The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (126 page)

The military and naval commanders themselves were an uneven lot. General Thomas Gage had ability, but he was relieved early in the war, in part because he had frightened the ministry with his predictions of what lay in store for British power in America unless great efforts were made immediately to put down the rebellion.

William Howe was in many respects a solid officer, brave in battle and popular with most of his subordinates. But Howe seems not to have ever grasped the nature of the problems he faced, or if he did he may have been disabled by his sympathy for America. He lacked energy, and he sometimes failed to plan intelligently. He should have struck at Washington's demoralized army immediately after the battle of Brooklyn but chose to begin regular approaches instead. Washington took advantage of his opportunity and recovering quickly, boated his troops across the river to Manhattan. Howe's failure to anticipate Washington's daring strike across the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 is understandable. It was a devastating failure, for his complacency communicated itself to Rall and the officers in command in New Jersey. They, of course, were unprepared for Washington's attack. Howe's move to Philadelphia by sea in July 1777 may have been his worst blunder. A resourceful commander would have attempted to drive up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne, who himself was engaged in a badly conceived operation. To be sure, Howe's orders from Germain permitted great discretion in devising his operations. Whatever his reasons and his orders, his plan for 1777 ignored all but the narrowest strategic considerations.

Henry Clinton may have had greater ability than Howe, but his temperament, compounded of fear and suspicion of others, usually restrained whatever disposition he may have had to act. Clinton's judgment also played a part in holding him in place. He overestimated his difficulties and then did not really try to overcome them. He allowed his one great victory -- the capture of Charleston in 1780 -- to be squandered. Cornwallis of course must bear his share of this failure, but Clinton after all gave Cornwallis command and then returned to New York. His departure ended his last burst of activity in the war and freed Cornwallis to run his own operations.

The two had regarded one another uneasily from the moment Clinton assumed command in America. Until May 1780, Cornwallis was quite prepared to give his chief loyal service, a willingness that Clinton could never quite bring himself to believe. As time passed he saw Cornwallis more and more as his rival, the natural choice of Germain and the ministry to replace him. Cornwallis's ambitions seem to have grown

with his chief's suspicions. In the campaign at Charleston the two men found ways of avoiding one another, and afterwards, with Clinton in New York, neither could make the other understand what he was doing.

Clinton had even less success in dealing with Arbuthnot, the naval commander. Clinton despised Arbuthnot, and Arbuthnot did not care much for Clinton. Both men had weaknesses; unfortunately for British arms in America the weakness in one fed the weakness in the other.

Cordial personal relations among British commanders would not have won the war for them. But they might have permitted these officers to deal more effectively with problems which seemed intractable without the cooperation of the two branches of the armed forces. The possibility of coordinated efforts might also have released energies and perhaps even stimulated inventive thinking. As matters turned out, the British fought their war in conventional grooves and in an atmosphere soured by jealousy and crabbed spirits.

The morale of commanders had not been good even when the war began. Most did not like what they had to do -- suppress the military forces of a people for whom they felt affection. Not that they approved of rebellion; many felt horror and rage at it. Still, the fact remained that they had to kill Americans, who, though not exactly Englishmen, were certainly not the usual sort of enemy. For officers who felt this way, perhaps the Howes among them, the whole affair from 1775 on was a dreadful business.

Unlike the British, the Americans decided on their objective in the war -- the winning of independence -- and shaped their actions accordingly. Just as the British irresolution affected their planning and conduct of operations, so also did the American certainty shape theirs. American strategy after Lexington emerged slowly; yet its aim seemed almost inevitable. It was to maintain the army, to seek foreign aid and recognition, both in the belief that armed opposition that refused to be subdued would eventually persuade the British government to yield. This strategy could not have been sustained had the larger purpose of the Revolution not been already stated and widely accepted. For this purpose constantly ran up against their localism, their provincial suspicions, and their unbridled individualism.

The defeats that the army absorbed and the years of sacrifice took their toll of American morale nonetheless. Civilians showed their weariness in various ways -- by profiteering, refusing to honor requisitions of food and money, and avoiding military and governmental service. The army seemed about to disintegrate on several occasions. But the virtually

constant desertions and the mutinies of several regiments in 1780 and 1781 did not arise from political unease or from a divergent conception of the cause. Rather, breakdowns in discipline occurred from concrete grievances -- lack of pay, hunger, near nakedness, and uncertainty over the length of enlistments.
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The type of war the Americans fought, with its overriding political objective and its defensive strategy, called for a particular sort of commander. In a war of defense, patience was necessary, and so was prudence in using the army. But caution and the ability to wait were not enough. Both civilians and soldiers needed the action which sustains hope, hope that the war would end with America free. A general with imagination as well as judgment would see that daring might sometimes be necessary. George Washington was such a commander. In the course of the war he demonstrated that he had other qualities as well.

