Washington [217]
On October 30 Washington handed Hamilton his marching orders, which stipulated that he should inform Gates of “the absolute necessity that there is for his detaching a very considerable part of the army at present under his command to the reinforcement of this.”21 When Hamilton arrived in Albany, Gates was predictably outraged to have to bargain with the youthful aide. That Hamilton regarded Gates as craven and inept didn’t help matters. In a letter drafted but never sent to Washington, Gates fumed, “Although it is customary and even absolutely necessary to direct implicit obedience to be paid to the verbal orders of aides-de-camp in action . . . yet I believe it is never practiced to delegate that dictatorial power to one aide-camp sent to an army 300 miles distant.”22 Gates, in a cantankerous mood, insisted to Hamilton that he needed all his troops in case Sir Henry Clinton moved up the Hudson River. He seemed emboldened by his newly won renown. To Washington, Hamilton reported, “I found insuperable inconveniences in acting diametrically opposite to the opinion of a gentleman whose successes have raised him to the highest importance.”23 In a masterly performance, however, and after much wrangling, Hamilton extracted two brigades from the reluctant Gates.
The juxtaposition of Gates’s victory and Washington’s defeats crystallized congressional discontent with the latter’s leadership. The rush of battles turned Congress into an assembly of would-be generals, determined to run the war by resolutions. There had always been sotto voce grumbling about Washington’s military ability, but now serious questions arose as to whether he was up to the job. Henry Laurens told his son John that the assembly buzzed with detractors saying that “our army is under no regulations or discipline” and that Washington had failed to stem desertions or adequately provision his men .24 Lafayette warned Washington of “stupid men” in Congress “who, without knowing a single word about war, undertake to judge you, to make ridiculous comparisons; they are infatuated with Gates.”25
The discontent crested in October when Washington got wind of the rumored promotion to major general of Brigadier Thomas Conway. An engraving of Conway shows a man with a cool, haughty air. His small chin, tightly pursed lips, and alert eyes give him a petulant expression. Born in Ireland, he had been an officer in the French Army but, unlike Lafayette, was a self-aggrandizing fortune hunter. For him, the Continental Army was a convenient rung to grasp in clambering up the military hierarchy in France. Nathanael Greene saw him as “a man of much intrigue and little judgment” who joined the Continental Army to cash in on the fight.26 “I freely own to you it was partly with a view of obtaining sooner the rank of brigadier in the French army that I have joined” the American army, Conway conceded to another officer that January.27 An excellent judge of men, Washington recoiled from this self-promoting braggart and may also have learned that the sharp-tongued Irishman had denigrated him after Brandywine. “No man was more a gentleman than General Washington or appeared to more advantage at his table . . . but as to his talents for the command