Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (49 page)

He then asked, “How are [these interests] to be promoted?” The address of the anonymous group behind the initial call for a meeting had proposed two possibilities to the officers: “remove into the unsettled Country—there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful Country to defend itself.” Or, if peace comes, “never sheath your Swords, says he, until you have obtained full and ample Justice.” Washington took these suggestions apart, exposing their fatuousness and finally, in exasperation, dismissing them as “impracticable in their Nature.” Along the way he nearly exploded with fury, saying “My God! What can this writer have in view by recommending such measures?—Can he be a friend to the Army?—Can he be a friend to this Country?—Rather is he not an insidious Foe?—Some Emissary, perhaps, from New York, plotting the ruin of both, by sowing the seeds of discord & seperation between the Civil and Military powers of the Continent?”

By this point in Washington’s address it had become clear that he believed that the army held the fate of the Revolution and the United States in its hands, and he feared that if the army moved against the Congress, the Revolution and the new nation might be lost. To prevent such an outcome, he then confessed that he could not “conclude this Address” without giving his “decided opinion” that Congress “entertain exalted sentiments of the Services of the Army;—and from a full conviction of its Merits & sufferings, will do it compleat Justice: That their endeavors, to discover & establish funds for this purpose, have been unwearied, and will not cease, till they have succeeded.”

The address to the officers then explained the slowness of congressional action on back pay and pensions. Congress, “like all other large bodies representing a variety of different interests to reconcile,” deliberated slowly. Why should the army distrust them? he asked, and in their distrust “adopt measures” that “may cast a shade over the glory which has been justly acquired; and tarnish the reputation of an Army which is celebrated thro’ all Europe, for its fortitude and Patriotism?” Such action, he said, would not “bring the object we seek nearer—No!—most certainly in my opinion, it will cast it at a greater distance.”

Lest anyone doubt his commitment to the army, Washington then declared it—simply and directly: He was grateful, he said, for the confidence
his troops had placed in him, and he confessed “the sincere affection I feel for an Army I have so long had the honor to command.” This feeling obliged him to declare his determination to strive for “compleat justice for all your toils & dangers,” and, he reassured them, “you may freely command my services to the utmost of my abilities.”

Reminding the officers of what he had done in the Revolution and would continue to do, he ended the major part of his address by calling on them to refrain from repudiating their own enormous sacrifices and instead to “express your utmost horror & detestation of the Man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our Country & who wickedly attempts to open the flood Gates of Civil discord, & deluge our rising Empire in Blood.”

This plea was a challenge to the officers to match not only his standards of conduct but their own during the entire course of the war. The Revolution was at stake, and so was their “own sacred honor,” the “rights of humanity” and the “National character of America.” Should they do so, he insisted, “you will give one more distinguished proof of unexampled patriotism & patient virtue.” And “you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for Posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to Mankind, ‘had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’ ”

This final declaration of the importance of the officers’ conduct was brilliantly phrased in Washington’s taut and tension-filled prose. Ending on such an emotional note seemed, somehow, to leave the crisis unresolved. What then? What can a speaker—in this case a great commander, known for his restraint and his apparent remoteness—do? Washington stood silently for a few moments, looking at his audience, and they, seated, at him. He felt dissatisfied with what he had said, felt that he might not have persuaded these officers that Congress could be trusted to give them—in the parlance of these tense days—“justice,” and in his uncertainty he pulled a letter from his pocket written by a member of Congress. The letter, really a pledge, contained a promise that Congress would fulfill its obligations to the army, obligations as the officers defined them. Washington began to read the letter to the officers, or tried to read it—he stumbled over the words, apparently in difficulty seeing the text. He then stopped and pulled his spectacles from his pocket, saying as he did so, “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.”

The response to this statement, by the officers sitting before him, has been described as evoking their tears. The man standing before them had long commanded their respect and even their affection. They probably had brought to the meeting an animosity toward Congress; they were tired of sacrifice, and weary of excuses and delays in getting paid. Washington had surprised them when, unannounced, he walked into the meeting. Most surely were moved by his talk of sacrifices they had made and by evocation of the glorious cause. They also knew that they could believe his promises that he would stand with them. They indeed were willing to wait on Congress, knowing that the greatest man in America was with them.

Some undoubtedly
were
in tears; all listened as he finished reading the letter. He spoke no dramatic farewell. He simply stopped when he finished reading the letter and left the room. He did not know it then, but he had smashed an enormous threat to the Revolution.

