Valley Forge — Almost A Trainwreck — Part III
“The men must be fed,” a Continental general wrote to George Washington in December 1777, “or they cannot be commanded.”
Washington knew all this already. His men also needed shelter from the elements, proper clothing and shoes, medicine, weapons, ammunition, and training. Modern estimates show he had about 11,000 soldiers at Valley Forge, but with disease, desertion, and discontent, his total number of effectives could have been as low as half that.
George was building quite the winter to-do list. One other item he didn’t share but was clearly on his mind was the murmurings in Congress and the army that maybe he wasn’t up to the job of beating the British. His track record in battle over the last year had consisted of defeats and retreats. The Congress, normally on his side, had been driven into exile when the enemy captured Philadelphia. Worried as much about their own lives as the cause of independence, many of them harbored the expectation that Washington and his army, a scant twenty-three miles from the taken American capital, would swoop in and save them.
And if he wouldn’t, maybe Horatio Gates would.
While on the march (or, more appropriately, straggle) to Valley Forge, the Continental Congress issued a national day of thanksgiving and praise in honor of General Gates’s victory over the British at Saratoga in October 1777. This was a clear dig at the commander-in-chief, who nonetheless ordered the troops to give thanks and praise General Gates, issuing his last remaining stores of food and drink to the men in celebration.
Washington stopped his horse on the side of the road to watch the young men file past. He was likely reminded of his own early service in the Virginia militia twenty years before, where he had risked his life many times but came out unharmed, believing that “Providence was saving him for something larger.”
But in December 1777, Washington might have felt that he had been spared only to watch the cause of America flicker out and die in the snow.
(If you’d rather listen than read, check out this episode of the History’s Trainwrecks Podcast — https://shows.acast.com/60a3be0e6196e1001b05895b/episodes/65f89c47fa04820015b0d774?)
***
The high-flowing prose of the Declaration of Independence and all the Revolutionary writers like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Paine had gotten the ball of independence rolling, as it were, but freedom from English rule was only going to come from defeating their army and navy. Which meant the whole thing hinged on Washington and the tattered remnant of his army. As with ancient Greece’s struggles against tyranny, “Pericles may have moved men’s minds, but Leonidas made them get up and march.”
When it came to the final deliverance of the United States of America, the sword was mightier than the pen, and George was out of swords.
***
What he had going his way was the fact that it was winter, the British commander General William Howe had sent in his resignation to London and was unlikely to come out and fight, and Valley Forge was a defensible place to hole up until warmer weather. It had plenty of trees for building and burning, and the few roads in and out would provide advance warning of any British attack.
He set his engineers to lay out the camp and plan shelters and defenses. He sent what men he could spare back toward Philadelphia to interdict the flow of supplies to the British and bring back whatever they could capture.
The American supply system was a disaster, led by two generals who were not, shall we say, on George Washington’s Christmas card list. Thomas Mifflin was the new nation’s first Quartermaster General, and he held a personal grudge against Washington from an incident during the American retreat from New York in 1776 when George displayed his famous temper and yelled at Mifflin in front of other people because of a massive screwup. It was also likely that Mifflin’s efforts to enrich himself by way of the army’s supply department and a rash of poor decision-making was to blame, like hiring civilian teamsters to deliver supplies. Looking to save a buck, these men often lightened their loads by dumping out the brine needed to preserve meat, so that what finally got to the men was inedible. The other malefactor was Horatio Gates, the Hero of Saratoga, who only had one thing on his to-do list: take over as commander-in-chief.
The soldiers at Valley Forge built their own cabins, starting from the specifications ordered by the engineers, but, lacking tools and materials (and goaded to speed by a contest whereby the squad that finished their cabins first would get a twelve-dollar reward), the finished products were drafty and many lacked fireplaces.
By the time the building was complete, Valley Forge was the fifth most populated city in the United States.
But the numbers were dropping.
***
Most Continental enlistments were set to end on December 31. Quite a lot of men walked away, turning to brigandage in the countryside. There were also notorious Loyalist gangs raiding nearby farms. On the one hand, local residents saw former American soldiers plundering their property. On the other were thieving miscreants loyal to the Crown. Either way, the army stationed nearby seemed helpless to stop them.
Officers, faced with increased competition for diminishing perks, disintegrating brigades, no immediate prospect for battle, cold weather, and no food, tendered their resignations. Three thousand Continentals were deemed unfit for service due to lack of shoes, clothing, or weapons.
