PART THREE

The General

George Washington at Princeton, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1779.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Glorious Cause

BEFORE SETTING OUT for the Second Continental Congress, Samuel Adams and John Hancock decided to spend a quiet weekend in hiding in Lexington, Massachusetts. On April 14, 1775, General Gage received instructions from London to arrest these ringleaders of the insurgency, and he planned to seize a powder magazine in nearby Concord as well. Patriotic forces were tipped off to this raid, whereupon Paul Revere galloped off to alert Adams and Hancock. When overwhelming British forces descended on Lexington Green on April 19, they were confronted by a small but doughty band of volunteers. The historic shots were fired, killing eight Americans and wounding ten more before the British, having lost only one horse, moved on to Concord. When the redcoats marched back to Boston, however, they were suddenly engulfed on all sides by armed farmers, known as Minute Men, who shot with deadly accuracy, shielded by trees, buildings, and fences. By the time the frantic British troops had scrambled back to town, 273 had been killed or wounded versus only 95 colonials. As John Adams proclaimed with self-evident truth, “The battle of Lexington on the 19th of April changed the instruments of warfare from the pen to the sword.”¹

George Washington was sobered and dismayed by the shocking news; there was nothing bloodthirsty in his nature. As he lamented to George William Fairfax, “Unhappy it is . . . to reflect that a brother’s sword has been sheathed in a brother’s breast and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.”² He fathomed the full import of what had happened. As he had already regretted to a friend a year earlier, he wished “the dispute had been left to posterity to determine, but the crisis is arrived, when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us.”³

As the colonies submitted to a frenzy of military preparation, young men everywhere grabbed muskets and formed militias. Like others committed to the cause, Washington brushed up on warfare and dipped into military volumes. For all his frontier experience, he was still a neophyte when it came to large-scale conflict. In the weeks before he left for the Second Continental Congress, the early leadership of the Continental Army began to coalesce on his doorstep, as if power were already shifting toward him. Charles Lee came for dinner, as did another, unrelated Lee named Henry—later celebrated as Light-Horse Harry Lee—who was nineteen and had graduated from Princeton the previous fall, specializing in Latin. Another military figure spending the night at Mount Vernon was Horatio Gates, a British officer who had been wounded during the Braddock campaign. He was a ruddy, thickset man, with a large, aquiline nose and long hair flowing over his shoulders from a receding hairline. After rising to the rank of major in England, he had returned to Virginia and bought a plantation in the Shenandoah Valley. As Washington was to discover, Gates had more than a trace of egotism and duplicity in his nature.

On May 4, 1775, George Washington climbed into his chariot, which was guided by a coachman and a postilion (an elegant conveyance for the future leader of a revolutionary army), and sped north. He was probably joined by his friend Richard Henry Lee, a talented orator and fellow burgess. In his diary Washington recorded drily, “Set out for the Congress at Phila.” and described the spring weather as “very warm indeed, with but little wind and clear.”⁴ Had he foreseen the many tempestuous years that would elapse before he again set eyes on his cherished estate, he might have gazed back longingly. En route to Baltimore, Washington and Lee encountered other coaches hastening to the same destination, a swelling column of southern delegates that included Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Joseph Hewes and Richard Caswell of North Carolina. Previewing things to come, Baltimore’s citizens asked Washington to review four volunteer companies on the town common. The southern delegates must have already felt a palpable crescendo of excitement as they approached Philadelphia, for six miles outside of town they were greeted by a throng of five hundred people on horseback—officers, town dignitaries, and curiosity seekers—who had ridden out as a welcoming party. Two miles from town they were embraced by a lively patriotic band and a spirited honor guard of foot and rifle companies, so that they streamed into Philadelphia enfolded in an extemporaneous parade. On the same day John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and John Adams rolled in from the north.

Held in the immediate aftermath of Lexington and Concord and favored with fine spring weather, the Second Continental Congress was supercharged with an atmosphere of high drama that made the first seem somnolent in comparison. Many delegates were already in a warlike mood. On May 9 a Loyalist named Samuel Cur-wen stayed up till midnight talking with Washington, whom he found “a fine figure and of most easy and agreeable address,” and they discussed ways to block British ships from coming up the Delaware River to occupy Philadelphia. As he recorded sadly in his journal, he found a determined Washington, in no mood to bend to the British: “I could not perceive the least disposition to accommodate matters or even risk.”⁵

For this Congress the delegates met in a lofty ground-floor chamber of the red-brick State House, surmounted by a high steeple, today known as Independence Hall. In this gracious neoclassical setting, the president’s chair was flanked by fluted pilasters, and the doors were topped by pediments. Whereas the First Congress had dwelled on diplomatic niceties, this one turned briskly to matters of war. Meeting in secret sessions, delegates heard reports that Great Britain had rebuffed conciliatory overtures from the earlier Congress and that more British troops were crossing the Atlantic. They also learned that Massachusetts was prepared to raise 13,600 soldiers, and that New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut would contribute troops in the same proportion; already patriotic militias and volunteers from across New England had congregated on the Cambridge Common outside Boston. There was no talk as yet of a commander in chief, for the simple reason that the Congress still regarded itself as representing a collection of colonies, not a sovereign nation.

In this civilian conclave, Washington stood out for his martial air and naturally majestic aura. As if to signal his availability for military duty and with an instinctive sense of theater, he came clad in the blue and buff uniform of the Fairfax militia, sewn by Andrew Judge, an indentured servant at Mount Vernon. More than a militant statement, it was an inspiring sign of southern solidarity with New England soldiers. People were transfixed by Washington’s lean, virile presence. “Colonel Washington appears at Congress in his uniform,” wrote John Adams, “and by his great experience and abilities in military matters is of much service to us.”⁶ Washington had the inestimable advantage of fully looking the part of a military leader. As Benjamin Rush stated, “He has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.”⁷

Clearly, for these rank amateurs in warfare, Washington’s military résumé was neither sketchy nor irrelevant—and he was suddenly deemed the fountainhead of wisdom. A marginal figure at the earlier Congress, Washington was drafted onto nine committees and inserted into every cranny of decision making. Some of Washington’s committees dealt with purely military questions, such as how to defend New York, while others reflected his broad range of knowledge, such as how to print a new American currency. Each day he dined at the City Tavern with eight other delegates, helping to expand his circle of admirers.