France’s entry into the war would precipitate a radical shift in British strategy. Both empires controlled lucrative islands in the West Indies, whose vast sugar and cotton slave plantations had yielded considerable profits. When Clinton was ordered that spring to divert eight thousand men, or a third of his army, to reinforce the West Indies and Florida, he concluded that staying in Philadelphia was untenable and decided to evacuate his troops across New Jersey to New York City. The British still dreamed of a mass Loyalist uprising that would turn the war decisively in their favor, but many Americans who fraternized with the enemy merely sought lucrative business. Those Loyalists in Philadelphia who had curried favor with the British were thrown into a panic by their decision to quit the city and made bootless attempts to travel north with the army. By failing to safeguard these turncoats, the British committed a major propaganda blunder. “No man,” said one royal official, “can be expected to declare for us when he cannot be assured a fortnight’s protection.”2 With excellent political judgment, Washington opposed a plan to levy punitive taxes on rich Tory sympathizers when the patriots regained the town. “A measure of this sort . . . would not only be inconsistent with sound policy,” he reflected, “but would be looked upon as an arbitrary stretch of military power.”3 He named Benedict Arnold commandant of the reclaimed city.
Often mystified by British intentions, Washington had accurate intelligence in mid-May that the British would leave Philadelphia and repair to their more secure base in New York. He did not know whether Clinton would return by land across New Jersey or by sea. With three thousand men still sick, and short of supplies, Washington doubted he could capitalize on a land retreat. Ironically in view of what was to happen, he envisioned a lightning march of quick-stepping British soldiers across New Jersey, led by “the flower of their army, unencumbered with baggage,” and did not think he could harass such fleet-footed units.4
In April Washington had been rejoined by General Charles Lee, who was released in a prisoner exchange after sixteen months of captivity in New York. As queer a fish as ever, the imprisoned Lee had written to Washington that he should forward his beloved dogs, “as I never stood in greater need of their company than at present.”5 His opinion of Washington’s military talents had hardly improved with incarceration. When Elias Boudinot, commissary general of prisoners, visited Lee that January, the latter launched into a diatribe about “the impossibility of our troops, under such an ignorant Commander in Chief, ever withstanding British grenadiers and light infantry,” as Boudinot recorded in his journal.6 Attempting to woo the capricious Lee to their side, the British had pampered him with choice food and wine and a warm bed “into which he tumbled jovially mellow every night.”7 The strategy produced the desired effect. It was later learned that Lee may have sketched out for General Howe a comprehensive plan on how to crush patriotic resistance and end the war.
Washington knew none of this that April, when he amicably greeted Lee on horseback, with all the honors due to his second in command, on a road outside Valley Forge. The two rode companionably into camp together, flanked by troops exhibiting the precision marching drilled into them by Steuben. Lee immediately exhibited bizarre behavior. When he awoke the next morning, “he looked as dirty as if he had been in the street all night,” said Boudinot, staggered that Lee had brought along “a miserable dirty hussy with him from Philadelphia and had actually taken her into his room by a back door and she had slept with him that night.”8
Lee was guilty of more than bad manners. Far from giving Washington credit for saving the army at Valley Forge, he snickered in private that Washington was “not fit to command a sergeant’s guard,” that the army was “in a worse situation than he had expected,” and that Washington couldn’t do without him, since he surrounded himself with toadying officers.9 But Lee was careful to conceal this venom from Washington himself: in a sympathetic note in mid-June, he apologized obsequiously to Washington for intruding on his time as it “must necessarily be taken up by more and a greater variety of business than perhaps ever was impos[ed] on the shoulders of any one mortal.”10 With his usual certitude, Lee believed that the superior British forces would not retreat to New York but would lurch west and try to engage the Americans near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
On June 16 Washington received a clue that the British stood on the verge of leaving Philadelphia: peace commissioners sent by George III to Philadelphia had asked for the immediate return of their clothing from the laundry. Two days later ten thousand British and Hessian troops began shuffling across New Jersey toward New York, slowed by a baggage train of fifteen hundred wagons that stretched for twelve miles. Coincidentally, Washington had recently lectured his men on the hazards of getting bogged down with bulky, overloaded baggage: “An army by means of it is rendered unwieldy and incapable of acting with that ease and celerity which are essential . . . to its own security.”11
Washington summoned a war council to consider whether to pounce on the retreating army. Most of his generals, after the previous fall’s defeats and the traumatic winter, urged extreme caution. The usually daring Henry Knox warned that “it would be the most criminal madness to hazard a general action at this time,” while Charles Lee passionately opposed any action.12 Despite the overall air of skepticism, some of Washington’s generals wanted to engage the British aggressively; the impetuous Anthony Wayne declared his desire of “Burgoyning Clinton.”13 On June 18, as soon as he received definite word that the British were leaving Philadelphia, Washington sent six brigades in pursuit of them. The last remnants of the Continental Army crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey on June 22.
