Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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what made men fight 99

again mutinied, and Wayne moved against the ringleaders swiftly and

decisively: “Macaroney Jack” was the first to fall, followed by a soldier

named Smith who had his head hideously blasted to bits by a volley of

musket fire; the firing squad stood less than ten feet from their victims,

so close that the handkerchiefs covering the mutineers’ eyes caught

fire.”

Ensign Ebenezer Denny of the 7th Regiment recorded the,

literally, awe-inspiring execution.

The regiments paraded in the evening earlier than usual; orders

passed to the officers along the line to put to death instantly any

man who stirred from his rank. In front of the parade the ground

rose and and descended again, and at the distance of about three

hundred yards over this rising ground, the prisoners were escorted

by a captain’s guard; heard the fire of one platoon and immediately

a smaller one, when the regiments wheeled by companies and

marched round by the place of execution. This was an awful

exhibition. The seven objects were seen by the troops just as they

had sunk or fell under the fire. The sight must have made an

impression on the men; it was designed with that view.

Wayne wrote to Washington a few days later that “a liberal dose of

niter [gunpowder]” had done the trick. Almost exactly one year later

the Connecticut Line revolted, and Private Lud Gaylord was executed.

In June 1783 the Pennsylvanians again mutinied, but by this time the

war was practically over and Washington did not feel that the methods

he had used previously were appropriate.

Henry “Light Horse” Lee (Robert E. Lee’s father) had no doubt

about “motivating” through fear. He wrote to Washington suggesting

beheading as a suitable method for dealing with deserters, a suggestion

so grotesque that it prompted Washington to respond:

The measure you propose of putting deserters from our Army

immediately to death would probably tend to discourage the

practice. But it ought to be executed with caution and only when

the fact is very clear and unequivocal. I think that part of your

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proposal which respects cutting off their heads . . . had better be

omitted. Examples however severe ought not to be attended with

an appearance of inhumanity otherwise they give disgust and may

excite resentment rather than terror.

The key word here is terror. Washington is less concerned with issues

of humanity in their own right than with the countereffectiveness of

Lee’s suggestion. But, unknown to Washington, Lee had already acted.

Brigadier General William Irvine wrote to General Anthony Wayne

on 10 July 1779 that on 8 July a party of Lee’s cavalry had captured

three deserters and, after some haggling among Lee’s men, agreed to

decapitate one, “a corporal of the First Regiment”: “[His] head was

immediately carried to camp on a pole by the two who had escaped

instant death . . . I hope in future Death will be the punishment for

all such. I plainly see less will not do.”

Lee informed Washington of

his action, which elicited a sharp reply from the commander in chief,

who reminded him of their recent correspondence and ordered Lee to

bury the body quickly to prevent it from falling into enemy hands and

perhaps providing the enemy with some juicy propaganda.

Feeding the Beast

hen Frederick the Great humbly declared, “It is not I who

commands the army but flour and forage [that] are the

masters,” it was a salutary recognition of the formidable

constraints faced by eighteenth-century commanders. Inspirational

rhetoric, regimental pride, the sting of the lash, the lure of bounty,

and all the other arts of persuasion and coercion played their part in

motivating men to fight, but at the end of the day the army had to be

supplied, fed, clothed, and sheltered if there was to be an army at all

to face battle. The problems of supply and transport dictated much of

the strategy of eighteenth-century warfare. For example, the traditional

campaign season ran from approximately May to October when roads

were usable and provisions more plentiful. In the winter eighteenth-

century armies went into camp. (Washington’s attack on Trenton began

25–26 December 1776 and Montgomery and Arnold’s assault on Quebec

on 31 December 1775 were highly unusual, and both, to a degree, driven

by desperation.) General Howe’s strategy immediately following his

evacuation of Boston in 1776 was largely dictated by lack of supplies. He

wrote to Lord George Germain from Halifax in May 1776, “I tremble

when I think of our Present State of Provisions, having now Meat for

no more than thirteen days in store.” It is interesting to speculate that if

Howe had amassed the necessary supplies to have started his New York

campaign earlier in the season (he fought the battle of Brooklyn at the

very end of August 1776), he may well have had enough of the season

patriot battles 102

left to have mopped up Washington’s defeated army as it retreated

through New Jersey. As it turned out, it was early December when

Cornwallis halted at the Delaware, his supplies practically exhausted:

“We subsist only on the flour we found in the country.” The British had

run out of time.

