Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Part VIII: A Weak General and Bad Counselors

Looming behind all of the men serving as officers in the Continental Army, of course, either as rival or patron, was George Washington himself. And though neither the dedication nor humility which he displayed during his service as Commander-in-Chief of that force ought to be called into question – from refusing pay at the outset in 1775 to resigning his commission on his own initiative in 1783 – he was himself given to fits of ego over the course of his military career. During his service in the Seven Years War with the colonial Virginia Regiment, for example, he not infrequently came into conflict with British Army officers over the relative authority which each of them claimed to possess. Royal officers of lesser rank more than once asserted superiority over the colonially-appointed Washington, and he was known to complain to his commanders at being so callously disregarded. That the remedy which he settled upon was to pursue a royal commission for himself should not come as much of a surprise. Becoming an officer of the British Army would have elevated Washington’s social standing among his fellow planters substantially at the same time it served the function of firmly establishing his fitness to command mixed regular and colonial troops. With this aim in mind, he accordingly attempted to make himself indispensable to General Edward Braddock (1695-1755), newly arrived in the colonies and tasked with leading an expedition against the French position at Fort Duquesne – later renamed Fort Pitt, later still known as Pittsburgh – in the hope that his services would be appropriately rewarded. While Braddock subsequently came to trust and depend on the young Virginian for both logistical support and tactical advice, to the point that Washington was certain Braddock would have granted him a commission if asked, events would unfortunately transpire so as to prevent this or any similar outcome.

Braddock, history famously records, was killed at the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9^th, 1755. And though Washington managed to rally the slain general’s dispirited men sufficiently to fight a rear guard action and permit an organized retreat – for which he became something of a hero among his fellow Virginians – his efforts did not generate much in the way of goodwill with Braddock’s successors. Both William Shirley (1694-1771), then Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and Lord Loudon (1705-1782), then Governor of Virginia, rebuffed his request for a regular army commission, the latter going so far as to humiliate him in front of his aides. Stung yet still dutiful, Washington continued for a time to serve alongside his British counterparts and superiors to the best of his abilities – such as when he accompanied General John Forbes (1707-1759) on a second, far more successful expedition to capture Fort Duquesne in 1758 – all the while becoming increasingly resigned to the fact that the recognition he coveted was simply not forthcoming. Upon returning to Virginia from the Forbes Expedition early in 1759, he accordingly resigned his post with the Virginia Regiment and returned to Mount Vernon as once more a private citizen.

Washington’s experiences during the Seven Years War were most definitely formative ones, providing him both with a sense of the rigors and requirements of 18^th century warfare as well as an appreciation for the countervailing pressures of ambition and restraint within a military hierarchy. He did not wholly cease to be ambitious, or course, or to pursue those personal objectives which he most ardently desired, though his persistence in seeking a royal commission had been a source of irritation among a number of his commanders. Indeed, even his early patron, Lt. Governor of Virginia Robert Dinwiddie (1692-1770), at length became frustrated with his young protégé’s near-constant stream of recommendations, requests, and complaints, and started to suspect Washington of dishonesty and mismanagement when anonymous reports to that effect were published in the Virginia Gazette in September, 1756. Seeming to take these incidents to heart, Washington thereafter became much more patient and much more cautious when attempting to advance and protect his public reputation. When, some twenty years after his name first became known in America, the Second Continental Congress offered him the post of Commander-in-Chief of its prospective army, he accordingly behaved with a great deal of humility, expressed his gratitude at having been so chosen, and professed it as his earnest hope that he would live up to the confidence that had been placed in him by his fellow delegates. In spite of these kinds of professions, however, Washington remained acutely conscious of the manner in which he was perceived, his statute as Commander-in-Chief, and potential threats to his authority in the form of jealous or disgruntled subordinates. Consider, by way of example, the degree to which Washington actively attempted to maintain his presence at the peak of the American republic’s nascent military hierarchy in spite of the various reverses that threatened him and it.

Despite leading a successful campaign to recapture British-occupied Boston which culminated in the early spring of 1776, the next several months for the Continental Army proved to be among the most trying in the entire course of the Revolutionary War. Chased out of Brooklyn on August 27^th by British General William Howe (1729-1814) and forced to retreat across the East River into Manhattan on August 30^th, Washington’s forces then failed to stop a British landing at Kip’s Bay on September 15^th, barely held their ground at Harlem Heights on September 16^th, and suffered a series of defeats at White Plains on October 26^th, Fort Washington on November 16^th, and Fort Lee on November 20^th. Retreating through New Jersey, dispirited, underfed, shorthanded, and half-frozen, the five thousand troops that remained to Washington – compared to the twenty-three thousand he’d started the campaign with – accordingly had little reason to place much confidence in the tactical prowess of their commander. Nor, arguably, did Congress, thereby placing Washington in a very precarious position. Had the string of defeats which followed the lifting of the Siege of Boston into the winter of 1776 continued unbroken, Washington would surely have found himself without a command one way or another. Sheer attrition may have bled away his forces, Congress may have opted to surrender to the British, or he might have been replaced as Commander-in-Chief. Something, in short, needed to change if the hero of Monongahela was to retain the preeminent station to which he had but a year and a half prior been elevated.

