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Books: Washington’s Cabal

4 minute read
TIME

WASHINGTON AND THE REVOLUTION—Bernhard Knollenberg—Macmillan ($3).

Last week the vast, dead peaceful world of the past faced the horrors of a historigraphical schism. With his Washington and the Revolution, Historian Bernhard Knollenberg knocked the Father of his Country off the pedestal, and mumbling expressions of polite admiration, began to pound his head on the ground.

Bernhard Knollenberg is a former member of the venerable Manhattan law firm of Lord, Day & Lord, former member of the New York Child Labor Committee, former member of the Committee on Legislation of the Association of the Bar of New York City. Two years ago he went to Yale to become the university’s librarian. As a private hobby, he had long worked on a detailed history of the American Revolution from the Tea Act to the French Alliance.

Knollenberg experienced no unusual difficulties until 1775. In that year Washington took the revolutionary limelight, began to write letters and make comments on which classic U. S. historians have relied for their record and interpretation of much Revolutionary history. To historians like John Fiske, George Bancroft, Worthington Chauncey Ford, Paul Leicester Ford, Washington’s word was almost sacrosanct. Reluctantly, Historian Knollenberg concluded that it wasn’t. Yet others went on believing Washington. To correct (“in some measure”) this prejudice, Knollenberg wrote Washington and the Revolution.

Most Americans learned in school that during the dark winter at Valley Forge, Washington was the near-victim of a cabal cooked up by Irish Expatriate and French General Thomas Conway, by Dr. Benjamin Rush, by the Adams cousins. Sam & John. Purpose of the plot was to replace Washington by General Horatio Gates. Now Historian Knollenberg reviews the documents to conclude that no such cabal ever existed, that the long-lived rumor was due in part to Washington’s touchiness, dictatorial arrogance, “disingenuousness,” skill at passing the buck for his own mistakes. In part it was due to wild statements by ambitious young Marquis de Lafayette. If there was any Conway cabal, in short, it was a cabal against Conway. His enemies were Washington and his Army clique, and President of Congress, Henry Laurens.

To clinch his charge of Washington’s shiftiness, Knollenberg digs out pre-revolutionary correspondence of Washington with Royal Lieut. Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, a letter to a contemporary historian in which Washington tries to shift the blame for the loss of Fort Washington to Congress and General Greene, letters showing that Washington engaged in shady land deals. Knollenberg also claims that Washington did not, as he implied, lose the Battle of Brandywine because General Gates refused to return a borrowed corps. Washington did not request Gates to return the corps until 13 days after the Brandywine defeat. There are also letters to prove that Conway and Gates were two of the most respected and able officers in the Continental Army. Cleared of the charge of cowardice after his defeat at Camden, S. C., Gates was second in command of the Army when the war ended. Washington had to exaggerate stray rumors of a cabal to cover up his inability to discipline his own troops, his inability to win battles.

If Historian Knollenberg’s voice is not always dispassionate, this is due to the fact that his book is less an onslaught on Washington than a book-bat heaved in a historians’ squabble. Conspicuous on the receiving end is Historian John C. Fitzpatrick, editor of the Bicentennial edition of Washington’s works.

Since the beginning of the present century, historians like Sydney George Fisher, Claude H. Van Tyne, Francis V. Greene, by a process known as making Washington less of a statue and more of a human being, have busily reduced the prodigious figure to something nearer their own size and understanding. They were doing quite nicely when along came Historian John C. Fitzpatrick, by whom, says Knollenberg testily, “their work has been largely undone.” So exasperated does Historian Knollenberg become in undoing this undoing that he accuses Historian Fitzpatrick of taking literally a remark of Washington Irving’s: “There is a certain meddlesome spirit which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition.”

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