LIFE MASK OF WASHINGTON
When the Second Congress met, in May, 1775, the battle of Lexington had been fought, and twenty thousand minute-men were assembled about Boston. To pay and feed such a horde was wholly beyond the ability of New England, and her delegates came to the Congress bent upon getting that body to assume the expense, or, as the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts naively put it, “we have the greatest Confidence in the Wisdom and Ability of the Continent to support us.”
The other colonies saw this in a different light. Massachusetts, without our advice, has begun a war and embodied an army; let Massachusetts pay her own bills, was their point of view. “I have found this Congress like the last,” wrote John Adams. “When we first came together, I found a strong jealousy of us from New England, and the Massachusettes in particular, suspicions entertained of designs of independency, an American republic, Presbyterian principles, and twenty other things. Our sentiments were heard in Congress with great caution, and seemed to make but little impression.” Yet “every post brought me letters from my friends … urging in pathetic terms the impossibility of keeping their men together without the assistance of Congress.” “I was daily urging all these things, but we were embarrassed with more than one difficulty, not only with the party in favor of the petition to the King, and the party who were zealous of independence, but a third party, which was a southern party against a Northern, and a jealousy against a New England army under the command of a New England General.”
Under these circumstances a political deal was resorted to, and Virginia was offered by John and Samuel Adams, as the price of an adoption and support of the New England army, the appointment of commander-in-chief, though the offer was not made with over-good grace, and only because “we could carry nothing without conceding it.” There was some dissension among the Virginia delegates as to who should receive the appointment, Washington himself recommending an old companion in arms, General Andrew Lewis, and “more than one,” Adams says of the Virginia delegates, were “very cool about the appointment of Washington, and particularly Mr. Pendleton was very clear and full against it” Washington himself said the appointment was due to “partiality of the Congress, joined to a political motive;” and, hard as it is to realize, it was only the grinding political necessity of the New England colonies which secured to Washington the place for which in the light of to-day he seems to have been created.
As a matter of course, there was not the strongest liking felt for the General thus chosen by the New England delegates, and this was steadily lessened by Washington’s frank criticism of the New England soldiers and officers already noticed. Equally bitter to the New England delegates and their allies were certain army measures that Washington pressed upon the attention of Congress. He urged and urged that the troops should be enlisted for the war, that promotions should be made from the army as a whole, and not from the colony- or State-line alone, and most unpopular of all, that since Continental soldiers could not otherwise be obtained, a bounty should be given to secure them, and that as compensation for their inadequate pay half-pay should be given them after the war. He eventually carried these points, but at the price of an entire alienation of the democratic party in the Congress, who wished to have the war fought with militia, to have all the officers elected annually, and to whom the very suggestion of pensions was like a red rag to a bull.
A part of their motive in this was unquestionably to prevent the danger of a standing army, and of allowing the commander-in-chief to become popular with the soldiers. Very early in the war Washington noted “the jealousy which Congress unhappily entertain of the army, and which, if reports are right, some members labor to establish.” And he complained that “I see a distrust and jealousy of military power, that the commander-in-chief has not an opportunity, even by recommendation, to give the least assurance of reward for the most essential services.” The French minister told his government that when a committee was appointed to institute certain army reforms, delegates in Congress “insisted on the danger of associating the Commander-in-chief with it, whose influence, it was stated, was already too great,” and when France sent money to aid the American cause, with the provision that it should be subject to the order of the General, it aroused, a writer states, “the jealousy of Congress, the members of which were not satisfied that the head of the army should possess such an agency in addition to his military power.”
His enemies in the Congress took various means to lessen his influence and mortify him. Burke states that in the discussion of one question “Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina voted for expunging it; the four Eastern States, Virginia and Georgia for retaining it. There appeared through this whole debate a great desire, in some of the delegates from the Eastern States, and in one from New Jersey, to insult the General,” and a little later the Congress passed a “resolve which,” according to James Lovell, “was meant to rap a Demi G—over the knuckles.” Nor was it by commission, but as well by omission, that they showed their ill feeling. John Laurens told his father that
“there is a conduct observed towards” the General “by certain great men, which as it is humiliating, must abate his happiness…. The Commander in Chief of this army is not sufficiently informed of all that is known by Congress of European affairs. Is it not a galling circumstance, for him to collect the most important intelligence piecemeal, and as they choose to give it, from gentlemen who come from York? Apart from the chagrin which he must necessarily feel at such an appearance of slight, it should be considered that in order to settle his plan of operations for the ensuing campaign, he should take into view the present state of European affairs, and Congress should not leave him in the dark.”