Adopted Son Page 17
The sufferings of the army at Valley Forge have become legendary, but they were real enough. Everything was in short supply. Fatigued and underfed men labored to erect huts of fence rails and tree trunks chinked with clay, moss, or straw. Even in that they were defeated, as straw was in short supply. Many thatched roofs went unfinished, and many men—crowded twelve to each small room—slept on brush or bare ground. The hovels quickly attracted bedbugs and other vermin, and the chimneys were so poorly built that they filled the rooms with smoke. A third of the 9,000-man army was unfit for duty by the end of December, and cries of “No meat! No meat!” echoed through the camp.43
Lafayette remembered that the soldiers lacked everything. “Their feet and legs turned black with frostbite, and often had to be amputated.” The lack of hard money deprived them of food as well as clothing. He and his aides lived in a commandeered house and usually ate better than the privates. Another French officer observed, “We, who lived in good quarters, did not feel the misery of the times, so much as the common soldiers, and the subaltern officers; yet we had more than once to share our rations with the sentry at our door.”44
The situation in the camp was so bad, said Brigadier General James Mitchell Varnum, “that in all human probability the army must soon dissolve.” Washington begged Congress for relief. “What then is to become of the army this winter,” he asked, “and if we are as often without provisions now, as with it, what is to become of us in the spring,” when he hoped to campaign before the enemy could be reinforced.45
Lafayette did what he could to improve his men’s condition. He pestered Henry Laurens when the promised clothing and blankets did not arrive, because they were, “I am told, detained in York town and confined in a dark jail. Consider, if you please, that they are innocent strangers, traveling thro’ this state, and very desirous of meeting the Virginian regiments they belong to. If they are detained only for exerting the most respectable rights of hospitality receive here my thanks in the name of Virginia. But if it is possible, I do not want they should be entertained longer.” He raised the subject again two weeks later when the goods had still not reached camp, without the humor, and badgered Governor Patrick Henry to get Virginia to meet its quotas for recruitment and supply.46
When Duportail outlined field fortifications to defend the camp, Lafayette, Stirling, and Greene rotated as “major general of the day,” supervising the work. The others grumbled, but the marquis complained only about the shortage of tools. He stayed on-site as the labor went forward, to show his men that he ate the same poor rations and suffered the same conditions as they did. That did not impress them, but when he reprimanded an officer for making soldiers work before they had eaten, they enjoyed it.47
Lafayette spent part of almost every day with Washington and wrote him personal letters, either when he could not see Washington or when the spirit moved him. They were formal military messages, but he signed off with unmilitary salutations such as “with the tenderest respect and highest admiration.” He was not afraid to challenge his commander when he thought he was in the wrong. Once he reported two officers who separately left their posts. Lafayette and Washington disagreed on what to do about them, and the commander in chief held them for court-martial over the marquis’ objections. One was acquitted, the other convicted and discharged.
Lafayette protested, feeling that the trials were not justified in either case. He wanted the guilty verdict overturned, and lost that argument also. So he wrote a long letter for the record, beginning, “I schall make use in this particular instance of the liberty you gave me of telling freely every idea of mine which could strike me as not being useless to a better order of things.” He ended with this: “There are reasons against court martials, when there is not some considerable fault to punish. According to my affair I am sorry in seeing the less guilty being the only one punished. However, I shall send to court martials but for such a crimes, that there will be for the judges no way of indulgence and partiality.”48
Direct challenges like that made the young general nervous, and it showed in his English. More often, he begged for Washington’s approval, as in a long, unsolicited letter recommending all manner of things. “Is it not very importune and even very impertinent,” he asked, “to lay before you my young and unexperienced ideas about what is to be done? But if they are unjudicious and unacceptable, I hope at least that you will not miss the sentiment which dictate them. I am very far from thinking myself able to give any advice in this army, but I dare hope that my warmest wishes for the good and right could inspire me some times with some tolerable ideas, and as I have no pretentions in it I’l see myself deceived by false ones without being surprised at all.”49
However often Lafayette asked for Washington’s reassurance, to his audience in France he emphasized how much the elder man depended on him. Telling Adrienne once more why he could not come home, he said his presence was “more necessary to the American cause at this moment” than she could imagine. There was much at stake, because “General Washington will be truly unhappy if I speak to him of leaving. His confidence in me is greater than my age allows me to admit. In his position, he is surrounded by flatterers and secret enemies. He finds in me a trustworthy friend to whom he can open his heart, and who always tells him the truth. Not a day passes that he does not have long conversations with me or write me long letters, and he likes to consult me about the most important matters. At this moment there is a particular matter in which my presence is of some use to him; this is not the moment to speak of leaving.”50
Lafayette flattered himself, but in this case he was right. He had just done something for his adoptive father that nobody else could have. The commander in chief suffered one of the greatest crises of his career, and the young general helped him through it.
I ENTERTAIN SENTIMENTS OF THE PUREST AFFECTION
Saratoga was a serious military loss for Britain, and a worse political one. Howe’s hostile reception farther south showed that there was no widespread loyalist support in the middle states. Washington had met tactical defeat, but his soldiers had fought stoutly enough to give the enemy a hard shock. The Continental Army was still together.
