Washington: A Life (47 page)

As convinced believers in the British Empire and sympathetic to colonial grievances, the Howe brothers didn’t want to crush the patriots in a total war of annihilation. Still hopeful that their misguided American cousins could be restored to their senses, they came to North America bearing both peace and a sword. In the coming campaign, they would plot strategy with political as well as military considerations in mind.

On July 14, in their capacity as peace commissioners, the Howe brothers sent Lieutenant Philip Brown with a message for Washington. Backed by the intimidating presence of the British fleet, Richard Howe requested, in polite terms, a parley: “The situation in which you are placed and the acknowledged liberality of your sentiments, induce me very much to wish for an opportunity to converse with you on the subject of the commission with which I have the honor to be charged.”
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Washington tended to be skeptical of peace overtures as ruses used to “distract, divide, and create as much confusion as possible,” as he characterized them in the spring when he first heard that Britain might send commissioners.
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Lieutenant Brown’s boat was intercepted between Governors Island and Staten Island by three American boats, whose crews demanded to know his business. When Brown said that he had a letter for Washington, the Americans instructed him to stay put while they sought instructions onshore. The three American officers who came out to handle the situation—Henry Knox, Joseph Reed, and Samuel Blachley Webb—had been well coached by Washington. They told Brown that they refused to touch the letter until he told them to whom it was addressed. When Brown retorted that it was addressed to “George Washington Esq., etc. etc.,” they said no such person existed and they couldn’t receive it. Somewhat mystified, Brown asked to whom it should be addressed, and his interlocutors replied that “all the world knew who Gen[era]l Washington was since the transactions of last summer.”
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Brown tried to strike a conciliatory tone. “I am sure Lord Howe will lament exceedingly this affair, as the letter is quite of a civil nature and not a military one.”
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Thus ended the initial standoff.

Washington knew that this exchange involved much more than the fine points of decorum. He was now the de facto head of state of a newly minted country, and his treatment reflected the perceived legitimacy of his authority. “I would not upon any occasion sacrifice essentials to punctilio,” Washington explained to Hancock, “but in this instance … I deemed it a duty to my country … to insist upon that respect which in any other than a public view I would willingly have waived.”
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Lord Howe’s secretary, Ambrose Serle, grew hopping mad at Washington’s rebuff. “So high is the vanity and the insolence of these men! … There now seems no alternative but war and bloodshed, which must lay at the door of these unhappy people.”
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Washington suspected that the British would renew their entreaty, and on July 16 he spurned another letter addressed to “George Washington, Esq.” Serle again gnashed his teeth, remarking that the letter “was refused for the same idle and insolent reasons as were given before.”
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His remark shows the condescending attitude of at least some British commanders toward Washington. Referring to him as if he were still a youthful subaltern in the French and Indian War, Serle sneered that “it seems to be beneath a little paltry colonel of militia at the head of banditti or rebels to treat with the representative of his lawful sovereign because ’tis impossible for him to give all the titles which the poor creature requires.”
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Washington planned to teach the British a lesson. They finally sent him a letter on July 17, addressed to “His Excellency, General Washington,” with a request that he meet with Lieutenant Colonel James Paterson, the smooth-talking adjutant general of General William Howe. Believing that protocol had been satisfied, Washington agreed to meet with the British officer on July 20. He chose as his venue Henry Knox’s headquarters at 1 Broadway, near the water; if a spot deeper inside the city had been chosen, he would have needed to blindfold Paterson, and he didn’t care to demean him in that manner.

