THE ARMY ON THE SCHUYLKILL.--AT VALLEY FORGE.--THE CONWAY CABAL.
On the evening of the 24th of November Washington reconnoitred,
carefully and thoughtfully, the lines and defences about Philadelphia,
from the opposite side of the Schuylkill. His army was now
considerably reinforced; the garrison was weakened by the absence of a
large body of troops under Lord Cornwallis in the Jerseys. Some of the
general officers thought this an advantageous moment for an attack
upon the city. Such was the opinion of Lord Stirling, and especially
of General Wayne, Mad Anthony, as he was familiarly called, always
eager for some daring enterprise. The recent victory at Saratoga had
dazzled the public mind and produced a general impatience for
something equally striking and effective in this quarter. With an
anxious eye Washington scrutinized the enemy's works. They appeared to
be exceeding strong. A chain of redoubts extended along the most
commanding ground from the Schuylkill to the Delaware. They were
framed, planked, and of great thickness, and were surrounded by a deep
ditch, enclosed and fraised. The intervals were filled with an abatis,
in constructing which all the apple trees of the neighborhood, beside
forest trees, had been sacrificed.
The idea of Lord Stirling and those in favor of an attack was, that it
should be at different points at daylight; the main body to attack the
lines to the north of the city, while Greene, embarking his men in
boats at Dunk's Ferry, and passing down the Delaware, and Potter, with
a body of Continentals and militia, moving down the west side of the
Schuylkill, should attack the eastern and western fronts. Washington
saw that there was an opportunity for a brilliant blow, that might
satisfy the impatience of the public, but he saw that it must be
struck at the expense of a fearful loss of life.
Returning to camp, he held a council of war of his principal officers,
in which the matter was debated at great length and with some warmth,
but without coming to a decision. At breaking up, Washington requested
that each member of the council would give his opinion the next
morning in writing, and he sent off a messenger in the night for the
written opinion of General Greene.
Only four members of the council, Stirling, Wayne, Scott and Woodford,
were in favor of an attack; of which Lord Stirling drew up the plan.
Eleven (including Greene) were against it, objecting, among other
things, that the enemy's lines were too strong and too well supported,
and their force too numerous, well disciplined and experienced, to be
assailed without great loss and the hazard of a failure. Had
Washington been actuated by mere personal ambition and a passion for
military fame, he might have disregarded the loss and hazarded the
failure; but his patriotism was superior to his ambition; he shrank
from a glory that must be achieved at such a cost, and the idea of an
attack was abandoned.
A letter from General Greene received about this time, gave Washington
some gratifying intelligence about his youthful friend, the Marquis de
Lafayette. Though not quite recovered from the wound received at the
battle of Brandywine, he had accompanied General Greene as a volunteer
in his expedition into the Jerseys, and had been indulged by him with
an opportunity of gratifying his belligerent humor, in a brush with
Cornwallis' outposts. "The marquis," writes Greene, "with about four
hundred militia and the rifle corps, attacked the enemy's picket last
evening killed about twenty, wounded many more, and took about twenty
prisoners. The marquis is charmed with the spirited behavior of the
militia and rifle corps.... The marquis is determined to be in the way
of danger."
Washington had repeatedly written to Congress in favor of giving the
marquis a command equal to his nominal rank. He availed himself of the
present occasion to support his former recommendations, by
transmitting to Congress an account of Lafayette's youthful exploit.
He received, in return, an intimation from that body, that it was
their pleasure he should appoint the marquis to the command of a
division in the Continental army. The division of General Stephen at
this time was vacant; that veteran officer, who had formerly won honor
for himself in the French war, having been dismissed for misconduct at
the battle of Germantown, the result of intemperate habits, into which
he unfortunately had fallen. Lafayette was forthwith appointed to the
command of that division.
At this juncture (November 27th), a modification took place in the
Board of War, indicative of the influence which was operating in
Congress. It was increased from three to five members: General
Mifflin, Joseph Trumbull, Richard Peters, Colonel Pickering, and last,
though certainly not least, General Gates. Mifflin's resignation of
the commission of quartermaster-general had recently been accepted;
but that of major-general was continued to him, though without pay.
