The Washingtons Read online

  With his letter of the eighteenth, Washington had enclosed a will drafted to his direction in Philadelphia by a fellow delegate, the lawyer Edmund Pendleton. “I had not time to do it before I left home,” Washington told Martha. Then he had been a delegate off to attend a congress. Now he was commander of a new army embarking on a campaign against experienced British regiments and risking death. Though news of a battle for Bunker Hill in Boston on June 17 had not reached Philadelphia when he wrote, casualty figures would sober Congress when first reports later arrived. The patriot forces were rumored to have accounted for many hundreds of British regulars, but some among the rebels too had lost their lives.

  If the arrival of her husband’s last will and testament did not necessarily increase Martha’s “tranquillity,” at least she was forearmed, should she become a war widow. Washington hoped the provision made for her was agreeable. He had included “the Money for which I sold my own land [Home House, Fredericksburg] (to Doctor Mercer) in the Sum given you, as also all other Debts [owed by others to Washington].” What he himself owed, he wrote, was “very trifling,” his debt to Cary excepted. He added that even that would not have amounted to much, “if the Bank stock had been applied without such difficulties as he [Cary] made in the Transference”—from the guardian accounts to Washington’s own. The previous year legal documents that Washington and Martha had signed to facilitate the sale of Patsy’s stock had been rejected by the directors of the Bank of England. New documents were not to be signed, nor the stock sold, till after hostilities had ceased. The outbreak of war between mother country and colonies also rendered moot all further action on the part of John and Joseph Dunbar Parke, residents of the British West Indies. Jacky’s inheritance, and Martha’s dower portion, were safe from foreign depredations.

  In a much later will, Washington was to leave his whole estate to Martha for the term of her life. The will that Washington made now in 1775 has not survived. From the above, it seems likely that he left Mount Vernon—a family property—and his other land immediately to one of his brothers, probably John Augustine Washington, who had cared for Mount Vernon in the 1750s. Should Washington perish in combat, Martha’s Parke Custis inheritance would, of course, revert to her, including the inheritance from Patsy. She would be a rich woman in control of her own fortune, as she had been once long before. It seems probable that it was intended she should make a home away from Mount Vernon, either looking to Jacky to provide a home on his Parke Custis estates or buying a property herself on the Potomac.

  It is little wonder, in short, that Martha was to resist all entreaties, however well meaning, to get her to abandon a home that might not be hers for long. In the meantime she had the satisfaction of knowing that, hard-pressed as Washington might be with military preparations, he understood the importance of other obligations. “P.S.,” he added to his letter of June 18, “Since writing the above I have received your Letter of the 15th and have got two suits of what I was told wa[s] the prettiest Muslin [for neckerchiefs]. I wish it may please you—it cost 50/. a suit that is 20/. a yard.”

  Early in the morning of June 23, though surrounded by company come to take leave and within a few minutes of leaving Philadelphia, Washington wrote again: “My dearest…I could not think of departing from it [the city] without dropping you a line.” With Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler, newly appointed major generals by Congress, he was about to set out north to take command of the army at Cambridge. The First City Troop, a company of light horse—mounted troops who could serve as cavalry or, dismounted, as infantry—had been raised in Philadelphia the previous year. They would form his escort on the journey. A crowd including all the delegates from Massachusetts then in Philadelphia were readying to accompany him on horseback, in carriages, and on foot to the bounds of the city. Washington’s full concentration was for the moment given to this letter to his wife: “I go fully trusting in that Providence, which has been more bountiful to me than I deserve, & in full confidence of a happy meeting with you sometime in the fall.…I retain an unalterable affection for you, which neither time or distance can change, my best love to Jack & Nelly, & regard for the rest of the Family concludes me with the utmost truth & sincerity, Your entire Go: Washington.”

  Once the accompanying well-wishers had dropped away, Washington and his party proceeded north with haste and reached New York on June 25. When they left for Cambridge the following day, Schuyler, who had served as a delegate to Congress and, in his time, as a colonial officer, remained behind. His task was to command and order the American forces assembling in his native city. Washington’s respect for Schuyler shows in the instructions he issued before leaving from Cambridge: “Your own good Sense must govern in all Matters not particularly pointed out, as I do not wish to circumscribe you within too narrow Limits.” Washington was all the more eager to go to the aid of the patriots besieging Boston, having read on the day of his arrival in New York a full account of the confused conflict at Bunker Hill on the seventeenth.

  Many Bostonians had by this time left their city for towns and villages inland. In 1774, Gage had been appointed military governor and had dissolved the legislature. Patriots outside the city, in response, had founded the rebel Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Gage, with an army 40,000 strong, and men-of-war and smaller vessels in Boston harbor, could occupy the city indefinitely. The patriots, meanwhile, were guarding positions along eight or nine miles of shore and coastline.

