Washington had met defeat in every considerable battle at which he was
personally present. His first appearance in military history, in
the Ohio campaign against the French, twenty-two years before the
Revolution, was marked by a defeat, the surrender of Fort Necessity.
Again in the next year, when he fought to relieve the disaster to
Braddock's army, defeat was his portion. Defeat had pursued him in
the battles of the Revolution--before New York, at the Brandywine, at
Germantown. The campaign against Canada, which he himself planned, had
failed. He had lost New York and Philadelphia. But, like William III of
England, who in his long struggle with France hardly won a battle
and yet forced Louis XIV to accept his terms of peace, Washington, by
suddenness in reprisal, by skill in resource when his plans seemed
to have been shattered, grew on the hard rock of defeat the flower of
victory.
There was never a time when Washington was not trusted by men of real
military insight or by the masses of the people. But a general who does
not win victories in the field is open to attack. By the winter of 1777
when Washington, with his army reduced and needy, was at Valley Forge
keeping watch on Howe in Philadelphia, John Adams and others were
talking of the sin of idolatry in the worship of Washington, of its
flavor of the accursed spirit of monarchy, and of the punishment which
"the God of Heaven and Earth" must inflict for such perversity. Adams
was all against a Fabian policy and wanted to settle issues forever by a
short and strenuous war. The idol, it was being whispered, proved after
all to have feet of clay. One general, and only one, had to his credit
a really great victory--Gates, to whom Burgoyne had surrendered at
Saratoga, and there was a movement to replace Washington by this
laureled victor.
General Conway, an Irish soldier of fortune, was one of the most
troublesome in this plot. He had served in the campaign about
Philadelphia but had been blocked in his extravagant demands for
promotion; so he turned for redress to Gates, the star in the north. A
malignant campaign followed in detraction of Washington. He had, it was
said, worn out his men by useless marches; with an army three times
as numerous as that of Howe, he had gained no victory; there was high
fighting quality in the American army if properly led, but Washington
despised the militia; a Gates or a Lee or a Conway would save the cause
as Washington could not; and so on. "Heaven has determined to save your
country or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it"; so
wrote Conway to Gates and Gates allowed the letter to be seen. The words
were reported to Washington, who at once, in high dudgeon, called
Conway to account. An explosion followed. Gates both denied that he had
received a letter with the passage in question, and, at the same time,
charged that there had been tampering with his private correspondence.
He could not have it both ways. Conway was merely impudent in reply to
Washington, but Gates laid the whole matter before Congress. Washington
wrote to Gates, in reply to his denials, ironical references to "rich
treasures of knowledge and experience" "guarded with penurious reserve"
by Conway from his leaders but revealed to Gates. There was no irony in
Washington's reference to malignant detraction and mean intrigue. At
the same time he said to Gates: "My temper leads me to peace and harmony
with all men," and he deplored the internal strife which injured the
great cause. Conway soon left America. Gates lived to command another
American army and to end his career by a crowning disaster.
Washington had now been for more than two years in the chief command and
knew his problems. It was a British tradition that standing armies were
a menace to liberty, and the tradition had gained strength in crossing
the sea. Washington would have wished a national army recruited by
Congress alone and bound to serve for the duration of the war. There
was much talk at the time of a "new model army" similar in type to the
wonderful creation of Oliver Cromwell. The Thirteen Colonies became,
however, thirteen nations. Each reserved the right to raise its own
levies in its own way. To induce men to enlist Congress was twice
handicapped. First, it had no power of taxation and could only ask the
States to provide what it needed. The second handicap was even greater.
When Congress offered bounties to those who enlisted in the Continental
army, some of the States offered higher bounties for their own levies
of militia, and one authority was bidding against the other. This
encouraged short-term enlistments. If a man could re-enlist and again
secure a bounty, he would gain more than if he enlisted at once for the
duration of the war.