General Gates was appointed president of the board, and the President
of Congress was instructed to express to him, in communicating the
intelligence, the high sense which that body entertained of his
abilities and peculiar fitness to discharge the duties of that
important office, upon the right execution of which the success of the
American cause so eminently depended; and to inform him it was their
intention to continue his rank as major-general, and that he might
officiate at the board or in the field, as occasion might require;
furthermore, that he should repair to Congress with all convenient
despatch to enter upon the duties of his appointment. It was evidently
the idea of the cabal that Gates was henceforth to be the
master-spirit of the war.
While busy faction was at work, both in and out of Congress, to
undermine the fame and authority of Washington, General Howe,
according to his own threat, was preparing to "drive him beyond the
mountains."
On the 4th of December, Captain Allen McLane, a vigilant officer
already mentioned, of the Maryland line, brought word to head-quarters
that an attack was to be made that very night on the camp at White
Marsh. Washington made his dispositions to receive the meditated
assault, and, in the meantime, detached McLane with one hundred men to
reconnoitre. The latter met the van of the enemy about eleven o'clock
at night, on the Germantown Road; attacked it at the Three Mile Run,
forced it to change its line of march, and hovered about and impeded
it throughout the night. About three o'clock in the morning the
alarm-gun announced the approach of the enemy. They appeared at
daybreak, and encamped on Chestnut Hill, within three miles of
Washington's right wing. Brigadier-general James Irvine, with six
hundred of the Pennsylvania militia, was sent out to skirmish with
their light advanced parties. He encountered them at the foot of the
hill, but after a short conflict, in which several were killed and
wounded, his troops gave way and fled in all directions, leaving him
and four or five of his men wounded on the field, who were taken
prisoners.
General Howe passed the day in reconnoitring, and at night changed his
ground, and moved to a hill on the left, and within a mile of the
American line. It was his wish to have a general action; but to have
it on advantageous terms. He had scrutinized Washington's position and
pronounced it inaccessible. For three days he manoeuvred to draw him
from it, shifting his own position occasionally, but still keeping on
advantageous ground. Washington was not to be decoyed. He knew the
vast advantages which superior science, discipline and experience gave
the enemy in open field fight, and remained within his lines. All his
best officers approved of his policy. Several sharp skirmishes
occurred at Edge Hill and elsewhere, in which Morgan's riflemen and
the Maryland militia were concerned. There was loss on both sides, but
the Americans gave way before a great superiority of numbers.
On the 7th there was every appearance that Howe meditated an attack on
the left wing. Washington's heart now beat high, and he prepared for a
warm and decisive action. In the course of the day he rode through
every brigade, giving directions how the attack was to be met, and
exhorting his troops to depend mainly on the bayonet. The day wore
away with nothing but skirmishes, in which Morgan's riflemen, and the
Maryland militia under Colonel Gist, rendered good service. An attack
was expected in the night, or early in the morning; but no attack took
place. The spirit manifested by the Americans in their recent contests
had rendered the British commanders cautious.
The next day in the afternoon, the enemy were again in motion; but
instead of advancing, filed off to the left, halted and lit up a long
string of fires on the heights; behind which they retreated, silently
and precipitately, in the night. By the time Washington received
intelligence of their movement they were in full march by two or three
routes for Philadelphia. He immediately detached light parties to fall
upon their rear, but they were too far on the way for any but
light-horse to overtake them.
Here then was another occasion of which the enemies of Washington
availed themselves to deride his cautious policy. Yet it was clearly
dictated by true wisdom. His heart yearned for a general encounter
with the enemy. In his despatch to the President of Congress, he
writes, "I sincerely wish that they had made an attack; as the issue,
in all probability, from the disposition of our troops and the strong
situation of our camp, would have been fortunate and happy. At the
same time I must add, that reason, prudence, and every principle of
policy forbade us from quitting our post to attack them. Nothing but
success would have justified the measure, and this could not be
expected from their position."