  Patriot leaders learned of British plans to break out of the city and subdue western Massachusetts. On the night of the sixteenth, they stealthily occupied and fortified two positions on the Charlestown peninsula—Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. The latter position was directly above Charlestown and commanded views of Boston’s northern shore opposite. Confusion reigned in the city next morning, when the British discovered the patriots’ occupation of ground they had themselves expected soon to dominate. Two experienced generals, recently arrived from England—Howe and Clinton—with another, Burgoyne, led the attacks that followed.

  The conflict, during which the British destroyed Charlestown by fire, ended with the patriots retreating. But they were elated by the good showing they had made. The British had possession of Boston and the peninsula alone, at great cost in lives. Nevertheless, the patriot forces were hard-pressed for all supplies and lacked gunpowder and, above all, direction. The rebel Provincial Congress wrote to Congress on June 20: “if a commander in chief over the army of the United Colonies should be appointed, it must be plain to your honors, that no part of this continent can so much require his immediate presence and exertions, as this colony.”

  When he arrived on July 2 at Cambridge, Washington was in no danger of underestimating the difficulty of guarding “a semi-circle of eight or nine miles.” As he wrote to his brother John Augustine later in the month, the British, from their central position in Boston and with the fleet in command of Boston Bay, could “bend their whole force…with equal facility” against any of the Continental—American army—positions. At the outset he had to do everything himself. He supplied Congress with “returns” for the different regiments, namely, the number of officers and men in each. He rendered account of the supplies each regiment had of clothing, foodstuffs and—most important—guns and powder. He inspected the different outposts and regiments. Slowly some of the burden lifted. In mid-July, at his request, Joseph Trumbull, son of Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, was appointed commissary general of stores and provisions. In August, Washington appointed Philadelphia merchant Thomas Mifflin, originally one of his aides-de-camp, to the post of quartermaster general. A commissary of artillery was appointed. Dr. John Morgan, a leading Philadelphia physician, was given direction of a new army hospital and medical department.

  Washington’s instructions from Congress were to take command of a united army, but first the disparate militias and volunteers before Boston must be amalgamated. As an initial step, he made three grand divisions of the army. Within days of h
is arrival at Cambridge, he dispatched Charles Lee north to take command at Medford. He sent Artemas Ward, formerly in command of rebel forces in Massachusetts, to Roxbury. At Cambridge, he himself guarded against British incursions across Charleston Neck.

  Within a couple of weeks of his arrival in Massachusetts, Washington had moved from makeshift headquarters in Harvard College to “the Vassall house.” This elegant mansion, above the Charles and close to Cambridge Common, was on Brattle Street, a road generally known as Tory Row. When disaffection was rife in the town the previous year, the owner of the house, Henry Vassall, had, in common with several other Cambridge Tories, fled north to Nova Scotia. A patriot regiment from Marblehead had more recently occupied the dwelling. Washington now kept a ledger—as faithfully as he had ever kept guardian accounts for Jacky and Patsy—titled “The United States…in account with General Washington.” It shows that payment was made for cleaning the Vassall house before his arrival. A steward—Ebenezer Austin—was appointed and furnished with £10 a week to supply the establishment. A “French chef” was located to cater to the needs of the commander-in-chief and any guests. The military “family”—as Washington’s aides-de-camp and secretaries were known—also dined at this table. Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Reed served as the new commander’s principal secretary.

  At Cambridge, Washington found, as he wrote privately in late July to his brother John Augustine, “a mixed multitude of People here, under very little discipline, order, or Government.” The democratic spirit in which Yankee officers mingled with men, he believed, was in part responsible. Washington, a Virginian to the bone as well as a former British officer, exhorted, threatened, and cajoled throughout the month of July and August. Slowly distinctions between officers and other ranks and some measure of discipline and order were established. Washington corresponded with consummate tact with Congress, with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and with other assemblies. He favored his cousin Lund, however, on August 20 with his private opinion of the army which now numbered—“including sick, absent, etc”—some 16,000 men: “Their Officers generally speaking are the most indifferent kind of People I ever saw.” He had already cashiered a colonel and two captains for cowardice at the recent conflict at Bunker Hill. Nevertheless, he had some ground for optimism: “I daresay the Men would fight very well (if properly Officered) although they are an exceeding dirty & nasty people.” In one of his first “General Orders,” he exhorted officers to “keep their Men neat and clean; to visit them often at their quarters, and inculcate upon them the necessity of cleanliness, as essential to their health and service.” When Washington himself rode through the camps, he was clean shaven, and his buff and blue uniform, distinguished by a blue sash, was immaculate.

  There was wide variation in the attire of those the commander surveyed. Some regiments wore hunting shirts, others brown coats with colored facings. There was not as yet any official Continental uniform, no telling who was a subaltern and who a sergeant. Washington acted on July 23 to order badges of distinction to be worn: “Field Officers may have red or pink colour’d Cockades in their Hatt: the Captains yellow or buff.” By the time he wrote to his cousin at Mount Vernon in August, the commander-in-chief had at least accomplished some important tasks. His general orders of the fifth read: “The Regiments of the several provinces”—the term newly coined to describe the American colonies—“that form the Continental Army, are to be considered no longer in a separate and distinct point of view, but as parts of the whole Army of the United provinces.” The lines of defense were complete, but the British showed no inclination to “come out” of Boston or form their own fortifications above the ruins of Charlestown. “We do nothing but watch each other’s motion’s all day at the distance of about a Mile,” Washington wrote to Lund, “…every now and then picking off a straggler when we can catch them without [outside] their Intrenchments.” In return, the British wasted “a considerable quantity of Powder” cannonading the Continental lines—powder, wrote Washington, that “we should be very glad to get.”

