Washington: A Life (70 page)

The dilemma of what to do with his slaves would hound Washington for the rest of his life. Virginia still lacked a free labor force, and, at bottom, he probably could not figure out how to farm in the absence of slaves. So however much he admired the economies of the New England and mid-Atlantic states in which he spent the war, he did not see how he could re-create that freer world at home.

IN FRAMING POLICY toward Native Americans, George Washington spoke in many conflicting voices. As an inveterate speculator in western lands and a military man with firsthand knowledge of Indian raids on frontier outposts, he was capable of railing against Indians as savages who committed barbaric acts. In a less-than-enlightened letter of 1773, he told George William Fairfax that the colonists had “a cruel and bloodthirsty enemy upon our backs, the Indians … with whom a general war is inevitable.”
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Yet this same man could sound sage and statesmanlike in urging his countrymen to treat the Indians fairly and coexist with them in peace. He always advocated buying Indian lands “in preference to attempting to drive them by force of arms out of their country.”
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Frequently he manifested horror at the avarice of real estate speculators and the wanton depredations of settlers against Native American communities. His tone, however, varied subtly with the audience and the situation.

The American Revolution did not give Washington the option of developing a broad-minded Indian policy, especially when dealing with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. These proud warriors felt more endangered by American westward expansion than by British policy, which had banned settlements beyond the Alleghenies, starting with the 1763 proclamation that had so infuriated the young Washington. The Six Nations weren’t uniformly pro-British—the Oneidas sided with the Americans—but such fine distinctions often got overlooked in the heat of battle.

Of special concern to Washington was the capable Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant, who had plotted with the British to attack American settlements in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. In November 1778 Brant took three hundred Seneca Indians, united them with two Tory companies under Major Walter Butler, and ravaged an American settlement at Cherry Valley, New York: they set fire to the village and killed more than thirty settlers. The attack generated hair-raising stories of atrocities, some credible tales of scalpings, others far-fetched claims of cannibalism. The assault produced such outrage that Washington had no choice but to take decisive action. “It is in the highest degree distressing to have our frontier so continually harassed by this collection of banditti under Brant and Butler,” he told General Edward Hand, warning of retaliatory measures.
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At various junctures Washington extended diplomatic overtures to the Indians. As early as January 1776 he had presided over a parley of Indian sachems. John Adams was then visiting the camp, and Washington, with a droll flight of fancy, introduced him as belonging to the “Grand Council Fire at Philadelphia.”
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During the Middlebrook winter of 1778-79, Washington invited Native American chieftains to tour the camp and witness the size of his army. James Thacher wrote how his brigade was “paraded for the purpose of being reviewed by General Washington and a number of Indian chiefs … His Excellency, with his usual dignity, [was] followed by his mulatto servant Bill, riding a beautiful gray steed.”
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The French alliance helped Washington to woo Indian tribes that were erstwhile French supporters. Nonetheless most tribes made the rational, if ultimately calamitous, decision that they had to protect their homelands and that the best way to do so was by supporting Great Britain, which they thought more likely to win the war.