If the British, facing their own supply problems in Philadelphia, had been more aware of the American army’s status, they could have ended the war in one battle. The Marquis de Lafayette, whose commitment to the American cause and its commander never wavered, nonetheless wrote, “The American situation was never more critical.”
It was now, when all reasonable thinking pointed toward hunkering down or giving up, that the master of bold surprise came up with a stunning plan.
George Washington was going to attack Philadelphia.
***
Washington has a reputation in our history books of calm reserve and patience. He was the adult in every room, possessing what John Adams, that loveable grump, called “the gift of silence.” A gift Adams himself did not possess.
But beneath his calm and dignified exterior lurked an impatience for action, a towering temper, and the sure knowledge that surprise in this kind of war was his best ally. At least until the French showed up. As he had done after the disastrous retreat from New York in 1776, George knew the Americans needed a win. A year of defeats siphoned their hope and their commitment to the cause. It was why he staged his Christmas Eve crossing of the Delaware and midnight raid on the Hessians at Trenton in 1776. He knew full well that all could be lost in one night, but it sure looked like all was lost anyway.
Plus, he really wanted to take the fight to the enemy.
His plan was typical Washington — there was a major holiday surprise; ever America’s badass Santa Claus, George was going to start his attack on Christmas Eve. There were lots of moving parts, and the complicated plan hinged on General Howe responding to the attack in the exact way George predicted, the defiance of prevailing military wisdom that an attacking force on a fortified city had to outnumber the defenders two to one, multiple simultaneous attack points, and perfect timing.
George Washington had spent his life restraining his impulses — his temper, his generosity, and his tendency toward rash immediate action. So he knew he’d better check his intricate battle plan with his close advisors.
Their response must have come as a huge disappointment. Generals Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene, whose support for their commander in chief rivaled that of Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, advised against the attack while simultaneously agreeing to do it if Washington wished. Other generals like John Sullivan suggested more strategic targets than Philadelphia. Most of Washington’s advisors knew how important a symbolic victory would be to the cause and the commanding general, but Greene warned Washington “about the danger of ‘consulting our wishes rather than our reason.’”
George shelved his battle plan. One gets the sense that, instead of presiding over a disintegrating army and fading away to defeat in the spring, he would rather have risked everything on one final battle, which might have, even if he lost, roused the country and the world to action.
But that idea was now over. Never one to give up, George moved on to plan B.
***
This Congress, as we have discussed in prior episodes, wasn’t the gang of ardent revolutionaries who had spat in the eye of the British king. Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hancock were gone away on missions deemed critical to the American cause, like getting money from the Dutch and warships from the French. Henry Laurens of South Carolina presided over an out-of-touch group of delegates who styled themselves armchair military experts and were overly susceptible to the machinations of Horatio Gates and Thomas Mifflin.
Fortunately for the cause, Henry Laurens’s son John was at Valley Forge and part of Washington’s inner circle. He kept his dad informed of the true condition of the army, turning the president of the Congress into a major ally.
But before that, Laurens passed along a communique from the Congress to the Commander-in-Chief arguing against retreating to winter quarters, instead recommending a direct attack on the captured capital. Having been recently talked out of just that very thing, Washington’s reply pulled no punches.
“It would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection to every individual Spot of Ground in the whole of the United States,” George wrote back, channeling more than a little of John Adams’s curmudgeonliness. “Nothing is more my wish. But this is not possible with our present force.”
He went on to predict the army’s dissolution, deprived of supplies caused by the current quartermaster and his shoddy system. He demanded an immediate change in the way the army was supplied, told Laurens that the blame for this shameful state lay with the Congress, which had “tarnished his [own] good name and reputation.”
If Henry Laurens hadn’t quite gotten the message, George finished up by telling him “that it is a much easier and a less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fire side than to occupy a cold bleak hill, and sleep under frost and Snow with no Cloaths, or Blankets.”
Take that, Continental Congress.
But the Congress wasn’t quite done with their shenanigans. They appointed Thomas Conway — the third member of the unholy trinity with Gates and Mifflin — as inspector general. Conway had spent a lot of time prowling the halls of Congress and lying about his resume, in the manner of many foreign adventurers looking for rank and money in America’s war.
John Laurens told his father that “The promotion of General Conway has given almost universal disgust.” Washington’s self-educated generals like Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox and nine others threatened to resign. Washington, instead of trying to talk them out of it, passed their letter on to Congress without a word. He did write privately to Richard Henry Lee that “General Conway’s merit, then, as an Officer, and his importance to this Army, exists more in his own imagination, than in reality.”