  Their own stores at present would furnish no more than nine rounds a man, the commander told John Hancock, president of Congress, on the fourth. This was a state of affairs that he wished to keep a profound secret. “Relief both speedy and effectual” was essential. The vital importance of securing gunpowder and arms from other colonies was a constant refrain in his letters to the president. In May, Hancock had been elected, in succession to Peyton Randolph, president of the Second Continental Congress. This role, for which there was no fixed term, was designedly limited. Hancock acted as moderator of congressional debates and undertook official correspondence. During important business, all Congress was adjudged a committee of the whole, and Hancock ceded his place to an appointed chairman.

  The commander-in-chief was prescient in his call for supplies. Though news of it was not to reach Cambridge till the beginning of November, the king issued a Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in London on August 23, in response to the events on Bunker Hill. British officials were ordered “to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress” disorder in Massachusetts and in any other colony where inhabitants were in “open and avowed rebellion.” George III had refused days earlier to look at the petition that the Continental Congress had crafted on July 6, affirming loyalty and expressing a wish to avoid conflict. This olive branch from the rebel assembly had admittedly followed fast upon their Declaration of Taking up Arms of the previous day.

  In August in Boston, the British were already looking ahead to wintering in their current quarters, contracting for “quantities of coal,” as Washington told Hancock. He had therefore set about securing fuel, clothing, and cover for his own army as best he could. Huts, winterproofed, were slowly replacing those of boards in which the majority of troops were originally billeted on Cambridge Common and elsewhere. But his thoughts turned too to Martha and Mount Vernon. He had become alive to the danger that Martha might be in from one who had formerly been a friend and with whom they had often dined when in Williamsburg—Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia.

  Dunmore had beaten off in May the threatened assault on his Williamsburg palace by Hanover County patriots en route to Congress, headed by Patrick Henry. In early June he had concluded that further residence in Williamsburg was unsustainable. A patriot youth, attempting to break into the town magazine and seize powder there, triggered a booby trap and was killed. Dunmore, who had ordered the trap to be set, attracted widespread condemnation. Different counties of Virginia raised militia, and armed independent companies streamed into the town. Under cover of night on June 8, the governor and his family took ship for Yorktown, where they remained on board in the harbor. Here Dunmore remained, refusing to return to Williamsburg and sending his wife and children home to England.

  Patriots feared that Dunmore meant to attack Williamsburg and establish martial law. Detachments of a foot regiment, recruited from General Gage in Boston, served him as a marine force. An attempt, which nearly succeeded, was made to seize him in early July, when he paid a rash visit upriver to his farm, Porto Bello. It was hoped he could be forcibly returned to the governor’s palace and made to resume his gubernatorial duties. But Dunmore had his own ideas. With his “boiled crabs”—as the Virginia Gazette dubbed his scarlet-coated companions—and in a small fleet, he sailed southeast for Norfolk. From this port in the Hampton Roads, he directed many successful raids up and down the Chesapeake Bay over the course of the summer, seizing arms and supplies from patriot houses and burning townships.

  Perhaps inevitably, rumors circulated that Dunmore intended to sail up the Potomac and kidnap Martha from Mount Vernon. They reached Washington, and on August 20, he wrote to Lund: “I can hardly think that Lord Dunmore can act so low, & unmanly a part, as to think of seizing Mrs Washington by way of revenge upon me.” The passage of letters between Mount Vernon and Cambridge was as slow and erratic as rumor was swift to spread. Washington calculated that his wife woul
d be mostly out of Dunmore’s reach “for 2 or 3 Months to come.” He had Nelly Calvert Custis’s accouchement at Mount Airy and Martha’s projected visit “down country” in mind. During that time, the fortunes of war, he wrote, might make her removal “either absolutely necessary, or quite useless.” Should danger threaten more immediately, he told Lund to “provide a Kitchen for her in [the town house in] Alexandria, or some other place of safety elsewhere for her and my Papers.”

  Martha had no intention of altering her plans. Burwell Bassett, who visited Mount Vernon in late August, made no mention, in a letter to Washington of the thirtieth, of any concern for her safety. His news was all of the Third Virginia Convention, chaired by Peyton Randolph, which had been meeting in Richmond. In accordance with the demands of Congress, they had established a committee of safety to take the place of royal government in the province, formerly the colony of Virginia. They had agreed to print £350,000. They had approved the raising of two regiments, one of them to be headed by Patrick Henry and comprising 1,450 men. In addition, they had directed that each of sixteen districts in the province should equip five hundred men, to be called minutemen and to be “nearly under the same regulations as the Militia of England.”