By March 1779 Washington had steeled himself to act ruthlessly against the Six Nations and resort to cold-blooded warfare against civilians as well as warriors. His aim, he told Horatio Gates, was to “chastise and intimidate” these foes and “cut off their settlements, destroy their next year’s crops, and do them every other mischief of which time and circumstances will permit.”
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Even when Cayuga Indians sent out peace feelers in early May, Washington dismissed them as mere tactical ploys. “A disposition to peace in these people can only be ascribed to an apprehension of danger,” he told Congress, “and would last no longer than till it was over and an opportunity offered to resume their hostility with safety and success.”
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Fearful of further Indian defections to the British, Washington entertained six Delaware Indian chieftains on May 12. He thought that, as long-standing Iroquois enemies, they might be drawn squarely into the American camp. His speech to them began bluntly: “Brothers, I am a warrior. My words are few and plain, but I will make good what I say. ’Tis my business to destroy all the enemies of these states and to protect their friends.”
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He scorned the British as a “boasting people” who didn’t deliver on promises and contrasted them with the trustworthy French: “Now the Great King of France is become our good brother and ally. He has taken up the hatchet with us and we have sworn never to bury it till we have punished the English.”
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The speech, likely drafted by an aide, included Washington’s most explicit reference to Jesus: “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life and, above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”
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From the safe distance of a carriage, Martha Washington monitored the curious proceedings, escorted by a gawking Lucy Knox and Caty Greene. As one might expect from a genteel Virginia lady, Martha was taken aback by the Indians and their seemingly outlandish regalia. “The General and Billy [Lee], followed by a lot of mounted savages, rode along the line,” she told her daughter-in-law. “Some of the Indians were fairly fine looking, but most of them appeared worse than Falstaff ’s gang. And such horses and trappings! The General says it was done to keep the Indians friendly toward us. They appeared like cutthroats all.” The editor of Martha Washington’s papers notes that this “letter, if authentic, has undergone editing.”
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Such diplomacy didn’t forestall the punitive measures Washington initiated against Indian settlements three weeks later. Clearly in a vengeful mood after attacks on American civilians, he contemplated a drastic removal of the Six Nations from their traditional hunting grounds and farms. He ordered General Sullivan and about four thousand soldiers to march to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York and the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania and undertake “the total destruction and devastation” of Iroquois settlements, grabbing women and children as hostages for bargaining purposes.
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The Indians must have been forewarned, for Sullivan’s men often swooped down on deserted villages, which didn’t stop the Americans from reducing forty towns to ashes and incinerating 160,000 bushels of crops. As Sullivan laid down this trail of devastation, Washington recounted to Lafayette in jubilant terms how Sullivan had “completed the entire destruction of the whole country of the Six Nations, except so much of it as is inhabited by the Oneidas, who have always lived in amity with us.”
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Although Washington admitted that Indian families were fleeing in terror, he rationalized these harsh measures as fit punishment for assorted cruelties practiced by the Indians on “our unhappy, frontier settlers, who (men, women, and children) have been deliberately murdered in a manner shocking to humanity.”
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This wasn’t the last word on Indian policy from Washington, who still hoped to develop friendly relations with even hostile tribes. “To compel a people to remain in a state of desperation and keep them at enmity with us … is playing with the whole game against us,” he told Philip Schuyler.
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Nonetheless the cumulative devastation wrought against Indian tribes during the war crippled their power and disrupted their communities, causing incalculable harm and making them vulnerable to forced resettlement policies later inflicted upon them by several American presidents.

 

 

“WASHINGTON WAS NEVER VERY GOOD AT WAITING,” writes the historian Edward G. Lengel, “but that is how he spent the years between 1778 and 1781.”
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The year 1779 was perhaps the war’s most sluggish, characterized by minor skirmishes in lieu of major battles. Although Washington busied himself with espionage, the Continental Army mostly settled into an indolent mode. Aside from the Indian offensive, Congress was bent upon conserving money, forcing Washington into an unwanted defensive posture as he awaited the return of the unaccountable Count d’Estaing. He found it extremely dispiriting to be suspended again in a limbo of inaction as the war dragged on interminably.

In May the major locus of fighting switched back to the Hudson River, as Sir Henry Clinton overran two American forts at Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point. This placed the enemy twelve miles south of the American fortress at West Point and made it seem as if the British might at last attain their strategic will-o’-thewisp—cutting off New England from the rest of the country. Washington hastily relocated his base of operations to New Windsor, New York, overlooking the Hudson, where he could interdict British movements on the water. Afraid that its loss would be catastrophic, he assigned top strategic priority to West Point. For his summer headquarters, he chose the commodious West Point dwelling of a well-known New York merchant named John Moore.

