Washington [181]
For Washington, it came as yet another in a never-ending series of setbacks, a cascading series of colossal defeats. Finding it hard to resist total despair, he wrote, “I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde motion of things.”27 Yet despite the calamities at Forts Washington and Lee, the British had done Washington an inadvertent favor. They had shown him the futility of trying to defend heavily fortified positions along the seaboard and forced him out into the countryside, where he had mobility and where the British Army, deprived of the Royal Navy, operated at a disadvantage. For political reasons, Washington hadn’t been able to countermand the congressional decision to defend New York City and the Hudson River, but now that he had done so and suffered predictable defeats, he would have more freedom to pick and choose his targets. With his drastically diminished army and depleted supplies, it was no longer a question of standing and confronting the British with their vastly superior troops and firepower.
WASHINGTON AND HIS BEDRAGGLED TROOPS began a dreary retreat across the flat, open terrain of New Jersey, their recent humiliation fresh in their memories. The British gloated over their string of stunning victories, the young Lord Rawdon boasting that the American army “is broken all to pieces, and the spirit of their leaders . . . is also broken.” His smug verdict: “It is well nigh over with them.”28 The retreating army wore a defeated look as they shuffled slowly through villages. “They marched two abreast,” said one inhabitant, “looked ragged, some without a shoe to their feet, and most of them wrapped in their blankets.”29 Washington’s sole concern was saving his army. He knew that his men were “very much broken and dispirited,” and with many enlistments ending December 1, he anticipated a catastrophic erosion of soldiers.30 On that date, as Washington feared, 2,000 militia from New Jersey and Maryland drifted away, leaving him with only about 3,800 men in a state crawling with Tories. Around the same time Lord Howe issued a proclamation offering pardons to those who swore allegiance to the king, and thousands of discouraged Americans took up the offer.
During the retreat Washington rode in the perilous rear position, supervising the destruction of bridges to stall the enemy. “I saw him . . . at the head of a small band, or rather in its rear, for he was always near the enemy, and his countenance and manner made an impression on me which I can never efface,” wrote James Monroe, then an eighteen-year-old lieutenant. “A deportment so firm, so dignified, but yet so modest and composed, I have never seen in any other person.”31 Thomas Paine also praised the New Jersey retreat as one of Washington’s finest hours of quiet courage. “There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude,” he wrote, saying that God had endowed Washington “with uninterrupted health and given him a mind that can even flourish upon care.”32 One of the few bright spots occurred at the Raritan River near New Brunswick. On the afternoon of December 1, British soldiers appeared and threatened to cut off American troops as they crossed the river. Once again Captain Alexander Hamilton and his