John Marshall Read online

  As Burr prepared to charge into the British flank, Marshall’s Virginians arrived almost miraculously to reinforce Burr’s onslaught, and together they forced the British to pull back and allow Washington and 5,000 troops to escape capture.

  “We all agreed to trust to his conduct and courage,” a sergeant-major recalled his service with Burr, “and he did not disappoint us, for he effected a retreat with the whole brigade, and I do not think we lost more than thirty men. . . . Colonel Burr was foremost and most active where there was danger, and his conduct, without considering his extreme youth, was afterwards a constant subject of praise, and admiration, and gratitude.”18 Major Theodore Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, later a Speaker of the US House of Representatives, was even more effusive in praise of Burr’s heroics, writing to the young man, “You know, my dear Burr, I love you. . . . Pamela [Sedgwick’s wife] desires me to tell that she loves you.”19

  Burr’s heroic charge into British lines allowed Washington’s combined force to make an orderly retreat to northern Manhattan and the Harlem River crossing to Westchester. When they reached White Plains, however, the British were waiting with a massive assault that sent the Americans fleeing in disarray. While some moved northward into the Hudson River Highlands, Washington led a contingent of about 5,000 in full flight across the Hudson to New Jersey.

  Wintry winds enveloped the Northeast earlier than usual in 1776, and with the British in close pursuit, Washington and his men staggered westward through sheets of icy rains toward the Delaware River, barely reaching safety on the opposite bank in Pennsylvania. By early December desertions had reduced his army to only slightly more than 3,000 men—among them remnants of Thomas Marshall’s 3rd Virginia Regiment and John Marshall’s 11th Virginia. Sickness had left 500 of Thomas Marshall’s 700 men unfit for duty. Only he and four other officers stood ready to lead, among them John Marshall’s boyhood friend James Monroe, who had abandoned his studies at College of William and Mary to enlist in the Revolution.

  The retreat across New Jersey, Monroe recalled later, “will be forever celebrated in the annals of our country for the patient suffering, the unshaken firmness, and gallantry of this small band . . . and the great and good qualities of its commander. . . . [Washington] was always near the enemy, and his countenance and manner made an impression on me which time can never efface. A deportment so firm, so dignified, so exalted, but yet so modest and composed, I have never seen in any other person.”20

  The British advance left New York and most of New Jersey in British hands. With enemy troops almost in sight of the American rebel capital at Philadelphia, Congress fled for Baltimore on December 12 and, all but conceding defeat in the struggle for independence, began debating terms of capitulation. The American Revolution seemed at an end.

  As the Continental Congress considered peace overtures to end the Revolution, Washington planned a quick, dramatic strike to save it. In the dead of night on December 25 he and 2,400 troops, including John Marshall’s Virginians, boarded small boats and rowed through a blinding snowstorm across the ice-choked Delaware River.

  At eight the next morning they reached the east bank of the Delaware, near Trenton, New Jersey, and found the 1,400-man Hessian garrison still abed, dissuaded by the storm from posting their usual patrol. Shocked awake by the reality of their plight, the terrified Germans raced out into the snow in night clothes to secure cannon emplacements at the head of King Street and repel the approaching Americans. Before they could get there, Virginia captain William Washington, a distant cousin of the commander-in-chief, and his eighteen-year-old lieutenant, James Monroe, charged through a hail of rifle fire and seized the weapons. Both fell wounded but held fast until Washington’s troops fought their way up King Street and forced the Hessians—1,100 strong—to surrender. While a quick-thinking surgeon tended to their wounds, Washington commended both his cousin and Monroe, whom he promoted on the spot to captain.

  Washington’s victory set off a wave of euphoria that temporarily bolstered troop morale and public support for the Revolution. The new year saw army ranks swell instead of shrink, and a subsequent Washington victory at Princeton left western New Jersey in Patriot hands. Congress returned to Philadelphia, and Washington moved his Continental Army into Pennsylvania to protect the capital from British attack.

  “In May 1777,” John Marshall recalled, “I was promoted to the rank of captain. I was in the skirmish at Iron Hill where the light infantry was engaged and in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.”21

  Although Iron Hill proved less significant, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth emerged as three of the bloodiest, most important battles of the war. In mid-July 1777 General Howe sailed from New York into Chesapeake Bay with 15,000 troops, who landed on the northernmost shore at Head of Elk (now Elkton), Maryland, and began to march toward the American capital at Philadelphia.

  In a disastrous miscalculation George Washington massed his forces on the Philadelphia side of the Brandywine Creek at Chadd’s Ford, where, on September 11, the two sides opened fire. Throughout the day the battle raged with increasing intensity. Washington concentrated his fire power at the center of what appeared to be the main British thrust, but British General Lord Cornwallis quietly slipped away to the northwest with 8,000 British and Hessian troops. They crossed the Brandywine at its narrowest point, far from the battle at Chadd’s Ford, then looped around and behind the American army’s right flank and threatened to encircle Washington’s entire army.