Washington doubted that he could ever dislodge the British from their new entrenched positions, but he had a general who warmed to the task: Anthony Wayne, a fighter by nature as much as by training. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, he had been educated by his uncle, Gilbert Wayne, who found the wayward boy’s mind inflamed by dreams of battle. “He has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my charge by rehearsals of battles, sieges, etc.,” Gilbert Wayne sighed. “During noon, in place of the usual games of amusement, he has the boys employed in throwing up redoubts, skirmishing, etc.”
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A surveyor and a tanner before the war, then a member of Pennsylvania’s assembly, Wayne had gained Washington’s admiration for his bravery at Brandywine Creek, Germantown, and Monmouth Court House. He fought with often-bloodthirsty glee, shouting to his men, “I believe that [a] sanguine God is rather thirsty for human gore!”
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This rabble-rousing style earned him the nickname of “Mad Anthony” Wayne.

Bluff and familiar, Wayne was a great favorite among his men. Washington’s coolly reserved style of leadership was so antithetical to Wayne’s that he admired this impetuous officer with reservations. Washington found Wayne, for all his courage, imprudent and cursed by erratic judgment. As president, Washington would render this mixed appraisal of him: “More active and enterprising than judicious and cautious … Open to flattery, vain, easily imposed upon, and is liable to be drawn into scrapes. Too indulgent … to his officers and men. Whether sober, or a little addicted to the bottle, I know not.”
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On the other hand, Washington knew that Wayne was an effective missile if fired with accuracy. While crediting Wayne’s bravery, Thomas Jefferson contended that he was the sort of obstinate man who might “run his head against a wall where success was both impossible and useless.”
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Washington chose Wayne to lead a picked force of 1,350 infantry to mount a surprise raid against the new British outpost at Stony Point. The commander sketched out a plan to scale the 150-foot-high cliff overhanging the river, prompting Wayne, according to legend, to boast, “I’ll storm hell, sir, if you’ll make the plans!”
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To which Washington retorted drily, “Better try Stony Point first, general.”
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On the night of July 15 Wayne and his men approached the promontory with fixed bayonets, so as not to alert the British. When Wayne’s head was grazed by a musket ball, he cried out, “Carry me into the fort and let me die at the head of my column.”
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True to form, he pushed up the bluff and overran the fort, slaying sixty-three British soldiers and taking five hundred prisoners, in a virtuoso performance. He sent a courier to Washington to announce the victory, writing with customary spirit, “Dear General, The fort and garrison with Colonel Johnston are ours. Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free. Yours most sincerely, Ant[hon]y Wayne.” Never loath to credit his officers, Washington trumpeted Wayne’s virtues to Congress: “He improved upon the plan recommended by me and executed it in a manner that does signal honor to his judgment and to his bravery.”
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The victory stopped the enemy’s northward advance up the Hudson Valley at a time when a gunpowder shortage had virtually ruled out large-scale American operations.

Washington gradually resigned himself to a lull in the fighting. Baffled by the movements of his French allies, he concluded that America needed another European power if it ever hoped to match British superiority at sea. In late September that wish was fulfilled when he received news that Spain had entered the war against England. “The declaration of Spain in favor of France has given universal joy to every Whig,” Washington wrote to Lafayette, “while the poor Tory droops like a withering flower under a declining sun.”
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It turned out that Spain was more interested in harassing the British monarchy than in fostering American independence, which might threaten Spanish territories in North America. Before long a subdued Washington realized that no sudden windfalls would result from Spanish intervention. “We ought not to deceive ourselves,” he wrote the following spring. “The maritime resources of Great Britain are more substantial and real than those of France and Spain united.”
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For this reason Washington was overjoyed by news that autumn that John Paul Jones had armed an old French ship, christened it the
Bonhomme Richard
in homage to Ben Franklin, and defeated the British ship
Sera-pis
off the English coast. In the throes of battle, Jones thundered his immortal line, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
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