Lafayette (25 page)

Knowing the affection members of Congress felt for Lafayette, Washington sent the young man to deliver his message in Philadelphia. As Washington had anticipated, Congress gave Lafayette an enthusiastic reception and a unanimous resolution welcoming his return to America. But it refused to respond to Washington’s requests for aid—and paid dearly for its refusal when British troops swarmed into Charleston and captured General Lincoln and his entire 5,000-man army. It was the worst American defeat of the war—made more so by the pointed humiliation of Lincoln and his troops after the surrender. Instead of permitting the Americans to parade with honor at surrender, the British ordered them to stack their arms silently and choose either imprisonment or parole under a pledge to take no further part in the war and return to their homes as loyal British subjects.

Worse news followed. In mid-June, 1780, Horatio Gates, the so-called hero of Saratoga, took command of the Southern Department and, against the advice of baron de Kalb, sent 3,000 untrained Patriot troops to Camden, South Carolina, to face Lord Cornwallis’s legendary British cavalry. The British sliced through the American lines and sent the Patriots fleeing in panic—except for Kalb’s contingent of infantrymen on the right flank. At Gates’s insistence, Kalb ordered his men to hold fast. Infuriated by their audacity at refusing the option to withdraw, Colonel Banastre Tarleton ordered horse troops to slaughter the stubborn Americans. The ensuing massacre left nearly 900 Patriots dead. Among the last to fall was the gigantic Kalb, Lafayette’s old friend. After his wounded horse collapsed beneath him, Kalb slashed wildly at the piercing thrusts of British bayonets until, finally, a series of blows to the head by enemy rifle butts sent the great soldier of fortune to his knees. A few more stabs assured his end in the South Carolina muck. Kalb had come to America plotting Washington’s overthrow and met his end loyally defending him.

The slaughter did not end, however. The savage Tarleton saw terror as the surest strategy for ending the American uprising and ordered the massacre of hundreds more American soldiers, even as they attempted to surrender. About 1,000 others escaped death only by surrendering to the
more chivalrous Cornwallis. In fashioning the most brutal and disheartening engagement of the war, Tarleton stripped Horatio Gates of his aura of invincibility and showed the South the consequences of resisting British rule.

With the 8,000-man Cornwallis army in firm control of South Carolina and Georgia, and Gates limping northward into North Carolina, Sir Henry Clinton sailed his 6,000 troops back to New York in anticipation of an attack by the French armada. To further bolster British defenses, Clinton ordered the 6,000-man force at Newport to abandon Rhode Island and regroup in New York.

At Washington’s urging, and with Alexander Hamilton at his side to edit his prose and spelling, Lafayette began cashing in some of the goodwill he had accumulated among state leaders to persuade them to provide more troops and supplies. He sent an emotional appeal to James Bowdoin of Massachusetts, saying, “I love America, and I love our cause.”
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To Samuel Adams, who had greeted him so enthusiastically in Boston, he wrote that “all Europe have theyr Eyes upon us . . . I would feel most unhappy and distress’d was I to tell the people that are coming over full of ardour and Sanguine hopes, that we have no army to cooperate with them, No provisions to feed the few soldiers who are left & c. & c. But I hope, My dear Sir, it will not be the Case, and More particularly depending on the Exertions of your State,
I know Mr. Samuel Adams’s influence
and popularity will be as heretofore Employ’d to the Salvation and glory of America.”
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The following day, he sent much the same message to Joseph Reed, the president of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council—in effect, the governor of that state:

These people are coming, my good friend, full of ardour and sanguine hopes. . . . The world is looking on us. . . . It is from me, on the moment of their arrival, that the French generals expect intelligence. . . . Shall I be obliged to confess our inability, and what shall be my feelings on the occasion, not only as an American and American soldier, but also as one that has highly boasted in Europe of the spirit, the virtue, the resources of America. . . .

We have men, my dear sir, we have provisions, we have everything that is wanted, provided the country is awakened and its resources are brought forth. That, you know, can’t be done by Congress, and unless the States take the whole matter upon themselves, we are lost. You will, both as a soldier and a politician, easily foresee that the crisis is . . . a decisive one, and that if proper exertions are made, we may expect everything good.
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Then it was the turn of New York governor George Clinton, who was unrelated to British general Henry Clinton: “How unhappy I shall be,” Lafayette wrote to Clinton, “for to me they will look for an answer, I am
obliged to confess to the people who are coming in sanguine hopes . . . to all the world, to confess the inability of America.”
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The letters had immediate and dramatic effects, with all recipients assuring him—and Washington—they would provide arms, ammunition, clothing, and food, and draft enough soldiers to double the Continental army to 15,000 men. In Philadelphia, Joseph Reed’s wife, Esther, organized a fund to clothe soldiers, to which Lafayette sent one hundred livres—equivalent to about $1,000 in today’s currency—as a contribution in Adrienne’s name, saying she was “heartly [
sic]
wishing for a personal acquaintance with the ladies of America” and that she “would feel particularly happy to be admitted among them on the present occasion.”
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On July 10, 1780, the French fleet sailed into Newport—and immediately dashed American hopes for victory that summer. The French government failed to fulfill its pledges to Franklin and Lafayette: the fleet was smaller than expected and would not give the Americans the necessary superiority to attack New York or Charleston. The French had not sent the daring John Paul Jones to raid British coastal shipping—or the promised arms and ammunition (and clothing) for the American army. Instead of 6,000 troops, Admiral Rochambeau brought only 5,000, of whom 2,000 were ill and unfit for service. With 1,300 sailors equally sick and unfit, another French military expedition had obviously deteriorated into a costly and useless adventure. The American Revolution once again seemed doomed.

