WASHINGTON IN COMMAND.
On the twenty-first day of June, 1775, Washington left Philadelphia for
Boston, and on the third day of July assumed command of the Continental
Army of America, with headquarters at Cambridge.
At this point one is instinctively prompted to peer into the closed tent
of the Commander-in-Chief and observe his modest, but wholly
self-reliant attitude toward the grave questions that are to be settled,
in determining whether the future destiny of America is to be that of
liberty, or abject submission to the Crown.
For fully two months the yeomanry of New England had firmly grasped all
approaches to the City of Boston. This pressure was now and then
resisted by efforts of the garrison to secure supplies from the
surrounding country farms; which only induced a tighter hold, and
aroused a stubborn purpose to crowd that garrison to surrender, or
escape by sea. The islands of the beautiful bay and of the Nantasket
roadstead had become miniature fields of daily conflict; and persistent
efforts to procure bullocks, flour, and other needed provisions, through
the boats of the British fleet, only developed a counter system of boat
operations which neutralized the former, and gradually restricted the
country excursions of the troops within the city to the range of their
guns.
And yet the beleaguering force had fluctuated every day, so that but few
of the hastily improvised regiments maintained either identity of
persons, or permanent numbers. Exchanges were frequent between those on
duty and others at their homes. The sudden summons from so many and
varied industrial pursuits and callings was like the unorganized rush of
men at an alarm of fire, quickened by the conviction that some wide,
sweeping, and common danger was to be withstood, or some devouring
element to be mastered. The very independence of opinion and sense of
oppression which began to assert a claim to absolutely independent
nationality, became impatient of all restraint, until military control,
however vital to organized success, had become tiresome, offensive, and
sharply contested. Offices also, as in more modern times, had been
conferred upon those who secured enlistments, and too often without
regard to character or signal merit; while the familiarities of former
neighborhood friends and acquaintances ill-fitted them to bear rigid
control by those who had been, only just before, companions on a common
level.
Jealousies and aspirations mingled with the claims of families left at
home, and many local excitements attended the efforts of officers of the
Crown to discharge their most simple duties. After the flash of
Lexington and its hot heat had faded out, it was dull work to stand
guard by day, lie upon the ground at night, live a life of half lazy
routine, receive unequal and indifferent food, and wonder, between
meals, when and how the whole affair would end. The capture of
Ticonderoga, so easily affected, inclined many to regard the contest
before Boston as a matter of simple, persistent pressure, with no
provident conception of the vast range of conflict involved in this
defiance of the British Crown, in which all Colonies must pass under the
rolling chariot of war.
And yet, all these elements were not sufficiently relaxing to permit the
enclosed garrison to go free. While thousands of the Minute Men were
apparently listless, and taking the daily drudgery as a matter-of-course
experience, not to be helped or be rid of,—there were many strong-willed
men among them who held settled and controlling convictions, so that
even the raw militia were generally under wise guardianship. Leading
scholars and professional men, as well as ministers of the Gospel and
teachers of the district schools, united their influence with that of
some well-trained soldiers, to keep the force in the field at a
comparatively even strength of numbers. The idle were gradually set to
work, and occupation began to lighten the strain of camp life.
At the date of Washington’s arrival to take command, there was a
practical suspension of military operations over the country at large;
and this condition of affairs, together with the large display of
Colonial force about Boston, gave the other Colonies opportunity to
prepare for war, and for Washington to develop his army and test both
officers and men.
In his tent at Cambridge, he opened the packages intrusted to his care
by Congress, and examined the commissions of the officers who were to
share his councils and execute his will. His own commission gave him all
needed authority, and pledged the united Colonies to his hearty support.
Confidence in his patriotism, his wisdom, and his military capacity was
generous and complete. He represented Congress. He represented America.
For a short time he withheld the delivery of a few of the commissions.
Some officers, hastily commissioned, although formerly in military
service, had been entirely isolated from opportunities for knowledge of
men and of questions of public policy. The emergency required such as
were familiar with the vast interests involved in a struggle in arms
with Great Britain; men who would heartily submit to that strict
discipline which preparation for a contest with the choicest troops of
the mother country must involve.