Both the American and British armies struggled with their supply

and transport problems throughout the war. If the organization of supply

for the British was antediluvian, for the Americans it was prenatal.

They both wrestled with the same boa constrictor of bureaucracy: how

to establish a system that worked more or less (usually less) efficiently.

For the Americans it was a frantic game of catch-up. A centralized

supply infrastructure had to be created within a political system almost

tailor-made to frustrate it. The only centralizing agency, Congress, was

a lion tamer without a whip. With almost no power to force individual

states to conform to a central strategy, it could only appeal rather than

enforce, beg rather than demand. After all, it had taken more than

sixteen months of acrimonious debate before a “mission statement”—

the Declaration of Independence—had been wrung from the fractious

states, and throughout the war the battle between centralized and local

control worked like square wheels on a cart. The states and Congress

competed with each other in foreign markets to purchase armaments,

gunpowder, and all manner of military stores. For example, in January

1778 there were three competing sets of commissary agents operating in

Pennsylvania: congressional commissioners, Board of War procurement

commissioners, as well as Pennsylvania’s own supply commissioners.

The competition between the three conspired to drive up prices.

The states resolutely refused to pay any kind of national tax to help

finance the war. On 22 November 1777 Congress, mired in a huge paper

debt of $20 million, “recommended” that the states raise a “federal” tax

to underwrite it, but the appeal failed. Patriot America was struggling

to create nothing less than the machinery of independence. When the

Board of War was created on 12 June 1776, John Hancock proclaimed

to George Washington that the act was “a new and great event in

the history of America.” It was, in fact, one of the foundation blocks

of the nation itself. In making the army, the patriots were making

feeding the beast 103

America. Although Congress was often stumbling and bumbling, and

overwhelmed at times by the gigantic task, there is something not short

of heroic about its determination to grapple with the administrative

structure it would need not only to support its army but also to launch

America as an independent republic.

The original Board of War was, in effect, a congressional standing

committee charged with oversight of ordnance and military stores. As

its members had obligations to other congressional committees, the

vital work of supply control was often shortchanged. It was not until

October 1777 that members were added who had experience of the

Quartermaster and Commissary departments but who were not also

members of Congress. Even so, there was little close supervision of

these important departments by the board. In 1781 the board itself was

superseded by the War Office under its first secretary of war, Major

General Benjamin Lincoln.

On 16 June 1775 Congress began the business of bolting together

the structure needed to supply the army of which the departments of

the quartermaster general and the commissary general were key. The

quartermaster general, working closely with a commanding general,

helped plan marches, select campsites, survey roads and bridges, and,

where necessary, repair them. He was responsible for all transportation

for the army on the march and for providing it with shelter in camp.

It was an intricate and demanding administrative role requiring an

intimate knowledge of military and business affairs. In Washington’s

words, it required a man of “great resource and activity, and worthy of

the highest confidence.” Four men carried the burden during the war:

Thomas Mifflin was appointed on 14 August 1775; Stephen Moylan

(5 June 1776) lasted only briefly following his ineptitude during the

New York campaign; Mifflin was recalled for another eighteen months

and then handed the position over to a reluctant Nathanael Greene on

22 March 1778. Greene resigned to return to active service and passed

on the responsibility to the equally reluctant Timothy Pickering on 22

September 1780.

The commissary general’s primary role was to feed the army. Like

the quartermaster general’s job, it was something of a poisoned chalice.

patriot battles 104

The responsibility was massive, but the resources provided by Congress

were inadequate, and the situation was compounded by frequent

reorganizations and reforms, sometimes at the most inappropriate

times, such as in the middle of a campaign season. Four men held the

post during the course of the war: Joseph Trumbull (son of the governor

of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull) from July 1775 until August

1777, William Buchanan until April 1778, Jeremiah Wadsworth until

December 1779, and Ephraim Blaine thereafter.

