Sir Henry Clinton and Army Profiteering: A Neglected Aspect of the Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy

Abstract

J N any examination of the British side of the war of the American Revolution, the controversy between Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Charles Cornwallis inevitably looms large. Yet the controversy is like an iceberg: what is easily seen is so imposing that it draws the attention of the observer away from the far more important mass concealed below the surface. Probing at the concealed mass has only recently begun. Starting from the bitter public squabble over the responsibility for the surrender at Yorktown which provided such an undignified anticlimax to the war on the British side, William B. Willcox has shown that the controversy was the culmination of long-standing animosities between the two British generals. He has also shown that such animosities were a constant feature of Clinton's personal relationships.' In conjunction with a psychologist, Frederick Wyatt, Willcox has used these animosities as a key to the understanding of Clinton's personality and has related the findings to his capacity as a commander and performance as commander-in-chief.2 But the Clinton-Cornwallis controversy was not confined to the Yorktown question. Less publicized at the time and for that reason, perhaps, largely ignored by historians was the issue of profiteering by officers and civilians on the staff of the British army in America. An examination of this issue tends to confirm and extend the psychological analysis of Clinton proposed by Willcox and