At this time, one of the earliest measures recommended by the Board of
War, and adopted by Congress, showed the increasing influence of the
cabal; two inspectors-general were to be appointed for the promotion
of discipline and reformation of abuses in the army; and one of the
persons chosen for this important office was Conway, with the rank,
too, of major-general! This was tacitly in defiance of the opinion so
fully expressed by Washington of the demerits of the man, and the
ruinous effects to be apprehended from his promotion over the heads of
brigadiers of superior claims. Conway, however, was the secret
colleague of Gates, and Gates was now the rising sun.
Winter had now set in with all its severity. The troops, worn down by
long and hard service, had need of repose. Poorly clad, also, and
almost destitute of blankets, they required a warmer shelter than mere
tents against the inclemencies of the season. The nearest towns which
would afford winter-quarters, were Lancaster, York and Carlisle; but
should the army retire to either of these, a large and fertile
district would be exposed to be foraged by the foe, and its
inhabitants, perhaps, to be dragooned into submission. The plan
adopted by Washington, after holding a council of war, and weighing
the discordant opinions of his officers, was to hut the army for the
winter at Valley Forge, in Chester County, on the west side of the
Schuylkill, about twenty miles from Philadelphia. Here he would be
able to keep a vigilant eye on that city, and at the same time protect
a great extent of country.
Sad and dreary was the march to Valley Forge, uncheered by the
recollection of any recent triumph, as was the march to
winter-quarters in the preceding year. Hungry and cold were the poor
fellows who had so long been keeping the field, for provisions were
scant, clothing worn out, and so badly off were they for shoes, that
the footsteps of many might be tracked in blood. Yet at this very time
we are told, "hogsheads of shoes, stockings and clothing, were lying
at different places on the roads and in the woods, perishing for want
of teams, or of money to pay the teamsters."
Such were the consequences of the derangement of the commissariat.
Washington wrote to the President of Congress on the subject: "I do
not know from what cause this alarming deficiency, or rather total
failure of supplies arises; but unless more vigorous exertions and
better regulations take place in that line (the commissaries'
department) immediately, the army must dissolve. I have done all in my
power by remonstrating, by writing, by ordering the commissaries on
this head, from time to time, but without any good effect, or
obtaining more than a present scanty relief."
Scarce had Washington despatched this letter, when he learnt that the
Legislature of Pennsylvania had addressed a remonstrance to Congress
against his going into winter-quarters, instead of keeping in the open
field. This letter, received in his forlorn situation, surrounded by
an unhoused, scantily clad, half-starved army, shivering in the midst
of December's snow and cold, put an end to his forbearance, and drew
from him another letter to the President of Congress, dated on the
23d, which we shall largely quote, not only for its manly and truthful
eloquence, but for the exposition it gives of the difficulties of his
situation, mainly caused by unwise and intermeddling legislation.
And first as to the commissariat:--
"Though I have been tender, heretofore," writes he, "of giving any
opinion, or lodging complaints, as the change in that department took
place contrary to my judgment, and the consequences thereof were
predicted, yet finding that the inactivity of the army, whether for
want of provisions, clothes, or other essentials, is charged to my
account, not only by the common vulgar, but by those in power, it is
time to speak plain in exculpation of myself. With truth then, I can
declare, that no man, in my opinion, ever had his measures more
impeded than I have by every department of the army. Since the month
of July we have had no assistance from the quartermaster-general; and
to want of assistance from this department, the commissary-general
charges great part of his deficiency.... As a proof of the little
benefit received from a clothier-general, and as a further proof of
the inability of an army, under the circumstances of this, to perform
the common duties of soldiers (besides a number of men confined to
hospitals for want of shoes, and others in farmers' houses on the same
account), we have, by a field return this day made, no less than two
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men now in camp unfit for
duty, because they are barefoot, and otherwise naked. By the same
return, it appears that our whole strength in Continental troops,
including the eastern brigades, which have joined us since the
surrender of General Burgoyne, exclusive of the Maryland troops sent
to Wilmington, amounts to no more than eight thousand two hundred in
camp fit for duty; notwithstanding which, and that since the 4th
instant, our numbers fit for duty, from the hardships and exposures
they have undergone, particularly on account of blankets, have
decreased near two thousand men.
