The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (7 page)

The Baron confided his disappointment to William Gordon, a local pastor and friend of Samuel Adams. He believed that he “had been by some means neglected so as not to meet with the civilities that might justly be expected,” Gordon noted, and “felt strongly the disappointment of the expectations he had formed of the manners of the people in this quarter.”
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Steuben blamed his predicament on the leadership of the town, who were “almost as lackadaisical as certain people at Versailles,” he wrote in disgust to Beaumarchais. “I still do not understand what they did to get where they are today.” But he also worried about the attitude of Congress and of General Washington. Steuben had written to them from Portsmouth and still had not heard a word, welcoming or otherwise. His sense of dejection worsened when he and Francy encountered a handful of younger French officers who had been sent to America a year before by Beaumarchais and Deane. They had not received even the slightest encouragement from Congress. Humiliated and penniless, they awaited the first ship that could take them back to France. Steuben commiserated with them, and tried to persuade them to stay, but deep down he took their situation as an ill omen. If Congress was so bullheaded as to let these talented professionals go, then what kind of treatment could he expect?
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Had the Baron exercised a little more forbearance, though, he would have found some encouragement. Congress and George Washington had already replied to Steuben's letters from Portsmouth. Both
were delighted to hear of his arrival, and in fact Congress was prepared to pay all of his expenses.

But the news did not reach Boston fast enough. Having heard nothing, and with his funds and his patience tapped out after five weeks in town, Steuben prepared to proceed directly to the seat of government in York, Pennsylvania. John Hancock and the state of Connecticut forwarded him some cash to defray further travel expenses. After purchasing fresh horses, a wagon, some supplies, and new blue-and-buff uniforms for his assistants, the Baron set out from Boston on the morning of January 14, 1778. Ahead of him lay a four-hundred-mile trip in the dead of winter.

 

D
URING THE COURSE
of the Revolutionary War, the cause of American independence would endure more dark times than happy ones. The winter of 1777–78 was no exception, and though there were worse winters in many regards, that of '77–78 probably deserves the epithet “gloomy” more than any other. It was not just the uncertainty of the hoped-for French alliance, nor the disagreeable weather, nor the desperate shortage of willing manpower to fill the dwindling ranks of the army. The thing that infused the season with despair was the conflict within—not that between Patriot and Tory, but among those who should have been united, the rebel leadership itself. The Revolution appeared to be tearing itself apart from the inside.

Because of Washington's almost miraculous victories at Trenton and Princeton, the previous year had commenced with a healthy measure of hope. But the British were not about the allow the rebels any respite, and so they would take to the field again in 1777 with a vengeance. Lord William Howe, commanding the main British force in New York, would move on Philadelphia, wresting that symbol of rebellion out of Patriot hands. Meanwhile, a three-pronged invasion of New York State would, if successful, amputate New England from the rest of the colonies. The latter enterprise proved to be a spectacular failure. Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates—sometimes unkindly called “Granny”
for his matronly appearance and fussy demeanor—stopped the southward advance of General Burgoyne's army at Freeman's Farm, and then thoroughly trounced Burgoyne at Bemis Heights, two separate actions collectively called the Battle of Saratoga. To add to this shame, a makeshift band of New England militia forces ambushed a portion of Burgoyne's army at Bennington, near the present-day border of New York and Vermont. The victories were almost as reinvigorating as Trenton and Princeton had been, and more valuable in some ways, for they provided Vergennes with proof that the war was winnable and therefore deserving of French support.

Not far south, things were going much worse for George Washington. In June 1777, Howe launched his assault on Philadelphia after British transports carried his army from New York by sea and up the Chesapeake Bay. Disembarking at Head of Elk, Maryland, the British moved north by land to menace the capital. As Howe had predicted, Washington would not give up the city without a fight. The two armies clashed on the Brandywine Creek, near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on September 11. The Continentals fought bravely but were overwhelmed by superior numbers. With Washington's army bruised and bleeding, Howe was free to march directly on Philadelphia, and on September 26 the British took possession of the town. Congress fled, first to Lancaster, then to York, where they would remain until the following summer.

Washington refused to give up just yet. Barely a week after the British paraded in triumph on Philadelphia's streets, he hatched a plan to drive Howe out. On October 4, at Germantown, just a few miles north of Philadelphia, the Continentals tried to envelop and crush the outnumbered British garrison. Washington's men fought well, and at first had the advantage of surprise, but the Redcoats quickly recovered, and ultimately the Americans were driven off in defeat.

The disappointing outcome of the Philadelphia campaign of 1777 somewhat dampened the jubilation over Saratoga, but the defeat's significance went well beyond its impact on American morale. Brandywine and Germantown spoke volumes about the martial qualities of the Con
tinental Army. The men fought like demons at both battles; they had a tenacity and spirit that even their opponents acknowledged. But they lacked the ability to maneuver and change formation quickly, and the restraint that would allow them to deliver devastating volleys of musketry at close range against an advancing enemy. Nor were they comfortable with the use of the bayonet, and in eighteenth-century warfare that weapon still have a very real tactical value. The Continentals wanted, in short, the training that would permit them to fight the British in the conventional European fashion.

Brandywine and Germantown did not destroy the morale of the common soldiers in the ranks. But in the upper echelons of command, at Washington's headquarters and in the halls of Congress, the defeats around Philadelphia had a toxic effect. That campaign, coupled with the humiliating loss of the capital city, emboldened Washington's critics. A growing chorus of voices, secretive but unmistakable, questioned his leadership abilities and his commitment to the cause of independence. In the closing months of 1777, the general became convinced that there was a plot afoot to seek his downfall and replacement. He was right.

