It is not now a time to talk of aught
But chains or conquest, liberty or death.
—Cato, Cato, Act II
There were twenty-four hours until the Saturday meeting, and I could feel the tension rising throughout the camp. When I rode out across the various bivouacs, officers and men avoided my glances, and their conversation focused on whether it would rain that day, a subject that rarely received so much attention. No one asked how the General was doing, no one asked about the status of treaty negotiations, and no one mentioned the meeting the following morning.
I observed the General make his usual morning round of the troops, and there was no doubt this time—the huzzahs were muffled. This did not seem to deter the General, who calmly made his observations to commanders on the men’s appearance and what drills were planned for the day.
The General retired to his study around noon. I remember opening the door to pose a question about some inconsequential order regarding the furnishing of regimental colors to the regiments that did not possess them. The General was at his desk reading Cato.
What did this portend? Cato had said, “Would Lucius have me live to swell the number of Caesar’s slaves, or by a base submission give up the cause of Rome?” Cato had then committed suicide rather than abandon his republican beliefs in Ancient Rome.
Again, I concluded it was unlikely that the General would avoid tomorrow’s meeting by committing suicide. After all, Cato faced capture by Caesar’s allies, and the General did not face capture by the British or by Gates’s allies, at least not yet. But did the reading of Cato foreshadow opposition to the mutiny so as to preserve our own nascent republic? Perhaps, but it might be too much to imply from the General’s fascination with Addison’s play. After all, standing on the General’s desk were two other favorites, biographies of Caesar and Alexander, and these men, while possessing noble traits, were military dictators whose example might lead the General in the opposite direction. The only other books in evidence were the usual Rules of Civility, Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary, Arthur Young’s A Course of Experimental Agriculture, and Humphrey Bland’s Treatise of Military Discipline. (The General had earlier commended Bland’s Treatise to his officers but had come to believe that Bland—commander in chief of the British army in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden—was too attuned to the mores of European armies fighting pitched battles, something the General had learned to avoid.)
Of one thing I was sure—the General had a tremendous ability to blot out extraneous, even significant, matters when faced with a truly important political or military decision. Before the war, his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter Patsy had died from epilepsy. I was told Martha had worn mourning clothes for months. While the General had been moved—I once thought I saw him with tears in his eyes when Patsy was mentioned—and had gone out of his way to comfort Lady Washington, he never spoke to me of Patsy during the war.
At Yorktown, the General’s twenty-six-year-old stepson, Jacky, had joined him. I am sure this pleased the General, as Jacky had never volunteered for duty during the war. Jacky served as an aide—a rather undistinguished one, in my opinion—but while at Yorktown, he contracted a camp disease that led to his death at his uncle’s nearby estate a few weeks later. The General had joined his wife for several days of grieving at Mount Vernon and planning for the raising of Jacky’s and his wife Eleanor’s four children, with the General and Martha adopting the two youngest, Wash and Nellie. The General, however, was soon back with the troops at Newburgh. The deaths of Lady Washington’s children, just as the failure to have their own, were subjects that Lady Washington and the General avoided while going about their respective duties. Lady Washington doted on her family and, with the death of her two remaining children, focused her attentions on her grandchildren. The General did as well, but never to the detriment of civic or military duty. I always felt that Lady Washington, even when she was tending to the needs of the troops, did so because she felt that was what the General wanted.
I wondered if the General talked with Lady Washington about the pending meeting. I never heard them discuss it, but I assumed they did, based on what seemed like an amiable, respectful relationship where confidences were shared, albeit out of the sight or hearing of others.
The General never revealed much of his emotions, but when I told him I was contemplating marriage, he expressed enthusiastic approval. “It is a wonderful state, marriage, and all should enjoy it.” That he enjoyed marriage, I have no doubt, but he seemed reluctant to express any intimate details of his own enjoyment of that institution, just as he seemed reluctant to express his feelings to me on the Saturday meeting. I had no idea what advice Lady Washington would have given the General, as she had never given advice on a subject of this nature to him in my presence or, so far as I knew, in anyone else’s.
Once in a while, if she did not approve of what the General was doing, Lady Washington would reach up and grab him by the lapels—she was at least a foot shorter than he was—and address him as “General.” But these infrequent occurrences generally referred to matters of the household, servants, or supplies. They rarely involved military matters, except when Lady Washington had arrived outside Boston. There she’d told the General that from then on she was going to direct and oversee the repair of socks and leggings through organizing ladies’ groups and was henceforth to supervise the distribution of clothing and blankets and monitor their quality. The General had smiled and quickly acquiesced, which was a smart move on his part.