The Life of John Marshall Volume I Part 14

[353] Marshall, i, 184.

[354] Marshall, i, 184.

CHAPTER IV

VALLEY FORGE AND AFTER

Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place ... this army must inevitably starve, dissolve, or disperse. (Washington, Dec. 23, 1777.)

John Marshall was the best tempered man I ever knew. Nothing discouraged, nothing disturbed him. (Lieutenant Slaughter, of Marshall at Valley Forge.)

Gaunt and bitter swept down the winter of 1777. But the season brought no lean months to the soldiers of King George, no aloes to the Royal officers in fat and snug Philadelphia.[355] It was a period of rest and safety for the red-coated privates in the city, where, during the preceding year, Liberty Bell had sounded its clamorous defiance; a time of revelry and merry-making for the officers of the Crown. Gay days chased nights still gayer, and weeks of social frolic made the winter pa.s.s like the scenes of a warm and glowing play.

For those who bore the King's commission there were b.a.l.l.s at the City Tavern, plays at the South-Street Theater; and many a charming flirtation made lively the pa.s.sing months for the ladies of the Capital, as well as for lieutenant and captain, major and colonel, of the invaders' army. And after the social festivities, there were, for the officers, carousals at the "Bunch of Grapes" and all night dinners at the "Indian Queen."[356]

"You can have no idea," wrote beautiful Rebecca Franks,--herself a keen Tory,--to the wife of a patriot, "you can have no idea of the life of continued amus.e.m.e.nt I live in. I can scarce have a moment to myself. I spent Tuesday evening at Sir William Howe's, where we had a concert and dance.... Oh, how I wished Mr. Paca would let you come in for a week or two!... You'd have an opportunity of raking as much as you choose at Plays, b.a.l.l.s, Concerts, and a.s.semblies. I have been but three evenings alone since we moved to town."[357]

"My wife writes me," records a Tory who was without and whose wife was within the Quaker City's gates of felicity, "that everything is gay and happy [in Philadelphia] and it is like to prove a frolicking winter."[358] Loyal to the colors of pleasure, society waged a triumphant campaign of brilliant amus.e.m.e.nt. The materials were there of wit and loveliness, of charm and manners. Such women there were as Peggy Chew and Rebecca Franks, Williamina Bond and Margaret Shippen--afterwards the wife of Benedict Arnold and the probable cause of his fall;[359] such men as Banastre Tarleton of the Dragoons, twenty-three years old, handsome and accomplished; brilliant Richard Fitzpatrick of the Guards; Captain John Andre, whose graces charmed all hearts.[360] So lightly went the days and merrily the nights under the British flag in Philadelphia during the winter of 1777-78.

For the common soldiers there were the race-course and the c.o.c.k-pit, warm quarters for their abodes, and the fatness of the land for their eating. Beef in abundance, more cheese than could be used, wine enough and to spare, provisions of every kind, filled pantry and cellar. For miles around the farmers brought in supplies. The women came by night across fields and through woods with eggs, b.u.t.ter, vegetables, turkeys, chickens, and fresh meat.[361] For most of the farmers of English descent in that section hated the war and were actively, though in furtive manner, Tory. They not only supplied the British larder, but gave news of the condition and movements of the Americans.[362]

Not twenty miles away from these scenes of British plenty and content, of cheer and jollity, of wa.s.sail and song, rose the bleak hills and black ravines of Valley Forge, where Washington's army had crawled some weeks after Germantown. On the Schuylkill heights and valleys, the desperate Americans made an encampment which, says Trevelyan, "bids fair to be the most celebrated in the world's history."[363] The hills were wooded and the freezing soldiers were told off in parties of twelve to build huts in which to winter. It was more than a month before all these rude habitations were erected.[364] While the huts were being built the naked or scarcely clad[365] soldiers had to find what shelter they could. Some slept in tents, but most of them lay down beneath the trees.[366] For want of blankets, hundreds, had "to sit up all night by fires."[367] After Germantown Washington's men had little to eat at any time. On December 2, "the last ration had been delivered and consumed."[368] Through treachery, cattle meant for the famishing patriots were driven into the already over-supplied Philadelphia.[369]

