Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (25 page)

Competition came from the states that were also engaged in filling militia battalions and the original eighty-eight state Continentals. Such efforts also undercut attempts to put together the additional sixteen
Congress had approved.
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In January, just as Washington’s attempts to establish these regiments began, he discovered that the Connecticut legislature had authorized payment of a bounty of thirty-three dollars “over & above what Congress have given” for regulars, and not long afterwards Connecticut’s generosity had drawn men from New York, to the dismay of recruiters there. John Trumbull, governor of Connecticut, when reproved by Washington for his state’s action, explained that because the cost of living was higher in the New England states than elsewhere—in particular the South—the higher bounty was justified. Washington replied that the southern states manufactured little and paid “most extravagantly” for what they imported. Trumbull did not extend the dispute—he and the Connecticut legislature held Washington in high esteem, and saw the cogency of his desire to fill the additional regiments. They could be helpful, they believed, by agreeing to pay the difference between the congressional bounty and Connecticut’s, thereby making equal the amounts paid to recruits to the additional congressional and state regiments.

This enlightened action helped to gather in soldiers in Connecticut, but the fact remained that it made recruiting more difficult in next-door New York. There were similar disparities elsewhere in the United States, which undoubtedly slowed the entire process of expanding the size of the army. There were other sorts of competition for recruits: The militia attracted men who might have entertained patriotic sentiments, as service in such units was always of a short duration—sometimes as little as four weeks and virtually never more than a year, and a year was seldom required. In Massachusetts, William Heath, who took over the Eastern Department in March 1777, after Artemas Ward resigned, despaired of meeting the state’s quota and reported to Washington that the state had taken the congressional bounty of twenty pounds and increased it with a subvention of twenty-four pounds. The towns of Massachusetts sometimes added even more to the bounty, raising it to the point that he feared it would make the troops “Uneasy,” a euphemism for “envious,” for it created a system that could only be considered unequal in its treatment. This pattern seemed especially destructive in a part of the country in which equality was taken seriously.
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Washington himself unintentionally contributed to difficulties in recruiting by requiring that as men were brought into the ranks they be
inoculated against smallpox. This was more than a prudent measure—it was a necessity. Smallpox in an army would kill the troops faster than the enemy, and an army with many infected men would threaten civilians in towns and cities. His order in these winter months of 1777 to the commanders charged with bringing their soldiers into the larger camp always included the requirement that they make certain that all of their men be inoculated, and to bypass Philadelphia if they had not.
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At least some of the men who volunteered aroused Washington’s suspicion when he learned, early in the process of putting an army together, that enlisting, accepting the congressional bounty, and then disappearing was not an uncommon practice. His remedy was incorporated in his suggestion that colonels looking to fill the ranks of their regiments pay each man only a part of the bounty when he joined. Later, presumably when a soldier had received part of his training, it would be safe to pay the remainder.
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In late winter through the early months of spring, despite difficulties and failures, Washington never let up. He wrote the new regimental officers often, urging them on and reminding them of the need to rebuild his force; he kept Congress informed of the process, especially of its flaws; and he reminded state governments of the overriding importance of a national effort. At the beginning of April, after months of strenuous effort, not a single soldier had been added to his army in New Jersey, but two weeks later they began marching in, inoculated, many actually equipped with muskets, and adequately clothed. By summer Washington could look upon an American army of regulars, though these soldiers were still not fully trained, and militia from several states made up almost half the total force.
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This army resembled its predecessors in most ways. Its men were largely untrained—a few hardy souls stayed with it, and more than a few commanders remained with their regiments. Washington added new brigadiers—his desire for more officers in that rank had resided with him all winter. The core of major generals stuck with him, Nathanael Greene, the best of the lot, among them.

This new army did not perform as a smoothly functioning machine, or even as a machine with all its parts in place. When Congress created
the army in 1775, it had not really known what an army looked like, had not indeed known what its staff should be, or how they should work in relation to its regiments or to Congress. A handful of delegates had read a few guides for army commanders; a smaller number had any experience in military life other than the attenuated version provided by conventional militia service. Despite their ignorance of military organization, the delegates in Philadelphia plunged ahead.

A number of departments had to be created at once, and no great knowledge of armies was needed to decide that action had to be taken to feed, clothe, arm, and otherwise supply the new organization. To a limited extent the New England Army that swarmed around Boston after Lexington and Concord provided a rough, if provisional, model. It was no surprise, then, that within a couple of days of appointing Washington commander in chief, Congress established five staff departments: a commissary general of provisions, a quartermaster general, a commissary of musters, a paymaster general, and an adjutant general.

Filling these posts was left to Washington, a recognition of his judgment that set John Adams on fire with worry that such an arrangement would encourage concentration of power in the army’s command. These “officers,” he wrote his friend James Warren, “are checks upon the General, and he a Check upon them: there ought not to be too much Connection between them.”
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Only Adams seemed troubled by this delegation of power, and in the weeks given to devising a command structure, his colleagues in Congress, far from such concerns, turned their attention to finding places in the army’s staff and the auxiliary organizations growing up around it for their friends and political allies.

