Washington: A Life (90 page)

This restful time for Washington peeled away layers of tension built up during the stressful war years. One day he threw a dinner for Congress in a grand trophy of the war, a capacious tent captured from the British, and his guests delighted in his newfound calm. “The general’s front is uncommonly open and pleasant,” said David Howell of Rhode Island. “The contracted, pensive phiz [face], betokening deep thought and much care … is done away, and a pleasant smile and sparkling vivacity of wit and humor succeeds.”
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This dinner afforded rare vignettes of Washington succumbing to a merry mood. When the president of Congress regretted that Robert Morris had his hands full, Washington retorted, “I wish he had his pockets full.”
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Congress needed to discuss with Washington military arrangements for the postwar period. Doubtless with Yorktown in mind, when only the French possessed the requisite skills for a siege, he endorsed the creation of a military academy to train engineers as well as artillery officers. Following up on his “Circular to State Governments,” he outlined plans for a “national militia” made up of individual state units guided by consistent national standards. And worried that the United States would be vulnerable if it disarmed too quickly, he favored a peacetime army of 2,631 men. Most of all, he approved the creation of a navy that could repel European intruders. Washington also sounded out Henry Knox on whether Knox might take the post of secretary at war, showing that, despite his professions of retreating from public life, Washington was still prepared to intervene directly in the country’s future affairs.

During his stay at Rocky Hill, Washington learned that Thomas Paine was in the neighborhood and invited him for a chat with a gracious note. Paine was a difficult man, even something of a malcontent, and although Congress had offered him a job as official historian of the American Revolution, he preferred to chide it for “continued neglect” of his services.
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Congress decided that individual states should reward him instead, and Washington agreed to lobby friends in the Virginia legislature on his behalf. “That his
Common Sense
and many of his
Crisis
[essays] were well timed and had a happy effect upon the public mind, none, I believe … will deny,” Washington wrote. “Does not common justice then point to some compensation?”
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Although Paine eventually received a large honorarium from Congress and ample property from New York, he continued to nurse grievances about his treatment and would later lash out at his erstwhile hero.

THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS IN PARIS were hampered by an array of baffling issues, not the least of which was the contentious question of fishing rights off the Newfoundland coast. As John Adams recalled wearily, the sessions droned on in “a constant scuffle morning, noon, and night about cod and haddock on the Grand Bank, deerskins on the Ohio, and pine trees at Penobscot, and what were worse than all the [Loyalist] refugees.”
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Although the final treaty was signed on September 3, 1783, the news was delayed for two months by transatlantic travel, and Washington didn’t find out indisputably that the war had ceased until November 1. To his horror, Congress promptly adjourned without making adequate provision for the peacetime army or overdue pay for his long-suffering men.

A virtuoso of farewell messages, Washington disseminated from Rocky Hill his “Farewell Address to the Armies of the United States.” It was his fondest wish that the same process that had welded men from various states into the Continental Army would now form a model for the country: “Who that was not a witness could imagine that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon and that men who came from the different parts of the continent … would instantly become but one patriotic band of brothers.”
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In this affectionate valedictory, Washington reminisced about the high drama and dreamlike events of the war, telling his men that what they had experienced together “was little short of a standing miracle” and that such events had “seldom if ever before taken place on the stage of human action, nor can they probably ever happen again.”
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After forwarding his baggage to Mount Vernon, Washington rejoined his remaining troops on the Hudson one last time. Martha Washington, who had a special capacity to enter into whatever captivated her husband, had grown to love the men as much as he did. By the end of the war, the woman who in 1775 had shuddered in fright at cannon blasts was enchanted by the sight of well-drilled units and thrilled to the lilt of fifes and drums. One postwar visitor to Mount Vernon, a young Scot named Robert Hunter, heard an earful from Martha Washington about the Continental Army’s crisp efficiency: “It’s astonishing with what raptures Mrs. Washington spoke about the discipline of the army, the excellent order they were in, superior to any troops, she said, upon the face of the earth towards the close of the war.”
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She never forgot the “heavenly sight” of the troops in those closing weeks. “Almost every soldier shed tears at parting with the general, when the army was disbanded,” she told Hunter, calling it “a most melancholy sight.”
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That fall the mood in the camp was hardly all sweetness and light, as Washington had to contend with residual bitterness among his officers. When Robert Morris couldn’t muster one month’s pay for departing officers, they grew surly again. Washington made a pitch to Morris for more money, even though federal coffers were depleted. Morris promised to do what he could while admitting that “the goodwill is all which I have in my power … I am constantly involved in scenes of distress … and there is not any money in the treasury.”
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So furious were the officers over the absence of promised pay that they canceled a climactic dinner intended as a parting tribute to their commander in chief. Washington ended the war still smarting under the humiliation that he had had to beg for money for his men.

