Being George Washington (11 page)

He’d be damned if he took a rebel musket ball through the neck before he got there.

February 2, 1778

York, Pennsylvania

Inside the brick and log Golden Plough Tavern, the Continental Congress’s president, Henry Laurens, was having a hard time. “Laurens,” the angriest of his adversaries said, jabbing his finger at him, “when will you stop defending your friend Washington? The game is over. Gates is the general we want—the general the revolution needs! He wins! He
fights
!”

“Yes, Henry,” pronounced another congressman, a balding man barely over five feet, who busied himself tapping the remains of burnt tobacco from a white clay pipe that measured a full half yard long. “The revolution,” he continued, “is bigger than any one man—even if he
is
as tall as General Washington!”

Even Henry Laurens had to chuckle at that one.

At that moment, a weary traveler entered through the Golden Plough’s heavy red wooden front door. Garbed in white buckskin, he could not help but catch every patron’s eye, and before he had reached the bar, excited shouts erupted.

“It’s Daniel Morgan!”

For they knew Morgan had fought at the recent Battle of Saratoga. They clamored for firsthand news of it and how General Horatio Gates had vanquished Britain’s General Burgoyne—and demanded to know what Morgan thought of the remarkable Gates. Morgan extended a calloused hand above his head as a crowd gathered around him.

“I’ll talk, if you buy!” he shouted and the crowd laughed. “And when I talk I’ll tell you the truth about Saratoga—and that cowering old woman Horatio Gates. If it were left up to him, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne would be drinking here with you instead of me.

At that the crowd began to quiet down.

“It was Benedict Arnold who led the charge and saved the day! Horatio Gates is not half the general George Washington—or even Johnny Burgoyne—is and that’s the truth, too! If you replace Washington, you can replace me! Half my army would march home to Virginia if you did that! The other half would join the British—and hang the lot of
you
!

“Now, who’s buying?”

The crowd had been stunned into silence. Morgan’s broad smile was met only by a host of blank stares.

“I’m buying!” exclaimed Henry Laurens, “for you and for the house!” Surveying his suddenly sheepish fellow congressmen, Laurens softly said, “Now, can we finally have the end of this foolish talk?”

“Yes,” said the small congressman with the big clay pipe, “but only if we drink a toast.”

“A toast?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” he answered, with a laugh, knowing he was beaten, “a toast, to Daniel Morgan—and to our commander in chief, George Washington!”

With that, the Congress spoke no more of Horatio Gates.

February 28, 1778

Valley Forge

“Eins!”

“Zwei!”

“Drei!”

“What the deuce is going on out there, General?” General Charles Lee asked Horatio Gates, who had recently arrived from New York, as the two Washington critics stood watching the unlikely scenario unfolding before them, “Are we the last officers in this Valley Forge to speak English? Lafayette! DeKalb! Pulaski! Now, this fellow! And he calls himself a baron, a general—and he is out there drilling troops like a sergeant! They can’t even understand him! He has to have his commands translated. This encampment is a bedlam, and I know not whether our so-called commander is its warden or a mere inmate!”

The object of Lee’s ire was Baron von Steuben, who, on George Washington’s orders, had assembled a squad of a hundred men to learn the latest in modern European military techniques. Steuben strode before his command, barking orders in German, pantomiming what he wanted them to do, and either beaming with pride when they followed his orders—or throwing up his hands and sputtering a long list of Teutonic imprecations better left untranslated when they didn’t. That such a high-ranking officer would deign to directly train enlisted men was unheard-of—in either the aristocratic old world or in the republican new. But Steuben was doing whatever he was doing enthusiastically—and, perhaps more important, with General Washington’s blessing.

As Steuben swore and sputtered and harrumphed up and down the line, his chosen squad could barely contain their smiles. This was something new, they thought, and while they may not have known what to make of this mad Prussian, they knew that they liked him. Whatever they thought of what he was teaching them, they were at least learning
something
. It was almost like a game. But in the process they learned to shoulder arms, march in formation, and use a bayonet for more than roasting rabbits over an open fire.

Whether they knew it or not, they were learning how to be more than rebels. They were learning how to be soldiers.

General Lee continued glaring at Steuben. He spat at the ground in contempt. Horatio Gates glanced downward to see if Lee had somehow hit his boots. He was relieved to see his comrade had missed.

“So, General Gates, what think you of our Prussian drillmaster with his great ‘Star of Fidelity of Baden’ upon his chest?”

Lee had pronounced each word of “Star of Fidelity of Baden” slowly and with the utmost contempt.

“I think,” answered General Gates, in a low voice so none but Charles Lee might hear him, that ‘Baden’ bears far too close a similarity to ‘bedlam.’”

Wednesday, May 6, 1778

Valley Forge

A lone six-pound cannon roared fire and smoke and shattered the Valley’s mid-morning silence. It thundered not in violence, nor in attack nor in defense.