An army is an intricate mechanism needing the same variety of agencies
that is required for the well-being of a community. The chief aim is, of
course, to defeat the enemy, and to do this an army must be prepared to
move rapidly. Means of transport, so necessary in peace, are even more
urgently needed in war. Thus Washington always needed military engineers
to construct roads and bridges. Before the Revolution the greater part
of such services had been provided in America by the regular British
army, now the enemy. British officers declared that the American army
was without engineers who knew the science of war, and certainly the
forts on which they spent their skill in the North, those on the lower
Hudson, and at Ticonderoga, at the head of Lake George, fell easily
before the assailant. Good maps were needed, and in this Washington
was badly served, though the defect was often corrected by his intimate
knowledge of the country. Another service ill-equipped was what we
should now call the Red Cross. Epidemics, and especially smallpox,
wrought havoc in the army. Then, as now, shattered nerves were sometimes
the result of the strain of military life. "The wind of a ball," what we
should now call shell-shock, sometimes killed men whose bodies appeared
to be uninjured. To our more advanced knowledge the medical science of
the time seems crude. The physicians of New England, today perhaps the
most expert body of medical men in the world, were even then highly
skillful. But the surgeons and nurses were too few. This was true
of both sides in the conflict. Prisoners in hospitals often suffered
terribly and each side brought charges of ill-treatment against the
other. The prison-ships in the harbor of New York, where American
prisoners were confined, became a scandal, and much bitter invective
against British brutality is found in the literature of the period. The
British leaders, no less than Washington himself, were humane men, and
ignorance and inadequate equipment will explain most of the hardships,
though an occasional officer on either side was undoubtedly callous in
respect to the sufferings of the enemy.
Food and clothing, the first vital necessities of an army, were often
deplorably scarce. In a land of farmers there was food enough. Its
lack in the army was chiefly due to bad transport. Clothing was another
matter. One of the things insisted upon in a well-trained army is a
decent regard for appearance, and in the eyes of the French and the
British officers the American army usually seemed rather unkempt. The
formalities of dress, the uniformity of pipe-clay and powdered hair, of
polished steel and brass, can of course be overdone. The British army
had too much of it, but to Washington's force the danger was of having
too little. It was not easy to induce farmers and frontiersmen who at
home began the day without the use of water, razor, or brush, to appear
on parade clean, with hair powdered, faces shaved, and clothes neat. In
the long summer days the men were told to shave before going to bed that
they might prepare the more quickly for parade in the morning, and to
fill their canteens over night if an early march was imminent. Some
of the regiments had uniforms which gave them a sufficiently smart
appearance. The cocked hat, the loose hunting shirt with its fringed
border, the breeches of brown leather or duck, the brown gaiters or
leggings, the powdered hair, were familiar marks of the soldier of the
Revolution.
During a great part of the war, however, in spite of supplies brought
from both France and the West Indies, Washington found it difficult to
secure for his men even decent clothing of any kind, whether of military
cut or not. More than a year after he took command, in the fighting
about New York, a great part of his army had no more semblance of
uniform than hunting shirts on a common pattern. In the following
December, he wrote of many men as either shivering in garments fit only
for summer wear or as entirely naked. There was a time in the later
campaign in the South when hundreds of American soldiers marched stark
naked, except for breech cloths. One of the most pathetic hardships
of the soldier's life was due to the lack of boots. More than one of
Washington's armies could be tracked by the bloody footprints of his
barefooted men. Near the end of the war Benedict Arnold, who knew
whereof he spoke, described the American army as "illy clad, badly fed,
and worse paid," pay being then two or three years overdue. On the
other hand, there is evidence that life in the army was not without its
compensations. Enforced dwelling in the open air saved men from diseases
such as consumption and the movement from camp to camp gave a broader
outlook to the farmer's sons. The army could usually make a brave
parade. On ceremonial occasions the long hair of the men would be tied
back and made white with powder, even though their uniforms were little
more than rags.
