George Washington's War: The Forging of a Revolutionary Leader and the American Presidency

578 Pages·2005·4.26 MB·English

by  Bruce Chadwick

Copyright © 2004 by Bruce Chadwick
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chadwick, Bruce.
George Washington's war: the forging of a Revolutionary leader and the
American presidency / by Bruce Chadwick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–4022-0222-9 (alk. paper)
1. Washington, George, 1732–1799—Military leadership. 2. Command of troops
—History—18th century. 3. United States. Continental Army—History. 4.
United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Campaigns. 5. Generals—
United States—Biography. 6. Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Title.
E312.25.C48 2004
973.3'3' 092—dc22
2004003566
For Margie and Rory
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: Christmas, 1776
Chapter Two: The Squire of Mount Vernon
Chapter Three: The Army Will Die
Chapter Four: The Patriot King
Chapter Five: Rebuilding the Army
Chapter Six: The Army's War Machine
Chapter Seven: Valley Forge
Chapter Eight: The Angel of Death
Chapter Nine: The Fall from Grace
Chapter Ten: A New American Army
Chapter Eleven: Starving to Death
Chapter Twelve: A War of Attrition and Ungrateful Hearts
Chapter Thirteen: A Hero Turned Traitor
Chapter Fourteen: The Great Slavery Debate
Chapter Fifteen: Coup d'Etat
Chapter Sixteen: Cincinnatus
Epilogue: “I Do Solemnly Swear…”
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes
About the Author
“We are, during the winter, dreaming
of Independence and Peace.”
—George Washington, commander-in-chief of the
Continental Army in the American Revolution
“The qualities we seek in a great man are vision,
integrity, courage, understanding, power of
articulation and…a profundity of character.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, World War II
Chapter One
CHRISTMAS, 1776
“Victory or Death.”
—George Washington
During the early evening of December 19, 1776, a thick snow began to fall
throughout central New Jersey and the greater Philadelphia area. It landed
silently, coming down in straight lines, and within hours the countryside was
covered with a blanket of white. The snow draped itself over the tops of large
wooden barns and small homes. Slender columns of smoke from fireplaces
inside cabins cut through the storm and drifted toward the sky. The snow made
low rock outcroppings disappear as it piled high, filling up gullies and cascading
in soft pillows over wooden wagons left outdoors. The snow rested on the
branches of thousands of trees and lined the banks of creeks. It covered dirt
roads and meadows near the Delaware River, which separated Trenton, New
Jersey, from McKonkey's Ferry, in Pennsylvania, seven miles north.
The snow continued to fall through mid-morning of the following day. It
was accompanied by light winds and a brisk twenty-four-degree temperature.
Winter had finally hit Trenton and Philadelphia. The home of William Keith,
near Newtown, Pennsylvania, now served as headquarters for George
Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. The Keith home,
a two-story gray stone building, was covered with snow. Washington's officers,
coming in and out of the Keith house, stamped their feet to loosen the powder
from their boots and brushed the snow from their coats. On the first floor, two
large fireplaces burned throughout the day and evening, providing the only heat
for the officers and for George Washington, who was trapped by both the British
Army and the vicissitudes of the icy weather.
The American Revolution had ignited in glory on a spring day, April 19,
1775, when colonists in Massachusetts battled British regulars at Lexington and
Concord, forcing them to retreat back toward Boston after the firing of the famed
“shot heard 'round the world.” The colonists had chased the British, shooting at
them from behind trees and stone walls, from the windows of houses and from
atop the roofs of barns. Later, residents had cheered when the British vacated the
city at the end of the winter of 1776, forced out by a threatened artillery
bombardment led by George Washington. The British army, under the command
of General William Howe, had retreated from Boston to spend the remainder of
the winter in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Washington's leadership had made him a hero. From the Carolinas to New
Hampshire, thousands of men joined the Continental Army, determined to free
the thirteen colonies from the yoke of what they considered unacceptable British
oppression. The army, funded by the new Continental Congress, had the
emotional support of many of the colonists, despite pockets of Loyalist, or pro-
