Loyalty to the General did not characterize the attitude of all the commanders. You had to understand that Congress appointed many of Washington’s top commanders based on politics or what the Congress conceived to be its military expertise. And often officers used their congressional backers to lobby for their promotions.
In some cases, these military climbers were generals with their eyes on General Washington’s place. There was Charles Lee, the former British officer who aspired to the top commander’s role and was a favorite of congressmen early in the war. I respected Lee’s military judgment, but it was hard to take seriously a general who liked dogs more than people—Lee always had a pack of dogs on a leash following him. Anyway, the Lee movement disintegrated when he was captured by the British in flagrante delicto with a madam in a tavern. The British exchanged him in a prisoner swap, which fueled the rumors that Lee had advised his captors on military strategy against our forces. How else to explain the swap for junior officers? I couldn’t imagine the British swapping Lafayette or Greene. Anyway, the General could be very forgiving—or perhaps he was assuaging potential congressional allies. He welcomed Lee back, at least until Lee refused to lead the charge at the Battle of Monmouth, and the General dismissed him right there on the field and replaced him with Lafayette. That old fool Lee thought he could count on his congressional influence and demanded a court-martial to clear his name. He was convicted of refusing to follow orders, resigned in disgrace, and went off to his estate in the Shenandoah Valley to breed dogs and horses.
To my embarrassment, the man who had introduced me to the General, Joseph Reed, sent a letter to Lee implying support for his bid to replace Washington as commanding general. Lee’s response arrived while Reed was away, and the General, thinking it was a message from one of his commanders, mistakenly opened the letter and discovered Reed’s disloyalty. The General, in a deft touch, had me write a letter to Reed in which the General apologized for opening the letter. When he received the General’s letter, poor Reed, realizing the General knew all, profusely apologized for his disloyalty and sent his resignation to Congress.
Military and personal embarrassments always seemed to befall potential rivals of the General, particularly when some in Congress were lobbying to replace him. Take General Horatio Gates—the Old Leaven to the General and Old Granny to his troops—who, I was convinced, was behind the Armstrong letter. I’ll give Gates his due: the victory over General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777 had brought the French into the war. Still, the officers I spoke to gave most of the credit there to Benedict Arnold for both the strategy and combat leadership. (Two years later, Arnold tried to hand over West Point to the British and lost credit for even his good deeds.) I admit I never respected Gates after I saw him refuse to accept a major command from the General before Trenton so that he could go off to Philadelphia to lobby his congressional friends for a promotion.
Gates had powerful supporters. An effort was instigated after Saratoga by that congressional appointee, the French-Irish General Thomas Conway, to get Congress to replace the General with Gates. Conway and a former aide to the General, Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin, tried to use the Board of War to achieve their purposes. (Enemies of the General came from all sides: Conway was one of those congressional appointees, but Mifflin, like me, was an ex-Quaker from Philadelphia and a former aide of the General’s.) Lafayette and Laurens put a stop to the maneuvering, the former by threatening to resign and go back to France and the latter by writing his father, who was president of the Continental Congress.
Reed and Mifflin, mind you, were the exceptions. In my experience, almost all the General’s aides were loyal, maybe too loyal. They were always challenging the General’s detractors to duels, which was ironic, given how the General disapproved of dueling. I am told in his youth he went to great lengths to avoid duels, even apologizing to one potential opponent. Anyway, both the Conway and Lee affairs got the General’s aides’ dueling pistols out. (Not mine, mind you, although I offered encouragement.) Laurens challenged Lee to a duel, which ended with Lee writing the General a letter of apology, and one of the General’s former aides, John Cadwalader, challenged Conway to a duel and wounded him. Cadwalader would have killed him in another duel, but Conway wrote a letter apologizing to the General and then resigned and returned to France.
The Conway Cabal crushed, the General, as was his fashion, forgave Gates, the intended beneficiary of the “Cabal,” who still had strong support in the Congress. But Gates could not escape one of those events that always seemed to thwart the General’s rivals. At Congress’s insistence, Gates was promoted and given command of the Southern Army. In August 1780, he led his army into a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Camden and then disgracefully fled the field. Congress set up a special inquiry to investigate charges of cowardice, and Gates was suspended from command.
After the suspension was lifted, the General welcomed Gates back. He probably thought Gates would be grateful and follow the General’s orders. Given this week’s letter by Gates’s aide Armstrong, I thought the General had made a big mistake, unless, of course, the letter was at the General’s bidding.
With all the rivalries—which the citizenry knew little about—it did make one reflect on the abilities of the various generals and the ability of General Washington himself. Was he a great general, as some of my fellow aides believed, or was he overrated, as the teacher told my great-grandchildren? That week at Newburgh I reflected on that question as I have many times since.
The General’s role as commander in chief all started with his appointment by Congress in 1775, which probably mystified the many who aspired to that command. The General always said that he did not seek out or campaign for the appointment. “Josiah, I did not solicit command but accepted it after much entreaty. I did not seek this burden.”