Washington- The Indispensable Man

by James Thomas Flexner

  In Philadelphia with his mourning wife beside him, Washington found dull and depressing a social season that was generally considered brilliant. Back with his army on the Hudson in April, he was lonely for the officers away on the southern campaign. He wrote General Greene, “To participate and divide our feelings, hopes, fears, and expectations with a friend is almost the only source of pleasure and consolation left us in the present languid and unpromising state of our affairs.”

  Washington must have got some grim satisfaction when Clinton was replaced by Sir Guy Carleton: he had now outlasted his third British commander in chief. But his hopes of French assistance that would enable him to drive the enemy from New York were knocked down by the news that in a naval action off the West Indies de Grasse had been decisively defeated by Admiral Rodney. Rochambeau and the French army remained inactive until, in the autumn, they sailed back to France.

  By that time, Washington had been notified by Carleton that peace negotiations had been commenced in Paris at which George III intended not only to accept but to propose the independence of the United States. Washington was less exhilarated than frightened. The news, which would probably remove what bit of backbone was left in the support of the army, might well have been fabricated for that purpose: “From the former infatuation, duplicity, and perverse system of British policy, I confess I am induced to doubt everything, to suspect everything.”

  Washington did his best to think of ways of amusing his troops in idleness. He sent his officers home on long furloughs, urged the men to vie with each other in decorating their huts and their hats. Encouraging one of New England’s favorite sports, he wrote that religious discourses “must afford the most pure and rational entertainment for any serious and well-disposed mind.” But he noted that the dissatisfaction was taking on a new and ominous note. Formerly, the officers had tried to quiet the men. Now they were leading the protests.

  The situation was already dangerous enough when Congress decided to cut expenses by reducing the number of regiments in a way that would demobilize many officers. However, no provision was made for giving them any pay, although some were owed (as Washington noted) for “four, five, or perhaps six years.” A promise of pensions previously made at a dark moment in the war showed no likelihood of being honored. To officials in Philadelphia, Washington wrote bitterly that the demobilized officers would depart “goaded by a thousand stings of reflection on the past and of anticipation on the future … soured by penury and what they call the ingratitude of the public, involved in debts, without one farthing of money to carry them home, after having spent the flowers of their days, and many of them their patrimonies, in establishing the freedom and independence of their country, and suffered everything human nature is capable of enduring on this side of death.… I cannot avoid apprehending that a train of evils will follow of a very serious and distressing nature.”

  The summer of 1782 passed in frustrating doldrums. Washington hoped to spend the following winter at Mount Vernon, recruiting his strength and attending to his neglected private concerns. But when the time for departure came, he felt that the temper of the army was such that he could not leave.

  The plight of the officers who had already been demobilized could not help seeming frighteningly prophetic: when no longer needed to protect the civilian population, every soldier, all obligations forgotten, would also be sent home in penury. It seemed to follow that while the troops were still together, they should take the steps necessary to make sure that the civilian authorities would give them the pay that was owed and secure to them the pensions that had been voted them. The Massachusetts regiments sent a delegation to their own government, only to be shunted on to the Congress. But Massachusetts was delinquent (as were all the other states) in meeting her part of the quota that would help make Congress solvent enough to pay the army.

  Over campfires in the chill autumn, warmed sometimes with rum, the officers fingered the hilts of their swords and talked of taking the law in their own hands. Only by the most intense persuasion did Washington channel the discontent into a petition to Congress. There had been petitions before, but this one was accompanied by a not-too-subtle threat. It was to be presented by a committee of three high officers who were to stay in Philadelphia until it became clear whether justice would be done or not. If not, the army would consider more decisive action.

  Since Congress’s requisitions to the states were continuing to fall on deaf ears, everything depended on the fate of the amendment to the Articles that would allow Congress to collect its own taxes. Hardly had the military committee reached the capital when adverse votes of both Rhode Island and Virginia carried the amendment to defeat. The committee angrily warned Congress that the soldiers “were verging on a state which we are told will drive wise men mad.” But Congress, being bankrupt, could do nothing.

  Almost every revolution in the history of the world, however idealistically begun, had ended in tyranny. The American Revolution had now reached its moment of major political crisis.

