The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [255]
HE COULD NOT STAY IN THE HOUSE, WROTE BRIEF DETAILED LETTERS to his family, all the affairs of his life put onto paper. As he rode toward London, there were no thoughts of gardens and estates, or trips and laughter. The countryside was unfamiliar, the carriage carrying him past woods and deep winding creeks whose memories had been swept away. He felt no attachment to the land, the towns, the country. With her death, something had left him, some piece of his own soul taken with hers.
He was on his way to see Germain, had requested an audience as well with the king. There was only one place now where he could feel at home, where no one would speak of wives and illnesses and country estates. If the king would allow it, if the government would only understand that he could still be a good servant, that he still knew something of discipline and honor, then he could still give them what it took to be a soldier. All he wanted was to leave this place. The only comfort left for him now was his life in the army. He would go back to America.
41. WASHINGTON
SPRING 1779
IT HAD BEEN A STRANGELY MILD WINTER, AND ALL THROUGH THEIR BASES along the Hudson, Washington’s men had enjoyed a peaceful winter quarters. If there was misery at all, it was due mainly to the boredom.
They had constructed their own cabins, the lessons carried forward from Valley Forge. There had been mistakes made that previous winter, the cabins topped by roofs of mud and grass, which kept the cabins wet and unhealthy. The forests near the Hudson had supplied a greater supply of wood planking, and the new cabins were healthier places. They had flooring as well, another lesson learned, separating the blankets of the men from the ground beneath them.
Despite the depressing turn the French alliance had taken at Newport, the news from across the Atlantic was still positive. The merchant ships had continued to bring their precious cargo, and nearly all of Washington’s army received fresh uniforms. There were shoes as well, a better quality and a greater number, and for the first time since the siege of Boston, his men were not forced to perform their drills and marches in bare feet.
As the new year had begun, there had been little sign the British would move at all from their crowded base in New York. There had been raiding parties, foraging expeditions along the New Jersey shore, the occasional bloody confrontation with surprised outposts. But for the most part, Clinton seemed determined to maintain the inflexible British custom of delaying any new campaign until winter had completely passed.
With little activity that required his presence along the Hudson, Washington had gone to Philadelphia, the invitation both social and official. Martha had joined him there, and the city had responded with a series of lavish affairs, grand balls and banquets. He had expected celebrations for the success of his army, the recognition from a grateful nation that their enemy had been driven away. But as the weeks passed, he could see that the festive atmosphere in Philadelphia had little to do with the army at all. It was more a city returning to its routine, a decadent display of excess and wastefulness, as though no one in the city was aware that not so far away, two armies faced each other across a river, waiting to resume their bloody war.
HE COULD NOT AVOID EVERY PARTY, BUT MADE EXCUSES NONETHELESS, finding some refuge in the business of the war. Much of the time had been spent with his friend Robert Morris, the man who had already done so much good work as the nation’s unofficial financier. It was Morris who kept the avenues of commerce open to France, who had completed the process begun by Silas Deane. The merchant ships were still under threat from British patrols, but now, with the French fully in the war, the supply ships were protected by French men-o-war, and Lord Howe’s warships could no longer make easy prey of the French and American cargo.
Morris had been successful in business long before the war. In the years