George Washington: A Life by Woodrow Wilson

Author:Woodrow Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications, Inc
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

GENERAL WASHINGTON

CHAPTER VII

MATTERS had not stood still before Boston to await a commander sent by congress. While Washington waited for his commission and made ready for his journey there had been fighting done which was to simplify his task. General William Howe had reached Boston with reinforcements on the 25th of May, and quite ten thousand troops held the city, while a strong fleet of men-of-war lay watchfully in the harbor. There was no hurry, it seemed, about attacking the sixteen thousand raw provincials, whose long lines were drawn loosely about the town from Charlestown Neck to Jamaica Plain. But commanding hills looked across the water on either hand—in Charlestown on the north and in Dorchester on the southeast—and it would be well, Howe saw, to secure them, lest they should be occupied by the insurgents. On the morning of the 17th of June, however, while leisurely preparations were a-making in Boston to occupy the hills of Charlestown, it was discovered that the provincials had been beforehand in the project. There they were in the clear sun, working diligently at redoubts of their own upon the height. Three thousand men were put across the water to drive them off. Though they mustered only seventeen hundred behind their unfinished works, three several assaults and the loss of a thousand men was the cost of dislodging them. They withheld their fire till the redcoats were within fifty—nay, thirty—yards of them, and then poured out a deadly, blazing fire which no man could face and live. They were ousted only when they failed of powder and despaired of reinforcements. Veteran officers who had led the assault declared the regulars of France were not more formidable than these militia-men, whom they had despised as raw peasants. There was no desire to buy another American position at that price; and Washington had time enough for the complimentary receptions and addresses and the elaborate parade of escort and review that delayed his journey to headquarters.

He reached Cambridge on the 2d of July, and bore himself with so straightforward and engaging a courtesy in taking command that the officers he superseded could not but like him: jealousy was disarmed. But he found neither the preparations nor the spirit of the army to his liking. His soldierly sense of order was shocked by the loose discipline, and his instinct of command by the free and easy insolence of that irregular levy; and his authority grew stern as he labored to bring the motley host to order and effective organization. “The people of this government have obtained a character,” his confidential letters declared, “which they by no means deserved—their officers, generally speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. I dare say the men would fight very well (if properly officered), although they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people. … It is among the most difficult tasks I ever undertook in my life to induce these people to believe that there is, or can be, danger till the bayonet is pushed at their breasts.

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