Washington: A Life

There was no way of putting a face-saving construction on this searing loss: it was a defeat without redeeming features. As David McCullough has summarized the debacle, “In a disastrous campaign for New York in which Washington’s army had suffered one humiliating, costly reverse after another, this, the surrender of Fort Washington on Saturday, November 16, was the most devastating blow of all, an utter catastrophe.”21 The outcome could only have deepened Washington’s nightmarish sense of helplessness. Just as he fretted about expiring enlistments, he had losses of almost three thousand men killed or captured. At the same time, a huge cache of valuable muskets and ca

The demise of Fort Washington could have scuttled the career of the distraught Nathanael Greene. As he told Knox the next day, “Never did I need the consoling voice of a friend more than now . . . This is a most terrible event; its consequences are justly to be dreaded.”22 It is a remarkable commentary on Washington’s admiration for him that he didn’t scapegoat Greene or drum him out of the ranks. Washington was honest enough to point out that his advice to Greene to evacuate the fort had been “discretionary” and took a portion of the blame on himself.23 On the other hand, he had granted this discretion because Greene was on the scene and presumably better placed to form a judgment. Washington couldn’t account for his own failure to reverse Greene’s decision once he had reviewed the situation firsthand. Drawing on a thin pool of talented officers, Washington was forced by circumstance to tolerate a high rate of failure among his generals. A master politician in the making, he had a knack for spotting and rewarding faithful subordinates who repaid his trust with absolute devotion. He seemed to know implicitly that no loyalty surpassed that of a man forgiven for his faults who vowed never to make them again.

By contrast, General Charles Lee tried to capitalize upon Washington’s tremendous stumble at Fort Washington. He claimed that, enraged upon hearing the news, he tore out a patch of his hair. “The ingenious maneuver of Fort Washington has unhinged the goodly fabric we have been building,” he wrote to General Horatio Gates. “There never was so damned a stroke. Entre nous, a certain great man is damnably deficient.”24 He tried to undermine Washington further by informing Congressman Benjamin Rush that “I foresaw, predicted, all that has happened . . . had I the powers I could do you much good . . . but I am sure you will never give any man the necessary powers.”25 To Washington himself, Lee wrote more tactfully. “Oh, General, why would you be over-persuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own?”26

Even more bad news hung in the offing. On the morning of November 20 word reached Washington in Hackensack that thousands of enemy soldiers, camouflaged by a dark, rainy night, had crossed the Hudson River in a daring raid, landing six miles above Fort Lee. They had nimbly scaled the Palisades, a solid wall of rock and dense greenery, and now marched toward Fort Lee in great numbers. After the fall of Fort Washington, Fort Lee had shed its strategic importance, since it was impossible to thwart British ships from only one side of the Hudson. Having seen the importance of reacting quickly to threats, Washington raced on horseback to Fort Lee, covering six miles in forty-five minutes. Once at the fort, he ordered an immediate evacuation of its two thousand men, sacrificing the bulk of supplies on hand—two hundred ca

For Washington, it came as yet another in a never-ending series of setbacks, a cascading series of colossal defeats. Finding it hard to resist total despair, he wrote, “I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde motion of things.”27 Yet despite the calamities at Forts Washington and Lee, the British had done Washington an inadvertent favor. They had shown him the futility of trying to defend heavily fortified positions along the seaboard and forced him out into the countryside, where he had mobility and where the British Army, deprived of the Royal Navy, operated at a disadvantage. For political reasons, Washington hadn’t been able to countermand the congressional decision to defend New York City and the Hudson River, but now that he had done so and suffered predictable defeats, he would have more freedom to pick and choose his targets. With his drastically diminished army and depleted supplies, it was no longer a question of standing and confronting the British with their vastly superior troops and firepower.

WASHINGTON AND HIS BEDRAGGLED TROOPS began a dreary retreat across the flat, open terrain of New Jersey, their recent humiliation fresh in their memories. The British gloated over their string of stu

During the retreat Washington rode in the perilous rear position, supervising the destruction of bridges to stall the enemy. “I saw him . . . at the head of a small band, or rather in its rear, for he was always near the enemy, and his countenance and ma

Washington’s career had few moments of misplaced trust, but one occurred during this lonely, vulnerable time. He had confided to Joseph Reed that he needed someone with whom he could “live in unbounded confidence” and Reed himself had appeared to be that privileged person.33 In June Reed was named adjutant general in order to retain him in Washington’s service. Unfortunately, Reed harbored growing doubts about Washington’s ability—doubts only strengthened by his boss’s failure to override Nathanael Greene at Fort Washington. Reed decided to voice those doubts to Charles Lee, a man of atrocious judgment who was never circumspect in covering his tracks.