The men carried weapons some of which, in, at any rate, the early days
of the war, were made by hand at the village smithy. A man might take
to the war a weapon forged by himself. The American soldier had this
advantage over the British soldier, that he used, if not generally, at
least in some cases, not the smooth-bore musket but the grooved rifle
by which the ball was made to rotate in its flight. The fire from this
rifle was extremely accurate. At first weapons were few and ammunition
was scanty, but in time there were importations from France and also
supplies from American gun factories. The standard length of the barrel
was three and a half feet, a portentous size compared with that of the
modern weapon. The loading was from the muzzle, a process so slow that
one of the favorite tactics of the time was to await the fire of the
enemy and then charge quickly and bayonet him before he could reload.
The old method of firing off the musket by means of slow matches
kept alight during action was now obsolete; the latest device was the
flintlock. But there was always a measure of doubt whether the weapon
would go off. Partly on this account Benjamin Franklin, the wisest man
of his time, declared for the use of the pike of an earlier age rather
than the bayonet and for bows and arrows instead of firearms. A soldier,
he said, could shoot four arrows to one bullet. An arrow wound was more
disabling than a bullet wound; and arrows did not becloud the
vision with smoke. The bullet remained, however, the chief means of
destruction, and the fire of Washington's soldiers usually excelled that
of the British. These, in their turn, were superior in the use of the
bayonet.
Powder and lead were hard to get. The inventive spirit of America was
busy with plans to procure saltpeter and other ingredients for making
powder, but it remained scarce. Since there was no standard firearm,
each soldier required bullets specially suited to his weapon. The men
melted lead and cast it in their own bullet-molds. It is an instance of
the minor ironies of war that the great equestrian statue of George III,
which had been erected in New York in days more peaceful, was melted
into bullets for killing that monarch's soldiers. Another necessity was
paper for cartridges and wads. The cartridge of that day was a paper
envelope containing the charge of ball and powder. This served also as
a wad, after being emptied of its contents, and was pushed home with a
ramrod. A store of German Bibles in Pennsylvania fell into the hands of
the soldiers at a moment when paper was a crying need, and the pages of
these Bibles were used for wads.
The artillery of the time seems feeble compared with the monster weapons
of death which we know in our own age. Yet it was an important factor in
the war. It is probable that before the war not a single cannon had been
made in the colonies. From the outset Washington was hampered for lack
of artillery. Neutrals, especially the Dutch in the West Indies, sold
guns to the Americans, and France was a chief source of supply during
long periods when the British lost the command of the sea. There was
always difficulty about equipping cavalry, especially in the North. The
Virginian was at home on horseback, and in the farther South bands of
cavalry did service during the later years of the war, but many of
the fighting riders of today might tomorrow be guiding their horses
peacefully behind the plough.
The pay of the soldiers remained to Washington a baffling problem. When
the war ended their pay was still heavily in arrears. The States were
timid about imposing taxation and few if any paid promptly the levies
made upon them. Congress bridged the chasm in finance by issuing paper
money which so declined in value that, as Washington said grimly, it
required a wagon-load of money to pay for a wagon-load of supplies. The
soldier received his pay in this money at its face value, and there
is little wonder that the "continental dollar" is still in the United
States a symbol of worthlessness. At times the lack of pay caused mutiny
which would have been dangerous but for Washington's firm and tactful
management in the time of crisis. There was in him both the kindly
feeling of the humane man and the rigor of the army leader. He sent
men to death without flinching, but he was at one with his men in their
sufferings, and no problem gave him greater anxiety than that of pay,
affecting, as it did, the health and spirits of men who, while unpaid,
had no means of softening the daily tale of hardship.
Desertion was always hard to combat. With the homesickness which led
sometimes to desertion Washington must have had a secret sympathy,
for his letters show that he always longed for that pleasant home in
Virginia which he did not allow himself to revisit until nearly the end
of the war. The land of a farmer on service often remained untilled,
and there are pathetic cases of families in bitter need because the
breadwinner was in the army. In frontier settlements his absence
sometimes meant the massacre of his family by the savages. There is
little wonder that desertion was common, so common that after a reverse
the men went away by hundreds. As they usually carried with them their
rifles and other equipment, desertion involved a double loss. On one
occasion some soldiers undertook for themselves the punishment of
deserters. Men of the First Pennsylvania Regiment who had recaptured
three deserters, beheaded one of them and returned to their camp with
the head carried on a pole. More than once it happened that condemned
men were paraded before the troops for execution with the graves dug and
the coffins lying ready. The death sentence would be read, and then, as
the firing party took aim, a reprieve would be announced. The reprieve
in such circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned
endure the real agony of death.
