Books: Shaper of Victory

GEORGE WASHINGTON (Vol. V, 570 pp.) —Douglas Soufhall Freeman—Scribner ($7.50).

George Washington has had his ups & downs since the days of his idolatrous early biographer, Parson Weems. The debunking period set in long ago—at least as early as 1880, when a character in Henry Adams’ novel, Democracy, ticked him off as “a rawboned country farmer, very hard-featured, very awkward, very illiterate and very dull.” Since then, two generations of “liberal” debunkers have gleefully whittled away at his reputation, trying to leave the impression that Washington was little more than a stodgy figurehead.

Douglas Southall Freeman’s marathon biography disposes of this notion once & for all. Though Freeman writes without grace and often loses his story in a wilderness of battle detail, he does bring out Washington’s heroic stature. Simply by piling up grey mountains of fact, Freeman shows that those who snipe at Washington for not being a great thinker or military strategist neglect something more important: that he was a great leader.

The War Could Be Won. Volume V, which spans the years 1778-83, starts at a low point in American morale. In 1778 food was scarce, the states seldom filled their quotas of money or men, bumpkin generals quarreled obscenely over “honors,” and during the spring the militia melted away as farmers went home to plant crops. The only good news was that France had recognized the Colonies as independent and had promised troops, supplies, and a fleet to puncture the British blockade. For the first time, Washington might hope that if he kept his scraggly little army together, the war could be won.

That he did keep it together was something of a miracle. Every plague a commander could suffer fell upon him. The vainglorious Charles Lee led a shameful retreat at Monmouth, and after being court-martialed, he slandered Washington up & down the states. Congress fretted and fumbled; its appropriations, snapped Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene, were “no more equal to our wants than a sprat in a whale’s belly.” The encampment at Morristown during the winter of 1779-80 was far worse, by Freeman’s measure, than the winter at Valley Forge two years earlier.

Somehow, Washington kept patience and hope. His capacity for self-control was enormous: when the news of Benedict Arnold’s treason reached him, he sent his aide, Colonel Alexander Hamilton, 24, riding off to intercept the traitor, calmly ate dinner, did his best to comfort Arnold’s hysterical wife, and within three hours revamped the defenses of Arnold’s exposed post—the Hudson narrows at West Point —so that the British could not storm it. When mutinies broke out among Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops in 1781, Washington suppressed them sternly, not because he was harsh by temperament or insensitive to the sufferings of his men, but because he knew that hesitation would mean disaster.

The Frounces Farewell. Biographer Freeman contends that “feeble, inexperienced America never had a prospect of winning her independence by force of arms until [France] protected her waters and defeated or blockaded the fleet of Britain.” But he also makes it clear that without Washington, the American army would probably not have survived to take advantage of French aid.

Freeman ends his fifth volume (two more to come) on a note of high emotion: Washington’s farewell to his officers at Manhattan’s Fraunces’ Tavern: “I cannot come to each of you,” Washington said in a trembling voice, “but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.”