I awkwardly withdrew, my mind full of questions. Was he writing a letter to the troops to be presented at the meeting he apparently was not going to attend? If so—the question uppermost in my mind—was he intending to welcome and lead the insurrection or oppose it? Or was he just writing still another letter to Congress pleading for payments to the men?
As I sat down at my table to get back to work, I tried to list the countervailing forces tugging at the General. On the one side was the General’s vision of a republic, which he had pledged to uphold many times to Congress and various state legislatures. Often I had heard the General speak with contempt of Cromwell’s overthrowing of the English king and installing himself as a dictator. Just as often I had heard him speak with admiration of the Swiss cantons that had formed themselves into a republic. He himself had served for years in and, I believe, had some fond memories of his service in the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress.
And yet . . . there were all those letters and pleas he received to assume control of the government and to become dictator, if not king. It was not just the mutterings of the troops or the villagers in the towns we passed through, although there was plenty of that. In many of the states, outstanding citizens had voiced the same sentiments. Merchants and farmers hailed the General because he restrained our troops from seizing goods and crops. I have told you about the Duché letter and then the Nicola letter in May of 1782. I earlier mentioned the letter on monarchy from Major General James Varnum of the Rhode Island militia. That came two months after Nicola’s letter, and the writer, Varnum, was a man of far higher reputation than either Reverend Duché or Colonel Nicola.
Varnum—a big, vigorous, college-educated lawyer who never held back from telling the General his thoughts—had earlier in the war successfully proposed the idea of raising black troops from slaves. Greatly respected by the General and Varnum’s fellow Rhode Islander General Greene, he had left the Rhode Island militia to be his state’s delegate to Congress and was not pleased with what he found there. He expressed outrage at the lack of respect shown the army by Congress. Varnum found our then system of government too weak (a sentiment shared by most of us), described the Articles of Confederation as “that baseless fabric,” and did not think our countrymen up for the challenge of democracy. “The Citizens at large are totally destitute of that Love of Equality which is absolutely requisite to support a democratic Republick: Avarice, Jealousy & Luxury control their feelings,” he wrote the General.
General Varnum’s solution to the people’s failings was simple: “absolute Monarchy, or a military State, can alone rescue them from all the Horrors of Subjugation.” Varnum, like many, did not fault the British system of government so much as that the system was imposed from three thousand miles away by an incompetent monarch without our consent.
When the letter arrived, I remember thinking, If these are the sentiments of a leading citizen of a state such as Rhode Island where republican suspicions of the military run strong, imagine what the feelings must be elsewhere. I could not think of many men with both military and legislative experience (it was later that he became the chief justice of the Northwest Territory) more respected than General Varnum, and I knew that respect was shared by the General.
The General replied to Varnum that he could not “consent” to Varnum’s view, but unlike in his reply to Nicola, he did not specifically disavow Varnum’s proposal. Again, as with Colonel Nicola’s letter, and unlike with Reverend Duché’s letter, no copies of Varnum’s letter were passed on to the Congress.
The General once said with a laugh, “Josiah, no one will fear me as a monarch because I have no natural children to whom I can pass the throne.” I could not figure out whether this was really a joke or a realization of how easy it would be to become king of our new country. I did not know how many times in letters or private conversations officers or civilians had made proposals similar to Duché’s, Nicola’s, or Varnum’s. I was sure there were many such pleas, not to mention all those comparisons to Moses.
Was the General starting to change? I noticed that the tone of his letters to General Benjamin Lincoln had changed. As always he complained of the troops getting meager rations and being released with “not a farthing of money to carry them home,” but to this was added the criticism that the congressmen and other civilian officials were still regularly getting all the salaries of their offices. “It is vain,” Washington wrote, “to suppose that Military men will acquiesce contentedly with bare rations, when those in the Civil walk of life (unacquainted with half the hardships they endure) are regularly paid the Emoluments of office.” It was the first time I had noticed the General not just pleading for his men but showing irritation at the conduct of the civilians who had appointed him. Had he reached the point where, although being the last person to “consider” installing himself as king or dictator (as he had responded to Colonel Nicola), he was now considering just that? The General had always sympathized with his unpaid troops from the days of the French and Indian War, but now he added the criticisms of, and implicit threats to, civilian-elected officials.
Just months earlier, the General and I had passed a tavern in a small New York town on our way to Newburgh. Its old sign—a picture of King George—lay on the ground against the tavern wall. Swinging above us was a new sign featuring a picture of a different George. I commented on how he had replaced the king in the eyes of our people, but the General merely grunted and said nothing. I knew, and the General must have known, that across the states, the toast of “God save the king” had been replaced by “God save great Washington.”