A more cautious commander – i.e. a less ambitious one – might not have come to that conclusion. Weighing his chances of securing a victory after so many consecutive defeats, absent fresh men, supplies, and favorable weather, a man of humbler character might fairly have determined that his first duty should have been to preserve what was left of the Continental Army through the winter so that it could be passed along to whomever Congress chose as his successor in the spring of 1777. There was far more at stake than one man’s ego, after all, and far more to gain than personal glory. Washington did not do this, of course. Instead, though it may have ended the Revolutionary War there and then, he resolved to engineer a victory from the jaws of defeat. It was a very risky proposition. Supplies, as aforementioned, were limited, some seventeen hundred men were unfit for duty due to injury or illness, and though the arrival of additional soldiers under the commands of General Gates and General Lee served to buttress Washington’s weakened forces, many of the men’s enlistments were due to expire at Christmas and morale was generally quite low. In spite of these difficulties, however, and notwithstanding the harsh winter conditions of central New Jersey, the Commander-in-Chief – while he yet still bore that title – gathered information, planned well and carefully, and determined finally to cross the Delaware River on December 26^th with some six thousand men to strike a garrison of German mercenary troops from the state of Hesse-Kassel quartered at Trenton.

The resulting battle, though tactically of limited significance at the time, has since become known as one of the most famous engagements in the history of the United States. While the crossing of the ice-choked Delaware proved so difficult that over half of the man assigned to the attack were forced to turn back before it even began, the Hessians were caught completely off guard and surrendered after only a short – though reportedly still quite intense – exchange of fire. Almost one thousand Hessians were captured at the cost of minimal American casualties, thus effectively dispelling the notion that colonial troops could not successfully overcome a trained, professional European force. At the same time, the victorious Americans carried the garrison’s supplies back across the Delaware along with their prisoners, thus significantly alleviating the potential resource crisis that loomed on the horizon. Congress naturally made the most of the news, and enlistments increased significantly for the campaign season that followed. The winter was still a harsh one, and desertion remained a chronic issue for the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War, but Washington’s victory at Trenton on December 26^th and at Princeton on January 3^rd had effectively given his fellow countrymen reason to hope that the cause of independence was not yet lost. The struggle would continue, notwithstanding the loss of New York to the British, and a final victory was yet possible.

Though he undoubtedly considered his actions in the moment to be wholly in service of the American cause, it would be difficult to deny that Washington himself also benefited personally from his victory at Trenton by effectively erasing his previous defeats in the face of a minor but unexpected triumph. Going into 1777, his reputation was arguably at its lowest ebb. New York had been lost, over two thousand of his men had been captured during the retreat from Manhattan, and what remained of the forces under his command were divided and disconsolate. If ever the likes of Charles Lee and Horatio Gates truly desired to displace their superior, it would be difficult to imagine a better time than that. By the beginning of the New Year, however, the tenor of the moment had changed dramatically. The American cause was yet still in danger –Washington’s victories in New Jersey having done relatively little to shift the actual balance of power – and there remained further months of privation ahead for the Continental Army. But the mood of the fight had shifted. Though the Patriots suffered, they were still in the fight, and Washington was the man to whom this miracle was owed. There were more tribulations he was due to face, at Valley Forge the following winter – during which some two thousand men died of disease and/or malnutrition – and in the form of a conspiracy intent on replacing him discovered at around the same time, but the seed of his glory had already been planted.

This isn’t to say that Washington didn’t make a point of nurturing his reputation from time to time in the years that followed. Humble though he has famously been depicted – and though certain of his actions undeniably were – he showed no inclination during the events of the Revolutionary War to step aside in favor of some rival or other who promised more decisive results. Fortunately for him, the master of Mount Vernon was canny enough to understand that he need not always involve himself personally in the preservation of his rank and title in order to see precisely that end achieved. During the events of the aforementioned conspiracy, for example, Washington responded to rumors of dissatisfaction with his performance in Congress and the Army by more or less allowing events to play out of their own accord. Having earlier tacitly threatened to resign as Commander-in-Chief in response to the persistent entreaties of an Irish-born Continental Army officer named Thomas Conway (1735-1800) to promotion over and ahead of his American-born cohorts, Washington took the news of Conway suggesting to Horatio Gates that, “A weak General and bad Counselors” were near to ruining the country with comparative calm. In reference to a letter by Conway to Gates that his subordinate and confidante William Alexander (1726-1783) had placed in his hand, he in wrote to Conway in November, 1777 to confirm the truth of what he’d read. Conway unsurprisingly demurred, acknowledging that he had written to Gates but that the passage in question was an entire fabrication. Whether or not Washington truly believed this explanation, he notably took no further action directly against either Conway or Gates.