Procurement of supplies was often financed by merchants, who

charged a percentage for the service. During the French and Indian

War they charged 5 percent for purchases, 2.5 percent on money, and 7.5

percent for storage and sale of goods sent by the colonies to defray their

debt. The agent personally financed all procurements and personally

carried any debt. During the War of Independence this system persisted

until 1781, when Robert Morris, superintendent of finance, introduced

contracts. It was a graft (in more senses than one) of the private and

public that has something of a modern resonance: the eighteenth-

century version of Halliburton meets the Pentagon.

Without an adequate bureaucracy or ready credit, Congress had

little option but to rely on the relatively sophisticated commercial

organization and financial clout that leading merchants, like Robert

Morris of Willing and Morris, Philip Livingston, Thomas Mifflin,

and Jeremiah Wadsworth, could offer. This was not an arm’s-length

relationship with Congress. Powerful merchants were also members of

the Secret Committee that was responsible for overseas procurement.

Thomas Mifflin became the first quartermaster general, and

Jeremiah Wadsworth, the most successful merchant in Connecticut,

was commissary general in 1778 and 1779. That the system opened

itself up to conflicts of interest is hardly surprising. Robert Morris,

Nathanael Greene, Wadsworth, and Mifflin, for example, all dabbled

in private side deals in military supplies. Alexander Hamilton

discovered Greene’s and Wadsworth’s shenanigans (buying up flour

that was needed for the French fleet and raising the price “an hundred

percent” for their own profit) and lambasted Greene in a letter of 26

October 1778.

feeding the beast 105

I say when you were doing all this, and engaging in a traffic

infamous in itself, repugnant to your station, and ruinous to your

country, did you pause and allow yourself a moment’s reflection

on the consequences? Were you infatuated enough to imagine

you would be able to conceal the part you were acting? Or had

you conceived a thorough contempt of reputation, and a total

indifference to the opinion of the world? Enveloped in the promised

gratification of your avarice, you probably forgot to consult your

understanding and lost sight of every consideration that ought to

have regulated the man, the citizen or the statesman.

Panicked but not deterred, Greene wrote to his coconspirator in

profiteering, Jeremiah Wadsworth, who would become enormously

wealthy on the back of his procurements for the French army.

You may remember I wrote to you sometime since that I was

desirous that this copartnership between Mr Dean, [Silas Deane,

principal American agent to France] you and myself should be

kept a secret. I must beg leave to impress this matter upon you

again; and to request you to enjoin it upon Mr Dean. The nearest

friend I have in the world shall not know it from me; and it is

my wish that no mortal should be acquainted with the persons

forming the Company except us three.

The temptations were too great, and corruption was endemic

throughout the chain of procurement and supply. Quartermasters and

commissaries sold government supplies and colluded with crooked

suppliers to buy substandard food, clothing, and gunpowder. During the

British invasion of Pennsylvania in August 1777 Ephraim Blaine, then

deputy commissary general for the Middle Department, complained

that 100 head of the cattle he had ordered removed from islands in

the Delaware were sold by one of his own agents to the British, with a

contract to provide more!

Transport was the linchpin of supply and throughout the war was a

logistical headache for the quartermaster general’s departments of both

patriot battles 106

armies. The road system was sparse, the terrain rugged. In bad weather

the roads turned to quagmire. (During February 1778 not one wagon

could reach the encampment at Valley Forge.) It took over two days

to travel the ninety miles between New York and Philadelphia. There

were few bridges, and none across the main rivers. The lumbering

wagons that carried goods throughout the interior were in short supply.

Finding forage to feed the wagon horses was a constant challenge.

The Continental army had to requisition much of its land transport,

and Congress never had enough money to compete with merchants

who were also in the business of hiring wagons and drivers. On 14 May

1777 Congress tried to get itself on an even keel by creating a separate

wagon department. It was not a success. First, Washington could not

find a suitable candidate to become wagonmaster general. (One refused,

citing his advanced age; one died before he could take up the post; one

begged off for reasons of ill health.) Second, wagon construction could

never keep pace with demand. By the winter of 1777–78 there was such

a shortage that at Valley Forge men yoked themselves to little carriages

in order to haul firewood and food.

Wagoners abused their horses or let them destroy private property—

“wherever our Baggage marches the Soldiers and Waggoners plunder

all houses & destroy every thing,” complained Colonel Henry Lutterloh.