Washington's judgment improved each year, as he assimilated the experience of the war. His confidence in himself also grew as he learned. When the war began he was full of concern that he would fail because his abilities were not of the first order. This belief persisted even though he also felt that he had been called by Providence to lead the American army in the Revolution. By the end of 1776 with a year and a half of the war under his belt, and with the success at Trenton and Princeton, he was a much more confident commander. He was not arrogant, and he continued to consult his general officers before he made important decisions, but he no longer took advice against his better judgment, as he had, for example, in the autumn of 1776 on the Hudson.

Washington came to his post with a feeling for the technical side of his command. He seems always to have known about logistics, and he seems also to have understood immediately the complexity of actually moving an army from one place to another. In fact, whatever the impression his papers convey, his skills at these tasks probably improved just as his staff's did. He was superb in taking the army out of danger at

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Brooklyn in 1776; his move to Trenton further demonstrated efficiency as well as his daring. And the march to Yorktown with its disguised beginnings and its transport of large numbers of men, artillery, and supplies was simply a superb achievement.

Washington also displayed wisdom in choosing men to assist him. Unfortunately the choice of subordinates did not always fall to him. Congress selected the senior officers and sometimes chose unwisely. Washington was able to make his wishes known, however, especially after the first year or two of the war. Nathanael Greene, for example, replaced Gates in the South on Washington's suggestion to Congress. Washington's "family," as the eighteenth-century army staff was known, included several brilliant young officers; and virtually every member of this group possessed fine abilities.

Successful commanders usually have a sense of strategy. Washington recognized the problems of fighting a powerful enemy with a weak and poorly trained army. He did not like the defensive war he had to fight, but he pursued it with great skill. His tactical abilities, those involved in particular in planning for a battle, were less sure. His most common mistake was to make plans beyond the capacities of his army. This tendency cost him dearly at Germantown. At Kip's Bay and at Brandywine he was out-maneuvered. His major tactical skill came from an ability to think clearly under fire. He did not flinch when disaster seemed about to overtake his army, as for example, at Monmouth Court House. Nor did he hesitate to seize his opportunities, again one thinks of Trenton and in a different sense - because larger -- of Yorktown later.

As important as these talents were, Washington's temperament and his character were even more important. His fidelity to the Revolution impressed everyone who knew him, and somehow conveyed itself to the American people. Washington did not seek popularity and did not become popular in an ordinary sense. Yet he inspired others, not perhaps so much through his actions, dramatic and stunning as they sometimes were, but through his determination, his refusal to give up, and his devotion to the cause of republican liberty.

That cause inspired the deepest American resistance. The unspoken question in America during the Revolution was "What holds us together as a people?" Before 1760 some sense of commonality with Britain existed, created perhaps from language, blood, kin, trade, liberty, and constitutionalism. Over the years before the Revolution an American experience had loosened the ties. Should Britain do anything that suggested that interests were not mutual, that values were not shared, that

commonality had been compromised or did not exist, then resistance to acts impairing liberty was inevitable.

English ministries and Parliament brought on a confrontation. In the war that followed, Americans recognized the ties among themselves. The most important was what they came to call the glorious cause -the defense of republican freedom. This cause and the way it was understood -- as a providential struggle of good against evil -- expressed the values of American culture and armed Americans for war. The language of this culture, imbued with traditional religious meanings, made the conflict much simpler and much more clear-cut than it actually was. But perhaps simplicity of understanding was an advantage to a people who fought against enormous odds in a conflict that had few precedents in history.

There is no need to take a romantic view of these people. They often faltered, and they sometimes could not match the resoluteness of Washington, but finally they sustained him as he led them. They might have broken had their army surrendered, but they could not have been held down by an eighteenth-century army. Not only were they too many and spread over a large country, in the crisis that began in 1764 they had come to know themselves. And in the war they learned that though they might be defeated, they could not be subdued.

Caesar rode into Annapolis on December 19, 1783. At least some hoped -- and others feared -- that he was Caesar. He turned out to be George Washington, and as much as he may have admired Caesar he admired the republic more. He had come to Annapolis, where Congress sat, to surrender the commission he had accepted eight years before.

Washington might simply have written a letter of resignation and enclosed his commission. The occasion offered too much of the dramatic and the symbolic to be passed by with such a flat performance, however, and Washington recognized the dramatic and symbolic importance of his resignation as commander in chief. The republic after all was barely on its way; its health was not yet robust; and it was surrounded by atmospheres heavy with monarchy and militarism. Hence he must seize the opportunity to reaffirm the uniqueness of a nation in which a congress, a representative body, held a weightier authority than the military.