This was the plan of Gates, Mifflin, and Conway anyway. They had no respect for homegrown and self-taught generals (of whom George Washington was the most prominent) and blamed the sorry state of the army on it. Mass resignations of the general staff would have cleared the way for this Conway Cabal to get their own men in charge, and finally, as they saw it, start doing things right.
Brand new Inspector General Thomas Conway rode the paper tiger of Congressional authority into Valley Forge on December 29th 1777. He demanded that officers and sergeants be assigned to his command so he could start drilling them in maneuvers. George used his gift for silence and did not respond, other than to say he had received no notice from the Congressional Board of War of Conway’s appointment to his new post.
Conway lost it. He accused Washington of “acting like an ‘absolute King.’” He said, “Since you will not accept of my services, since you cannot bear the sight of me in your camp, I am very ready to goe Where ever Congress thinks proper.”
George kept his temper in check, remaining silent for several days before sending back, “it remains with Congress alone to accept your resignation.” Conway once again lost it, sending letters to Congress complaining about Washington, who did not dive into the fray. George remarked, “To persevere in one’s duty, and be silent, is the best answer to calumny.”
Conway left Valley Forge and set himself up in his own headquarters twenty miles away. But the problem didn’t leave with the inspector general. His appointment was only part of Horatio Gates and Thomas Mifflin’s master plan. They convinced Congress to reorganize the Board of War that oversaw military supplies. Horatio Gates was appointed the new board’s president. This group would operate without military control, meaning that Washington had no say over their activities. This set Gates and Mifflin and Conway above the commander in chief.
The three also started a whisper campaign against Washington. News reached Valley Forge of a wellspring of not just criticism of Washington’s leadership and success thus far, but a new element, expressed in a letter by Dr. Benjamin Rush, that old disloyal crabass: “The northern army (meaning the one commanded by Horatio Gates at Saratoga) has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a general at their head. The spirit of the southern army (meaning the one commanded by George Washington) is in no ways inferior to the spirit of the northern. A Gates, a Lee (by whom he meant Charles Lee, currently languishing in British captivity and traitorously spilling his guts about the best way to defeat the Americans), or a Conway would in a few weeks render them an irresistible body of men.”
The plan was simple — erode confidence in George Washington, deprive his troops of supplies, get his loyal generals and Washington himself to resign (because George wouldn’t wait for the humiliation of being fired), then put Gates, Lee, and Conway in charge of the whole shebang.
Had that come to pass, we’d all still be speaking British.
***
Letters back and forth between the general and the Congress were one thing. What was called for was a plan, and George had some of the best planners available. His inner circle of brilliant youngsters — Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, and the Marquis de Lafayette, all in their early twenties — got to work on a complete reorganization of the Continental Army. They compiled lists of everything the army would need for a spring campaign against the enemy and sent it to Henry Laurens with a request that he send a Congressional delegation to Valley Forge to see the situation for themselves.
Prodded by Washington and his own son’s backchannel correspondence, Henry swooped into action. He informed the Pennsylvania legislature that unless they sent the supplies they had promised to Washington’s army right now, American troops would be withdrawn from around Philadelphia. This got the wagons moving. Laurens then convinced his fellow delegates to send a three-man commission to Valley Forge along with the three members of the Board of War, who refused to go.
A cabal of cowards, were Conway, Gates and Mifflin. Henry Laurens cheerfully accepted their flimsy excuses and appointed two more Congressmen to the party of five. The delegation wasn’t clear on their mandate, but Laurens knew that their proximity to the soldiers and the commander-in-chief would have the desired effect.
The Congressmen reached Valley Forge on January 24th, 1778.
***
Washington made a point of meeting them in person. He had cultivated an imposing, dignified gravitas his entire life and he was well aware that he was, along with only Benjamin Franklin, an American living legend. Criticizing Washington from miles away was easy. It was much harder to, as delegate Francis Dana put it, “to rap a demi-god over the knuckles” in person.
Which the demi-god himself knew all too well.
But just sitting in dignified silence while the obviousness of the army’s plight was made obvious to the delegation wasn’t going to work fast enough. The congressmen went out to inspect the camp, which had the effect Washington intended. The delegates were so mortified by the condition of the soldiers on guard that they took off their own shoes and handed them over.