The commissariat failed miserably, perhaps dishonestly, to relieve the desperate want. Two days before Christmas there was "not a single hoof of any kind to slaughter, and not more than twenty-five barrels of flour!"[370] Men died by the score from starvation.[371]

Most of the time "fire cake" made of dirty, soggy dough, warmed over smoky fires, and washed down with polluted water was the only sustenance. Sometimes, testifies Marshall himself, soldiers and officers "were absolutely without food."[372]

On the way to Valley Forge, Surgeon Waldo writes: "I'm Sick--eat nothing--No Whiskey--No Baggage--Lord,--Lord,--Lord."[373] Of the camp itself and of the condition of the men, he chronicles: "Poor food--hard lodging--Cold Weather--fatigue--Nasty Cloaths--nasty Cookery--Vomit half my time--Smoak'd out of my senses--the Devil's in it--I can't Endure it--Why are we sent here to starve and freeze--What sweet Felicities have I left at home;--A charming Wife--pretty Children--Good Beds--good food--good Cookery--all agreeable--all harmonious. Here, all Confusion--Smoke--Cold,--hunger & filthyness--A pox on my bad luck. Here comes a bowl of beef soup,--full of burnt leaves and dirt, sickish enough to make a hector spue--away with it, Boys--I'll live like the Chameleon upon Air."[374]

While in overfed and well-heated Philadelphia officers and privates took the morning air to clear the brain from the night's pleasures, John Marshall and his comrades at Valley Forge thus greeted one another: "Good morning Brother Soldier (says one to another) how are you?--All wet, I thank'e, hope you are so--(says the other)."[375] Still, these empty, shrunken men managed to squeeze some fun out of it. When reveille sounded, the hoot of an owl would come from a hut door, to be answered by like hoots and the cawing of crows; but made articulate enough to carry in this guise the cry of "'No meat!--No meat!' The distant vales Echo'd back the melancholy sound--'No Meat!--No Meat!'... What have you for our Dinners, Boys? [one man would cry to another] 'Nothing but Fire Cake and Water, Sir.' At night--'Gentlemen, the Supper is ready.' What is your Supper, Lads? 'Fire Cake & Water, Sir.'"

Just before Christmas Surgeon Waldo writes: "Lay excessive Cold & uncomfortable last Night--my eyes are started out from their Orbits like a Rabbit's eyes, occasion'd by a great Cold--and Smoke. What have you got for Breakfast, Lads? 'Fire Cake and Water, Sir.' The Lord send that our Commissary of Purchases may live on Fire Cake & Water till their glutted Gutts are turned to Pasteboard."

He admonishes: "Ye who Eat Pumpkin Pie and Roast Turkies--and yet Curse fortune for using you ill--Curse her no more--least she reduce you ...

to a bit of Fire Cake & a Draught of Cold Water, & in Cold Weather."[376]

Heart-breaking and pitiful was the aspect of these soldiers of liberty.

"There comes a Soldier--His bare feet are seen thro' his worn out Shoes--his legs nearly naked from the tatter'd remains of an only pair of stockings--his Breeches not sufficient to cover his Nakedness--his Shirt hanging in Strings--his hair dishevell'd--his face meagre--his whole appearance pictures a person foresaken & discouraged. He comes, and crys with an air of wretchedness & despair--I am Sick--my feet lame--my legs are sore--my body cover'd with this tormenting Itch--my Cloaths are worn out--my Const.i.tution is broken--my former Activity is exhausted by fatigue--hunger & Cold!--I fail fast I shall soon be no more! And all the reward I shall get will be--'Poor Will is dead.'"[377]

