George Washington, 250 Years Ago
[guest post by JVW]
On his forty-fourth birthday, some 250 years ago, George Washington sat at winter camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts, taking stock of the momentous events of the past year and invoking all of his abilities to ensure that he could place an army in the field come spring, thereby keeping the revolutionary hopes arrive. A Continental Congress was sitting in Philadelphia, with its delegates attempting to coordinate a multi-colony plan to do battle with the world’s greatest military power. King George III had formally declared the American colonies to be in rebellion, and various towns and boroughs from the northernmost part of Massachusetts (now Maine) to the southernmost part of Georgia were openly discussing the idea of independence from Great Britain.
The previous year had been quite the whirlwind for the Man from Mount Vernon. After the battles of Lexington and Concord in April, the Continental Congress had gathered in Philadelphia and two months later selected him to be Commander-in-Chief of all Continental forces, an appointment that the General humbly declared that “my abilities & Military experience may not be equal to the extensive & important Trust” and wrote home to Mrs. Washington that “far from seeking this appointment I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it.” At this same time, British and Continental forces clashed at Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, adjacent to Bunker Hill which would mistakenly carry the name of the battle for posterity. While the redcoats had technically won the field on Breed’s Hill, it had come at an enormous cost of 1,000 casualties (including 226 killed), roughly twice as many as suffered by the Colonials. The Siege of Boston was underway.
The General soon left Philadelphia for Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, where he assumed command of a rather rag-tag outfit assembled to implausibly withstand a British attempt to drive the New England army (also sometimes referred to as the Boston army) out of Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk Counties. The British held the city of Boston, including the all-important port, as well as neighboring Charlestown. The Colonists, under the command of General Nathaniel Greene, held the outlying areas. When the new Commander-in-Chief arrived he immediately saw that his army, such that it was, lacked uniforms, gunpowder, cannon, and ammunition. He did have about 16,000 men of whom roughly 14,000 were available for duty. Another 1,500 were injured or sick (camp fever, epidemic typhus spread by lice, was a common presence and typhoid fever was a killer). The one supply Washington’s Army did have was food, as the surrounding New England farms were in the midst of a verdant growing year.
Fortunately for the slowly-developing Continental Army, British General William Howe was content to wait for the arrival of a full compliment of reinforcements promised to him by Parliament before launching an all-out attack, likely spooked by the carnage his troops had endured on Breed’s Hill. At the same time, his Continental counterpart had approved a rather audacious plan to invade Quebec, partly due to the success of Colonel Benedict Arnold of the Connecticut Militia and Major General Ethan Allen of the Vermont Militia, who together led the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York earlier in May. General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Arnold (who now held a commission in the Continental Army) were given command of the Quebec offensive. Their aim was two-fold: prevent the British from controlling the Hudson River up to Lake George thereby cutting off New England from the mid-Atlantic, and perhaps enticing the French-Canadians into joining the Revolution on the side of the Colonists. Though the end result was a disastrous defeat in Quebec City at the end of the year, the campaign did end up forcing the British commanders in Canada to request relief from Boston, which further prevented General Howe from continuing with the siege.
A strong compliment of British troops at last sailed into Boston in early December 1775, but by then the weather had grown too fierce for the British to entertain any serious military offensive until spring. Both sides hunkered down for the New England winter: the British relatively snug in Boston and Charlestown while the Patriots were subjected to the cold of rural Cambridge and environs, though it would be nowhere as severe as the army would experience in Valley Forge two winters later.
As 1776 broke, the sad news from Quebec City made its way to headquarters in Cambridge. The Patriots had not just suffered a complete defeat, but General Montgomery had been killed, Colonel Arnold was wounded, and Colonel Daniel Morgan of Virginia was captured (and would not be exchanged for an entire year). General Allen had been captured earlier in October, and would remain a British prisoner until May 1778. The only saving grace for the Continentals is that British General Guy Carleton decided to continue to defend Fort Saint-Jean rather than pursue and perhaps annihilate the retreating Continental forces.
With no battles to fight, General Washington undertook the tasks that tended to define much of his command: he wrote the Continental Congress imploring them to allocate more money for the arming, feeding, and pay for the troops; he tried to instill order and discipline in his men; he charmed and rebuked politicians as he saw necessary; he reviewed field reports and promoted or demoted officers as necessary; he mapped out strategies for spring campaigns; and he wrote and received dozens and dozens of letters both official and personal. On February 11, the General rode out to Dorchester Heights, south of Boston, to personally inspect fortifications for cannon captured at Fort Ticonderoga due to arrive in Cambridge soon. This would set the stage for a decisive development in the Siege of Boston.
Two-and-one-half centuries ago, on Thursday, February 22, 1776, George Washington was well immersed in what would be a six-year endurance test of his own resolve to see the war through. Though he continued to outwardly display all of the characteristics of bold and firm leadership, privately the daunting task in front of him was taking its toll. In a January 14 letter to his former secretary and confidant Colonel Joseph Reed, the General issues the usual complaints about lack of enlistments, a dearth of qualified officers, and the shortage of funds needed to outfit and pay an army. He then muses on how his life might be different had he turned down command:
I have often thought, how much happier I should have been, if, instead of accepting of a command under such Circumstances I had taken my Musket upon my Shoulder & enterd the Ranks, or, if I could have justified the Measure to Posterity, & my own Conscience, had retir’d to the back Country, & livd in a Wig-wam [. . . .]
He then snaps out of it and declares that if he can overcome the enlistment issue and have an army ready to fight in the spring, then “I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the Eyes of our Enemys; for surely if we get well throw this Month.” He ends with a solemn pledge to attack Boston the very first opportunity he gets, which will be the subject of our story next month.
– JVW
