Patriots (70 page)

At midnight, a surgeon from a Virginia regiment asked to speak with General Washington. When Washington’s officer of
the guard refused to let him in, the doctor asked him to tell His Excellency that he had secret and important intelligence and craved only five minutes.

The doctor was allowed inside, and he told Washington, “
I have come to warn you of Lee. That fellow is not to be trusted, Your Excellency. I know his breed too well. Pray be on your guard that he does the army no harm!”

The doctor didn’t have proof, and the battle was set to begin in hours. Washington thanked the caller for his concern and showed him out.

—

On Sunday, June 28, 1778, at 4:30
A.M.
, an American scout saw the British forces begin to move away from their camp at the clapboard-and-shingle Monmouth Court House. General Washington sent word that Charles Lee and his five thousand men were to follow the enemy and force an engagement. Washington would lead the support team, and he had also sent out a thousand New Jersey militia and Daniel Morgan’s six hundred riflemen. As the morning wore on, the temperature rose. Washington’s men began collapsing from the heat, yet he kept urging them forward so that they would be in place when General Lee launched his offensive.

But the unfamiliar terrain was posing difficulties for Lee. He had not sent out his own scouts and now was cursing the conflicting information being brought to him. He didn’t know whether the entire British army had left Monmouth Court House or whether some rear units had stayed behind. Time was running out. If Henry Clinton could get his men and baggage to Middletown, the surrounding hills would shelter them. Lee’s route to Monmouth was blocked by three ravines and by rough woods and stretches of marsh. He had intended to keep the British engaged while he sent troops behind and to the left of them, cutting them off from their main force. But Henry Clinton had anticipated that tactic and, because he controlled the road, could send two divisions back quickly while Lee was still puzzling over the landscape. Trying to figure out where to cross one ravine, Lee led his troops back and forth across the same bridge until finally he cried out, “
I am teased, mortified and chagrined by these little marches and countermarches.”

Finally, Lafayette rode up and convinced Lee to disregard the conflicting intelligence and get on with the attack. Lee maneuvered
his men over the second ravine and across open country toward the courthouse. But as the Americans approached, they caught a glimpse of Clinton’s baggage train galloping away in the distance.

General David Forman of the New Jersey militia was on home ground and told Lee he knew a shortcut. Lee brushed him away. “I know my business,” he said.

For a moment, it almost seemed he did. Lee sent troops around the courthouse and thought he was going to encircle the two thousand British soldiers who had remained there. He didn’t seem bothered to be out of effective contact with most of his commanders, and he boasted to Lafayette, “
My dear Marquis, I think those people are ours.”

When a messenger rode up from George Washington, Lee assured him as well that he would cut off the British rear guard. “By God,” Lee was exclaiming now, “I will take them all!”

Then, at about 10
A.M.
, Henry Clinton returned to Monmouth Court House with four thousand troops, and Lee’s worst fears came flooding back. Lafayette wanted to begin a counterattack, but Lee forbade it. “Sir,” he said, “you do not know the British soldiers. We cannot stand against them.”

Some Americans were pressing forward to fight, others were falling away. Charles Lee first told officers to take their men into the woods to save their lives, then upbraided others for retreating without his order. “They are all in confusion, they are all in confusion,” Lee kept repeating. His officers were appalled. A French captain of engineers, Pierre L’Enfant, demanded to know why the Americans were not attacking.

Lee said, “
I have orders from Congress and the commander in chief not to engage.”

—

At that moment, George Washington was five miles to the rear. He was riding a tall white horse at the side of his main army as it marched to back up Lee in his victory. An army doctor who was chatting with him remarked, “Looks like a Sunday battle, General Washington.”

“
Yes, it does. I don’t feel much like fighting on the Sabbath,” said Washington, who had waged his most successful attack on Christmas Day. “But I must yield to the good of the country.”

They were interrupted by Thomas Henderson, a lieutenant
colonel in the militia from nearby Englishtown. Henderson called out that the American troops were retreating.

“Retreating?” Washington repeated. He asked where that information had come from. Henderson pointed to a fifer. Angrily, Washington hailed the boy and demanded to know what he had been saying.