On the day after Christmas the soldiers waded through snow halfway to their knees. Soon it was red from their bleeding feet.[378] The cold stung like a whip. The huts were like "dungeons and ... full as noisome."[379] Tar, pitch, and powder had to be burned in them to drive away the awful stench.[380] The horses "died by hundreds every week"; the soldiers, staggering with weakness as they were, hitched themselves to the wagons and did the necessary hauling.[381] If a portion of earth was warmed by the fires or by their trampling feet, it froze again into ridges which cut like knives. Often some of the few blankets in the army were torn into strips and wrapped around the naked feet of the soldiers only to be rent into shreds by the sharp ice under foot.[382] Sick men lay in filthy hovels covered only by their rags, dying and dead comrades crowded by their sides.[383]

As Christmas approached, even Washington became so disheartened that he feared that "this army must dissolve;"[384] and the next day he again warned Congress that, unless the Commissary were quickly improved, "this army must inevitably ... starve, dissolve, or disperse."[385]

Early in 1778 General Varnum wrote General Greene that "The situation of the Camp is such that in all human probability the Army must soon dissolve. Our desertions are astonishingly great."[386] "The army must dissolve!" "The army must dissolve!"--the repeated cry comes to us like the chant of a saga of doom.

Had the British attacked resolutely, the Americans would have been shattered beyond hope of recovery.[387] On February 1, 1778, only five thousand and twelve men out of a total of more than seventeen thousand were capable of any kind of service: four thousand were unfit for duty because of nakedness.[388] The patriot prisoners within the British lines were in even worse case, if we credit but half the accounts then current. "Our brethren," records Surgeon Waldo in his diary, "who are unfortunately Prisoners in Philadelphia, meet with the most savage & inhumane treatments--that Barbarians are Capable of inflicting.... One of these poor unhappy men--drove to the last extreem by the rage of hunger--eat his own fingers up to the first joint from the hand, before he died. Others eat the Clay--the Lime--the Stones--of the Prison Walls.

Several who died in the Yard had pieces of Bark, Wood,--Clay & Stones in their mouths--which the ravings of hunger had caused them to take in the last Agonies of Life."[389]

The Moravians in Bethlehem, some miles away from Valley Forge, were the only refuge of the stricken patriots. From the first these Christian socialists were the Good Samaritans of that ghastly winter. This little colony of Germans had been overrun with sick and wounded American soldiers. Valley Forge poured upon it a Niagara of starvation, disease, and death. One building, scarcely large enough for two hundred and fifty beds, was packed with nearly a thousand sick and dying men. Dysentery reduced burly strength to trembling weakness. A peculiar disease rotted blood and bones. Many died on the same foul pallet before it could be changed. The beds were "heaps of polluted litter." Of forty of John Marshall's comrades from a Virginia regiment, which was the "pride of the Old Dominion," only three came out alive.[390] "A violent putrid fever," testifies Marshall, "swept off much greater numbers than all the diseases of the camp."[391]

Need, was there not, at Valley Forge for men of resolve so firm and disposition so sunny that they would not yield to the gloom of these indescribable months? Need, was there not, among these men, for spirits so bright and high that they could penetrate even the death-stricken depression of this fetid camp with the glow of optimism and of hope?

Such characters were there, we find, and of these the most shining of all was John Marshall of the Virginia line.[392] He was a very torch of warmth and encouragement, it appears; for in the journals and diaries left by those who lived through Valley Forge, the name of John Marshall is singled out as conspicuous for these comforting qualities.

"Although," writes Lieutenant Philip Slaughter, who, with the "two Porterfields and Johnson," was the messmate of John Marshall, "they were reduced sometimes to a single shirt, having to wrap themselves in a blanket when that was washed"[393] and "the snow was knee-deep all the winter and stained with blood from the naked feet of the soldiers,"[394]

yet "nothing discouraged, nothing disturbed" John Marshall. "If he had only bread to eat," records his fellow officer, "it was just as well; if only meat it made no difference. If any of the officers murmured at their deprivations, he would shame them by good-natured raillery, or encourage them by his own exuberance of spirits.

