Chapter XV: Under the Old Elm

It was on the 15th day of June, 1775, that George Washington was chosen Commander-in-Chief of the American army. The next day he made his answer to Congress, in which he declared that he accepted the office, but that he would take no pay; he would keep an exact account of his expenses, but he would give his services to his country. There was no time to be lost. He could not go home to bid his wife good-by, and he did not know when he should see her again, so he wrote her as follows:

"PHILADELPHIA, 18th June, 1775.

"MY DEAREST:

"I am now set down to write to you on a subject which fills me with
inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and
increased when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you.
It has been determined in Congress that the whole army raised for the
defence of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it
is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me
the command of it.

"You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I assure you in the most
solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have
used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my
unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a
consciousness of it being a trust too great for my capacity, and that
I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than
I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were
to be seven times seven years. But as it has been a kind of destiny
that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my
undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose. You might,
and I suppose did perceive, from the tenor of my letters, that I was
apprehensive I could not avoid this appointment, as I did not pretend
to intimate when I should return. That was the case. It was utterly
out of my power to refuse this appointment, without exposing my
character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon
myself and given pain to my friends."

That is to say, he could not refuse the appointment without laying himself open to the charge of being a coward and afraid to run the risk, or a selfish man who preferred his own ease and comfort. He was neither. He was a courageous man, as he had always shown himself to be, and he was unselfish, for he was giving up home and property, and undertaking a life of the greatest difficulty in the service of--what? His country? Yes. But we must remember that Virginia was his country more than all the colonies were, and at present it was only Massachusetts that stood in peril. Of course every one is impelled to do great things by more than one motive. Washington was a soldier, and his blood tingled as he thought of being Commander-in-Chief, and doing the most that a soldier could; but he was, above all, a man who had a keen sense of right and wrong. He saw that England was wrong and was doing injustice to America. The injustice did not at once touch him as a planter, as a man who was making money; it touched him as a free man who was obedient to the laws; and he was ready to give up everything to help right the wrongs.

Washington left Philadelphia on his way to Boston, June 21, escorted by a troop of horsemen, and accompanied by Schuyler and Lee, who had just been made major-generals by Congress. They had gone about twenty miles when they saw a man on horseback coming rapidly down the road. It was a messenger riding post haste to Philadelphia, and carrying to Congress news of the battle of Bunker Hill. Everybody was stirred by the news and wanted to know the particulars.

"Why were the Provincials compelled to retreat?" he was asked.

"It was for want of ammunition," he replied.

"Did they stand the fire of the regular troops?" asked Washington anxiously.

"That they did, and held their own fire in reserve until the enemy was within eight rods."

"Then the liberties of the country are safe!" exclaimed Washington. He remembered well the scenes under Braddock, and he knew what a sight it must have been to those New England farmers when a compact body of uniformed soldiers came marching up from the boats at Charlestown. If they could stand fearlessly, there was stuff in them for soldiers.

All along the route the people in the towns turned out to see Washington's cavalcade, and at Newark a committee of the New York Provincial Congress met to escort him to the city. There he left General Schuyler in command, and hurried forward to Cambridge, for the news of Bunker Hill made him extremely anxious to reach the army.

In New England, the nearer he came to the seat of war, the more excited and earnest he found the people. At every town he was met by the citizens and escorted through that place to the next. This was done at New Haven. The collegians all turned out, and they had a small band of music, at the head of which, curiously enough, was a freshman who afterward made some stir in the world. It was Noah Webster, the man of spelling-book and dictionary fame. At Springfield, the party was met by a committee of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, and at last, on the 2d of July, he came to Watertown, where he was welcomed by the Provincial Congress itself, which was in session there.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon of the same day that Washington rode into Cambridge, escorted by a company of citizens. As he drew near Cambridge Common, cannon were fired to welcome him, and the people in Boston must have wondered what had happened. The Provincial Congress had set apart for his use the house of the President of Harvard College, reserving only one room for the President; but this house, which is still standing, was probably too small and inconvenient; for shortly afterward Washington was established in the great square house, on the way to Watertown, which had been deserted by a rich Tory, and there he staid as long as he was in Cambridge. By good fortune, years afterward, the poet Longfellow bought the house, and so the two names of Washington and Longfellow have made it famous.

On the morning of the next day, which was Monday, July 3, 1775, Washington, with Lee and other officers, rode into camp. Cambridge Common was not the little place it now is, hemmed in by streets. It stretched out toward the country, and a country road ran by its side, leading to Watertown. An Episcopal church stood opposite the common, and a little farther on, just as the road turned, nearly at a right angle, stood an old house. In front of this house, at the corner of the road, was a stout elm-tree. It was a warm summer morning, and the officers were glad of the shade of the tree.

On the left, and stretching behind, were the tents of the American camp. The soldiers themselves were drawn up in the road and on the dry, treeless common. Crowded about were men, women, and children, for the news had spread that the general had come, and the crowd and the soldiers were well intermingled. What did they see? They saw a group of men on horseback, in military dress; but the foremost man, on whom all eyes were bent, was a tall, splendid figure, erect upon his horse; those nearest could see that he had a rosy face, thick brown hair that was brushed back from his face, and clear blue eyes set rather far apart. By his side was a man who appeared even taller, he was so thin and lank; he had a huge nose, eyes that were looking in every direction, a mouth that seemed almost ready to laugh at the people before him. He sat easily and carelessly on his horse. This was General Lee.

