His Excellency: George Washington (24 page)

Scholars who have studied the Newburgh Conspiracy agree that it probably originated in Philadelphia within a group of congressmen, led by Robert Morris, who decided to use the threat of a military coup as a political weapon to gain passage of a revenue bill (the impost) and perhaps to expand the powers of the Confederation Congress over the states. Washington got wind of the mischief when he learned of petitions circulating among officers at Newburgh that contained veiled threats of action against the Congress if their pensions were not assured. By early March 1783, as the plot thickened, a split had emerged within the officers’ corps between moderates, led by Henry Knox, who were allied with congressional schemers to threaten a coup, and radicals, led by Horatio Gates, who were prepared to act on the threat and attempt a military takeover of the government. For obvious reasons, the secret conversations within the officers’ corps never found their way into the historical record, making all efforts to recover the shifting factions in the plot educated guesses at best. We can be sure that the crisis came to a head on March 11, when the dissident officers scheduled a meeting to coordinate their strategy. Washington countermanded the order for a meeting, saying only he could issue such an order, then scheduled a session for all officers on March 16.
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He spent the preceding day drafting, in his own hand, the most impressive speech he ever wrote. Beyond the verbal felicities and classic cadences, the speech established a direct link between his own honor and reputation and the abiding goals of the American Revolution. His central message was that any attempted coup by the army was simultaneously a repudiation of the principles for which they had all been fighting and an assault on
his
own integrity. Whereas Cromwell and later Napoleon made themselves synonymous with the revolution in order to justify the assumption of dictatorial power, Washington made himself synonymous with the American Revolution in order to declare that it was incompatible with dictatorial power. It was the father lecturing the children on the meaning of this new American family. Here is the most eloquent and salient passage:

But as I was among the first who embarked in the Cause of our common Country. As I have never left your side one moment, but when called from you on public duty. As I have been the constant companion and witness of your Distress, and not among the last to feel, and acknowledge your Merits. As I have ever considered my own Military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army. As my Heart has ever expanded with Joy, when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen, when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it; it can
scarcely be supposed
at this late stage of the War, that I am indifferent to its interests. . . . And let me conjure you, in the name of our Common Country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the Military and National Character of America, to express Your utmost horror and detestation of the Man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our Country, and who wickedly attempts to open the flood Gates of Civil discord, and deluge our rising Empire in Blood.
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There it was, simple but profound. At the personal level, Washington was declaring that he had sufficient control over his ambitions to recognize that his place in history would be enhanced, not by enlarging his power, but by surrendering it. He was sufficiently self-confident, assured about who he was and what he had achieved, to ignore all whisperings of his indispensability. At the ideological level, Washington was declaring that he instinctively understood the core principle of republicanism, that all legitimate power derived from the consent of the public. (Interestingly, Washington seldom used the term “republic” to describe the emerging nation that he, more than anyone else, had helped to create. His preferred term was “empire,” which had imperial and monarchical implications that
were,
in fact, compatible with Napoleonic aspirations.) He did not agree with the versions of republicanism that emphasized the elimination of executive power altogether, and that opposed energetic government as a violation of all that the American Revolution meant. But he was a republican in the elemental sense that he saw himself as a mere steward for a historical experiment in representative government larger than any single person, larger than himself; an experiment in which all leaders, no matter how indispensable, were disposable, which was what a government of laws and not of men ultimately meant.
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Sighting: March 16, 1783

