To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 Read Online Free Page A

that soon broke down as it would in almost any army that stayed in camp.Smallpox struck thousands, and hundreds perished, but such was to be expected even in the best tended of armies. As to stopping the men from going at each other’s throats, that had proven near impossible at times.
    Though he would never admit it within the hearing of a single living soul, the New Englanders struck him as a haughty and ill-bred lot, lacking in the refinements a gentleman planter of Virginia expected of them. He was not the only person in the command to carry such feelings, and nearly all others expressed them openly, vocally, and at times violently. He actually started to pray that the British would return, and soon, for, if not, the army might very well rend itself apart.
    And they had come, as if in answer to that prayer, and proved reality a curse.
    In the first week of July the vanguard appeared; in the next weeks, more and yet more——ships of the line, frigates, fast sloops and brigs, supply ships——and then the transports brought regiment after regiment of England’s finest. How ironic that with each passing day he could ride down to the narrows between Long Island and Staten Island and with telescope watch the ranks disembarking onto Staten Island. Regimental standards he remembered with such admiration from the last war floated on the breeze, and when the wind came from the west he could even hear their bands playing. And alongside men who were once old comrades were the blue uniforms of the regiments from Hesse and Hanover, men who at first were merely scorned, but soon would be feared by every man in his army.
    The Howe brothers, Richard in command of the navy, William the army, had made their arrangements in a ponderous, leisurely fashion, the intent obvious, to overawe before the first shot was fired. There had even been diplomatic protocols observed, of offers of reconciliation if only Washington and his rabble would ground arms, renew allegiance to the king, and return peaceably to their homes.
    The offers, of course, had been met with scorn and contempt. Officers around him had boasted that once swords were crossed, itwould be the British who begged for mercy; before summer was out the entire lot of them would be sent packing to their humiliated master, George the Third.
    Another gust of wind swept in from across the frozen plains of New Jersey, racing across the river, causing him to shiver again as the frigid rain lashed his face.
    Few boasted now, few indeed.
     
    This day, Christmas Day, had dawned clear and cold, the ground frozen, dusted with a light coating of snow. With a moon near full tonight, the weather at first appeared to be perfect for this move, roads frozen solid, light from the moon to guide them . . . and then by midday the harbingers of what was coming appeared. Glover’s Marblehead men, checking their boats, would raise their heads and in their nearly incomprehensible New England dialect pronounce that a regular “nor’easter was comin’.”
    With John Glover, the taciturn fisherman from the tempestuous New England coast, there was not the personal bond of affection that he felt had evolved between himself and Knox, but here was a doughty man he knew he could rely upon.
    He had seen such weather often enough back home at Mount Vernon, the wind backing around to the east, clouds rolling up from the south, the broad Potomac tossed with whitecaps, temperature at first rising and then plummeting, as it now was.
    The plan for tonight had been that by sunset the army would be mustered and already moved by individual columns of battalions to the points of embarkation. That plan had collapsed as the last rays of the sun were blanketed by the lowering clouds already lashing out with icy rain driving in from the east. The army was to have made its first move to concealed positions within a few minutes’ walk from the riverbank while it was still light. Some of the men were not yet out of their