goin’ home, Matt. I miss my wife.”
“We all miss our wives,” whispered another of the Negro boys, Sam Brisby.
Washington’s horse give a big snort, and Washington turned him toward the town. I figured, that was the end of that.
But all of a sudden he reined the horse and come back and started ridin’ back and forth in front of the ranks, like this was too important to quit on. And he shouted, so everyone could hear, “My brave fellows! You’ve done all I asked you to do, more than could be expected.”
Willard whispered, “That’s the truth.”
“But your country is at stake—your wives, your houses, all that you hold dear.” At that last part, he stopped in front of me and looked down. Didn’t look
long, but ’twas as if he was pinnin’ me to the ground with them words. ’Twas freedom I held dear.
Then he kicked the horse again and shouted out, so they could hear him in the back ranks, “You’ve worn yourselves out with fatigue and hardship, but we know not how to spare you.”
’Twas like he was tryin’ to look into the hollow eyes of every hungry man on that field. “If you’ll stay only one month longer, you’ll render a service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, that will be invaluable.”
And he finished, in a pleadin’ voice, “Men, we’re living the crisis that will decide our destiny. We need you.”
He stopped, like he was tryin’ to think of more to say. Then he backed his horse up again and give the drummers another nod.
He was no man to beg. But he’d just finished as plain a beggin’ speech as any man ever made. He didn’t climb down from his horse, though. His horse was like his stage, and a good actor stayed on the stage. But this actor knew, on pure instinct, how to play to the groundlings. So he played the father in need of help from his sons.
And then the drums rolled again.
And we waited, with the wind blowin’ little funnels of snow across the orchard. Finally a feller stepped forward, a Rhode Islander. Then one of his mates did the same. And I heard a man in another company say,
“I’ll do it if they will.” And another one said, “We come this far, I reckon we can go a little farther.” And before long, up and down the line, men were steppin’ out, standin’ straight in the snow, all except the sickest and the weakest.
The only men who weren’t comin’ out were the ones that I was watchin’ closest—the Marbleheaders.
Not a one of us moved till that Negro boy, Sam Brisby, he went and done it.
Willard muttered, “Damn fool.”
“I don’t know,” I said. My eyes was on Washington. He was noddin’, like he was glad of what he was seein’, and proud, too.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” asked Willard.
Right then my throat tightened up. But I done it. I said, “I’m stayin’ too.” And I stepped forward.
“Well, damn you, Matt Jacobs,” Willard whispered about as loud as a man could. “They always said niggers was dumb. We can be on the deck of a ship in two weeks, and rakin’ in prize money a week later. Step back into line here. Nobody seen you.”
I looked over my shoulder. “I’m stayin’, Willard. And I ain’t dumb.”
“Hell and damnation, Matt. If you stay, I have to stay.”
“No you don’t.”
“But you saved my life.”
“You saved mine, too. Go home.”
“Ah, hell and damnation.” And Willard Walt stepped forward.
Sergeant asked the General, “Should I get ’em all to sign, sir?”
“No. Men who show such spirit can be taken at their word.”
Out of four hundred in our regiment, maybe forty stayed. We formed up with Colonel Shepard. And I fought for what I held dear.
In the end his speech and the entreaties of other officers persuaded some twelve hundred New Englanders to stay. And in the days to come we would need every one, as we needed the twelve hundred New Englanders who went home, and the hundreds from other units who did the same.
For on December 31, while on a reconnaissance trip with six members of the Philadelphia Light Horse, I came upon a farmhouse just south of Princeton. A party of British dragoons had stopped there and were, at that moment, about the business of capturing a savory mince pie from a New Jersey mother.
We moved against this enemy, surrounding them even as they surrounded the pie. Twelve British dragoons, well armed, their pieces loaded, having the advantage of the house, surrendered to seven horsemen, six of whom had never seen the enemy before.
I said to my men, “When you tell this story, don’t say what heroes you are. Say that one Philadelphia Light Horse can take two British dragoons any day.”
The men liked that. But Washington did not like what we learned from those dragoons: a large British force under Cornwallis was driving south. They would be in Princeton the next day, Trenton the day after that.
“Cornwallis moves faster than General Howe, sir,” I said.
“Too fast,” answered Washington.
We might have fled back across the Delaware, but our boats had been dispersed up and down the river, as Washington had been making plans for moving farther into New Jersey. He had ordered unit officers to “hold themselves in readiness to advance at a moment’s warning.” Now, he sent parties north to harass Cornwallis, while issuing orders to strengthen our position on the high ground south of Trenton, with the Delaware at our back and the Assunpink Creek before us.
The next day, light rain and a January thaw turned the Post Road to mud. Add to this the fine harassing work of Colonel Hand’s riflemen, and it took the fast-flying Cornwallis most of another day to cover that last eleven miles to Trenton.
There was sharp fighting in the town. Washington had ordered Hand to slow the enemy until dark, so his riflemen fired from buildings and from behind fences, falling back steadily but just slowly enough to keep the enemy from attacking our positions that day. It was not until four o’clock that the riflemen reached the stone bridge across the Assunpink.
And Washington rode out to urge them to safety. He took a position on the Trenton side of the bridge and sat his horse resolutely, like a caped beacon in the gathering gloom. Enemy bullets were flying around him and Knox’s artillery was thundering from behind,
but he never flinched. Neither, according to reliable reports, did his horse.
Only when all the riflemen were safely within our lines did Washington come back across the bridge and leave its defense to our cannon.
Even after turnin’ the worm at Trenton, Washington was still a blunderer. There were now eight thousand enemy troops at our front, with nothin’ but a little six-foot creek keepin’ ’em where they was. At our rear was the Delaware—too frozen to row across, but not frozen enough to run across. And even if Knox’s cannon kept the British from crossin’ that bridge, there were fords on that creek and, come dawn, Cornwallis would find them.
Then we’d have British in our front, and British on our flank. And the two thousand or so Continentals we had left, and the three thousand militia from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, they’d be trapped.
“A worse spot than Long Island,” I said to John Haslet. He and I were lookin’ out at the British torches and campfires lightin’ up Trenton.
“From one bad spot to another,” said Haslet, grim as a pallbearer. “And me with not a man to command.” His fine unit of Delawares had all refused the bounty and gone home. He just shook his head. “I’ll say it again: Would to heaven that General Lee were here.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been with him in the Jerseys,” I told him.
The day had been warm. Now the wind was kickin’ up from the northwest. Haslet buttoned his coat across his neck. “Lee or not, tomorrow will be very hard.”
“If I was Cornwallis, I’d come tonight.”
Over on the other side of the Assunpink, some British officers were tellin’ Cornwallis the same thing, so the story goes. But Cornwallis wouldn’t move. His troops were exhausted. ’Twas dark. And they had Washington right where they wanted him. He told his officers, “We’ll go over and bag the fox in the morning.”
To which a British officer is supposed to have answered, “If Washington is half the general I think him to be, he won’t be there in the morning.”
Others have taken credit for proposing our escape route that night. Some have even tried to give it to me. I would be proud to take it, considering that I have been blamed for much. But I only provided tactical information.
It was Washington who made the proposal that saved the army and demonstrated, once and for all, what a bold leader he could be.
That night we gathered for a conference in a cold farmhouse. The faces were long, the lamps hung low, the shadows dark. We were trapped.
Henry Knox spoke first. “I have forty cannon facing the enemy. You saw their work today. If Cornwallis sends columns across that bridge, you’ll see their work tomorrow.”
“A spirited opinion, General,” said Washington.
“I believe our right flank is too vulnerable to make a stand, sir,” said Nathanael Greene. “I propose a retreat, back along the riverbank.”
“We’ll simply be running again,” answered Washington. “At length, we’ll be forced to turn and fight, most likely on ground not of our choosing.” He looked at me, “You grew up here, Colonel Reed. You attended the college at Princeton.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there not a secondary road to Princeton, one that runs parallel to the Post Road? One by which we might slip around the British left?”
I could sense a stirring in the smoky little room. Washington may have blundered, but remember the mind that rose when the spirits of others fell, the mind made for crisis.
“There’s a new road, sir,” I said, “called the Quaker Road. It runs through woodlands and the Barrens and reaches the Post Road a mile south of Princeton.”
“Good,” said Washington.
And now Greene said, “Instead of standing or running, sir, perhaps we might take this new road and get in the enemy’s rear by a march upon Princeton.”
“First Princeton,” said Washington, “then the British supplies at Brunswick.”
“But the road, sir,” said Henry Knox. “I’ve heard ’tis mostly mud and stumps. How will we move the artillery?”
“Henry,” said Washington, “you’ve dragged those guns all over America. Find a way to pull them eleven miles to Princeton.”
And then Billy Lee spoke up. “Sir, I just been outside.
And the wind’s comin’ up good. Puddles is icin’ up’. Ground’ll be froze solid ’fore long.”
Washington looked at us and said, “There you have it, gentlemen. Providence is with us.”
We kept the fires burnin’. We kept a small rear guard scrapin’ shovels through the night. We muffled the wheels of our cannon and their limbers and wrapped the hooves of the horses, too. Officers unhitched their hangers so they wouldn’t rattle. And for the second time in six months, we snuck away, leavin’ the British with an empty bag.
Only problem was that we were marchin’ deeper into enemy-held territory. Retreatin’ in the wrong direction, you might say. We were also pit-belly hungry and dog-ass tired. I actually saw men walkin’ while they was sound asleep. Hell, I fell asleep myself on my horse, so I got down and walked. Felt better once the sky got light, but I still thought this was Washington’s wildest roll of the dice yet.
The sun come up as bright as we’d seen in a month. ’Twas bitter cold, but dry and calm. No wind at all. And the hoarfrost trimmed rail fences and trees and everything else.
We came to a fork in this road, and Washington sent General Mercer and three hundred men off to the left to destroy a bridge about a half mile away on the Post Road.
My Virginians moved toward Princeton as part of Sullivan’s division, one of the most mixed-up brigades
in the history of warfare. We had Virginia Continentals; Colonel Hand’s Pennsylvania riflemen; Shepard’s regiment, includin’ a little remnant of Marblehead men; and New Englanders from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. And behind us by about a thousand yards were Cadwalader’s Pennsylvania militia. What we had was truly Continental, also truly tired, cold, and hungry.
A low run of hills screened us from the Post Road, and up ahead, across the fields, we could see the rooves of the Princeton College. Then we heard the sound of musket fire, followed quick by the bangin’ of several field pieces, all comin’ from the direction of Mercer and the bridge.
Straight off, Washington had half of us turned and movin’ back toward the noise—volleys, cannon blasts, screamin’ horses, shoutin’ men. It all sounded like a … a bad dream on such a bright calm morning.
Comin’ over a low ridge, we saw two American cannon, dug in near a farmhouse, holdin’ off a slew of redcoats in an orchard below them.
Mercer had run into two regiments of British, four or five hundred men, hurryin’ down the Post Road to Trenton.
The British were as surprised to see him as he was to see them. But they rallied quick. They drove in Mercer with a volley and a bayonet charge. Then they turned on Cadwalader’s Pennsylvanians, who did what militia always did when bayonets flashed—lost their nerve and ran.
Now, ’twas just the two cannon keepin’ the British at bay in the orchard, whilst John Haslet tried to order up the men from Mercer’s unit, because Mercer
was down on the field, and from the way the British were workin’ him over, we’d find more bayonet holes than buttonholes in his coat.
I arrived just in time to see Haslet take a musket ball in the head. Hadn’t seen anyone I cared about shot down on a battlefield in a long time. Damn hard puttin’ it out of my head, but I had to. Because this was bad. If the British pushed through at that farmhouse, they’d split our whole column in half.
But Washington was takin’ command, shoutin’ to me and Colonel Hand: “Form up on the right of the cannon. Wait for my order. I’ll bring up the Pennsylvanians.”
Then he went gallopin’ along the crest of the rise, past the farmhouse, and into the stand of trees where those Pennsylvanians were huddled.
I don’t know what magic he worked on them, bein’ so busy pullin’ my own men into line and duckin’ the musket balls that was blowin’ past my ears.
They say he shouted, “Parade with us, boys! There’s but a handful of the enemy over there, and we’ll have them presently.”
And this time he didn’t need a ridin’ crop to make them obey, because they believed him. They’d never done more than practice on their town greens, but they came marchin’ out of the woods like regulars, with the big man on the bay horse leadin’ ’em.
And I thought, What a target. Decided to dismount and lead my men on foot.
Washington stretched a line of men all the way across that low hill—militia on the left and Continental veterans on the right, with a force of tough, blooded British regulars holdin’ their red formations in the orchard and field before us, darin’ us to attack and
hopin’ to keep us on this field till reinforcements arrived.
And now came the moment when George Washington proved what kind of man he was. No matter what I’ve said, or what I’ll say, I’ll always admire him for that day at Princeton.
He pulled off his hat, waved it, and shouted, “Forward!”
And all of us kicked on his order, a big, lurchin’, ragged line of soldiers comin’ down the rise, crunchin’ over the snow.
But we didn’t scare the British, not one damn bit. They could see our rags and tatters. Figured we’d fight like rags and tatters, too. Their sergeants, all as confident as cocks, were shoutin’, “Make ready! Prepare to fire by volley!”
But Washington didn’t stop us until the two lines were thirty yards apart, prime range for a musket. Then he shouted, “Halt!”
I’d been in some big fights before, but I’d never been in somethin’ like this. ’Twas like a giant duel, a long brown line of men countin’ off the steps and closin’ with the line of redcoats slashed across the snow. And the officers were bellowin’ orders, and the bravest—or the most frightened—of the men were shoutin’ across those thirty yards at each other, and I was callin’, “Make ready!” to my men. And the muskets were all rattlin’ into place. And …
Just before the British commander shouted it, Washington screamed, “Fire!”
I was settin’ on the little rise by the farmhouse.
The second I heard the first primin’ powder pop, I yanked off my hat and put it over my face. I couldn’t watch my master shot down, and I didn’t see how nothin’ else could happen. He was in between them two armies, a big man on a white horse, with hundreds of muskets pointin’ at him from both sides.
Them muskets went off all at once, and the sound hit me so hard in my stomach, I almost puked in my hat.
Then I heard men screamin’ and shoutin’, and I just had to take the hat from my eyes. I thought I’d see British bayonets comin’ up the rise through the smoke, but what I saw was our boys, runnin’ lickety-split after the tail-turned redcoats.
And the General? Why, he was still there on the horse, wavin’ his hat, and shoutin’, “It’s a fine fox chase my boys! Run them to ground.”
’Twas the bravest damn thing I’d ever seen, or the dumbest. But Washington himself carried the day. There was no question about it.
And by God, but he couldn’t stop himself.
When those British turned and ran, he ran right after them, his army hootin’ and hollerin’ behind him.
His aides looked mighty nervous, because he was out of sight for quite some time. But the man that
Cornwallis had called a fox the night before went out and bagged about a hundred British prisoners that mornin’.
Meanwhile Sullivan moved against the regiment in front of him. He forced the British back into Nassau Hall at King’s College, and Alexander Hamilton set up his artillery outside. Fired two shots. One hit the buildin’. Another one, so the story goes, went through an open window and took off the head of King George in the portrait on the wall. The British must’ve seen that as a bad sign, because they come surrenderin’ out in short order.
The stories of beheading King George in Nassau Hall are true. I’m afraid that other stories are also true. Once the British troops had surrendered to us and were properly subdued, our men ate the British breakfasts and collected the British stores. Then they looted the town.
They believed it a Tory stronghold, so they took it upon themselves to liberate what they would from the houses of patriotic Americans who had already been oppressed by Hessians and British. The looting was so widespread that no punishment could be fairly administered, and the enemy were moving toward us so quickly that there was not time to make amends.