Religion offered its consolations in the army and Washington gave much
thought to the service of the chaplains. He told his army that fine as
it was to be a patriot it was finer still to be a Christian. It is an
odd fact that, though he attended the Anglican Communion service before
and after the war, he did not partake of the Communion during the
war. What was in his mind we do not know. He was disposed, as he said
himself, to let men find "that road to Heaven which to them shall seem
the most direct," and he was without Puritan fervor, but he had deep
religious feeling. During the troubled days at Valley Forge a neighbor
came upon him alone in the bush on his knees praying aloud, and stole
away unobserved. He would not allow in the army a favorite Puritan
custom of burning the Pope in effigy, and the prohibition was not
easily enforced among men, thousands of whom bore scriptural names from
ancestors who thought the Pope anti-Christ.
Washington's winter quarters at Valley Forge were only twenty miles from
Philadelphia, among hills easily defended. It is matter for wonder that
Howe, with an army well equipped, did not make some attempt to destroy
the army of Washington which passed the winter so near and in acute
distress. The Pennsylvania Loyalists, with dark days soon to come, were
bitter at Howe's inactivity, full of tragic meaning for themselves. He
said that he could achieve nothing permanent by attack. It may be so;
but it is a sound principle in warfare to destroy the enemy when this
is possible. There was a time when in Washington's whole force not
more than two thousand men were in a condition to fight. Congress
was responsible for the needs of the army but was now, in sordid
inefficiency, cooped up in the little town of York, eighty miles west
of Valley Forge, to which it had fled. There was as yet no real federal
union. The seat of authority was in the State Governments, and we need
not wonder that, with the passing of the first burst of devotion which
united the colonies in a common cause, Congress declined rapidly in
public esteem. "What a lot of damned scoundrels we had in that second
Congress" said, at a later date, Gouverneur Morris of Philadelphia to
John Jay of New York, and Jay answered gravely, "Yes, we had." The body,
so despised in the retrospect, had no real executive government, no
organized departments. Already before Independence was proclaimed there
had been talk of a permanent union, but the members of Congress had
shown no sense of urgency, and it was not until November 15, 1777, when
the British were in Philadelphia and Congress was in exile at York, that
Articles of Confederation were adopted. By the following midsummer many
of the States had ratified these articles, but Maryland, the last
to assent, did not accept the new union until 1781, so that Congress
continued to act for the States without constitutional sanction during
the greater part of the war.
The ineptitude of Congress is explained when we recall that it was
a revolutionary body which indeed controlled foreign affairs and the
issues of war and peace, coined money, and put forth paper money but
had no general powers. Each State had but one vote, and thus a small and
sparsely settled State counted for as much as populous Massachusetts
or Virginia. The Congress must deal with each State only as a unit; it
could not coerce a State; and it had no authority to tax or to coerce
individuals. The utmost it could do was to appeal to good feeling, and
when a State felt that it had a grievance such an appeal was likely to
meet with a flaming retort.
Washington maintained towards Congress an attitude of deference
and courtesy which it did not always deserve. The ablest men in the
individual States held aloof from Congress. They felt that they had more
dignity and power if they sat in their own legislatures. The assembly
which in the first days had as members men of the type of Washington and
Franklin sank into a gathering of second-rate men who were divided into
fierce factions. They debated interminably and did little. Each member
usually felt that he must champion the interests of his own State
against the hostility of others. It was not easy to create a sense of
national life. The union was only a league of friendship. States which
for a century or more had barely acknowledged their dependence upon
Great Britain, were chary about coming under the control of a new
centralizing authority at Philadelphia. The new States were sovereign
and some of them went so far as to send envoys of their own to negotiate
with foreign powers in Europe. When it was urged that Congress should
have the power to raise taxes in the States, there were patriots who
asked sternly what the war was about if it was not to vindicate the
principle that the people of a State alone should have power of taxation
over themselves. Of New England all the other States were jealous and
they particularly disliked that proud and censorious city which already
was accused of believing that God had made Boston for Himself and all
the rest of the world for Boston. The religion of New England did not
suit the Anglicans of Virginia or the Roman Catholics of Maryland, and
there was resentful suspicion of Puritan intolerance. John Adams said
quite openly that there were no religious teachers in Philadelphia to
compare with those of Boston and naturally other colonies drew away from
the severe and rather acrid righteousness of which he was a type.
