Washington [268]
Perhaps it was the aborted plan to kidnap Benedict Arnold that planted the idea in Washington’s mind of attempting a daring abduction of Sir Henry Clinton. On Christmas Night he gave the go-ahead to Lieutenant Colonel David Humphreys to row down the Hudson to New York with a small band of men, their oars muffled to avert detection. The nature of the top secret mission was disclosed only to participants, right before they shoved off. “I prefer a small number to a large one,” Washington said, “because it is more manageable in the night and less liable to confusion.”5 The party was supposed to land at Clinton’s house on the Hudson, disarm the guards, pinion Clinton, then hurry back up the Hudson with their high-ranking prize. In the event, a brisk wind sprang up and blew the boats into the bay, scuttling the operation.
On New Year’s Day 1781 Washington’s worst nightmares were realized when thirteen hundred troops from the Pennsylvania Line, encamped near Morristown, mutinied and killed several officers. Much inflamed by rum, these men aired a host of legitimate grievances: insufficient food, clothing, and pay. After grabbing every musket in sight and six cannon, they angrily stormed off toward Philadelphia, where they intended to intimidate Congress into providing relief. The insurgents stressed that they acted under duress—“We are not Arnolds” was a favorite battle cry—but they could no longer stomach the inhumane treatment inflicted on them by politicians. Among other things, they could not tolerate that newly enlisted men were being paid cash bounties while they had received no pay in more than a year.
The ranking officer on the scene was the valiant but hot-blooded Anthony Wayne. Washington encouraged him to stick close to his men as they marched and not brake their movement until they crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania. Washington experienced an overriding fear of massive desertion or even full-blown defection to the British—Sir Henry Clinton sent emissaries to entice them into exactly such treachery—and he thought it would help to stem such flight if the river stood behind the mutineers. Because his officers warned of smoldering discontent among the New Windsor troops, Washington feared abandoning them and tried to screen them from inflammatory news of the mutiny. Taking personal charge of the situation, he also worried about a loss of face if he ordered mutineers to desist and they ignored him. Bypassing Congress, Washington wrote directly to the states and demanded more provisions along with three months’ pay for the troops. Sympathetic to their complaints, if aggrieved by their methods, he spluttered in wrath that “it is in vain to think an army can be kept together much longer under such a variety of sufferings as ours has experienced.”6
The Pennsylvania Line stopped at Princeton and Trenton and never reached Philadelphia. To squash the uprising, Wayne drew on New Jersey soldiers and summoned additional militia. He negotiated a settlement with the mutineers under which half would be discharged and another half furloughed until April. The soldiers would receive certificates to compensate them for their depreciated currency and would be issued extra clothing. Although Washington accepted the expediency of this bargain, he hated negotiating with disobedient soldiers. Wayne also decided, with Washington’s blessing, to make an example of the ringleaders. He called out twelve refractory members of the revolt and lined them up in a farmer’s field before firing squads made up of their fellow soldiers. One fifer described this brutal scene: “The distance that the platoons stood from [the condemned men] at the time they fired could not have been more than ten feet. So near did they stand that the handkerchiefs covering the eyes of some of them were set on fire . . . The fence and