But that outbreak of negative passion could not besmirch the achievement of George Washington during that miraculous ten days. Looking back upon it all
now, I see that the enterprises of Trenton and Princeton were the dawning of that bright day which afterward broke forth with such resplendent luster.
C.D.—All those I interviewed agreed that a push to Brunswick and the British supply depot might have changed the course of the war even more dramatically than those two victories. But Washington’s men were exhausted, and Cornwallis, furious at being outwitted, was hurrying from Trenton. So Washington retreated to the hills around Morristown, which were virtually impregnable. Winter descended, the British withdrew all but a token force from the Jerseys, and Washington was a greater hero than ever.
I wanted to go home. Wasn’t supposed to, but I had to. Went to Adam Stephen and told him I was sick. ’Twas no lie. I was sick in the heart at havin’ been away from my wife for eighteen months. Begged Stephen to give me a pass.
“How am I to be certain that you’ll come back?” he asked.
“I give you my word.”
Stephen looked over my request. “You know, the lads you led at Princeton, they startin’ to call themselves Draper’s Regiment. What do I tell them? What do I tell the General?”
“Tell them the truth. Tell them I’m sick. Tell the General I’m happy to keep fightin’, so long’s I can go
home to check on the printin’ business now and then. Tell him there’s two things made of lead that matter in this fight—musket balls and movable type.”
A week later I came up to the offices of what was now called Draper Importin’ and Printin’. But there wasn’t much importin’ goin’ on. The British were tryin’ to blockade the coast, and one place where they’d had some luck was at the mouth of the Chesapeake. But that couldn’t be the reason that the door was draped in black crepe.
I had an inklin’ on what it might be. Leastways I hoped it was my uncle and not … not somebody else.
Instead of the old men who’d once been hunched over ledgers in the downstairs office, there were young men hunched over type cases. They looked at me, in my officer’s coat and dirty breeches, like I was an Injun or somethin’.
I hurried through that room and went up the stairs to my uncle’s office. Eli was sittin’ at the door, sound asleep.
I pushed open the door, and sittin’ behind the desk … was my Charlotte.
She didn’t glance up as the door swung open. She was too engrossed in the young man sittin’ in the chair on the other side of her desk. He was holdin’ a newspaper, and I was almost jealous at the attention she was giving him.
He said, “Here’s the Pennsylvania Journal on Washington: ‘If there are spots on his character, they are like spots on the sun, only discernible by the magnifying powers of the telescope. Had he lived in the days of idolatry, he had been worshiped as a god.’”
Charlotte asked the young man, “Do you think we should print that?”
“It’s what people are thinking.”
“It’s a mite strong,” she said. “I wonder what my husband would say.”
And I sent a loud voice from the doorway: “He’d say, ‘Washington is a god and will remain so until things go wrong. Then they’ll damn him again.’”
And the smile she gave me erased any jealousy and all the pain.
She told the young man, who turned out to be John Hereford, to print whatever he wanted. Then the two of us rushed arm in arm through the streets of Alexandria to the little house where we’d lived for so long. I will tell you honestly that I can hardly remember any grief that day. My uncle was gone, but he had been goin’ slowly for many years. And he’d left everything to me.
What I still tingle at is the joy of that reunion. Keep your Chinese potions and your oysters. Absence is the best aphrodisiac known to man. And a hot bath. Long talk with your wife works, too. So I had the bath, then we tumbled, then talked, then tumbled, then talked, then … talked some more. Don’t forget I was forty-four by then. When I finally went to sleep, she was readin’ somethin’ I’d brought her—my copy of The American Crisis.
Fifteen minutes later she was nudgin’ me awake the way she used to. Nothin’ had ever felt better in my life than bein’ in that bed, with her cold feet against mine and that elbow in my ribs.
“Hess … Hess … we should print this. We should print everything he writes from now on. Listen: ‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet the harder
the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.’”
C.D.—By May 1800, I had made my way to France, to a château called La Grange, some thirty miles southeast of Paris. There I was privileged to talk for the better part of a week with my next narrator, who spoke excellent English.
I first came into the presence of General Washington in July of 1777 in the City Tavern in Philadelphia. I picked him out immediately by the majesty of his face and figure. I could not know then how close our bond would become, but it is safe to say that we became as father and son.
I never knew my real father. He was a colonel in the French army, killed when I was only two. I inherited his titles and wealth, but at the age of eleven I lost my mother and grandfather also. I was sixteen and my beloved Adrienne fourteen when a marriage was arranged for us.
So you see, I had lived much life in a very short time when Silas Deane, America’s commissioner in Paris, began recruiting French officers to his country’s
cause. He promised high rank and high pay to those who would bring European training to the battlefields of America, and such service was something that my own country smiled upon.
I did not deceive myself, however. My captaincy in the French army had come not because of experience but because of the influence of my family. Deane knew of this influence, and he did not deceive himself either. A happy Lafayette would be a strong ally at the Court of Versailles. And so it was that I was made a major general in the American army at the age of twenty.
From the first moment that I arrived in America, I was in love with the land and the people. In them were simplicity of manners, willingness to oblige, love of country and liberty, and an easy equality. People ask me often, was I a believer in republicanism at this time? I do not say yes and I do not say no. I say only that America opened my eyes.
General Washington greeted me with cool politeness. I knew he was measuring me, as he must have measured all the many men who sought to impress him, and his eyes, of course, fell upon the major general’s sash which now I was wearing.
He had been told that my rank was to be ceremonial. This I did not know.
I was hoping to be given a division. This he did not know.
He thanked me for coming. He complimented my zeal and invited me to reside in his house as a member of his military family in the coming campaign.
This offer was accepted with the same frankness with which it was made.
“Of course,” he went on, “this is a republican army.
Poor in material comforts and military trappings. We should be embarrassed to show ourselves before an officer who has just left French troops.”
I answered in the best way, with the truth: “Mon Général, I have come to learn and not to teach.”
And that modest tone, which was not common in most of the Europeans who came to him, produced a very good effect. I could tell, because he smiled.
I had become an aide to His Excellency in the winter.
Joseph Reed had resigned. Though Washington had sought to obtain for him the position of brigadier of cavalry, and the two men had expressed their friendship in letters, they were moving apart. At least, Reed had left the army for Congress, where it was hoped he would serve our purposes.
So the General needed more hands for the great volume of papers that demanded his attention. He told me, “My time is so taken up at my desk that I am obliged to neglect many essential parts of my duty; it is absolutely necessary for me to have persons who can think for me, as well as execute my orders.”
I always sought to keep my happiness independent of the caprices of others. But I could not deny the General’s great personal power. He had put on the face of fortitude and resolution, even while our affairs were at the lowest ebb and the continent almost in a state of despair.
So I took the position, and soon enough I was learning to write in Washington’s hand as well as his
voice, so that he could simply sign his name to a letter or an order and it would appear that he had written the whole of it.
That summer we spent much time and energy trying to ascertain the intentions of the enemy. General Howe had left New York and taken to his ships. His evident target was Philadelphia, but we could not be certain. So back and forth we marched, hoping to meet him wherever he came ashore. At such a time it was of little merit for Washington to be placating European officers like Lafayette, who was then arrogantly pressing to be given a field command.
The General expressed his irritation over Lafayette to Congress: “What the designs of Congress respecting this gentleman are, and what line of conduct I am to pursue, I know no more than a child unborn, and beg to be instructed. If Congress meant that this rank should be unaccompanied by command, I wish it had been sufficiently explained to the Marquis.”
The answer: “Depend on it that Congress never meant he should have a command, nor will it countenance him in his applications.”
There then arrived several letters from France, from Silas Deane and, more importantly, from our emissary, Benjamin Franklin.
Deane spoke directly of the value of the Marquis to America. “A generous reception of him will do us infinite service.”
Franklin agreed with that but found a way to make personal the relations of self-interested states: “I have met his beautiful young wife, who is big with child. For her sake particularly, we hope his bravery and ardent desire to distinguish himself will be restrained by the General’s prudence. As there are a number of
very worthy persons here who interest themselves in the welfare of that amiable young nobleman, advise him with a friendly affection.”
“I’ll take Dr. Franklin’s advice,” the General told me. “Of all the Europeans, the young Marquis seems the most worthy of friendship despite his pretensions as to rank.”
Soon thereafter, Lafayette came to the General’s office. For all I had heard, I like him immediately.
The General delivered him the bad news: “Marquis, I must tell you that your commission, in the eyes of Congress, is considered entirely ceremonial.”
Though Lafayette made some sounds of protest, the General quieted him quickly and gently. “Nevertheless, you can rely on me, my dear Marquis, that I will continue to treat you as a father and a friend.”
It was my impression that the Marquis took the General’s words far more seriously than the General may have meant them. A father and a friend were powerful pronouncements for a fatherless boy so far from home.
I, on the other hand, had from the beginning determined that if the General offered friendship to me, I would accept it in a manner which showed that I had no inclination to court it and that I wished to stand rather on a footing of military confidence than private attachment.
This, perhaps, is why my friendship with Lafayette endured. We were as brothers in the General’s family, but not rivals for his affections.
“Father and friend.” He said this to me on a day that I now look back upon as one of the most important in my life.
And all during that summer’s campaign in Pennsylvania, and all during the years that followed, he never wavered from that promise. I never wavered in my affection for him or in my loyalty.
C.D.—Late that summer, Howe finally satisfied everyone’s curiosity by moving on Philadelphia. Washington tried to stop him at Brandywine Creek and failed, though Lafayette distinguished himself and sustained a bloody leg wound.
None other than Dr. James Craik, now assistant director general of the hospital department, tended the Marquis and commented to me on both the “warmth of the young man” and “the deep, personal concern of the General.”
Of greater concern were the British. In October, Washington attacked at Germantown and was driven back, leaving Philadelphia firmly in the hands of Lord Howe. But then transcendent news arrived: at Saratoga the Army of the Northern Department, under Horatio Gates, had defeated a British army invading from Canada, thereby dashing British hopes of driving a wedge down the Hudson.
Though the victory was due in greater part to the battlefield diligence of Benedict Arnold than to the strategic caution of Gates, the latter ignored Arnold in his dispatch. He ignored Washington, too, sending
the dispatch directly to Congress, suggesting that they, and not the commander in chief, were his superiors.
Washington wrote to Gates, with controlled fury: “I cannot but regret that a matter of such magnitude should have reached me by report only or through letters not bearing that authenticity which it would have received by a line under your signature.”
Gates issued a tepid apology.
As winter came on, Washington lingered in the hills west of Philadelphia, trying to hold his army together and hold Howe in check, but lacking the strength to dislodge him. There were some who began to suggest that it was skill Washington lacked. Soon the name of Gates was being whispered as a replacement for him, in Congress and in the shadowy corners of cold canvas tents, where conspiracy and cabal grew like mushrooms.
December 18 was decreed by Congress to be a day of thanksgiving for the victory in Saratoga, which had caused my husband to rejoice for many reasons.
He wrote me that he was happy that the victory was “not immediately due to the commander in chief, nor to the southern troops. If it had been, idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded; so excessive as to endanger our liberties. Now at least we can allow a certain citizen to be wise, virtuous, and good, without thinking him a deity or savior.”
That “certain citizen” was Washington.
My husband’s great fear, since Trenton and Princeton, had been that Washington would become more important than the Revolution. Having taken the measure of the man, I was not concerned about this.
But I was concerned for my husband’s health. He came home a few days before the thanksgiving, worn down and exhausted by his work in Congress, and especially by his service on the Board of War, which saw to recruiting, supply, prisoner exchange, and the keeping of records. My husband was leaving Congress, the Board of War was to be reorganized, and so, I thought, was our life.
Then came news from Congress: John Adams had been selected to replace Silas Deane in Paris. Not only would he be leaving me but he would be at six weeks’ distance, on the other side of a stormy sea, rather than two weeks away, in the center of a stormy Congress.
Of course the storms of Congress were less glorious than once they had been. All but two of the original delegates had gone on to other things—the army, state politics, private life. New congressmen bogged themselves down, even more than their predecessors, in the piddlings and triflings of governing thirteen disparate political bodies as one. And as the faces in Congress changed, the question became more obvious. Who was the one constant in the Revolution? Washington? Or would Horatio Gates, hero of Saratoga, surpass him?
In November we learned that Gates had been named president of the Board of War. This, in essence, made him Washington’s superior, though in reality I did not believe there could be any to function in that role.
Thanksgivin’: It means a day of prayer. It can also mean a day with a feast. Well, a lad from a Connecticut regiment put it best: “We feasted upon a leg of nothin’ and no turnips.”
We were marchin’ west to winter quarters, some twenty miles outside Philadelphia. The name of the place had a nice ring to it. Made you think of a valley down out of the wind, a blacksmith’s forge with a fine warm furnace goin’ night and day. But when you’re an army of ten thousand hungry men, and there’s fifteen thousand full-bellied British regulars twenty miles away, you better not be puttin’ yourselves into a valley.
No, Valley Forge was no valley. And thanksgivin’ was no banquet. And don’t ask me why this place was called winter quarters, either. Hardly a shelter anywhere, nothin’ but bare woods and a barren plateau, two miles long and a mile and a half wide, ’tween the Schuylkill River and Valley Creek.
But there were roads. Even in the snow, you could tell where they were by trackin’ the bloody footprints. I saw lads marchin’ with rags around their feet. Saw bare soles sliced open on the ice-shard edges of frozen footprints left by men lucky enough to have boots. Saw men limpin’ along in moccasins made from untanned hides, with edges so stiff they gave you bloody ankles instead of bloody soles.
Sometimes I wondered what made those boys keep goin’. I’d stopped tryin’ to answer the question for myself. Hell, I’d stopped askin’ it.
I’d kept with the Virginians, though the Virginians
hadn’t kept so much with me. The first nine regiments would soon be gone home. And old Adam Stephen was gone already. Dismissed for drunkenness at Germantown.
To replace him, we’d been given a man—or should I say boy?—with a head shaped like an egg. That was what I thought when I first laid eyes on Lafayette. An egg fringed with reddish blond hair, and arched brows that made him look like he was always surprised. My second thought was, If he’s only twenty and I’m forty-five, how is it that he’s a major general and I’m just a colonel?
Well, there were political answers to that. And he wasn’t given a command till he proved himself at Brandywine. But after he was wounded there, Washington took to him with more warmth than I’d ever seen him show to anybody, except for his little dead stepdaughter, Patsy. I think if Lafayette asked for a doll baby from London, George would’ve moved heaven and earth to get it.
So did George need a son? Had a stepson already. But most of the men he trusted were younger, some by ten years, like Greene, most by twenty or more. What other army ever had a general of artillery the age of Henry Knox? What general ever put as much trust in an aide like Hamilton? Or gave a whole division to somebody as young as Lafayette?
Washington liked men who admired him, who flattered him somehow, who proved their loyalty before they proved they could think for themselves. That wasn’t to say he didn’t like the men around him to be smart. They could even be smarter than he was, so long as they knew their place or, like Hamilton, let him think they did.
That explained why I’d been promoted to colonel but no higher. I’d said things he might have forgiven, but he never forgot. So he always treated me cold and correct. After two and a half years of that damn war, I’d proven my loyalty to the cause, if not to him, but I’d never be a general.
Lafayette, on the other hand, wasn’t one to treat anyone cold. Always correct, but always warm.
By the time we got to Valley Forge, he’d been our division commander for a bit more than two weeks. Called his officers to his tent for a conference. Like Washington, he said he’d live in a tent for as long as it took the men to build shelters. In the middle of December, that was the depth of misery.
But in a funny kind of way, I think Lafayette liked it. Acted like ’twas all some kind of adventure, a huntin’ trip away from the castle.
“Gentlemens,” he said, “I see the soldiers without shoes—”
“Hell,” said General Woodfort, one of the brigadiers, “I see soldiers without breeches.”
“And I’ve seen officers without the itch,” I said. “But not many.” Then I give myself a scratch in the armpit.