Washington’s constitutional reticence deepened from his first assumption
of command. Frederick the Great once declared that “if he suspected that
his nightcap would betray his thoughts while he slept, he would burn
it.” Washington, like Frederick, and like Grant and Lee, great soldiers
of the American Civil War, largely owed his success and supremacy over
weak or jealous companions in arms to this subtle power. And this, with
Washington, was never a studied actor’s part in the drama of Revolution.
It was based upon a devout, reverential, and supreme devotion to country
and the right. His moral sense was delicate, and quick to discern the
great object of the people’s need and desire. He was also reverential in
recognition of an Almighty Father of all mankind, whose Providence he
regarded as constant, friendly, and supervising, in all the struggle
which America had undertaken for absolute independence. Under this
guidance, he learned how to act with judicial discretion upon the advice
of his subordinates, and then,—to execute his own sentence. Baron Jomini
pronounced Napoleon to have been his own best chief of staff; and such
was Washington. Congress discovered as the years slipped by, and
jealousies of Washington, competitions for office and for rank, and
rivalries of cities, sections, and partisans, endangered the safety of
the nation and the vital interests involved in the war, to trust his
judgment; and history has vindicated the wisdom of their conclusion. And
yet, with all this will-power in reserve, he was patient, tolerant,
considerate of the honest convictions of those with contrary opinions;
and so assigned officers, or detailed them upon special commissions,
that, when not overborne by Congress in the detail of some of its
importunate favorites, he succeeded in placing officers where their
weaknesses could not prejudice the interests of the country at large,
and where their faculties could be most fruitfully utilized.
If the thoughtful reader will for a moment recall the name of some
battlefield of the Revolution, or of any prominent military character
who was identified with some determining event of that war, he will
quickly notice how potentially the foresight of Washington either
directed the conditions of success, or wisely compensated the effects of
failure.
Washington never counted disappointments as to single acts of men, or
the operations of a single command, as determining factors in the
supreme matter of final success. The vaulting ambition, headstrong will,
and fiery daring of Arnold never lessened an appreciation of his real
merits, and he acquired so decided an affection for him, personally, and
was so disappointed that Congress did not honor his own request for
Arnold’s prompt promotion, at one time, that when his treason was fully
revealed, he could only exclaim, with deep emotion, “Whom now can we
trust?”
Even the undisguised jealousy of Charles Lee, his cross-purposes,
disobedience of orders, abuse of Congress, breaches of confidence, and
attempts to warp councils of war adversely to the judgment of the
Commander-in-Chief did not forfeit Washington’s recognition of that
officer’s general military knowledge and his ordinary wisdom in council.
These considerations fully introduce the Commander-in-Chief to the
reader, as he imagines the Soldier to be in his tent with the
commissions of subordinate officers before him.
He began his duties with the most minute inspection of the material with
which he was expected to carry on a contest with Great Britain. Every
company and regiment, their quarters, their arms, ammunition, and food
supplies, underwent the closest scrutiny. He accepted excuses for the
slovenliness of any command with the explicit warning that repetition of
such indifference or neglect would be sternly punished.
The troops had hardly been dismissed, after their first formal parade
for inspection, before a set repugnance to all proper instruction in the
details of a soldier’s duty became manifest. The old method of fighting
Indians singly, through thickets, and in small detachments, each man for
himself, was clung to stubbornly, as if the army were composed of
individual hunters, who must each “bag his own game.” Guard duty was
odious. Superiority by virtue of rank was questioned, denied, or
ignored. The abuses of places of trust, especially in the quartermaster
and commissary departments, and the prostitution of these
responsibilities to private ends were constant. “Profanity, vulgarity,
and all the vices of an undisciplined mass became frightful,” as
Washington himself described the condition, “so soon as any immediate
danger passed by.” To sum up the demoralization of the army, he could
only add, “They have been trained to have their own way too long.”
But the good, the faithful, and the pure were hardly less restive under
the new restraint, and few appreciated the vital value of some
absolutely supreme control. The public moneys and public property were
held to belong to everybody, because Congress represented everybody.
Commands were considered despotic orders, and exact details were but
another system of slavery.
Nor was this the whole truth. Even officers of high position, whether
graded above or below their own expectations, found time to indulge in
petty neglect of plain instructions, and in turn to usurp authority, in
defiance of discipline and the paramount interests of the people at
large.
