Washington [132]
As Washington and his party pushed northward, his mind was occupied with the situation awaiting him in Boston. A decade later he admitted that he wasn’t sufficiently “at ease” to observe closely the countryside through which he passed.54 He felt beleaguered by the social duties thrust upon him as he passed through an unending succession of towns and endured ritual greetings from their leading citizens. He was already swamped with letters from provincial legislators, who began to address him as “His Excellency”—a rather regal locution for a revolutionary leader. George Washington was already becoming more than a mere man: he was the face and form of an amorphous cause. As Garry Wills has noted, “Before there was a nation—before there was any symbol of that nation (a flag, a Constitution, a national seal)—there was Washington.”55 Knowing that people wished to see him astride a horse, Washington would step down from his carriage and mount a horse before entering a town, turning it into a theatrical performance.56
On Sunday, July 2, Washington arrived at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to assume control of the Continental Army, which had laid siege to Boston and the many redcoats bottled up inside the town. People in New England took the Sabbath seriously, and Washington respected religious observance, so on this historic day the stately Virginian made a quiet, unobtrusive entrance into the camp. The fledgling troops that had lined up on the parade ground to be inspected were dismissed when a steady daylong rain spoiled the reception, but Washington and Lee did meet with the officers’ corps that evening. The rain screened any clear view of the British troops in the distance. Nevertheless, in taking up his duties, George Washington had crossed the threshold into a new life.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Magnificent Bluff
ALTHOUGH GEORGE WASHINGTON had never attended college and regretted his lack of education, he moved into the Harvard Square home of college president Samuel Langdon, who retreated to a single room. Politicians and officers soon descended on Washington en masse, including the two New England generals Artemas Ward and Israel Putnam. By mid-July Washington had transferred to grander quarters on Brattle Street, occupying the three-story Georgian mansion of John Vassall, a rich Tory who had fled behind British lines in besieged Boston. The Vassalls had owned a slave family that remained in the house, and when Washington toured his new headquarters, he found a slave boy, Darby Vassall, swinging on the front gate. In a friendly manner, Washington expressed interest in taking him into his service, but Darby, imbued with the spirit of liberty, asked what his pay would be. At that interjection, Washington evidently lost interest. “General Washington was no gentleman,” Darby later said, “to expect a boy to work without wages.”1
By the time Washington and Charles Lee reviewed troops on the parade ground on July 3, the overcast skies had cleared and an effervescent mood filled the air. Twenty-one drummers and as many fife players treated the new generals to a full musical accompaniment as they inspected the New England soldiers. While some had muskets, many others toted primitive weapons, including tomahawks and knives lashed to poles. Despite these handicaps, Washington hoped the patriots could muster eighteen thousand men—at least, if one included the sick and absent—and enjoy a numerical superiority over British forces of no more than twelve thousand.
As Washington and Lee toured lengthy defensive fortifications being thrown up pell-mell to deter a British attack, they viewed the eerie reality of two armies, separated by scarcely more than a mile, enjoying panoramic, unobstructed views of each other. It was easy to make out British sentinels