So Lafayette gave his head an elaborate scratchin’. And ’twas like a signal for all those officers to scratch here, rub there, and relax some in the presence of their new commanding officer.
The itch came from never havin’ a chance to get clean. Some had it bad, with crusty pustules between their fingers, creepin’ up their necks, festerin’ in their crotches. Others had just light cases. ’Twas called impetigo. And lads who didn’t have it might be favored by fleas and lice and other vermin. But everybody had some kind of an itch, you can be sure.
“Gentlemens,” said Lafayette, when he was done scratching, “we must help the men. I will buy clothing for the troops, from my own funds.”
Now, we all knew he came from money. First thing he did when he got to America was contribute 60,000 pounds to the cause. Put himself into everyone’s good graces. But I had to ask him, “Where are these clothes, sir?”
“This I do not know. If Quartermaster General Mifflin cannot say, we must ask the Board of War, or the new inspector general.”
I’d gotten a letter from the inspector general. Name was Conway. Wrote to me because I’d been Gates’s secretary and Lee’s adjutant. And Conway had been puttin’ it about that Gates—or Lee, if he was exchanged—might be better medicine for this army than Washington. And he wasn’t the only one sayin’ it.
But that was a pissin’ contest with skunks everywhere. I was stayin’ out. Besides, wouldn’t matter a damn who led the army if the troops starved or froze.
So I said to Lafayette, “General, if you can find clothes for the troops, and pay for them, I think you’ll be known evermore as the soldiers’ friend.”
Lafayette beamed. Seemed like an easy one to flatter. But you know, he did what he said. Sent parties out, found what clothes he could, paid for them, too. And that’s just what our Virginians took to callin’ him—the Soldiers’ Friend.
Well, after we talked about clothes, Lafayette turned to the buildin’ of the shelters, as Washington had prescribed: “Dimensions are to be 14 by 16 feet; sides, ends, and roof made of logs; roof made light with split slabs; sides made tight with clay; fireplaces made of wood and secured with clay in the inside,
eighteen inches thick; fireplace to be in the rear, the door to be in the end next to the street.”
I said, “And the lads are supposed to do this work without anything to eat?”
“They must do what they can,” answered Lafayette.
And so the men did. Ever seen a family of beavers in autumn? Then you know what those early days were like at Valley Forge. Axes rang, trees fell, mallets thumped, teams of men trudged in like oxen bearin’ logs, and those huts rose, rough and mean but better than tents.
Some men have assailed me for my political ambition when military matters were yet to be decided. But no republican war can be fought and won without close cooperation between a nation’s civil and military parts. So I had determined that it would be better to stand for Congress and serve from there than to hope for a return to my former friendship with the General.
But soon I was at Valley Forge, part of the congressional committee Washington had requested to help in reorganizing the army.
My first private meeting came with him in his marquee, where he had chosen to live until the shelters were completed. I admit that though I wore a fine black coat and waistcoat, I felt naked before his uniform and military demeanor, even in a cold tent, in a hungry place.
I said, “Your privation is a scandal, sir, in a country which has had such a fine harvest.”
“’Tis a hard fact, Congressman Reed. There are only twenty-five barrels of flour in this camp. And not a single hoof to slaughter. And you know the reason as well as any man. Pennsylvania demanded that we take residence here, to protect their countryside and their capital. And yet we daily see speculations, peculations, engrossing, forestalling—all affording proof of the decay of public virtue.”
“You should coerce these farmers, sir.”
“Confiscation never produces enough and inevitably turns people against us. Leave it to the enemy. They seem well practiced at it.”
A cold wind buffeted the canvas walls of the tent, and Washington said, “We’ve demanded half the grain from all farmers within seventy-five miles. We will issue certificates to be redeemed for Continental dollars. But what we cannot pay for, we will not take.”
“You know that the farmers prefer British gold to our paper.”
The wind blew, and the tent poles stood a little straighter.
And anger came into his voice. “Don’t blame the farmers. Congress and the quartermaster general should have seen to our needs long before the farmers. You complain that I won’t confiscate food, but you won’t write the law authorizing me to do it. You’d rather that I simply do it and suffer the consequences. You reconstitute the Board of War to put Gates in charge—”
“I am on the board, too, sir. You can count on me.”
“Then tell the others to stop clamoring for an attack on Philadelphia. I cannot do it, and I cannot say
why, or I would reveal our weakness, and in war, the next best thing to being strong is to be thought to be strong.”
A gust of wind all but lifted the tent.
He looked up at the roof, then went on, “’Tis much easier to make criticisms in a comfortable room by a good fire than it is to occupy a cold, bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets or—”
His speech was interrupted by a strange, derisive sound: “Caw! Caw! Caw!”
He listened a moment, then went to the flap of his tent and looked out. The cawing grew louder. All around the campfires and empty commissary wagons, there were little flocks of soldiers, cawing like crows at their predicament and at their leaders.
The General grappled down his anger and said he’d show himself to the men. “And so should a member of Congress, so the men will know they have not been deserted.” He then called for his guard, and as soon as he appeared, the crows fell silent, as if preparing to take flight before the entourage Washington now led across the camp.
It seems that he had offered a reward of twelve dollars—a dollar a man—to the first group that finished their hut. Some of Woodfort’s Virginians had won the prize, so he marched to their little village and had the twelve winners fall in.
The General gave twelve Continentals to their colonel. As he did, we heard something new. It began softly, among a few workers, almost in rhythm with their hammers and saws. “No pay! No clothes! No provisions! No rum!” Soon the chant was rolling across the whole plateau.
Washington turned to me and said, “Be sure you tell Congress what you’ve heard.”
I promised that I would, though in truth, I could do little.
Washington gave me the twelve dollars. Then he stepped back and watched like I was givin’ out twelve sides of bacon.
And he heard those strange, muffled cries, “No this, no that,” gettin’ louder and louder. He cocked his head, but he didn’t turn around to see where the noise was comin’ from. ’Twas as if he was tryin’ to keep his dignity by ignorin’ the noise. Always kept his dignity.
Then he turned on his heel and went stridin’ back to his marquee, with Joseph Reed—who’d been smart enough to quit this mess—hurryin’ along after him, and that strange chant chasin’ him like a low, moanin’ wind.
One of our lads looked at his dollar and said to a mate, “How do we know this ain’t counterfeit?”
“Because counterfeits is printed better.”
And all the boys in the line had a laugh.
Soldiers laughin’ at money … didn’t speak well for the currency. Soldiers cryin’ for meat … spoke even worse for the commissary. And soldiers showin’ their insubordination so bold … spoke terrible for the General himself.
In late December, into our misery strode an old acquaintance and new enemy, Thomas Conway. He had been in York, behind the Susquehanna, speaking before Congress, like a man sent by heaven for the liberty and happiness of America. He told them so, and they were fools enough to believe it. So they had made him inspector general, and they promised to make him a major general, too, jumping him over many an American brigadier general. What injustice!
Washington knew of Conway’s machinations. He knew that Conway had written to Horatio Gates, “Heaven has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad councilors would have ruined it.” And he knew that this was an opinion shared by others.
I warned Washington that the group of schemers coalescing against him were vermin. And the worst was Conway. There was no more villainous calumniator or incendiary in the American camp.
Thomas Conway: Irish by birth, French by adoption. The Irish part made him think he could charm the angels off the altar. The French part made him arrogant enough to think the angels might want to come down, just for the pleasure of sittin’ with him.
I was livin’ in one of those miserable log cabins, and one miserable night, the canvas door blew back, the snow blew in, and right behind it came Conway. He was a big man, but none too impressive. Had pop eyes and a tucked-under chin, but he had that superior European attitude I told you about. Didn’t matter what those officers looked like. They all looked down on us.
Now, my cabin mates had gone off to play cards. I was tryin’ to read, through eyes waterin’ from the woodsmoke. When I think of Valley Forge, I think first of that damn smoke. Every cabin had a wattle-and-daub chimney, and every chimney puffed more smoke down than up, so you woke every mornin’ covered in soot, rubbin’ red eyes, and coughin’ up phlegm the color of lampblack.
But Conway didn’t seem bothered. He sat on a stool and pulled out a bottle of brandy, then a long thick sausage that may have been the most beautiful thing I’d seen since Alexandria. But new-minted inspector generals didn’t come callin’ on colonels just for society. He was after somethin’.
So I congratulated him on his promotion, ate the sausage, and let him do the talkin’.
“Better than fire cake, eh, Draper?”
“For certain.” Fire cake formed the main part of our diet—a miserable, unsalted mess of flour mixed with water and baked on a hot stone.
“Do the men blame Washington for the fire cake?” he asked.
“They blame the quartermaster and the commissary and all the cutpurse contractors,” I said. “Why, we had twenty barrels of pickled pork delivered the other day, all rotted, ’cause the teamsters drained the brine preservin’ the pork, just to lighten their loads. That’s the kind of trimmin’ we’re up against.”
I took a swallow of brandy to calm me. It tasted like sunshine, playin’ on a field of French grapes. “So whoever blames Washington knows nothin’.”
“Believe me, Draper, no man is more a gentleman than Washington, but as to his talents for the command of an army”—Conway give one of those elaborate French shrugs, even though he was Irish—“they’re miserable indeed. The more I see of his army, the less I think it fit for general actions.”
“I reckon some folks agree.”
“Indeed,” he answered. “Numerous congressman, Benjamin Rush, the Adamses of Massachusetts … Samuel, anyway … So what say you?”
“To what?”
“A movement of officers to put Gates over Washington.”
“You mean a mutiny? Troops haven’t mutinied. Why should officers?”
“You exaggerate. Not a mutiny. A small push here. A gentle nudge there. A simple expression of opinion.”
As I said, this was a pissin’ contest, and one of the skunks was right in front of me, and he had the brain of a skunk, to think that a gentle nudge would knock
Washington over. So I ate his sausage and drank his brandy and didn’t make any fast moves, so he wouldn’t spray.
“Inspector General Conway? In camp?” Just like that the General said it—loud and mad. Conway was comin’ with power, from the Board of War.
We was alone in the General’s office, in a little stone farmhouse, and when we was alone, I was a little bolder. So I said, “This ’spector general, what does he do?”
“He inspects, Billy. What do you think?” The General was still fumin’.
I could see that, so I should have kept my mouth shut. But I’d spent time with my Margaret in Philadelphia, and she was a girl who didn’t care what she said to who, and I was pickin’ it up from her. So I said, “Inspect what, sir?”
And he calmed down some. “Inspector general is supposed to train the troops, pursue deserters, and see that soldiers steal no public property.”
“Ain’t much public property here to steal.”
General didn’t say nothin’ to that, like the sayin’ would make him madder.
Just then Mr. Tilghman come in and announced Conway. And you never felt such a cold wind as blew through that room. ’Twas like the General just called it down from the sky, so it frosted ice all over his face and put his fire right out. Amazin’ how that man could get control of himself.
Conway come in dressed in his best, not a patch in sight. He didn’t powder his hair, but he sprinkled himself with some kind of fine-smellin’ rosewater. ’Twas like a puff of flowers come in ahead of him. Kind of nice.
“Good day, sir,” he said, very polite.
“Good day.” The General barely moved his lips.
“I have come to present my credentials, sir, from the Board of War.” He pulled these papers from his coat.
I went to pick them up. ’Twas my job.
But the General put out his hand for me to stay where I was. He kept his cold eye on Conway. “Is there anything else?”
“I have plans for the service, sir. I would like to share them.”
“As Mr. Hamilton is away from camp, share them with Mr. Tilghman.”
And then they stood there, the General just fixin’ this feller with his coldest stare. Time went slow and the room went colder.
Finally Conway said, “Am I dismissed?”
The General just nodded.
Conway turned, but he stopped in the doorway. “If my appointment is in any way disagreeable to Your Excellency, as I neither applied nor solicited for it, I am very ready to return to France. I will be more useful to the cause there than here.”
“As you wish, sir,” said the General. And that was that.
I saw Conway that afternoon, and mad as a hatter he was.
“Draper, I have never met with such treatment before from any general during the course of thirty years in a respectable army.”
“General,” I said, “this ain’t exactly what you’d call a respectable army.”
“Good leadership would make it one. He thinks by his attitude to send me packing back to France. But I’m going back to the Board of War.”
I went to the General that night. He was buried in papers, but he welcomed me, as always.
“Excellency,” I said, “it is important that you know my position on Conway. Simply because he is French, this means nothing.”
“Your coming is proof of your friendship, Marquis.”
“He calls himself my soldier, as if he were my friend. He is not. I have inquired in his character, and I find that he is ambitious and dangerous.”
“Calm yourself,” he said. “The danger of disunion over this business is very great. As I’ve told any officer who expresses dissatisfaction over Conway’s new rank—be cool and dispassionate.”
“Excellency, I leave coolness to you. I shall be hot in my support of you. For I am now fixed to your
fate. I shall follow it. I shall sustain it as well by my sword if called upon.”
The General smiled. He was a very great man, in size and spirit both. “We mustn’t expect always to meet with sunshine, my dear Marquis. I have no doubt that everything happens for the best. We’ll triumph over our misfortunes, and when that day comes, you’ll come to Virginia, and we’ll laugh at our troubles and the folly of others.”
I don’t recollect ever hearin’ the General invite Henry Knox or Alexander Hamilton down to Mount Vernon. But there was somethin’ about that Marquis. He could get through the ice when it froze, and he could put out the fire when it flashed. I don’t guess anyone ever liked the General as much, and that may be why the General liked him. But I don’t know. I was just a slave.
I was nae as close to him as once I had been, only because of the heavy responsibilities that both of us bore. I took leave in December, but the morning I left camp, I was informed by a certain officer that a strong faction was forming against the General in the new Board of War. I resolved, however, to say nothing until I reached home, as perhaps I might make further discoveries on my way.
At my arrival in Bethlehem, I was told of it there.
At York, I visited Dr. Benjamin Rush. I wished to discuss the typhus cases I had seen, and our talk was professional enough, but after our business, I said, “Sir, I’ve been hearing most disconcerting remarks against the General. Have you heard of any movement to replace him?”
Rush was a man of high forehead, intelligent feature, and large, dark eyes. At my question, his eyes seemed to grow even larger, as if he were trying to see into my brain, and he said, “I have great regard for the General, as you know.”
This, I learned, was a lie served up to a firm ally of the General. To others, Rush had been heard to say, “The northern army has shown us what Americans can do with a general at their head. The spirit of the southern army is in no way inferior. A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway would in a few weeks render them an irresistible body of men.”
There were adherents to such opinion all the way down to Virginia. I believed the conspiracy to be pretty general over the country.
And their method was always the same: to hold Gates up to the people while criticizing Washington’s generalship. It was said that they dared nae appear openly as his enemies, but that the new Board of War was composed of such leading men as would throw such obstacles and difficulties in his way as to force him to resign.
I put all of my information into a letter to him, as a good friend. But I was forced to add that my wife was in an extremely low and weak condition. I would miss much of the next year of campaigning, as I could not think of leaving her in such a state with such a large family, and my large-hearted friend understood.
For the next month, life went on. You could say that death went on, too. Men starved and froze and died of disease. They stopped complainin’, stopped chantin’, stopped cawin’. They were too tired and too hungry. Instead, they whispered the rumors. Who’d be in charge when spring came?
Gates was at York, with the Board of War. Conway was there, lookin’ for ways to insinuate himself with men in power. Reed was there, too, and you could never be sure about him.
Me? I just missed my wife. A lot of officers had resigned or slipped off for a while. But I wanted to do things right. Like Washington, I’d joined a Masonic lodge when I was younger, and I always believed what they said: “Meet on the level and part on the square.”
Woodfort was my brigadier general. Told me I’d need higher permission. Seein’ as how Lafayette wasn’t in the camp just then, I went to the man himself.
“You want a furlough?” Washington looked at me with a disappointed face. “Draper, I need good unit officers in the camp.”