When the commander-in-chief convened the first formal meeting between his staff and the Congressional delegation, the wunderkind — Hamilton, Laurens, and Lafayette — had prepared a concise report on the changes necessary to revitalize the army, and thereby the American cause of independence.
The Representation to the Committee of Congress, written longhand by Alexander Hamilton, proposed a complete reorganization of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineering units. It recommended a mechanism of half-pay for life and a pension to get officers to commit to service for the duration of the war. It established a formal system of hospitals to care for the sick and wounded. Most importantly, it put forth a complete overhaul of the military supply system.
Washington, the tallest man in the room and with an imposing force of will to match, stood up and told the delegates that his current army was “obsolete, ineffective, and doomed to failure” unless the changes so carefully devised were implemented.
The opening paragraph of the Representation ended with this simple statement: “Something must be done.”
***
The Conway Cabal, pouting at their headquarters, knew how dangerous it was for a Congressional delegation to be at Valley Forge and in the compelling presence of George Washington. Knowing the army was restless for action, Horatio Gates got Congress to agree to the boondoggle pipe dream that had eluded the Americans since the start of the war: the invasion and occupation of Canada.
Canada was a prize on many levels — it was important to both the British and the French, who were still smarting over having to cede New France. It removed a strategic enemy stronghold close by New England and New York. The capture of Canada was seen as a strategic necessity, despite the many failed attempts to take it.
Gates, that wily devil, came up with yet another brilliant machination: he nominated the Marquis de Lafayette to command the expedition. French involvement in the war was on its way — giving pre-eminence to a French-born general who was well connected back home would endear Gates to the French. He assumed that once the French arrived in America, they would support his candidacy for commander-in-chief over the fellow who had slaughtered some of their countrymen a quarter century back. (For details on George Washington’s early encounters with the French see History’s Trainwrecks Episode 5: Washington? Never Heard Of Him).
Horatio Gates was quite the devious slimeball.
But he was also arrogant, and he made a major misstep by nominating General Thomas Conway to be Lafayette’s second in command. John Laurens immediately dashed off a note to his dear old dad, saying that a Canadian invasion, historically a fool’s errand, was even more so while the British navy controlled the eastern seaboard and their army held New York City. The Continentals might have had enough men to invade Canada but not enough to effectively hold it against a British counterattack. And then there was Conway himself, saying “it is feared that the ambition and the intriguing spirit of Conway would be subversive of the public good” and that as second in command Conway would do all he could to blame any failures on Lafayette.
The Congressional delegation in residence at Valley Forge, also weighed in: an invasion of Canada was a terrible idea. But Lafayette had no choice but to go.
He left camp just in time.
***
The supply situation got worse in February 1778, to the point where Washington was forced to send General Nathanael Greene out on overt foraging and confiscation patrols in an effort to get any supplies to Valley Forge. The squabbling officer corps, in the face of this deprivation, finally let go of their gripes and banded together behind their commander-in-chief, whose example of self-sacrifice shamed and inspired them.
It was around this time that a Lancaster almanac, for the first time, called George Washington “the Father of the Country.”
Which probably stuck pretty deep in the collective craws of the Conway Cabal. But this was only the beginning.
Brace yourself, Conway Cabal.
***
The Congressional delegation at Valley Forge started firing off recommendations to Congress, most of which aligned with Hamilton’s Representation to the Committee of Congress. They recommended that Philip Schuyler, Washington’s friend, Hamilton’s father-in-law, and Horatio Gates’s sworn enemy, be named quartermaster general. Then they called for the head of the Commissary Department, the incompetent William Buchanan, to be sacked. Ignoring the fact that they were part of an entire Congress that had to vote on things like ordering the governors of nearby states to send cartloads of food directly to the army, the Valley Forge delegation ordered the governors of New Jersey, Maryland, and New York to send cartloads of food directly to the army. And right now.
The Valley Forge delegation, far out in front of their original confused mandate, had clearly come under the undeniable spell of George Washington and his resolute team of young wizards. Quite a lot of the language in their letters quoted Hamilton’s Representation word for word.
Slimy Traitorous Cabal Safety Tip, Number Two Hundred Fifty Seven: If you’re going up against George Washington, you’d better bring your A-game. And then some.
***
Henry Laurens sent a letter to Valley Forge, indicating that the Board of War (meaning Horatio Gates) had proposed eliminating the post of quartermaster general (mostly to keep General Schuyler out of it) and distribute the responsibility of supply to regional superintendents who would report directly to the Board of War (meaning Horatio Gates), bypassing Washington. It would put Gates and Mifflin in charge of overall military supply and strategy.
