Washington: A Life (44 page)

With reluctance, Washington accepted their verdict and said tartly to Joseph Reed that they had waited all year for the bay to freeze, but now that it had, “the enterprise was thought too dangerous!” At the same time, he admitted that his “irksome” situation had perhaps led him to advocate a rash action that might have miscarried.
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There was nothing despotic in Washington’s nature, making him the ideal leader of a republican revolution, but he still had to learn when to trust his instincts and overrule his generals. It was both Washington’s glory and his curse that he was so sensitive to public opinion, so jealous of his image, and so willing to listen to others.

The veto of his generals steered the discussion to a second plan that turned into one of the war’s inspired maneuvers. The high ground of Dorchester Heights, which loomed over Boston from the south, could be used to defeat the British if it was fortified. This strategic bluff, more than one hundred feet high, had remained unarmed for several reasons. Spies in Boston reported General Howe’s solemn vow to “sally forth” and snuff out the rebellion if the Americans attempted to occupy it.
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And thorny logistical questions remained. How could fortifications be built on ice-encrusted ground? How could the Americans move the Ticonderoga guns up to the lofty ridge within full view and range of enemy guns?

The ingenious solution was to haul the guns into position under cover of darkness during a single night. Noise from the operation would be muffled by firing steady salvos from Roxbury, Cobble Hill, and Lechmere Point and by wrapping wagon wheels with straw to deaden their sound. To obstruct the vision of British troops, the patriots would throw up intervening screens of hay bales. Washington and his generals hit upon the clever expedient of prefabricating the fortifications elsewhere, making it necessary only to transport them to the heights. By now a champion bluffer, Washington also had earth-filled barrels lined up before the parapets, giving a deceptive show of strength. These convenient props could also come thunderously crashing down on any British troops foolhardy enough to storm the hillside.

By late February, Washington was persuaded that the contemplated operation would lure the British into an engagement on terms favorable to the Americans. One lesson he had learned from the French and Indian War was that fear was contagious in battle, especially among inexperienced troops. Without disclosing the exact nature of the impending operation, he warned his soldiers bluntly that “if any man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without the orders of his commanding officer, he will be
instantly shot down
as an example of cowardice.”
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At midnight on March 2 the patriots began firing diversionary volleys at the British, who replied with earsplitting cannon fire—sounds of war loud enough to startle Abigail Adams from her sleep in nearby Braintree. These cacophonous exchanges persisted through the next night. On the night of March 4, Washington recalled, the moon was “shining in its full luster,” as the weather cooperated with the unfolding operation. “A finer [night] for working could not have been taken out of the whole 365,” wrote the Reverend William Gordon. “It was hazy below [the Heights] so that our people could not be seen, though it was a bright moonlight night above on the hills.”
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Washington directed operations on horseback, his familiar form visible in silhouette to his men. Under the tutelage of Henry Knox, the American artillery strafed Boston in a ferocious cannonade. “Our shells raked the houses and the cries of the poor women and children frequently reached our ears,” wrote Lieutenant Samuel Blachley Webb.
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Hidden by the roar and flash of cannon, General John Thomas supervised three thousand soldiers and oxen-led wagons as they dragged the big guns, weighty barrels, and preassembled ramparts up the steep slope. The unforgiving ground was covered with ice two feet thick, packed hard as rock. At sunrise on March 5 the British saw that something wondrous had happened overnight: Dorchester Heights had been converted into a full-fledged fortress, making the British occupation of Boston seem untenable. Not a single American soldier had been lost in the operation. Legend maintains that, upon beholding the massed American guns, an incredulous General Howe exclaimed, “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”
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On this anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Washington strode among his men, shouting at them to “remember it is the fifth of March, and avenge the death of your brethren,” and the men roared back their assent.
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As in the French and Indian War, Washington was no remote leader but an active, rousing presence. “His Excellency General Washington is present animating and encouraging the soldiers,” wrote Dr. James Thacher, “and they in return manifest their joy, and express a warm desire for the approach of the enemy.”
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The second phase of Washington’s strategy called for Generals Putnam, Sullivan, and Greene to speed across the Charles River with four thousand men and pummel Boston if Howe’s troops could be drawn out into a bloody engagement at Dorchester Heights. The British seemed about to wade into this cleverly laid trap. Despite skepticism among some officers, General Howe elected to throw more than two thousand troops against the heights, and legions of bystanders scurried eagerly across the surrounding hills to await the grand battle scene. Washington was convinced that, if he could flush the British from Boston, they could be bombarded by lethal fire.

John Trumbull remembered Washington making one last meticulous survey of his defenses, only to be frustrated by an unforeseen shift in the weather: “Soon after his visit, the rain, which had already commenced, increased to a violent storm and [a] heavy gale of wind, which deranged all the enemy’s plan of debarkation, driving the ships foul of each other.”
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Girded for battle, Washington was woefully disappointed and told General Lee that the storm was “the most fortunate circumstance for them and unfortunate for us that could have happen[e]d. As we had everything so well prepared for their reception … I am confident we should have given a very good account of them.”
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Some chroniclers have interpreted the raging tempest as an accidental blessing that safeguarded American troops set to cross a mile of open water, only to encounter well-entrenched redcoats in Boston. “Had the storm not intervened,” wrote James T. Flexner, “ … the troops Washington had intended to land in Boston could never have regained their boats. They would have been trapped. They would either have had to annihilate the British or be themselves entirely defeated.”
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The one certainty is that the storm averted an engagement that might have been decisive for one side or the other.