“Sir, if I don’t go, she’ll die.”
“Women don’t die for such trifles.”
“Then I’ll die,” I told him.
“You’ve survived British bullets. You won’t die.”
“So what do I do?”
“Write to her to add another leaf to her book of sufferings.”
Maybe he thought he was bein’ funny. But I wasn’t laughin’. I stepped toward his desk and said, “George
Washington, we’ve known each other since we were boys, and I’m tellin’ you, I can’t take this much longer.”
“We all have to take it, Draper. For as long as we can.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” I started for the door.
And he said, “Draper … my wife is coming at the end of January. There may be a seat in her chariot for a woman who’s been printing Mr. Paine’s thoughts … .”
Right then I was glad I’d given Conway no brief. On the way out the door, I even said, “General, watch your back. There’s men who—”
“Thank you, Draper. Your loyalty is noted.”
Always correct, always cold.
My husband’s summons came in January. I set out soon thereafter for Alexandria, where I picked up Mrs. Charlotte Draper, who proved a woman of grace and geniality, two qualities I do not recollect experiencing in the presence of her husband.
However, the journey did not start auspiciously, as she kept me waiting more than a half hour while her trunk was loaded and she finished business at the office of Draper Importing and Printing. Even after seating herself, she was giving instructions out the window to a young man who noted down all her words. Then, as the chariot lurched into the street, she brought her handkerchief to her eyes.
“My dear,” I said, fearing a tearful trip, “what is it?”
“I’ve received sad news. My … my father has died
in London.” And the tears she was holding back burst forth. “Forgive me. It is not my way to appear so … before a—”
“Don’t say ‘stranger,’ dear.” I touched her hand. “We won’t be strangers after this trip.”
“No … no, we won’t.” She drew back her tears. “He was a barrister. He fled with the Annapolitan Tories in ’76. Left everything he loved behind because he didn’t hold with our revolution. Mother writes that he died of a broken heart.”
And I was filled with pity for her, and sadness for all the pain that this struggle between parents and children had caused. I told her, “I’ve recently lost a loved one, as well. My sister.”
“’Tis a terrible thing to know that we’ll never again see people we—”
“My dear,” I said, “those who go before us make a happy exchange. And they’re only gone a little while before we rejoin them, never to part.”
“I hope you’re right, Mrs. Washington.”
And I said what I believe even more firmly today: “My dear, if to meet our departed friends and to know them was certain, we could have very little reason to stay in this world, where, if we’re at ease for an hour, we’re in affliction for days … and call me Martha.”
Such honest talk brought us close and made us friends.
We reached Valley Forge in early February. And my heart bled for the poor soldiers I saw. They were in a cart. And they were dead. Yes, a dozen emaciated, cold-blackened bodies, mostly naked, riding the death cart to a miserable mass grave hacked from the frozen earth.
As for my own husband, he seemed much worn with anxiety and with the desperate sadness of those death carts. His apartment in Mr. Potts’s farmhouse was very small, but large enough for me. That night I said I would brighten Valley Forge.
“Brighten as much as you will, we’ll have no dancing, no cards, none of the usual enjoyments of winter headquarters. The men suffer too much.”
“I shall make our pleasures simple, then,” I said.
And the greatest pleasure, for both of us, was to be in each other’s company again, after so many months apart.
But on subsequent evenings I gathered together the generals’ ladies—Henry Knox’s ebullient wife, Lucy, Nathanael Greene’s vivacious Kitty, Lady Stirling and her daughter—to lighten the cares of our menfolk. There was some friction. Lucy Knox thought Kitty an incurable flirt, and Kitty disliked Lucy in turn. But we did our best to rise above our petty differences, providing nightly conversation over a dish of coffee or tea, and singing, which was always a great pleasure.
My husband was not known for his singing. He preferred to listen, though he always enjoyed chatter with the ladies. And I was happy to do anything to bring him a bit of joy, so much else weighed upon him and so bleak was that world.
I did make one suggestion that he took wholeheartedly: the men should put on a play. Yes, a play.
“There’s only one play to be done,” he said. “Addison’s Cato. It could be very instructive to the men.”
“A play?” I laughed when I heard. But the lads liked the idea.
And I have to admit, it took the men’s minds off the misery around them. Took the officer’s minds off the backstabbin’ that was goin’ on with Conway, too.
Soldiers took to their roles as if feedin’ words into their brains was better than feedin’ beefsteaks into their bellies, and they put on the show in a big barn, with the wind howlin’ outside and torches burnin’ all around and the General and his lady sittin’ right down front.
And it worked some magic. Noble Cato was called from his plow to defend the republic against Julius Caesar, and when it looked like he’d be defeated or forced to submit, he killed himself, true to his ideals. The feller who played Cato fell on his wooden sword and twitched like a mackerel. Mighty dramatic. You could hear sniffles all around.
We were sittin’ near Washington, and I think I even saw tears in his eyes.
Charlotte whispered, “Don’t you cry, Hess. One cryin’ officer is enough.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I only cry for you, when you’re gone.”
I can’t rightly say that Cato changed anything for us. But in a place like Valley Forge, ’twas a good lesson to see men facin’ up to somethin’ as bad as dictatorship, even if it finally beat them.
Cato was a pleasant distraction for us all. But nothing could keep my husband from lying awake in the dark hours before dawn, talking about all the shoes and blankets sitting in warehouses as far away as Boston, or about the unscrupulous contractors, or most bitterly about the enemies trying to remove him from his position.
“I did not want this job,” he whispered early one morning, not long after he had seen the play.
“No one knows how hard it is, George,” I said.
“I’d rather be at Mount Vernon, at my own plow, like Cato. But I’m here”—he threw himself out of bed and pulled on the breeches Billy Lee had laid out by the fireplace—“so I’ll see the job through, but not by falling on my sword.”
“Where are you going now?” I asked.
“To write a letter to Horatio Gates.”
The pen was truly mightier than the sword that winter. Mightier also than the machinations of all the cabalist vultures on the Board of War.
In early February, Washington attacked Gates by attacking Conway: “Many instances might be adduced, to manifest that he is capable of all the malignity of detraction and all the meanness of intrigue, so as to gratify his disappointed vanity, to answer the purposes of personal aggrandizement, and to promote the interests of faction.”
And Gates began his retreat, solemnly declaring that he was of no faction, and hoping the General would not spend another moment on the subject. Soon Gates’s supporters began to withdraw, rightly sensing that his resolve to stand against Washington was no greater than his battlefield resolve. And men of importance advanced with support for Washington, men as varied as Daniel Morgan, the Virginia rifleman; Henry Laurens, president of Congress; and Thomas Paine.
It was plain, by the last week of February, that the cabal had unmasked its batteries too soon. Now its leaders were hiding their heads, and Congress was accepting the resignation of Conway. Washington had acted with resolve and the steady hand that was the hallmark of his leadership. But all true friends of their country, and, of course, of a certain great man, had to be on the watch to counterplot the secret machinations of his enemies.
In all of the history of warfare, there may have been no better letter-writer than Washington. I had seen his skill. I had helped him to hone it. At the Board of War, I stood in awe before it.
As for the so-called Conway Cabal, I will only say that war produces many passions and opinions. I never supported Gates. After Trenton and Princeton, I knew that Washington was the only man with the personal gravity to hold that army together.
But after a trip to camp in February, I doubted if the Lord himself could have done it. Half of the eight
thousand men left were unfit for duty. Typhus and camp fever ran wild. And in the third week of the month, there was not a steer to slaughter nor a slab of salt pork to give out nor a pound of flour to make fire cake. It was the darkest time of all at Valley Forge.
Washington told me to warn Congress that there was a prospect of “absolute want, such as will make it impossible to keep the army much longer from dissolution.”
Then it would be over. I knew that better than any man. I left Valley Forge in a sleet storm, intent upon helping Washington as best I could, and more certain than ever that the best help I could give would be in Congress, for I was far more skilled as a debater than as a warrior.
I would not again see him in the war, though we would correspond on many matters, sometimes to our mutual satisfaction, sometimes not. I think we parted as friends.
C.D.—Correspondence … letters … missives … notes … they flew like musket balls from a cold Pennsylvania farmhouse. In truth, it was not one letter but a chain of them that unmasked the Conway batteries. And it took dozens of letters to secure support for anything from Congress. It seemed that Reed’s remark in Cambridge was still accurate: “We fight this war with paper, ink, and sealing wax.” But no secrets had been revealed to me in the few letters I’d seen from Washington to his wife. Perhaps there were no secrets.
Best thing about quietin’ Conway was that Washington could turn to what really mattered. He finally resorted to confiscation in late February. ’Twas the only way to save that army. And he had to save the army. At all costs, he had to save the army.
He made Nathanael Greene his quartermaster—a job I no longer coveted, not with money losin’ value faster than a peach rots in the sun—and Greene led us into the Pennsylvania countryside with the order, “Harden your hearts. We are in a damn nest of Tories.” Meanwhile, Anthony Wayne swept into Jersey and rounded up all the cattle he could find. And while the food wasn’t enough to put weight on anybody, it sure raised men’s spirits.
So did a stocky, beetle-browed German who called himself Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. He was one of the few European officers I liked. Oh, he was as pretentious as most of them, struttin’ around wearin’ the Order of Fidelity—a medal as big as a horseshoe—on his chest. And he wasn’t a real baron, either. He was a drillmaster, but he was the best damn drillmaster I ever saw.
Under him, our boys started marchin’, drillin’, and piece by piece, learnin’ how to become a battlefield army. And the best part was, he didn’t have any whinin’ militia at Valley Forge. These men were all Continental line troops, men from New England to North Carolina, some signed for three years, others for the duration, so whatever they learned, they’d remember, and maybe they’d put it into practice when the time came.
Steuben picked a hundred men, and he started trainin’ ’em. You’d see him scurryin’ from place to place on that snowy plain, always with an American aide behind him, translatin’ while Steuben barked and shouted and cursed at the men. Fact was, he didn’t speak a word of English, till he learned the words goddamn, fuck, bitch-bastard-whore, and lazy prick.
Once, he lost his temper with a group of men who couldn’t get a simple drill step right. Cursed at them in German, then in French, then he turned to Hamilton and said, “Now swear at them in English.”
My Charlotte laughed like hell at that story.
She and I had moved to the attic of the farmhouse, where Lafayette was stayin’, but we were the old farmer’s only guests, seein’ as Lafayette had gone off for a silly march on Canada, the brainchild of Gates and the Board of War. And I’ll tell you, Charlotte made them some happy months for me.
In general, Washington didn’t approve of women in camp. Thought they distracted the enlisted men. But the officers had their ladies. So he couldn’t stop the enlisted wives from comin’. Instead, he dreamed up jobs for them. Had them serve in the hospital, where there was plenty to do, or in the laundry hut, where there wasn’t much. And he looked the other way when the jills and hags come around. And when the lads designated a cabin to be the whorehouse for a night, I made sure the subalterns looked the other way, too.
Charlotte worried me, though, because she insisted on takin’ Martha’s example and visitin’ the hospitals. I told her ’twould be better for her to run one of the
sewin’ circles that Martha had started—sit around and darn socks all day. But you didn’t tell her such things. She said she’d had the smallpox, so she’d help where she could, bandagin’ sores and bathin’ frostbit limbs in warm water, and pretendin’ like the stench of the hospital was no more than a nosegay of roses.
“If old Cato can fall on his sword,” she said, “’tis the least I can do.”
She was an angel, and I told her so one night as we lay together. “I don’t see how I can be without you another year, darlin’.”
“You have to be, Hess. We’re in this as deep as Washington.”
“They hang the generals, darlin’, not the colonels.”
“After they hang the generals, they’ll hang the printers.”
I was proud as hell one March night when my Margaret rode in carryin’ three crates of salt. She said she’d stole ’em from the British commissary, who’d moved into the house where she was workin’ in Philadelphia.
After I’d had two or three good tumbles with her, I took her to the General to tell him what she done. I figured ’twould make him like her more.
And he thanked her all very grave and serious.
“Billy says salt is as good as gold in this army,” she told the General.
“With salt, we can preserve food,” he said.
“When you get some,” she said.
I give a little chuckle to that, so it might sound like a joke.
But the General didn’t smile. He just give her a receipt for pay.
“Ten dollars, Continental?” she said. “That ain’t worth its weight in paper.”
The General sat back and give her a hard look, and I eased her out.
That gal was too sassy by half, and I told her so. Made her so mad she wouldn’t even kiss me good-bye. She just went ridin’ off.
Those days under von Steuben was worse than slavery. Drill by day. Starve by night. Freeze or choke in smoke all the time. But we was still there, the foot soldiers, doin’ what we was told, jokin’ when we could, and laughin’ like hell whenever ol’ Steuben tried to swear at us. Man couldn’t swear worth a shit.
But he taught us how to wheel and charge, how to load that musket in fast steps and fire it fast, too. When he was done with us, we’d go back to that miserable cabin all tired out and as hungry as bears in spring.
Now, we had us a cabin with twelve men. And seein’ as Massachusetts Negroes marched with white soldiers, our cabin was a mix—six of each.
One night Sammy Brisby started in about Marblehead and fishin’, and then he started talkin’ about goin’ home.
“You can’t do that,” said Willard, “you’re signed for the rest of the war.”
And Sammy—he was a big feller, but mighty skinny after that miserable winter—he said, “I can’t read, so how’d I know what I’se signin’? I wants to go home and go fishin’. And I wants to eat fish. And smell fish … and, ah, hell.”
And just like that, he got up and started packin’ his things into a little sack—his pipe, his tobacco pouch, some rope he used for a belt.
So we axed him where he was goin’, and he said, “I’se goin’ home.”
We all laughed, but he went ’round the cabin, all real solemn, and he shook everybody’s hand. And I said, “Sammy, you desert, they’ll hang you.”
And he said, “I needs to go fishin’.” Then he picked up his musket, which warn’t his property, and he headed off.
Me and Willard, we just looked at each other. We couldn’t let this happen. So we stepped out after him.
’Twas a full moon, so we had to do some good sneakin’, but we slipped the pickets and caught up to Sammy down at the riverbank.
’Twas early spring. Ice was out. River was runnin’ cold and clear.
“Sammy!” I called. “We ain’t lettin’ you run away.”
“I has to fish, Matt. I has to do what I was put here for.”
“You was put here to drill and fight,” I said.
And then Willard Walt told us to be quiet.
“What?” I said.
“Listen.”
And I heard it—a splatterin’ sound in the water, and I saw Willard grinnin’ in the moonlight. He knew what it was. Then I saw the little silver waves, all
across the river. And I knew. ’Twas nature takin’ her course.
And I said to Sammy, “I reckon you can go fishin’ right here, boy.”
And Sammy knew what it was, ’cause he let out with a “Wahoo!” to wake the whole camp. Then he jumped into the water, right into all them beautiful, fat, fast-swimmin’ shad. He dipped his hat and come up with half a dozen skitterin’ and splashin’ in the crown, and he shouted, “I’se fishin’!”
“And we’s eatin’ fish tonight.” I fired my musket into the air.
The British could no more stop the shad from swimmin’ up the Schuylkill than they could stop the greenin’ of the grass. By mornin’ there was shad cookin’, shad fillin’ bellies, shad on every man’s mind. Now, we knew, the worst was over.
When Lafayette came back, we said we’d move out of his farmhouse, but he insisted that we stay. “If I could be lucky enough to have my Adrienne by my side,” he said, “I would thank God. It does me warmth to see a woman in this house.” Then he took Charlotte’s hand and kissed it.
Now, Charlotte was not impressed by such things, but that young Marquis melted her heart like a big plop of suet on a hot stone. For the rest of her time there, ’twas “Marquis this” and “Monsoor that,” and when he told her about the bullet he’d taken at Brandywine and how he described it for his wife, she thought
’twas the most romantic thing she’d ever heard: “My wound is perfectly healed, but my heart is sore with loneliness.”
