Series:

Revolutionary War

9 total works

Cover of The Papers of George Washington
The concluding volume of the Presidential Series begins following the publication of Washington's Farewell Address, which was circulated widely in newspapers and drew reactions from citizens across the nation. With his approaching retirement from the presidency, Washington tended to a number of domestic and international issues, including his final annual message to Congress, ongoing Indian affairs, the growing acrimony between the United States and France about the Jay Treaty and U.S. neutrality policy, and diplomacy with the dey of Algiers and other Barbary powers. In his personal life, Washington corresponded with his farm managers, continued his unsuccessful pursuit of runaway slave Oney Judge, mentored George Washington Parke Custis as he began his studies at the College of New Jersey, and renounced spurious letters that first appeared in print during the Revolutionary War as forgeries, requesting that his statement "be deposited in the office of the department of state, as a testimony of the truth to the present generation and to posterity.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington v.3; Revolutionary War Series;Jan.-March 1776
Volume 3 covers the final months of the siege of Boston. It opens with General Washington proclaiming the commencement of the remodeled Continental army on New Year's Day 1776 and closes at the end of March as he prepares to depart for New York in the wake of the British evacuation of Boston.

Washington's correspondence and orders for this period reveal an uncompromising attitude toward reconciliation with Britain and a single-minded determination to engage the enemy forces in Boston before the end of the winter. Washington's bold proposal to attack Boston across the frozen back bay in the middle of February was rejected as too risky by a council of war, but the council did approve occupying the strategic Dorchester Heights overlooking the city and harbor. During the last weeks of February and the first days of March, Washington devoted himself to mobilizing artillery and gunpowder for a massive cannonade of Boston and assembling materials for portable fortifications to be erected on the frozen soil of Dorchester Heights. The successful execution of this operation on the night of 4 March failedto provoke General William Howe into assaulting the American lines and thereby open the way to counterattack on the city as Washington hoped it would. It did, however, compel the British to withdraw from Boston in haste a few days later, giving Washington and his army a spirit of confidence with which to embark on the New York campaign. The volume also includes a number of documents relating to Washington's private affairs in Virginia, the most important of which are eight letters from his Mount Vernon manager Lund Washington.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington v.9; March-June, 1777;March-June, 1777

Volume 9 covers the spring of 1777, a period when Washington's resourcefulness and perseverance were tested as much as at any time during the war. Instead of opening the new campaign by taking the field with a reinvigorated Continental army as planned, Washington was obliged to spend much of his time pleading with state authorities to fill their recruiting quotas and with officers to bring in the men whom they had enlisted. He was further hampered by a high desertion rate, which he blamed on the failure of many officers to pay their men regularly.

Painfully aware of the weakness of his army, Washington was puzzled but relieved that General Howe did not launch a major offensive during the spring. Although British raids on Peekskill, N.Y., Boundbrook, N.J., and Danbury, Conn., stirred local fears, Washington remained focused on the larger threat posed by Howe's forces. Employing a network of spies, Washington attempted to discover whether Howe planned to attack the strategically important Hudson highlands or politically important Philadelphia, and if the latter, whether he intended to move by land or sea. Believing that Philadelphia would be Howe's target but unable to prove it, Washington concentrated most of his forces at Middlebrook, N.J., in late May, in order to be able to move rapidly north or south as events dictated.

Unhappy officers added to Washington's woes with complaints of ill treatment and threats to resign. "It seems to me," Washington wrote John Hancock in April, "as if all public Spirit was sunk into the means of making money by the Service, or quarrelling upon the most trivial points of rank." Foreign officers, who arrived in unprecedented numbers, were the most troublesome. Often unable to speak English and having little attachment to the American cause, they demanded extravagant ranks and pay that could not be granted without disrupting and demoralizing the Continental officer corps. "The management of this matter," Washington wrote Richard Henry Lee in May, "is a delicate point.... In the mean while I am Haunted and teazed to death by the importunity of some & dissatisfaction of others."

Cover of The Papers of George Washington v.8; Revolutionary War Series;January-March 1777

Volume 8 documents Washington's first winter at Morristown. Situated in the hills of north central New Jersey, Morristown offered protection against the British army headquarters in New York City yet enabled Washington to annoy the principal enemy outposts at Newark, Perth Amboy, and New Brunswick. To discover Howe's intentions for the next campaign, Washington refined his intelligence-gathering network in New Jersey and New York during the winter months and kept a watchful, if distant, eye on the British armies in Rhode Island and Canada.

