• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 912 0

wilderness of want, the first angel to appear to revive offensive capacity was Robert Morris, richest of the merchants who had profiteered from the war and who in 1781 was elected by Congress to the post of Superintendent of Finance. In its abiding fear of centralized power, so like the Dutch, Congress for five years had avoided the submission of finances to a single governor. Only in 1781, when the state was sliding toward a collapse of credit, did it admit the necessity of a financial director. Morris, whose opinion of mankind grew worse “from my experience of them,” and who believed that public office exposed an honest man to envy and jealousy and to the “malicious attacks of every dirty scoundrel that deals in the murther of reputations,” nevertheless accepted the post and, by virtue of the funds he generated, did as much as anyone at this hour to preserve the fight for independence. The rich have their uses; although assumed to be knaves, they can prove to be pillars of the state like anyone else. Virtue and patriotism are not a prerogative of the humble. Through the influence of his personal credit, Morris obtained contributions from the various states, reduced government spending, laid the foundations for a national bank and persuaded a group of Philadelphia bankers to make a substantial loan in cash. Altogether, he borrowed from Rochambeau and from the Phil adelphia businessmen a total of $40,000, which provided the ragged half-fed Continentals with their first touch of hard cash since enlistment, cut down desertions and even brought in recruits. More than that, the money enabled Washington to move to the offensive.

On August 14, Washington received, like a burst of fireworks in the dark, a letter from de Grasse to Rochambeau, written from the West Indies, to say he was coming with 28 ships and 3,000 soldiers to the Chesapeake. Without fussing further over his lost dream of regaining New York to make an end of the war, Washington at once set about preparing a campaign at the Chesapeake to make an end of Cornwallis.

He wasted no time in a judicious balancing of pros and cons that often prolongs the taking of difficult decisions, for if he were to meet de Grasse’s demand for “immediate cooperation” upon his expected arrival of September 13, he had only a month to select and prepare troops for the campaign, provision the line of march to cover a distance that over local roads amounted to about 500 miles, arrange for boats to meet him at river points for transportation and provide for local food supply to keep his army alive when they reached their goal. Rochambeau’s army, which had already marched 200 miles from Newport to join him at White Plains in the first week of June, also had to be prepared. The venture was a long chance and a formidable operation. To bring off a long trek in heat to a disliked destination with troops in an uncertain temper, with a mixed army of French and Yankees with opportunity for antipathies and quarrels, and a chance of attack on the flank by Clinton’s forces, was to place ultimate reliance on very long odds. To make good the “decisive stroke,” the army after a month on the road must meet the French fleet after its ocean crossing in the hour of its arrival, after each had traveled an obstacle course of perils and mischances that could spoil the timing and ruin the plan. Exact timing was required in order that they should not meet the enemy with divided forces, nor by a separate arrival give him warning to escape. The longest chance was whether Cornwallis would stay where he was in position to be trapped; otherwise the great effort would go for nothing. This worry was very much on Washington’s mind. He wrote to Lafayette to make sure that he did not allow Cornwallis to move back into North Carolina, and to keep him informed of all the enemy’s movements.

Still the problem remained of how the joint armies were to be fed when they had dug in at Yorktown for a siege. Fifteen hundred barrels of salt beef, originally brought in with Rochambeau, were stored at Newport, which would supply the