Two days later, at Hopewell, Washington again weighed the conflicting views of his generals. In sweltering, rainy weather, the British Army had turned east toward Sandy Hook and trudged across gravelly, uncertain terrain at a rate of only six miles per day, making them a tempting target. Their woollen uniforms and cumbersome gear turned their march into a torturous ordeal. Some soldiers dropped dead from sunstroke, and the British ranks were badly thinned by desertions. For once the Continental Army, twelve thousand strong, enjoyed a numerical advantage. At a war council on June 24 Charles Lee reiterated his view that it was in the patriots’ interest to have the British evacuate Philadelphia and that they should, to this end, construct “a bridge of gold” to New York and let the British cross it.14 Once again the generals opposed a major engagement and favored a more circumscribed operation in which fifteen hundred men under Brigadier General Charles Scott would harass the British Army. Such caution led Alexander Hamilton to comment tartly that the timid conclave “would have done honor to the most honorable society of midwives.”15 Greene, Wayne, Lafayette, and Steuben knew the country clamored for strong action. “People expect something from us and our strength demands it,” Greene advised in a letter. “I am by no means for rash measures, but we must preserve our reputation.”16 Lafayette, who privately ridiculed the war council “as a school of logic,” urged Washington to defy its meek counsel.17 Washington, with growing confidence in his own judgment, overruled the majority of generals and decided to undertake a more assertive operation against the British, led by an advance contingent of four thousand men.
On June 25 he learned that British troops were approaching the tiny crossroads village of Monmouth Court House (now Freehold) and deputized Charles Lee to lead the offensive. When Lee balked at the assignment as beneath his lofty dignity, fit only for a “young volunteering general,” Washington handed the job to Lafayette, who would command the vanguard force to harry the British rear.18 “The young Frenchman, in raptures with his command and burning to distinguish himself, moves toward the enemy who are in motion,” the aide James McHenry wrote in his diary.19 Suddenly afraid that Lafayette would steal his glory, Lee informed Washington that he had reconsidered. “They say that a corps consisting of six thousand men, the greater part chosen, is undoubtedly the most honorable command next to the Commander in Chief; that my ceding it wou[l]d of
course have an odd appearance,” he wrote with considerable understatement. “I must entreat therefore . . . that, if this detachment does march, that I may have the command of it.”20 If he did not get the command, Lee asserted, he would be disgraced, which meant he might have to resign.
Whatever Washington thought of Lee’s attempts to gratify his own self-importance, he couldn’t afford a feud with his second in command on the eve of battle, even if Lee had shown little sympathy for the planned attack. On the other hand, he didn’t wish to disappoint Lafayette. So he crafted a nice compromise, adding one thousand men to the operation and placing Lafayette under Lee’s nominal command. As James McHenry wrote, “To prevent disunion, Lee is detached with 2 brigades to join the Marquis and as senior officer to the command. His detachment consists of 5,000 men, four-fifths of whom were picked for this service.”21
On June 27, as the British reached the vicinity of Monmouth Court House, the advance American forces pulled to within six miles of the tail end of their column. Meeting with his generals, Washington ordered Lee to attack the British column the next morning, as soon as it sprang into motion. He himself would hang in the rear with six thousand men, prepared to move forward with the main body of the army.
In retrospect, Washington conceded too much latitude to Lee, and the open-ended nature of the battle plans would breed fatal confusion the following day.
Many romantic yarns have been spun about the eve of the Battle of Monmouth. One describes the Reverend David Griffith, a chaplain in the Continental Army, going to Washington and warning him that General Lee planned to make him seem inept the next day so as to nab the top army spot for himself. Another tale claims that several generals approached Washington’s friend Dr. James Craik and asked him to appeal to Washington to safeguard his own person in the coming conflict instead of exposing himself to danger. This advice, if given, ran counter to Washington’s active conception of leadership on the battlefield. It is also said that Charles Lee, overtaken by a case of nerves, paced through a sleepless night before the battle. As for Washington, he is said to have shown a touching solidarity with his men, akin to Shakespeare’s Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt, sleeping under a tree amid his army.
Around dawn Washington learned that the British Army had risen early and was already marching toward Sandy Hook. He sent orders for General Lee “to move on and attack them unless there should be very powerful reasons to the contrary,” and started toward Monmouth Court House with his men.22 Washington recommended that Lee’s men jettison their packs and blankets to accelerate their speed. Unfamiliar with the local topography, Lee found himself penetrating terra incognita, a problem that had troubled the Continental Army in previous contests. On this morning of brutal weather, the temperature would zoom close to one hundred degrees, and many men stripped off their shirts and rode bare-chested. Joseph Plumb Martin opined that “the mouth of a heated oven seemed to me to be but a trifle hotter than this ploughed field; it was almost impossible to breathe.”23 At eleven A.M. Washington, accompanied by troops under Stirling and Greene, wrote to Henry Laurens that several men had already expired from the heat.
