Washington And The Revolution - A Reappraiasl (Paperback)

WASHINGTON and the Revolution A REAPPRAISAL GATES, CONWAY, AND THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS by Bernhard Knollenberg New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 194-0 PREFACE FOR many years I have been at work on a detailed history of the political developments of the American Revolution from the Tea Act of 1773 to the French Alliance of 1778. I began with the assumption that anyone tempted to read my book would be familiar with the elementary facts about the Continental Congress and the military side of the Revo lution. But as my work progressed, it became evident that, from the time July 1775 that Washington takes the cen ter of the stage, the more widely read books on the Revolu tion give a distorted picture of some of these facts. This applies especially to the facts concerning the relations be tween Washington and the Continental Congress and Gen erals Gates and Conway. I found myself in a position similar to that of a lawyer forced to try a case before a judge, who, far from being prepared to take judicial notice that the sun rises in the east, or that six is less than eight, had been taught the opposite. This book is designed, in some measure, to correct this distortion. Without purporting to offer a complete restudy of the war, I have undertaken to present certain episodes and characters in what I believe to be a truer light. During the first thirty years of the present century, Syd ney George Fisher, Claude H. Van Tyne, Francis Vinton Greene, William E. Woodward, Shelby Little, Rupert Hughes, and other historians and biographers made great progress toward correcting the misimpressions created by vii PREFACE their predecessors. 1 But their work has been largely undone in recent years by John GFitzpatrick, editor of the monu mental Bicentennial Edition of the Writings of Washing ton. In his recent biography, George Washington Himself, he has apparently taken literally Washington Irvings re mark that There is a certain meddlesome spirit which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, cast ing down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition. Irving, Columbus, 1828, 1, 40. At first blush, this protective point of view, however un scientific, appears to have at least the virtue of charity. But it does not have even this much in its favor. For, in order to maintain the tradition of the heros nonexistent infalli bility, it is necessary to shift the responsibility for the con sequences of his lapses to others, who are made the scape goats for his mistakes. It has been the common practice among historians to ac cept the accuracy of any statement made by Washington concerning the men and events of the Revolution as repre senting final, unimpeachable truth. Thus Hughes, in his George Washington II, 282, after quoting Gouverneur Morris exclamation What a set of damned scoundrels we had in that Second Congress, says If all this sounds like an indictment of the founders of the republic where panegyric is de rigueur, the blame must be laid 1 In speaking disparagingly of historians and biographers of the Revo lution under the general term the historians, I, of course, appreciate that there are other exceptions besides those turned in the text, especially among those who have written on some special phase of the Revolution rather than on the Revolution as awhole. Appendix, Chapter XV. V1U PREFACE upon the facts that continue to stink under the flowers. And the principal witness is Washington himself, whose testimony is not to be impeached, and whose achievement cannot be un derstood if the truth is suppressed. The undesirable effect of accepting Washingtons state ments as conclusive is illustrated by Hughes treatment of the Conway Cabal which Washington declared was formed against him in the winter of 1777-78. There are two com mon versions of this affair...