FOLLOWING THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN, letters of congratulation flowed to both Washington and Franklin. Those to Franklin from such New Englanders as Massachusetts governor John Hancock urged him to secure fishing rights in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland as part of any peace treaty with Britain. These correspondents simply assumed that Franklin would quickly negotiate the war’s end once Cornwallis’s army had surrendered.
Franklin did not have that luxury. While Yorktown sapped the British public’s will to fight, it did not break the king’s resolve. British troops still held entrenched positions in New York, Charleston, and Savannah that the Americans could not dislodge, and the Royal Navy continued to fight France and its allies, Spain and the Netherlands, in the Caribbean and elsewhere. So long as he retained a supportive government in Parliament under Lord North, George III refused to give up. Worried about his reputation, he confessed to praying “that posterity may not lay the downfall of this once respectable empire at my door.”31
Complicating matters, in 1779, Congress had entrusted peace negotiations to the vain and distrustful John Adams, who soon antagonized both the British and French. They preferred dealing with Franklin. Vergennes pressed this point on Congress, which in June 1781 expanded its peace commission to include Franklin, Jefferson, Henry Laurens, and the American minister to Spain, John Jay, as well as Adams. By this point, Adams had moved to the Netherlands in order to seek loans for Congress from Dutch bankers, who found him as difficult to deal with as the French and British had. When North’s government finally fell in March 1782 and peace negotiations began in earnest, at least Adams’s mission to Holland kept him otherwise occupied.
Aside from directing their commissioners to follow France’s lead, Congress gave them a free hand in negotiating a peace treaty with Britain. Since the negotiations occurred in Paris, this left preliminary matters to Franklin. Jefferson never left Virginia. Having been captured by the British during a transatlantic crossing in 1780, Laurens was still imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time of his appointment and did not reach Paris until late in the negotiating process. Diplomatic duties kept Jay in Spain and Adams in Holland well into 1782, with Jay incapacitated by illness when he did arrive. By that time, Franklin had struck an initial understanding with British negotiators. At first, he had deferred to France even as Britain sought a separate peace, but after Vergennes became impatient to end the war and authorized him in May to negotiate independently to speed the process,32 Franklin pressed ahead with remarkable success.
Franklin was a straightforward negotiator who stated his terms and held to them. He set forth four necessary conditions for any treaty: full and complete independence for the United States, removal of all British troops from the states, fishing rights for Americans on the Grand Banks, and recognition of borders prior to the Quebec Act of 1764. This last term was critical because (even though American forces had done little to win the west) it would extend the states to the Mississippi River rather than cut them off at the Appalachian Mountains. Like Washington, Franklin believed in the frontier. As a young man, he had gone west, to Pennsylvania, to make his future. Before inheriting Mount Vernon, Washington sought his fortune as a frontier surveyor. Both had invested in western lands and viewed the frontier as a source of economic opportunity and republican virtue. In support of his fourth demand, Franklin warned British negotiators that Americans were restless people destined to push westward. If Britain retained the Ohio Country, tensions would inevitably arise on the border and sour relations between the two nations. Franklin also suggested some advisable terms for the treaty, such as an apology and reparations from Britain, a free-trade agreement between the countries, and the cession of Canada, as ways for Britain to regain the affections of Americans. Predictably, Britain agreed only to his necessary conditions but did concede to all of those.
A final treaty needed to wait for France and its allies to reach their own agreements with Britain. Spain wanted Gibraltar but settled for reclaiming Florida. The Netherlands regained territory in the East Indies. France, which bore the brunt of the war costs, ultimately got the least—only the West Indian island of Tobago and the return of a trading post in Senegal.
Franklin had cut the best deal of all for the United States—perhaps the finest in the history of American diplomacy. When Jay and Adams arrived, they tried to sweeten the terms in further negotiations, but achieved little. In November 1782, they joined Franklin in signing preliminary articles of peace with British negotiators along the lines previously struck by Franklin. Upon learning that the Americans had signed a preliminary peace agreement, Vergennes voiced displeasure at not being advised in advance. Franklin managed to mollify him to such an extent that France extended Congress yet another loan to tide it over until the Peace of Paris officially ended the war in September 1783. Until then, the British continued to disrupt American shipping on the high seas and occupy New York City, Charleston, and Savannah. Washington’s army had in the meantime settled back into its positions in the lower Hudson Valley around Newburgh to guard against any outbreak by the British in New York.