It was true, the fifer insisted. Everybody was on the run.

Washington was sure the story must be false. He told a sergeant to put the boy under guard to stop him from spreading the damaging rumor.

Riding on, Washington came to American soldiers pulling their artillery back across a muddy brook, away from the courthouse.

“By whose orders are the troops retreating?” Washington asked their officer.

“By General Lee’s,” the man replied.

The aides watching him thought George Washington’s passions were about to explode. “Damn him!” Washington said.

A little ahead, another aide, Colonel Robert Harrison, encountered one of General Lee’s captains, John Mercer. For the love of God, Harrison shouted, why are you surrendering?

Agitated, Mercer shouted back that if Harrison went any farther he would meet columns of enemy foot and horse–Colonel Harrison interrupted him. “Thank you, Captain, but we came to this place expressly to meet columns of enemy foot and horse!”

As Washington got closer to the scene, Alexander Hamilton rode up, jumped from his horse and ran to his side. “General!” Hamilton cried. “General! We are betrayed! General Lee has betrayed you and the army.”

Washington said, “
Colonel Hamilton, you will take your horse.” He drew up his own reins and crossed the planks laid over a narrowing in the marsh. Two hundred yards farther on he met Charles Lee, who stopped his horse and was about to greet him when Washington blurted, “
My God, General Lee! What are you about?”

Either Lee did not hear or the abrupt tone left him speechless. “Sir?” Lee said. “Sir?”

“I desire to know, sir, what is the reason for this disorder and confusion.”

General Lee launched into various excuses: The intelligence had been contradictory. One unit had abandoned a favorable position. And, he concluded, the whole plan had been put into action against his advice.

“Whatever your opinions might have been,” Washington replied, “I expected my orders would have been obeyed. The British at Monmouth were a covering party at most.”

“Maybe so, sir,” said Lee, “but it seemed stronger than that, and I did not think it proper to risk so much.” He added that American troops could not stand up to British bayonets.

At that, Washington muttered something to himself, which his orderly overheard. Charles Lee may have heard him, too: “
You’ve never tried them, you damned poltroon!”

Washington left Lee and rode forward to the front of the action. Colonel Harrison galloped up and reported that the British main force was barely fifteen minutes away and pressing hard. Washington had time only to act on reflex. He charged through the confusion, lining up the Americans behind a hedgerow. Alexander Hamilton watched admiringly as Washington, cool and firm, molded the soldiers back into a fighting force. Lafayette, who was also looking on, decided that he had never seen so superb a man as George Washington at that moment. Washington was still clearly angry, but calm as he rode effortlessly among the men, converting panic to enthusiasm.

General Wayne, who had survived the attack at Paoli, got his troops into position behind the hedge and waited for the British to charge. His men considered him a tyrant—Mad Anthony Wayne—but he could guarantee they would stand their ground. Charles Lee passed by and asked what he thought he was doing. Wayne said he was carrying out the express commands of General Washington.

At that, Lee made a ceremonial bow. “I have nothing further to say.”

After Washington had stemmed the retreat and lined up the Americans for battle, General Lee rode to his side. “Will you take command,” he asked, “or shall I?”

Washington, ready to put the last hour behind them, answered, “If you wish to take it, I will return to the main body and arrange them on the heights at the rear.”

Lee said gravely, “I will take command here, Your Excellency,
and check the enemy. Nor will I be the first to leave the field.”

Alexander Hamilton was exalted by the impending battle. Joining them, he vowed, “I will stay with you, my dear General Lee, and will die with you here on the spot!”

Lee answered him dryly, “When I have taken the proper measures to get our main body in position, I will die here with you. On this spot, if you like.”

Despite that pledge, Washington remained in control. Once Lee had restored order among his troops, Washington ordered him to march them as reserves to Englishtown. Within minutes, Alexander Hamilton fell in battle, but not as valiantly as he had promised. His horse rolled on him, and though Hamilton lived he was out of combat. The day was hard on horses. George Washington’s white mount, a gift from the governor of New Jersey, collapsed of sunstroke, and Washington quickly switched to his favorite brown mare. Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Burr had a horse shot out from under him but freed himself unhurt. Colonel Burr was another officer who felt wronged over a slow promotion, for which he tended to blame Washington. Here at Monmouth, Burr was angered more when Washington stopped him from pursuing a host of British soldiers he was sure he could have captured.

