Vidal's Burr

For a large, rather ungainly man (he had the hips,
buttocks and bosom of a woman), Washington could move with brutal
swiftness. He fell upon the two men. One large hand encircled the
strangler’s throat. The other seized the matted hair of the cannibal. He
dragged the men to their feet; held them aloft; shook them like rats. All
the while a series of sky-rending oaths emerged from the broad yellow
face now brick—red beneath its powder. If he was not heard all the way to
Boston, he was certainly heard by most of the encampment.
Aides hurried to support their commander. A sergeant put the two
terrified men under arrest. The revellers even tried to come to attention
as Washington mounted his horse, affecting a serenity that wasltruly
marvellous except for someone next to him, as I was, who could see the
trembling of the hand with wluch he held the reins. He must, secretly,
have been terrified. After all, he had had no experience of modern
warfare, while his exploits as an Indian fighter were a good deal less than
glorious despite the legends that he and the Virginians used so relentlessly
‘to circulate. But no matter what his military short-comings, at least he
looked like a general.
*
Hancock went to his grave furious that it was Washington and not he
who had been chosen to command the Continental Army. Narrowly to
miss such greatness is a bitter thing; and greatness seemed inevitable that
summer. At Lexington and Bunker Hill we had held our own in the face
of the best army in the world. Also, the British were 3,000 miles from
home and forced to fight in a wild country-side where their specialty, the
fixed battle, was of no use to them against the strategy they most feared,
the constant sniping of invisible rifiemen.
*
_“You are most certain, Major, of your military gift.”
~ “No, Sir. But it is a fact that the other strategy failed. I had hoped only
to imitate the same tactic King Frederick set in motion during the siege of
Dresden.” Young and opinionated, I hoped to impress my commander
not only with my own military prowess but with my wide knowledge of
modern warfare. Like so many young officers in those days, I had studied
closely the campaigns of Frederick the Great.
 General Washington, however, did not read books; he knew as little of
Frederick as I did of tobacco farming, a business in which he had only
recently failed. The wealth of his wife notwithstanding, Washington was
in some financial difficulty when he took command of the army. He had
not done well farming despite all sorts of theories about river mud being
the best of manures (it is not), and the invention-of a plough (shades of
Jefferson!) which proved to be so heavy that two horses could not budge it
“ “even in moist earth. i
. Although Washington was always short of money, he lived grandly.
Later in the war, we were all startled and amused when his mother put it
about that son George had robbed her of everything and so, being
destitute, she was forced to apply to the Virginia Assembly for a pension.
‘lam reasonably certain‘ that Washington was innocent in this matter. He
was, apparently, a dutiful son and the mother a source of much distress to
him, When word came of her son’s “victory” at Trenton, the virago was
quoted as saying, “Here is too much flattery.” It is plain she always
disliked her son and he must, finally, have hated her. How odd not to like
one’s own mother! I always thought I would have adored mine, who saw
fit to die before we could properly meet.
*
During this time George Washington was conducting the war in his
own mysterious way. After losing the battle for bong lsland, he was
surprised at Kip’s Bay and so lost New York City to the British. He then
sustained a defeat at White Plains after which most of the Continental
Army went home. With what men remained, Washington scurried
across the North River. Yet if in August of ’76 Washington had
abandoned to the British everything east of the Hudson River, he would
have been able to keep intact his army, dig in before Philadelphia, and
hold that city. Instead he devoted nearly a year to losing New York lsland
and City, demonstrating to everyone that he had neither the resources nor
the craft to defeat the British. The Revolution was nearly over and done
with by the winter of 1777.
A number of young officers prayed for Washington to be relieved of
command. Some of us wanted Lee. Others Gates. No one but the
sycophants on His Excellency’s staff wanted another winter of Washing-
ton and failure. Had the British realized the extent of our confusion and
weakness, they might then and there have forced a peace upon us for with
each passing day Washington’s conduct of the war was creating Tories
by the thousands, including a number of powerful if secret ones in the
Congress itself. .
My task in September 1777 was to make the enemy regret that they
were not Americans. I think we succeeded. Certainly they were never
able to adapt to our Indian-style fighting which relied on darkness, stealth,
surprise. We knew the wild forests around Paramus. They did not. We
never met them in battle. Rather, we were always near by, ready to shoot
them down one by one, preferably in the dark.
In September 1777 the British out-manoeuvred Washington once
again and occupied Philadelphia (the Congress now became a burden to
the city of Baltimore). Contrary to accepted legend, the Philadelphians
did not at all mind the presence of the British army in their city; in fact,
many of them hoped that Washington would soon be caught and hanged,
putting an end to those disruptions and discomforts which had been set in
motion by the ambitions of a number of greedy and vain lawyers
shrewdly able to use as cover for their private designs Jefferson s
high-minded platitudes and cloudy political theorizings.