On June 10 Rochambeau informed Washington that the Count de Grasse would bring his fleet north that summer to coordinate an attack with the French and American armies. Washington reiterated his hope that de Grasse would sail to New York. In reply, Rochambeau continued to string Washington along, contending that de Grasse had been informed “that your Excellency preferred that he should make his first appearance at New York . . . that I submitted, as I ought, my opinion to yours.”29 In reality, Rochambeau alerted de Grasse to his private preference for heading first to the Chesapeake Bay.

In the early years of the war Virginia had been spared bloodshed, but in June 1781 fighting raged there with blazing ferocity. Lord Cornwallis had joined forces with Benedict Arnold, and despite able defensive maneuvers by Lafayette, the two men spread terror through the state. “Accounts from Virginia are exceedingly alarming,” Washington told Rochambeau, reporting that the enemy was marching through the state “almost without control.”30 Still bent on taking New York, Washington pleaded that an attack there would be the best way to siphon off British troops from Virginia. In mid-June he wrote again with a new twist—if they had clear naval superiority, he would contemplate targets other than New York: “I wish you to explain this matter to the Count de Grasse, as, if I understand you, you have in your communication to him, confined our views to New York alone.”31 Clearly Washington had been fooled as to what Rochambeau had whispered in the admiral’s ear.

With the benefit of hindsight, Washington’s preoccupation with New York seems a colossal mistake, just as Rochambeau’s emphasis on Cornwallis and Virginia seems prescient. As a rule, Washington did not tamper with history and implicitly trusted the record. In this case, however, he later tried to rewrite history by suggesting that his tenacious concentration on New York was a mere feint to mislead the British in Virginia, while maintaining the political allegiance of the eastern and mid-Atlantic states. Responding to a query from Noah Webster in 1788, Washington defended his behavior with unusual vehemence, as if the inquiry had touched a raw nerve. He alleged that his preparations against New York were intended “to misguide and bewilder Sir Henry Clinton in regard to the real object [i.e., the Chesapeake] by fictitious communications as well as by making a deceptive provision of ovens, forage and boats in his neighborhood . . . Nor were less pains taken to deceive our own army.”32 He went so far as to say that “it never was in contemplation to attack New York.”33 But in confidential correspondence with Rochambeau he pushed for no Chesapeake operation, and the record shows that he had repeatedly favored a strike against New York. Only on the very eve of the Yorktown campaign did he undertake the deceptive maneuvers described to Webster.

In general, Washington lived up to his vaunted reputation for honesty, but it was awkward for him to admit that he had, at least initially, opposed a campaign that served as the brilliant capstone of his military career. He wanted to portray himself as the visionary architect of the Yorktown victory, not as a general misguidedly concentrating upon New York while his French allies masterminded the decisive blow. Washington made it difficult for people to catch his lie because he alleged that he had tried to deceive his own side as well as the enemy; hence any communication could be construed as part of the master bluff. When Washington’s letter to Noah Webster was published in the American Museum in 1791, Timothy Pickering, the former adjutant general and quartermaster general of the Continental Army, shook his head sadly. “It will hurt [Washington’s] moral character,” he wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush. “He has been generally thought to be honest and I own I thought his morals were good, but that letter is false and I know it to be so.”34

Whatever his shortcomings as a military strategist, the French understood that Washington’s greatness as a general lay in his prolonged sustenance of his makeshift army. He had done something unprecedented by cobbling together a creditable fighting force from the poor, the young, the black, and the downtrodden, and he had done it in the face of unprecedented political obstacles. In early July the French and American armies camped close together near Dobbs Ferry, on the east bank of the Hudson, giving the French officers a chance to study the Continental Army and marvel at what Washington had wrought. It was a heterogeneous, mongrel army such as no European had ever before witnessed. “I admire the American troops tremendously!” said Baron von Closen. “It is incredible that soldiers composed of men of every age, even of children of fifteen, of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.” He gave all credit to “the calm and calculated measures of General Washington, in whom I daily discover some new and eminent qualities.”35

Von Closen’s amazement was shared by his colleague the Count de Clermont-Crèvecoeur. As the latter roamed about the American army camp, he was stunned “by its destitution: the men were without uniforms and covered with rags; most of them were barefoot. They were of all sizes down to children who could not have been over fourteen. There were many negroes, mulattoes, etc. Only their artillerymen were wearing uniforms.”36 Such tributes are the more noteworthy in that Washington was ashamed of the slovenly state of his army, which only heightened the admiration of the flabbergasted French.

Predictably, French officers carped at the quality of American food. On the other hand, they couldn’t fault the quantity, except the way it all seemed thrown indiscriminately on one plate: “The table was served in the American style and pretty abundantly: vegetables, roast beef, lamb, chickens, salad dressed with nothing but vinegar, green peas, puddings and some pie, a kind of tart . . . all this being put upon the table at the same time. They gave us on the same plate beef, green peas, lamb & etc.”37 One wonders how Washington squared this groaning table with his constant pleas to Congress about food shortages. The French stared in amazement at all the beer and rum consumed and the interminable toasts with raised glasses of wine. They found Washington in an expansive mood at these dinners, convivial and relaxed—the Count de Ségur spoke of his “unaffected cheerfulness”—and he lingered long into the night after the evening meals.38

On July 18 Washington and Rochambeau wandered along the Hudson at the north end of Manhattan, surveying enemy positions. So many years had elapsed since 1776 that land denuded of its thick vegetation early in the war had started to grow back. “The island is totally stripped of trees and wood of every kind,” Washington wrote, “but low bushes (apparently as high as a man’s waist) appear in places which were covered with wood in the year 1776.”39 He knew that de Grasse’s arrival off the coast was imminent, though he didn’t know whether it would be off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, or the Virginia capes. Meeting with Rochambeau the next day, Washington reprised his idée fixe: that if de Grasse’s fleet could navigate its way into New York Harbor, then “I am of opinion that the enterprise against New York and its dependencies should be our primary object.”40 In his journal Washington confessed that the Massachusetts governor hadn’t responded to his plea for more men and that he was petrified that, after de Grasse’s arrival, it would be found “that I had neither men nor means adequate” for a military operation.41 Even as he knew he might be on the brink of a major triumph, he was also distraught at the impotence of his position vis-à-vis his French allies. When he wrote to the Count de Grasse on July 21, he ducked the essential question of exactly how many men he had. “The French force consists of about 4,400 men,” he told the French admiral. “The American is at this time but small, but expected to be considerably augmented. In this, however, we may be disappointed.”42 Contrary to his later statement, Washington told de Grasse that he hoped there would be no need to go to Virginia, “as I flatter myself the glory of destroying the British squadron at New York is reserved for the king’s fleet under your command.”43 44