Although the sun was sinking, heat still parched the soldiers’ throats, and to slake their constant thirst a private’s young wife had been fetching water from a nearby well for her husband and his fellow artillery gunners. She was Mrs. John Hays, but the men called her “
Molly Pitcher.” When her husband was shot dead, Mary Hays knew his job well enough to grab a rammer and keep the gun firing. Once, as she stretched to reach for a cartridge, a cannonball passed between her legs and tore away her petticoat. Mary Hays, who had chewed tobacco with these men and cursed with them, simply looked down and remarked that it was lucky the shot had not passed higher or it would have carried away something else.

At about 6
P.M.
Washington wanted to launch a counterattack, but, under the hottest sun in recent memory, his men were as spent as they had been in the bitter cold at Princeton. Henry Clinton was vastly relieved for the respite. He was outnumbered, possibly by four thousand men, and described himself as ready to go raving mad from the heat. The British had suffered about
twelve hundred casualties—four times the number of the American losses.

Clinton had already lost half that number in desertions; love-struck Hessians kept creeping back to sweethearts in Philadelphia. With the odds against him, Clinton quietly left Monmouth in an overnight retreat as skillful as any the Americans had made on the many occasions they had conceded a battlefield.

By midmorning on Monday, the British reached the safety of Middletown; two days later, Sandy Hook. There, on the fourth of July, 1778, Henry Clinton’s men boarded Lord Howe’s ships and sailed to New York. After more than three years of war and two years of embattled independence, the Americans had a reason to celebrate. This time it was their army that had chased the enemy across New Jersey.

—

George Washington had been content to let Charles Lee’s erratic behavior be buried with the dead at Monmouth Court House. But Washington’s momentary show of anger had affronted Lee. From the end of the battle and all through the next day, he awaited Washington’s apology for his harsh remarks. When none came by Monday night, Lee was still seething and wrote his commander a letter:

Washington’s manner of addressing him, Lee said, implied that he had disobeyed orders, failed in his conduct or showed cowardice. Lee asked Washington to tell him which of those charges he had made so that Lee could justify himself to the army, to the Congress, to America and to the world. Lee added that since the success at Monmouth had been due entirely to his maneuvers, “
I have a right to demand some reparation.” In conclusion, he attempted to be politic. Washington’s cutting remarks could only have been prompted “by some of those dirty earwigs who will forever insinuate themselves near persons in high office.”

Lee might have learned from Thomas Conway that Washington was slow to unleash his anger, but, once let free, it could be fierce. He began his response by pointing out that Lee had misdated his letter. Then Washington said he found General Lee’s language highly improper but would soon give Lee the chance he was demanding. Lee could explain why he had not attacked but
instead had made “
an unnecessary, disorderly and shameful retreat.”

Charles Lee exploded in fury. He wrote again, deliberately using the wrong date and claiming to welcome the opportunity for America to judge the respective virtues of her generals. Lee’s talent for invective had always been highly developed, and now he indulged it fully. “
I trust the temporary power of office, and the tinsel dignity attending to it, will not be able, by all the mists they can raise, to obfuscate the bright rays of truth.” In yet another letter a few hours later, Lee called for a full court-martial, not merely a court of inquiry. Washington agreed immediately. The court began taking testimony on July 4.

Alexander Hamilton worried that Charles Lee’s gift for language would affect the outcome of his trial, and it did, but not in the way Hamilton had feared. Lee was now denouncing his commander’s behavior at Monmouth to anyone who would listen. “By all that’s sacred,” he wrote to Robert Morris, “General Washington had scarcely more to do in it than to strip the dead.” Had Lee retreated? Only when a jealous Washington sent him from the field after victory was already assured. Lee claimed that twice in the past he had saved Washington and his whole army from perdition. And now at Monmouth he had given him the only victory Washington had ever tasted.