Some members of Congress were not so sure, because the positive aspects of the Main Army’s defeats were not obvious to anyone who was not a soldier. It was also easy to draw a contrast between Washington’s setbacks and Gates’ victory. Discontent in high places made for grumbling and encouraged change for the sake of change. That was fertile ground for the seeds of personal ambitions, and no one had more ambition than Brigadier General Thomas Conway, another of Silas Deane’s gifts to the American cause. Born in 1735 in Ireland, he grew up in France, where he entered the army in 1749. He saw service during the Seven Years’ War and rose to colonel by 1772. He made his way to America in April 1777, carrying Deane’s promise of a brigadier general’s commission.
A large man with a chinless, rather pop-eyed face, Conway was much given to posturing and intrigue. He encouraged civilians to believe that he owned great military talents, but he wore out his welcome in the army with his pomposity and ceaseless bragging. “It is a maxim with him to leave no service of his untold,” Washington snorted. Conway established himself as a thorn in Washington’s side, one of the few people the general ever expressed personal animosity toward. Hamilton called him “one of the vermin bred in the entrails of this chimera dire…. There does not exist a more villainous calumniator or incendiary.”51
At first Lafayette admired Conway, swallowing his claims to military genius and his proffers of friendship. The Irish-Frenchman saw the marquis’ closeness to Washington and his moderating influence over other French officers. He wanted to win the young general over to his side, helping him draw up his plans for expeditions against the British, which Conway presented to Congress as his own. When Henry Laurens mentioned them in a letter, Lafayette volunteered to present them to the French government. Hence his pirate proposal to Maurepas.52
Conway
would use anybody or anything to advance his own interests, and when it came to feathering his own nest he was no slacker. He often left his brigade to push his case among the delegates to Congress, hinting that he should be promoted to major general. Rumors that he was about to have his way hit the army in the middle of October 1777, and Washington cut the ambitious brigadier off. If there was any truth in a report he had received, he told Richard Henry Lee, that Congress had appointed or was about to appoint Conway a major general, it would be “as unfortunate a measure as ever was adopted. I may add (and I think with truth) that it will give a fatal blow to the existence of the Army.” Conway’s talent, said Washington, “exists more in his own imagination, than in reality.” He was also the junior brigadier. To promote him over the heads of all the others would cause most of them to resign, and with good reason. In conclusion, he said, “I have been a slave to the service: I have undergone more than most men are aware of, to harmonize so many discordant parts; but it will be impossible for me to be of any further service, if such insuperable difficulties are thrown in my way.” There were limits to how much interference in his command he would put up with.53
Washington believed that he had scuttled Conway’s project, and turned his attention to the condition of his army. It was still woefully untrained, so he needed an additional staff officer to supervise training and maneuvers and to prepare regulations. European officers in his camp had made him familiar with the role of inspectors general in foreign armies.
The commander assembled a council of fourteen generals on October 29, 1777, and asked them, “Will the office of inspector-general to our army, for the purpose principally of establishing one uniform set of maneuvers and manual, be advisable as the time of the adjutant-general seems to be totally engaged with other business?” The generals answered that “such an officer was desirable, the manual of regulations to be first agreed upon by the commander in chief, or a board of officers appointed for the purpose.” By that statement, they reminded him that the inspector must be subordinate to the commander, who should issue any regulations. The new officer would superintend the training of the whole army, imposing a common set of tactics, under the commander in chief’s authority. Washington sent the record of the meeting to Congress and asked it to establish the inspector general’s position.54
Congress passed his request to its Board of War, established in June. It was supposed to handle all military matters and correspondence, and supervise recruitments and supplies in the thirteen states. Because the board had been ineffective, Congress appointed the victorious Gates as its chairman. He was soon joined by the disgruntled former quartermaster general, Thomas Mifflin.
Conway was present at the meeting on the proposed inspector general and signed the report. He let Congress know that he would like the new job, which carried a major general’s rank. He believed that Gates’ fortune was on the rise after Saratoga, and Washington’s was about to fall, so he hitched his wagon to Gates’ star and wrote him a flattering letter that disparaged Washington. There were grumbles in Congress that the cause might be better served with the victor of Saratoga in command, instead of the loser of Germantown. They remained nothing more than idle mutters, and not even Gates put much stock in them.