CONGRESS NEEDED THE ADDITIONAL LOAN because, rather than strengthening its hand, the diminishing military threat from Britain and impending peace made the states even less willing to contribute to the collective cause than before. Having gone with part or no pay for years, Washington’s soldiers worried that they would never get paid. His officers feared not only for their back pay but also for their hard-won pensions. Once Franklin and his fellow peace commissioners secured a final treaty with Britain, Congress could afford to ignore veterans and devote its scarce resources to future needs or its most powerful creditors. The resulting tinderbox of armed, idle troops bearing legitimate grievance against Congress severely tested republican norms of civilian control over the military that Washington had vowed to respect. Individual units had mutinied for pay before but now, at Newburgh, Washington feared an army-wide uprising.
“When I see such a number of Men goaded by a thousand stings of reflexion on the past, & of anticipation on the future, about to be turned into the World, soured by penury & what they call the ingratitude of the Public, involved in debts, without one farthing of Money to carry them home, after having spent the flower of their days & many of them their patrimonies in establishing the freedom & Independence of their Country,” Washington warned Congress in October 1782, “I cannot avoid apprehending that a train of Evils will follow.”33 Without knowing specifics of the situation except through grim reports from Henry Laurens, Franklin also worried about the soldiers’ plight and its possible consequences. It spurred his pleas for French aid at a time when the financial exigency at Louis XVI’s court was such that even payment to French officers in America was delayed by a year.
With Washington’s tacit approval, during the closing days of 1782, a delegation of officers from Newburgh carried a petition to Congress, which then met in Philadelphia. The petition appealed for the ascertainment of the amount owed each officer for back pay and expenses, with security established for future payment. “We have borne all that men can bear—our property is expended—our private resources are at an end,” the officers grumbled in the petition. “The uneasiness of the soldiers, for want of pay, is great and dangerous; any further experiments on their patience may have fatal effects.”34
Upon the delegation’s arrival, the soldiers were embraced by Robert Morris, Congress’s superintendent of finance and a leading advocate of a strong central government. Adding to the warmth of its welcome by federalists like Morris, the delegation reached Philadelphia only days after Congress learned that the states had failed to ratify its proposal for a national tax or “impost” on all goods coming from overseas, which Morris had pushed through Congress as the means to pay past debts and finance ongoing operations. Federalists in Congress saw the officers’ petition as a timely tool to revive the impost. All they needed to gain its ratification, some thought, was for the army to link its worthy cause and veiled threats with
the political clout of wealthy domestic creditors.35 More cynical federalists, like Morris’s rakish young assistant, Gouverneur Morris (to whom he was not related), privately conceded that it might take an actual show of force by the unpaid troops to wrest taxing authority for Congress from the states. On New Year’s Day 1783, the younger Morris wrote to the like-minded John Jay in Paris about soldiers “with swords in their hands” securing that power for Congress “without which the government is but a name,” that is, the power to tax.36
HISTORIANS HAVE LONG DEBATED exactly what situation Morris had in mind—mere threats or actual insurrection—and how much the two Morrises and Washington’s former aide, Congressman Alexander Hamilton, tried to hasten it. Certainly they were wily politicians who fought fiercely for their ends and, at the time, viewed the taxing power as an essential end for a stable government. After conferring with them, some of the officers began warning Congress that the troops might mutiny without pay.
Despite these provocations, Newburgh remained quiet until mid-February, when word reached America that the British government had agreed to independence. Hamilton now wrote to Washington warning him of rumors that some unpaid officers at Newburgh might reject his republican leadership and use the army to secure their pay and pension by force.37 Washington could read the ambiguously worded letter as urging him either to channel the insurrection in ways that would strengthen the central government or to squelch it in advance.38
Responding to Hamilton, Washington blamed the dissension in camp on General Horatio Gates (though “I have no proof of it,” he conceded) and junior officers at Gates’s headquarters near Newburgh. Despite this mutinous faction and the injustices suffered by all, Washington assured Hamilton that “the sensible, and discerning part of the Army” would remain subordinate “notwithstanding the prevailing sentiment in the Army is, that the prospect of compensation for past Services will terminate with the War.”39
Despite these confident words from Washington, rumblings among junior officers at Gates’s headquarters threatened to erupt into a general revolt against Washington’s leadership and civilian rule in mid-March, following word of a preliminary peace treaty with Britain. The cabal may have included Gates and the Morrises.40 Hamilton almost certainly knew about it; some historians surmise that he orchestrated it.41
On March 10, the conspirators at Newburgh distributed an anonymous call for a meeting of field officers and company representatives on the following day, coupled with an unsigned address outlining their demands. “Suspect the man who would advise to more moderation and longer forbearance”—presumably Washington—and present members of Congress with a stark “alternative,” the address demanded. If peace comes without pay, tell them that “nothing shall separate them from your arms but death”; if war continues, “retire to some unsettled country, smile in your turn, and ‘mock when their fear cometh on.’”42
Washington reacted swiftly. He issued general orders disallowing the anonymously called meeting. Perhaps fearing that it might proceed anyway without an orderly alternative, he authorized a similar one for the fifteenth—the Ides of March—and directed Gates to preside.43 Officers from every unit in the Newburgh encampment attended that meeting. As soon as Gates called the session to order, Washington entered the hall and asked to speak first.