The teamsters were a rough bunch, a mix of enlisted men and contracted

civilians (in 1778, for example, there were 104 military wagon-drivers

and 272 civilians)

much given to frequent tavern stops, which slowed

their daily mileage from the expected twenty to three or four. However,

after they had fortified themselves they would often drive “as if the

Devil was driving them,” which only ruined the horses.

It was grueling work and badly paid (£10 a month in the army

compared with £16– £20 a month in the civilian world). It is no wonder,

then, that wagon-drivers frequently dumped their military supplies

in order to hire themselves out to merchants and sutlers, especially if

the quartermaster’s department was slow in paying their wages. John

Chaloner, a deputy commissary, complained to James Young, the

wagonmaster general for Pennsylvania, “I am just now informed that a

number of County wagons coming from Lancaster [on their way to the

feeding the beast 107

troops at Valley Forge] have laid down their loads on the Horse Shoe

road, and gone home, a practice so destructive to the publick weal.”

When hauling casks of brined pork—an essential component of the

soldiers’ diet—wagon-drivers were prone to drain off the brining liquid

in order to lighten the load. Inevitably, the pork arrived spoiled.

Feeding a great army is a massive logistical task. Washington

estimated that he would need 100,000 barrels of flour and 20,000

pounds of meat to keep his 15,000 men surrounding Boston in 1775

fed for one year. The British army consumed 300 tons of food each

week and 360,000 gallons of rum each year, most of it shipped from

Britain. The grocery list was staggering. In seven months of 1778

the British army consumed 3.5 million pounds of bread and flour,

and 2 million pounds of meat over and above the amounts the British

Treasury had forecast.

The American army was well supplied and well fed during the

first year of the war. This was thanks largely to the talent of Joseph

Trumbull, who had been Connecticut’s commissary general at the

outbreak of war and became Washington’s first commissary general on

19 July 1775. It helped also, during the first year, that most of the troops

besieging Boston were New Englanders, whose nearby states were

the best provided and organized and could succor their fighting men

relatively easily. The turning point would come after the battle for New

York had been lost. The British captured huge quantities of foodstuffs

and, during their occupation of New Jersey, consumed and destroyed

much of that state’s ability to support the Continental army.

Once an American national army had been created, a standard

ration for each soldier needed to be established. It was substantial, but

this was a diet for men whose lives were, by modern sedentary standards,

intensely physical. It was a diet that delivered calories in abundance.

1 lb beef or

¾ lb pork or 1 lb salt fish per day

1 lb bread or flour per day

1 pint of milk per day

1 quart spruce beer or cider per day

¾ pint of molasses per day

patriot battles 108

3 pints of peas or beans per week (or the equivalent weight in

vegetables)

⁄

pint of rice or 1 pint “indian meal” (cornmeal) per week

The peas or beans were issued dried, so each soldier would have been

allocated three pounds dry weight of legumes each week, which, when

rehydrated, constituted approximately twelve cups per week. One half

pint (one half pound) of dry rice would convert to two cups of cooked

rice per week. Of course, the ration was not neatly portioned per day,

and Congress’s standard ration was theoretical. The milk, for example,

was never supplied, and at Boston spruce beer was not available. When

the army went to New York in 1776, molasses was unavailable but

beer was. Occasionally there were a few extras. Joseph Trumbull, for

example, managed to add six ounces of butter per man per week.

But

as the war went on, deficiency rather than sufficiency became the rule.

The army would never eat as well as it did in those early months.

The standard ration compared well with that available to British

troops. Each day a British soldier was to receive:

1 lb beef or

⁄

lb pork

1 lb bread or flour

⁄

pint peas

1 ounce butter or cheese

1 ounce oatmeal

⁄

gills rum

The standard ration (American or British) delivered more

than enough calories and twice as much protein as was needed.

contained adequate minerals but was low on vitamins A and C, and

this deficiency had serious health implications of which Washington

was keenly aware. In 1777 he lobbied Congress to broaden the standard

ration, and it responded on 25 July with a directive to the Board of War

to supply vinegar and sauerkraut (which were thought to be effective

in combating scurvy; in fact they were only mildly useful compared

with lemon or lime juice), vegetables, beer, and cider. When the board