Washington [252]
Washington braced for a winter that, for sheer misery, threatened to rival the trials of Valley Forge. As early as October, there wasn’t a single pair of shoes in army depots, and the situation was equally lamentable for shirts, overalls, and blankets. Since the Continental currency now fetched only three cents to the dollar, Congress stopped printing money and appealed to the states to pay their own troops. As the latter issued their own paper currency, prices soared even further. Washington captured graphically the ruinous hyperinflation when he told John Jay that “a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.”47 To Gouverneur Morris, he protested, “A rat, in the shape of a horse, is not to be bought at this time for less than £200.”48 He took seriously intelligence reports that the British in Philadelphia had purloined reams of the paper used to print currency and planned to crush the rebellion by swamping the country with counterfeit money.
Washington faced double jeopardy from the debased currency. Besides placing goods beyond the budget of his quartermasters, it was whittling away his personal fortune. Like many rich planters, Washington had large loans outstanding in Virginia that were being repaid in debased currency. As he complained to his brother-in-law, “I am now receiving a shilling in the pound in discharge of bonds which ought to have been paid me and would have been realized before I left Virginia, but for my indulgence to the debtors.”49 Washington estimated that personal losses occasioned by his absence from home had swollen to ten thousand pounds. Further embittering him was the selfish behavior of Jacky Custis, who stalled in settling debts to him so he could repay in cheaper currency. Washington, finally losing his temper, scolded his stepson: “You might as well attempt to pay me in old newspapers and almanacs, with which I can purchase nothing.”50 For political reasons, Washington accepted payment for land in Continental currency, so he wouldn’t be seen as questioning American credit, but by the summer of 1779 he could no longer afford these massive losses and discontinued the practice.
The previous winter Washington had been sufficiently confident of his troops to risk a six-week stay in Philadelphia, but he now felt compelled to stick close to his restive men, “to stem a torrent which seems ready to overwhelm us.”51 Reports from New York told of mutinous sentiments brewing among the militia for want of food, and Washington feared the contagion might spread to New Jersey. If Sir Henry Clinton invaded Morristown, the Continental Army would be easy prey. Clinton “is not ignorant of the smallness of our numbers,” Washington alerted New Jersey governor Livingston. “He cannot be insensible of the evils he would bring upon us by dislodging us from our winter quarters.”52 In mid-December he informed Congress that his army had gone for days without bread, making its prospects “infinitely worse than they have been at any period of the war and . . . unless some expedient can be instantly adopted, a dissolution of the army for want of subsistence