It thundered instead in sheer joy.

The previous evening General Washington had received correspondence from Benjamin Franklin in Paris containing the news that all Americans had long awaited: France had entered the war against Britain. The colonists no longer faced the world’s mightiest empire outgunned and alone. Franklin—along with a victory at Saratoga—had finally convinced France’s King Louis XVI to declare war upon George III. It would now be a fair fight and perhaps only a matter of time until London grew tired of war, of expending its blood and treasure in a fruitless struggle against men who no longer wished to be called English subjects but rather free Americans.

Washington summoned his officers. By flickering tallow candlelight he read to them the wondrous news. Tears streamed down Marquis de Lafayette’s cheeks. He rushed toward Washington and embraced him.

Washington knew a celebration was in order, but it was Steuben who knew what to do—and how to do it.

Somehow, this ruddy-faced Prussian had done more than simply train these rough and ready and—not long ago starving—Americans how to shoulder arms and respectably march around Valley Forge’s vast parade ground. He had achieved a miracle. In a matter of weeks, he had transformed a horde of patriots into a cadre of professional soldiers—capable, confident, and, hopefully, deadly effective.

Now Steuben would stage a grand show for Washington, for the men
themselves—and for an entire world still wondering whether a revolution of free men might succeed.

Two great lines of Continental troops faced each other on Valley Forge’s parade grounds: the first line was half under the command of Major General Lord Stirling’s command and half under Lafayette’s. The second line was entirely under the command of yet another foreign-born volunteer: the German-born French general Baron Johann DeKalb.

Three thirteen-gun salutes punctuated the morning air, but the most heartening portion of the program was the great show the enlisted men staged—a
feu de joie
, a “fire of joy”—a spectacular running of musket fire from the seven brigades that marked the two lines of men. As each musketeer fired a blank shot into the air, the soldier next to him instantly discharged his own weapon. On and on, the men fired in precision, without a hitch, up one line and down the next. The thunder they sent skyward was long and loud, continuous and resounding. General Horatio Gates covered his ears from the noise. General Charles Lee’s faithful dogs cowered under their master.

Baron von Steuben had indeed transformed an ill-trained, half-starved rabble into professionals. And Valley Forge had toughened the men it had not killed or frightened away. Those who remained were hardened patriots, not frightened by battle or adversity, willing to follow George Washington anywhere.

And so, on this fine spring morning, Frederick the Great’s grenadiers could not have performed better than these freemen who fired their muskets faster and faster, as the fire of joy splendidly unfolded. This morning’s muskets rang as loudly for freedom as Philadelphia’s great bronze Liberty Bell or Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence.

And these men—Washington and Steuben’s men—would soon be granted a chance to see if their ability to march in line and fire into the air would match their ability to fight. Because if General William Howe wouldn’t take the fight to the rebels, General Charles Cornwallis certainly would.

A
round ten thousand men arrived at Valley Forge in December 1777, surviving in drafty, makeshift tents before they built small, freezing huts—fourteen feet wide by sixteen feet long—that would go on to house twelve soldiers each.

At some point during their stay, around 30 percent of these soldiers would suffer from one disease or another; 2,500 of them would die. When they first got to the camp, about 4,000 men were without blankets; 2,000 would never have one during their entire stay at Valley Forge.

Washington must have noticed the streaking blood coming from lacerated feet on the icy paths that led to the camp. Thousands of his men were without shoes and, soon enough, army surgeons were amputating frostbitten and gangrened legs and feet in astonishing numbers.

And shoes weren’t the only thing missing. Eventually some of the soldiers’ clothing grew so ragged that it fell off their gaunt bodies, leaving
them with only blankets to cover their nakedness. With no clothes to wear, the men were too embarrassed to even leave their quarters.

To make matters even worse, the British, the world’s largest and most powerful fighting force, were amassed only eighteen miles away in Philadelphia, ready to pounce. They’d already taken New York and had just handed Washington a bruising defeat in Brandywine.

Morale was low. Not a single shot had been fired to defend the City of Brotherly Love—the capital of revolutionary America. In fact, it’s possible that Washington heard about the cheering crowds that awaited the British’s arrival in Philadelphia.

Despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, Washington maintained his resolve. He may not have been the greatest tactical general of all time, but he knew how to lead. And he knew that real leadership required bravery—especially when all hope seemed to be lost.

“Naked and starving as [our troops] are,” Washington wrote, “we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the solider.”

It was that admiration that made the unfathomable suffering and death he saw every day even harder to take. But that wasn’t Washington’s only problem—many men had also decided to return to their families or farms once their conscriptions to the army had ended. Of those who stayed, many complained endlessly about the dreadful conditions and were dragging down morale of everyone. “This is not an army, this is a mob,” one general noted after a visit to the camp.