  Now that independence seemed at hand, the state leaders felt their own urgency: it should be made clear, for the impending future, that the United States was not one nation but thirteen. But state autonomy was not the basis on which the war had been fought. It had been necessary to create a Continental Congress and a Continental Army, and also to incur Continental debts. These debts were not only to the soldiers. Congress also owed much to civilians. There was the currency it had printed, which should be honored, even if at less than face value. There were certificates of indebtedness: bonds and various acknowledgments of loans; paper Washington had, when deprived of more specific means of payment, given to farmers and wagoners; the multitudinous other kinds of paper emitted by a bankrupt government scrambling for existence. Since the poor had been unable to wait, they had usually sold their certificate of indebtedness to speculators for a fraction of the true value. The paper had thus found its way into the hands of large operators. The financial community was as deeply involved as were the soldiers in the national obligations which the states were trying, as they delicately looked the other way, to sweep under the rug.

  The fact that the army and the ablest, most prosperous businessmen were being similarly defrauded opened a promising field for common action. The members of the military committee that had been sent to Philadelphia conferred with the leading financiers, particularly Robert and Gouverneur Morris. It was agreed that the only protection for the creditors, whether civilians or soldiers, was the military strength of the army. The army should, even if peace were declared, refuse to go home until the states agreed to a system by which all federal debts could be paid. If necessary, violence should be threatened to achieve what was basically required: a strong central government that could protect the rights of its creditors. Should military force be used to reform the state legislatures, that would, it was said (and probably often believed), be only a temporary expedient until the necessary changes were achieved. Then the government would be returned to the people. So it was argued. The modern reader will see being groomed and saddled the horses of fascism.

  The road ahead seemed clear except for one serious potential barrier: George Washington. Would the national hero be willing to countenance a movement to use the army as a political force? And if he refused to go along, could he be pushed aside?

  The conspirators agreed that the ground should be prepared for getting rid of Washington and finding another leader. However, it would be infinitely better to persuade Washington. Washington’s former aide, Alexander Hamilton, now a congressman from New York, announced that he knew how to handle the General. He would undertake the mission.

  Washington’s role in the Revolution had always been more than military. After electing him Commander in Chief, the members of Congress had committed themselves to the cause by committing themselves to support him. And their need for his help had proved to be great. As a legislative body entrusted with all executive functions, the Congress had tried to admin
ister the war and the army by setting up committees of its members. There were soon more committees than the members had time for, and the method was at best cumbersome. Because the committees so often failed to act, Washington was continually forced, in order to keep his army alive, into himself making decisions with much wider implications than the purely military. And on several occasions when Congress became frightened by British successes, the legislators officially dumped in the Commander in Chief’s lap powers to determine civilian concerns. Although he fought off rather than sought these extensions of responsibility and made as little use of them as was feasible, Washington became, while still Commander in Chief, as much of a chief executive as the United States then had.

  This did not escape observation, and many influential patriots considered that the possibility of making Washington a one-man government was an asset which could be fallen back on in a severe emergency. As we have seen, he had been begged by major political leaders to take over the government of Virginia. In May, 1782, he had received from one of his colonels, Lewis Nicola, a letter urging him to accept the responsibility of becoming king of the United States.

  The suggestion seemed to Nicola highly reasonable. Every major nation in the world was then ruled by a king, and royalty had been throughout history almost exclusively the accepted form of government. But Washington replied, “No occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army.… I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity” a conception that was “big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country.”

  However, Washington had taken this stand before it was known that the states would not of their own volition make possible a central government strong enough even to pay its just debts to the national creditors and to the soldiers who had fought under his leadership for so many years.

  Washington was at his headquarters on the banks of the Hudson at Newburgh, New York, when, during mid-February of 1783, Hamilton’s effort to inveigle him arrived in the form of a subtly composed letter. As a congressman, Hamilton reported that there were no further possibilities of supplying the army; by June, the troops would have to take everything they needed at bayonet point. As a colonel (he was still a member of the army), Hamilton informed Washington that, should peace come, the army intended to use its bayonets “to procure justice to itself.”

  Washington’s own command, so Hamilton warned, was in danger. The army felt that his “delicacy carried to an extreme” had made him stand in the way of their achieving their just dues. They might very well act without him. Then “the difficulty will be to keep a complaining and suffering army within the bounds of moderation.” But if Washington took the lead, the result could be salutary rather than destructive. By cooperating with “all men of sense,” the army could, under Washington’s benign control, operate on “weak minds” to establish the federal taxation “which alone can do justice to the creditors of the United States … and supply the future wants of government.”

  In came a letter from one of Washington’s confidential correspondents, Congressman Joseph Jones of Virginia. Jones warned that “dangerous combinations in the army” were using “sinister practices” to tear down Washington’s reputation so that “the weight of your opposition will prove no obstacle to their ambitious designs.” Jones believed that the plot was likely to succeed. “Whether to temporize or oppose with steady, unremitting firmness,” he continued, “… must be left to your own sense of propriety and better judgement.”