Sometimes I thought she was sweet on him. Sometimes I thought she was motherin’ him. And he always acted like he loved it.
And when he learned from France that his little daughter had died of fever, ’twas Charlotte comforted him and helped him write his letter to his wife.
Then, in May, there came news that comforted us all.
I remember well the glorious day. I still carried a deep wound of grief, but I had resolved to stay and serve America, in my daughter’s memory. On that day the General stood in the officers’ meeting, and upon his face was written an expression of absolute joy. What could this be?
He said, “Gentlemen, I must beg you to withhold this information until there is official notice from Congress, but it would seem that the court of France has recognized us as free and independent states and is entering into an alliance.”
Happiness filled me for the first time in weeks. I leaped up, feeling the tears welling in my eyes and the joy overflowing in my heart. I ran around the table, seizing our general by the shoulders and kissing him on the cheeks.
He looked at me with a face so startled, it was as if I had struck him.
“Excellency,” I laughed, “you are not used to our French ways.”
“No. But … but thanks to this news,” he said, “I believe I must learn.”
In all the days that I ever saw Washington take a glass or two or five or ten, I never saw him drunk. And only one day did I ever see him half lit. ’Twas May 6, 1778, the day we celebrated the French alliance.
It started with prayer services. Had to thank God for this miracle. Then there was a march of brigades, wheelin’ to the right by platoons. Thousands of men, Steuben-trained, fish-fed, and healthy, dressed in clean, Martha-mended clothes, lookin’ hard and stringy, not gaunt and dyin’, like a few months before. Then a feu de joie—French for joyful fire. Every man in the army, lined in two ranks, firin’ one after another. Then the roarin’ cheers: “Huzzah! To the king of France. Huzzah! To the American States!” Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!
Every soldier got a gill of rum. And the officers and their ladies gathered beneath a great canopy stitched together from half a dozen marquees.
Charlotte looked grand, eyes bright and skin flushed from the heat and the excitement and too many sips of strong wine under that hot canvas. She was wearin’ a blue dress she’d decked out with white and red trim, and she puffed up when all the ladies told her how fine she looked. Didn’t have a sarcastic word for any of them.
But of Washington she said, “That man could use some loosening up.”
Truth was, I’d never seen him so happy. He and Martha were receivin’ officers, thirteen at a time, offerin’ each of them a smile, a bow, a kind word.
And the drinks flowed, and the toasts rolled, and a cold collation of meats filled our bellies. The band played marches and light airs, though no one in the tent was dancin’. ’Twasn’t part of the plan. But toes were tappin’ everywhere.
I was talkin’ to Lafayette, and Charlotte was chatterin’ away with Lucy Flucker Knox, who was even fatter than her husband.
Now, Lucy didn’t chitchat with just anyone, seein’ as she came from what had been one of the first Tory families of Massachusetts. But she’d learned about Charlotte’s Tory family, how they’d gone back to England, like her own, so she figured that the Fluckers and the Spencers had a common bond.
I noticed that the two of them was pointin’ toward the General and chucklin’. What they were pointin’ at was his foot, which was tappin’ to the music, to the tune “Banish Misfortune.”
Lafayette noticed, too, and said, “The General would like to dance.”
“Last winter quarters, at Morristown,” said Lucy Knox, “he danced with all the ladies.”
“Is he a good dancer?” asked Charlotte.
“So I’ve heard,” said Lafayette.
Lucy Knox scanned the crowd, then said to Charlotte, “I’d wager you’re the only woman in the room who’s never danced with him.”
“But a lady doesn’t ask a gentleman,” said Charlotte, “nor a general.”
So, in the same jig time as the tune, Lafayette bounced over to Washington’s side and whispered in his ear.
Washington brightened, gave a glance toward Charlotte, and excused himself from Martha, who must’ve been used to her husband goin’ off to dance with longer-legged gals, because she didn’t even make a face.
The crowd parted, and he give Charlotte a graceful bow. “I would beg one dance with a lady patriot before I return to my duties.”
Charlotte dipped a polite curtsy. Washington bowed and called for “Tom Jones,” a hearty little country dance. Then their hands touched. Their eyes locked. Their feet flew. And for a few moments ’twas just the two of them in the center of the tent, as if all the rest of us were pinwheelin’ around them. A strange effect that man had when he moved. Strange and strong.
Before the music was done, everybody was cheerin’, as much because there was dancin’ again as for the dance itself. Charlotte dipped another curtsy, and Washington announced that after such a dance, there was nothin’ for him but to go back to his work, so that he might forget the beautiful Mrs. Draper.
The days when even the sight of a woman could tie his tongue were long gone.
Lafayette shouted, “Vive le Général!” And the hats flew into the air, includin’ my own. Charlotte almost threw her bonnet.
The pipers picked up another tune, and Washington and his family were played out, with the crowd followin’ them into the afternoon sun. Martha took to the chariot, and the General mounted his horse. Then he turned, pumped his fist into the air, and shouted, “Huzzah!”
He was answered with a roar of cheers from all the officers.
He went a little distance more, turned again, and give out again. “Huzzah!”
I couldn’t believe it. ’Twas the most demonstration I ever saw from the man.
Charlotte said, “I guess I loosened him up.”
I said, “’Twas you or the wine.”
“Huzzah!” he cried again. Now there was no doubt. ’Twas the wine. The man had a glow on, and who wouldn’t on such a day as that?
The lines had deepened around my husband’s eyes, and his hair had begun to gray. These things are to be expected in a man of forty-six who has spent three years living from trunks, sleeping in tents, and carrying such heavy burdens of work. But the news from France had reinvigorated him.
“Will the French assistance mean that much to us?” I asked after the party.
“Whether we’ve played the game well or poorly, Patsy, I cannot say. But ’tis now verging fast toward a favorable issue.”
“You mean we’re going to win?”
“I’m afraid to say it quite so plain.”
His secretaries had all turned to sleep. I suggested that he do the same.
“I have just one more letter to write,” he said. “To Jacky.”
This intrigued and pleased me. I was always happy
for communication between my husband and his stepson. “What are you telling him?”
“I’m advising him to hold on to all his inherited lands, for things are going to get better.” And he read: “‘Lands are permanent, rising fast in value, and will be very dear when our independency is established.’”
My husband was ever a practical man.
Charles Lee was exchanged in May. And Washington greeted the news like a long-lost brother was comin’ home or, better yet, a long-lost general, because none of Washington’s brothers could lead a division.
I figured Washington had a lot more to worry about with Lee than he had with Horatio Gates, who’d never do anythin’ so darin’ that he’d destroy himself, either in battle or on the Board of War. Lee spoke his mind, did what he pleased, and was still considered a military genius by some congressmen.
Seein’ as I’d been Lee’s adjutant, Washington invited me to join the welcomin’ party. We went to a place about four miles down the road—Washington, Lafayette, Greene, Knox, and a whole gaggle of aides. Band was waitin’ already, and soldiers lined the road all the way back to the camp.
And there he came, as arrogant, self-important, and flea-bitten as ever, ridin’ alone, except for four of his dogs.
And Washington did what I’d never seen him do before. He dismounted and let Lee ride up to him.
Then he offered his hand and said, “Welcome back, General.”
“I return at your service,” said Lee. Only then did he dismount.
And then Washington did somethin’ even more amazin’. He threw his arms around Lee and said, “Your counsel has been missed, sir.”
I thought Washington had been spendin’ too much time with Lafayette. He was startin’ to act so giddy, thought he might even kiss Lee on the cheeks.
After that little scene, we paraded back to camp, with our men presentin’ arms all the way along the road. ’Twas a mighty stirrin’ thing.
But Lee didn’t seem impressed. When we dismounted at headquarters, he took my arm and whispered, “What say you of the great General now?”
Well, time spent dodgin’ Conway had taught me a few things. “What say you?”
“I say Washington is too enamored of Steuben’s little tricks. Steuben can teach this army to dress lines, dress themselves, and present arms from here to Boston, but the simple fact is that he should be dispersing them into the population, creating a partisan army that appears, strikes the enemy, and disappears as it will.”
“Some do disappear,” I answered. “We call it desertion.”
“I’m bringing Congress a plan for reforming the army. I tell you, I understand what we’re about better than any man living.” And he was more arrogant, too.
Besides, Washington already had a plan. He’d stumbled onto what was called a Fabian strategy, after a Roman general called Fabius the Delayer. A lot
of people tried to take credit, but ’twas Washington who put it into action: Do what you must to keep the army together. Fight when you’re strong. Run when you have to. But keep the army together. ’Twasn’t always pretty, but ’twas workin’.
And Washington had endurance, which gave him a stubborn courage. He had middle-of-the-battle courage, middle-of-the-night courage, too. He’d learned that when the enemy was shootin’ at him, he had to make a decision. And when those dark shadows of doubt and criticism come creepin’, he’d light a candle and write another dispatch. But he never quit.
Don’t ask me where all this came from. How a man gets to be what he is can be a true mystery. We’re not talkin’ about some Papist saint. And Washington was truly like an actor. He knew people was always watchin’ him, some hopin’ to see him stumble, others to see how to act themselves. So he acted as best he could. Inspired some. Confounded others.
And, not to get too fancy about it, he made that army the symbol of resistance. Congressmen came and congressmen went, but one man had stayed in place, doin’ his job through thick and thin, and endurin’. And that’s the last I’ll say on Washington’s so-called greatness.
Now, Charles Lee was not one for endurin’. Unless folks were endurin’ him. ’Twas somethin’ of a disappointment to me that, just before we went into headquarters for a banquet to welcome Lee, Hamilton come up to me and said, “The General orders that you rejoin the staff of General Lee.”
I saw to the best meal I could invent as a welcome to
Charles Lee.
My husband told me that, no matter his faults, we needed his fine battlefield judgment.
And he was at his most voluble and spirited on the night of his return.
He told us of the comforts of his captivity in New York. He showed us the new tricks he had taught his dogs. He recited for us all a speech from Shakespeare, something from Julius Caesar, I believe.
And then we retired.
General Lee had been given the room directly behind my sitting room. As entertainment always left me too exhausted to sleep, I had remained awake for a time, knitting booties for our newest grandchild. It seemed the middle of the night when I heard a back door open. Then I distinctly heard Lee’s voice and female giggling and then … other sounds, all no more than a few feet away.
I dropped a stitch I was so embarrassed! I put away my needles and hurried off to bed and my own snoring General.
The next morning, Lee appeared at breakfast, which was taken in the communal dining room. He looked as unkempt as if he’d been in the street all night.
And that is hardly an exaggeration, for later that morning, I saw a young woman slip from Lee’s door, a miserable gutter hussy, to say it plain, who, it turned out, was the wife of a British sergeant he had met in New York.
I said to my husband, “General Lee must be brilliant
indeed, for he is a very dirty man to be tolerated by one as fastidious as yourself.”
“He is more than insolent,” answered my husband. “But he is a soldier.”
Not long after, our spies reported that the British were preparing to leave Philadelphia and return to New York. The great questions now became: Would they go by land or sea? And what would my husband do?
On a bright June day, with summer’s winds rustling the leaves of the trees which had survived the cuttings of winter, my husband and I bade each other good-bye. We did it quick and in private. As I’ve told you, we were practiced at farewells.
’Twas far more painful for Charlotte and Hesperus Draper. They held each other close, broke away, drew back together again and held each other tight.
Finally, Charles Lee came out on the veranda of the headquarters and called, “Draper! Parting is sweet sorrow, but the sooner we get to finishing this war, the sooner you can go home to your wife.”
A moment later, Charlotte Draper climbed into the chariot beside me, and just as upon our first meeting, she was dabbing back tears. This time, so was I.
“Don’t let your husband see you cry, dear,” I whispered.
“Farewell, ladies!” Charles Lee was shouting. “Good luck, Godspeed, and get going before these green leaves start to turn.”
“Damn that Charles Lee,” said Charlotte.
“Don’t let him see you cry, either. None of it will
make your husband feel any better. Just give him a last wave and fix your eyes on the horizon.”
As our chariot rumbled away, I heard Charles Lee declaiming to Draper, “Your wife is better off at home. She’ll just worry if she stays here. Remember the bard: ‘A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.’”
Lee liked me for some damn reason, and nothin’ I could say would insult him. For a time, all he could do was talk about how well he’d lived with the British, how he’d even had his own Italian valet to take care of him. “And now I’m back with the rabble.”
I said, “If it’s too hard for you, General, go back to the British.”
“No. There are too many men in this army that I like too much. I can’t leave them under a general who’s more fit to command a sergeant’s guard.”
“A strong opinion, sir.”
Lee give me that death’s-head grin, all nose and yellow teeth. “You are a man who likes strong opinions, Draper. I urge you to speak them.”
“That’s my way, sir.”
“Which is why you serve me rather than the General. He has surrounded himself with toadies and lapdogs—Knoxes and Hamiltons. I have no toadies, and my dogs are as like to bite you as lap you. A man such as yourself is no toady. So he remains outside the charmed circle. But well within mine.”
Why did I attract these fellers? First Gates, then Lee, then Conway, and now Lee again. If Washington had ever had any suspicions about me, they had to be gettin’ worse. I sure was glad he’d danced with my wife.
Twas the middle of June that Margaret snuck out of Philadelphia with what she said was big news.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Take me to Washington.”
I put my arms around her and tried to lead her toward the barn instead. It’d been months since the last time, and rollin’ in the hay was on my mind.
“No barn, Billy,” she said. “No barn, till you’re free.”
“What?”
“If this army is fightin’ for freedom,” she said, “’Tis about time that everybody in it was free.”
Women can be a whole lot of trouble.
Just then, the General come out the back, callin’ my name.
“Yes, sir,” I said, “right with you, sir, but my wife, she’s come with news.”
“News of what?” The General come down off the little veranda.
Margaret said, “I’ll tell you if you give Billy his freedom. Right now.”
The General looked at her like she was plain crazy. Then he looked at me. “Is that what you want, Billy? Freedom? Aren’t you treated well enough?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I rightly am.”
“Do you want your freedom?” he asked.
I was torn. The General looked calm and steady. She looked fierce and angry, like if I didn’t demand my freedom right then, she’d leave me.
But I couldn’t leave the General. ’Twasn’t like I was a slave at all. I was a valet de chambre. That’s what Lafayette called me. And damn me, but I liked it. I liked carryin’ the General’s papers. And ridin’ at his side. I wouldn’t have none of that if I was free. So I said, “Sir, what I want to do is work for you.”
Margaret made a mad sound, like a hiss—ssss. Just like that.
The General just give her the flat look and said, “You have intelligence?”
“More than my husband.”
So the General said, “If you know something that might help us—”
“All right … I do laundry for British officers in Philadelphia. And last night they ordered their laundry returned to them, finished or unfinished.”
“Finished or unfinished … Have other washerwomen heard this?” he asked.
“All that I talked to.”
The General give this some thought. Then he muttered, almost to himself, “They’re leaving Philadelphia. They’re … Mr. Tilghman! Mr. Hamilton!”
Two of his aides were at the door in a flash.
“Summon an officers’ council. The British move has begun.”
Those aides went runnin’ like the house was on fire, and the General went to follow. Then he stopped and pulled out a piece of silver—one of those Spanish-milled dollars—from his pocket and give it to Margaret.
“A good spy deserves hard money. You’ve done the cause of freedom a great service.”
She took the money, but she wouldn’t stay. Hell, she wouldn’t even speak to me. She just went ridin’ off, and I didn’t rightly know if I’d ever see her again.
’Twas the first time since the General bought me that I felt like a real slave, ’stead of someone who mattered. So I went out to where I’d hid a wine bottle filled with rum—dribs and drabs scrounged here and there, mostly from what little might be left in a mug after a meal. I’d saved it to drink when I was feelin’ bad. Now was the time. Got myself good and drunk.