The inspection of the Commander-in-Chief had been made. Immediately, the
troops were put to work perfecting earthworks, building redoubts, and
policing camp. “Observance of the Sabbath” was enforced. Officers were
court-martialed, and soldiers were tried, for “swearing, gambling,
fraud, and lewdness.” A thorough system of guard and picket duty was
established, and the nights were made subservient to rest, in the place
of dissipation and revelry. Discipline was the first indication that a
Soldier was in command.
These statements, which are brief extracts from his published Orders,
fall far below a just review of the situation as given by Washington
himself. From some of his reports to Congress it would seem as if, for a
moment, he almost despaired of bringing the army to a condition when he
might confidently take it into an open field, and place it, face to
face, against any well-appointed force of even inferior numbers. That he
was enabled so to discipline an army that, as at Brandywine, they
willingly marched to meet a British and Hessian force one-half greater
than his own in numbers, became a complete justification of the patience
and wise persistence with which he handled the raw troops in camp about
Cambridge, in the year 1775.
His next care was “the practical art of bringing the army fully equipped
to the battlefield,” known as the “Logistics of War.” The army was
deficient in every element of supply. The men, who still held their
Colonial obligation to be supreme, came and went just as their
engagements would permit and the comfort of their families required.
Desertion was regarded as nothing, or at the worst but a venial offence,
and there were times when the American army about Boston, through nine
miles of investment, was less in number than the British garrison within
the city.
But the deficiency in the number of the men was not so conspicuous and
disappointing as the want of powder, lead, tools, arms, tents, horses,
carts, and medical supplies. Ordinary provisions had become abundant.
The adjacent country fed them liberally and supplied many home-made
luxuries, not always the best nourishment for a soldier’s life; but it
was difficult to persuade the same men that all provisions must enter
into a general commissariat, and be issued to all alike; and that such
stores must be accumulated, and neither expended lavishly nor sold at a
bargain so soon as a surplus remained unexpended. Such articles as
cordage, iron, horseshoes, lumber, fire-wood, and every possible thing
which might be required for field, garrison, or frontier service, were
included in his inventory of essential supplies.
In his personal expenditures of the most trivial item of public
property, Washington kept a minute and exact account. Of the single
article of powder, he once stated that his chief supply was furnished by
the enemy, for, during one period, the armed vessels with which he
patrolled the coast captured more powder than Congress had been able to
furnish him in several months.
Delay in securing such essential supplies increased the difficulty of
bringing the troops themselves to a full recognition of their military
needs and responsibilities, so that the grumbling query, “What’s the use
of copying the red-coats’ fuss and training?” still pervaded camp. Plain
men from the country who had watched the martinet exactness of British
drills in the city, where there was so much of ornament and “style,” had
no taste for like subjection to control over their personal bearing and
wardrobe. A single order of General Howe to the Boston garrison
illustrates what the Yankees termed the “red-coats’ fuss.” He issued an
order, reprimanding soldiers “whose hair was not smooth but badly
powdered; who had no frills to their shirts; whose leggings hung in a
slovenly manner about their knees, and other soldierly neglects, which
must be immediately remedied.” This seemed to the American soldier more
like some “nursing process;” and while right, on general principles, was
not the chief requirement for good fighting zeal.
For many weeks it had been the chief concern of the American
Commander-in-Chief how to make a fair show of military preparation,
while all things were in such extreme confusion. Washington, as well as
Howe, had his fixed ideas of military discipline, and he, also, issued
orders respecting the habits, personal bearing, and neatness of the men;
closing on one occasion, thus emphatically: “Cards and games of chance
are prohibited. At this time of public distress, men may find enough to
do in the service of their God and country, without abandoning
themselves to vice and immorality.” In anticipation of active service,
and to rebuke the freedom with which individuals inclined to follow
their own bent of purpose, he promulgated the following ringing caution:
“It may not be amiss for the troops to know, that if any man in action
shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without
the orders of his commanding officer, he will be instantly shot down as
an example of cowardice; cowards having too frequently disconcerted the
best troops by their dastardly behavior.”
Amid all this stern preparation for the battlefield and its incidents,
the most careful attention was given to the comfort and personal
well-being of the privates in the ranks. While obedience was required of
all, of whatever grade or rank, the cursing or other abuse of the
soldier was considered an outrage upon his rights as a citizen, and
these met his most scorching denunciation and punishment.
A Soldier was in command of the Continental Army of America.