The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (30 page)

Map of Virginia, 1781

The real reason for Leslie's precipitous withdrawal was that Cornwallis, clamoring for reinforcements, had ordered Leslie to leave. No one in Virginia knew that, however. Leslie's invasion had prompted a groundswell of patriotic fervor. The state militia, poorly organized and worse armed, had turned out in force. From the rebel side, it certainly looked as if the British had withdrawn because the militia had convinced them to.

The whole episode gave the Virginians and their governor, one
Thomas Jefferson, a false sense of security, a conviction that the militia alone was sufficient to protect the state. This was dangerous. For as Greene and Steuben clearly saw, Virginia was in no condition to fight a protracted campaign against even a small force of British regulars. The state owned few muskets and little ammunition, not even enough to equip the militia who had been called up to defend against Leslie.

Inevitably, Leslie's invasion had an impact on the Continental Army, too. There were at most eight hundred Continental recruits in Virginia in November 1780, and—untrained, lacking weapons and clothing, all but destitute of provisions—they were not even ready to march south. The Continental quartermaster's department in Virginia was, in Greene's words, “totally deranged,” without any organization or personnel.
¹⁴

Greene desperately needed men, equipment, clothing, and food from Virginia, but neither could he tarry in the state much longer. Before he left for the Carolinas on November 21, he decided to leave Steuben behind in Richmond to organize recruits and supplies for the Southern Army. He did so reluctantly, for he needed Steuben's personal assistance, too. But it would be only a temporary assignment. As soon as a critical mass of Continental recruits could be clothed, armed, and formed into regiments, Steuben could march south with them and take his place at Greene's side.

Easier said than done, as the Baron soon discovered. “All the Wheels of the Machine are Stopt, and all the Departments in the greatest Confusion,” he reported to Washington in dismay. The eight hundred Continental recruits—inactive, half-naked, and without food—were deserting in droves. Because of the invasion scare in October and November, the Virginia General Assembly was much less concerned about meeting Greene's requirements than it was about the defense of the state. “Your Affairs are very little more advanced than when you left this town,” Steuben told Greene at the very end of November.
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Steuben took charge. On Greene's recommendation, he delegated the task of recruiting and supply to Col. William Davies. A rough-
spoken man with “an uneasy disposition,” as Timothy Pickering described him, Davies was nonetheless highly dependable and intelligent, and he knew how to work with the Baron: he had been one of the original sub-inspectors at Valley Forge. Davies quickly constructed a recruiting depot at Chesterfield Courthouse, complete with barracks, a hospital, a clothing manufactory, and storehouses. Here Steuben made his headquarters. A Continental “laboratory”—a facility for manufacturing ammunition and repairing weapons—was established at nearby Westham. Davies somehow managed to find enough clothing and equipment for four hundred men. Within days, more than a full battalion of fresh Continental troops was on its way south to Greene.

Better yet: the next month, the state government gave every sign of willingness to cooperate with Greene. At Jefferson's urging, the General Assembly authorized the recruitment of three thousand men for Continental service, promising cash bounties, gold, silver, and slaves to men who volunteered for three years' or more service.
¹⁶

At this rate, Steuben could count on sending off a battalion to Greene every month or so, maybe even every couple of weeks, and perhaps he, too, could leave the state by February. But the obvious strategic vulnerability of the state troubled him. Entrusting the defense of the state to the militia was in itself a risky proposition. Geography, too, made eastern Virginia difficult to defend. The network of rivers, the James and York estuaries in particular, could serve as a highway for an invading enemy. If the rivers were not properly guarded, a seaborne army could stab deep into the state.

One very inexpensive measure, Steuben saw, would go a long way toward forestalling invasion. Just downriver from the mouth of the Appomattox, the tidal estuary of the James narrowed sharply at a place called Hood's Landing. A simple earthen fort there, properly sited and bristling with ship-killing cannon, could keep a British fleet at bay indefinitely. Steuben could find the cannon, and he already had a competent engineer: Col. John Christian Senf, formerly chief engineer to Horatio Gates. All that was wanting was labor.

Steuben laid his plan for Hood's on Thomas Jefferson's desk at
Richmond. Nothing came of it. Neither Jefferson nor the Assembly thought that an enemy force would attempt to ascend the James. Virginia did not have the money to waste on guarding against every remote strategic possibility. The militia would have to suffice—if indeed there was any invasion at all.
¹⁷

On December 29, 1780, a British fleet of twenty-seven sail dropped anchor off Old Point Comfort. On board were sixteen hundred British regulars and their commander, a familiar figure who had returned to plague his former comrades-in-arms. Benedict Arnold was back.

 

S
TEUBEN HAD GUESSED
that another invasion was coming soon. At the first sign of trouble he took measures to safeguard what little Continental property he had, transferring men and supplies from Chesterfield to safe locations farther south, away from the James. The state government, on the other hand, “was never more taken off its Guard” than by Arnold's sudden appearance that December.
¹⁸
Even then, vague and conflicting intelligence as to Arnold's intentions lulled the government in Richmond into indecision. The state's executive council discounted the Baron's warnings—that Arnold would invade—until late in the day on January 2, 1781, four days after the fleet had been sighted. And by that point it was too late to stop him. Arnold's ships were already on the James.