News that the British were on the move brought us all to a high pitch of excitement. Within hours we had sent twelve regiments out to shadow them on the right flank, and by the next morning the rest of the army was marching back through Philadelphia and onto their trail.
General Henry Clinton had replaced Howe, and he had been ordered back to New York, by far the best stronghold on the continent. For a week we moved behind him, waiting to see which way he’d turn, always maintaining a defensive posture, even though we were now a well-trained, well-fed, and reasonably well-clothed force that had grown to eleven thousand.
At first we feared Clinton might be trying to draw us into an action, as he made a mere thirty-four miles in six days, and he kept his best troops at the rear. But there were good reasons for his rate of march. We
had destroyed every bridge in his path, and those June days were an alternating hell of heavy thunderstorms that turned roads to mud, followed by a festering hot sun that turned puddles to steam.
Sometimes I wondered about Willard Walt. I was beginnin’ to think the heat was gettin’ to him. On maybe the fourth or fifth day into our march, he started takin’ off his hat every so often, sweepin’ it through the air, and plunkin’ it back onto his head.
Now, we was supposed to be marchin’ in step, eight to a row. ’Twas damn hard for me and the other lads to keep up with him when he was busy wavin’ his arms around, and finally I said, “God damn it, Willard, what is you doin’?”
“Collectin’ heat.”
“You’re what?”
“Collectin’ heat. In my hat. Keepin’ it for next winter.”
“You’re a damn fool.”
Willard laughed. “If somebody thought of collectin’ the heat last summer, we could’ve used it at Valley Forge. I’m just thinkin’ about the winter ahead.”
He should’ve been thinkin’ ’bout the enemy ahead. ’Tis a true fact that foot soldiers is generally the last to know anything, but we knew that we was just about steppin’ on the British tail.
’Twas easy to tell, on account of the destruction. Jersey in June was green country, fat country, but not after the British army went through.
They’d kill cattle for sport and leave ’em lyin’ dead in the fields, or maybe just cut the steaks out of their haunches and go on. They’d tear through a farmhouse and wreck it, break all the windows, scatter the furniture outside, and leave some poor farm wife sittin’ in her dooryard, starin’ at the mess.
But the saddest sight I ever seen come in a cherry orchard. Our column was movin’ up the road, and Washington was up on a little rise, sittin’ on his horse, amidst dozens of fallen trees, whilst a farmer told his tale.
“Them redcoat bastards come through here and seen my cherries ripe on the trees. So they dumb up and took what they could. And I said, fine, let ’em eat their fill and be gone. But ’twasn’t enough. They wanted ’em all. So they … they commenced to cuttin’ trees just to get the cherries high up and … My pa planted them trees twenty-five year ago … and now …” And that farmer started blubberin’ like a baby.
Must’ve been a hundred cherry trees in that orchard, and every one was cut down, so the leaves was all squashed against the ground like a dead man’s face.
General just shook his head. Then he looked down and said to that farmer, “We’ll make them pay, my good man. Rely on it.”
“Send ’em to hell, General.”
On June 24, just after we had crossed the Delaware River at Coryell’s Ferry, the General unluckily called a council of war. Present were Charles Lee, Nathanael Greene, Lafayette, Henry Knox, Steuben, Stirling, the aggressive young Pennsylvanian Anthony Wayne, and half a dozen other brigadiers.
It was held in a farmhouse along the route of march, in Hopewell Township.
Washington began by inviting his officers to remove their coats, as the temperature was near a hundred degrees. But as the General did not remove his, all kept their coats on.
“Considering the situation,” he began, “and the probable prospects of the enemy, I wish your opinion on hazarding an action.”
“I say no,” proclaimed Charles Lee. “American troops cannot stand against the British. I have seen both armies and I am firm in that opinion. The British are in superb condition.”
“The British have spent a winter in Philadelphia, seeing plays and sniffing ladies,” said Lafayette. “We have spent a winter growing hard.”
“Not so hard as you think,” said Lee. “And those lady-sniffing British are in their kind of country—rolling country, open fields. They’ll be impossible to defeat on such ground, sir.”
“But once they reach the high ground at Middletown, they are safe,” responded Lafayette. “They make the ships at Sandy Hook in a day.”
“Let them go,” answered Lee, “while we repair to White Plains.”
Henry Knox wiped the sweat from his forehead. This was, considering the great heat and his great size, a task almost as Sisyphean as arguing with Lee. “I disagree with the general’s assessment of our troops. But if he means to suggest—”
“What I mean to suggest,” said Lee, fanning himself with his hat, “is that instead of attacking Clinton, we build a golden bridge to spirit him to New York.”
Washington furrowed his brow. “You’ll have to explain yourself, sir.”
“Do not fight useless battles,” said Lee, in a tone one would use on a child. “Let Clinton reach New York whilst we wait for the French. Their entry into the war guarantees victory.”
“The French appreciate your confidence,” said Lafayette, “but the enemy shows a long tail. Could we not cut it off?”
“Clinton may cut off our nose in the process,” answered Lee. “’Tis is a meaningless attack. I would venture to say a criminal attack.”
I was taking notes, leaving great blotches of ink on the page in my anger at what I was hearing.
Steuben, who was sitting next to me, asked me to translate what had just been said, and his response was to grunt.
Washington looked at him, “The general has some opinion?”
Though he was learning English, Steuben spoke in French and I translated: “‘To strike an enemy who is on the move, his line strung out over many miles’”—here I interjected that the British baggage train alone consisted of fifteen hundred wagons—“‘to strike such a blow is the dream of every general.’”
“Every general with an experienced army,” said Lee.
“Attack,” said Brigadier General Anthony Wayne suddenly.
Washington turned to him.
“Attack,” repeated Wayne. They came to call him Mad Anthony for his aggressiveness, but his advice that day was correct, though unheeded.
“I agree with Lee,” said Knox, “in that it would be criminal to hazard a general action at this time. But perhaps a piecemeal action. Perhaps …”
And so it went. That council would have done honor to the most honorable society of midwives, and to them only. The vote was that we should keep at a comfortable distance and keep up a vain parade of annoying the enemy with a detachment of perhaps fifteen hundred. General Lee was the primum mobile of this sage plan.
But Washington was disappointed. His instinct was for action, despite the Fabian tactics he had always employed. That night, Nathanael Greene and I went to him.
He stood as we entered his office, letting us feel the force of his height. “Gentlemen … you wish me to fight?”
It was hot enough that he wore neither coat nor waistcoat, only his shirt, open at the throat. His hair, which he did not powder in the heat, would soon need no powder, as he was graying at the temples and strands of gray were showing on the crown. But appearing coatless seemed only to enhance his presence.
“Sir,” I said, “I’ve ridden out ahead. I’ve seen the country. I’ve spoken with our spies. The enemy is
dispirited by desertion, broken by fatigue, retiring through woods, defiles, morasses. I urge you to something stronger.”
Nathanael Greene supported me and added this: “The people expect something from us, General, and our strength demands it.”
That position was one to which the General was always sensitive. To maintain the support of the American people was a vital necessity. He studied us for a moment, motionless despite the mosquitoes buzzing around him. Then he said, “I agree. We must use these men. We must take this opportunity.”
Upon mature consideration, the General determined to pursue a new line of conduct at all hazards. We would strike the British rear guard with a corps of five thousand men, followed closely by the main body. If a more general action could thus be brought about, we might have a signal victory, like Saratoga, and such a victory might end the war.
The question now was, who should command the advance corps?
General Lee’s conduct in the matter was truly childish.
Twas said that Washington lacked decision. But before Monmouth, Charles Lee would have made a flighty woman in a dress shop look implacable.
He didn’t want the command when it was a mere fifteen hundred men. So it went to Lafayette. Then word came that Washington had changed the plan, so
Lee changed his tune and went to see Washington. Brought me with him.
Headquarters was another farmhouse. Sometimes I think that war was harder on farmers and their wives than anybody else. Weather was hot as hell. And the thunderstorms blowin’ through didn’t do a thing but make the heat wet. ’Twas miserable marchin’. Damned hard thinkin’, too. So I just stood there, quiet as Washington’s slave, Billy Lee, and let General Lee do all the talkin’.
“Sir, a thousand apologies for the trouble my rash decisions may have caused you”—Lee could play courtesy and condescension with equal skill, almost at the same time—“but if this detachment does march farther, I entreat you to allow me to have command of it, though, to speak as an officer, sir, I do not think that this detachment ought to march at all.”
Right then I would have thrown Lee out. But Washington deferred more to Lee that to anybody else in that army. Did he really like Lee? He never liked men who were his rivals. Did he believe in the old saw, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer”? Aside from Lafayette, I’d never seen him actually embrace any other officer. He hated Horatio Gates, who was no more devious and self-servin’ than most people; but he always worried about what Lee thought.
Shows you the power of reputation. Lee had come to the Continental army with a reputation as a great soldier. And it had stuck.
“You put me in a difficult situation, sir,” said Washington. “The honor of the Marquis is at stake.”
“So is my own,” said Lee.
“But you did refuse the command,” said Washington.
“Of a small detachment,” he answered. “’Twould be dishonorable of me to refuse command of five thousand men.”
Certain words worked miracles on Washington. “Honor,” in all its forms, was one of them. He would not dishonor his second-in-command. And Lafayette, graceful as ever, said it would be an honor to serve under General Lee.
A few days later the British camped around Monmouth Court House, so sunburnt, thirsty, rain-soaked, mosquito-bit, and wore out that they had to rest, not fifteen miles from the coast.
Lee had joined Lafayette, and we were camped about six miles behind the British, with Washington three miles back of us. Washington had ordered Lee to bring the advance corps into action the next mornin’, and he would follow on with the main body.
Our boys were sunburnt, thirsty, rain-soaked, and bug-bit, too. The cold of Valley Forge was a fond memory. But where the enemy was wearin’ heavy wool uniforms, our boys were mostly in huntin’ shirts and light breeches. ’Twas one of the benefits of bein’ poor that we couldn’t afford uniforms.
Lee called a council of war—Lafayette, Anthony Wayne, a few others. First off, he told them Washington expected that they would all put aside their jealousies over rank and take his orders, which seemed reasonable.
Then Wayne asked Lee a simple question. “What are your plans, sir?”
And Lee answered, “I’m not certain.”
“You mean,” said Lafayette, “you have not formed them?”
“I mean that we do not know the numbers of the enemy nor the terrain nor much else about the situation. It therefore seems much the better course to let events dictate themselves.”
“You mean you have no plan at all?” asked Wayne, a persistent son of a gun, big and strong, with a wild look in his eye and a willingness to fight anyone.
“I have just given you my plan,” answered Lee. “I plan to react to events. I expect all of you to do the same.” And he said it with such confidence that it almost seemed he knew what he was talkin’ about.
Now, there’s nothin’ worse than tryin’ to sleep the night before a battle. First I tried outside. But in mosquito season in the Jerseys, sleepin’ outside is like plasterin’ sugar syrup all over yourself and lyin’ down on an anthill. So I went inside, closed the windows, half-suffocated myself, and slept on the floor.
By four, I was up, watchin’ the eastern sky, tryin’ to read the weather.
Usually, even on hot summer days, the sun comes up golden in a cool blue sky. When the sky at dawn is hot red and the sun looks like nothin’ so much as a bloodshot eye, you know you’re in for hell by noon, even if you’re doin’ no more than sittin’ under a tree.
Well, on that June 28, dawn come up as red and ugly as I ever saw.
By five o’clock we got word that Clinton was on the move. By eight o’clock our whole advanced column
was after him with Lee in command, Lafayette directin’ the troops on the left, Wayne on the right. And I remember thinkin’ how calm and cool Lee looked. Gave me a good feelin’. I should’ve known better.
The lay of the land, west to east, was all undulatin’ plateau, like a bedsheet blowin’ in a gentle breeze. ’Twas farmland—woods, cornfields, orchards, hedgerows—peaceful land, land where nobody in their right mind would fight a battle. But that’s the beauty and the horror of war. It forces you over and over again to do things you don’t want to do.
There were streams cuttin’ across this ground, mostly east to west, but at just enough of an angle that two of them cut the main road. The streams made ravines, and the ravines were bottomed with morasses of spongy, wet, weedy ground sure to slow down a marchin’ army.
The main choke point was a bridge over the West Ravine. By ten o’clock we’d crossed it, covered two miles more, and were comin’ into action in the fields just east of the Monmouth Court House. And the calm collected Lee of earlier … well, remember what I said about that woman in the dress shop?
We had five thousand men attackin’ two thousand. With a plan, we’d have cut them to pieces and done it quick, even if they were some of the best light infantry, dragoons, and rangers in the British army.
Afterward, Lee said he’d been in complete control when the battle began. Don’t believe it. Moment to moment, he led that corps like the woman goin’ from gingham to lace and back again.
Seein’ the British rear guard, he shouted to Lafayette, “My dear Marquis, I think those men are ours!”
Things began well—“By God, I will take them
all!”—but he didn’t give his commanders any direction. ’Twas called reactin’ to events.
Washington sent up a messenger to find out what was goin’ on, and Lee just said, “Tell the General I’m doing well enough.” Sounded annoyed to be interrupted.
But we couldn’t turn the enemy’s flank. And Clinton was comin’ back with four or five thousand men more. Suddenly we had a British column tryin’ to turn our right, and another comin’ from the center. Things started to waver, includin’ Lee. “We must retreat!” he shouted.
I told him we were still on good ground and Clinton was throwin’ his men at us one unit at a time. Told him not to panic.
But he was spooked. “You do not know the British soldiers, Draper. We cannot stand against them. We shall be driven back. We must be cautious.”
Then he started spewin’ orders to units spread over a half-mile front: “Retreat! Stand and fight! Take to the trees! Fall back and take defensive positions on the high ground.” And everything started to break down, like always. And Lee put on the punctuation, shoutin’, “They’re all in confusion, Draper! Confusion!”
That was the word. Not only was Lee mighty confused. Seemed like half the General’s family was gallopin’ around. Big-Ass Henry came up to watch his artillery, then went ridin’ back on a poor lathered horse that didn’t look like it could last the mornin’ with two hundred and eighty pounds of blubber on its back. Lafayette kept ridin’ between Lee and the right wing, askin’ for orders and givin’ advice, with those arched eyebrows dancin’ like drunken caterpillars. And Hamilton
was everywhere, like always, tryin’ to tell everyone their business, like always.
But there was no confusion in one fact: Americans still knew how to make a retrograde maneuver better than any army on the face of the earth. That’s what Lee called it. A retrograde maneuver. ’Twas also known as a retreat.
Like I told you, foot soldiers is the last to know anything. They’s jess s’posed to do what they’s told. So when the word come for us to retreat, I didn’t ask no questions. But I didn’t run. Neither did Willard. We was part of one of the “picked battalions,” New Englanders, mostly, sent out to hit the British that mornin’. And we retreated the way we went forward, like soldiers, in step.
But we was damn mad that we’d barely been brought into the action ’fore turnin’, and we was cursin’ our commanders and cursin’ the heat. I was so damn dry I couldn’t spit. Hell, if I’d tried, I don’t reckon I could’ve pissed.
Remember the bird … imagine flyin’ over that battlefield about eleven thirty in the mornin’.
You’re comin’ from the west, comin’ up on the main body of the American army. They’re marchin’ east,
past a Presbyterian Meetin’ House, toward a cloud of smoke about three miles away.
And at the head of the column is the man himself, ridin’ a fine white charger, just like a general in an English oil paintin’. He’s leadin’ his men down a hill to the planked bridge at the West Ravine. From there, the land rises gentle, maybe five hundred yards, to a hedged fence. Then, it slopes into the second ravine and rises gentle again. Beyond are fields of Indian corn, some thick woods, and the Monmouth Road, so sandy it looks like a ribbon of yellow, cuttin’ through the fields and disappearin’ into the woods.
