Long a wealthy woman, Martha adapted to the austere camp life and looked askance on lavish consumption. Soon after her arrival, she was invited to a fancy dress ball at a local tavern, which local radicals protested as inappropriate in wartime. Four representatives met with her and requested that she boycott the event. One recalled that Martha reacted with “great politeness” and sent her “best compliments” to the protesters, assuring them “that their sentiments on this occasion were perfectly agreeable unto her own.”
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The ball was canceled on the spot. While Martha Washington could have ducked the issue, saying she would consult her husband, she showed confidence in her judgment and ingratiated herself to the men. At first Washington balked at Martha’s suggestion that they celebrate their Twelfth Night anniversary, but he finally submitted and allowed a gala celebration to be held. Before long Martha took out her needles and was knitting stockings for the soldiers.
Since Washington had a good deal of entertaining to do, Martha oversaw the social side of headquarters. For morning visits, she offered oranges and wine to guests and heartier fare for midafternoon meals. At these gatherings, Washington experienced relief from his burdensome labors and enjoyed his favorite Madeira wine combined with the camaraderie of several pretty young women. A particular favorite was the fetching Caty Greene, wife of Nathanael. Washington’s fondness for the young brunette was only enhanced that February when she gave birth to a boy christened George Washington Greene. A woman of stunning good looks, the sociable Caty was coy and high-spirited. Henry Knox dismissed her as superficial, but Washington didn’t seem to care. Even as local gossips whispered about her flirting with the commander in chief, he seemed enchanted by her company and teased her good-naturedly about her “Quaker-preacher” husband.
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Inasmuch as Martha was fond of the younger woman, Caty could hardly have enjoyed an illicit romance with the general.
It is testimony to Martha’s social versatility that she won over women who were far more intellectual than she. Mercy Otis Warren, a prolific bluestocking who wrote poems, plays, and histories, called on Martha, and they immediately became fast friends. As Warren reported to Abigail Adams, “I took a ride to Cambridge and waited on Mrs. Washington at 11 o’clock, where I was receiv[e]d with that politeness and respect shown in a first interview among the well bred and with the ease and cordiality of friendship of a much earlier date.”
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Washington knew the shortcomings of Martha’s education, and when she corresponded with intellectual women such as Mercy Warren, he or a secretary would draft her replies. There’s no evidence that Martha objected to this practice and may even have felt that it spared her embarrassment.
During the long Cambridge winter, the Washingtons perceived the mythical stature that the hopeful populace was foisting upon them. A man named Levi Allen wrote to Washington, hailing him as “our political father,” and in 1778 an almanac described him as the “father of his country.”
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A couple called the Andersons named their twins George and Martha, while three ships were christened for the general’s wife. A town in western Massachusetts renamed itself Washington. In January 1776 Washington set eyes on a fictitious engraving of himself, printed in London, by an artist who falsely claimed to have based it on an actual sitting with him. With wry amusement, Washington noted drily that the artist had created “a very formidable figure of the Commander in Chief, giving him a sufficient portion of terror in his countenance.”
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By far the most sparkling tribute came from the pen of a young woman, Phillis Wheatley, who resided in Boston and honored Washington with a flattering ode mailed to him in late October 1775. In polished couplets reminiscent of Alexander Pope, she burnished Washington’s image: “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side, / Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide. / A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine, / With gold unfading, Washington! Be thine.” The youthful poetess lauded America as “the land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!” which was the more remarkable given that Phillis Wheatley was a twenty-two-year-old slave.
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Seized in Africa at age seven or eight, she had been sold to John Wheatley, a Boston tailor, as a personal slave for his wife. The Wheatleys recognized the girl’s gifted nature, schooled her in Scriptures and ancient classics, and allowed her to live with the family. In 1773 she published in London a collection of verse,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
. The frontispiece showed an arresting picture of Wheatley in which her personality leaps out. She looks smart and self-assured, with her chin supported by her fingers and her quill poised above the page as she stares coolly into the distance. The volume made her the most celebrated black person in America.
Not until mid-December did Wheatley’s poem come to Washington’s attention, and he didn’t find time to reply until late February. His cordial, respectful letter is little short of astonishing for a large Virginia slave owner replying to a young woman in bondage. This was the same Washington who had recently reviled Lord Dunmore as diabolical for promising freedom to defecting slaves. Washington started his note by saying that he should have replied sooner. “But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real, neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed. And however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical talents.”
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He concluded with an invitation: “If you should ever come to Cambridge or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favour[e]d by the Muses and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am with great respect your obed[ien]t humble servant.”
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This is the sort of exquisite letter that, once upon a time, Washington might have reserved for the eyes of a duchess. Few incidents in the early days of the war suggest how powerfully Revolutionary ideals were transforming George Washington as his reaction to Phillis Wheatley.
Washington considered publishing the poem, but feared it might be misinterpreted as a mark of vanity. Also the poem, with its imagery of crowns and thrones, had some uncomfortable overtones. Nevertheless Washington appears to have received Phillis Wheatley at his Cambridge headquarters in March with a “very courteous reception,” and through Joseph Reed, the poem found its way into print in April.