Inefficiency meanwhile brought terrible suffering at Valley Forge,
and the horrors of that winter remain still vivid in the memory of the
American people. The army marched to Valley Forge on December 17, 1777,
and in midwinter everything from houses to entrenchments had still to be
created. At once there was busy activity in cutting down trees for the
log huts. They were built nearly square, sixteen feet by fourteen, in
rows, with the door opening on improvised streets. Since boards were
scarce, and it was difficult to make roofs rainproof, Washington tried
to stimulate ingenuity by offering a reward of one hundred dollars for
an improved method of roofing. The fireplaces of wood were protected
with thick clay. Firewood was abundant, but, with little food for oxen
and horses, men had to turn themselves into draught animals to bring in
supplies.
Sometimes the army was for a week without meat. Many horses died for
lack of forage or of proper care, a waste which especially disturbed
Washington, a lover of horses. When quantities of clothing were ready
for use, they were not delivered at Valley Forge owing to lack of
transport. Washington expressed his contempt for officers who resigned
their commissions in face of these distresses. No one, he said, ever
heard him say a word about resignation. There were many desertions but,
on the whole, he marveled at the patience of his men and that they did
not mutiny. With a certain grim humor they chanted phrases about "no
pay, no clothes, no provisions, no rum," and sang an ode glorifying war
and Washington. Hundreds of them marched barefoot, their blood staining
the snow or the frozen ground while, at the same time, stores of shoes
and clothing were lying unused somewhere on the roads to the camp.
Sickness raged in the army. Few men at Valley Forge, wrote Washington,
had more than a sheet, many only part of a sheet, and some nothing at
all. Hospital stores were lacking. For want of straw and blankets the
sick lay perishing on the frozen ground. When Washington had been
at Valley Forge for less than a week, he had to report nearly three
thousand men unfit for duty because of their nakedness in the bitter
winter. Then, as always, what we now call the "profiteer" was holding up
supplies for higher prices. To the British at Philadelphia, because they
paid in gold, things were furnished which were denied to Washington
at Valley Forge, and he announced that he would hang any one who
took provisions to Philadelphia. To keep his men alive Washington had
sometimes to take food by force from the inhabitants and then there was
an outcry that this was robbery. With many sick, his horses so disabled
that he could not move his artillery, and his defenses very slight,
he could have made only a weak fight had Howe attacked him. Yet the
legislature of Pennsylvania told him that, instead of lying quiet in
winter quarters, he ought to be carrying on an active campaign. In most
wars irresponsible men sitting by comfortable firesides are sure they
knew best how the thing should be done.
The bleak hillside at Valley Forge was something more than a prison.
Washington's staff was known as his family and his relations with them
were cordial and even affectionate. The young officers faced their
hardships cheerily and gave meager dinners to which no one might go if
he was so well off as to have trousers without holes. They talked and
sang and jested about their privations. By this time many of the bad
officers, of whom Washington complained earlier, had been weeded out and
he was served by a body of devoted men. There was much good comradeship.