And stumblin’ along the road, headin’ in the wrong direction, is a little fifer boy. A lone, little fifer boy.
You fly farther and see men comin’ toward you. At first a few, then a few dozen, then a few hundred, hurryin’ along the road, tramplin’ through the cornfield, streamin’ through the woods. Some are leaderless, movin’ in bunches. But most are in formation—five battalions, maneuverin’ backwards, like Steuben trained them.
And ridin’ with them, as proud as a crow struttin’ in the gutter, is General Charles Lee.
’Twas the hottest day of history, yes, sir.
Henry Knox had just rid up, all sweaty and red, sayin’, “General, it looks like a Sunday battle.”
“I don’t feel much like fighting on the Sabbath, Henry. But we must yield to the good of the country.”
’Twas then that we all spied a little fifer boy comin’ up the road from Monmouth, movin’ on the quickstep.
Seein’ us, he shouted, “They’re comin’, Your Honors. They’re all comin’ this way.”
Knox asked, “Who’s coming, my little man?”
“Why, our boys, Your Honor, our boys and the British right after them.”
The General said, “Impossible.” Then, he cocked his head to listen, but all we could hear was the marchin’ beat of our own drums. So he leaned down and whispered to the fifer boy, “Son, if you say another word of this falsehood, I’ll have you put over a cannon and caned. Do you understand?”
“Caned, sir? But—”
“I’ll make it easier for you.” And he put the lad under guard.
Then he rode ahead, crossin’ the bridge, passin’ a hedged fence, and comin’ down a slopin’ grade to a spring where a dozen soldiers was stoppin’ for a drink. He said, “What’s going on here?”
“A retreat, sir.” Their young officer gave a spit. “We’re flying from a shadow.”
“Who ordered this retreat?”
“General Lee, sir.”
“Why, that—” But the General caught his anger in front of the men.
More and more troops were comin’ out of the trees on the left, more and more comin’ down into the little ravine where we’d stopped.
And then Colonel Hamilton come gallopin’ hard, shoutin’, “General! General! We’re betrayed! General Lee has betrayed you and the entire army.”
The General snapped, “Colonel, calm yourself, sir.”
Whatever was happenin’, wasn’t goin’ to be no panic on the General’s staff.
“Sorry, sir,” answered Hamilton, “but Lee may have brought us to disaster.”
And the General spurred his horse up the rise from the water hole, onto the plateau of cornfields and wheatfields and woods that led the last mile to Monmouth. And there was our army. Retreatin’. Again.
We were ridin’ through the cornfield. Lee was sayin’, “I was against this maneuver all along, Draper. And once more my military prophecy proved correct.”
“You’re a regular Isaiah, General. They should put you in the Bible.”
“The history books will be enough.”
’Twas then that I saw somethin’ risin’ from the ravine up ahead that caused me to say, “General, if you don’t have a page yet, you’re about to get one.” ’Twas a cloud-white horse bearin’ the biggest, maddest, reddest-faced Washington I’d ever seen.
Lee reined up and started to say somethin’, like “Ah, good morning—”
And Washington boomed, “My God, General Lee, what are you doing?”
“Sir? Sir?” Lee pretended he didn’t hear him, or didn’t understand.
“What is the reason for this disorder and confusion?”
“Reason, sir? Why … why, there are reasons aplenty, and they are obvious.”
“They’re not obvious to me, sir!”
“Why … why”—Lee seemed shocked, but he rallied his wits better than he’d rallied his men—“contradictory intelligence, sir, officers abandoning favorable positions in the midst of battle, and you know right well what I’ve thought of this operation from the beginning.”
And Washington just blew. “God damn you, sir! Whatever your opinions are, I expected my orders to be obeyed. The British at Monmouth are no more than a covering party!”
He was wrong about that. But not about anything else.
He give Lee a few more God damns while I backed my horse up a bit, tryin’ to get out of the way of his temper.
“Sir,” said Lee when he could force a word in, “these troops are not able to meet British grenadiers.”
“You haven’t tried them, sir!” thundered Washington. “They can, and by God, they will.”
“Then … then … I must protest—”
“No, you will not protest, you son of a—” Washington caught himself. “You’re a damned ignorant poltroon, sir. Nothin’ more.”
He looked at Lee and me as if we were both useless. Then he kicked his horse into the mass of men retreatin’ through the corn stalks and steam.
Lee looked at me with an expression of dead shock on his face, and he started to sputter about how willin’ he was to do his duty. Then he fell silent because he could hear our men cheerin’.
George Washington might have kept my father a slave for all of his life, but I cheered him when I saw him come gallopin’ along our lines. He’d stop this, if anybody would.
He was shoutin’, swingin’ his arms, givin’ orders. And Varnum’s boys was spreadin’ out across that field, wheelin’ into line to cover our retreat. Old Steuben, he sure would’ve been proud of how those boys looked, even if some of them was keelin’ over as they went, keelin’ over in the brutal heat.
I fell in with the General as he rode through the cornfield and rallied the retreating men. As yet, the only evidence of the enemy came from cannonballs plowing up the ground. These the General regarded as no more than gnats. But the words of Colonel Harrison, who now came galloping back from the rear guard, struck him like a blow:
“Sir! Sir!” Harrison shouted. “The British are pushing forward! Sixteenth Light Dragoons in the van. They’ll be on us in fifteen minutes.”
One could not say that the color left the General’s face. In that heat, under that sun, every man’s face was broiled red. But his eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and a simple truth assailed him: if the British caught us in full flight, we could be cut to pieces.
As he looked about to get the lay of the land,
Tench Tilghman came galloping up with a Jerseyite colonel.
“Sir!” cried Tilghman. “If you mean to make a stand—”
“I have to make a stand,” answered Washington.
“Colonel Rhea knows the ground, sir,” said Tilghman.
Washington turned to Rhea and said, “Well, then?”
And he took in every detail of Rhea’s description of the terrain. As soon as the Jerseyman was done, the General had a plan fixed and ready to put into motion. Some have questioned the celerity of his mind. But none who saw him on the field at Monmouth ever would.
He rode forward and positioned units commanded by Colonels Stewart and Ramsay in a point of woods, from whence they could fire into the British flank. As they were part of Anthony Wayne’s division, General Wayne now came up to take command.
Washington ordered him, “Dispute the ground as long as possible!”
“Yes, sir,” said Wayne. “Inch by inch.”
“Minute by minute will do. Just give me time to form the main body beyond the bridge.”
Then Washington wheeled his horse and galloped back to Varnum’s men. He ordered them up to a hedged fence on a hill some four hundred yards behind us. Once the enemy had run the gauntlet of our men in the point of woods, they would have to assail this position. By then, the main body would be properly positioned.
Lee was still sittin’ on his horse, where Washington had left him, still tryin’ to read the ground and make a decision. Didn’t take a genius to see that the best place for us to form up would be at the hedged fence on the rise to the west. Lee hadn’t come to that yet, but Washington had.
Now Hamilton rode up demandin’ to know what dispositions Lee had made.
Lee seemed stunned, like a duck knocked down by bird shot but still alive.
I said, “General Lee is gettin’ the lay of the land.”
“If he’s confused—”
And Lee snapped to, jumpin’ on Hamilton. “Do I appear to you to have lost my senses, sir? Do I not possess myself?”
“You’re in possession of yourself,” answered Hamilton. “But we seek to possess the enemy, sir.”
Now Washington came gallopin’ back on that lathered white charger that looked as wobbly as a three-legged table. ’Twas plain that the heat would bring that horse down before too long. ’Twas likely to bring us all down.
“General,” cried Lee, lookin’ past Hamilton, “are you taking command here, or shall I?”
Washington had his temper under control again. Maybe he saw the gravity of the situation that had caused Lee to retreat. Five thousand British troops were more than a rear guard. He said, “If you wish to take it, I’ll return to the main body and arrange them on the heights at the rear.”
“I will take command here, Your Excellency. And
I will check the enemy. And I will be the last to leave the field.” Lee was gettin’ windy, blowin’ a big voice so all the men would hear. I was hopin’ it might give him a little of his old spirit. ’Twould be better than havin’ a stunned duck for a superior officer.
Then Hamilton pulled out his sword and give it a flourish over his head, like he was drunk with the heat or the excitement. What he was drunk with was sarcasm. He said, “Stay here, my dear General Lee, and I’ll stay with you. And we’ll both die on this spot.”
Lee looked at him like he was a dog in need of shootin’. “One of us has lost his senses, sir. But when I’ve put the men in readiness, I will die here with you. Right on this spot, if you like.”
Lee might as well have died. He thought he’d made the right decision, retreatin’. And Washington was doin’ exactly what Lee had planned to do—rally on good ground, hold, volley, and fall back to the main body. But after his retreat from the courthouse, I don’t think Lee could have rallied those men for a night in a tavern.
You see, there’s many kinds of leadership. Lee led by complaint, blame, sarcasm, and self-importance. Washington led the same way sometimes, but on the battlefield, he rode a white horse, and Lee just kept on bein’ Lee.
Still, Washington had no choice but to leave Lee in command. Then he galloped back to the main body. But that presumptuous little Hamilton decided to stay with us, and he started urgin’ Lee to put more units along that hedged fence. Varnum’s unit had gone in on the left. Hamilton wanted Colonel Livingston’s brigade sent to the right.
Lee sputtered, “Sir, do not tell me my business. I am—”
“Sir!” I said, headin’ off an argument for which we had no time, “’Tis a strong position, that fence. And the artillery up there needs protection.”
Henry Knox had put two field pieces on a little hillock behind the fence, two more on the slopin’ ground in front of it, all to hold off the enemy attack we knew was comin’.
Lee opened his mouth as if to declaim somethin’—maybe more Shakespeare—then he just said, “Very well. Order Livingston’s brigade to the fence.”
So we all went gallopin’ up that hill, and with a few good shouts, we had Livingston’s lads wheelin’ into position like old, blooded professionals, just like Steuben had trained them. ’Twas a beautiful thing.
Then I looked back at the point of woods juttin’ into the cornfield. And there were the British—the Sixteenth Light Dragoons, advancin’ in line through the trampled stalks way cavalry does when they’re fixin’ to charge, and followin’ them, about two thousand grenadiers and King’s Guards. Hell-on-horseback leadin’ hell-on-foot.
Knox’s cannon started barkin’, but at six hundred yards, they did damn little damage to those fine British lines. ’Twas the boys hidden in the point of woods who’d strike the first blow. Strike hard, I thought, then run like hell.
We was hidden in the trees, maybe six hundred of us, down in the shadows, down in the cool shadows, the only cool place on the field that day. Front rank was kneelin’, second rank was standin’, and every man’s shoulder was anchored to his mate’s, or pressed hard against a tree.
We let the dragoons go by with their spurs janglin’ and their hangers clankin’. We didn’t want them and their big horses comin’ in at us.
We was waitin’ on the infantry, the King’s Guards and the grenadiers in them tall hats. They come by in column, all red and white, marchin’ left to right, as tall and arrogant as soldiers ever was. ’Twas as if they didn’t even think we’d be waitin’ in them woods to ambush ’em. The tramp of their feet and the tootlin’ of their fifes was so loud they couldn’t hear Anthony Wayne and his officers, whisperin’, “Steady, lads … steady …”
Willard whispered, “When’s that crazy bastard gonna tell us to fire?”
“When the whole flank’s exposed,” I whispered. Then I wiped the sweat from my hands so I wouldn’t wet my cartridges as I handled ’em.
I didn’t like havin’ Anthony Wayne commandin’ us. He’d charged like a madman at Brandywine. And they say he was driven crazy by the massacre at Paoli’s Tavern, when the British caught his men at night, mostly asleep, and put ’em all to the bayonet. No wonder they called him mad.
“We better shoot soon,” said Sammy, “or they’ll be past, and those boys on up at the hedgerow, they’ll have hell to pay.”
Then the whispered order of “Make ready” went down the line.
Then “Front rank, fire!”
I pulled my trigger, and those trees were filled with roarin’ noise and smoke so chokin’ that you’d think you was in the chimney instead of the oven.
Then “Second rank, fire!”
That column closest to us all but collapsed. Boys were down, groanin’, bloody, dead. But now the rest of them turned on us, fired one blastin’ volley that did more damage to the tree branches above us than it did to us. Then they came chargin’, bayonets lowered.
Our lads got off one more blast ’fore they was on us—seven hundred of ’em, scramblin’ over their mates, screamin’, slashin’, slammin’ into us.
’Twas like nothin’ you can imagine.
There was bodies swirlin’, bloody steel flashin’, redcoats comin’ from every corner of your eye, and a sound that mixed together all the bad noises you ever heard—all the shrieks of pain and shouts of hate, all the thumpin’ and thunkin’ of bone and flesh and steel and wood, and all of it happenin’ in burnin’ smoke and heat so bad it was killin’ men all by itself.
I tried to run—I ain’t ashamed to say it—but them woods was so jammed with fightin’ men and so cramped with trees that I had to fight, just to find room to run. A big grenadier come at me. I parried and lunged, like I’d been taught, and somehow I stuck him in the thigh and he went stumblin’ off.
And all whilst I was fightin’ for my life, Willard Walt was fightin’ for his.
And so was Sammy Brisby … till he took a British
bayonet, right above his crossbelts. I heard him scream, “No! No! Oh, Goddamn, no!”
And the redcoat that stuck him, he screamed, “Die, you nigger fuck. Die!”
So, I drove my blade right into the side of that redcoat’s neck. I didn’t look at his face. Didn’t want to see his eyes. I just screamed “You die, you redcoat fuck! You die!”
That brung a grenadier screamin’ at me. But Willard’s musket went off right in his face. Blew his brains up into his hat.
Then we heard the thumpin’ of hooves and the screamin’ of horses. The dragoons was comin’ in where the trees was thin, comin’ in with sabers slashin’.
’Twas time to run. We left Sammy, dyin’ in the middle of all them swirlin’ boots and screamin’ men, with that neck-stuck redcoat gushin’ blood all over him.
Wayne’s ambush at the point of woods was a beautiful thing to see from six hundred yards, but it must have been hell up close, and hell with bells on when the British turned on the lads who done the ambushin’.
By then, our line stretched four hundred yards along the hill. Charles Lee had gotten hold of himself and was ridin’ back and forth, shoutin’ orders. Hamilton was ridin’ wherever Lee wasn’t. Henry Knox was huffin’ and puffin’ and hollerin’ to his cannoneers on the hillock behind us. And I was on my horse,
tryin’ to steady the nervous lads on the far right of our line.
But the first action was comin’ on the far left, over where Wayne’s lads were streamin’ out of the woods, rushin’ down the ravine, then up toward the safety of our hedged fence.
The dragoons who’d flushed them had those boys right where mounted troops always want infantry—out in the open and on the run. They sabered the stragglers and ran down them who turned to fight. And they used our boys like a movin’ shield, ridin’ right in amongst ’em, right at that fence. They figured they could gallop right up to it, and once they’d jumped it, have themselves a fine slaughter. ’Tis a basic truth of warfare that dragoons are death to infantry in line.
Runnin’ for my life. Runnin’ with them horses thunderin’ after me. Runnin’ hard for that hedged fence, never even wonderin’ where Willard was. But when I was maybe forty yards away, I heard someone behind the fence shoutin’, “Front rank, present!”
Then I seen the worst sight of all that day. ’Twas the muskets of our own lads, pokin’ through the hedge, pointin’ right at us!
And I heard someone screamin’, “Aim high! Aim high! Take down the dragoons!” But you know the truth. After thirty or forty yards, nobody knows where a musketball’s goin’.
I run on, tryin’ to decide if I should keep runnin’
and be shot by my own men, or drop and be trampled by them dragoons. When someone screamed “Fire!” I dropped, and I ain’t afraid to say it—I pissed my breeches.
