THAT FALL THE ATMOSPHERE grew thick with rumors that the British might evacuate New York, but even though a large number of British ships sailed south to destinations unknown in November, Sir Henry Clinton remained fixed in the city. As for winter quarters, Washington decided to house the main body of his troops at Middlebrook, New Jersey, west of Staten Island, in countryside much prettier than Valley Forge. Washington shared the home of the Philadelphia merchant John Wallace, who lived on the Raritan River, four miles west of Bound Brook. His extended absence from Mount Vernon preyed on his mind, for it began to look as if he might be trapped in some form of permanent exile. “I am beginning to throw the troops into cantonments for their winter quarters,” he told brother Jack, “giving up all idea this fourth winter of seeing my home and friends, as I shall have full employment during the winter to prepare for the campaign that follows it.”22

While the Continental Army was better clothed than at Valley Forge, it hadn’t solved all the problems of the previous winter, thanks to congressional ineptitude. By now, Washington had become habituated to a draining atmosphere of a perpetual, slow-motion crisis. “Our affairs are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been in since the commencement of the war,” Washington insisted to Benjamin Harrison.23 He had learned a valuable lesson at Valley Forge, where he had made the mistake of concentrating his men in one compact group. This time he scattered his troops across a broad area, extending north to the Hudson Valley and as far off as Connecticut, a strategic dispersal that facilitated the hunt for forage and supplies. He also ordered the application of more sanitary methods in the camp, forbidding earthen floors in huts and requiring that they be roofed with boards, slabs, or shingles.

On December 23 Washington took a brief respite from his incessant labors and traveled to Philadelphia to confer with Congress about the prospective Canadian invasion. Perhaps in preparation for this trip, he ordered new clothing for Billy Lee—two coats, two waistcoats, and a pair of breeches—that would do credit to both slave and master in the city’s tony salons. Washington had already asked Martha to meet him in Philadelphia and she had eagerly awaited him there since late November. They would celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in the city that January. The Pennsylvania Packet noted with gratitude that this sojourn was “the only relief” Washington had “enjoyed from service since he first entered into it,” yet the trip would prove anything but a vacation. Staying at the Chestnut Street home of Henry Laurens, Washington got a view of civilian life that would revolt him with an indelible vision of private greed and profligacy. Like soldiers throughout history, he was jarred by the contrast between the austerity of the army and the riches being earned on the home front through lucrative war contracts.

Ever since Valley Forge, Washington had lamented the profiteering that deprived his men of critically needed supplies, and he remained contemptuous of those who rigged and monopolized markets, branding them “the pests of society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America,” as he erupted in one fire-breathing letter. “I would to God that one of the most atrocious of each state was hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman.”24 Because of hoarding and price manipulation, among other reasons, the mismanaged currency had lost 90 percent of its value in recent months. As he contemplated these problems, Washington was also distraught over popular disunity and wished that the nation could move beyond factional disputes, telling Joseph Reed that “happy, happy, thrice happy the country if such was the government of it, but, alas! we are not to expect that the path is to be strewed w[i]t[h] flowers.”25

Broadening his critique of the political situation, Washington traced the source of the nation’s problems to the very structure of the Articles of Confederation. Deprived of taxing power, Congress had to rely on requests to the states. Instead of dealing with such structural defects, the legislature had deteriorated into partisan backbiting. “Party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day,” he wrote, while the “great and accumulated debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit” were “postponed from day to day, from week to week, as if our affairs wore the most promising aspect.”26 One can see here the seeds of Washington’s later version of federalism, shaped by the fear that the public would become so wedded to local government that the national government would be left weak and ineffective in consequence.

Washington trod a fine line in dealing with Congress, finding himself in an inherently contradictory position. He had far more power than any congressman and felt it his duty to make his opinions known. On the other hand, ideology required the military leader to submit to the wishes of Congress and acknowledge civilian control. The situation demanded exquisite tact from Washington, who could exploit his fame only up to a certain point. This balancing act explains why he felt both very powerful and, at moments, completely impotent during the war. In Philadelphia he met Conrad-Alexandre Gérard, the first French minister to the United States, who found him “cold, prudent, and reserved,” but nonetheless detected the essence of his greatness. “It is certain that if General Washington were ambitious and scheming, it would have been entirely in his power to make a revolution, but nothing on the part of the general or the army has justified the shadow of a suspicion,” he informed Versailles. “The general sets forth constantly this principle, that one must be a citizen first and an officer afterwards.”27

As he tried to straighten out the nation’s affairs, Washington developed a fine rapport with the new president of Congress, John Jay, whom he had known since the First Continental Congress. Despite their best efforts, Washington and Nathanael Greene found their serious work obstructed by an unceasing round of parties. To fulfill his duties, Greene said, he “was obliged to rise early and go to bed late to complete them. In the morning, a round of visiting came on. Then you had to prepare for dinner after which the evening balls would engage your time until one or two in the morning.”28 The toast of the town, sought by every hostess, Washington was shocked at the decadent civilian life that contrasted with the hardscrabble world of his men. He stared in outraged wonder at the stately carriages rolling by, the opulent parties unfolding around him. It infuriated him that people feasted as his men suffered. “Speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men,” he wrote.29 As Greene aptly noted, the city’s luxurious life gave Washington “infinitely more pain than pleasure.”30 He began to feel vaguely guilty about lingering in Philadelphia while his men still wallowed in poverty. By now he had developed something close to a mystic bond with his men and placed great store on his presence among them. “Were I to give in to private conveniency and amusement,” he told Joseph Reed, “I should not be able to resist the invitation of my friends to make Phila[delphia] (instead of a squeezed up room or two) my quarters for the winter, but the affairs of the army require my constant attention and presence.”31

When Washington returned to Middlebrook in February 1779, after a six-week stay in Philadelphia, he and Martha tried to brighten up the winter camp. Since the tin plates at meals had grown rusty, Washington ordered a set of china for the table along with six genteel candlesticks. The fare was less spartan than at Valley Forge, and the Washingtons entertained in modest style. As the surgeon James Thacher said of one dinner, “The table was elegantly furnished and the provisions ample, but not abounding in superfluities . . . In conversation, His Excellency’s expressive countenance is peculiarly interesting and pleasing; a placid smile is frequently observed on his lips, but a loud laugh, it is said, seldom, if ever, escapes him. He is polite and attentive to each individual at table and retires after the compliments of a few glasses.”32 Thacher assessed Martha with an approving eye: “Mrs. Washington combines in an uncommon degree great dignity of manner with the most pleasing affability, but possesses no striking marks of beauty.”33