The General was surprisingly anti-British when he talked about farming or gardening, but of course most of the books he read on these subjects came from England. Later, I learned that after the war he had hired a farm manager from England. I am sure he used the man’s skills while pursuing what he considered his own American ideas about farming and landscaping.
The General did not confine his gardening desires to his own plantation. He ordered his troops at Newburgh to plant vegetable gardens. Some of his officers looked askance, but the General thought the gardening would be good for the men’s souls and the vegetables and fruits good for their bodies (most importantly, for preventing scurvy).
After talking about his gardens, the General paused. Covered with snow in early March, the Hudson Valley was a dispiriting place for a Virginia planter longing for his land. Finally, he said, “Josiah, I would rather be at Mount Vernon than emperor of the world.”
I think he meant it, but I knew the choice that week was not between Mount Vernon and emperor of the world but between Mount Vernon and assuming power over the states.
The General then lowered his eyelids and drifted off into barely coherent melodramatic mumblings taken from letters to his friends. “At Mount Vernon . . . that, Josiah, is where I wish most devoutly to glide silently through the remainder of my life. The days of my youth have long since fled to return no more. I am now descending the hill I have spent fifty-one years climbing, but I will not repine; I have had my day. What I want, Josiah, is to return to Mount Vernon and just move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my fathers.” Using his favorite biblical metaphor, the General talked of “just living under my own vine and fig tree.”
The General had lately taken to speaking, writing, and rambling with barely coherent sentiment about his advancing age, although he was only fifty-one. Still, the war had aged him. His hair had grayed, a slight paunch had emerged, his hearing had waned, and he talked incessantly about becoming a private citizen pursuing a private life. He talked as if he were at the end of his career, which may come as a surprise, given his later roles in convening the Constitutional Convention and serving as president.
Considering what was going on at Newburgh that week, when I heard these musings about his death and yearning for the quiet of Mount Vernon, I couldn’t help reflect on whether such wishes meant that he would try to stop the mutiny and then return to Mount Vernon or whether he was just so weary he would let the rebellious officers go ahead while he returned to his estate.
Still, I kept thinking that the General, so vain about his place in history, must be weighing what posterity would think of him. Would he be looked on as the savior of his country for taking over the government or would he be looked on as the savior for stopping the rebellion? While the General tried to avoid looking like he cared about fame or his place in history, sometimes he would slip in my presence. This was the man who had once said to me when dozing off, “To obtain the applause of my compatriots and their descendants would be a heartfelt satisfaction. To merit such applause is my highest wish.”
Sometimes he would explicitly acknowledge his focus on fame by saying, “Josiah, I am growing weary of the pursuit of fame.”
That the General was an incredibly able man I had no doubt. But with my Quaker upbringing, I was uneasy about his constant, albeit somewhat hidden, seeking after applause. Should not human beings seek to do good deeds for their own and the Lord’s sake rather than the approbation of others? Then again, I had never known the General to do bad deeds, so maybe my concern about the General’s mixed motivations was ungenerous.
While my mind raced, the General had been thinking his own thoughts. Soon, fully awake, he dismissed me from his study, leaving me to ponder whether seeking fame was interwoven with, or could be separated from, seeking power.
Chapter Six
DAY SIX—SATURDAY
The Showdown
This sun, perhaps, this morning sun’s the last
That e’er shall rise on Roman Liberty.
—Sempronius, Cato, Act I, Scene 2
I’ll animate the soldiers’ drooping courage,
With love of freedom, and contempt of life.
I’ll thunder in their ears their country’s cause,
And try to raise up all that’s Roman in them.
—Portius, Cato, Act I, Scene 2
The General spent the early morning in his bedroom attended by his aide, Will Lee, as was his custom. To say the General was fastidious would be an understatement. His deep-blue coat was always freshly brushed. His faded-yellow buff waistcoat and breeches always perfectly matched. His shirt was always of the finest linen. The yellow buttons on the lapels and the buckles on his breeches were all as highly polished as his boots. His graying, reddish-brown hair was combed smoothly back in a small queue. Except for the three silver stars on his epaulettes, you would not know his rank. The General’s appearance was elegant but simple. As I have said, he refused to wear the medals that had been given him, declaring to me that this would be immodest. For the same reason he abandoned the blue sash he had initially worn across his breast. The French officers, who loved ribbons and medals, found this peculiar. And this, as I said earlier, from the man who had introduced the wearing of medals by his own enlisted men.
Will Lee was almost as well dressed as the General, who ordered his aide’s clothes from either the General’s indentured tailor at Mount Vernon or, where possible, the same Philadelphia tailor favored by the General. Will may have been the General’s slave as well as aide, but we joked in headquarters that he looked more smartly dressed than many of the generals in the army.