I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott
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even as spring was returning and the fields around Morristown were turning green with new growth and optimism, the Continental Army was foundering; nor had I needed Peggy Arnold to tell me so, either. Most of us in Morristown were aware of it, and that knowledge hung like a forbidding cloud over the entire encampment.
No one had expected the war to continue as long as it had, with seemingly so little achieved. There had been hints of mutiny in the snow-covered cabins of Jockey Hollow, from muted grumbling to out-and-out insubordination. Many of the men had enlisted in 1777 for a term of service of three years, and were well aware that their duty would be finished at the end of April.
“Already the men are beginning to drift away,” Alexander said. It was early evening, and we were sitting side by side on a rough plank bench in the small yard behind my parents’ house, where we’d have a measure of privacy, if few comforts. Whatever cheer the sun had given earlier in the afternoon was gone, and I’d wrapped myself in a thick woolen shawl, with Alexander’s arm around me for extra warmth. Small ghostly patches of old snow still lingered in the shadows, dirty and tattered like worn lace, but at last the first shoots of green were beginning to appear in the sticky, muddy ground.
Yet the way Alexander was explaining it, spring was bringing little cheer to General Washington.
“Each morning’s muster shows more men have vanished overnight,” he continued. “Their guns are gone and their other belongings with them. They’ve had their fill of soldiering, and all that matters to them are new crops to be planted and sweethearts to kiss. Staying here another few weeks makes no difference to them, nor can I fault them for it.”
“But if they’re captured, they’ll be charged as deserters, won’t they?” As a soldier’s daughter, I knew the unequivocal sentence for desertion—the most grievous sin in any army—was death.
“The general will have no choice if he wants to maintain discipline,” Alexander said. “Yet most who flee are young, younger than I, and eager to return to homes they left as boys. They haven’t been paid in months, at least not in money that has any value to it. Many are sick, and all are near to starving from the poor rations. They believe Congress and the populace despise them, and they’re justified in that. And yet . . .”
He let the words drift off unfinished, but I could complete them as well as he.
“You’ve stayed,” I said, tightening my fingers into his. “You’re here.”
“I’m an officer, Betsey,” he said, “and on my honor as a gentleman I’m bound to be part of this until the end of the war.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “It’s more than that for you.”
He sighed deeply. “I believe in this, all of this. The war, our country, our future, the men who have died in battle beside me and the children I hope to have one day with you. To abandon it now would be madness, and cowardice besides.”
“That’s why I love you,” I said softly. “Wrapped there in a single sentence.”
“It was three sentences, actually,” he said wryly, “but the sentiment is the same nonetheless.”
“You spoke it as one.” Only he would parse the syntax of a passionate declaration, and how endearing I found it, too. “The rumors among the ladies are that a thousand men are set to quit the army by the end of April.”
“If only that were all,” he said. “The last report that I wrote for the general to Congress estimated that at least two thousand eight hundred will be gone as surely as the last of the snow. That’s more than a quarter of our regular army. Yet Congress urges the general to send more troops south to Charleston, heedless of how we’d then be helpless to stop the British here in the north. How can we send what we don’t to spare? There’s little doubt that given the opportunity, the British would overrun New Jersey, and likely take back Philadelphia as well.”
I remembered the blithe confidence of so many of the Philadelphians I’d met. They’d placed all their faith in Congress and ignored the warnings of military gentleman like Papa, and instead assumed that the British would never choose to recapture their pretty city of red brick and neat houses. I didn’t want to imagine how wrong they could be proven to be.
“Are you certain the British are interested in Charleston?” I asked, preferring to discuss a city I’d never visited. “Even if so, they wouldn’t begin to shift their forces until summer, would they?”
“Oh, my sweet Eliza,” he said with a curious mix of fondness and despair. “In January, General Clinton sent an expeditionary force of both British and Hessian soldiers to the town of Savannah in Georgia, which is already in British hands. Some say it’s eight thousand men, some say twelve. Either way, it’s far more than we have. By all our best intelligence, Clinton has every intention of attempting Charleston by land, where the city is weakly defended. If he does, he’ll likely succeed. He could be there by now.”
Abruptly I sat upright, twisting about to face him.
“Is it so bad as that?” I asked.
“I’ve heard from Laurens as well,” he said grimly. “Those skirmishes he’s led, the attacks that he and others in the local militia have made against the British—it’s all that our forces can do to keep them from Charleston.”
“And how is Colonel Laurens?” I knew how close Alexander was to John Laurens, and though I’d yet to meet him, I prayed for his safety, too, for the sake of their friendship.
“Laurens is as strong as a bull and has more good luck than ten mortal men together,” he said. “He’s nigh invincible because of it. God, I wish I were there with him!”
“I’m glad you’re not,” I said fervently. I’d heard too much of Colonel Laurens’s reckless form of heroism, and I was horrified by the prospect of Alexander lying dead on some distant southern battlefield while his bull-like friend charged onward.
“You needn’t fear,” he said, the familiar bitterness and disappointment welling up in his voice. “The general shares your opinion, and will not let me go with the others.”
“The others?” I repeated. “You just told me that His Excellency had no troops to spare.”
He sighed again; this conversation was too full of sighs, and worse, too full of the reasons for them.
“This is for your ears alone, Eliza,” he said, lowering his voice even further. “At the Council of War this week, His Excellency and the other generals agreed that they would send the Maryland Line to join and support the Southern Army. They shall depart as soon as it can be arranged.”
“How many men is that?” I asked.
“Two thousand,” he said, the number a blunt fact.
I swiftly made the calculations. “If those two thousand soldiers are subtracted along with the twenty-five hundred expected to depart when their terms are done, then there will be scarcely more than five thousand remaining here.”
“Other brigades should be returning soon from outpost duty, but yes, the Northern Army will be sorely depleted.” He raised his hands and spread his fingers in an uncharacteristic gesture of resignation. “I pray we won’t be tested. Those fools in Congress believe that the General exaggerates our needs, and that we can continue indefinitely without more men, guns, and other resources. With their lack of support, all the general can do is pray that Clinton will not decide to launch an attack on us from New York.”
I shook my head in silent empathy. I had heard the same from Papa, who was every bit as frustrated with Congress’s denials as was Alexander.
“The general might as well march us all to Charleston,” he said with increasing bitterness. “At least then we would meet our fate with a semblance of honor instead of wasting away to shabby nothingness here.”
“Is that a possibility?” I asked anxiously. I knew all too well what he meant by the word fate; to him it