First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [119]
But despite the advantages of the American fighting style, at the Hartford Conference the outlook was bleak, and Rochambeau was pessimistic and Lafayette even more so. Because of the great decline in American credit since the taking of Charleston, the “very unfavorable” news about Camden and the fall in the finances of Congress, Lafayette pronounced “this campaign” at rock bottom. “We are still more destitute of clothing, tents and wagons for our troops,” he reported to Washington. It was essential to have provisions sent to them, “were it possible to find means of transportation. Despairing of this, as much is sent as possible northward on navigatable rivers.” His report was not one to encourage anyone, but the goal ahead was stronger than discouragement. The Hartford Conference was occupied mainly by the two commanders, Washington and Rochambeau, taking each other’s measure and discovering what comradeship they might—or might not—develop, and in discussion of what should be the locale of their joint action. Between Rochambeau, a knowledgeable soldier, and Washington, who inspired a touch of worship merely by being, mutual respect came easily; an agreed plan of campaign less so. They agreed that assault on New York, Washington’s dearest object, could not be accomplished without French command of adjacent waters, which de Ternay’s squadron could not by itself establish. Moreover, Rochambeau could not offer a firm plan of campaign because he had been instructed that the French fleet and army were to act together, and until additional French naval forces arrived, he felt obliged to remain in support of de Ternay’s force at Newport. Not until a year later when a second contingent of French land forces arrived under Admiral de Barras to replace the deceased de Ternay, and along with de Barras the promise of a French fleet coming to give the Americans the naval power they needed so badly, was the daring plan of envelopment by sea and land conceived that was to win the war.
But the American General’s mind was still fixed on New York. Washington did not like Rochambeau’s alternative of a campaign in the Chesapeake region to cut off the British threat from the South, because he believed the French soldiers would sicken in the summer heat of Virginia, and his own New Englanders despised the South for its snakes, heat and mosquitoes and had the deepest suspicions of the climate as unhealthy, not to say poisonous and rife with fever. Fever, undifferentiated by name because its sources in germs and infections were not known, could include malaria, pneumonia, yellow fever, typhoid, typhus and dysentery. Its prevalence in Virginia arose less from the climate, which was always blamed for all ill health, than from swamps and mosquitoes combined with unsanitary conditions of men living in military groups. Eight out of ten deaths in the 18th century were ascribed to “fever.”
To bring an army to Virginia would mean a journey of about 500 miles, which would have to be made on foot, as the only available sea transport was the eight-ship squadron at Newport under Admiral Count Louis de Barras, now the French naval commander there. Against the superior strength of the British fleet off New York, de Barras refused to transport troopships packed with soldiers down the coast to Virginia. The overland march appeared to Washington too risky and costly and likely to lose a third of the army to sickness and desertions, and he did not think the campaign could bring much benefit so long as the British controlled the offshore waters of the Virginia coast. He believed that an attack on New York, as a diversion causing Clinton to call up troops from the South, would do more to relieve Lafayette than direct action in his behalf. Most compelling was his emotional attachment to New York as his first major defeat of the Revolution in the early Battle of Long Island. It had left him with a yearning to retrieve the city. According to the alliance, Washington was Commander-in-Chief