Although Washington was geared up to enter New York City in triumph the moment the British departed, they kept postponing the promised day. On November 20, having moved down the Hudson River to the Harlem River, just north of the city, he waited in the wings amid mounting suspense. To ensure the safety of American spies in the city, Washington sent Benjamin Tallmadge on ahead to protect them against any reprisals as their identities became known. He received reports of “universal consternation” among departing Tories in New York, who were frantic to get aboard ships before the remnants of the Continental Army marched into town. Washington described these distraught refugees as “little better than a medley of confused, enraged, and dejected people. Some are swearing, and some crying, while the greater part of them are almost speechless.”
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On the cold morning of November 25, 1783, Washington and a small contingent of eight hundred men tarried at a barrier north of the city, awaiting word of the British departure. The day was so overcast and blustery that British ships in the harbor kept deferring their sailing. In one last vindictive gesture, the British greased the flagpole at Fort George in lower Manhattan, causing a delay before the American flag could be hoisted in its place. Then the cannon sounded thirteen times, signaling that Washington, astride his fine gray horse, could lead the cavalcade down the Boston Post Road into the city. Always sensitive to political symbolism, he rode beside Governor George Clinton of New York to show his deference to civilian authority and was also accompanied by the Westchester Light Dragoons, a surefire local crowd-pleaser. It was a boisterously elated procession of citizens and soldiers that trooped into the liberated city, marching eight abreast, along streets lined with wildly cheering citizens.

For one woman in the crowd, the contrast between the splendidly uniformed British troops who had just left and the unkempt American troops in homespun dress who now straggled in conveyed a telling message:

For seven years, the British had flattered themselves that only they could maintain order in this raucous city. In a self-congratulatory spirit, they had insisted that anarchy would descend without them. But when one British officer returned briefly from his ship to retrieve some forgotten personal items, he was struck dumb by the law-abiding crowds. “This is a strange scene indeed!” he commented. “Here, in this city, we have had an army for more than seven years, and yet could not keep the peace of it … Now [that] we are gone, everything is in quietness and safety. The Americans are a curious, original people. They know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them.”
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Casting his eyes beyond the jubilant onlookers, Washington could discern a desolate city of empty lots, burned-out buildings, and churches despoiled of pews to house British troops. Animals roamed the streets freely. The British surrendered only five hundred American prisoners at the end, which attested both to the large number already freed in exchanges and the appalling number who died in captivity. Most had been kept aboard British prison ships anchored in the East River, where they languished in infernal conditions. Stuffed in airless spaces belowdecks, they had been wedged together in vermin-infested holds slick with human excrement and forced to eat worm-infested rations or devour their own body lice. Typhus, dysentery, and scurvy were common scourges. For years afterward the bones of dead prisoners washed up on East River shores. The American Revolution was never a bloodless affair, as is sometimes imagined. Of 200,000 Americans who served in the war, about 25,000 died, or approximately 1 percent of the population, making it the bloodiest American war except for the Civil War.

During eight hectic days in New York, Washington’s calendar was crowded with dinners, receptions, and fireworks galore. Suddenly an avid consumer again, he went shopping for teapots, coffee urns, and other silverware for entertaining guests at Mount Vernon. Earlier that fall, when inquiring of his nephew Bushrod about silverware purchases, he had asked “whether French plate is fashionable and much used in genteel houses in France and England,” showing that the great American liberator was still enslaved to European styles. On Saturday night, November 29, a rare earthquake struck New York—three quick tremors rumbled through town after midnight—and people started from their sleep, darting into the streets for safety. Asleep at the former Queen’s Head Tavern, a three-story brick building at the corner of Broad and Pearl streets better known to history as Fraunces Tavern, Washington scarcely stirred: a man accustomed to the alarums of war wasn’t about to be unsettled by the earth’s minor trembles.

On December 1 Sir Guy Carleton wrote to Washington that, if wind and weather permitted, he hoped to remove the last of his troops from Long and Staten islands and depart by December 4. Washington sent back such an exceedingly polite note that he might have been saying goodbye to an affable weekend guest at Mount Vernon: “I have received your favor [i.e., letter] of yesterday’s date, announcing the time of your departure, and sincerely wish that your Excellency, with the troops under your orders, may have a safe and pleasant passage.”
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When it came time for Washington to bid farewell to his officers, Fraunces Tavern seemed the ideal spot. The innkeeper, Samuel Fraunces, was a West Indian called Black Sam; his nickname probably refers to a swarthy complexion rather than African parentage. An excellent cook and a Freemason, Fraunces was partial to wigs and fancy clothing and had a rather aristocratic air. A secret friend to the American cause during the war, he had helped to relieve the agony of American prisoners held in New York and also worked to thwart a plot to assassinate Washington. Congress would later repay him handsomely by housing government offices in Fraunces Tavern. Well aware of his heroism, Washington wrote to Fraunces warmly that summer and thanked him for his “constant friendship and attention to the cause of our country.”
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Shortly before noon on December 4, Washington assembled his men in the long banquet room on the second floor of Fraunces Tavern. One tends to picture Washington on this occasion surrounded by a full complement of officers, but those on hand represented the sturdy, resilient band who had held out until the very end. Only three major generals—Knox, Steuben, and McDougall—and one brigadier general attended; a handful of lesser officers rounded out the crowd of thirty or forty. When Washington strode into their midst in his familiar blue and buff uniform, they all rose in respect. He invited them to heap their plates with cold buffet meats but was too overwrought to have much appetite himself. Amid what one officer described as “breathless silence,” glasses were handed around and filled with wine.
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Raising his glass with a shaking hand, Washington began to speak, his voice breaking with emotion: “With a heart filled with love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”
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The officers, moved, lifted their glasses and drank in silence. Tears welled up in Washington’s eyes, as if he suddenly relived eight emotional years of sacrifice with these battle-tested men and was pained at the thought of parting from them. “I cannot come to each of you,” he said tenderly, “but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.”
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The moment was legendary, not for any feat of oratory, but for the simple heartfelt emotion palpable in Washington’s words.