"We find gentlemen, without knowing whether the army was really going
into winter-quarters or not (for I am sure no resolution of mine could
warrant the remonstrance), reprobating the measure as much as if they
thought the soldiers were made of stocks or stones, and equally
insensible of frost and snow; and moreover, as if they conceived it
easily practicable for an inferior army, under the disadvantages I
have described ours to be--which are by no means exaggerated--to
confine a superior one, in all respects well appointed and provided
for a winter's campaign, within the city of Philadelphia, and to cover
from depredation and waste the States of Pennsylvania and Jersey.... I
can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less
distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a
good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under
frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. However, although they
seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I
feel abundantly for them, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries,
which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent."
In the present exigency to save his camp from desolation and to
relieve his starving soldiery, he was compelled to exercise the
authority recently given him by Congress, to forage the country round,
seize supplies wherever he could find them, and pay for them in money
or in certificates redeemable by Congress. He exercised these powers
with great reluctance. He was apprehensive of irritating the jealousy
of military sway, prevalent throughout the country, and of corrupting
the morals of the army.
We here close Washington's operations for 1777; one of the most
arduous and eventful years of his military life, and one of the most
trying to his character and fortunes. He began it with an empty army
chest, and a force dwindled down to four thousand half-disciplined
men. Throughout the year he had had to contend, not merely with the
enemy, but with the parsimony and meddlesome interference of Congress.
In his most critical times that body had left him without funds and
without reinforcements. It had made promotions contrary to his advice
and contrary to military usage; thereby wronging and disgusting some
of his bravest officers. It had changed the commissariat in the very
midst of a campaign, and thereby thrown the whole service into
confusion.
Among so many cross-purposes and discouragements, it was a difficult
task for Washington to "keep the life and soul of the army together."
Yet he had done so. Marvellous indeed was the manner in which he had
soothed the discontents of his aggrieved officers, and reconciled them
to an ill-requiting service; and still more marvellous the manner in
which he had breathed his own spirit of patience and perseverance in
his yeoman soldiery, during their sultry marchings and
countermarchings through the Jerseys, under all kinds of privations,
with no visible object of pursuit to stimulate their ardor, hunting,
as it were, the rumored apparitions of an unseen fleet.
The same machinations which were so successful in displacing the
noble-hearted Schuyler from the head of the Northern department, were
now at work to undermine the commander-in-chief, and elevate the
putative hero of Saratoga on his ruins. He was painfully aware of
them; yet in no part of the war did he more thoroughly evince that
magnanimity which was his grand characteristic, than in the last
scenes of this campaign, where he rose above the tauntings of the
press, the sneerings of the cabal, the murmurs of the public, the
suggestions of some of his friends, and the throbbing impulses of his
own courageous heart, and adhered to that Fabian policy which he
considered essential to the safety of the cause. To dare is often the
impulse of selfish ambition or harebrained valor: to forbear is at
times the proof of real greatness.
While censure and detraction had dogged Washington throughout his
harassing campaign, Gates was the constant theme of popular eulogium,
and was held up by the cabal as the only one capable of retrieving the
desperate fortunes of the South. Letters from his friends in Congress
urged him to hasten on, take his seat at the head of the Board of War,
assume the management of military affairs, and _save the country!_
Gates was not a strong-minded man. Is it a wonder, then, that his
brain should be bewildered by the fumes of incense offered up on every
side. In the midst of his triumph, however, while feasting on the
sweets of adulation, came the withering handwriting on the wall! It is
an epistle from his friend Mifflin. "My dear General," writes he, "an
extract from Conway's letter to you has been procured and sent to
head-quarters.... General Washington enclosed it to Conway without
remarks."