"He was an excellent companion, and idolized by the soldiers and his brother officers, whose gloomy hours were enlivened by his inexhaustible fund of anecdote.... John Marshall was the best tempered man I ever knew,"[395] testifies his comrade and messmate.

So, starving, freezing, half blind with smoke, thinly clad and almost shoeless, John Marshall went through the century-long weeks of Valley Forge, poking fun wherever he found despondency, his drollery bringing laughter to cold-purpled lips, and, his light-hearted heroism shaming into erectness the bent backs of those from whom hope had fled. At one time it would be this prank; another time it would be a different expedient for diversion. By some miracle he got hold of a pair of silk stockings and at midnight made a great commotion because the leaves he had gathered to sleep on had caught fire and burned a hole in his grotesque finery.[396]

High spirits undismayed, intelligence shining like a lamp, common sense true as the surveyor's level--these were the qualities which at the famine camp at Valley Forge singled the boyish Virginia officer out of all that company of gloom. Just before the army went into winter quarters Captain-Lieutenant Marshall was appointed "Deputy Judge Advocate in the Army of the United States,"[397] and at the same time, by the same order, James Monroe was appointed aide-de-camp to Lord Stirling, one of Washington's generals.[398]

Such was the confidence of his fellow officers and of the soldiers themselves in Marshall's judgment and fairness that they would come to him with their disputes and abide by his decision; and these tasks, it seems, the young Solomon took quite seriously. He heard both sides with utmost patience, and, having taken plenty of time to think it over, rendered his decision, giving the reasons therefor in writing.[399] So just after he had turned his twenty-second year, we find John Marshall already showing those qualities which so distinguished him in after life. Valley Forge was a better training for Marshall's peculiar abilities than Oxford or Cambridge could have been.

His superiority was apparent, even to casual observers, notwithstanding his merriment and waggishness. One of a party visiting Valley Forge said of the stripling Virginia officer: "By his appearance then we supposed him about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. Even so early in life ... he appeared to us _primus inter pares_, for amidst the many commissioned officers he was discriminated for superior intelligence.

Our informant, Colonel Ball, of another regiment in the same line,[400]

represented him as a young man, not only brave, but signally intelligent."[401]

Marshall's good humor withstood not only the horrors of that terrible winter, but also Washington's iron military rule. The Virginia lieutenant saw men beaten with a hundred stripes for attempting to desert. Once a woman was given a hundred lashes and drummed out of the army. A lieutenant was dismissed from the service in disgrace for sleeping and eating with privates, and for buying a pair of shoes from a soldier.[402] Bitter penalties were inflicted on large numbers of civilians for trying to take flour, cattle, and other provisions to the British in Philadelphia;[403] a commissary was "mounted on a horse, back foremost, without a Saddle, his Coat turn'd wrong side out his hands tied behind him & drummed out of the Army (Never more to return) by all the Drums in the Division."[404]

What held the patriot forces together at this time? George Washington, and he alone.[405] Had he died, or had he been seriously disabled, the Revolution would have ended. Had typhoid fever seized Washington for a month, had any of those diseases, with which the army was plagued, confined him, the patriot standard would have fallen forever. Washington was the soul of the American cause. Washington was the Government.

Washington was the Revolution. The wise and learned of every land agree on this. Professor Channing sums it all up when he declares: "Of all men in history, not one so answers our expectations as Washington. Into whatever part of his life the historian puts his probe, the result is always satisfactory."[406]

Yet intrigue and calumny sought his ruin. From Burgoyne's surrender on through the darkest days of Valley Forge, the Conway cabal shot its filaments through Congress, society, and even fastened upon the army itself. Gates was its figurehead, Conway its brain, Wilkinson its tool, Rush its amanuensis, and certain members of Congress its accessories before the fact. The good sense and devotion of Patrick Henry, who promptly sent Washington the anonymous letter which Rush wrote to the Virginia Governor,[407] prevented that shameful plot from driving Washington out of the service of his country.

