The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [346]
As he rode down into the city itself, the crowds had emerged, but they were not a grand and boisterous mob. It was so much like he had seen in Boston, seven years before, the faces of a people scarred by the brutality of their experiences. A fourth of the city was still in black skeletal ruins, naked chimneys rising above cavelike dwellings. Though the crowd was sparse, their suffering was an overpowering sign of what the city had become, a festering sore for those people who were too poor or too crippled to escape, Americans loyal to their cause who had no means, and no other place to go.
There had been a great many more suffering souls, the mass of humanity that had once packed into the city, the Tories who had scampered to the safety of the British guns. He cared little for the suffering of the loyalists, so many refugees with the means and the wealth to escape the wrath of their neighbors. After Yorktown, the loyalists were the only real source of bloodshed in the north, bands of marauding Tories who still sought revenge on the citizenry who had swept them from power. Their violence had infuriated Washington. They were not soldiers at all, were no better than bandits, exacting retribution on the poor and powerless. When Washington responded with violence of his own, they had scurried back to New York, shoving the desperate residents deeper into their holes.
But nearly all the loyalists and Tories were gone, most seeking escape by sailing to England, some going to Canada. The people they had left behind were the people Washington saw.
As he rode farther into the city he looked out across the East River, toward the place where his own horror began, the awful fight on Long Island, the shameful wounds to the confidence of his army. He cared little for the accolades that would have met some grand triumph. He thought instead of all those who had looked to him for leadership, had followed him to that first devastating fight. In every battle, he had borne that weight, the responsibility to the men who followed him, from the officers to the barefoot militiamen, so many who had believed he would lead them to victory over that polished and efficient professional army. For so many, it was never to be, so many of those faithful men still out there, buried somewhere in the fields around Brooklyn. But the river was a harsh reminder of a worse horror, so many thousands stuffed into shallow graves in the mud of the riverbank, those tragic souls who had not survived the rotting hell of the prison ships.
That so many had followed him through it all was a mystery to him. The small victories could not erase the stain of hopelessness he had so often carried, the despair he hid so well. And yet, despite the marches and the starvation and the nakedness, so many still stood tall and faced the awful challenge. Their courage and sacrifice had cleansed him of the disdain for those Americans who had done so little to help their cause. He held no grudge, no thoughts of vengeance against those whose concerns were so petty, whose selfishness threatened to destroy any chance that this nation would survive. Many in the army did not share his generosity, and he had confronted the ugly talk, officers and their men succumbing to the basest emotion of revenge. They had threatened to march upon the congress, to exact punishment on those whose thievery and ambition had done so much to damage the cause, those who did not deserve to be called Americans. But Washington had confronted them, had eased the anger as he had eased their frustrations in the past. He was still no orator, could only offer the soft word, the emotional plea that they return home. No paper, no treaty, no congress could carry their nation into permanence without their hands, the strong, the dedicated, the men who knew so much of sacrifice. It was not his words that calmed them, it was his presence, the