Most of the remainder of Washington's time and efforts were directed toward the reorganization of the continental army, which dwindled away rapidly following the victories at Trenton and Princeton. Unwilling to face the usual hardships of winter or the dangers of a new outbreak of smallpox, many men returned home when their enlistments expired. Desertion also rose dramatically, and Washington was reluctantly forced to depend upon militia. By mid-March Washington's army in New Jersey numbered only about 4,000 troops, nearly two-thirds of which were militia enlisted only to the end of the month.

Other important matters demanding Washington's attention included the reorganization of the hospital department and the creation of new hospitals, the reorganization of the commissary and clothier generals departments, the appointment of a wagonmaster, the establishment and placement of a new "Magazine, Laboratories, & Foundery for casting Cannon &c.," and continuing negotiations with the British on prisoner exchanges. The volume closes in late March with the good news that a much-anticipated shipment of arms, ammunition, and cloth had arrived from France for the Continental army.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington v.7; Revolutionary War Series;October 1776-January 1777

Volume 7 documents the dramatic events of the New York campaign and the ensuing New Jersey campaign, a seemingly endless string of American reverses and retreats terminated by surprising victories at Trenton and Princeton. The volume opens with Washington's withdrawal of most of his army from Manhattan Island north to White Plains, where on 28 October British and Hessian troops routed the American right wing on Chatterton hill. Although Washington subsequently succeeded in blocking any further British advance to the north, his indecisiveness about ordering the evacuation of Fort Washington, the sole remaining American post on Manhattan Island, led to the disastrous loss of the fort's large garrison and many valuable stores when General Howe's forces overran it on 16 November.

After the fall of Fort Lee on the west bank of the Hudson River four days later, Washington began retreating across New Jersey with his rapidly dwindling army. His repeated appeals for reinforcement by local militia and Continental troops remaining in New York fell largely on deaf ears, and in early December Washington was obliged to cross the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, leaving New Jersey in enemy hands. From his Bucks County Headquarters Washington wrote his brother Samuel on 18 December: "If every nerve is not strained to recruit the New Army with all possible Expedition I think the game is pretty near up.... No Man I believe ever had a greater choice of difficulties & less the means of extricating himself than I have--However under a full perswation of the justice of our Cause I cannot but think the prospect will brighten." Washington's optimism was justified by his subsequent actions. His daring counterstrokes against a Hessian brigade at Trenton on 27 December and a British detachment at Princeton on 3 January not only reversed the strategic situation but also turned the tide of political defection that had theatened to engulf the middle states.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington December 1777-February 1778

Volume 13 of the Revolutionary War Series documents a crucial portion of the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, when the fate of Washington's army hung in the balance. The volume begins with Washington's soldiers hard at work erecting log huts to the general's specifications and building a bridge over the Schuylkill River under the direction of Major General John Sullivan. Most of the fighting that characterized the bloody year of 1777 had drawn to a close by Christmas, and although British foraging and raiding parties ventured out of Philadelphia from time to time, Washington's priority was no longer to fight General William Howe but to preserve his own army and prepare it for the next campaign.

The American army was badly in need of reform. Attrition and ineffective recruitment had left most of the Continental regiments dangerously weak, and the rising pace of officer resignations made apparent the need for an equitable pay and pensionary establishment. At the same time the battle losses of the previous summer and autumn had exposed severe problems in military organization, drill, and discipline. Washington hoped that a congressional camp committee would rectify some of these problems, and after consulting his officers on army organization, he submitted to the committee one of the longest, most detailed, and most thoughtful letters he ever wrote. The arrival in camp of a Prussian volunteer who styled himself the Baron von Steuben, meanwhile, promised to bring about improvements in drill and discipline. Washington also had to look to his own authority, as a dispute with Major Generals Thomas Conway and Horatio Gates seemingly threatened to undermine his command of the Continental army.

