Sold – Washington Anxiously Awaits the Arrival of the French Fleet

On May 4, 1778, the alliance between France and the new United States of America became effective. The Americans had high hopes for this venture, but those hopes were initially dashed. The French sent a fleet under Admiral d’Estaing in the summer of 1778; but after failing to encounter the British in the Chesapeake Bay and making unsuccessful moves at New York and Newport, it abandoned the offensive. However, the French were determined to play a role in the outcome of the American War and planned to send a significant number of troops and ships for the next campaign. Count Rochambeau was appointed to command of the army that was destined to support the Americans, and on May 2, 1780, he sailed for the U.S. 

Meanwhile, the American cause was at a low ebb. Washington felt too weak to move against the British in the north, and in the south Charleston fell to the British on May 12. So Washington, who had been disappointed by the French before, anxiously anticipated their active intervention to make a 1780 campaign possible. His plan: a joint Franco-American late-summer assault against British-held New York. But when would the French arrive??Would they, in fact, arrive at all??Washington believed that the fate of the Revolution could in large part hinge on the answers to these questions. He was starved for reliable information and his informants on the coast provided him with whatever relevant news came their way.

David Forman was a brigadier general of New Jersey militia and was in overall command of American forces in Monmouth County in that state. Located along the ocean just south of New York, the commander in Monmouth was in a position to monitor shipping traffic both in and out of New York and the region generally. Washington made Forman part of his intelligence network, and Forman provided him with a stream of information. He was particularly active in June of 1780, writing Washington on the 16th and 17th with naval intelligence that had come to his attention. At the end of his letter of June 17, he added a postscript: “This Minute a Report has reached me that a sloop is arrived at Egg Harbor that was two Days in Company with a Large French fleet –that he left them a little to the Southward of Cape Henlopen – the Moment the Fleet appears Your Exely may depend on My pushing Forward the accounts”. This letter is in the Library of Congress collections.

Washington responded the next day, and though by nature a reserved man, not known for showing his emotions, you can feel in his letter his apprehension about the arrival of the French and his guarding against further disappointment.

I thank you for your promise of the earliest communication should any fleet appear off.

Letter Signed, Head Quarters, Springfield, N.J., 18th June 1780, to Forman. “I had last evening the pleasure of receiving yours of yesterday. I hope the intelligence brought by the sloop to Egg Harbor may prove true, but I apprehend the captain may have fallen in with a fleet of French armed merchantmen, which arrived in Delaware a few days ago. I thank you for your promise of the earliest communication should any fleet appear off. The enemy remain in the same position upon the point which they were in when you were here. I am with great Regards, dear sir, Yr most obt Servt, G Washington.” This letter is unpublished, and was unknown until recently, having remained in the same family for nearly 100 years. Its text is in the hand of Robert Hanson Harrison, Washington’s personal secretary throughout much of the Revolution. Harrison was one of the first five men picked by Washington to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court but died before he could take office.

Washington was right to be cautious on June 18th. The French fleet, with General Rochambeau and 5,000 French troops on board, did arrive, but not until July 11, when they anchored off Newport, Rhode Island. Rochambeau came ashore the next day. In the end, there was no 1780 campaign in the north, but the next year Washington’s vision of the Franco-American juggernaut finally took shape. By September 28, 1781, the combined armies with the French fleet – some 16,000 troops – arrived in Virginia and set up camp outside the British defenses at Yorktown. Just three weeks later, the siege of Yorktown ended with the complete surrender of the British. As a result of this catastrophe to their arms, Britain sued for peace; the war was over. So Washington’s dream, about which he expressed anxiety in this letter – that the arrival of the French would make the difference and secure American independence – though delayed, became a reality.