Conway, his petitions having at long last paid dividends, was appointed Inspector General of the newly-created Board of War in December, 1777, the purpose of which body was ostensibly to superintend the war effort on behalf of Congress and over the authority of Washington. Thus threatened in his role as sole commander of the Continental Army by a man whose sympathies were demonstrably and decidedly against him – and who, in his new position, could have sidelined or even removed him with relative ease – Washington made it known the Congress the contents and the source of the letter which he had previously brought to the attention of Conway. Far from a fabrication, it had found its way into the aforementioned Alexander’s hands directly from those of James Wilkinson (1757-1825), an aide to its recipient. It was at this point that Gates rendered his aforementioned apology and Conway, having now been removed from the Board of War and concerned that his influence in Congress was at and end, threatened to resign his commission in March, 1778. Unfortunately for him, Congress accepted. Shortly thereafter – perhaps at the urging of Washington, perhaps not – Wilkinson challenged his former commander Gates to a duel and Washington’s supporter John Cadwalader (1742-1786) challenged Conway. While Gates apologized sufficiently to have the affair successfully called off, Conway was ultimately shot through the mouth by Cadwalader on July 4^th, 1778. Though he survived, he departed to France shortly thereafter, having begged Washington’s forgiveness and agreed forthwith to leave the Continental Army.

         

That Charles Lee and Thomas Conway each suffered similar fates after having challenged the authority of George Washington is most definitely worthy of reflection. Certainly, these men were each responsible for much of what befell them in consequence of their blatant egotism in the face of the ongoing national crisis that was the Revolutionary War. While their subordinates were being killed by the score at Brandywine and Long Island, or else dying of sickness or starvation at Valley Forge, Lee and Conway worked with their allies in Congress to obtain the recognition which they felt they respectively deserved. Humiliation was the least of what they deserved, not to mention discharge from the Continental Army and the foreclosure of their hopes of preferment and prestige. But that was not all that they received. Though Washington himself, as aforementioned, took little or no action against either man once it became clear that they were prepared to move against him, his presence would yet be felt. Lee was shot in a duel by John Laurens, loyal aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief. Conway was shot by John Cadwalader, who had fought alongside Washington in New Jersey during the winter of 1776/1777. While it remains impossible to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not the master of Mount Vernon either ordered or encouraged these men to challenge his rivals according to the social mores of the time, it would be hard to deny that the end result in either case was both convenient and effective. Maintaining an outward aloofness from the matter, Washington could claim that he was not responsible for the off-duty behavior of his younger subordinates, and that he was in fact wholly unaware of the challenges and the duels until substantially after the fact. Laurens and Cadwalader had acted of their own accord, hotheaded young mavericks that they were. But in so doing, they had extracted apologies from Lee and Conway at the same time that they had reduced them to a state of intense physical humiliation. With the fate of these men as examples, other potential rivals of Washington would doubtless be made to think twice before placing themselves in the path of his loyal coterie of officers. Not only would they likely suffer defeat, but the honor which their efforts intended to augment may yet have ended up dashed to pieces in the most public manner imaginable.

Taking all of this to heart, one may naturally be given to ask why it was that Washington voluntarily surrendered the office he had seemingly spent so much time and energy defending at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783. As is so often the case, the correct answer may in fact be the most obvious. Having been appointed to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the spring of 1775, Washington’s tenure had lasted over eight years by the time the Treaty of Paris was sealed and the war between Britain and the United States concluded. And while, though variously forced to confront tactical reverses, chronic shortages of manpower, resource scarcity, harsh weather, scheming rivals, political machinations, and at least one attempted mutiny, he had managed to sustain a reputation for competence and dedication, even the most successful occupant of such an office could be forgiven for growing fatigued. It is possible, as has been speculated since his aforementioned resignation, that Washington could instead have made himself king of America. The Continental Army was with him, the American people loved him, and Congress could likely not have resisted for very long or very effectively. In addition to quite possibly being too much the ardent republican to grasp at such power of his own accord, however, Washington was also likely already satisfied with what had been able to achieve. From chafing under the imperiousness of British officers in the 1750s while also coveting the prestige which they wore as though born to it, he had managed to best the entire British military establishment against substantial odds and with distressingly limited resources. It was not an easy road, to be sure, and had more than once nearly led to defeat. But in the process of following it, Washington had managed to fully justify the confidence his countrymen had placed in him in 1775 while at the same time forging a reputation from himself as America’s indispensable man. Little more could be done to burnish this image, and any number of things done to tarnish it. And so, likely as tired as he was satisfied, Washington opted to take retirement as his reward, and surrendered that power for which he had struggled so hard but which could arguably do him no more good than it had.