Other departments were fashioned in the months that followed and all through the New York campaign. One part of the army was often in transit between the camp and civilian life, and another part simply remained incomplete—or not conceived of—with responsibilities left to some temporary arrangement made by Washington and his staff. Getting any sort of clothing on his soldiers remained a problem. Washington never solved it satisfactorily, despite appeals to state officials, or to any authority with a supply. At times the competition for clothing, blankets, shoes, and socks led to conflict. There were occasions when Washington thought he had secured a supply from a British transport,
its cargo having been sent on its way to the Continental Army by the privateer captain, but local authorities, hearing of the captured supplies, seized and diverted them to their own militia as the cargo was crossing the state.
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Desperate for a reliable system, Washington appealed to Congress to create a department with a clothier general in charge. In late December 1776, Congress named James Mease to the office. Mease was a Pennsylvania merchant, a civilian, and remained a civilian, though he reported to Washington. He was not notably successful in his job, if the men he was charged to clothe in uniforms are to be trusted. They, often afflicted with sickness they associated with inadequate dress, joked that they were “dying of the Meases.” The possibility exists that Mease was color-blind—how else are we to explain that one of the regiments was given red uniforms? This embarrassment undoubtedly angered Washington, though most of the time he probably would have been grateful had Mease found uniforms of any color. He asked Congress to remove Mease in 1778, but Congress did not act until the following year.
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That appointing an official to supply uniforms for Washington’s troops required so many months indicates something about the organization of the Continental Army and the Congress. The army’s incomplete character lingered far too long and diverted energies better given to making disciplined fighting men. Incompletion marked the army in almost every way, and Washington strove month after month to fill such holes. His methods were almost always ad hoc: appeals to state governments or directly to Congress, but also to private sources, usually men of property who could give of themselves or find others who could. The commissaries were not lavishly staffed; in time, deputies and other assistants were authorized by Congress, but they proved to be of limited value. The fault, or the limitation, has to be traced back to Congress. Like almost all legislative bodies before and since, it was not designed to function with speed and decisiveness. Its strength lay elsewhere, and it could not find the means within itself to act as an executive. For executive authority and an underlying unity of purpose were needed to carry on the war.

The deepest problem of organization and drive arose from American society itself. The Americans, even after two years of war, were a divided people. Only a few delegates to Congress believed that in Philadelphia
they had a political center. For most, their provincial capital or the town, parish, or county served as the organizing point of governance. Their economies were only gradually coming together—usually through coastal trade. The big producers of tobacco and rice sent their crops overseas, and much of the fish and naval stores also found their way abroad. If a farmer raised grain or milled flour or baked bread, he often dealt in local markets, but he might also send a considerable proportion of these commodities to the West Indies. Local trade usually took second place to European and British productions, especially in books, fine clothing, guns, and hardware of various kinds. A sense that an American society existed that transcended the societies of the thirteen states barely breathed in 1776, when independence was declared. Over the next few years, as the states struggled to bring their scattered spirits together, the outlines of such a society, with different purposes from those of the states, began to appear. No revolutionary leader surpassed Washington in the attempt to lead Americans to think and act together; nor was any more pleased than he when they did.

Throughout his time dealing with the morass of administrative problems, Washington had also to fight a war. Operations as a category did not overpower the demands to find, feed, clothe, and arm the troops he led; there were no large-scale operations until September of 1777. Small-scale operations—attacks on British foraging parties and moving soldiers from here to there in anticipation of a British strike—were challenging enough. And underlying all that he did in this time was his concern about what the British were going to do after their noses had been bloodied at Trenton and Princeton.

Washington thought most of the time that General Howe would act to capture Philadelphia. This belief was widely shared in his army and in Congress. There were other possibilities, of course, such as a drive up the Hudson River to meet Burgoyne bringing an army down the lakes from Canada. Howe was a baffling man to American commanders and, in fact, to several of his colleagues. General Henry Clinton could never figure him out, and found his own advice about strategy rejected with little discussion.
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Howe’s head may not have been entirely clear while he sat in New York. There were stories at the time that he was so dazzled by Elizabeth
Loring, wife of the British commissary of prisoners, that he had no will to take on his American enemy. (The story is given much too much importance.) For a short period in late winter, he roused himself sufficiently to recruit loyalists for service around New York and in New Jersey. But he did little to entice nearby Indians into British service. By this point in Howe’s service in America, suspicion had arisen of his ability to exercise overall command of the army. No one doubted his bravery, for he had shown that on a number of occasions. The best known of his exploits in America had occurred in 1759, in the French and Indian War, when he led the advance force that climbed the Heights of Abraham and captured Quebec. He looked the part of a warrior—he was tall, good-looking, and he carried himself quietly; no bragging or display of the sort that Burgoyne favored.

Howe, like his brother Lord Richard, probably came to the Revolutionary War with some sympathy for Americans. Massachusetts had erected a monument in Westminster Abbey to their brother George Augustus, 3rd Viscount Howe, who had been killed at Ticonderoga in the French and Indian War. But neither William Howe’s sympathy nor his principles had kept him out of the war. Other British officers had refused to join the effort to subdue the Americans. But William and his brother had agreed to serve, and their commissions from the Crown to offer a peace had not stayed their hands from making war.

The suspicion toward William Howe owed more to doubts about his capacity for command than to such matters as his sympathy for a people who had honored his brother. There was his record in the war—his delay in using his army, after his return from Britain in July 1776, with an overwhelming force. His failure to attack Washington when he had him trapped in Brooklyn raised doubts about his leadership. Howe had also appeared sluggish after Kips Bay and White Plains, and most emphatically in the march across New Jersey that ended in the defeats at Trenton and Princeton.