Now, the strong Virginian, easily marked by his bearing and his striking dress,--for he wore a blue coat with buff facings, buff small-clothes, an epaulet on each shoulder, and a cockade in his hat,--turned to General Ward, who had heretofore been in command of the army, and laying his hand on the hilt of his sword, drew it from the scabbard, and raised it in the sight of the people. The cannon roared, no doubt, and the people shouted. It was a great occasion for them, and everybody was on tiptoe of curiosity to see the Virginians. All this is what we may suppose, for there is no account of the exact ceremony. We only know that, at that time, Washington took command of the army.

But what did Washington see, and what did he think, now, and later, when he made a tour of inspection through the camp and to the outposts? He saw a motley assembly, in all sorts of uniforms and without any uniform at all, with all sorts of weapons and with precious little powder. So little was there, that Washington was very anxious lest the British should find out how little he had; and so while he was urging Congress to provide supplies, he had barrels of sand, with powder covering the top, placed in the magazine, so that any spy hanging about might be misled. Some of the soldiers were in tents, some were quartered in one or two college buildings then standing, and some built huts for themselves. The most orderly camp was that of the Rhode Island troops, under General Nathaniel Greene.

The men were in companies of various sizes, under captains and other officers who had very little authority over the privates, for these usually elected their own commanders. A visitor to the camp relates a dialogue which he heard between a captain and one of the privates under him.

"Bill," said the captain, "go and bring a pail of water for the men."

"I shan't," said Bill. "It's your turn now, Captain; I got it last time."

But the men, though under very little discipline, were good stuff out of which to make soldiers. Most of them were in dead earnest, and they brought, besides courage, great skill in the use of the ordinary musket. A story is told of a company of riflemen raised in one of the frontier counties of Pennsylvania. So many volunteers applied as to embarrass the leader who was enlisting the company, and he drew on a board with chalk the figure of a nose of the common size, placed the board at the distance of a hundred and fifty yards, and then declared he would take only those who could hit the mark. Over sixty succeeded. "General Gage, take care of _your_ nose," says the newspaper that tells the story. General Gage, as you know, was the commander of the British forces in Boston.

Washington wrote to Congress, "I have a sincere pleasure in observing that there are materials for a good army, a great number of able-bodied men, active, zealous in the cause, and of unquestionable courage."

His first business was to make an army out of this material, and he shrewdly suggested that, inasmuch as there was great need of clothing, it would be well to furnish ten thousand hunting-shirts at once. Not only would these be the cheapest garments, but they would furnish a convenient and characteristic uniform, which would destroy the distinctions between the troops from different colonies or towns. If the men looked alike, they would act together better.

There is a story that Washington had a platform built in the branches of the elm under which he had taken command of the army, and that there he sat with his glass, spying the movements across the water in Boston. Whether this be so or not, he was constantly scouring the country himself, and sending his scouts within the enemy's lines. The most critical time came at the end of the year 1775, when the term of the old soldiers' enlistment expired, and the ranks were filling up with raw recruits.

"It is not in the pages of history, perhaps," writes Washington to the President of Congress, on the 4th of January, "to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy for six months together without----, and at the same time to disband one army and recruit another, within that distance of twenty-odd British regiments, is more, probably, than ever was attempted. But if we succeed as well in the last as we have heretofore in the first, I shall think it the most fortunate event of my whole life."

The blank purposely left in this letter, in case it should fall into the hands of the enemy, was easily filled by Congress with the word "powder." At one time there was not half a pound to a man. General Sullivan writes that when General Washington heard of this, he was so much struck by the danger that he did not utter a word for half an hour.

When Washington left Philadelphia for Cambridge, he wrote to his wife as if he expected to return after a short campaign. Perhaps he said this to comfort her. Perhaps he really hoped that by a short, sharp struggle the colonies would show Great Britain that they were in earnest, and would secure the rights which had been taken from them. At any rate, from the day he took command of the army in Cambridge, Washington had one purpose in view, to attack Boston just as soon as possible. The summer was not over before he called his officers together and proposed to make the attack. They hesitated, and finally said they were not ready for so bold a move. He called a council again, the middle of October, but still he could not bring them to the point. He kept on urging it, however, as the one thing to do, and Congress at last, just at the end of the year, passed a resolution giving Washington authority to make an assault upon the British forces "in any manner he might think expedient, notwithstanding the town and property in it might be destroyed."

As soon as he received this authority, Washington again called his officers together, and urged with all his might the necessity of immediate action. He thought they should make a bold attempt at once to conquer the English army in Boston. In the spring more troops would come over from England. "Strike now!" he said, "and perhaps it will not be necessary to strike again." But it was not till the middle of February that he was able to persuade his generals to agree to a move. As soon as he had won them over, he made his preparations as rapidly as possible, and on the 3d of March took possession of Dorchester Heights. That movement showed the British what was coming. If they were to stay in Boston, they would at once be attacked. They took to their ships and sailed out of Boston harbor.

Washington had driven them out, though he had fought no battle. It is impossible to say what would have happened if he could have had his way before, and attacked Boston. There were many friends of America in Parliament, and if the news had come that the New England men had actually destroyed Boston, the town where their property was, in their determination to drive out the British soldiers, I think these friends would have said: "See how much in earnest these Massachusetts men are! They have a right to be heard, when they are willing to sacrifice their own town to secure their rights." Boston was not destroyed, and the war went on; but one effect of this siege of Boston was to inspire confidence in Washington. He showed that he was a born leader. He did not hold back, but went right to the front, and beckoned to the other generals to come and stand where he stood. He had courage; he was ready to attack the enemy. It was a righteous cause in which he was embarked, and he wished to make short work of the business. There were to be seven weary years of war, and Washington was to show in other ways that he was the leader; but it was a great thing that in the beginning of the struggle he should have been head and shoulders above the men around him, and that when he drew his sword from the scabbard he was no boaster, but was ready at once to use it.