A History | The Winning of Independence 1777-1783 | Nadir of the American Cause
Nadir of the American Cause
In the summer of 1780 the American cause seemed to be at as low an
ebb as it had been after the New York campaign in 1776 or after the
defeats at Ticonderoga and Brandywine in 1777. Defeat in the south was
not the only discouraging aspect of patriot affairs. In the north a
creeping paralysis had set in as the patriotic enthusiasm of the early
war years waned. The Continental currency had virtually depreciated out
of existence, and Congress was impotent to pay the soldiers or purchase
supplies. At Morristown, New Jersey, in the winter of 1779-80 the army
suffered worse hardships than at Valley Forge. Congress could do little
but attempt to shift its responsibilities onto the states, giving each
the task of providing clothing for its own troops and furnishing certain
quotas of specific supplies for the entire Army. The system of
"specific supplies" worked not at all. Not only were the
states laggard in furnishing supplies, but when they did it was seldom
at the time or place they were needed. This breakdown in the supply
system was more than even General Greene, as Quartermaster General,
could cope with, and in early 1780, under heavy criticism in Congress,
he resigned his position.
Under such difficulties, Washington had to struggle to hold even a
small Army together. Recruiting of Continentals, difficult to begin
with, became almost impossible when the troops could neither be paid nor
supplied adequately and had to suffer such winters as those at
Morristown. Enlistments and drafts from the militia in 1780 produced not
quite half as many men for one year's service as had enlisted in 1775
for three years or the duration. While recruiting lagged, morale among
those men who had enlisted for the longer terms naturally fell. Mutinies
in 1780 and 1781 were suppressed only by measures of great severity.
Germain could write confidently to Clinton: "so very
contemptible is the rebel force now . . . that no resistance . . . is to
be apprehended that can materially obstruct . . . the speedy suppression
of the rebellion . . . the American levies in the King's service are
more in number than the whole of the enlisted troops in the service of
the Congress." The French were unhappy. In the summer of 1780 they
occupied the vacated British base at Newport, moving in a naval squadron
and 4,000 troops under the command of Lieutenant General the Comte de
Rochambeau. Rochambeau immediately warned his government: "Send us
troops, ships and money, but do not count on these people nor on their
resources, they have neither money nor credit, their forces exist only
momentarily, and when they are about to be attacked in their own homes
they assemble . . . to defend themselves." Another French commander
thought only one highly placed American traitor was needed to decide the
campaign.
Clinton had, in fact, already found his "highly placed
traitor" in Benedict Arnold, the hero of the march to Quebec, the
naval battle on the lakes, Stanwix, and Saratoga. "Money is this
man's God," one of his enemies had said of Arnold earlier, and
evidently he was correct. Lucrative rewards promised by the British led
to Arnold's treason, though he evidently resented the slights Congress
had dealt him, and he justified his act by claiming that the Americans
were now fighting for the interests of Catholic France and not their
own. Arnold wangled an appointment as commander at West Point and then
entered into a plot to deliver this key post to the British. Washington
discovered the plot on September 21, 1780, just in time to foil it,
though Arnold himself escaped to become a British brigadier.
Arnold's treason in September 1780 marked the nadir of the patriot
cause. In the closing months of 1780, the Americans somehow put together
the ingredients for a final and decisive burst of energy in 1781.
Congress persuaded Robert Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant, to
accept a post as Superintendent of Finance, and Col. Timothy Pickering,
an able administrator, to replace Greene as Quartermaster General.
Greene, as Washington's choice, was then named to succeed Gates in
command of the Southern Army. General Lincoln, exchanged after Charleston, was appointed Secretary at War and the old board was
abolished. Morris took over many of the functions previously performed
by unwieldy committees. Working closely with Pickering, he abandoned the
old paper money entirely and introduced a new policy of supplying the
army by private contracts, using his personal credit as eventual
guarantee for payment in gold or silver. It-was an expedient but, for a
time at least, it worked.
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