Washington [279]
That Washington found it frustrating to be junior partner in the French alliance was confirmed when he returned to New Windsor after meeting with Rochambeau. At Wethersfield, Washington had advised Rochambeau to relocate the French fleet from Newport to Boston. Then the Duke de Lauzun arrived with a message that a French council of war had opted to keep it in Newport. This was a direct slap at Washington, who was “in such a rage,” the duke said, that he didn’t reply for three days. He had to accept that the French were his superiors, notwithstanding their public claims that he supervised the two armies. When Washington finally replied, he said he took “the liberty still to recommend” that the fleet be moved to Boston.27 The French seemed to acquiesce, for on May 31 he recorded in his journal that Admiral de Barras “would sail with the first fair wind for Boston.”28
On June 10 Rochambeau informed Washington that the Count de Grasse would bring his fleet north that summer to coordinate an attack with the French and American armies. Washington reiterated his hope that de Grasse would sail to New York. In reply, Rochambeau continued to string Washington along, contending that de Grasse had been informed “that your Excellency preferred that he should make his first appearance at New York . . . that I submitted, as I ought, my opinion to yours.”29 In reality, Rochambeau alerted de Grasse to his private preference for heading first to the Chesapeake Bay.
In the early years of the war Virginia had been spared bloodshed, but in June 1781 fighting raged there with blazing ferocity. Lord Cornwallis had joined forces with Benedict Arnold, and despite able defensive maneuvers by Lafayette, the two men spread terror through the state. “Accounts from Virginia are exceedingly alarming,” Washington told Rochambeau, reporting that the enemy was marching through the state “almost without control.”30 Still bent on taking New York, Washington pleaded that an attack there would be the best way to siphon off British troops from Virginia. In mid-June he wrote again with a new twist—if they had clear naval superiority, he would contemplate targets other than New York: “I wish you to explain this matter to the Count de Grasse, as, if I understand you, you have in your communication to him, confined our views to New York alone.”31 Clearly Washington had been fooled as to what Rochambeau had whispered in the admiral’s ear.
With the benefit of hindsight, Washington’s preoccupation with New York seems a colossal mistake, just as Rochambeau’s emphasis on Cornwallis and Virginia seems prescient. As a rule, Washington did not tamper with history and implicitly trusted the record. In this case, however, he later tried to rewrite history by suggesting that his tenacious concentration on New York was a mere feint to mislead the British in Virginia, while maintaining the political allegiance of the eastern and mid-Atlantic states. Responding to a query from Noah Webster in 1788, Washington defended his behavior with unusual vehemence, as if the inquiry had touched a raw nerve. He alleged that his preparations against New York were intended “to misguide and bewilder Sir Henry Clinton in regard to the real object [i.e., the Chesapeake] by fictitious communications as well as by making a deceptive provision of ovens, forage and boats in his neighborhood . . . Nor were less pains taken to deceive our own army.”32 He went so far as to say that “it never was in contemplation to attack New York.”33 But in confidential