THE SECOND ANONYMOUS LETTER, PAGES 37-40 (QUOTED IN APPENDIX B, PAGES 273-278)
The quotes here are all taken verbatim from the letter. The author is a masterful writer who understands the grievances of the army and plays on the insecurities of his readers, who feared with much justification that the American people did not appreciate their service and would not reward their efforts after the war ended. The writer cleverly makes the case that the army’s leverage will disappear if it doesn’t act while it is still armed before the peace treaty is signed.
PENNSYLVANIA 1781 MUTINY, PAGES 41-43
While John Nagy’s previously cited Rebellion in the Ranks covers the 1781 Pennsylvania mutiny, as well as other mutinies, two books focus exclusively on the 1781 mutiny that Josiah learns about from his cousin. Mutiny in January by Carl Van Doren is a judicious and well-researched account of the largest mutiny of American troops to actually take place during the Revolutionary War. The Proud and the Free, a fast-paced novel by Howard Fast, tries to create a Marxist framework by picturing the 1781 mutiny as a working-class revolt by troops against a bourgeois and planter officer class. There were undoubtedly resentments against officers, but as Van Doren makes clear, what distinguishes the Pennsylvania mutiny was the troops’ focus on grievances against the Congress and state governments, not against their officers. The mutinous troops’ apparent respect for many officers, including Washington and General Anthony Wayne; the willingness of these troops to undertake actions against the British under the command of American officers; and their rejection of British overtures, going so far as to arrest and turn over British emissaries to American officers, are not the actions one would expect from the usual mutineers angry at their officers.
JOSIAH CALCULATES THE CHANCES OF A REVOLT SUCCEEDING, 43
As I mentioned in the Afterword, given Washington’s character and the fact that he did not lead the mutiny, historians have assumed he never considered that course. Similarly, since the mutiny did not take place in the end, historians have spent little time assessing whether it would have succeeded. To the extent such consideration has been given, there have been varying opinions about the chances of success. Thomas Fleming sees the army marching on Philadelphia and, without predicting whether the revolt would have succeeded, sees the possibility of a civil war, the British “irresistibly tempted to get back in the game,” and the potential collapse of the Confederation (The Perils of Peace, 273).
Barry Schwartz believes that “Washington could have taken over the government by military coup . . .” (George Washington: Making of an American Symbol, 44).
Those expressing skepticism about the success of a revolt point to the innate reservations of Americans about the military based on years of British quartering of troops and the ties of soldiers and officers to their families.
Yet, as Josiah calculates, it is hard to dismiss the chances of success, which I believe were quite good. By the end of 1782, all the major cities and seaports were occupied by the American armies except for New York, where London had sent General Carleton, whose mission was the withdrawal of the fourteen thousand troops there. The Congress might have fled Philadelphia, which it did during the short-lived Pennsylvania mutiny put down with Washington’s help in 1781. But even if it found a town willing to host the Congress, where would it have found the revenue to carry out any governmental functions?
Control of seaports meant that a revolting army would have immediately controlled the vast majority of revenues coming to the government set up in 1776 since those revenues were derived from imposts on trade. The revenues raised by the states through taxation were meager, and the states showed no inclination to turn over the revenues they did raise to the national government.
A revolt, especially one led by Washington, would have quickly established the only national government with both revenues and a military arm. The states would have been given a stark choice: join the new government (which already controlled several states through the army’s occupation of the major cities) or resist and try to go it alone. The latter alternative would not have seemed very attractive. Either the states would have fallen victim to a military filled with its own sons or, more likely, the revolting army with Washington leading the new government would just have waited for the holdouts to join the new government, feeling the same pressures not to go it alone that they felt in 1776 and were to feel during the Constitution ratification process in 1789.
The pressure to join the new government would have increased; a government with Washington at its head promised all the benefits of the previous one plus benefits for the soldiers, without the Congress’s reputation for incompetence. Foreign nations would have augmented the pressure. Given that nations like France had premised their loans on their respect for Washington and not the Congress, it is easy to see to which government foreign states would have given their backing. After all, the loans from France and Holland and the moral support of others were not based on the Declaration of Independence but on a desire to lessen British influence. This had been accomplished, and both repayments of loans and the continued lessening of British influence would seem more likely under a respected military leader like Washington.
As for the British, a majority had finally come to power in Parliament, which favored an immediate withdrawal of British troops and independence for America under whatever government was set up. As Washington had predicted, if the states continued the war long enough, the British would eventually tire of the struggle. All in all, I believe, while nothing was certain, the prospects for a revolt were good.
LETTER TO ELIJAH HUNTER AND ORDER TO WILLIAM SHATTUCK, PAGE 44
The orders and letters that Washington issued at Newburgh are contained in part in the various biographies previously cited. There are many full compendiums, such as the Washington Papers at the University of Virginia made available to the author by Editor-in-Chief William Ferraro, as well as The General Orders of Geo. Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Revolution, Issued at Newburgh on The Hudson, 1782–1783 at the Harvard University Library and The Itinerary of General Washington, edited by William S. Baker and published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. in 1892. Every reference to an order or letter at Newburgh, such as this letter to Elijah Hunter on Hunter’s stolen horses and the order to William Shattuck sending him to Vermont to track down criminals, is based on actual orders and letters.