My father did not write his fateful letter to Alexander until April. Though I shall never know for certain, I believe that it was my mother who finally pushed him to write, and if it had been left to Papa, I would still to this day be a spinster waiting for his blessing, he’d become that loath to part with me.
The contents of the letter were simple enough—that he and my mother had accepted Alexander’s offer to me of marriage—but my life, and Alexander’s, were changed forever. With the weather and the roads improving, my mother made the journey from Albany to Morristown, and took up residence in the house Papa had rented. I was pleased that they wished to know Alexander better, and I was equally pleased that he in turn wished to know them as well. Having no family of his own, he was eager to become part of mine, and as often as he could be spared from headquarters he came to our little house. With his usual charm, quick wit, and perspicacity, Alexander discussed military matters with Papa and household economies with Mamma, and won them both so thoroughly that they became as happy to see him at our door as I was.
Best of all was the glowing happiness that came with being betrothed to Alexander. My parents insisted on us marrying at our home in Albany, and we all hoped that Alexander would be able to procure leave to do so before the summer campaigns began. Our joy in one another was boundless, and whenever we were together, we planned and plotted our shared future together as husband and wife, and dreamed of the children we would have and the house where we’d live.
But the unhappy truth was that we had increasingly less time to spend in each other’s company. It was not from lack of interest, of course, but on account of Alexander’s duties. By now he had become for all purposes the general’s chief of staff, and was as indispensable as any single officer in the army could be. I do not believe there was anyone that His Excellency trusted more. As can be imagined, I was thoroughly proud of Alexander, but his role meant that he was constantly either at the general’s side, or away executing a mission or order on his behalf.
Privately I thought the general took advantage of Alexander’s great energy and ability to subsist on little sleep. Whenever he’d steal away a few moments to call upon me, he often looked weary, with circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and I thought he’d grown thinner, too, which he could ill afford. He could become preoccupied, his gaze turning blank in the middle of a conversation as his thoughts began to churn some problem or another. It was obvious he’d much on his mind, and I worried at the toll it was taking upon him. Yet I could hardly protest, since the very survival of our new country was at risk.
For even as spring was returning and the fields around Morristown were turning green with new growth and optimism, the Continental Army was foundering; nor had I needed Peggy Arnold to tell me so, either. Most of us in Morristown were aware of it, and that knowledge hung like a forbidding cloud over the entire encampment.
No one had expected the war to continue as long as it had, with seemingly so little achieved. There had been hints of mutiny in the snow-covered cabins of Jockey Hollow, from muted grumbling to out-and-out insubordination. Many of the men had enlisted in 1777 for a term of service of three years, and were well aware that their duty would be finished at the end of April.
“Already the men are beginning to drift away,” Alexander said. It was early evening, and we were sitting side by side on a rough plank bench in the small yard behind my parents’ house, where we’d have a measure of privacy, if few comforts. Whatever cheer the sun had given earlier in the afternoon was gone, and I’d wrapped myself in a thick woolen shawl, with Alexander’s arm around me for extra warmth. Small ghostly patches of old snow still lingered in the shadows, dirty and tattered like worn lace, but at last the first shoots of green were beginning to appear in the sticky, muddy ground.
Yet the way Alexander was explaining it, spring was bringing little cheer to General Washington.
“Each morning’s muster shows more men have vanished overnight,” he continued. “Their guns are gone and their other belongings with them. They’ve had their fill of soldiering, and all that matters to them are new crops to be planted and sweethearts to kiss. Staying here another few weeks makes no difference to them, nor can I fault them for it.”
“But if they’re captured, they’ll be charged as deserters, won’t they?” As a soldier’s daughter, I knew the unequivocal sentence for desertion—the most grievous sin in any army—was death.
“The general will have no choice if he wants to maintain discipline,” Alexander said. “Yet most who flee are young, younger than I, and eager to return to homes they left as boys. They haven’t been paid in months, at least not in money that has any value to it. Many are sick, and all are near to starving from the poor rations. They believe Congress and the populace despise them, and they’re justified in that. And yet . . .”
He let the words drift off unfinished, but I could complete them as well as he.
“You’ve stayed,” I said, tightening my fingers into his. “You’re here.”
“I’m an officer, Betsey,” he said, “and on my honor as a gentleman I’m bound to be part of this until the end of the war.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “It’s more than that for you.”
He sighed deeply. “I believe in this, all of this. The war, our country, our future, the men who have died in battle beside me and the children I hope to have one day with you. To abandon it now would be madness, and cowardice besides.”
“That’s why I love you,” I said softly. “Wrapped there in a single sentence.”
“It was three sentences, actually,” he said wryly, “but the sentiment is the same nonetheless.”
“You spoke it as one.” Only he would parse the syntax of a passionate declaration, and how endearing I found it, too. “The rumors among the ladies are that a thousand men are set to quit the army by the end of April.”
“If only that were all,” he said. “The last report that I wrote for the general to Congress estimated that at least two thousand eight hundred will be gone as surely as the last of the snow. That’s more than a quarter of our regular army. Yet Congress urges the general to send more troops south to Charleston, heedless of how we’d then be helpless to stop the British here in the north. How can we send what we don’t to spare? There’s little doubt that given the opportunity, the British would overrun New Jersey, and likely take back Philadelphia as well.”
I remembered the blithe confidence of so many of the Philadelphians I’d met. They’d placed all their faith in Congress and ignored the warnings of military gentleman like Papa, and instead assumed that the British would never choose to recapture their pretty city of red brick and neat houses. I didn’t want to imagine how wrong they could be proven to be.