Even as he brooded about the Laurens proposal, Washington contemplated a drastic plan to sell all his slaves and invest the proceeds in interest-bearing loan office certificates to help finance the war effort. Perhaps this made him reluctant to press a plan that involved emancipating blacks. On February 24, 1779, Washington sent a chilling letter to Lund Washington in which he pondered aloud a liquidation scenario. If America lost the war, he noted, “it would be a matter of very little consequence to me whether my property is in Negroes or loan office certificates, as I shall neither ask for, nor expect, any favor from his most gracious Majesty . . . the only points therefore for me to consider are . . . whether it would be most to my interest, in case of a fortunate determination of the present contest, to have negroes and the crops they will make, or the sum they will now fetch and the interest of the money.”47 Clearly slaves were just another form of salable property for Washington, and the only question was what price they fetched or what profit they yielded compared to other assets. While he had scruples about breaking up slaves’ families, he evidently had none about selling them, provided they stayed together.

The dilemma of what to do with his slaves would hound Washington for the rest of his life. Virginia still lacked a free labor force, and, at bottom, he probably could not figure out how to farm in the absence of slaves. So however much he admired the economies of the New England and mid-Atlantic states in which he spent the war, he did not see how he could re-create that freer world at home.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Storm Thickens

IN FRAMING POLICY toward Native Americans, George Washington spoke in many conflicting voices. As an inveterate speculator in western lands and a military man with firsthand knowledge of Indian raids on frontier outposts, he was capable of railing against Indians as savages who committed barbaric acts. In a less-than-enlightened letter of 1773, he told George William Fairfax that the colonists had “a cruel and bloodthirsty enemy upon our backs, the Indians . . . with whom a general war is inevitable.”1 Yet this same man could sound sage and statesmanlike in urging his countrymen to treat the Indians fairly and coexist with them in peace. He always advocated buying Indian lands “in preference to attempting to drive them by force of arms out of their country.”2 Frequently he manifested horror at the avarice of real estate speculators and the wanton depredations of settlers against Native American communities. His tone, however, varied subtly with the audience and the situation.

The American Revolution did not give Washington the option of developing a broad-minded Indian policy, especially when dealing with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. These proud warriors felt more endangered by American westward expansion than by British policy, which had banned settlements beyond the Alleghenies, starting with the 1763 proclamation that had so infuriated the young Washington. The Six Nations weren’t uniformly pro-British—the Oneidas sided with the Americans—but such fine distinctions often got overlooked in the heat of battle.

Of special concern to Washington was the capable Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant, who had plotted with the British to attack American settlements in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. In November 1778 Brant took three hundred Seneca Indians, united them with two Tory companies under Major Walter Butler, and ravaged an American settlement at Cherry Valley, New York: they set fire to the village and killed more than thirty settlers. The attack generated hair-raising stories of atrocities, some credible tales of scalpings, others far-fetched claims of cannibalism. The assault produced such outrage that Washington had no choice but to take decisive action. “It is in the highest degree distressing to have our frontier so continually harassed by this collection of banditti under Brant and Butler,” he told General Edward Hand, warning of retaliatory measures.3

At various junctures Washington extended diplomatic overtures to the Indians. As early as January 1776 he had presided over a parley of Indian sachems. John Adams was then visiting the camp, and Washington, with a droll flight of fancy, introduced him as belonging to the “Grand Council Fire at Philadelphia.”4 During the Middlebrook winter of 1778-79, Washington invited Native American chieftains to tour the camp and witness the size of his army. James Thacher wrote how his brigade was “paraded for the purpose of being reviewed by General Washington and a number of Indian chiefs . . . His Excellency, with his usual dignity, [was] followed by his mulatto servant Bill, riding a beautiful gray steed.”5 The French alliance helped Washington to woo Indian tribes that were erstwhile French supporters. Nonetheless most tribes made the rational, if ultimately calamitous, decision that they had to protect their homelands and that the best way to do so was by supporting Great Britain, which they thought more likely to win the war.

By March 1779 Washington had steeled himself to act ruthlessly against the Six Nations and resort to cold-blooded warfare against civilians as well as warriors. His aim, he told Horatio Gates, was to “chastise and intimidate” these foes and “cut off their settlements, destroy their next year’s crops, and do them every other mischief of which time and circumstances will permit.”6 Even when Cayuga Indians sent out peace feelers in early May, Washington dismissed them as mere tactical ploys. “A disposition to peace in these people can only be ascribed to an apprehension of danger,” he told Congress, “and would last no longer than till it was over and an opportunity offered to resume their hostility with safety and success.”7

Fearful of further Indian defections to the British, Washington entertained six Delaware Indian chieftains on May 12. He thought that, as long-standing Iroquois enemies, they might be drawn squarely into the American camp. His speech to them began bluntly: “Brothers, I am a warrior. My words are few and plain, but I will make good what I say. ’Tis my business to destroy all the enemies of these states and to protect their friends.”8 He scorned the British as a “boasting people” who didn’t deliver on promises and contrasted them with the trustworthy French: “Now the Great King of France is become our good brother and ally. He has taken up the hatchet with us and we have sworn never to bury it till we have punished the English.”9 The speech, likely drafted by an aide, included Washington’s most explicit reference to Jesus: “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life and, above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”10

From the safe distance of a carriage, Martha Washington monitored the curious proceedings, escorted by a gawking Lucy Knox and Caty Greene. As one might expect from a genteel Virginia lady, Martha was taken aback by the Indians and their seemingly outlandish regalia. “The General and Billy [Lee], followed by a lot of mounted savages, rode along the line,” she told her daughter-in-law. “Some of the Indians were fairly fine looking, but most of them appeared worse than Falstaff ’s gang. And such horses and trappings! The General says it was done to keep the Indians friendly toward us. They appeared like cutthroats all.” The editor of Martha Washington’s papers notes that this “letter, if authentic, has undergone editing.”11

Such diplomacy didn’t forestall the punitive measures Washington initiated against Indian settlements three weeks later. Clearly in a vengeful mood after attacks on American civilians, he contemplated a drastic removal of the Six Nations from their traditional hunting grounds and farms. He ordered General Sullivan and about four thousand soldiers to march to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York and the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania and undertake “the total destruction and devastation” of Iroquois settlements, grabbing women and children as hostages for bargaining purposes.12 The Indians must have been forewarned, for Sullivan’s men often swooped down on deserted villages, which didn’t stop the Americans from reducing forty towns to ashes and incinerating 160,000 bushels of crops. As Sullivan laid down this trail of devastation, Washington recounted to Lafayette in jubilant terms how Sullivan had “completed the entire destruction of the whole country of the Six Nations, except so much of it as is inhabited by the Oneidas, who have always lived in amity with us.”13