  The Battle of Brandywine quickly turned into a rout, with American troops fleeing in panic and suffering more than 1,000 dead or wounded and more than 300 taken prisoner. Colonel Thomas Marshall, his son John, and the rest of the Virginia troops were in the thick of the fighting, with Colonel Marshall twice thrown to the ground when his horses were shot from under him. Bounding onto riderless mounts, he saw Virginia’s commanding General William Woodford fall wounded, assumed command of the regiment himself, and held off the British advance long enough for Washington’s army to escape entrapment. Decorated for his bravery, Thomas Marshall won promotion to general and the gift of a ceremonial sword from the Virginia Assembly.

  As Congress fled westward to Lancaster, Howe and his troops marched into Philadelphia, establishing his main encampment near the northwestern edge of the city in Germantown. Rather than allow the British to sweep westward, Washington made a bold move on the night of October 3, sending two separate columns along what seemed to be parallel roads to Germantown for a two-pronged attack on the British. Before he gave the order to advance, he mounted his magnificent white horse and “rode through every brigade of his army,” according to John Marshall, “delivering in person his orders . . . exhorting his troops to rely principally on the bayonet and encouraging them by the steady firmness of his countenance as well as by his words to a vigorous performance of their duty.”22

  Again, however, Washington miscalculated badly. One of the roads to Germantown followed a long serpentine course, while the other was a straighter, shorter approach. The column on the shorter road penetrated the streets of Germantown long before its twin column arrived. Faced with an impenetrable wall of British fire and no support from the second column, the advance party of Americans retreated.

  Just then, however, a dense fog rolled over the area, and retreating troops ran into their own second column, which mistook them for enemy soldiers and fired. Caught between American and British fire, the trapped column suffered 200 dead, 600 wounded, and 400 taken prisoner. John Marshall suffered a wound in his hand but returned safely to camp, where his mate from Parson Campbell’s woodlands school, Captain James Monroe, dressed his injury.

  As November snows began to fly, Washington ordered his troops to repair to winter quarters twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia at Valley Forge, an elevated wooded plateau that a small force could readily defend against a larger enemy. From the bluffs facing east, sentries could warn of a British approach from Germantown, while gentle slopes to th
e west offered an avenue of quick retreat.

  Before the last of Washington’s troops arrived at their mountain-top encampment, however, cries of dismay echoed across through the surrounding forest as the troops realized the area had no springs. The nearest source of water was at the foot of the mountain, near the forge that gave the valley its name. Washington nonetheless ordered the troops to raise a small city of log huts, and Captains Marshall and Monroe chose to share one and spend winter together.

  The choice of Valley Forge proved a macabre climax to what had been eighteen months of military setbacks for George Washington and his hapless Continental Army. Isolated from every major source of supply, his men ran out of essentials in less than a month of what became the most bitter American winter in memory. By Christmas desertions, disease, starvation, thirst, and exposure to subzero temperatures reduced Washington’s Continental Army of 11,000 men to fewer than 5,000. Some froze to death; most of those who survived were too weak to fight. When Quartermaster General Thomas Mifflin failed to respond to Washington’s orders for supplies, the commander-in-chief appealed to Congress for help.

  Congress, however, all but ignored his requests, with some member states apparently losing interest in the Revolution. Thirty-five-year-old Thomas Jefferson, Washington’s fellow Virginian, shocked Washington by resigning from Congress and returning home to the hills of central Virginia. After signing the Declaration of Independence and joining in the collective pledge to sacrifice “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” Jefferson failed to risk any of those assets and abandoned the Revolution. “The situation of my domestic affairs,” he mewled, “renders it indispensably necessary that I should solicit the substitution of some other person.”23

  Washington was irate. “Where is Mason, Whyte, Jefferson?” the commander-in-chief cried out in anger to his close friend Benjamin Harrison, a delegate in Virginia’s House. They had helped write the Declaration of Independence, inspired young men across the land to charge into battle, but when they themselves heard the cannons roar, they fled the slaughter they had helped provoke. Fifty-six had signed the Declaration of Independence: nine died in battle, five were captured by the British, and many, such as John Adams, who didn’t or couldn’t fight, risked death simply by remaining in Congress to raise arms, ammunition, military supplies and money for Washington’s Continental Army.

  Except Jefferson!

  Gentleman Tom had fled the war to his Palladian villa atop a mountain near Charlottesville, Virginia, where he sipped his favorite wines, bowed his beloved violin, and read philosophy. To augment his musical and intellectual solitude, he culled nearby prisoner-of-war camps for the companionship of musically and intellectually gifted Hessian officers—enemy commanders who had fought American troops until their defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. He formed an intimate friendship—and chamber music group—with Baron de Geismer, a Hessian general and talented violinist. Baron Jean Louis de Unger,24 a young scientist with a passion for philosophy, proved a gifted conversationalist.

  “I am alarmed,” Washington raged, “and wish to see my countrymen roused. Idleness, dissipation and extravagance . . . and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and every order of men.”25

  Jefferson cited financial considerations to justify his decision to remain beyond the fray: “My estate is a large one . . . upwards of ten thousand acres of valuable land on the navigable parts of the James River and two hundred Negroes and not a shilling out of it is or ever was under any encumbrance for debt.”26 In contrast, Washington had left a 20,000-acre plantation at Mount Vernon, Virginia, to fight in the war.