Washington has just entered the New Building at Newburgh, a large auditorium recently built by the troops and also called The Temple. About 500 officers are present in the audience. Horatio Gates is chairing the meeting, a rich irony since Gates is most probably complicitous in the plot to stage a military coup that Washington has come to quash. Everything has been scripted and orchestrated beforehand. Washington’s aides fan out into the audience to prompt applause for the general’s most crucial lines. Washington walks slowly to the podium and reaches inside his jacket to pull out his prepared remarks. Then he pauses—the gesture is almost certainly planned—and pulls from his waistcoat a pair of spectacles recently sent to him by David Rittenhouse, the Philadelphia scientist. No one has ever seen Washington wear spectacles before on public occasions. He looks out to his assembled officers while adjusting the new glasses and says: “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.” Several officers began to sob. The speech itself is anti-climactic. All thoughts of a military coup die at that moment.
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In the summer and fall of 1783, as provisional versions of the peace treaty were publicized and it became clear that American independence was assured, Washington kept drilling the Continental army to new levels of military discipline just in case the diplomatic effort collapsed and war resumed. He was determined to leave nothing to chance. (Ironically, the Continental army was probably best prepared to fight when fighting was no longer necessary.) He barraged the Congress with letters, pleading for justice to the army in the form of guaranteed pensions, even though in his heart he knew that, no matter what the Congress enacted, there was no money to fund the government’s promises. The army, in truth, had always been an embarrassing contradiction to federal and state lawmakers, a source of power and coercion that simultaneously won the war and defied the revolutionary conviction that power and coercion were violations of the natural order. The sooner it was disbanded, its sufferings and achievements forgotten, the better.

As the fullness of the American victory became more evident, Washington summoned his final thoughts on what the triumph meant. If the Newburgh Address was his most eloquent oration, his last Circular Letter to the States, in June 1783, was the most poignant piece of writing he ever composed, a lyrical contrast to the flat and numbing official correspondence—tens of thousands of pages—that a team of secretaries was already transcribing for posterity. It was obviously an inspiring moment that called forth Washington’s most visionary energies: “The Citizens of America, placed in the most enviable condition, as the Sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast tract of Continent, comprehending all the various soils and climates of the World, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, are now by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and Independency; They are, from this period, to be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.”
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The great prize that the war had won, in short, was a continental empire, starting with those lands west of the Alleghenies he had explored as a young man. Washington believed that America’s future as an independent nation faced west to the vast interior rather than east toward Europe. When Lafayette proposed a grand tour of the European capitals as a kind of victory parade, Washington countered with a proposal for an American tour of the “New Empire,” starting in Detroit, going down the Mississippi River, then heading back through Florida and the Carolinas.
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His last Circular Letter also reviewed the recent success of American arms, which he continued to describe as “little short of a standing miracle,” and developed the familiar theme of “a concatenation of causes,” though this time from a higher elevation: “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Suspicion, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, then at any former period.” He then proceeded to identify the treasure trove of human knowledge about society and government that had accumulated over the past century—what was soon to be called the Enlightenment—and its providential arrival on the scene just as Americans launched their experiment with independence. “At this auspicious period,” he observed, “the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be intirely their own.”
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There were two dramatic farewell scenes with the army. The first occurred at Newburgh in early November 1783, soon after word arrived from Paris that the definitive version of the peace treaty had been signed. Washington said goodbye to the ordinary soldiers of the Continental army in an emotional ceremony in which he addressed them as “one patriotic band of Brothers.” He expressed his hope that the states would honor their obligation to fund the promised pensions, and he urged all the soldiery to return to their homes as citizens of the United States rather than as Virginians or New Englanders. He later bid teary-eyed personal farewells, at Fraunces Tavern in New York, to the officers who had served with him for more than seven years, the culmination of an experience they all recognized as the shaping event in their lives as well as the shaping event in American history.
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A final farewell scene occurred in Annapolis, where the Confederation Congress was sitting temporarily. On December 22 a formal dinner and dance was staged to honor “His Excellency.” Washington’s toast at the dinner disturbed some of the delegates—“competent powers to Congress for general purposes”—because of its apparent criticism of the limited powers provided by the Articles of Confederation. At the ball afterward Washington danced every dance, as the ladies lined up in rows, as one witness put it, “to get a touch of him.” At the official ceremony the following day Thomas Mifflin was in the chair, a final irony since Mifflin had orchestrated the earlier campaign to force Washington’s resignation. Now it was coming voluntarily as the culmination of American victory: “Having now finished the work assigned me,” Washington solemnly said, “I retire from the great theatre of Action. . . . I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the enjoyments of public life.” The man who had known how to stay the course now showed that he also understood how to leave it. Horses were waiting at the door immediately after Washington read his statement. The crowd gathered at the doorway to wave him off. It was the greatest exit in American history.
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The earliest known portrait of Washington, wearing his old uniform from the French and Indian War, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1772

A later portrait by Charles Willson Peale, done in Philadelphia in 1787 while Washington attended the Constitutional Convention