Most of the troop mutinies that followed the early one in Boston were small, easily dispersed affairs. These uprisings were not because of lack of loyalty by our men to our cause. Our troops were honest farmers, tradesman, and fishermen, and they expected that promises made would be kept. When they weren’t, there was trouble, and the Congress and the governors left the General to deal with the mess. Of course, the General could not allow the troops to just run off, no matter what the justification. But this letter delivered by General Knox that Monday was not about some Pennsylvania mountain men or even the 1781 mutiny of thousands, about which I will tell you later. This was a letter to hundreds of officers in the main army encampment. For months, rumors of a mutiny and a march on Philadelphia to seize control of the government had been circulating through the camps at Newburgh and New Windsor, New York, where our army had come after the victory at Yorktown. The soldiers had not been paid for months, and many officers had never been paid since the beginning of the war. Congress didn’t want to levy taxes to support the war, and when it finally had to, the states didn’t want to collect them. And then, when the states did collect taxes, they spent the money on their own needs.
It wasn’t just the lack of pay. As General Nathanael Greene once told me, “Politicians think we can live on air as in heaven without eating or drinking.” He could have added that the politicians didn’t think we needed clothing either. Officers from friendly European nations were shocked to see troops often half naked or without shoes. The delegation of officers the General had sent to seek back pay and future pensions from Congress in Philadelphia had reported nothing but soothing words, all of which the anonymous letter writer and those who read the letter well knew.
I do believe that many Americans thought the war had been won with Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. But the General knew better. We were in Newburgh and New Windsor on the Hudson River because the British still held Savannah, Charleston, and, most importantly, New York City. General Guy Carleton commanded fourteen thousand British troops in New York City—far more than our forces of seventy-five hundred—and the General worried that Carleton would move upriver and try to split New England from the rest of the colonies. So there we were, a worn-out army with a headquarters, guardhouse, powder magazine, quarters for tailors, and other supporting buildings in Newburgh, along with a temple and hundreds of buildings for the troops in New Windsor. Fighting was at a lull, and peace negotiations had been going on in Paris for over a year, but these negotiations had produced no final agreement. King George III was reported to be incensed by Cornwallis’s surrender and was threatening to send even more troops across the ocean, although the faction in Parliament led by Fox and Burke, which was against the war, seemed to be growing stronger. Benjamin Franklin had recently written the General and others that negotiations were taking a positive turn and the next month or two might bring peace and independence, but the General had heard this story before. Still, the General could have remained at Mount Vernon after Yorktown to not only enjoy home life but be closer to our other armies in the South. There were so many rumors of mutiny or a coup that I suspected the General’s presence in Newburgh was not entirely motivated by military tactics.
And now came this anonymous letter. The author was obviously confident that the officers would attend the meeting. But then what? March on Philadelphia and take over the Congress? Or maybe the author had some other plan in mind. And who was the anonymous author? I remember thinking of so many possible answers to that question and not finding any convincing.
Was it General Horatio Gates or one of his aides? Gates was second-in-command at Newburgh. All of us on the General’s staff knew he had resented the General’s appointment and had yearned for the top command since the start of the war. Whenever I looked into Gates’s face with its sagging eyes and Roman nose, I thought of a bloodhound, and he was indeed tenacious; nothing in his life had come without striving and capitalizing on his connections. No officer spent more time lobbying Congress to advance his career. A few years older than the General, Gates had served in the British army years ago in Germany and then had met Washington when they were both young officers fighting in the Braddock expedition during the French and Indian War. Unlike other officers, Gates and Washington, while outwardly cordial, apparently had never bonded.
Gates’s desire for advancement and his resentment of the General had led to his involvement in the 1777 plot with the French-Irish adventurer Conway. The aim was to have the Congress remove the General and replace him with Gates. Referring to the Scriptures, we on the General’s staff used to describe Gates as Old Leaven, like sourdough starter that had gone bad and had to be thrown out. As I reflected on the anonymous letter, it seemed quite plausible that a man who had plotted just a few years ago to usurp the General’s role now saw a chance to seize control of the army and lead the mutiny.
Then again, there were other possible authors. Might it have been written by the British in the city to spread disunity? Or perhaps by some who wanted a meeting to threaten Congress into tax measures that favored creditors as well as the army? I knew there was a faction in Congress that was bitter about the weakness of the confederation and eager to strengthen the national government, as was Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris.
Still another possibility gnawed at me. Could the General himself have inspired the letter? I knew many were urging the General to take power. It had all started with a letter from the first chaplain of the First Continental Congress, Jacob Duché, in 1777 telling the General that the people no longer supported Congress, that the cause was hopeless with congressional leadership, and that if a peace could not be negotiated with the British, there should be a coup d’état with the General taking over the government.
The General had immediately dictated a response to the reverend disavowing this suggestion and had then made sure that copies of both letters were sent to Congress. I was not certain, however, if the General was assuring Congress of his loyalty or showing Congress that it must act more vigorously to help the army.
There were even calls from within Congress for the General to head up a military dictatorship, such as the call in 1781 from the Rhode Islander Ezekiel Cornell.
And then there was the statement of Congressman William Hooper of North Carolina, calling the General “the greatest man on earth” and leaving the conclusion to the imagination of the reader. Letters expressing such sentiments reached the General with rising frequency as the war proceeded, and I don’t know how many people whispered such sentiments in the General’s ear. Some of these sentiments weren’t just whispered. Why, just a year and a half ago, I heard General Cornwallis at a dinner a day after his surrender at Yorktown say, “Well, General, it looks like the colonials will be exchanging one George for another.” I didn’t hear the General say anything in response; he had never indicated to me he approved such sentiments. And yet . . .