As was his custom on formal occasions, Washington read a prepared statement. Less than two thousand words long, it spoke of his sacrifice, a soldier’s duty, and the impracticability of the conspirators’ scheme. To secure the officers’ back pay and future pensions, Washington vowed to do so much “as may be done consistently with the great duty I owe to my Country.”44 Given his influence, this promise meant much to his men. It gave them hope for some redress.
After concluding his short but stern speech, Washington reached into his coat pocket for a letter from a friendly congressman, Virginia’s Joseph Jones. It reiterated the extreme gravity of the government’s financial situation and summarized the ongoing efforts of Congress to address it. Struggling with the handwriting as he read from the letter, Washington drew reading glasses from his waistcoat and asked, “Gentlemen, 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.”45 Few of the officers had seen Washington wear glasses. Coming on the heels of his hard address, this soft show of familiarity in their presence moved many. It both humanized and elevated him. Whether from his lofty words or his lowly gesture, some officers wept openly. With this finely timed performance that some historians suspect was rehearsed, Washington carried the day.
After Washington withdrew, the officers present approved resolutions asking him to represent their interests before Congress and rejecting “with disdain the infamous propositions contained in a late anonymous address to the officers of the army.”46 Fifty years later, testifying to its significance in their eyes, survivors of the episode joined a later generation of Americans in erecting on the site a stone obelisk bearing the words “Birthplace of the Republic” for here, they believed, America’s republican ideals had been established.
TAKING HIS VOW to champion the officers’ cause to heart, Washington began using his platform as America’s leading citizen to call for quickly and fairly compensating the troops, and ultimately for building a strong central government that could support those payments and a permanent military establishment. He argued his case privately in a series of letters to members of Congress before taking it public after the states rejected a second, scaled-back import-tax measure. Franklin knew nothing of these events until long after—indeed, he complained in an April 15 letter to Livingston that he had received no news from America for nearly three months—yet he appreciated the gravity of the situation and pressed the case in France for relief.47
By early April, Washington became so worried about unrest within the ranks that he counseled Congress to disband the army as soon as possible.48 Following the official cessation of hostilities between the United States and Britain in mid-April, and with Congress lacking funds to pay the army, Washington endorsed a plan to release the troops with orders that their states (rather than Congress) pay them. Although British forces still occupied New York pending a final peace treaty, Congress responded by furloughing most of the army in June without any cash payment to the departing men. Washington found the episode shameful but necessary.49
With the end of warfare and resulting furloughs, Washington had time to focus on the country’s future as he waited with a rump force for the final peace treaty and the British to evacuate New York. The process dragged on until late November. During this period, Washington issued the two most significant documents of his military career. While both took years to bear fruit, they helped to lay a foundation for the new constitutional order that Washington would eventually lead.
The first, “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment,” argued for a peacetime military of a size and with a mission that would require a robust central government with taxing authority. Such a force ran contrary to conventional thinking about republican rule. “Altho’ a large standing Army in time of Peace hath ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a Country,” Washington now argued, “yet a few Troops, under certain circumstances, are not only safe, but indispensably necessary.”50 These would be Continental troops organized into regiments to secure the western frontier and guard the border with British Canada. Existing state militias would be restructured on a Swiss model as a uniform force of citizen-soldiers ready for call-up in times of need. Washington also recommended that the central government build a navy to protect merchant shipping, maintain a base at West Point to guard against invasion from Canada, and open an academy to train officers. But his main concern was securing the west, which (like Franklin) he viewed as essential for the country’s future. Washington called for a series of army posts along the Ohio River, north to the Great Lakes, and west to the Mississippi. If accepted, his proposal would go a long way toward forging a federal union and giving it
a national purpose founded on secure borders, global trade, westward expansion, and imperial prospects.
Washington followed this proposal, which he submitted to Congress, with a so-called circular letter simultaneously sent to all the states urging them to create “an indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head.” He explained, “It is indispensible to the happiness of the individual States, that there should lodged somewhere, a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic.” These concerns included military and diplomatic affairs, taxing authority for federal services, and “compleat justice to all the Public Creditors,” including unpaid troops. America’s independence, as declared in 1776 and later recognized by other nations, rested on a union of the states, Washington observed, and could survive in a hostile world only with union. “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period,” he added. With reason and experience, Americans could forge a more perfect union—an empire of states capable of taking its place among the great nations of the world.51 He viewed the United States in that way, regularly calling it an “empire” (rather than a “league of states”) during the confederation period.52 The term was singular, not plural.
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