Partnership in suffering tends to draw men together. In the company
which gathered about Washington, two men, mere youths at the time, have
a world-wide fame. The young Alexander Hamilton, barely twenty-one years
of age, and widely known already for his political writings, had the
rank of lieutenant colonel gained for his services in the fighting about
New York. He was now Washington's confidential secretary, a position
in which he soon grew restless. His ambition was to be one of the great
military leaders of the Revolution. Before the end of the war he had
gone back to fighting and he distinguished himself in the last battle
of the war at Yorktown. The other youthful figure was the Marquis de La
Fayette. It is not without significance that a noble square bears his
name in the capital named after Washington. The two men loved each
other. The young French aristocrat, with both a great name and great
possessions, was fired in 1776, when only nineteen, with zeal for the
American cause. "With the welfare of America," he wrote to his wife,
"is closely linked the welfare of mankind." Idealists in France believed
that America was leading in the remaking of the world. When it was known
that La Fayette intended to go to fight in America, the King of France
forbade it, since France had as yet no quarrel with England. The
youth, however, chartered a ship, landed in South Carolina, hurried to
Philadelphia, and was a major general in the American army when he was
twenty years of age.
La Fayette rendered no serious military service to the American cause.
He arrived in time to fight in the battle of the Brandywine. Washington
praised him for his bravery and military ardor and wrote to Congress
that he was sensible, discreet, and able to speak English freely. It was
with an eye to the influence in France of the name of the young noble
that Congress advanced him so rapidly. La Fayette was sincere and
generous in spirit. He had, however, little military capacity. Later
when he might have directed the course of the French Revolution he was
found wanting in force of character. The great Mirabeau tried to work
with him for the good of France, but was repelled by La Fayette's
jealous vanity, a vanity so greedy of praise that Jefferson called it a
"canine appetite for popularity and fame." La Fayette once said that
he had never had a thought with which he could reproach himself, and
he boasted that he has mastered three kings--the King of England in the
American Revolution, the King of France, and King Mob of Paris during
the upheaval in France. He was useful as a diplomatist rather than as a
soldier. Later, in an hour of deep need, Washington sent La Fayette to
France to ask for aid. He was influential at the French court and came
back with abundant promises, which were in part fulfilled.
Washington himself and Oliver Cromwell are perhaps the only two civilian
generals in history who stand in the first rank as military leaders.
It is doubtful indeed whether it is not rather character than military
skill which gives Washington his place. Only one other general of the
Revolution attained to first rank even in secondary fame. Nathanael
Greene was of Quaker stock from Rhode Island. He was a natural student
and when trouble with the mother country was impending in 1774 he
spent the leisure which he could spare from his forges in the study of
military history and in organizing the local militia. Because of his
zeal for military service he was expelled from the Society of Friends.
In 1775 when war broke out he was promptly on hand with a contingent
from Rhode Island. In little more than a year and after a very slender
military experience he was in command of the army on Long Island. On the
Hudson defeat not victory was his lot. He had, however, as much stern
resolve as Washington. He shared Washington's success in the attack on
Trenton, and his defeats at the Brandywine and at Germantown. Now he
was at Valley Forge, and when, on March 2, 1778, he became quartermaster
general, the outlook for food and supplies steadily improved. Later, in
the South, he rendered brilliant service which made possible the final
American victory at Yorktown.
Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller, had, like Greene, only slight training
for military command. It shows the dearth of officers to fight the
highly disciplined British army that Knox, at the age of twenty-five,
and fresh from commercial life, was placed in charge of the meager
artillery which Washington had before Boston. It was Knox, who, with
heart-breaking labor, took to the American front the guns captured
at Ticonderoga. Throughout the war he did excellent service with the
artillery, and Washington placed a high value upon his services. He
valued too those of Daniel Morgan, an old fighter in the Indian wars,
who left his farm in Virginia when war broke out, and marched his
company of riflemen to join the army before Boston. He served with
Arnold at the siege of Quebec, and was there taken prisoner. He was
exchanged and had his due revenge when he took part in the capture of
Burgoyne's army. He was now at Valley Forge. Later he had a command
under Greene in the South and there, as we shall see, he won the great
success of the Battle of Cowpens in January, 1781.
It was the peculiar misfortune of Washington that the three men, Arnold,
Lee, and Gates, who ought to have rendered him the greatest service,
proved unfaithful. Benedict Arnold, next to Washington himself, was
probably the most brilliant and resourceful soldier of the Revolution.
