Washington's Engineer Norman Desmarais (best e book reader .TXT) 📖

20. Samuel Hazard, ed., The Register of Pennsylvania 4, no. 8 (August 22, 1829): 118.

21. After careful analysis, James Brown Scott, De Grasse à Yorktown (Paris: Institut Français de Washington, 1931), concludes that Arnold’s treason was as essential to the success of the revolution as his actions prior to Saratoga.

22. The Battle of Saratoga was won before France made an alliance with America. It could not have been attempted, however, without the ammunition and other military stores secretly sent from France during the winter and spring of 1777. The French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, never admitted this aid, but the archives show beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was his plan from the beginning to “lay,” as he expressed it, “stepping stones” in the hope it would enable France to bridge the difficulties that prevented an earlier acknowledgment of American independence. It was also part of his plan to test the sincerity and vigor of the American people by sending them the means of resistance in a way that could be repudiated, should events turn out differently from his hopes.

Beaumarchais handled the secret aid. Two shiploads arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during the spring of 1777, and four more reached the continent during the summer, by way of the West Indies. The British captured one ship with her cargo in the fall. The last one brought the famous Baron von Steuben, with his French aide-de-camp, Peter Stephen Duponceau, then a lad of seventeen, who later became an American citizen and studied law. He became famous in his own right, as well as wealthy. Duportail’s heirs chose him to settle the general’s estate in 1810. Duponceau died in 1844.

For a thorough treatment of the extent of French aid, see Norman Desmarais, America’s First Ally: France in the Revolutionary War (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2019).

23. Washington, Writings, 16:319–20.

24. Howard Lee Landers, The Virginia Campaign and the Blockade and Siege of Yorktown, 1781: Including a Brief Narrative of the French Participation in the Revolution Prior to the Southern Campaign, Senate document 273 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 51.

25. The substance of the conversation on this occasion was taken down by Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who acted as interpreter during the interview. It is given under date of September 16, 1779, in Wharton, Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence, 3:318–22.

26. US Continental Congress et al., Journals, Library of Congress ed. Entered only in the secret journals.

27. John C. Fitzpatrick, George Washington Himself: A Common-Sense Biography Written from His Manuscripts (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1933), shows that after the loss of New York in 1776, Washington’s constant desire was to regain possession of this central stronghold of the Atlantic coast.

28. Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, John B. Russell, 1834), 6:378–79.

29. Washington, Writings, 16:483–84.

30. Washington, Writings, 16:4–6.

31. Brigadier General Louis Le Bèque Du Portail and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, Great Egg Harbor Landing, New Jersey, October 26, 1779, in Alexander Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 1:212.

32. Washington, Writings, 16:28. Published in full in Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 9:181.

33. This evidently refers to a note sent in the letter. Washington says that Mr. Henry Laurens, late president of Congress, had had the goodness to send him the note, which he enclosed. Mr. Laurens was from South Carolina; therefore, rumors from Georgia might easily reach him. There is no indication what was in the note.

34. Washington, Writings, 16:93–94.

35. Probably the chief cause of the disaster at Savannah was the treachery of a deserter from the American ranks who went over to the enemy the night of the eighth. He informed the enemy of the assault and that the real attack would be to the right; the onslaught to the left would be merely a feint. See Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 6:470.

36. Washington, Writings, 16:110–11.

37. Washington, Writings, 16:247–48.

38. Washington, Writings, 17:56.

39. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères: Correspondance politique, États-Unis 12, supplement, folio 108; Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 160; Elizabeth S. Kite, “General Washington and the French Engineers Duportail and Companions,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 43, no. 1 (March 1932): 25.

40. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, folio 109.

41. Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 161.

42. Greene, Papers, 5:178; Washington, Writings, 17:271.

43. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, folio 109; Kite, Brigadier-General Duportail, 164; Kite, “General Washington,” 29. Full text also in Serge Le Pottier, Duportail, Ou, Le Génie De Washington (Paris: Economica, 2011), 161–63.

CHAPTER 5

1. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799: Prepared under the Direction of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and Published by Authority of Congress, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1931), 17:362–65.

2. Washington, Writings, 17:339–40. Washington included Colonel Radière in his request, but he reminds Congress at the end of the letter that Radière had died of an illness at West Point on October 30, 1779.

3. Samuel Huntington to George Washington, Library of Congress, in Paul H. Smith, Gerard W. Gawalt, Rosemary Fry Plakas, and Eugene R. Sheridan, eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 14, October 1, 1779–March 31, 1780 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1987); US Continental Congress, Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1985), vol.4, no. 147, folio 63; US Continental Congress et al., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), 16:33, 16:39–40, 16:43–44, 16:46, 16:48–52, 16:55–56.

4. Washington, Writings, 17:421.

5. Published in full in Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Comprising His Correspondence and His Political and Official Writings, Exclusive of the Federalist, Civil