The fleet did not stop to unload its menacing cargo at Portsmouth, as Leslie had done, but taking advantage of a fair wind, it drove straight upriver. The British encountered virtually no resistance. To Arnold's amazement, there was nothing more at Hood's Landing than a small band of militia, which a British landing party quickly swatted aside as if they were flies. On January 4, the fleet dropped anchor at Westover, where nine hundred Redcoats went ashore and set out on foot for Richmond.
¹⁹

Richmond, then an unspectacular river port of less than four thousand souls, had served as the capital only since the previous April. It could not compare to its predecessor, Williamsburg, in size or stately
elegance; its chief advantages over the colonial capital were its more central location—Virginia's population was shifting steadily west-ward—and its lesser vulnerability. But little had been done to defend it. The General Assembly had called out four thousand militia before adjourning and fleeing. Few men, however, had yet answered the call.

Jefferson scrambled to impart some order, while the inhabitants of the Virginia Piedmont panicked and took to their heels as the traitor Arnold and his men drew close. Jefferson detailed the state's commissioner of war, Col. George Muter, to grab what military supplies he could and take them out of Arnold's path. The overall defense of the state he entrusted to Steuben.

The Baron did what he could. He rounded up what few militia troops he could find near Richmond, sending most of them downriver to slow Arnold's advance by land. The militia commander flagrantly disobeyed the order, and instead retreated to the Chickahominy River. Steuben did not have enough men left to defend Richmond—and most of them were unarmed, thanks to Muter's mishandling of the state-owned muskets—so he, too, retreated. At Manchester, across the James River south of Richmond, he intended to make a stand.
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Arnold ignored him. On January 5, his nine hundred Redcoats marched into Richmond. Half of his force proceeded to Westham, where they wreaked havoc with the Continental laboratory. The following day Arnold's men torched a few public buildings and some tobacco warehouses in Richmond before withdrawing to their base at Westover. In less than a week, the British had marched with impunity into the heart of Virginia, terrorized the population, and burned much of the capital, almost without firing a shot or losing a single man. And it had all been done with an army less than one thousand strong.

Steuben fell back on Petersburg. The small battalion of Continentals from Chesterfield were there, but they were so badly clothed as to be of no earthly use and had to be sent back to their barracks. The Baron rallied a few militia and advanced carefully on Westover to observe Arnold from a safe distance. In a few days, Arnold's troops boarded their transports and sailed back downriver to Portsmouth,
where they landed again and dug in. Steuben pursued cautiously, finally establishing a defensive cordon around Portsmouth.
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Throughout the state, the reaction to the invasion had been a near-fatal mix of poor planning, panic, and complacency. Even state military leaders were aghast at the abject failure of the militia to come to the aid of their native state. “My God!” one of them wrote to Steuben in shame. “What could have occasioned this total Departure from Virtue on the Part of the People?”
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Steuben didn't have an answer. He wanted only to leave, to be with Greene. “He had rather Obey in an Army,” Billy North intimated to Greene, “than Command in Virginia.”
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And Greene wanted Steuben to join him, but he also believed that the Baron would be far more valuable in Virginia at the moment. “As reenforcements and supplies are more important than Generals without them, I wish you not to leave Virginia,” he wrote to Steuben in January. “I fear that when you leave it nothing will be done.”

Greene added, with uncanny foresight: “The state is lifeless and inactive unless they are often electriced.”
²⁴

So the Baron would stay. His primary responsibility was to support Greene—or, as he put it, “tormenting the Governor” into supplying what Greene needed.
²⁵
Initially, he had promised Greene that he would send along one infantry battalion every fortnight, and additional clothing, weapons, and horses as opportunity allowed. This soon proved impossible. So long as Arnold remained on Virginia soil, the state government was loath to part with a single man or musket that could be employed by the militia. Steuben was unable to raise so much as a solitary infantry battalion between late December and late February. “My Situation here is really very embarrassing,” he reported to Washington on February 18. “Genl. Greene's whole dependance is on this State.”
²⁶

Unable to raise troops for Greene, yet stuck in Chesterfield anyway, Steuben became by default the man principally responsible for the defense of Virginia. The charge was more demanding than he could have anticipated. He had several excellent combat commanders beneath him, men like John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, the Prussian-educated
Lutheran parson who had led most of the Virginia troops in the Continental Line. Governor Jefferson, not a military man by any stretch of the imagination, nonetheless worked untiringly to keep a militia army in the field. But to Steuben fell everything else.

The workload nearly overwhelmed the Baron. Each day his desk was piled high with requests and petitions. Militia officers begged him to supply them with muskets, cartridge boxes, shirts, canteens, all from Continental stores; at the same time, the Board of War scolded him for distributing Continental property to state militia. Quartermasters wanted his advice on requisitioning horses from farmers unwilling to part with them. Greene wrote to him nearly once a week, asking for more men and supplies to be shipped south. Well-meaning Jefferson was the worst offender, sometimes writing to the Baron three or four times in a single day, and usually about trivial issues. The militia lacked proper hats, he once informed Steuben. Would it be acceptable to issue them cloth caps instead? Could Steuben come to Richmond to model a cloth cap for the governor?
²⁷

 

V
IRGINIA SORELY NEEDED THE TOUCH
of an experienced, no-nonsense soldier. Steuben, as the Continental Army's resident miracle worker, was perfect for the job. But he was not perfect for Virginia. With the state's defenses in such profound disarray, and with so little time to spare, he saw no choice but to be autocratic in his undesired role. His intolerance of mediocrity and false pride—qualities he would find, and to spare, among his subordinates in Virginia—made him appear insufferably overbearing. This had landed him in trouble before, among his fellow Continental officers, and they were men who were accustomed to being ordered about. Virginia civilians were assuredly
not
used to this kind of rough treatment.