Toward noon, as his main force advanced toward Monmouth Court House, Washington couldn’t see what was happening up ahead and assumed that all was going according to plan. In reality, Lee had made only a confused, halfhearted attack against Clinton and Cornwallis who, anticipating a possible attack, had concentrated their finest soldiers in the rear. They turned the tables, gathered six thousand men, and chased back the outnumbered Americans, who fell back in terror. Washington’s first inkling of disaster came when a farmer told him that American troops were retreating. Having received no report from Lee himself, Washington was at first incredulous. Then a frightened young fifer who was hustled into his presence assured him that “the Continental troops that had been advanced were retreating.” Washington was shocked. Fearful that a false report might trigger chaos, Washington categorically warned the boy that “if he mentioned a thing of the sort, he would have him whipped.”24
Taking no chances, Washington spurred his horse toward the front. He had not gone fifty yards when he encountered several soldiers who corroborated that the entire advance force was now staggering back in confused retreat. Soon Washington saw increasing numbers of men, dazed and exhausted from the stifling heat, tumbling toward him. He told aides that he was “exceedingly alarmed” and could not figure out why Lee had not notified him of this retreat.25 Then Washington looked up and saw the culprit himself riding toward him: General Lee, trailed by his dogs. “What is the meaning of this, sir?” Washington demanded truculently. “I desire to know the meaning of this disorder and confusion!”26 According to some witnesses, it was one of those singular moments when Washington showed undisguised wrath. Indignant, Lee stared blankly at him and spluttered in amazement. “Sir? Sir?” he asked, offended by Washington’s tone .27
In his self-serving view of events, Lee believed that he had performed a prodigious feat, rescuing his overmatched army from danger and organizing an orderly retreat. “The American troops would not stand the British bayonets,” he insisted to Washington. “You damned poltroon,” Washington rejoined, “you never tried them!”28 Always reluctant to resort to profanities, the chaste Washington cursed at Lee “till the leaves shook on the tree,” recalled General Scott. “Charming! Delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.”29 Lafayette said it was the only time he ever heard Washington swear. “I confess I was disconcerted, astonished, and confounded by the words and the manner in which His Excellency accosted me,” Lee recalled. He said Washington’s tone was “so novel and unexpected from a man whose discretion, humanity, and decorum” he admired that its effect was much stronger than the words themselves.30 Lee, babbling incoherently, tried to explain to Washington that he found himself facing the British on an open plain, making his men easy prey for British cavalry. Washington brusquely dismissed Lee’s reminder that he had opposed the attack in the first place: “All this may be very true, sir, but you ought not to have undertaken it unless you intended to go through with it!”31 In retrospect, Washington had trusted too much to an erratic general who had supported the mission only reluctantly, and he now banished him to the rear. Lafayette later said of Washington’s encounter with Lee that “no one had ever before seen Washington so terribly excited; his whole appearance was fearful.”32 This was the temperamental side of Washington that he ordinarily kept well under wraps.
Washington now moved toward the front and learned that the brunt of the enemy forces would arrive in fifteen minutes. As Tench Tilghman recalled, Washington “seemed at a loss, as he was on a piece of ground entirely strange to him.”33 The battlefield was an idyllic spot of steeply rolling farmland, split down the middle by deep ravines and creeks. Though spontaneity was never his strong suit, Washington reacted with undisputed flair and sure intuition. Fired up with anger as well as courage, he instructed Anthony Wayne to hold the enemy at bay with two nearby regiments while he rallied the confused rout of men. Commanding as always on horseback, he succeeded in stemming the panic through pure will. When he asked the men if they would fight, they loudly responded with three lusty cheers—a novel occurrence in Washington’s experience, suggesting the deep affection he inspired after the shared sacrifice at Valley Forge. His cool presence emboldened his men to resist the approaching British bayonets and cavalry charges. All the while American artillery shelled the British from a nearby ridge. Lafayette stood in awe of Washington’s feat: “His presence stopped the retreat . . . His graceful bearing on horseback, his calm and deportment which still retained a trace of displeasure . . . were all calculated to inspire the highest degree of enthusiasm . . . I thought then as now that I had never beheld so superb a man.”34 Sometimes critical of Washington’s military talents, Hamilton ratified Lafayette’s laudatory appraisal: “I never saw the general to so much advantage. His coolness and firmness were admirable . . . [He] directed the whole with the skill
of a master workman.”35 Stirling and Greene particularly distinguished themselves during the action, although Washington reserved his highest praise for Brigadier General Anthony Wayne, “whose good conduct and bravery thro[ugh] the whole action deserves particular commendation.”36
The bloody battle that afternoon was a fierce seesaw struggle that took many casualties on both sides. For two hours in blazing heat, British and Continentals exchanged cannon fire. As in previous battles, Washington experienced narrow escapes. While he was deep in conversation with one officer, a cannonball exploded at his horse’s feet, flinging dirt in his face; Washington kept talking as if nothing had happened. He was everywhere on horseback, forming defensive lines, urging on his men, and giving them the chance to display the marching skills acquired at Valley Forge under Steuben. Lines of patriot soldiers fired muskets with discipline not seen before. Several times the well-trained Americans withstood vigorous charges by British regulars. Earlier in the day Washington had ridden a white charger, a gift from Governor Livingston of New Jersey. As the battlefield turned into a furnace, this beautiful horse suddenly dropped dead from the heat. At that point Billy Lee trotted up with a chestnut mare, which Washington rode for the duration.