British, sympathizers. Soon it grew in strength from a collection of militia
totaling ten thousand men to an army numbering more than twenty thousand
soldiers and carrying with it more than two hundred cannon. Public support for
the cause ran high in many of the states. The American revolutionary spirit
reached its zenith on July 4, 1776, when members of the Continental Congress
issued the Declaration of Independence. By that date, some colonists,
particularly New Englanders, naively assumed that the hated “redcoats” would
soon leave American soil and sail back to England.
The British had no intention of losing their colonies. A week after the
Declaration of Independence had been signed, British general Henry Clinton left
the coast of South Carolina with his troops in order to join forces at Staten Island
with General Howe, who had brought nine thousand of his own men down from
Nova Scotia. By the middle of August, Howe's brother, Admiral Richard Howe,
had joined him. Together, they had assembled thirty-two thousand men—a
quarter of them Hessian auxiliaries—along with one hundred and thirty warships
and transports, twenty frigates, and more than three hundred cannon, all gathered
at considerable expense to defeat the American colonists. The numbers seemed
overwhelming. By the end of the summer, there were, in fact, four thousand
more British soldiers in New York than the entire population of Philadelphia,
America's largest city.
Washington, who left Boston for New York earlier that year, spent the
summer organizing his own defenses across Long Island, in forts along the
Hudson River as well as earthworks on Brooklyn Heights. But despite his
careful preparations, there was little he could do against the power of the British
forces, especially since he seemed intent on battling them head-on, army against
army, a misguided strategy that he would soon have to correct.
British troops at first overwhelmed the Americans at Brooklyn Heights,
pushing them back toward the East River behind heavy cannon and musket fire.
The vicious Hessians needlessly killed more than five hundred soldiers,
bayoneting many of them in the back and shooting others as they tried to
surrender. The British, under Howe, had the Americans boxed in on three sides,
their backs to the river. Washington feared the annihilation of his entire army. He
needed an escape route. It was then that he devised a method of retreat—one that
he would use continuously throughout the war.
Washington had access to hundreds of small flatboats that he had been
collecting from the New York area. On the night of August 29, the general
ordered soldiers, former fishermen, from Marblehead, Massachusetts, under the
command of Colonel John Glover to quietly organize the boats into a flotilla and
to wait for the beginning of a massive evening evacuation by the entire army.
When darkness descended, the fishermen watched as regiments of men, moving
quietly and in perfect order, climbed down from the heights above them and
scrambled into the boats. Glover and his men then poled them across to
Manhattan and out of danger under the cloak of a fortuitous fog. Finally, after
the hours of watching the slow, soundless evacuation, George Washington, the
last man on the east side of the river, climbed into the final boat and made his
escape. When the British attacked in the morning, they found the campfires still
burning, but the Heights empty.
Washington's sleight-of-hand did little more than buy time. American forces
were again routed at Harlem Heights, at White Plains, and finally at Fort
Washington, where some soldiers managed to escape by scrambling into
Glover's boats and crossing the Hudson into New Jersey, where the commander
led his men on a long retreat toward Philadelphia. More than five thousand
Americans had been killed or captured in the New York campaign, one of the
worst defeats in American military history.
The British chased what was left of the Continental Army across the state.
Fear of the British, with their long columns of professional soldiers and
hundreds of cannon—and the tenacious Hessians—prompted thousands more
soldiers to desert and go home as Washington and the army slowly made their
way across the dirt highways of New Jersey. Entire companies of soldiers fled.
Finally, on December 7, the Continental Army crossed the Delaware to escape
the British, under General William Howe and Lord Charles Earl Cornwallis, who
stopped on the New Jersey side of the river. The English were in no hurry.
Neither general had any regard for the Americans or their leader. Howe's top
aide, Ambrose Serle, reported that the generals considered Washington “a little
paltry colonel of a militia of bandits.”
By then, the American revolutionary forces led by the general, more than