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Washington, who stayed in Morristown until June, told her brother-in-law that “the poor General was so unhappy that it distressed me exceedingly.”68 At times Washington pretended to a deeper philosophic serenity than he could honestly claim. “The prospect, my dear Baron, is gloomy and the storm thickens,” he told Steuben, then went on to say, “I have been so inured to difficulties in the course of this contest that I have learned to look on them with more tranquillity than formerly.”69 In a revealing letter to Robert Morris that May, Washington noted, with restrained jollity, that in the absence of wine, he had been forced to substitute grog made from New England rum and drink it from a wooden bowl. Then he made a comment that suggested how his wartime experience had dampened his general experience of things. When his “public duty” ended, he told Morris, “I may be incapable of . . . social enjoyments.”70

What lifted Washington from the worst depths of dejection was the extraordinary heroism of his army, which had been reduced to eight thousand men, one-third still unfit for duty. Looking back upon the ghastly conditions of that winter, he found the army’s survival almost beyond belief. To brother Jack, he expressed amazement: “that an army reduced almost to nothing (by the expiration of short enlistments) should sometimes be five or six days together without bread, then as many without meat, and once or twice two or three without either; that the same army should have had numbers of men in it with scarcely clothes enough to cover their nakedness and a full fourth of it without even the shadow of a blanket, severe as the winter was, and that men under these circumstances were held together, is hardly within the bounds of credibility, but is nevertheless true.”71

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Traitor

IN THE SPRING OF 1780 Washington’s most immediate concern was the uncertain fate of the threatened American garrison in Charleston, South Carolina. Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis had set sail with a large flotilla from New York and besieged Charleston as the main theater of war shifted irreversibly to the South. The American force was commanded by Major General Benjamin Lincoln, a husky former farmer from Massachusetts. Lincoln was popular and widely respected, and Washington credited him with being “an active, spirited, sensible man.”1 The commander in chief remained a far-off observer of the Charleston deadlock, however, since Congress and the Board of War had deprived him of jurisdiction over the southern department, and he didn’t care to quarrel with this blatantly political decision.

Queasily aware of what the loss of a major seaport would mean, Washington prophesied that the fall of Charleston would probably “involve the most calamitous consequences to the whole state of South Carolina, and even perhaps beyond it.”2 At the very least it would expose the Carolinas to merciless British raids. By massing his men in the coastal city, Lincoln had left the interior pretty much defenseless. “It is putting much to the hazard,” Washington confided to Steuben. “I have the greatest reliance on General Lincoln’s prudence, but I cannot forbear dreading the event.”3 Washington’s dread was not misplaced. On May 12, 1780, Charleston capitulated to the British, and 2,571 Continental soldiers, 343 artillery pieces, and almost 6,000 muskets fell into enemy hands. Under the arcane rituals of eighteenth-century warfare, defeated forces were typically allowed to surrender with dignity and march out with their colors flying proudly. To shame the Americans, the British forbade them this customary honor, forcing them to lay down their arms in humiliated silence. The defeated soldiers then faced the unpleasant choice of either becoming prisoners of war or returning home with a solemn vow to refrain from further fighting, reverting to loyal British subjects.

As he reflected on this devastating blow, Washington sounded alternately bitter and philosophical. He believed the British had expertly timed their campaign to exploit his army’s weakness