  During “many contemplative hours,” Washington, as he put it, puzzled over “the predicament in which I stand as a citizen and soldier.” In that year of 1783, the efforts of the United States to establish a republican government were unique in the world. Modern history presented no evidence that people could rule themselves. Even political philosophers who thought that the people might under some circumstances be able to do so, commonly believed that republican forms could only survive on a small scale—and was this not being demonstrated by the behavior of the states? Even worse: it was generally believed in Europe that efforts at popular rule could only eventuate in anarchy and chaos. As Washington paced in perplexity, anarchy and chaos seemed about to overwhelm America. Was it not his patriotic duty, as Hamilton said, to accept the inevitable, as he had so often done on physical battlefields? And what of his ambitions? In a world of kings, why should not George Washington also be a king? He was later to thank the Ruler of the Universe—“the Greatest and Best of Beings”—for having led him “to detest the folly and madness of unbounded ambition.”

  Yet, when he placed ambition behind him, that only made the situation more “difficult and delicate.” The injustices being visited on the army were obvious and no peaceful remedies were in sight. His own investigations revealed that the army was more rebellious than he had realized, and that his leadership was in fact under severe attack. He suspected his old enemy General Gates, who was finally back in active service, of being deep in the intrigue.

  It was early March before Washington answered Hamilton’s letter. He could not, he wrote, countenance a movement which would be “productive of civil commotions and end in blood.” Despite the menace to his own leadership and reputation, “I shall pursue the same steady line of conduct which has governed me hitherto; fully convinced that the sensible and discerning part of the army cannot be unacquainted (although I never took pains to inform them) of the services I have rendered it on more occasions than one.”

  Washington’s letter made it clear that the conspirators would have to proceed independently, either catching him up in the tempest they raised or blowing him aside.

  Through the camp at Newburgh, unsigned papers began circulating. One ignored Washington’s authority by calling a mass meeting of officers. Another stated that the author had lost faith “in the justice of his country.” He urged his fellow soldiers to “suspect the man who would advise to more moderation and further forbearance.” If peace should be declared, nothing should separate the army “from your arms but death.” If the war continued, “courting the auspices and inviting the direction of your illustrious leader, you will retire to some unsettled country, smile in your turn, and ‘mock when their fear cometh on.’”

  Washington was himself deeply moved by the anonymous author’s emotional description of the soldier’s plight—he felt that the “force of expression has rarely been equaled in the English language”—but he believed it his duty “to arrest on the spot the foot that stood wavering on a tremendous precipice, to prevent the officers from being taken by surprise while the passions were all inflamed, and to rescue them from plunging themselves into a gulf of civil horror from which there might be no receding.”

  The Commander in Chief expressed “disapprobation of such disorderly proceedings” as the illegally called meeting. He summoned a meeting of his own for the following Saturday, March 15, 1783. This was probably the most important single gathering ever held in the United States. Supposing, as seemed only too possible, Washington should fail to prevent military intervention in civil government?

  George Washington when commander in chief, engraved in Paris by Prévost, after a drawing by Pierre Eugène du Simitière (Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society)

  The Commander in Chief hinted that he would not appear personally, and thus when he strode on the stage, it was a surprise. And the faces of his gathered officers made it clear that the surprise was not a pleasant one. For the first time since he had won the love of the army, he saw facing him resentment and anger.

  As Washington began to speak, he was “sensibly agitated.” He talked first of his own early and devoted service, of his love for his soldiers. The faces before him did not soften. He pointed out that the country which the anonymous exhorter wished them to tyrannize over or abandon was their own: “our wives, our children, our farms and other property.” As for the exhorter’s advice that they should refuse to listen to words o
f moderation, this would mean that “reason is of no use to us. The freedom of speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.” By now, the audience seemed perturbed, but the anger and resentment had not been dispelled.

  Washington then stated that he believed the government would, “despite the slowness inherent in deliberative bodies,” in the end act justly. He urged the officers not “to open the flood gates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood.” They should “afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, ‘had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’”

  Washington had come to the end of his prepared speech but his audience did not seem truly moved. He clearly had not achieved his end. He remembered he had brought with him a reassuring letter from a congressman. He would read it. He pulled the paper from his pocket, and then something seemed to go wrong. The General seemed confused; he stared at the paper helplessly. The officers leaned forward, their hearts contracting with anxiety. Washington pulled from his pocket something only his intimates had seen him wear: a pair of eyeglasses. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

  This homely act and simple statement did what all Washington’s arguments had failed to do. The hardened soldiers wept. Washington had saved the United States from tyranny and civil discord. As Jefferson was later to comment, “The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”