Washington sent Lafayette up to Newport to see Rochambeau and Chevalier de Ternay, the admiral of the French fleet. “As a general officer,” Washington wrote of Lafayette, “I have the greatest confidence in him; as a friend he is perfectly acquainted with my sentiments and opinions; he knows all the circumstances of our army and the country at large; all the information he gives and all the propositions he makes, I entreat you will consider as coming from me.”
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Lafayette left for Newport on July 20, stopping in Hartford, Connecticut, to elicit promises of men, money, and ammunition from Governor Jonathan Trumbull. Lafayette’s mission at Newport proved far less successful—despite a joyful reunion with his brother-in-law, the vicomte de Noailles, and other young officers he had known in Metz.

The meeting with Rochambeau and de Ternay, however, was disastrous, with the French leaders announcing they would not engage the British until the king sent another division of French troops and additional ships to give the French clear superiority over the British at sea. Lafayette was furious. He argued for immediate action, pointing out that American militiamen only served for three months and that the main Continental army would lose most draftees by the end of the year. “From an intimate knowledge of our
situation,” he insisted, “I assure you, Sirs . . . it is important for us to act during the present campaign, that all the troops which you may expect from France next year, as well as all the projects with which you flatter yourselves, will never repair the fatal consequences of our inaction. Without American resources, all foreign assistance will accomplish nothing in this country. . . . I think it important to profit from those moments when you can get cooperation here; without it, you can do nothing for the common cause.”
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Rochambeau, whose own son was older than Lafayette, was incensed by what he interpreted as a lecture and, still worse, a rebuke from a young subordinate. In France, Lafayette would have faced certain court-martial for addressing a superior officer with such frankness. The French commander demanded an interview with Washington, then sent this curt response to Lafayette: “As to your observation, my dear marquis, that the position of the French at Rhode Island is of no use to the Americans, I reply:—

“First, That I never heard it had been injurious to them.

“Second, That it would be well to reflect that the position of the French corps may have had something to do with Clinton’s . . . [having] been obliged to confine himself to Long Island and New York; that, in short, while the French fleet is guarded here by an assembled and a superior naval force, your American shores are undisturbed, your privateers are making considerable prizes, and your maritime commerce enjoys perfect liberty. It appears to me, that, in so comfortable a situation, it is easy to await patiently the naval and land forces that the king assured me should be sent.”
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He thereupon refused any further discussions with Lafayette, insisting that he would await all further orders from “our generalissimo [Washington], and I entreat him to grant the admiral and myself an interview.”
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Rochambeau’s response stunned Lafayette. Having devoted himself for three years to cementing American relations with France, he had, in a brief moment, unwittingly threatened those relations by being too American. He had adopted the informal, easy-going, and frank—above all, frank—approach of Sullivan and other Continental Army commanders, from whom Washington expected honest battlefield appraisals. French commanders expected obsequious praise from subordinates, never criticism—no matter how high the cost in human lives. Jolted by Rochambeau’s reply, Lafayette acted swiftly to repair the damage.

Calling up every resource of old-world diplomacy, he swallowed his pride and asked Rochambeau and de Ternay to “permit me . . . to accuse myself of having explained my own meaning in a very awkward manner.” He pointed out, however, that Washington “had given me full powers to explain to you our situation. . . . All that I said to you, gentlemen . . . was from the reiterated orders of General Washington.”
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Lafayette then wrote a personal letter to Rochambeau: “Permit me to address myself to you with the frankness born of the warm affection I have felt, and endeavoured to show you, from my earliest youth. Although your letter expresses your usual kindness for me . . . my feelings were deeply hurt by the unfavourable way you interpreted my letter. . . . If in that letter I have offended or displeased you; if, for example, you disapprove of that written account which General Washington asked for, and which I thought I ought to submit to you, I give you my word of honor that I thought I was doing a very simple thing; so simple, indeed, that I should have considered I was wronging you by not doing it.” Lafayette said that Americans had become skeptical that any additional forces would arrive from France, and that newspapers were mocking the idle French force.

“If I have offended you, I ask your pardon, for two reasons; first, because I am sincerely attached to you; and secondly, because it is my earnest wish to do everything I can to please you here.”
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Although Rochambeau was adamant in his refusal to deal with anyone but Washington, he did forgive Lafayette—in unusually warm terms that bespoke his recognition of Lafayette’s stature in both the United States and
France. Moreover, Rochambeau, as much as Lafayette, was eager to avoid any rift in relations between the two countries—especially over so inconsequential a matter.

Permit an old father, my dear marquis, to reply to you as he would to a son whom he loves tenderly and whom he holds in infinite esteem. You know me well enough to know that, at my age, when I have formed a resolution based on military reasons and the interests of the nation, I will never change my mind because of some momentary excitement or emotions. . . . Be ever convinced of my sincere affection, and that if I pointed out to you very gently what displeased me in your last dispatch, I felt at the time convinced that the warmth of your heart and soul had somewhat overheated your enthusiasm and sagacity of your judgment. Keep the last for the council chamber and reserve all of the first for the hour of action. It is still the old father Rochambeau who is speaking to his dear son Lafayette, whom he loves and will ever love and esteem until his last breath.
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