Notwithstanding George Washington’s evident rejection of something like monarchical glory in 1783, the example which he and his fellow Continental Army officers set for their countrymen through their often undisguisedly vainglorious behavior was understandably a source of concern for people like Patrick Henry in 1788. Faced with the proposition of the United States of America successfully adopting a far more centralized and energetic form of government than provided by the Articles of Confederation, it stands to reason that he would have been given to ask whether the evident desire of the Framers to create a more conventionally impressive American republic had anything to do with the fact that so many of them had so recently shown themselves to covet fame above all else. Of the fifty-five delegates who were sent to the Philadelphia Convention by their respective state governments in May, 1787, twenty-nine had served in some capacity in the armed forces organized by Congress beginning in 1775. Washington was the most famous of the bunch, of course, and the one whose record of service was the most well-known at the time. But if even he – paragon of virtue and self-sacrifice that he was – had at times been motivated by less-than selfless intentions, what could the twenty-eight others say for themselves by way of dispelling the appearance of ego or vanity?

What could Alexander Hamilton say, who, before he became Washington’s aide, passed up similar offers for the chance to win glory on the battlefield, and who was willing to risk his life unnecessarily at Yorktown so that he would not have to retire from the Continental Army as the Commander-in-Chief’s favorite clerk? And New Jersey’s Jonathan Dayton (1760-1824), whose service in the Continental Army began at age fifteen? And North Carolina’s William Blount (1749-1800), who served as a paymaster for the Continental Army at the same time that his family was selling it provisions? Each of these men would have conceivably been hard-pressed to affirm that their relationship with the concept of an American military establishment was not in the slightest bit colored by feelings of self-interest or vanity. Hamilton’s reputation was arguably grounded upon his having served as Washington’s aide, and his sense of personal pride was by his own admission closely tied to his service in the front-lines during the war. Dayton had meanwhile known nothing but the Army between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three – during which time he doubtless imbibed the self-importance of his fellow officers as an apprentice learns a trade by observing his master – while Blount had helped to further enrich his family at the same time that he established for himself a record for public service. The Continental Army, in short, had done these men well during their time spent in its ranks, and it would have been accordingly far from ridiculous to suggest in 1788 that they – and others like them – might have sought to impart the nascent American republic with some aspect of its essential character.

Under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, after all, the United States of America could hardly have been described as splendid. Daring wasn’t rewarded by Congress any longer, opportunities for advancement were minimal, and there were hardly fortunes to be made fulfilling its minuscule material needs. Creating a more complex, more powerful, and more active government would naturally change all of that. Such an entity would require far more men and far more resources to sustain itself and its necessary appendages – “An army, a navy, and a number of things” – and would understandably be given to seek opportunities abroad to at once test its strength and justify its existence. What other purpose could such a thing serve? What good was having the ability to raise an army and levy taxes if the men and the money weren’t going to be directed towards winning a yet more impressive prize? Patrick Henry certainly seemed to think he knew the answer to questions such as these. The proposed constitution having been drafted in no small part by a coterie of former Continental Army officers whose experiences during the late war had affirmed their affection for military prestige, he no doubt feared that the expansion of federal power that they suggested would inevitably lead to larger armies, more wars, and the gradual erosion of American liberty at the behest of a few men’s vulnerable egos. Washington, it was true, no longer seemed interested in fame and reputation, and he had been the wellspring of much of the squabbling and the glory-seeking that had gone on in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. At the same time, regardless of what his reputation and his recent disinterest in power might have amounted to, he had also shown himself to be quite tolerant – and even encouraging – of those of his protégés whose eagerness for recognition burned brighter than his own. Washington’s participation in the Philadelphia Convention – as no less than its president – therefore doubtless presented to his fellow Virginian Henry a decidedly ambiguous prospect. Would the most popular man in America restrain the vainglorious impulses of his former subordinates or would he allow them to use his name to once more seek the glory which they believed to be their due? Though neither Henry nor anyone could say for certain which it would be, his suspicions were certainly well-founded in the meantime.