Major James Wilkinson, Gates’ aide, saw Conway’s letter to his general and was greatly amused. He stopped at Lord Stirling’s headquarters at the end of October. As one drink led to another, Wilkinson began to talk. Hearing what Conway had been up to, Stirling sobered up and passed the news to Washington.55
Conway had crossed the boundaries of military decency. On November 9, Washington confronted him bluntly: “Sir: A letter which I received last night, containd the following paragraph. In a letter from Genl. Conway to Genl. Gates he says: ‘Heaven has been determined to save your country; or a weak general and bad councellors would have ruind it.’ I am Sir Yr Hble Servt. George Washington.”56
As November passed, Washington’s generals and aides saw signs of a plot in Congress to replace him with Gates. There was no organized conspiracy, but there were those—Mifflin in particular—who saw fit to advance Gates’ case, and for various reasons, Conway’s name popped up often. Hamilton and John Laurens urged Washington to head it all off. The commander in chief made it well-known near the end of the month that he wanted to hear the last of Conway. Lafayette seemed blind to the growing unrest, praising Gates when others criticized him. But he began to have doubts about Conway.57
The petulant Irish-Frenchman had developed a habit of threatening to resign if he did not get his way. Lafayette observed this in passing in a letter to Henry Laurens, which alarmed congressmen who believed that Conway was an asset. Laurens told Lafayette that to lose Conway “would be a circumstance extremely mortifying to a few persons here who hold themselves to be of the best friends to the United States…. We have something in view which we hope will hold the general longer in America.”58
“Something in view” became clear on December 13, 1777, when Congress authorized two inspectors general, “essential to the promotion of discipline in the American Army.” Instead of being the eyes and ears of the commander in chief, Congress wanted the officers to be political commissars. They were to send their reports to the Board of War, not the commander, and forward any complaints or grievances to Congress. As Hamilton put it, this measure “conferred powers which could not fail to produce universal opposition in the army,” and by requiring the approval of the Board of War before the introduction of every regulation, it introduced delays that would “defeat the usefulness of the institution.” It erected a political wall between the commander and his own army. Even worse than that, Congress appointed Conway to one of the positions (it never filled the other) and promoted him to major general.59
Lawmakers believed that this inspectorate, proposed by Washington himself, would improve the army. There may have been a few who hoped that appointing Conway would force Washington to resign, but they were few. The majority believed Conway’s self-professed reputation as a military expert and accepted his concept—he had helped draft the bill—as the recommendation of an authority. They did not understand that they had imposed an inspectorate that directly challenged Washington’s control of his army. They were equally unaware that every high officer at Valley Forge saw the office and Conway’s appointment as a plot to unhorse the commander in chief.60
All the generals and virtually all the colonels rose in outrage. The brigadiers threatened to resign en masse, and Greene, ever diplomatic, tried to calm them down. He noticed Lafayette and other French officers giving Conway the cold shoulder when he reached camp late in December 1777. He also decided that there really was a “cabal,” organized by Gates, to drive Washington out of the army, so he took it upon himself to write to Congress, calling for the discharge of all foreign officers. Greene excepted only Lafayette, because of “this nobleman’s generous, disinterested conduct, his sacrifices to our cause, and his great merit.” He explained why so many officers were upset at what they saw as favoritism for one who had not earned promotion. Sullivan drafted a letter, which all the generals signed, making the same demand, and also excepting Lafayette. Sullivan advised Washington to withhold announcing any recent promotions, meaning Conway. Washington agreed.61
When Conway presented himself, ready to take up his duties, the commander in chief gave him an icy reception. He observed that the Board of War’s instructions said that the board would furnish a set of regulations. When he asked if Conway had those instructions with him, the inspector general said that he did not. Washington told him that he could not possibly serve in his new office until the regulations arrived, and had an aide show the fuming Irish-Frenchman the door.
Conway complained to Gates, “I have been coolly received at my arrival here,” and returned to York. Washington wrote to Congress opposing Conway’s appointment, sending along the minutes of the October meeting to show that his version of the inspectorate was not what had been recommended. He wrote again wh
en he heard Conway’s complaint about their meeting. “If General Conway means,” he said, “by cool receptions…that I did not receive him in the language of a warm and cordial friend, I readily confess the charge. I did not, nor shall I ever, till I am capable of the arts of dissimulation. These I despise, and my feelings will not permit me to make professions of friendship to the man I deem my enemy and whose system of conduct forbids it. At the same time truth authorizes me to say, that he was received and treated with the proper respect to his official character, and that he has had no cause to justify the assertion, that he could not expect any support for fulfilling the duties of his appointment.”62
Lafayette finally tumbled to what was going on, and learned that Conway had implicated him and de Kalb in his dealings with the board and Congress. When he asked Washington about it, the general showed him Lord Stirling’s letter. He was shaken to the core, spied a plot to destroy the revered Washington, and feared that the general might think he had been in on it. Conway was the enemy, and so was Gates. They had played him for a fool and made him look like a traitor to his adoptive father. He had to do something.63
On December 29 the marquis went to headquarters. The general was too busy to see him, so he spent all night writing Washington a letter. He was so overcome by emotion that it mangled his English, and his hand shook enough to make his writing hard to read. He poured his young heart out. “My dear general,” he began, “I don’t need telling you how I am sorry for all what happens since some time. It is a necessary dependence of my most tender and respectful friendship for you, which affection is as true and candid as the other sentiments of my heart and much stronger than a so new acquaintance seems to admit. But an other reason to be concerned in the present circumstances is my ardent, and perhaps enthusiastic wishes for the happiness and liberty of this country. I see plainly that America can defend herself if proper measures are taken and now I begin to fear that she could be lost by herself and her own sons.”