Washington [141]
The reality was that during the siege of Boston George Washington was restless and all too eager to pounce. Fond of crisp decisions, he wanted to be done with this devilish stalemate and return to Mount Vernon. As he insisted to brother John, “The inactive state we lie in is exceedingly disagreeable.”2 The caution for which he was legendary struggled against a strong, nearly reckless streak in his nature. As the British lobbed bombs futilely over the American camp—one soldier said “sometimes from two to six at a time could be seen in the air overhead, looking like moving stars in the heavens”—Washington felt powerless to retaliate.3 “It would not be prudent in me to attempt a measure which would necessarily bring on a consumption of all the ammunition we have, thereby leaving the army at the mercy of the enemy,” he explained to Richard Henry Lee. So dire was the gunpowder shortage that spears were distributed to save ammunition, and Washington concluded that he couldn’t afford the big, bold action he desired: “I know by not doing it that I shall stand in a very unfavorable light in the opinion of those who expect much and will find little done . . . [S] uch, however, is the fate of all those who are obliged to act the part I do.”4
Washington frequently had Billy Lee remove his mahogany and brass spyglass from its handsome leather case so he could engage in surveillance of his adversary. He discerned signs of a British desperation at least equal to his own. The enemy was hollowing out much of Boston, stripping wooden houses for firewood and removing combustible materials that might erupt in flames should the patriots attack. Washington received a much clearer picture of both British and American fortifications when the young John Trumbull crept through high grass on his belly to sketch some maps. The son of Connecticut’s governor, the Harvard-educated Trumbull had exceptional talent as an artist despite a childhood injury that deprived him of sight in one eye, and he was destined to become the chief visual chronicler of the American Revolution. Enthralled by his accurate maps, Washington enlisted Trumbull as an aide-de-camp.
Fearing the onset of the New England winter, with an army short of both clothing and blankets, Washington hoped to strike a telling blow in the autumn. It would be expensive to build winter barracks for so many men, and he would have to chop down a forest of firewood to keep them warm. A minor mutiny among Pennsylvania riflemen on September 10 only fed Washington’s sense of urgency. As Connecticut and Rhode Island enlistments expired with the new year, he feared a total dissolution of his army. “The paymaster has not a single dollar in hand,” he told John Hancock, predicting that without money “the army must absolutely break up.”5 He gnashed his teeth over inexperienced militia soldiers, “dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life” and “unaccustomed to the din of arms,” and doubted they could stand up to British regulars, the best trained and equipped army in the world.6
From the beginning, Washington heeded a congressional directive that all major military engagements should be approved by a council of war. This committee structure gave a conservative bias to his plans, curbing his more daring impulses. At a war council on September 11, 1775, he presented a dramatic plan for an amphibious assault across Back Bay in flat-bottomed boats, telling the eight generals present that, with the element of surprise, such a plan “did not appear impractical, though hazardous.”7 It was roundly defeated by generals who worried that any delay might expose men to a massacre in an outgoing tide. Washington could be persuasive, able to bend men to his will. He “has so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet carrying his point, that if he was really not one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might be a very dangerous one,” observed Abigail Adams.8 But the vocal New England generals had no qualms about overruling Washington, and he abided, however