The upshot of the successful arming of Dorchester Heights was a British decision to evacuate Boston, albeit with British forces largely unmolested. Some historians have argued that Howe planned to leave anyhow and that this fresh threat merely accelerated the timetable and afforded a convenient cover story. For Washington, it marked a triumphant finale. On the night of March 9 Howe unleashed a deafening cannonade against Dorchester Heights, firing seven hundred cannonballs, a move that barely camouflaged frantic movements inside Boston to abandon the town. As Washington monitored developments, the town deteriorated into a scene of tumultuous disorder; British troops pitched disabled cannon and produce barrels into the harbor so they wouldn’t fall into patriot hands. Debris bobbed in the water everywhere or lay heaped upon the shore. Crowds of desperate Loyalists surged onto overloaded ships in a chaotic spectacle. The sense of shock was palpable among these refugees, prompting some to dive to death in the chilly waters. As Washington wrote to his brother Jack, “One or two have done what a great many ought to have done long ago—committed suicide. By all accounts, there never existed a more miserable set of beings than these wretched creatures now are, taught to believe that the power of Great Britain was superior to all opposition.”
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On Sunday, March 17, with the distant din of patriot cheers ringing in their ears, nine thousand quick-stepping redcoats and numerous Loyalists boarded an armada of 120 ships stretching nine miles out to sea and left Boston forever. “Surely it is the Lord’s doings and it is marvelous in our eyes,” wrote Abigail Adams .
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In a measure of Washington’s growing maturity, he indulged in no public bragging, even if he gloated in the privacy of print. Priding himself on staying cool-headed, he didn’t give way to jubilation, especially since it took ten days for the British ships to sail away. One of his hallmarks as a commander was unremitting vigilance, and he worried that British soldiers would slip ashore in disguise or even launch a surprise attack. On the alert for medical problems, Washington made sure that the first five hundred men who entered Boston were immune to smallpox. Instead of basking in the limelight, he permitted General Artemas Ward to lead the victorious vanguard into the city. When Washington himself entered on March 18, he did so unobtrusively, almost invisible to the elated multitudes, and studied the town with professional curiosity. It had suffered extensive damage, with buildings razed, churches gutted, supply depots emptied, and windows smashed, but Washington said the town was “not in so bad a state as I expected to find it.”
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He must have thanked the Lord for the freakish storm, since he found the British defenses “amazingly strong … almost impregnable, every avenue fortified.”
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He toured the Beacon Hill home of John Hancock and found the furniture in decent shape, with family oil portraits still on the walls. In their haste to leave, the British had discarded a huge trove of supplies, including 30 cannon, 3,000 blankets, 5,000 bushels of wheat, and 35,000 planks of wood.

In general, Washington handled his maiden victory with aplomb. When he informed Hancock of the British evacuation, he had the tact to congratulate not himself but Hancock and “the honorable Congress.”
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Instead of condoning the plunder that accompanies victory, Washington threatened to punish offenders severely. He set an orderly tone and deferred to civilian authorities, demanding that suspected Tories still in Boston be guarded by his men until the Massachusetts legislature ruled on their future. “If any officer or soldier shall presume to strike, imprison, or otherwise ill-treat any of the inhabitants, they may depend on being punished with the utmost severity,” he announced.
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In a beautiful symbolic act, he returned a horse given to him after learning that it had been swiped from a departed Tory who had been “an avow[e]d enemy to the American cause.”
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Once again, by opposing vindictive actions, Washington shaped the tone and character of the American army.

Only in private letters did Washington allow himself to crow a little. As he told brother Jack, “No man perhaps since the first institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult circumstances than I have done … I have been here months together with what will scarce be believed: not thirty rounds of musket cartridges a man.” With so little ammunition, he had defeated “two and twenty regiments, the flower of the British army, when our strength have been little, if any, superior to theirs and at last have beat them in a shameful and precipitate manner out of a place the strongest by nature on this continent … strengthened and fortified in the best manner and at an enormous expense.”
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The modest boasting masked the fact that Washington would have preferred a bloody and decisive encounter to the self-protective British decision to sail away and fight another day.

For his feat, Washington was lionized as never before and exalted into a historic personage, collecting heaps of honors. By bestowing upon him an honorary degree, Harvard supplied the long-standing defect in his education. In a tribute drafted by John Jay, Hancock assured Washington that history would record that “under your direction an undisciplined band of husbandmen in the course of a few months became soldiers.”
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Showing steady progress in egalitarian sentiments, Washington conceded that his men had started out as a “band of undisciplined husbandmen,” but that it was “to their bravery and attention to their duty that I am indebted for that success which procured for me the only reward I wish to receive, the affection and esteem of my countrymen.”
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This was a notable step forward for a man who had so recently wrinkled his nose at the filthy, money-grubbing New England troops. The Massachusetts politician Josiah Quincy assured Washington that his name would be “handed down to posterity with the illustrious character of being the savior of your country.”
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Such effusive praise reflected the patriots’ need for a certified hero as a rallying point as much as Washington’s skill in expelling the British. Canonizing Washington was a way to unite a country that still existed only in embryonic form. Curtailing any show of vanity, Washington reacted with studied modesty and stole a line from Joseph Addison’s
Cato,
telling Quincy, “To obtain the applause of deserving men is a heartfelt satisfaction; to merit them is my highest wish.”
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As a way of celebrating Boston’s liberation, Congress struck its first medal, showing Washington and his generals atop Dorchester Heights. It also commissioned a portrait by Charles Willson Peale in which Washington displays none of the swagger of a triumphant general. The look in his eyes is sad, anxious, even slightly unfocused, as if his thoughts had already turned to his upcoming troubles in New York. His shoulders appear narrow, and his body widens down to a small but visible paunch. It was way too soon for a full-fledged cry of triumph, Peale seemed to suggest, and events would prove him absolutely right.