Washington so trusted him that, when the dark days at Valley Forge were
over, he placed him in command of the recaptured federal capital. Today
the name of Arnold would rank high in the memory of a grateful country
had he not fallen into the bottomless pit of treason. The same is in
some measure true of Charles Lee, who was freed by the British in an
exchange of prisoners and joined Washington at Valley Forge late in
the spring of 1778. Lee was so clever with his pen as to be one of the
reputed authors of the Letters of Junius. He had served as a British
officer in the conquest of Canada, and later as major general in the
army of Poland. He had a jealous and venomous temper and could never
conceal the contempt of the professional soldier for civilian generals.
He, too, fell into the abyss of treason. Horatio Gates, also a regular
soldier, had served under Braddock and was thus at that early period
a comrade of Washington. Intriguer he was, but not a traitor. It was
incompetence and perhaps cowardice which brought his final ruin.
Europe had thousands of unemployed officers some of whom had had
experience in the Seven Years' War and many turned eagerly to America
for employment. There were some good soldiers among these fighting
adventurers. Kosciuszko, later famous as a Polish patriot, rose by his
merits to the rank of brigadier general in the American army; De Kalb,
son of a German peasant, though not a baron, as he called himself,
proved worthy of the rank of a major general. There was, however, a
flood of volunteers of another type. French officers fleeing from their
creditors and sometimes under false names and titles, made their way
to America as best they could and came to Washington with pretentious
claims. Germans and Poles there were, too, and also exiles from that
unhappy island which remains still the most vexing problem of British
politics. Some of them wrote their own testimonials; some, too, were
spies. On the first day, Washington wrote, they talked only of serving
freely a noble cause, but within a week were demanding promotion and
advance of money. Sometimes they took a high tone with members of
Congress who had not courage to snub what Washington called impudence
and vain boasting. "I am haunted and teased to death by the importunity
of some and dissatisfaction of others" wrote Washington of these people.
One foreign officer rendered incalculable service to the American cause.
It was not only on the British side that Germans served in the American
Revolution. The Baron von Steuben was, like La Fayette, a man of rank
in his own country, and his personal service to the Revolution was much
greater than that of La Fayette. Steuben had served on the staff of
Frederick the Great and was distinguished for his wit and his polished
manners. There was in him nothing of the needy adventurer. The sale of
Hessian and other troops to the British by greedy German princes was
met in some circles in Germany by a keen desire to aid the cause of the
young republic. Steuben, who held a lucrative post, became convinced,
while on a visit to Paris, that he could render service in training the
Americans. With quick sympathy and showing no reserve in his generous
spirit he abandoned his country, as it proved forever, took ship for the
United States, and arrived in November, 1777. Washington welcomed him at
Valley Forge in the following March. He was made Inspector General
and at once took in hand the organization of the army. He prepared
"Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United
States" later, in 1779, issued as a book. Under this German influence
British methods were discarded. The word of command became short
and sharp. The British practice of leaving recruits to be trained
by sergeants, often ignorant, coarse, and brutal, was discarded, and
officers themselves did this work. The last letter which Washington
wrote before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to
thank Steuben for his invaluable aid. Charles Lee did not believe that
American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the
disciplined British battalions. Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong
to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth when fighting began in 1778.
The British army in America furnished sharp contrasts to that of
Washington. If the British jeered at the fighting quality of citizens,
these retorted that the British soldier was a mere slave. There were
two great stains upon the British system, the press-gang and flogging.
Press-gangs might seize men abroad in the streets of a town and, unless
they could prove that they were gentlemen in rank, they could be sent
in the fleet to serve in the remotest corners of the earth. In both navy
and army flogging outraged the dignity of manhood. The liability to this
brutal and degrading punishment kept all but the dregs of the populace
from enlisting in the British army. It helped to fix the deep gulf
between officers and men. Forty years later Napoleon Bonaparte, despot
though he might be, was struck by this separation. He himself went
freely among his men, warmed himself at their fire, and talked to them
familiarly about their work, and he thought that the British officer was
too aloof in his demeanor. In the British army serving in America there
were many officers of aristocratic birth and long training in military
science. When they found that American officers were frequently drawn
from a class of society which in England would never aspire to a
commission, and were largely self-taught, not unnaturally they jeered
at an army so constituted. Another fact excited British disdain. The
Americans were technically rebels against their lawful ruler, and rebels
in arms have no rights as belligerents. When the war ended more than a
thousand American prisoners were still held in England on the capital
charge of treason. Nothing stirred Washington's anger more deeply than
the remark sometimes made by British officers that the prisoners they
took were receiving undeserved mercy when they were not hanged.
