Sometimes, the General’s resentment of the British, mixed with his pride, produced a response that I, but not many others, knew all too well. I remember when, early in the war, the British sent envoys to explore peace. They offered to repeal all taxes not approved by the colonies and to consider—just consider—American membership in the Parliament. They sent a letter addressed “George Washington, Esquire.” I saw the General when he read that letter—the squint of his eyes and pursing of his lips disrupted the impassive fa?ade. He must have felt like he did back in colonial times when the British officers would not give him his due. Finally, the General commented, “They never change,” and refused to send representatives to a meeting until the British sent a letter addressed to him as “General.” When they finally complied, the General sent a team to parley, but he remarked, “They’re three years too late.”
Of course, the General’s view may have been tempered by more than a British failure to address him by his proper title. They had not offered amnesty to American leaders, and the General knew full well what had happened to the military commanders of the Irish armed rebels just decades earlier—they had been disemboweled, then executed. He hardly could have relished such a fate. Often he joked with us that “my neck does not feel like it was made for a halter.”
If the General sometimes restrained his emotions vis-à-vis the British, it was the opposite with the French, at least outwardly. The General would make a great show of affection for the French, but I sensed that underneath was a reservoir of caution, perhaps dating to what he regarded as their duplicity during the French and Indian War. The General knew how vital our alliance was and would make a point of publicly celebrating the French king’s birthday and the birth of the Dauphin, ostentatiously feting the French officers. The French commanders, sensing the General’s emergence as a world hero, were full of admiration for the General and would let him know it. But neither French compliments nor the General’s reciprocation with friendly gestures seemed to affect the General’s judgment. Despite French pressure, after the early misadventure in Quebec, the General avoided all enticements to claim that former French colony for our allies.
“Josiah,” he pointed out to me, “we must think ahead. We do not want the French controlling Quebec, the country to the north of us, when they already, through the Indians, control the backcountry to the west of us and may soon take territories from Spain to the south of us. No nation, Josiah, is to be trusted further than it is bound by its present interests.”
I responded that the French were our friends.
“Yes.” The General sighed. “They are for now . . .”
This seemed a rather callous way to look at an ally, but then, the General, despite outward appearances, could be quite calculating in his judgments. He confided to me his suspicion that the French ambassador had members of Congress on the French payroll to help dictate negotiations at the end of the war. Still, the General wanted to preserve for all, especially the British, the picture of close French-American cooperation. When French sailors and American workers got into a brawl in Boston, the General showed no surprise but tried to prevent the news from spreading.
Sometimes it was hard to tell whether the General was more driven by his dislike of the British or by his ambition—nay, really an obsession—to win the war no matter what the costs, although I suppose it didn’t make much of a difference. The General’s obsession with winning the war led him to more considered and pragmatic actions, which his colleagues, although they did not challenge him, thought highly peculiar or, to say the least, unconventional. Nothing showed this more than the General’s desire to use everyone, and I mean everyone—Negroes, Indians, and even women—to increase his forces against the British. I suspect congressmen, some of his neighbors down in Virginia, and many other Americans would have been shocked if they had known, but the General masked his actions very carefully.
Take the issue of Negro troops. When we arrived in Cambridge in 1775 to take command of the American forces, the Congress sent the General an order not to use Negro troops. Even John Adams, who was an abolitionist, sent him a letter with similar advice. This was awkward because Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all had regiments with free black troops in their ranks. Naturally, being from an antislavery Quaker family, and the General being a slaveholder, I was interested in what the General would do.
“For the moment, Josiah, nothing,” he said.
Then the General went out and inspected the New England regiments. When he came back, I asked him if I should draft a reply to the congressional order. “Well, Josiah, these units seem to be doing well.” There followed an awkward pause, and then the General added, “Besides, we need everybody we can get to win this war.”
With the General I had learned to never leave any doubts as to his directions, and this did not seem like a clear answer to my question. “General,” I said, “do we just ignore this order?”
“Oh no, Josiah, we will just not enforce the order until I convince the Congress to rescind or acquiesce in my ignoring it.” And so he did, although it took him many months while the order sat at the bottom of the pile on my desk. During that time, the General continued to probe the limits of congressional patience on this subject when General Varnum of Rhode Island proposed creating two battalions, not of freed blacks but of slaves. The General did not ask for Congress’s approval but passed on the proposal to the Rhode Island governor implying, without stating, his own approval. The proposal was adopted and implemented as the General must have known it would be. When slaveholders demanded the return of their slaves from these units, the General never disagreed with their request; he just ignored it.
I was always intrigued by the fact that the blacks who fought with the British were predominantly Southern slaves who fled their masters, while the Negroes who fought with us were those who had already won their freedom or fled their masters in the North.