Washington the Soldier

by Henry B. Carrington

To Marion he wrote: “I am fully sensible that your service is hard, and your sufferings great; but how great the prize for which we contend! I like your plan of frequently shifting your ground. It frequently prevents surprise, and perhaps the total loss of your party. Until a more permanent army can be collected than is in the field at present, we must endeavor to keep up a partisan war, and preserve the tide of sentiment among the people in our favor, as much as possible. Spies are the eyes of an army, and without them, a general is always groping in the dark.”

In all these letters and the measures undertaken, Greene reflects the principles upon which his Commander-in-Chief carried on the war, and it was his highest pride so to act, as if under the direct gaze of Washington. On the twentieth of December, having been detained by rains at Charlotte, he abandoned his huts; and by the twelfth of January, 1781, was encamped on the banks of the Peedee River, awaiting the opening of the final campaign of the war for American Independence. Col. Christopher Greene, as well as Colonel Washington, Harry Lee, and Morgan, had already joined him, and Washington had thus furnished to the Southern army his ablest general and such choice details of officers and men as had been faithful, gallant, and successful throughout the war.

CHAPTER XXX.
THE SOLDIER TRIED.—AMERICAN MUTINY.—FOREIGN Judgment.—ARNOLD’S DEPREDATIONS.

Nothing new or unfamiliar to the American student can be said as to the military operations of the British, French and American armies during the closing year of the war for American Independence; but they may be so grouped in their relations to Washington as a Soldier, that he may stand forth more distinctly as both nominal and real Commander-in-Chief. His original commission, it will be remembered, was accompanied by the declaration of Congress that “they would maintain and assist him, and adhere to him, with their lives and fortunes, in the cause of American liberty.” After the Battle of Trenton, when Congress solemnly declared that “the very existence of Civil Liberty depended upon the right execution of military powers,” it invested him with dictatorial authority, being “confident of the wisdom, vigor, and uprightness of George Washington.” And in 1778, after the flash of the Burgoyne campaign had spent itself, and the experiences of the American army at Valley Forge attested the necessity for a fighting army under a fighting soldier, Washington was again intrusted with the reorganization of the army, both regular and militia, in respect of all elements of enlistment, outfit, and supply.

From the date of his commission, through all his acts and correspondence, it has been evident, that he has been perfectly frank and consistent in his assignments of officers or troops, either to position or command; and his judgment of men and measures has had constant verification in realized experience.

It was very natural for European monarchs, including Louis XVI., to behold in the very preëminent and assertive force of Washington’s character much of the “one-man power” which was the basis of their own asserted prerogative; and there were astute and ambitious statesmen and soldiers of the Old World who hoped that a new empire, and a new personal dynasty, would yet arise in the western world, to be their associated ally against Great Britain herself. They did not measure the American Revolution by right standards; because they could not conceive, nor comprehend the American conception of, a “sovereign people.”

There was one foreign soldier in the American army, and of royal stock, who must have clung to Washington and his cause, with most ardent passion as well as obedient reverence. Nothing of sacrifice, exposure, or vile jealousy, whether in closet, camp, or field, amid winter’s keenest blasts or summer’s scorching fires, was beyond the life and soul experience of Thaddeus Kosciusko. His name, and that of Pulaski, so dear to Washington, and so true to him, should be ever dear to the American; and in the history of their country’s fall, there should ever be cherished a monumental recognition of ancient Poland and the Pole.

It was one of the most striking characteristics of Washington’s military life that he recognized and trusted so many of these heroic men whose lives had been nursed and developed in the cause of liberty and country. Such men as these beheld in Washington a superhuman regard for man, as man; and the youthful Lafayette almost worshipped, while he obeyed, until his entire soul was penetrated by the spirit and controlled by the example of his beloved Chief. Some of these, who survived until the opening of the year 1781, were able to realize that its successive months, however blessed in their ultimate fruition, were months in which Washington passed under heavier yokes and through tougher ordeals than were those of Valley Forge or Yorktown. For the first time during the Revolutionary struggle, the American citizens who did the fighting might well compare their situation under the guardianship of the American Congress, with that of Colonial obligation under the British Parliament and the British crown.

The fluctuations of numbers in the American army seemed very largely to depend upon its vicinity to endangered sections. Remoteness from the seaboard induced indifference to expenditures for the navy, because British ships could not operate on land; and seaboard towns, which were constantly in peril, insisted upon retaining their able-bodied militia within easy reach, until armed vessels could be built and assigned for their protection. The same unpatriotic principle of human nature affected all supplies of food and clothing. It has already been noticed that Washington was profoundly grieved that country people courted the British markets of New York, and that British gold was of such mighty weight in the balance of “stay-at-home comfort,” against personal experience in some distant camp. Starvation and suffering could not fail to arouse resistance to their constraints. The condition of the army was one of protracted agony. Lafayette wrote home to his wife as follows: “Human patience has its limits. No European army would suffer one-tenth part of what the Americans suffer. It takes citizens, to support hunger, nakedness, toil, and the total want of pay, which constitute the condition of our soldiers,—the hardiest and most patient that are to be found in the world.”

Marshall states the case fairly when he asserts that “it was not easy to persuade the military, that their brethren in civil life were unable to make greater exertions in support of the war, or, that its burdens could not be more equally borne.”