Washington [135]
Maintaining unity among the men proved a perpetual struggle. In late July the New England troops were startled by the arrival of a rustic contingent of Virginia riflemen, led by Captain Daniel Morgan, who had trudged six hundred miles to join the fray. The rifles they carried were longer than muskets and could be fired with far more accuracy, but they took longer to load in combat. Army cook Israel Trask remembered how soldiers from Marblehead, Massachusetts, outfitted in round jackets and fishermen’s trousers, derided the Virginians with their fringed linen shirts, leggings, and tomahawks. Months later, on a snowy day, as the Virginians toured Harvard College, the Marblehead soldiers began to taunt and toss snowballs at them. Before too long, said Trask,
a fierce struggle commenced with biting and gouging on the one part, and knockdown on the other part with as much apparent fury as the most deadly enemy could create. Reinforced by their friends, in less than five minutes, more than a thousand combatants were on the field, struggling for the mastery. At this juncture General Washington made his appearance, whether by accident or design I never knew. I only saw him and his colored servant [Billy Lee], both mounted. With the spring of a deer, he leaped from his saddle, threw the reins of his bridle into the hands of his servant, and rushed into the thickest of the melee, with an iron grip seized two tall, brawny, athletic, savage-looking riflemen by the throat, keeping them at arm’s length, alternately shaking and talking to them. In this position the eye of the belligerents caught sight of the general. Its effect on them was instantaneous flight at the top of their speed in all directions from the scene of the conflict. Less than fifteen minutes time had elapsed from the commencement of the row before the general and his two criminals were the only occupants of the field of action. Here bloodshed, imprisonment, trials by court-martial were happily prevented and hostile feelings between the different corps of the army extinguished by the physical and mental energies timely exerted by one individual.23
One notes how swiftly the fearless Washington displayed derring-do. In dealing with troublemakers, he meted out harsh punishments, including having them ride the wooden horse, an ordeal in which the offender sat on the sharp wooden rail of a sawhorse, his hands bound behind his back and heavy weights anchored to his feet to heighten the pain. One also notes in the anecdote the conspicuous presence of Billy Lee, who remained steadfastly at Washington’s side throughout the Revolution.
As Washington examined his army with care, he was dismayed to find no more than 14,500 men fit for service—far fewer than the 20,000 fighting Yankees he had expected to find. This, the first of many unpleasant surprises, meant that he had to be an expert bluffer, pretending to a military strength he didn’t possess. In confidence, he told James Warren, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, “Your own prudence will suggest the necessity of secrecy on this subject, as we have the utmost reason to think the enemy suppose our numbers much greater than they are—an error which is not [in] our interest to remove.”24
If Washington had taken away one lesson from the French and Indian War, it was the need for a compact defense. It therefore irked him that he had to maintain a vast defensive perimeter of breastworks and trenches stretching for eight or nine miles. On the other hand, he feared the psychological blow if he retreated from fortifications