Martha Washington (17 page)

Martha had a naturally calm and optimistic outlook on life, but she also worked at maintaining that attitude. As she later wrote, “I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have also learnt from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances; we carry the seeds of the one, or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.”

The village of Cambridge was surrounded with earthworks and chock-full of American soldiers, their officers occupying many of the principal houses. The men were armed with a wide assortment of weapons brought from home or acquired higgledy-piggledy. There were no standard uniforms: some wealthy officers supplied uniforms of their own fancy to their troops; in other units, men wore their everyday working clothes or leather hunting shirts and breeches copied from the Indians.

The town common had become a parade ground. Harvard was closed down, its buildings serving as barracks. From the heights around Boston, colonial soldiers watched the British tear up wharves, fences, and abandoned houses for firewood. Sounds carried too in the crisp, cold air, as both sides listened to bugles and shouted commands, alert for the noises of an unexpected foray.

At first, Martha found the preparations for war and the nonchalance of the soldiers and citizens bewildering. She wrote: “Every person seems to be cheerfull and happy here. Some days we have a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill, but it does not seem to surprise any one but me; I confess I shudder every time I hear the sound of a gun.” She was driven up Prospect Hill to look down at “poor” Boston and Charlestown. The latter had only a few chimneys standing, but a number of fine buildings still stood in Boston. She observed: “God knows how long they will stand; they are pulling up all the warfs for firewood. To me that never [has] seen anything of war, the preparations are very terable indeed, but I endever to keep my fears to myself as well as I can.”

Martha settled into a fine Georgian two-story frame house, well furnished, the property of a Tory, Major John Vassall, which had been taken over as the commander's residence. It stood in a large fenced lot, whose garden must have been charming earlier in the year but was now blanketed with snow. She was happy to discover that although “the distance is long . . . the post comes in very regularly every week”—all the way from Williamsburg. Still influenced by traditional British formality, many people settled on calling Martha “Lady Washington” for want of an official title.

As usual, her first concern was her husband's comfort, allowing him freedom from domestic details to concentrate on his military responsibilities. The household was run by a steward, its expenses paid by one of Washington's aides who also kept the accounts; she reorganized household affairs so that they ran more smoothly. His emotional comfort, however, was her primary care. Her deep devotion to her children and other family members paled before the burning intensity of her love for George Washington. He accepted her adoration without much thought. It was the atmosphere in which he breathed and lived, where he was most himself. She was at his side and on his side, sympathizing and supporting him through depression, failure, disloyalty, and anxiety about the future. With her, he needn't pretend to be perfect.

As army headquarters, the Vassall house was the commander's office as well as the Washingtons' home and staff quarters. Being the commander's wife was something like being a fraternity house mother; Martha and George were in their mid-forties, living with a large group of men in their twenties—Washington's aides-de-camp and a shifting number of other bachelor officers and visitors. The young men slept two or three to a bed and several to a room; they were always bustling back and forth on military errands, sometimes seeking out their own private entertainments of the sort not best shared with Lady Washington.

This first winter camp in Cambridge, though far more comfortable than those to come, set the pattern for the rest of the American Revolution. The arrival of the commander's wife signaled that other officers might bring their wives to join them. Martha loved nothing more than congenial company, and the Vassall house became quite gay with dinners and visits. Jack and Nelly, who soon discovered that she was pregnant again, were great social assets.

The higher-ranking officers and their wives became part of a sociable circle, taking turns entertaining one another throughout the winter. Cambridge almost began to seem like home. That is, if one ignored the weather, the strange conglomeration of accents and manners, and the reason that had brought them all together. Martha made lifetime friends among the officers' wives, but Elizabeth Gates wasn't one of them. They came to dislike each other, especially later when Gates allowed himself to be considered a likely replacement in command by Washington's critics, egged on by “that Medusa . . . [who] rules with a rod of Scorpions,” as another general described her.

Curiosity had drawn visitors to Cambridge since the beginning of the siege. With both armies out of action for the winter and Lady Washington in residence, the visits increased, including several congressmen come to look over this “continental” army that they were supporting. The entertainment of influential guests, who naturally expected dinner at headquarters and personal tours, had taken up too much of Washington's time. Martha provided a screening process, greeting and chatting with them when they entered the house before taking them to meet the general and sometimes taking over their entertainment again after their shortened interviews.

Among his line officers, George found two inexperienced, native-born leaders especially talented and congenial—Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox. While both enjoyed healthy strains of pride and egotism, they were loyal to Washington and could submerge their individual ambitions for the greater good. They were middle-class civilians of the sort who would never have stood a chance to become officers in the caste-ridden professional armies of Great Britain, France, or any of the German states.

Nathanael Greene was a Quaker from Rhode Island who had been read out of his meeting when he joined the state militia. A farmer and smith from a moderately well-to-do family, Greene lacked military experience but learned fast. Nearly six feet tall, he was strong and well built, a good-humored man who smiled often. His physical presence and charisma helped him inspire confidence in a ragtag collection of men from different colonies. He leaped in one day from private to general in the Rhode Island militia and proved his ability over time.

At camp, he was joined by his young wife, Catherine Littlefield Greene (twenty-two to his thirty-four). Nathanael was desperately in love with the very pregnant Kitty. A vivacious, sometimes reckless brunette, she became one of Martha and George's great favorites. When she arrived in Cambridge, Kitty drove up to the Vassall house, where she talked with Martha in the paneled parlor. Then they went across the wide hall to the general's office. Saucy and always ready with a quick response, Kitty was the sort of young woman George most enjoyed spending time with. He teased her about her “Quaker-preacher” husband, and she promised to name her baby for the general if it was a boy. True to her word, when she gave birth in January, she named her son George Washington Greene.

