But I knew that the General was as proud and as concerned with getting his due as Achilles. The General, I realized, capitalized on his reputation for being greater than he appeared. As I think back, I realize the General had mastered the art of masking his talents so as to seem less threatening and therefore more admirable. Even when it came to diplomacy, where he always opined to me that “I am no diplomat,” his finesse in handling the French generals and admirals would have made Franklin proud.
Seeing my bewilderment, the General said, “Josiah, after reading your notes, we shall send a longer and more carefully drafted letter tomorrow or the next day with all the appropriate documents and make the case why the events of today should move Congress to action.” With that comment, he waved us away.
We walked—or in my case, bounded—out of the General’s study when suddenly the question that had nagged at me since the meeting brought me up short: I thought to myself, Was the whole incident with the spectacles spontaneous or had it been planned?
I was probably the only officer at the meeting who was even asking such a question. It had, I am sure, occurred to no one else in that room swirling with emotions, but then no one else had observed the General as actor the way I had during the last seven years.
I was filled with sudden resolve. I must ask him, I thought. I turned, leaving my fellow aides behind, knocked again, and opened the door to his study.
“Yes, Josiah. What is it?” he said, looking up and fixing me with a stare that indicated his impatience.
I froze and suddenly I had trouble speaking. “Oh, nothing, sir,” I said, turned, and stumbled out the door.
Two days later, the General, with my help, drafted a lengthy letter to Congress that flattered that body; extolled the army’s suffering, patriotism, and virtues; pointed to the army’s unanimous rejection of mutiny; and closed by asking for speedy action on the army’s petition. The letter not so subtly tried to shame the Congress, stating that the General could not believe Congress would refuse the army’s petition and leave unpaid Congress’s debt of gratitude. He borrowed from the anonymous letter, asking if “they [the army] are to grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt.”
The General had emphasized that the recent meeting showed “the last glorious proof of patriotism which could have been given by men who aspired to the distinction of a patriot Army; and will not only confirm their claims to justice, but increase their title to the gratitude of their country.”
The General again did not mention his own role in the Newburgh threat but alluded to his disinterestedness by reminding Congress that he, the General, who could afford it, had not taken any pay, implying that Congress could not ask such a sacrifice of the less well endowed. In case Congress could not understand his message, he directed me to include the copies of the army’s resolution and the anonymous letters imperiling Congress that he had sent earlier that week, as well as copies of many of his earlier pleas to Congress that it honor its promises to the army.
As I think back, I recognize the General was using the same strategy on Congress he had used with the officers: conveying the assumption that, with such a glorious cause, the Congress would of course rise to the occasion and do the right thing.
My other major letter that week was to Alexander Hamilton. I think the General harbored suspicions that Hamilton and Madison were trying to link the claims of the public creditors with the claims of the army. The General had no objections to the claims of public creditors, but he thought those claims should be second to those of the army. He did not like the financiers wrapping themselves in the protective popular cloak of the army.
The General renewed his plea to Hamilton for action on the army’s petition but asked me to insert that “the Army was not something to be trifled with.” Did the General mean that Hamilton should not use the army to push the claims of creditors? Or was he threatening what might happen if the Congress did not act on the army’s claims?
Perhaps the General—not so simple a man as people thought—chose his words so that Hamilton and his friends could reach both conclusions.
I later heard that I was not the only one who doubted whether the General would confront the mutineers. John Adams and James Madison had their doubts too, but after the General’s stand, knowing they would retain their congressional powers, they rushed to extol the General’s virtue.
Lastly, the General dictated a short letter to me for circulation to the whole army. He spoke of “the pleasing feelings which have been excited in his breast by the affectionate sentiments expressed toward him” at the Saturday meeting.
The General did not come across to many as a feeling or affectionate man, but I do believe he meant those words, and I remember thinking at the time that for a British general to have expressed such feelings for and to his troops would have been considered unseemly and would never have happened. But then, no British general would have commanded such devotion from his troops as to be able to do what the General did at the Temple.
Epilogue
’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.
—Portius, Cato, Act I, Scene 2
We were reminded often in the succeeding weeks of how high the stakes were during that pivotal week in Newburgh. News of a peace treaty, albeit a preliminary one, soon reached us. Still another mutiny of the Pennsylvania militia erupted in June over Congress’s stinginess about pay. They were just a few hundred militia, many new recruits, but they drove the Congress out of Philadelphia all the way to Princeton. The General sent fifteen hundred troops, who easily dispersed them. Safe under the protection of the General, the Congress resumed its duties (the Congress still later moved on to Annapolis), and the General again minimized his role. In his letter to Congress, he dismissed the militia mutineers as “recruits and soldiers of a day,” in contrast to the glorious army that had suffered through the entire war. The Congress was oblivious, but I kept thinking what might have happened if those several hundred raw Pennsylvania militia had been seven thousand five hundred regulars led by hundreds of officers. And what if that force had been augmented and led by the General?
Every day I kept thinking what might have happened if the week of March 9 had taken a different turn. I might have been in Philadelphia with Prescilla, helping the General govern the country. Or we might have been in a civil war, tempting the British to scuttle the preliminary treaty and reenter the fray.