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To this point, Washington had believed that the common people were the weak link in the successful prosecution of the war. By the time he left Philadelphia, Washington had come to believe that the self-serving greed of the most affluent Americans posed an even greater threat to the cause.51
The most rapid currency depreciation in United States history occurred that year, a faster free fall than followed the stock market crash in 1929.
What shines through most clearly about the Washington of 1779 is that he had begun to obsess over acting only in concert with the French navy and to fixate intransigently on New York.
As was true for soldiers in the Continental army, about two sailors in the Continental navy died from illness for every one that was lost in combat. The worst killers were ship fever, or typhus, which was transmitted by lice; dysentery, commonly contracted from foul water or spoiled food; and scurvy, a malady caused by an insufficiency of vitamin C.
Whereas one Continental soldier in four died in this war, about one in eight Continental sailors perished.16
The British and French navies fought in July off Ushant, an engagement that is best remembered as having formally started the war between the two great powers.
Saltonstall and many of the officers, including Paul Revere, who commanded the artillery force, were court-martialed. Most, including Revere, were acquitted, but Saltonstall was convicted and dismissed from the service.
For every Georgia Tory who stepped forward to fight for the Crown, roughly three Georgians took up arms against the king.52
Savannah was another Bunker Hill, only this time the British were the victors, and they retained what they had defended.
though it is clearer in retrospect than it was to contemporaries, Britain’s staying power and its Southern Strategy were beginning to weigh heavily on an increasingly war-weary American public.
By itself, Adams had said, the Continental army could never retake New York or Rhode Island, but it could succeed with the help of a sizeable allied fleet. An operation “by a sea force cooperating with [French and American] land forces” held the prospect “for conducting this War to a Speedy, successfull and glorious Conclusion.”
Jamaica, Britain’s most important Caribbean possession—it produced 40 percent of the sugar and 90 percent of the rum in Britain’s empire—
More than at any other moment in the war it was in this winter of deprivation and despondency that the seeds sprouted for what later would be called the “nationalist” or “consolidation” movement, the drive to create a strong and sovereign national government, a quest that culminated in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was while the miseries of Morristown were fresh on his mind that Washington first despaired that “our measures are not under the influence and direction of one council, but thirteen.” He added that unless Congress possessed “absolute powers in all matters relative to the
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A year later, when Clinton sailed for South Carolina, nearly nine thousand Tories were serving with the British army.
Utterly vanquished, Lincoln had suffered the worst American defeat during the War of Independence.42
whereas one Continental soldier in eighteen was killed in action and one in ten died of a camp disease, an astonishing 47 percent of those who became prisoners of war perished in captivity,
Ultimately, at least twenty-eight prison ships were put to use, mostly in the bays and rivers around New York, although one lay outside Charleston harbor and took on many of the sailors that surrendered when the city fell.
One American officer confined in New York estimated that 1,100 of the 2,800 men taken prisoner at Fort Washington died within sixty days of entering captivity.
The black stain on America’s record was its treatment of captive Loyalist soldiers, who often were consciously subjected to inhuman treatment. Left to the states, some Loyalists were housed with the mentally ill and others were thrown into loathsome makeshift prisons in mines or aboard barges, where they faced despicable conditions that rivaled those on Britain’s prison ships.54
Gates, they had whispered, had displaying little daring. He “hug himself” on the defensive, they said.79 It was the actions of Schuyler and Arnold, they insisted, that had led to Burgoyne’s undoing.
Gates should have exceeded Washington as a military leader. He had long experience in a professional army and was more loved by his men. But Washington’s character was superior to that of his rival, and it made him a great man, whereas Gates was merely a good soldier.
The debacle also finished Gates as a trusted general, ruined as much by his flight—which began while some of his men remained on the battlefield, an indefensible act—as by his inexplicable tactical errors.
In many ways, Arnold resembled an individual of the variety described by Max Hastings, the military historian. The “sort of people you need to win your wars are seldom if ever going to be the ones you would call normal human beings,” Hastings has said. Often they “possessed an uncongenial personality” and were “somewhat unhinged,” and not infrequently they “terrified” or at least aroused the “deepest suspicion by other soldiers around them.”