The volley blew out at us like a hot smoky wind. Lads all around me went down, but plenty of horses screamed and went tumblin’, too, and enough dragoons was hit that the rest of them reined up. And when they heard an officer scream, “Second rank, present!” they turned and ran right away as fast as they’d chased us.
There wouldn’t be no second volley. That hell was over. Lord, was I thirsty.
I couldn’t have given the order to fire into my own men.
But I had no time to think about it because just as the dragoons were fallin’ away from Varnum’s volley, guards and grenadiers were pourin’ out of the point of woods. Down into the ravine, past the spring and up the rise they came, screamin’, ragin’, some droppin’ from the heat, but none of them worried about musketballs or cannonballs or Yankee courage.
I spied a mounted British officer, ridin’ over from where the dragoons had been beaten back. ’Twas General Clinton, and he was screamin’, as clear as a bell, “Charge, Grenadiers! Charge! Never heed forming!”
But heed our muskets, I thought, when Livingston shouted, “Present!” and our men rammed their pieces
through the hedge. Every man stood his ground, even if we were outnumbered three or four to one. It made me proud.
Then Knox screamed, “Fire!” And the two cannon on the hillock behind me sprayed grapeshot at the red wall in front of me.
An instant later, Livingston screamed, “Fire!”
Now the air was so dense and hot that the roar of cannon fire and musketry had nowhere to go, so it doubled back against your skull, and the sulfurous, chokin’ smoke had nowhere to blow, so you sucked it into you like stingin’ poison.
Out in front of our lines, men’s arms flew out from their bodies or flew to their faces or grabbed to their guts. Hats and muskets went whirligiggin’. Men were wasted and thrown away like doll babies or lead soldiers.
But they kept comin’, kept roarin’. ’Twas fury they were showin’, fury at us and fury at the lads who’d ambushed them from the point of woods.
Then we saw that the dragoons had flanked us on our right. They’d ridden from one end of the line to the other and found the end of the hedgerow. Now they were poundin’ hard toward our flank.
Henry Knox was already pullin’ his guns off the knoll, gallopin’ them across the field toward the West Ravine Bridge. ’Twasn’t cowardice. ’Twas war. You saved the artillery. At all costs, you saved the artillery.
Charles Lee screamed for a retreat, and this time he was right.
The drums took up the fall-back tattoo. But do you know that those boys along the hedgerow tried to stand and fight, fight hand to hand? They were buyin’
Washington more time than he needed. Things sure had changed since Kips Bay.
The platoon commanders had to call them out, and they fell back company by company, keepin’ up a steady coverin’ fire as they went. Nobody threw away weapons. Nobody panicked. With the British chasin’ us, and the dragoons thunderin’ hard toward our flank, we fell back across a rollin’ field toward the bridge, about four hundred yards to our rear. Beyond it, our own main army was now drawn up, with artillery in position, all dug in, all ready. If we could just make it across that bridge—
I wasn’t but a hundred yards from it when my horse went down. Stepped in a hole, broke his front leg. And right then, a big dragoon decided he wanted me.
But a platoon of Livingston’s men stopped and turned, fightin’ the rear guard. They shouted at me to drop, then they presented and delivered a volley of ball and buck right over me.
The dragoon’s big horse screamed and went down, with the dragoon barrel-rollin’ right over him, losin’ his helmet, landin’ on his own right arm. It snapped as he hit, and he came to rest in a sittin’ position, lookin’ at his flopped arm like it belonged to someone else.
I pointed my pistol at him. Could’ve killed him. But with all those other grenadiers and dragoons comin’ after us, runnin’ seemed a better use of my time.
Up ahead, hundreds of men were squeezin’ onto the planked bridge. Lee was wavin’ his sword, urgin’ the stragglers to safety. And Hamilton, well, he was like me, mountless and movin’ hard by shank’s mare.
As I come closer, I could see two batteries of six-pounders in position on the rise beyond the bridge. I could hear the gun captains callin’ orders. I could see the sergeants sweepin’ their long linstocks through the air, lowerin’ their quickmatches to the touchholes and … well, I reckoned that one way or the other, from front or rear, I was about to die.
Those four cannon banged, and I swear, I saw bags of grapeshot come shootin’ out into the sunshine and tear open in midair, and then I could hear hundreds of pieces of shot come whizzin’ over my head, not five feet above me.
I thanked the Lord and never looked back till I was over the bridge.
By then, those cannon had fired two or three more times and turned the field before that bridge into one bloody mess. Dragoons and grenadiers were down everywhere. Horse were screamin’ and stumblin’ and gallopin’ off, wide-eyed.
And our American positions, well, thanks to the delayin’ action we’d fought, they were rock solid.
Washington had arrayed his men in three lines across a wide front on the risin’ ground of Perrine’s Hill. Knox’s cannon were covered by Anthony Wayne. Behind them, and runnin’ toward the left, Lord Stirling commanded his division. And somewhere at the top of the ridge, workin’ with a reserve, was Lafayette.
As for Lee, he’d been ordered to withdraw to Englishtown, to rally the troops who were “the most exhausted and demoralized” by the retreat. ’Twas like sendin’ the drunkards off to sober up with the brewmaster.
I decided to make for the center of the action, for the big man on the white horse. I was hurryin’ up the hill when, all of a sudden, the big man was down.
I seen the General go down, and I cried, “Oh, no!”
There was British cannonballs plowin’ up the ground around us now, and I thought … well, you know what I thought. But ’twasn’t the General who was down. ’Twas his horse. Guess that big white charger hadn’t been trained for this kind of hell. Horse just collapsed right under him.
’Twas my job to see that the General was always mounted, so right quick I brung up his favorite sorrel mare. He was back up in no time.
Men cheered all around, them who still had the voice in all that heat.
’Twas the hottest, noisiest afternoon that any man would ever go through. But I sure was glad I was there to see it. What would have happened if I’d demanded my freedom? Who would’ve brung the General his horse?
And I never would’ve seen what they call the great cannonade. British brought ten guns to the hedge fence where they’d driven our boys in. And Henry Knox had twelve guns up on Perrine’s Hill. They was ’bout five hundred yards between them. And both sides kept up a roarin’ hot fire for longer than ears could stand it.
Those two armies went at each other until dark. Heat. Blood. More heat. Charge. Countercharge. Heat. Cotton-spittin’ thirst. And only one Molly Pitcher on the whole field. And she was only haulin’ water for her husband’s gun crew.
I was gettin’ too old for this. But somehow I stayed in the thick of it all day. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t the kind who forgot himself in battle. Didn’t have foolhardy courage. Every time I heard a musket, I reckoned someone was firin’ at me. So you can be sure I said good-bye to Charlotte more than once on that field.
But that was a day when you couldn’t duck, because nobody else was, whether they were facin’ the Forty-second Highlanders in an apple orchard on the left, or fightin’ hand to hand at the Parsonage Farm on the right. If you can be proud of men killin’ each other, you had to be proud at Monmouth.
But battles are ugly things, especially when night comes on, and the mosquitoes start buzzin’, and out in the dark, dyin’ men cry for their mothers.
I never saw the General to so much advantage as at Monmouth. America owes a great deal to him for that day’s work; a general rout, dismay, and disgrace would have attended the whole army in any other hands but his. By his own good sense and fortitude,
he turned the day. Other officers earned great merit, but he directed the whole with the skill of a master workman. He brought order out of confusion and animated his troops and led them to success.
Late that night, when it was plain that the fighting and dying was done for the day, I went to visit the General. I brought a flask of brandy, a piece of sausage, a small round of hard cheese.
He thanked me and complimented me on my work that day.
“It was not so good as Wayne’s or Greene’s.”
“You will have days as glorious.” He took a long drink of my brandy and offered me that flask again.
I said, “No … no … it is all for you.”
“Thank you. Brandy will help me sleep.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“Here. On the ground.”
He then made gesture to his military cloak, laid out beneath a tree, and he said, “There is room for two. If you promise not to snore, you can have half.”
And I thought of the words he had said to me: “I will be father and friend.”
It was hot, and the bugs buzzed around our ears as soon as we lay down, but the exhaustion of the day came over us. The last words that he said to me were “We shall have Clinton and all his men tomorrow.”
Clinton took a page from Washington’s book. Left his campfires burnin’ through the night and pulled his troops out. By dawn they were ten miles away and bound for Sandy Hook.
Washington claimed victory because the British left the field first. Clinton claimed victory because he held off the Americans and got to where he was goin’. But if there’d ever been a doubt as to who was runnin’ the Continental army, Monmouth laid it to rest. And if there’d ever been any doubt that Americans could stand against British regulars, Monmouth proved otherwise.
Within a day or two, Lee was complainin’ that he’d “been sent out of the field when victory was assured.” He was even heard to say that Washington had no more to do in the victory at Monmouth than “strip the dead.” Then he demanded a court-martial, to clear his tarnished name.
No surprise that he was found guilty of insubordination, among other charges, and punished with a year’s removal from duty. But he kept sayin’ bad and worse about Washington and his “tinsel dignity.” Finally, John Laurens, one of Washington’s aides, challenged him to a duel. Put a pistol ball in his side. Damn near killed him.
Lee survived, but he never returned to the army. Just went driftin’, blown this way and that on the wind of his own words. When he died a few years later, only his dogs attended him. They were found lickin’ his face, tryin’ to wake their dead master. As Lee would have said, Sic transit gloria!
C.D.—And Sic transit to battlefield gloria as well. My uncle pointed out that Washington had won three battles, lost six, and fought once to a draw. His army was maturing, but his record was hard truth for a proud, aggressive man forced to fight like Fabius the Delayer. Washington yearned for another victory, but he would not fight in battle again for three years.
The rest of 1778 was given over to old problems in new guises—the French and Indians. For all their protestations of alliance, the French were offering little material support, no troops, and a fleet that stayed in American waters only a short time. Meanwhile, the Tories on the frontier, in alliance with the Iroquois, had turned their fury onto the American settlements.
My son and I moved north to the land of the Senecas. And my son took a Seneca woman. Because it is the clan of the mother that makes a child who he is, my grandchildren would be Seneca. So I would fight if the Senecas told me to fight.
You cannot know how great were the Iroquois then, that both sides wanted us to fight for them. When it began, we told the Americans we would stay out. But the British brought gifts and promised trade. They reminded us that our fathers always fought for them. So we said we would fight for the British.
But the Oneidas and Tuscaroras sided with the Americans, and the great Iroquois union was broken.
In the summer of 1778 we marched with the Seneca chief known as Cornplanter, and the Mohawk Thayendanegea, who the British called Joseph Brant. There were five hundred of us, and many more Tories. We came from Fort Niagara. We attacked the Wyoming Valley, on the Susquehanna.
At Lackawanna, six hundred Americans came out to fight us. They thought they could beat us, so they called to us as they came. They said we were afraid. But we drew them on. We hid in the trees and grass. We surrounded them. Then we struck. Some whites jumped in the river and tried to swim to their fort. We killed them in the water. We made the river run red. We killed all but thirty-three. Then we burned their fort and scattered their wives and children, as the whites once did at Mingo Town.
Then we attacked at Cherry Valley. And the earth ran as red as the river.
The Americans cried out to Caunotaucarius. His answer, so they say, was simple: “The only sure way of preventing Indian ravages is to carry the war into their own country.”
Then he sent four thousand men to do it.
I have told you many bad things already. But I will tell you more.
The American army, under Sullivan, came north. They drove our people before them. We fought when we could. We ran when there were too many. They burned our towns and destroyed our crops. They cut down our orchards.
So we fell back to the great Iroquois town of Genesee. There were more than a hundred lodges, surrounded by fine fields. But we did not think we could hold, because the army sent by Caunotaucarius was big. Our scouts watched them coming.
My son was one of those scouts. One day he saw white soldiers, twenty-four of them, coming through the woods. He let them see him, so they would chase him.
He drew them on toward his Seneca brothers, but before he came to them, the whites shot him down in a field of corn. While the blood of my son watered the cornstalks, the whites argued over who would scalp him. They were very stupid, because the Senecas fell on them and killed all but two. These Senecas brought me the terrible news with the two prisoners.
Chief Cornplanter put a knife in my hand and said, “Make the death slow.” Our warriors stripped the prisoners and stretched them between poles and tied them hands and feet. But I had no heart for torture. I had no heart for anything. I gave the knife back to Cornplanter.
“Torture must be done, old man,” the chief said. He wore a silver ring in his nose and a headdress of turkey feathers. He stood straight, as a chief should.
But I would never stand straight again. I said, “Let others do it. Torture cannot be done if you do not have the heart for it.”
So others made stabs in both men, in places where great pain would not bring death. They skinned one, so that the white of his ribs showed, and his scream was like a knife driven into the air. Then they punched out the eyes of the other. Then they cut off the balls of them both.
I went away from their screaming. I went to a quiet place by the river.
And the captive white woman came to me. She had lived with the Senecas many years. Her man had been killed fighting Sullivan. She said, “We both have pain worse than what those whites have.”
“Theirs will be over tonight,” I said.
“And ours will go on.” This woman was Mary Britain. And she was right.
C.D.—Washington wrote to General Sullivan: “The commander in chief congratulates the army on its success against the Senecas and their allies. Their whole country has been overrun and laid waste and they themselves compelled to place their security in the British fortress at Fort Niagara.”
But this was the only American success of 1779.
The true history of that year was best expressed in a single line from Washington: “We have reached the point where a wheelbarrow of currency will not buy a wheelbarrow of goods.” A dollar in specie, worth five Continental dollars in 1778, was worth forty in 1779, and would be worth ninety in 1780.
I was in France for most of 1779, acting on behalf of my American friends.
It was hard for me to leave my family the following spring, now that I had a new son, but my efforts had helped to convince the Count de Vergennes that in addition to naval support, France should send an army to America. Now I was charged with bringing the glorious news that six thousand troops under the Count de Rochambeau would soon embark.
Though I was welcomed in Boston as hero and ally and was spirited through the streets to the sound of
church bells and booming cannon, the America to which I returned was not a place of happiness. Snow lay four feet deep from Boston to Pennsylvania. And Washington’s winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, may have been the most sorriest place of all.
Upon our reunion, the General’s eyes filled with tears. My return to America had been a surprise. And so was my glorious news about Rochambeau. The joy on the General’s face was as unrestrained as the joy in my heart.
“We must find wine,” he said. “But lately we’ve been contented with grog, made of New England rum and drunk out of a wooden bowl.”
“That would be a fine drink with which to toast to the French army,” I said.
And so the toasts were drunk, and we talked long into the night.
“With this news,” he said, “we must redouble our efforts with the states to make the American army worthy.”
“The states?” This puzzled me.
“My dear Marquis, the money issued by Congress has grown so worthless, they have surrendered to the states the business of paying and outfitting troops.”
“Does this not make your job more complicated?”
“Impossibly. I see one head gradually changing into thirteen.”
“Like the hydra-headed beast of mythology?” I said.
“The hydra replicates itself and can’t be killed,” answered Washington. “But when Americans no longer see Congress as the controlling power of the United States, they are killing their hopes for independency.”
I took the grog pot from the table and refreshed our bowls.
“Unity must be our principle,” he went on. “But the people now look to their states for everything. And each state is driven to follow its own interests. This is how we began back in Boston.”
I said, “This is no way for an army to fight a war.”
“No, but”—he stood—“I’ve become so inured to difficulties in the course of this war, that I’ve learned to look on them with much more tranquillity than at the start. The troubles ahead will demand all our efforts, but I’m far from despairing. And I sleep well. So I’ll light you to your room and bid you good night.”
His hair had grown grayer and the lines cut deeper furrows in his face, but like a father, he said words that made me forget my own worries.
C.D.—Their optimism was not well founded. The French under Rochambeau were not nearly as cooperative as Lafayette had expected. They temporized in Rhode Island while Washington returned to the Hudson to await his chance for an attack on the British army in New York.