Washington had led his army to defeat after defeat while Gates had gained a glorious victory; Gates was the man for the hour--down, then, with the incompetent Virginian, said the conspirators. The Pennsylvania Legislature, wroth that Howe's army had not been beaten, but allowed to occupy the comfortable Capital of the State, remonstrated to Congress.

That body, itself, was full of dissatisfaction with the Commander-in-Chief. Why would he not oust the British from Philadelphia?

Why had he allowed Howe to escape when that general marched out to meet him? As the first step toward Washington's downfall, Congress created a new Board of War, with Gates as President; Conway was made Inspector-General.[408]

The conspirators and those whom their gossip could dupe lied about Washington's motives. His abilities, it was said, were less than ordinary; and his private conduct, went the stealthy whisper, was so bad as to prove the hypocrisy of his deportment.[409] Nor were Washington's generals spared. Greene was a sycophant, said these a.s.sa.s.sins of character; Sullivan a braggart; Stirling "a lazy, ignorant drunkard."

These poisoners of reputation declared that General Knox and Alexander Hamilton were "paltry satellites" of Washington and flatterers of his vanity.[410] So cunning, subtle, and persistent were these sappers and miners of reputation that even the timely action of Patrick Henry in sending Washington Rush's unsigned attack might not have prevented the great American's overthrow; for envy of Washington's strength, suspicion of his motives, distrust of his abilities, had made some impression even on men like John Adams.[411]

The great American bore himself with dignity, going hardly further than to let his enemies know that he was aware of their machinations.[412] At last, however, he lashed out at Congress. Let that body look to the provisioning of the army if it expected the soldiers to fight. The troops had no food, no clothing. The Quartermaster-General had not been heard from for five months. Did his critics think "the soldiers were made of stocks and stones?" Did they think an active winter campaign over three States with starving naked troops "so easy and practicable a business? I can a.s.sure those gentlemen," writes Washington, "that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets.... I have exposed myself to detraction and calumny" because "I am obliged to conceal the true state of the army from public view.... No day nor scarce an hour pa.s.ses without" an officer tendering his resignation.[413]

Washington was saved finally by the instinctive faith which that part of the common people who still supported the Revolution had in their great leader, and by his soldiers' stanch devotion, which defeat after defeat, retreat hard upon the heels of preceding retreat, hunger and nakedness, wounds and sickness could not shake.

"See the poor Soldier," wrote Surgeon Waldo at Valley Forge. "He labours thro' the Mud & Cold with a Song in his mouth, extolling War & Washington."[414]

Congress soon became insignificant in numbers, only ten or twelve members attending, and these doing business or idling as suited their whim.[415] About the only thing they did was to demand that Washington strike Philadelphia and restore the members of this mimetic government to their soft, warm nests. Higher and yet more lofty in the esteem of his officers and men rose their general. Especially was this true of John Marshall for reasons already given, which ran back into his childhood.

In vain Washington implored the various States to strengthen Congress by sending their best men to this central body. Such able men as had not taken up arms for their country refused to serve in Congress. Nearly every such man "was absorbed in provincial politics, to the exclusion of any keen and intelligent interest in the central Government of his nation."[416]

Amidst the falling snow at Valley Forge, Washington thus appealed to Colonel Harrison in Virginia: "America never stood in more eminent need of the wise, patriotic, and spirited exertions of her Sons than at this period.... The States, separately, are too much engaged in their local concerns.... The States ... have very inadequate ideas of the present danger."[417] The letter could not be sent from that encampment of ice and death for nearly two weeks; and the hara.s.sed commander added a postscript of pa.s.sionate appeal declaring that "our affairs are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been in since the commencement of the War."[418]

"You are beseeched most earnestly, my dear Col^o Harrison," pleaded Washington, "to exert yourself in endeavoring to rescue your Country by ... sending your best and ablest Men to Congress--these characters must not slumber nor sleep at home in such times of pressing danger--they must not content themselves in the enjoyment of places of honor or profit in their Country [Virginia][419] while the common interests of America are mouldering and sinking into irretrievable ...