Washington's General by Terry Golway

personally to Mumford’s widow. Greene also sent a letter to Caty, who was four months into her pregnancy, to offer her some measure of comfort and reassurance. Addressing his wife as “My Sweet Angel,” Greene wrote:
    The fears and apprehensions for my safety, under your present debillitated state, must be a weight too great for you to support. We are all in the hands of the great Jehovah, to him let us look for protection. I trust that our controversy is aRighteous one, and altho many of our friends and rellatives may suffer an untimely fate, yet we must consider the evil Justified by the Righteousness of the dispute. Let us then put our confidence in God and recommend our souls to his care. Stifle you own grief my sweet creature and offer a small tribute of consolation to the afflicted widow.
    In late September, Greene’s former tutor, Adam Maxwell, arrived in camp with an urgent message from Henry Ward, the secretary of Rhode Island and brother of Samuel Ward Sr. Henry Ward had come upon a letter written in code and intended for British officials in Boston. Suspecting treachery, he sent the letter to Greene via Maxwell, urging the general to bring it to Washington’s attention. Similarly alarmed, the American general tracked down a Boston woman who had tried to deliver the letter to the British. After interrogation, the woman revealed the letter’s author: her lover, Dr. Benjamin Church, a onetime member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the colony’s Committee of Correspondence, a noted patriot orator, and the chief physician in the American camp. He also was a British spy. The Americans brought in two cryptologists, who broke Church’s code and discovered that the letter contained information about American positions and troop strength.
    Greene wrote back to Ward to thank him for his alert actions: “The Author is found. You cannot guess who it is. It is no less a man that the famous Doctor Church.” The famous doctor got off with a relatively easy sentence. He was driven from the colony, jailed for two years, and then sent into exile in the West Indies.
    The siege went on. Some twenty thousand men were now gathered outside Boston. They drilled, they dug, they fired into the British lines, and then they drilled and dug and fired some more. From the perspective of headquarters in Cambridge, the endless siege was an administrative nightmare. This large army required a constant and consistent supply of food, clothing, fuel, and munitions. Its disruptive and sometimes disorderly presence tested the patience of neighboring citizens. The troops had been living outdoors for months, which was not so harshwhen the weather was warm, but now the New England winter was approaching. Washington was well aware of the warnings written on his calendar. In a letter to Congress on September 21, he noted that the troops were ill-prepared for a winter siege: “So far as regards the Preservation of the Army from cold, they may be deemed in a state of nakedness. Many of the men have been without Blankets the whole campaign and those which have been in use during the Summer are so worn as to be of little Service.” Not only were conditions bound to deteriorate as the year drew to a close, but the army itself would fall apart, too. Enlistments would begin to expire on December 1, and by the end of the year, virtually the entire American force would be free to return home.
    Washington was growing weary of the stalemate. Impatient to show Congress and the American people that his army was doing more than simply playing a waiting game, he dispatched Benedict Arnold and a thousand men, including Greene’s old friend Sammy Ward, north to reinforce an invasion of Canada under Generals Philip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery. The campaign was well under way by October.
    In Boston, however, all remained as it was when Washington arrived in July. Reports of disease and low morale among the