“Col. Hamilton is so hurried that he has not yet had time to write to you.–He looks like Death!!!”
George Fleming to Sebastian Bauman on March 26, 1778
It’s the three exclamation marks that get me every time xD
Valley Forge was a very busy time for the Headquarters staff and the help of many other able-officers had to be employed to aid the Aides-de-camp in their cramped headquarters but, even then, the workload was still enormous for everyone involved. Washington had to ask Congress to lift the limit on the number of aides and secretaries that he was allowed to have in order to help avoid this problem in the future.
(via revolutionary-pirate)
#in the face of new information#this quote just got 5000000000x better#But i’m not going to take credit for what someone else pieced together
I should explain. I was trying to place the date of this party, recounted by Duponceau in Friedrich Kapp’s The Life of Frederick William von Steuben
“Once, with the Baron’s permission, his aides invited a number of young officers to dine at our quarters, on condition that none should be admitted that had on a whole pair of breeches. This was, of course, as pars pro toto; but torn clothes were an indispensable requisite for admission, and in this the guests were very sure not to fail. The dinner took place. The guests clubbed their rations, and we feasted sumptuously on tough beefsteak and potatoes, with hickorynuts for our dessert. Instead of wine we had some kind of spirits, with which we made “salamanders”, that is to say, after filling our glasses, we set the liquor on fire, and drank it up flames and all.”
Unfortunately, the account of the party was never attached to a date, so I used intuition and logic to place the most-likely time for it to have occurred.
First assumption: Steuben would not have joked about the supply shortage until Washington had a trusted officer in charge of the quartermaster department. Steuben had been friendly with General Gates while he’d been in York, and he was too socially-conscientious to strain Washington’s precarious trust in him by taunting the state of the army’s supply- until after General Greene assumed the duties of Quartermaster General on March 23rd.
Second assumption: Steuben would not have hosted this party while he was drilling his model company since he and his aides would be working with late nights and very early mornings. So, the party could not have happened between March 19th and March 24th.
Third assumption: Steuben’s aides would have wanted to invite members of Washington’s staff who they had befriended as fellow translators, so they would have wanted to host the party before Washington sent Lt. Colonel Harrison and Alexander Hamilton to conduct the prisoner exchange for General Lee on March 28th.
That places the most likely dates for the party between March 24th and March 27th. Considering the 24th was the first day of Steuben’s drill instructors conducting his exercises, he likely didn’t host the party that night.
Given the date of this quote, I could guess the party happened on the 25th…and Hamilton’s hungover on the 26th.
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