There's a nice write up on him in
George Washington's Indispensible Men. Some more material on him may be found on
Amazon.
Joseph was one of Washington's top aides at the start of the war. He fell out of favor with Washington when a correspondence that Joseph had addressed to Charles Lee accidentally fell into Washington's hands. In it, Joseph expressed his frustration with Washington's indecisiveness during one of the New York Battles -- I believe it was Fort Washington. Joseph was mortified when Washington presented him with the letter, stating something to the effect of "I believe this is yours." I forget if the letter Washington accidentally read was Joseph's original letter or Lee's response to it. But regardless, it was most unfortunate for both gentlemen that this came in between them because they had been very close.
Washington was more taken aback about Joseph never personally confronting him about the issue than he was with the comment itself. The two remained friendly, though they were never close friends again after that.
The contents of the letter are discussed in
Washington's Indispensible Men. When I read the exceprt, it did not sound like a vicious attack on Washington to me. All Joseph appeared to have been doing was just venting to his friend, Charles Lee, who was second-in-command. It's an unfortunate twist of fate that the letter should have fallen by accident into Washington's hands and that was an embarassment that Joseph found very difficult to live down.
Nathanael Greene had also expressed some frustration with Washington's indecisiveness during battles. My own gut feeling was that this "indecisiveness" was actually his attempt at figuring out how to preserve manpower because at several points he was down to almost nothing. Greene's correspondences did not accidentally fall into Washington's hands.
Linda