At noon on July 20 a barge arrived at the Battery with Colonel Paterson. Washington wanted to impress upon the British emissary that, as commander in chief of a sovereign nation, he should be treated with all due dignity. His personal guard lined up in crisp formation at the entrance, and Washington appeared in full battlefield regalia, leading Knox to tell his wife that the general was “very handsomely dressed and made a most elegant appearance.”
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The stagecraft had the desired effect upon Paterson, who “appeared awestruck, as if he was before something supernatural,” wrote Knox. “Indeed, I don’t wonder at it. He was before a great man indeed.”
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Paterson groveled considerably and prefaced every sentence with “May it please your Excellency” or “If your Excellency so pleases.”
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Washington exacted revenge for previous indignities. When Paterson laid on the table the original letter from Richard Howe, addressed to “George Washington Esq. etc. etc.,” Washington wouldn’t pick it up and balked at the et ceteras. Paterson explained that the et ceteras implied everything that might follow. To which Washington retorted, “It does so—and anything!”
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He was suavely implacable before Paterson’s studied servility.

At this point Paterson launched into a prepared speech about how the goodness and benevolence of the king had induced him to send the Howe brothers to reach an accommodation with the unhappy colonists, this meeting being the first step. Washington denied that he was vested with powers to negotiate a settlement. Then he showed what a deft diplomat he could be. According to Joseph Reed’s memo, he argued that the Howe brothers had only the power “to grant pardons; that those who had committed no fault wanted no pardon; that we were only defending what we deemed our indisputable rights.”
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Paterson acknowledged that this opened a wide field for discussion. Washington remained polite, treating him with impeccable courtesy and even inviting him “to partake of a small collation” before he returned to his ship.
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He was always careful to separate the personal from the political, the man from the mission. If the British had hoped to mollify Washington, their diplomatic overture failed. The same day that he received Colonel Paterson, Washington wrote to Colonel Adam Stephen and decried “the vile machinations of still viler ministerial agents.”
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Two days later he dismissed the peace efforts of the Howe brothers as a mere propaganda exercise calculated expressly “to deceive and unguard, not only the good people of our own country, but those of the English nation that were averse to the proceedings of the king and ministry.”
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Once Washington had set his sights on independence, his vision was unblinking, and his consistency proved one of his most compelling qualities.

 

 

BY LATE JULY Washington’s men were laboring in a parched city under a blazing sky. “From breakfast to dinner I am boiling in a sun hot enough to roast an egg,” Knox groused to his wife. “Indeed, my dear Lucy, I never suffered so much from fatigue in my life.”
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It was precisely the atmosphere in which disease festered, and dysentery, typhoid fever, malaria, and smallpox infected the troops, disabling up to a third of them. “The vile water here sickens us all,” wrote Philip Fithian, a Presbyterian chaplain attached to the New Jersey militia. “I am very sick.”
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Illness was so prevalent that some regiments couldn’t field a single healthy officer. The men often relieved themselves in open ditches, until Nathanael Greene warned that “the stench arising from such places will soon breed a pestilence in the camp.”
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Responding to Greene’s request, Washington allowed the regiments to switch more of their diet from meat to fresh vegetables to combat scurvy. The troops also lacked uniforms, and Washington advised them to wear hunting shirts so the British would think they faced an army of skilled backwoods marksmen. To remedy the weapons shortage, Greene handed out three hundred spears. All in all, the Continental Army was a bizarre, mongrel corps that flouted the rules of conventional warfare. It was a far more peculiar army than the British troops had ever faced, leading Ambrose Serle to belittle them: “Their army is the strangest that was ever collected: old men of 60, boys of 14, and blacks of all ages, and ragged for the most part, compose the motley crew.”
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Chronically short of generals, Washington counted the bluff Israel Putnam as his only major general in New York. In response to Washington’s pleas, Congress added William Heath, Joseph Spencer, John Sullivan, and Nathanael Greene as major generals. Of this group, Washington banked his highest hopes on Greene, appointing him commander of American forces on Long Island—a striking affirmation of trust in a man with only one year of army experience. Plagued by ill health, Greene had succumbed to jaundice earlier in the year. “I am as yellow as saffron, my appetite all gone, and my flesh too,” he told his brother Jacob. “I am so weak that I can scarcely walk across the room.” Now, in mid-August, as the Continental Army braced for battle, Greene reported to Washington that he was struggling with a “raging fever” and could scarcely sit up in bed.
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It was a catastrophic development for Washington, who evacuated Greene to a house north of the city and replaced him with John Sullivan. A fiery, egotistical lawyer from New Hampshire, the son of Irish indentured servants, Sullivan had wild, unruly hair and a confrontational personality. Washington took a balanced view of Sullivan, crediting him with being “spirited and zealously attached to the Cause” but suffering from a “tincture of vanity” and an unhealthy “desire of being popular.”
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William Alexander, better known as Lord Stirling, who had been in charge of New York’s fortifications, was appointed to take over Sullivan’s division. Before the war Washington had tried to help the rich, free-spending Stirling with his crippling debts. A convivial man, excessively fond of drink, Stirling would distinguish himself as a brave soldier and a steadfast supporter of Washington.