Nothing could surpass the trouble and confusion of mind of Gates on
the perusal of this letter. Part of his correspondence with Conway had
been sent to head-quarters. But what part? What was the purport and
extent of the alleged extracts. How had they been obtained? Who had
sent them? Mifflin's letter specified nothing; and this silence as to
particulars left an unbounded field for tormenting conjecture. In
fact, Mifflin knew nothing in particular when he wrote; nor did any of
the cabal. The laconic nature of Washington's note to Conway had
thrown them all in confusion. None knew the extent of the
correspondence discovered, nor how far they might be individually
compromised.
Gates, in his perplexity, suspected that his portfolio had been
stealthily opened and his letters copied. But which of them?--and by
whom? He wrote to Conway and Mifflin, anxiously inquiring what part of
their correspondence had been thus surreptitiously obtained, and made
rigid inquiries among the gentlemen of his staff. All disavowed any
knowledge of the matter. In this state of mental trepidation, Gates
wrote, on the 8th of December, a letter to Washington, [in which,
after speaking of his disagreeable situation in discovering his
confidential letters exposed to public inspection, he urged Washington
to give him his aid in "tracing the author of the infidelity," and
asserting that it was in Washington's power to do him and the United
States an important service by detecting a wretch "who may betray me,
and capitally injure the very operations under your immediate
directions." He concluded by announcing his intention of forwarding a
copy of his letter to the president, "that the Congress may, in
concert with your Excellency, obtain as soon as possible a discovery
which so deeply affects the safety of the States."
Washington's reply was characterized with his usual dignity and
candor. After expressing his surprise that a copy of Gates' letter
should have been sent to Congress, and asserting that he was thereby
laid under the necessity of returning his answer through the same
body, he proceeds to state that Colonel Wilkinson, in the month of
October last, fell in with Major McWilliams, aide-de-camp to Lord
Stirling, and informed him, not in confidence, that General Conway had
written to Gates as follows: "Heaven has been determined to save your
country, or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it."
Washington then adds that this circumstance had not been communicated
to any officer in the army except Lafayette, to whom it was shown
under injunctions of secrecy, so desirous was he of concealing every
matter that "could interrupt the tranquillity of the army, or afford a
gleam of hope to the enemy by dissensions therein." He concludes by
declaring that he considered the information as coming from Gates,
given with a view to forewarn and forearm him against a dangerous
incendiary, "in which character sooner or later this country will know
General Conway."]
Gates was disposed to mark his advent to power by a striking
operation. A notable project had been concerted by him and the Board
of War for a winter irruption into Canada. An expedition was to
proceed from Albany, cross Lake Champlain on the ice, burn the British
shipping at St. Johns, and press forward to Montreal. Washington was
not consulted in the matter: the project was submitted to Congress,
and sanctioned by them without his privity. One object of the scheme
was to detach the Marquis de Lafayette from Washington, to whom he was
devotedly attached, and bring him into the interests of the cabal. For
this purpose he was to have the command of the expedition; an
appointment which it was thought would tempt his military ambition.
Conway was to be second in command, and it was trusted that his
address and superior intelligence would virtually make him the leader.
The first notice that Washington received of the project was in a
letter from Gates, enclosing one to Lafayette, informing the latter of
his appointment, and requiring his attendance at Yorktown to receive
his instructions. Gates, in his letter to Washington, asked his
opinion and advice; evidently as a matter of form. The latter
expressed himself obliged by the "polite request," but observed that,
as he neither knew the extent of the objects in view, nor the means to
be employed to effect them, it was not in his power to pass any
judgment upon the subject. The cabal overshot their mark. Lafayette,
who was aware of their intrigues, was so disgusted by the want of
deference and respect to the commander-in-chief evinced in the whole
proceeding, that he would at once have declined the appointment had
not Washington himself advised him strongly to accept it. [The project
was never carried out. Lafayette, still having a favorable opinion of
Conway's military talents, was aware of the game he was playing, and
succeeded in getting De Kalb appointed to the expedition, whose
commission being of older date, would give him the precedence of that
officer. When Lafayette arrived at Albany it was soon found that the
contemplated irruption was not practicable. Schuyler, Lincoln, and
Arnold all opposed it. Instead of twenty-five hundred men which had
been promised Lafayette, not twelve hundred in all were found to be
fit for duty, and these shrinking from a winter incursion into so cold
a country. Stark, who was to have joined the expedition, was
disinclined. Enlistments could not be made for want of money, or the
means of offering other inducements. The project, in view of the
numerous discouragements and difficulties, was at length formally
suspended by a resolve of Congress.]