The Valley Forge delegation, reading this with Washington nearby, knew that there was a good chance that this final shot across the bow would lead to Washington’s resignation as commander-in-chief. Having spent a bunch of time in his presence, the delegation knew that would mean the end of the cause.
So did Henry Laurens. After laying out the cabal’s evil scheme, he asked the delegation (meaning Washington) to nominate candidates for these regional superintendent posts and anyone else they thought might be a good fit for the Quartermaster’s Department.
So they did. The delegation nominated Nathanael Greene to be Quartermaster General.
Take that, Conway Cabal.
***
Nathanael Greene was a great choice. He had spent much of the winter on supply duty, rounding up all he could find from the surrounding area, so he knew full well what the army needed to function effectively and how hard it was to get. An experienced combat general, he also knew how supplies needed to be stored for retrieval and distribution while on the move and in camp. And, not for nothing, he was completely loyal to George Washington. He may have had to report to the Board of War on paper, but he would be working for the commander-in-chief.
Henry Laurens informed the Congress that the Valley Forge delegation had been granted the power to fill the posts in the Quartermaster Department. Congress would review the appointments at some vague point in the future.
Nathanael Greene had to be persuaded, because he wanted a front-line command far more than he wanted to be rounding up cows and vegetables, but he couldn’t withstand the personal entreaties of George Washington, who told him that the success of the entire war effort hung on the supply department. Greene himself knew this already.
He would have walked through fire for George Washington. So he took the job, with two conditions — his appointment would be temporary. He wanted a field command once the supply crisis was solved. And he insisted on naming his own reliable men to fill the posts in the department.
The Valley Forge delegation sent a letter to Congress trashing Horatio Gates’s plan to reorganize the Quartermaster Department as wasteful and divisive, and nominated Nathanael Greene, “an officer of impeccable character who knew firsthand the military’s wants and needs” to run the thing.
On March 2, 1778, the Congress rejected the Board of War’s plan and appointed General Greene Quartermaster General.
Washington wrote a fellow Virginian that he had “a good deal of reason to believe that the Machinations of this Junto (the Conway Cabal) will recoil upon their heads.”
He was right.
***
The Marquis de Lafayette left Valley Forge to take command of the Canada invasion force, but stopped at York to charm the socks off the Congress and Henry Laurens in particular. The marquis said that the French would not take kindly to the Irish-born Conway as part of the expedition, so Congress obligingly removed the general and posted him to a dead-end job.
Lafayette’s next stop was to see Horatio Gates himself, who had gotten Lafayette the commanding officer’s job by praising his military expertise. Lafayette informed Gates that all orders regarding the expedition, according to his military expertise, should rightly come from the commander-in-chief’s headquarters. And, to maintain a proper chain of command, Lafayette’s military expertise told him that his reports about the expedition would go first to Washington’s headquarters. Gates and the Board of War would get a copy. You know, eventually.
Gates, having built up Lafayette to the Congress in pursuit of his slimeball plan, was stuck. Things got worse when General Lafayette insisted that the final after-dinner toast be made to the health of George Washington.
This was not Horatio Gates’s best day ever.
***
Lafayette got to Albany, New York, the staging area for the Canada operation, eight days ahead of schedule. While there, Benedict Arnold, who deserved more of the credit for the victory at Saratoga than that sneaky snake Horatio Gates, told the marquis that an invasion of Canada was, in a word, “daft.” The money and materials required for the operation had not shown up, the troops were not adequately outfitted for a winter offensive, and worst of all, the British across the border had been fully informed of what the Americans had in mind.
The invasion of Canada was canceled by the end of February.
***
Horatio Gates had conceived the plan not so much to take Canada as to take out George Washington, both of which failed spectacularly. He finally realized that all his maneuvering had come to naught and tried to get back in Washington’s good graces, disavowing Conway and sucking up to Henry Laurens for a field command. Conway himself even wrote a letter of apology to Washington before resigning his commission and sailing back to France.
Washington wrote back to Horatio Gates, “My temper leads me to peace and harmony with all men. And it is particularly my wish to avoid any personal feuds or dissensions.”
Which in this case George avoided by, you know, winning.
Always a slimeball, Gates continued to disparage Washington as a commander until the disastrous Battle of Camden a couple years later, where Gates abandoned his troops and fled, leaving them to the slaughter. Gates left the army in disgrace.
So much for the Conway Cabal.