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It didn’t seem to bother Washington that Wheatley was a slave, and it evidently didn’t bother Wheatley that Washington was a substantial slave owner. Certainly there were Mount Vernon slaves whom Washington knew intimately and some to whom he spoke in a friendly manner, such as Billy Lee, but he had never met any black person on such terms of social equality. That Washington appreciated Wheatley’s poetry and received her warmly showed his great potential for growth. Once again he had displayed a striking capacity to adapt to new circumstances, even though he still had an immense distance to travel on the slavery issue.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Heights
THE REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGY that Washington absorbed from his avid reading of Revolutionary pamphlets never fit easily with his patrician reflexes as a Virginia planter. Perhaps few actions he took during the war exhibited his inconsistent nature in such bold relief as his creation of a personal guard during the dispiriting Cambridge winter. In part, the decision arose from legitimate concerns for his safety. “To guard against assassination, which I neither expect nor dread, is impossible,” Washington later wrote, but he knew that kidnapping attempts were always a possibility, especially since he himself would hatch a couple of failed schemes to kidnap British generals.
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His order to forge a personal guard or Life Guard, as it was commonly called, also sprang from a desire to be surrounded by a crack team of disciplined professionals who would accompany him whenever he rode out to review the troops. Protective of his historical reputation, Washington committed the care of his personal papers to this guard. Having such an elite corps at the beck and call of the chief general was a throwback to the glittering world of European armies.
In general orders for March 11, 1776, Washington instructed the commanding officer of each regiment to pluck out four men apiece for his guard. His description of what he wanted shows how much stock he placed in appearance. The men should be “from five feet eight inches high to five feet ten inches; handsomely and well made; and as there is nothing in his [i.e., Washington’s] eyes more desirable than cleanliness in a soldier, he desires that particular attention may be made in the choice of such men as are neat and spruce.”
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This precision was strange indeed at a time when Washington feared his army might crumble into dust.
A year later Washington issued new instructions that tightened requirements for the unit. Now he wanted his bandbox men to “look well and be nearly of a size.” He narrowed the height range—“I desire that none of the men may exceed in stature 5 feet 10 inches, nor fall short of 5 feet 9 inches”—and said they should be “sober, young, active, and well made.”
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Although Washington allowed class preferences to trump ideology, he didn’t want it to get around and enforced secrecy on the officers: “I am satisfied there can be no absolute security for the fidelity of this class of people, but yet I think it most likely to be found in those who have family connections in the country. You will therefore send me none but natives and men of some property, if you have them. I must insist that in making this choice you give no intimation of my preference of natives as I do not want to create any invidious distinction between them and the foreigners.”
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It should be said that Washington had noticed that a disproportionate number of foreign-born troops defected to the British side to pocket lucrative bounties.
Washington decked out his handpicked men in blue and buff uniforms, their round hats sprouting blue and white feathers and ornamented with bearskin strips. Nervous about the expense, he again demanded secrecy, noting that these costs created an “expense which I would not wish should go forth.”
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His painstaking regard for appearances wasn’t limited to his Life Guard. That January he told his troops that “nothing adds more to the appearance of a man than dress” and that he hoped “each regiment will contend for the most soldierlike appearance.”
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Even in the waning days of the war, he was preoccupied by an absence of hats, for the lack “of which the beauty and uniformity of the other articles will be in a great measure lost … and the troops can never make a military appearance.”
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He ordered officers to lend hats an attractive image “by cutting, cocking, or adding such other decorations as they think proper.”
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Washington’s perfectionism about looks extended down to his horses. His most famous steed, Old Nelson, a chestnut horse with a white face, earned the distinction of being the first “nicked” horse in America—that is, the root of his tail was incised so that he carried it with a high flourish. Washington was well aware of the towering impression he made on horseback.
ON JANUARY 14, 1776, Washington informed John Hancock that the state of American arms was “truly alarming.”
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His prayers for more firepower were soon answered. Three days later, beaming with good news, Henry Knox lumbered into camp after a two-month absence. He reported the imminent arrival of heavy weapons carted three hundred miles from Fort Ticonderoga. Incredibly, Knox had taken almost sixty mortars and cannon, weighing about 120,000 pounds, and mounted them on forty-two giant sleds. Through thickening December snow, teams of oxen had hauled this ponderous artillery up and down mountain passes, across frozen rivers, and down village lanes as spectators gaped in wonder. The entire grand procession seemed quasi-miraculous, and Henry Knox became the hero of the hour, executing one of the war’s legendary feats. In an instant, the entire conflict was transformed, for Washington could now contemplate offensive action against British troops bottled up in Boston.
The arrival of the big Ticonderoga guns was providential. Washington remained dangerously short of gunpowder and firearms, and two thousand men lacked muskets or ammunition. Things had come to such a desperate pass that Benjamin Franklin suggested to General Charles Lee that the troops be furnished with bows and arrows. “Those were good weapons,” Franklin admonished him, “not wisely laid aside.”
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So perilous was the plight of his troops that Washington confessed to Joseph Reed, “I have been oblig[e]d to use art to conceal it from my own officers.”
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He had succeeded so brilliantly in pretending to be securely armed that his main supporters overestimated his strength and expected more zeal in dislodging the British. As Washington observed, “The means used to conceal my weakness from the enemy conceals it also from our friends and adds to their wonder.”
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One missing prerequisite for an offensive operation was a blast of cold air to freeze the waterway between the Continental Army and the British troops, allowing an invasion of Boston without employing boats. When the temperature plummeted to near zero in late January, forming an icy crust on the water, Washington monitored it carefully. On February 13, at Lechmere Point, he determined that the ice had sufficiently thickened to freeze the channel all the way to Boston. Hence on February 16 he convened a war council to present a plan for “a bold and resolute assault upon the troops in Boston.”
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His skeptical generals unanimously voted it down, finding the plan flawed because they were short of gunpowder and couldn’t soften up the British beforehand with heavy bombardments. They also believed that Washington had overstated the size of American forces and underrated British strength.