Washington's letter of the 4th of January, on the subject of the
Conway correspondence, had not reached General Gates until the 22d of
January, after his arrival at Yorktown. No sooner did Gates learn from
its context that all Washington's knowledge of that correspondence was
confined to a single paragraph of a letter, and that merely as quoted
in conversation by Wilkinson, than the whole matter appeared easily to
be explained or shuffled off. He accordingly took pen in hand, and
addressed Washington as follows, on the 22d of January: "The letter
which I had the honor to receive yesterday from your Excellency, has
relieved me from unspeakable uneasiness. I now anticipate the pleasure
it will give you when you discover that what has been conveyed to you
for an extract of General Conway's letter to me, was not an
information which friendly motives induced a man of honor to give,
that injured virtue might be forearmed against secret enemies. The
paragraph which your Excellency has condescended to transcribe, is
spurious. It was certainly fabricated to answer the most selfish and
wicked purposes." He then goes on to declare that the genuine letter
of Conway was perfectly harmless, containing judicious remarks upon
the want of discipline in the army, but making no mention of weak
generals or bad counsellors.
General Conway, also, in a letter to Washington (dated January 27th),
informs him that the letter had been returned to him by Gates, and
that he found with great satisfaction that "the paragraph so much
spoken of did not exist in the said letter, nor anything like it." He
had intended, he adds, to publish the letter, but had been dissuaded
by President Laurens and two or three members of Congress, to whom he
had shown it, lest it should inform the enemy of a misunderstanding
among the American generals. He therefore depended upon the justice,
candor, and generosity of General Washington to put a stop to the
forgery.
On the 9th of February, Washington wrote Gates a long and searching
reply to his letters of the 8th and 23d of January, analyzing them,
and showing how, in spirit and import, they contradicted each other;
and how sometimes the same letter contradicted itself. How, in the
first letter, the reality of the extracts was by implication allowed,
and the only solicitude shown was to find out the person who brought
them to light; while, in the second letter, the whole was pronounced,
"in word as well as in substance, a wicked forgery." "It is not my
intention," observes Washington, "to contradict this assertion, but
only to intimate some considerations which tend to induce a
supposition that, though none of General Conway's letters to you
contained the offensive passage mentioned, there might have been
something in them too nearly related to it, that could give such an
extraordinary alarm. If this were not the case, how easy in the first
instance to have declared there was nothing exceptionable in them, and
to have produced the letters themselves in support of it?"{1}
{Footnote 1: [The Conway letter proved a further source of trouble to
the cabal. Wilkinson learning that Gates had denounced him as the
betrayer of the letter, and spoken of him in the grossest language,
wrote to Gates demanding honorable reparation. They met, however, and
the explanations of Gates appeased Wilkinson for the time, who now
turned to Lord Stirling as the betrayer of his confidence, asserting
that he should "bleed for his conduct." But in this case, as in the
other, Wilkinson's irritable honor was easily pacified. Lord Stirling
having admitted, according to Wilkinson's request, that the disclosure
in question "occurred in a private company during a convivial hour."
Subsequently Wilkinson was shown, by Washington, Gates' letter, in
which the extract from Conway's letter was pronounced a forgery.
Wilkinson, who was secretary of the Board of War, of which Gates was
president, now resigned his office, compelled to it, as he said, "by
the acts of treachery and falsehood in which he had detected
Major-general Gates." Wilkinson, as bearer of the news of the capture
of Burgoyne to Congress, had been rewarded by promotion to the rank of
brigadier-general. This was protested against by a large number of
colonels, whereupon Wilkinson resigned, and withdrew from the army.]}