  At the end of 1777 Washington and his troops grew desperate for supplies. With Congress lacking powers to tax the states or the people, Washington wrote directly to each state governor pleading for aid.

  “It is not easy to give you a just and accurate idea of the sufferings of the troops,” Washington lamented to his old friend Governor Patrick Henry, of Virginia. “I fear I shall wound your feelings by telling you that on the 23rd [of December] I had in camp not less than 2,898 men unfit for duty by reason of their being bare foot and otherwise naked. . . . I cannot but hope that every measure will be pursued . . . to keep them supplied from time to time. No pains, no efforts can be too great for this purpose. The articles of shoes, stockings, blankets demand the most particular attention.”27

  John Marshall was as appalled as his commander: “The inability of Congress and the failure of the states to comply with requisitions rendered our resistance less efficient than it might have been,” Marshall complained.28 “Happily, the real condition of Washington was not well understood by [British General] Sir William Howe, and the characteristic attention of that officer to the lives and comfort of his own troops saved the American army.”29

  The gregarious, fun-loving Marshall had a big hand in lifting troop morale at Valley Forge, injecting a spirit of optimism wherever he could. “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,” wrote Reverend Philip Slaughter. “John Marshall was the best tempered man I ever knew.”30

  In April 1778 George Washington elicited a chorus of cheers by announcing that France had recognized American independence and would send troops and military supplies to support the Continental Army. As summer approached, the impending arrival of the French forced the British to evacuate Philadelphia and consolidate their forces in New York.

  As the long British wagon train moved northward through New Jersey’s blistering summer heat, Washington’s forces followed, harassing the rear. After a week exhausted Redcoats encamped at Monmouth Courthouse (now Freehold, New Jersey). Six miles behind, Washington ordered his troops to attack the British rear guard, sending English-born General Charles Lee toward the center of the British line with four thousand troops. As Lee advanced, two smaller American forces sliced into the British flanks, one under French Major General Lafayette, the other led by Pennsylvania’s Brigadier General “Mad” Anthony Wayne and John Marshall’s 11th Virginia.

  Washington held the main army in reserve, and after Lee’s attack was to begin, he sent his fiery twenty-three-year-old aide, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, to reconnoiter. Hamilton had temporarily abandoned college in New York City to enlist in the war. He displayed such brilliance and heroism in action at New York, Trenton, Brandywine, and Germantown that Washington made him his personal aide—all but adopting the boy when he learned of his harsh, near-tragic background.

  Born out of wedlock to an itinerant Scottish trader on the Caribbean Island of Nevis, Hamilton was orphaned at twelve, worked as a clerk for an island merchant, and so impressed his employer with his hard work and intelligence that the merchant paid for Hamilton’s journey to New York. A cousin there paid for his education at King’s College (later, Columbia University), and he was on his way to a degree when the Revolutionary War began.

  As Hamilton loped toward the battle lines, he was astonished to find Lee’s force retreating in chaos, and he galloped back to report to Washington. Infuriated by Hamilton’s report, the commander-in-chief spurred his great white horse into Lee’s camp, shouting “till the leaves shook on the trees.”31 He ordered Lee to the rear, calling the Englishman a coward. Taking command himself, Washington rode into the maelstrom of retreating troops, his mount rearing right, then left, herding the men into line. Amidst a chorus of blood-curdling shrieks of wounded men and horses, the commander’s call rang out: “Stand fast, my boys! The southern troops are advancing to support you!”32

  “General Washington was never greater in battle,” declared the awe-struck young French General Gilbert de Lafayette. “His presence stopped the retreat; his strategy secured the victory. His stately appearance on horseback, his calm, dignified courage . . . provoked a wave of enthusiasm among the troops.”33

  As Washington called to his men, Hamilton led a frantic assault int
o the center of enemy lines, while James Monroe and the 3rd Virginia under Colonel Thomas Marshall attacked on the left. Brigadier General “Mad” Anthony Wayne lived up to his sobriquet with an insane charge into the British right flank with John Marshall’s 11th Virginia. The British tried to pull back from the onslaught only to be met by a company of Americans led by Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Burr Jr. Like Marshall, Monroe, and Hamilton, Burr had survived the brutal winter at Valley Forge before following Washington into the jaws of combat at Monmouth.

  General George Washington atop his great steed halting the retreat of American troops at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse (New Jersey). After calling to his troops to stand and fight, he turned the tide of battle, and the British retreated. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  “It should be remembered,” Burr wrote on the eve of battle to the aunt who had raised him as a son, “we are engaged in . . . the most important revolution that ever took place. . . . Fire or the sword has scarce left a trace among us. We may truly be called a favored people.”34

  They were all there under the suffocating New Jersey sun: the heroic Men of Monmouth—Burr, Hamilton, Marshall, Monroe—wielding their terrible swift swords against what Thomas Jefferson had assured them was “absolute tyranny.” They were a disparate group: Marshall and Monroe—farm boys from the Virginia woods; Burr—a minister’s son and Princeton scholar; Hamilton—the bastard son of a bankrupt itinerant Scot trader from an obscure Caribbean island.