Despite Washington’s skepticism about British intentions, it was hard to discount the extraordinary upheaval that occurred in London in early 1782 when antiwar sentiment engulfed British politics and toppled Lord North’s ministry. In a spiteful mood, King George III reflected that it might be better if he lost America, since “knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not be in the end an evil that they become aliens to this kingdom.”7 That spring the Crown recalled Sir Henry Clinton and replaced him with the commander of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, a move that threw into relief Washington’s own amazing longevity as commander in chief. When Carleton tested Washington’s position with peace overtures, the latter dismissed them as more examples of British trickery.

For Washington, 1782 was taken up with matters possessing more symbolic than military meaning. The most vexing involved the treatment of prisoners, and none caused more controversy than the case of Captain Joshua Huddy, a member of the New Jersey militia. In April 1782 the British had captured Huddy at Toms River and handed him over to a civilian Tory group, the Associated Loyalists, who placed him in the custody of Captain Richard Lippincott. In a brutal act of reprisal, Lippincott decided to punish Huddy for the death of a Loyalist partisan named Philip White, who had been captured and executed by American militiamen after he killed one of his captors. Huddy was strung up from a tree with a note fastened to his chest that read “Up Goes Huddy for Philip White,” along with threats of further retribution.8 Going through the motions of justice, Sir Henry Clinton subjected Captain Lippincott to a court-martial, which exonerated him on the ground that he had merely obeyed orders. This caused a furor on the American side because those orders had emanated from none other than William Franklin, the estranged Loyalist son of Benjamin Franklin.

Aghast that the perpetrator of such a “horrid deed” was freed, Washington ordered Brigadier General Moses Hazen to choose by lot a British officer to be executed in retaliation for Captain Huddy. Palpably torn by this decision, Washington instructed Hazen that “every possible tenderness that is consistent with the security . . . should be shown to the person whose unfortunate lot it may be to suffer.”9 The person selected at random to die powerfully enlisted his captors’ sympathy. Captain Charles Asgill of the First British Regiment of Foot was only nineteen and of distinguished parentage; his father, a former lord mayor of London, had been a Whig sympathetic to American grievances. Making the decision still more agonizing was that Asgill had been captured at Yorktown, where Washington had guaranteed the safety of prisoners in the articles of capitulation. A conflicted Washington admitted that Captain Asgill was a young man “of humor and sentiment” and that his plight engendered the “keenest anguish.”10

The projected execution blossomed into a cause célèbre as protests flooded in to Washington from abroad. Congress approved the execution, and public opinion overwhelmingly favored it. The brouhaha reawakened memories of the Major André affair and enlisted some of the same partisans. Evidently, some coolness still existed between Hamilton and Washington, for Hamilton protested the execution via Henry Knox rather than directly to Washington. Of the scheduled hanging, Hamilton insisted that “a sacrifice of this kind is entirely repugnant to the genius of the age we live in and is without example in modern history . . . It is a deliberate sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty and must be condemned.”11

Still haunted by André’s execution, Washington didn’t care to execute another sensitive young British officer and protested to one general that “while my duty calls me to make this decisive determination, humanity dictates a fear for the unfortunate offering and inclines me to say that I most devoutly wish his life may be saved . . . but it must be effected by the British commander-in-chief.”12 Interestingly enough, the unsentimental Benjamin Franklin favored a tough, uncompromising stand. “If the English refuse to deliver up or punish this murderer,” he wrote, “it is saying that they choose to preserve him rather than Captain Asgill.”13 Aware that he might be the target of patriotic reprisals, William Franklin fled to London.

In the end Washington handled the matter shrewdly and temporized instead of rushing to judgment. In an unexpected development, Lady Asgill pleaded her son’s case so eloquently at the court of Versailles that the king had his foreign minister request mercy for Captain Asgill. That November Congress obliged France by passing a resolution that granted clemency to the young British captain. It was a neat solution to a ticklish dilemma: Captain Asgill would be released at the behest of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Undoubtedly with enormous relief, Washington issued a pass that would take Captain Asgill to New York, thus ending the affair. He had dealt with it the way he would with many controversies during his presidency: by letting them simmer instead of bringing them to a premature boil.

The French partnership, however useful most of the time, was awkward at others, requiring Washington to pay homage to the French monarchy even as Americans fought against King George III. In the spring of 1782, when Louis XVI had a male heir, Washington was duty-bound to celebrate “the auspicious birth of a dauphin” and hope divine providence would “shed its choicest blessings upon the King of France and his royal consorts and favor them with a long, happy, and glorious reign.”14 Having fought for independence, Americans still had no idea what sort of government would emerge in the aftermath of a successful war. Thus far the new nation had no real executive branch, just a few departments; no independent judiciary; and only an ineffectual Congress. For most Americans, the idea of royalty was still anathema. On the other hand, at least a few Americans feared chaos and touted monarchy as a possible way to fill the dangerous vacuum of executive power.

On May 22, 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola of the Continental Army had the effrontery to suggest to Washington that he reign as America’s first monarch. He sent him a seven-page diatribe, citing “the weakness of republics” and the Continental Army’s privations at the hands of a feckless Congress, then conjured up a benevolent monarchy with Washington seated splendidly on the throne. “Some people have so connected the ideas of tyranny and monarchy as to find it very difficult to separate them . . . but if all other things are once adjusted, I believe strong arguments might be produced for admitting the title of king.”15

While he had roundly berated congressional ineptitude, Washington had never entertained the idea of a monarchy and was left to wonder whether Nicola was the instrument of a covert army faction that favored a king. His reply, sent the same day, fairly breathed with horror. What makes the letter so impressive is its finality—this serpent must be killed in the egg: “Be assured, sir, no occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed and [that] I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity.”16 He didn’t dare tell a soul about Nicola’s letter, he said, lest it contaminate men’s minds: “I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable . . . Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind.”17 Washington set such store by this momentous letter that, for the only time in the war, he demanded proof from his aides that his response was sealed and posted. Stunned, Nicola stammered out three replies in as many days, offering apologies for broaching the taboo subject.