Washington [158]
Having visited New York only twice before, Washington needed to familiarize himself with this new terrain. The harried general complained of being holed up in his office with endless paperwork when he wanted to be out in the field. He faced the herculean task of shoring up a chain of posts stretching across lower Manhattan to Brooklyn. Building on Lee’s plans, he projected the construction of a pair of twin forts, to be known as Fort Washington and Fort Lee, on rocky high ground farther up the Hudson, outposts designed to prevent the British from turning the river into a thoroughfare to Canada. Washington knew that in New York the odds were badly stacked against him. To ward off attacks by sea, he sealed off the end of every street with a barricade and sank offshore obstructions to British ships. By early June the Continental Army had 121 cannon in Manhattan, on the New Jersey shore, on Governors Island, and in Brooklyn, all ready to bombard the British fleet.
Though satisfied with his progress, Washington was dismayed to learn in May that King George III had hired seventeen thousand German mercenaries to fight in North America. This news confirmed that the conflict would be resolved only through a long, bloody war. Soon to be a master at espionage, Washington wondered whether he could infiltrate patriotic Germans among the Hessians to stir up disaffection and spur desertions.
In late May he rode to Philadelphia to consult with Congress about military strategy, trailed by unfounded rumors that he intended to resign. The round of talks made clear that the patriots would contest every square inch of New York, however impossible that seemed. Philadelphia was ablaze with talk about declaring independence from Great Britain, but Washington, as a military man, withheld public comment. In private, however, he was more militant than ever and scoffed at congressmen who were “still feeding themselves upon the dainty food of reconciliation. ”45 Prodded by Washington, Congress decided to offer ten-dollar bounties to attract new soldiers and also set up a Board of War, headed by John Adams, to improve recruiting and supply distribution.
By this point it was self-evident that Martha Washington would spend extended periods with her husband and might be exposed to smallpox. Washington could not advocate inoculation if his own wife shrank from it. After the liberation of Boston, Martha had refrained from entering the city to celebrate with officers’ wives who enjoyed immunity to the disease. She had vowed to be inoculated against smallpox, but Washington remembered how anxious she was when Jacky was inoculated in 1771; he doubted she would now make good on her pledge. Nevertheless, when they reached Philadelphia, Martha conquered her fears and submitted to the procedure. She came down with a fever and developed only a dozen pustules (none on her face), spending several weeks in quarantine. On June 10 Jacky Custis, in Maryland with his wife, wrote an appreciative note to Washington about his mother’s successful recovery. He used the occasion to express gratitude for everything his legal guardian had done, thanking him for the “parental care which on all occasions you have shown me. It pleased the Almighty to deprive me at a very early period of life of my father, but I cannot sufficiently adore His goodness in sending me so good a guardian as you Sir. Few have experienc[e]d such care and attention from real parents as I have done. He best deserves the name of father who acts the part of one.”46 It was an eloquent, well-deserved tribute for the often-thankless care that Washington had given to his stepson.
WITH MANY LOYALISTS scattered across the city, a more pervasive fear of espionage existed in New York than in Boston, where the patriots and British had been widely separated. With thousands of troops cooped up in southern Manhattan in a tense atmosphere, a vigorous hunt was