The turning point of the Valley Forge encampment came in February 1778, when a provision shortage led to what Washington called a "fatal crisis" that threatened the continued existence of the army. Poor management of the commissary department and a breakdown of transport, resulting from bad weather and an insufficiency of wagons, combined to bring about a logistical collapse that brought provision supplies almost to a halt. For many days bread was scarce and meat almost nonexistent. Soldiers, many dressed literally in rags because of the incompetence of the clothier general, threatened mutiny. Washington's efforts to save his army in this crisis mark one of the highest points of his military career and make up an important part of this volume.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington 1 November 1778 - 14 January 1779
Volume 18 of the ""Revolutionary War"" series covers the period 1 November 1778 through 14 January 1779. It begins with George Washington at Fredericksburg, New York, watching New York City for signs that the British were about to evacuate North America. The British had very different intentions, however, dispatching the first of several amphibious expeditions to invade and conquer the Deep South. Congress meanwhile mulled plans for the formation of a Franco-American army and the invasion of Canada. Washington worked hard to quash these plans, which he considered both impractical and dangerous. On 11 November, he wrote a long letter to Congress laying out the military reasons why the invasion could never succeed.Three days later, he wrote another, private letter to the President of Congress, warning that a French army in Canada might attempt to reestablish France's North American empire, transforming allies into oppressors. While Congress reconsidered and ultimately scrapped its plans, Washington oversaw the transfer of the captive Convention Army from Boston to Charlottesville, Virginia; planned for the dispersal of his own army to winter cantonments across New Jersey; and rode to Philadelphia in late December to open crucial discussions with Congress about the reorganization of the Continental Army and American strategy for the 1779 campaign.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington 15 September-31 October 1778
Volume 17 of the ""Revolutionary War Series"" opens with Washington moving his army north from White Plains, New York, into new positions that ran from West Point to Danbury, Connecticut. His purpose in doing so was threefold: to protect his army, to protect the strategically important Hudson highlands, and to shore up the equally vital French fleet anchored at Boston. His new headquarters, located near Fredericksburg, New York, about seventy miles north of New York City, was one of the most obscure of the Revolutionary War. Nevertheless, Washington remained as busy with important tasks during the fall of 1778 as during any other period of the war.It was a time of delicate transition for the new Franco-American alliance and for British strategists yet unwilling to concede defeat. Both circumstances required Washington to exercise the sort of mental agility he had demonstrated during the first three years of the war. Equally pressing were the immediate problems of British raids - threatened and real - in New Jersey and New York and along the extensive American frontier and coastline. Within the Continental army, troubling breakdowns in discipline and morale demanded Washington's close attention, as did the logistical and political difficulties of planning proper troop dispositions for the coming winter - the fourth straight winter that Washington would not see home.Although Washington could not foresee in October 1778 that the British would soon try their hand at conquering the southern states and that the war would last another five years, he sensed that the British Ministry still had both the financial means and the political will to continue the struggle. Ever a realist, Washington recognized that American victory would not come cheaply in what had become a war of attrition as well as an international conflict involving North American, European, and Caribbean theaters. As he had done since 1775, Washington was once more adjusting his thoughts to meet new realities on the long road to American independence.

Cover of The Papers of George Washington Volume 29
In volume 29 of the Revolutionary War Series, problems and frustrations dominate the final nine weeks of 1780 for Gen. George Washington—particularly the failure to strike a meaningful blow against the British headquartered in New York City and its environs. He abruptly canceled implementation of his own complex plan to assault the forts on northern Manhattan in late November, focusing instead on maintaining his troops through the winter’s chronic shortages of provisions.

Unlike previous winter encampments, Washington separated his command to avoid undue pressure on any one place for food and forage, as well as to protect strategic points. The distressing situation in the southern department was also a concern, as Major General Nathanael Greene traveled to take command of the shattered army and relayed discouraging reports on the lack of immediate assistance in the form of troops or supplies. Washington, who assured his anxious subordinate in a private letter written on 13 Dec. that "the great public" was not "so unreasonable as to expect impossibilities," did all he could to put men and material at Greene’s disposal and shared the ominous news that a British expedition had sailed from New York in late December.

Washington and Major General Lafayette, who sought additional support from his French countrymen and from increasingly sympathetic European countries, both realized that overzealousness in diplomacy could be counterproductive. Meanwhile, a new congressional establishment of the Continental army adopted in October and promulgated in the general orders for 1 Nov. buoyed Washington’s optimism, and he welcomed Martha Washington’s arrival at his winter headquarters and penned a rare joke involving Greene’s son approaching his first birthday in a letter to that general’s wife, Catharine.

Throughout these tumultuous times, rather than become unpleasant and brittle, Washington demonstrated emotional and mental balance, attributes essential to the eventual success of the revolutionary cause.