There was much debate at Valley Forge as to the prospect for the future.
When we look at available numbers during the war we appreciate the
view of a British officer that in spite of Washington's failures and
of British victories the war was serious, "an ugly job, a damned affair
indeed." The population of the colonies--some 2,500,000--was about
one-third that of the United Kingdom; and for the British the war was
remote from the base of supply. In those days, considering the means
of transport, America was as far from England as at the present day is
Australia. Sometimes the voyage across the sea occupied two and even
three months, and, with the relatively small ships of the time, it
required a vast array of transports to carry an army of twenty or
thirty thousand men. In the spring of 1776 Great Britain had found it
impossible to raise at home an army of even twenty thousand men for
service in America, and she was forced to rely in large part upon
mercenary soldiers. This was nothing new. Her island people did not like
service abroad and this unwillingness was intensified in regard to
war in remote America. Moreover Whig leaders in England discouraged
enlistment. They were bitterly hostile to the war which they regarded as
an attack not less on their own liberties than on those of America. It
would be too much to ascribe to the ignorant British common soldier of
the time any deep conviction as to the merits or demerits of the cause
for which he fought. There is no evidence that, once in the army, he
was less ready to attack the Americans than any other foe. Certainly the
Americans did not think he was half-hearted.
The British soldier fought indeed with more resolute determination
than did the hired auxiliary at his side. These German troops played
a notable part in the war. The despotic princes of the lesser German
states were accustomed to sell the services of their troops. Despotic
Russia, too, was a likely field for such enterprise. When, however, it
was proposed to the Empress Catherine II that she should furnish twenty
thousand men for service in America she retorted with the sage advice
that it was England's true interest to settle the quarrel in America
without war. Germany was left as the recruiting field. British efforts
to enlist Germans as volunteers in her own army were promptly checked by
the German rulers and it was necessary literally to buy the troops from
their princes. One-fourth of the able-bodied men of Hesse-Cassel were
shipped to America. They received four times the rate of pay at home and
their ruler received in addition some half million dollars a year. The
men suffered terribly and some died of sickness for the homes to which
thousands of them never returned. German generals, such as Knyphausen
and Riedesel, gave the British sincere and effective service. The
Hessians were, however, of doubtful benefit to the British. It angered
the Americans that hired troops should be used against them, an anger
not lessened by the contempt which the Hessians showed for the colonial
officers as plebeians.
The two sides were much alike in their qualities and were skillful in
propaganda. In Britain lurid tales were told of the colonists scalping
the wounded at Lexington and using poisoned bullets at Bunker Hill. In
America every prisoner in British hands was said to be treated brutally
and every man slain in the fighting to have been murdered. The use of
foreign troops was a fruitful theme. The report ran through the colonies
that the Hessians were huge ogre-like monsters, with double rows of
teeth round each jaw, who had come at the call of the British tyrant
to slay women and children. In truth many of the Hessians became good
Americans. In spite of the loyalty of their officers they were readily
induced to desert. The wit of Benjamin Franklin was enlisted to compose
telling appeals, translated into simple German, which promised grants
of land to those who should abandon an unrighteous cause. The Hessian
trooper who opened a packet of tobacco might find in the wrapper appeals
both to his virtue and to his cupidity. It was easy for him to resist
them when the British were winning victories and he was dreaming of a
return to the Fatherland with a comfortable accumulation of pay, but it
was different when reverses overtook British arms. Then many hundreds
slipped away; and today their blood flows in the veins of thousands of
prosperous American farmers.