All the aides wrote letters concerning the General’s orders and official correspondence. As the war proceeded, however, the General turned to me to write and edit his personal letters. These included his letters to Lady Washington when she was not with us as well as his letters to his plantation manager and his cousin Lund, and the numerous responses to charitable and personal loan requests. Whether it was caring for the children of his deceased brother, Samuel, giving bequests to the school for orphans in Alexandria, or loaning money to his neighbors (to the surprise of this son of a city merchant, it was apparently bad form for a Virginia planter to turn down a neighbor’s request for a loan or to press too hard for repayment), the General increasingly sought my help in answering requests.
Another of our tasks was to be messengers and intermediaries. We carried his orders to the various generals, colonels, majors, and captains at all times of the day and night and often in the heat of battle. It gave us the feeling of importance, as if we were giving the orders ourselves. It was a duty about which I had mixed feelings. I never could overcome my fear of bullets. Fortunately, I rarely found myself in direct combat and never had to fire a weapon at the enemy. I always feared that the General suspected my timidity, but if he did so, he never let on.
The General also used us as hosts and entertainers. When the congressmen would visit—often they did so when we were in camp, although rarely in the danger of battle when the General was doing more important things—we hosted them and tried to answer their interminable questions until the General could return and see them.
My father chuckled when I told him one of my duties was to keep the General’s expense accounts. My uncle considered me careless with money, and my family would not have trusted me back then with handling any accounts, let alone those of such importance. To say the General was careful about financial matters would be an understatement. The General told me he had been shocked and embarrassed when a friend and ally in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Speaker Robinson, had been found to have used public currency to guarantee personal loans. The General had never forgotten the shame attached to this conduct, and he made clear to us what he expected with our own handling of public monies.
I believe I told you the General didn’t take a salary, but the arrangement with the Congress was that he would be reimbursed for expenses. The General footed many of the day-to-day bills, but when he entertained, which was often (Lady Washington was invariably present, and they would joke about how they rarely dined alone), he kept meticulous accounts. This was particularly true of the lunches he held for the congressmen, French officers, and numerous foreign visitors.
Another major accounting category was intelligence. The General never stinted when it came to paying spies or even friendly citizens who incurred risks to pass on information about British comings and goings.
I never saw a man so careful about his spending. I read after the war that the Congress had reviewed the bills the General had submitted, and they’d found an error: he had undercharged the Congress one dollar! Naturally I took some pride in that.
The General seemed quite content with being compensated for his expenses while taking no salary for his services. Early on, the General said to me, “Josiah, the approbation of my country is sufficient recompense for my services.” That sounded quite noble to me until I realized what an insatiable desire the General had for approbation, and the fame and applause that went with it. I began to suspect that such a desire could become a dangerous drive. This made me apprehensive as the week at Newburgh wore on.
I’ve told you the official duties I had as an aide-de-camp. As the war went on, I sometimes thought my major, if unofficial, duty was just listening to the General. After the afternoon dinner with Lady Washington, various officers, and foreign and domestic visitors selected by Lady Washington—generally consisting of some fish, mashed potatoes, and soft vegetables since the General had started to have some trouble with his teeth—and after the meeting with aides to go over what we had written or rewritten during the day, the General would retire to his study with me for some Madeira and Brazil nuts. I suppose some of the aides resented this, but I was, after all, the senior aide in service for most of the war. The General had read widely and always had plenty of books on his desk, but one that was never absent was the Rules of Civility drafted by some French priest. I suppose you could call it a guide to conduct, but it contained the simplest rules you could imagine.
There were rules for speech, such as Rule 88: “Be not tedious in discourse; make not many digressions; nor repeat often the same manner of discourse.”
There were rules for table manners, such as Rule 97: “Put not another bit into your mouth ’till the former be swallowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.”
There were rules for personal conduct, such as Rule 82: “Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise.”
And rules for relating to others, such as Rule 44: “When a man does all he can, though it succeed not well, blame not him that did it.”
My favorite rule was Rule 4 (because, except when in the General’s presence, I violated it all the time): “In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming noise; nor drum with your fingers or feet.”
The rules—all 110—were so obvious and simplistic that I wondered why the General spent so much time with them. I concluded that the General had received little training in the social graces as a child and was very concerned about embarrassing himself. I found it useful to memorize those rules because, especially with the rules for conduct, it helped me gauge how the General was going to react.
Many of those afternoons, the General and I sat in silence. Sometimes he mused aloud. I could never be sure he cared what my opinions were, but he would often ask for them. Many times he would ask for the latest information or rumors. I’m not suggesting I got close to the General. With the exception of Lady Washington—and perhaps his cousin Lund; his brother John Augustine; and his manservant and slave, Will Lee—no one was close to the General in the sense of being a close friend. But these were easy, pleasant meetings . . . until that week of March 9, 1783, in Newburgh.