There had been issues with Arnold from the outset, but a deep-seated disgruntlement took hold of him early in 1777—not long after his heroics on Lake Champlain—when Congress promoted five junior officers over him.
Although in his official report Gates failed to mention Arnold’s role in Burgoyne’s defeat, Washington decorated him.
He sullenly resented Congress. It had earlier passed him over for promotion. Now, it shabbily refused to award him the back pay that was he was due.
In the end, it was agreed that Arnold was to seek command of West Point, which he would relinquish to the British, and that Clinton was to pay him the amount that Arnold had demanded if West Point was handed over. Otherwise, Arnold would receive £6,000. In either case, he was to be given command of a Loyalist force.
historian Walter Edgar concluded that had an international court existed in that day, “Cornwallis and his subordinates… would have been hauled before [it]… as war criminals.”
The constitution took effect on March 1, 1781.13
But some saw ratification as a necessary first step in strengthening the national government and resolving America’s economic plight. These men—later they were called Nationalists and still later Federalists—yearned for a strong national government capable of waging war, gaining victory, and securing the interests of the United States.
Cornwallis’s vanity and his aspirations drove him to insubordination, and to a destiny that included a rendezvous with ruination.
The next day, the French passed in review before Washington and Rochambeau, and the following day, under a pale blue sky, the Continentals reciprocated with a parade of their own. One French officer thought the rebels looked “rather good,” though another observed that many American soldiers were barefoot and an alarming number were either barely adolescents or somewhat old for the rigors of military service. He thought it hopeful that “a quarter of them were negroes, merry confident, and sturdy.”1
Some five thousand blacks served in the Continental army. Most were probably slaves when the war erupted and they were liberated at war’s end. It has been estimated that approximately 20,000 slaves owned by Revolutionaries fled to the British during the war. Disease claimed many and not a few were recaptured by their owners, but up to 10,000 lived to the end of the war, gaining their freedom and leaving America with the British sometime in 1783.17
The war exacted a ghastly toll. The estimate accepted by most scholars is that 25,000 American soldiers perished, although nearly all historians regard that figure as too low.
Of those who served in the Continental army, one in four died during the war. In the Civil War, one regular in five died and in World War II one in forty American servicemen perished.
The British sent about 42,000 men to North America, of which some 25 percent, or roughly 10,000 men, are believed to have died. About 7,500 Germans, from a total of some 29,000 sent to Canada and the United States, also died in this war in the North American theater.
If its death toll, which was below that of regulars and Germans, is typical, some four thousand provincials who fought for Great Britain would have died of all causes.
Thus, it seems likely that about 85,000 men served the British in North America in the course of this war, of which approximately 21,000 perished. As was true of American soldiers, the great majority—roughly 65 percent—died of diseases.
December 23, 1783, was Washington’s last as commander of the Continental army. At noon he appeared before Congress to resign his commission.
That victory was attained, it often was said, was due to the French alliance, the hand of providence, or the magnificent leadership of Washington, but especially the latter. For his part, Washington expressed “astonishment” at the American triumph, calling it “little short of a standing miracle.”2
French help was the single most important factor in determining the outcome of the War of Independence. Secret French assistance sustained the drive to declare independence in 1776 and further—and greater—aid from Versailles in 1777 was a key factor in the rebel victory at Saratoga. With the American economy in ruins after 1778, it is inconceivable that the rebels could have waged war for three additional campaigns without a French ally, unless they had shifted almost entirely to guerrilla warfare.
A military that selected its highest officers on anything but experience and professional competence was markedly defective.
Washington’s greatest liability was his indecisiveness.
But no commander played a greater role than Nathanael Greene in securing American independence, for it was his daring campaign in 1781 that thwarted Cornwallis and sent him on his fateful errand into Virginia, and it was rebel forces under Greene that liberated South Carolina and Georgia while the allies gathered at Yorktown. John Adams understood that, and nearly his first words on learning of Yorktown were: “General Greenes last Action… is quite as glorious for the American Arms as the Capture of Cornwallis.”19