Henry Knox was one of those success stories of the right man appearing at the right time. Only twenty-five when the Revolution began, he was a self-educated bookseller from Boston. A committed patriot since the Boston Massacre, he was tall, fat, and a man of unbeatable humor and charm. Martha was so fond of him that she later made him two hairnets, also known as “queue bags”—woven bags to bind up his long ponytail, or queue.

Of all the military branches, artillery was the least glamorous and prestigious, but Henry chose it, learning about big guns and the strategy for fighting them from books. After Washington named him colonel and chief of the army's artillery, his first task was to assemble enough cannons and other artillery for his men to fire.

Martha also spent time with Lucy Flucker Knox, Henry's hefty and fun-loving wife, but she came to know her well only later. The daughter of a fiercely loyalist family (her father was royal secretary of Massachusetts), she married Henry against their wishes. While her parents remained under siege in Boston, she was with the American forces, expecting her first child.

The ladies of Cambridge came calling at the Vassall house now that there was a hostess at headquarters to receive them with oranges and a glass of wine. Martha also met the formidable Mercy Otis Warren of Plymouth, an accomplished playwright, poet, and leading American patriot. Her husband, James, was paymaster general of the army, charged with finding the wherewithal to keep the troops at their posts.

A slim, sharp-featured woman, Mercy liked Martha, three years her junior, but perhaps underestimated her intelligence because of her soft southern manner. She wrote to her friend Abigail Adams that Martha had greeted her on their first meeting “with that politeness and respect shown in a first interview among the well-bred, and with the ease and cordiality of older friendship. The complacency of her manners speaks at once the benevolence of her heart, and her affability, candor, and gentleness qualify her to soften the hours of private life, or to sweeten the cares of the hero, and smooth the rugged pains of war.”

The new army officially came into existence January 1, 1776. According to Washington, it was “in every point of View . . . entirely Continental.” The sign and countersign for the day were “The Congress” and “America.” A crowd of soldiers and civilians gathered to celebrate at the parade ground on Prospect Hill. Unfortunately, thousands of militiamen refused to reenlist, streaming steadily out of town. For a few days, until new troops arrived, the Americans were drastically undermanned, but the British didn't attack.

In the meantime, Henry Knox had been sent to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to bring back a large supply of cannons and mortars, lead and flints. With a small group of picked men, he chose fifty-odd pieces of artillery (sources disagree on the exact number) and transported the weapons through three hundred miles of snowy mountains and icy roads. Eighty yokes of oxen dragged the forty-two sledges built for the trek; the large siege mortars, one of them known as “Old Sow,” weighed a ton each. Had he done nothing else—and he did a lot more—bringing artillery to Boston would have made Knox an American hero.

After months of stalemate, the American army was now armed and ready. All the talk at headquarters was how and when to attack. As the commander's wife, Martha attended closely to military news, strategies, and the shortages that so bedeviled George. A committed partisan, she boasted to her sister in a quite martial letter of the success of “our navey,” which had recently taken two British supply ships loaded with coal, potatoes, wines, and other supplies—all put to good use by the Americans.

The large port of New York would undoubtedly be the site of British attack soon, because of both its strategic location and its large population of loyalists. Washington had sent General Charles Lee there “in case any disturbance should happen.” If the British arrived, she hoped Lee would give them “a very warm reception.” Having absorbed Washington's concerns about civilian informers and spies, Martha fully realized the danger in New York posed by the “many Tories in that part of the world or at least many are suspected thare to be unfriendly to our cause at this time.”

In early March, Washington sent the American army into action. Under cover of a general bombardment, the Americans fortified Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston, and moved in men and field pieces overnight. It was a brilliant maneuver. On March 5, the British awoke to face an entrenched enemy who could blow away the city and the fleet in the harbor. After a counterattack was delayed and then prevented by a tremendous storm, the British prepared to evacuate. Among the Tory civilians who sailed away with the fleet for loyalist Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 27 were the Fluckers; Lucy Knox would never again see her family. The siege of Boston was over.

The city was left almost in ruins—trenches in the common, spiked cannons, piles of spoiled supplies, dilapidated and destroyed buildings, wharves and fences gone, wildly overgrown gardens. Toward the end of the siege, there had been an epidemic of smallpox, and only American soldiers with immunity, identified by their pockmarked faces, could enter safely. Because she had never had smallpox, Martha could not join Kitty Greene and other officers' wives at celebratory dinners in the city. She did enjoy a bit of sight-seeing, taking Mercy Warren on an early morning carriage drive “to see the Deserted Lines of the Enemy.” Besides, she was busy at headquarters with Washington's aides, making arrangements for their move.

On April 4, George Washington began moving his troops to New York City, marching through Rhode Island and Connecticut. He sent Martha, Jack, and Nelly by a different route, their coach escorted by two of his aides-de-camp. By going through Connecticut via Hartford, they avoided the racket and clouds of dust raised by an army on the march. On April 13, 1776, Washington was in New York.

Martha's party didn't arrive until four days later, delayed by Jack's illness on the road. The Custises stayed a couple of weeks before returning to Maryland. Nelly wanted to settle in safely with her mother and sisters at Mount Airy well in advance of the new baby's arrival.

Though thronged with business, including trying to convince New Yorkers that the British and Americans were truly at war, George devoted his usual care to his wife's comfort. He chose the Mortier house in lower Manhattan for their residence, probably using a separate building as his headquarters. Expecting that they would live there a while, he bought a featherbed, a bolster, some pillows, bed curtains, crockery, and pottery. Also, assuming that he would spend many future days in the field, he purchased a dining marquee (a large tent whose sides could be drawn up), a living tent with an arched chamber, walnut camp stools and tables, and other necessities for comfortable campaigning.