From the very first day that Washington assumed command of the army in 1775, he had had his detractors. Other, more experienced, soldiers, such as Horatio Gates and Charles Lee, felt themselves far more qualified to lead. Washington's elevation to supreme command especially rankled Lee. A professional soldier who had held a commission in the British army and a generalship in the Polish army, Lee had genuinely expected to be offered the position that was given to Washington. Lee served under Washington anyway, as a major general in command of a full division, but he never attempted to hide his disdain for his superior. At times, particularly during the unfortunate New York campaign of 1776, Lee's contempt manifested itself in conduct that bordered on outright insubordination.

Lee could not do much harm to Washington at the end of 1777—he had been taken prisoner by the British in December 1776—but there were plenty of others who mirrored his sentiments. Lee's fellow
British veteran Horatio Gates—an unimaginative man perhaps, but ambitious and self-righteous—thought poorly of Washington, too. The Baron de Kalb dubbed Washington “the weakest general” he had ever known.

What made this small group of disaffected generals dangerous was that they had political backing in Congress. The most vocal congressional opposition to Washington came from that faction known as the “true Whigs,” radical revolutionaries who firmly believed that a sense of patriotic duty—civic virtue—was in itself sufficient to guarantee victory over the British. Men such as Thomas Mifflin and Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania, and Sam Adams and James Lovell of Massachusetts, eschewed any measure that played to self-interest, convinced that virtue would lead all true patriots—military or civilian—to do the right thing. It was an impractical stance, to be sure, but in wartime it was dangerous, too. As a rule, the Whigs did not like the idea of a standing professional army, which they saw as a necessary evil at best; they far preferred reliance upon a militia of virtuous citizens. Washington represented everything they opposed, for he was both the commander and chief advocate of America's standing army. Worse still, he had been unwilling to risk the destruction of the Continental Army to save Philadelphia. He lacked the kind of virtue they were looking for in a patriotic general.

As 1777 drew to a close, the anti-Washington elements in Congress and within the army command coalesced into a coordinated plot to have the general-in-chief removed from command and replaced by Horatio Gates, the darling of the true Whigs. In Congress, the newly constituted Board of War, created in November 1777 to take over primary direction of the war effort, was slanted from the beginning against Washington. Three of its four active members—Gates, Mifflin, and Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts—were inimical to the commander. Soon one of Washington's own generals—the Irish-born Thomas Conway, a veteran of the French army—expressed the utmost disdain for Washington. “Heaven has been determined to save your Country,” Conway carped to Gates, “or a weak General and bad Coun
cellors would have ruind it.” Washington and his supporters caught wind of this irresponsible talk, and the fight was on.

The resulting power struggle, which has come down through history as the “Conway Cabal,” reached its peak in January–February 1778. Even as Washington and his allies moved decisively to squelch it that winter—Washington proved to be a much more agile political opponent than any of the true Whigs had anticipated—its poisonous effects could not help but trickle down into the army itself. When added to the fall of Philadelphia, the imminent expiration of enlistment terms in the army, and the rigors of the Valley Forge winter, it cast a pall over the Cause as 1778 dawned. Both the army and the Cause were sick, and they would need a strong dose of stern medicine if they were to survive the winter and face their opponents in the next campaign with any hope of success.
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T
HE
B
ARON DE
S
TEUBEN
knew something of the situation into which he was headed. His hosts in Boston had not been able to hide the fact that there was was something amiss in Pennsylvania that winter. “Our army (if army it might be called) were encamped at Valley Forge,” Duponceau noted tersely, “destitute…of every thing but courage and patriotism; and what was worse than all, disaffection was spreading through the land.”
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Steuben knew, too, that he was not guaranteed a warm handshake from Congress or from Washington, for as he suspected, the sentiment in both quarters had turned against foreign officers. Not six months before, the Marquis de Lafayette—already in possession of a major general's commission, signed by Silas Deane—had met with an icy reception in Philadelphia. James Lovell, the sharp-tongued Whig from Massachusetts, had harangued him loudly and in public on the steps of Independence Hall, telling the astonished marquis that his services were not needed.
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Things had been going even worse for the foreigners since then. Almost on the very day that Steuben and company had departed Paris,
Congress had decreed that all commissions given out by Silas Deane—“this weak or roguish man,” as Lovell called him—be nullified. In November 1777, Congress recalled Deane from his post. Even more unsettling was the fact that Deane's most vocal enemies in Congress, the brothers Richard Henry Lee and Arthur Lee, were on good terms with the current president, Henry Laurens of South Carolina. Washington was under pressure to stifle foreign intrusion into the officer corps. When Lafayette and the Baron de Kalb were given generalships, it unleashed a storm of protest from envious American-born officers. Washington could not abide that kind of grousing, especially when he agreed with the general tone of it. Steuben, as a foreigner and one of Deane's creatures, did not appear to have much of a chance.

Map of the northeastern United States, 1777

First, Steuben would have to get to York. In January 1778, that was easier said than done. With at most an additional servant or two to accompany them, and a guide provided by Hancock, the group—Steuben, Francy, Duponceau, Des Epiniers, Ponthière, Carl Vogel, and Azor—trudged along the roads that took them west through Massachusetts, into western Connecticut and to the Hudson Valley and beyond. They made remarkably good time, given the difficulties of winter travel in eighteenth-century New England and the special precautions they had to take. John Hancock had warned them to be on their guard for Loyalists en route. Tories were thick in the Massachusetts backcountry, and British successes in recent months had emboldened them.