With the patriots feeling beleaguered as never before, the question of military strategy preoccupied Washington and his officers. The armchair generals of the Continental Army, averaging only two years of military experience, had suddenly become real generals. Pessimism was rampant. With a sinking feeling, Henry Knox told his brother that the Continental Army was “not sufficiently numerous to resist the formidable attacks which will probably be made.”
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Joseph Reed espoused a cautious strategy, “a war of posts,” which he defined thus: “prolong, procrastinate, avoid any general action, or indeed any action, unless we have great advantages.”
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Under this strategy, the patriots would fortify a few strong, impregnable positions and invite the British to attack at their peril. Charles Lee wanted to fragment the army into nimble mobile units that could swoop down and harass the enemy as opportunities arose. Washington was slowly being forced to adopt a cautious strategy of trying to survive as best he could and attacking only when unusual chances emerged. The aim was to keep the Continental Army intact and wear down Britain through a prolonged war of attrition, hoping all the while to attract European allies who might deal a devastating blow to the enemy.

The British, for their part,
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have to win a military victory; a stalemate would be an expensive and humiliating defeat. They rejected a blockade of American ports as too daunting even for the Royal Navy. One faction favored the blatant application of terror to scare the colonists into submission—but that strategy, tried in Falmouth and Norfolk, had backfired and unified the Americans. The Howe brothers opted for a more subtle, complex agenda than their massive military presence implied, including a concerted attempt to regain the allegiance of the rebels and to mobilize Loyalists. They wanted to establish a British citadel in New York that would serve as a base of operations to sustain hit-and-run raids against Atlantic seaports, enabling their army to move more swiftly than the land-bound Continental Army. Most of all, they wanted to dominate the Hudson River and shut off New England from the other states.

Even as Washington awaited the British onslaught, his overburdened mind turned where it always did for comfort: to Mount Vernon, his mental sanctuary. That August, in his spare moments, he fantasized about the groves of trees that would brighten up each end of his mansion. Only recently he had heard from Jacky Custis that British men-of-war had sailed up the Potomac and burned houses to the ground, but Washington’s mind preferred to dwell on sylvan visions of home. He could see the grounds clearly in his mind, down to the last bush. “There is no doubt but that the honey locust, if you could procure seed enough and that seed would come up, will make … a very good hedge,” he wrote to Lund Washington. “So will the haw or thorn … but cedar or any kind of evergreen would look better. However, if one thing will not do, we must try another, as no time ought to be lost in rearing of hedges, not only for ornament but use.”
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A few days later this escapist vision would be blotted out by the bloodshed in Brooklyn.

BY MID-AUGUST fresh contingents of British ships had converged on New York, rounding out an expeditionary force of 32,000 troops, including 8,000 Hessian mercenaries, and revealing the magnitude of the threat to the Continental Army. Making a major statement about the peril of the American revolt, the Crown had enlisted seventy warships, a full half of the Royal Navy, to deliver an overwhelming blow against the Americans. It decided to gamble all on a military solution to a conflict that was, at bottom, one of principle and that depended ultimately on recovering the lost trust of the former colonists.