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Washington worked in close proximity with aides, who typically slept under the same roof. These scribes labored in a single room, bent over small wooden tables, while the commander kept a small office to the side. As at Mount Vernon, Washington adhered to an unvarying daily routine. Arriving fully dressed, he breakfasted with his aides and parceled out letters to be answered, along with his preferred responses. He then reviewed his troops on horseback and expected to find the letters in finished form by the time of his noonday return.
The best camaraderie that Washington enjoyed came in the convivial company of his young aides during midafternoon dinners. Up to thirty people attended these affairs, many sitting on walnut camp stools. As much as possible, Washington converted these repasts into little oases of elegant society, a reminder of civilized life at Mount Vernon. The company dined on damask tablecloths and used sparkling silver flatware bearing Washington’s griffin crest, while drinking wine from silver cups. One aide sat beside Washington and helped to serve the food and drinks. These meals could last for hours, with a bountiful table covered by heavy, succulent foods. One amazed French visitor recalled that “the meal was in the English fashion, consisting of eight or ten large [serving] dishes of meat and poultry, with vegetables of several sorts, followed by a second course of pastry, comprised under the two denominations of ‘pies’ and ‘puddings.’”29 There followed abundant platters of apples and nuts. Washington liked to crack nuts as he talked, a habit that he later blamed for his long history of dental trouble.
At these dinners Washington seemed at his most unbuttoned. If he wasn’t skilled at repartee, he was quite sociable and had no trouble making conversation, enjoying the company of his bright young disciples. A later visitor to Mount Vernon captured Washington’s contradictory personality: “Before strangers, he is generally very reserved and seldom says a word.” On the other hand, “the general with a few glasses of champagne got quite merry and being with his intimate friends laughed and talked a good deal.”30
In early 1777 a large turnover occurred in Washington’s military family as his first batch of aides gave way to a flock of new faces. Nathanael Greene briefly replaced Joseph Reed, who had resigned and was somewhat estranged from Washington. After the Fort Washington disaster, Greene was thrilled to be rehabilitated, even if it meant being temporarily demoted to clerical work. “I am exceedingly happy in the full confidence of His Excellency General Washington, and I found [that confidence] to increase every hour, the more [difficult] and distressing our affairs grew,” Greene told his wife.31 Washington demanded self-sacrifice from aides, who had to follow his schedule uncomplainingly. If he slept in the open air before a battle, so did they. “When I joined His Excellency’s suite,” wrote James McHenry, “I gave up soft beds, undisturbed repose, and the habits of ease and indulgence . . . for a single blanket, the hard floor or the softer sod of the fields, early rising, and almost perpetual duty.”32
Washington’s choices for his military family were permeated by an aristocratic ethos that could be hard to square with the republican spirit. He perpetuated the patrician ethos first encountered on General Braddock’s staff; indeed, his use of the term “family” was borrowed from British practice. Of twenty-two aides-de-camp and military secretaries that he appointed during the first two years of the conflict, more than half came from Virginia and Maryland, many of them smart young men from his own social class. Robert Hanson Harrison of Virginia and Tench Tilghman of Maryland fit the bill perfectly, while Caleb Gibbs took the role of the token New Englander.
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