While the struggle at Newburgh was being resolved, other mundane problems still festered. Washington fretted over peace, as well he might, for the negotiations that Franklin had incited almost exactly a year before, in March 1782, seemed endless. The armies on both sides had heard rumors soon after that agreement was near, and then, at the end of November, that the preliminary articles had been signed. Washington’s pessimism regarding British willingness to accept independence lingered even after he was told that the king had come to accept the loss of his colonies. Through all of the uncertainty and the speculation about the king and Parliament, his hope for the end of the war ran up against his profound fears and hatred of the British. Banishing his conviction of British “duplicity”—the mildest of the words he used to describe the enemy—was almost impossible for him. A few days after the affair at Newburgh, he was informed by Congress and General Carleton, the British army commander, that both sides were in full agreement and that formal approval would follow soon, as it did on September 3.
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Planning for demobilization in America was already under way. Washington wanted to know when the British would give up the posts
they still held. The principal one was New York, and Carleton promised to evacuate his army by late December, a promise he would keep. But British units would remain in the Northwest long after this date. Washington also looked forward to recovering American property in British hands. Slaveholders everywhere in America began clamoring for the return of their slaves, men and women who had fled to New York, enticed by British offers of protection and freedom. Well before the British departed America, Carleton and Washington had met in Orangetown, New York, to discuss methods and procedures for the evacuation. Carleton was sick that day, and the meeting was short, but arrangements both before and after were worked out fairly easily.
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Only one problem could not be resolved: the American claim to the black slaves who had found refuge in the city. Washington provided Carleton with the names of some but could not give a full list. Before the matter of the slaves could be discussed, several thousand had already sailed off on British ships—most, apparently, to Nova Scotia. When Washington and Carleton met, six thousand loyalists and slaves had already been taken away. The seventh article of the Treaty of Paris promised that in their withdrawal from the United States, the British would not carry “away any Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants,” a provision Washington apparently did not notice when he first read the text of the treaty.
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In the May meeting, Carleton explained that “it could not have been the intention” of the British government to violate their “Faith to the Negroes” who had come to their jurisdiction under the terms offered earlier. Carleton also pointed out that sending the slaves back to the Americans would be sending some to their executions and others to less severe punishments.
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Washington did not argue the case, though several of his slaves, he said, were among those who had fled to the British. He had come to the conclusion earlier in the arrangements for British withdrawal that there was little chance the slaves would be returned. He sent this conclusion to several of the claimants, including his friend and fellow planter Benjamin Harrison. He seems not to have felt surprise or disappointment at the British decision. He was neither an abolitionist nor a rabid slave owner, and he did not give much time to thinking over the plight of slaves, in or out of American hands.
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Unlike American slaves, American Indians found no place in the peace treaty—not that they would have welcomed any mention of
themselves as unfair as that accorded slaves. They did not attend the conference in Paris held by the treaty-making powers, and would not have been served well by being there. The British at this meeting took the easiest course for themselves, as if to say that since there was nothing more that the Iroquois or any other tribe could do for them, they saw no reason to defend Indian rights in western lands, and it is likely that many Americans wanted to face the Indians—and perhaps subdue or destroy them—unencumbered by the advice or action of others.

The American attitudes were not exactly Washington’s. He shared the general dislike, perhaps hatred, of Indians by many Americans. From an early age, when he was the colonel of the Virginia Regiment, he felt the common revulsion. The Indians for him were “wild beasts,” “wolves,” “savages”—dangerous and treacherous, the enemies of the stability and order prized by the whites. But, to be sure, they possessed attributes that he admired, especially their fighting skills which he felt were common to savages and wild animals. He also had reason to praise their aptitude for bushfighting and their helpfulness in fighting the French when their interests were involved.
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Now that the British had been repulsed and the West was an open preserve, Washington could see that the violence marking life there would increase. The root cause could not be ascribed to the Indians, however. In the absence of the British, settlers would pour in, and with them speculators and monopolizers of land indifferent and hostile to Indian claims of use and ownership.

The result would be bloodshed and war. He did not spare the intruders from responsibility, calling them “avaricious men” and a “parcel of banditti.” He did not include honest American farmers under these designations, but the implication in what he wrote was that by their presence they might spur the Indians to violence. The grim prophecy was made in letters to James Deane, a leading member of a congressional committee charged to look into the West.
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Understandably, Congress looked to him for advice on Indian affairs. The policy he recommended reached back to the British attempt in 1763 to bar settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains by a proclamation line. Washington proposed that such a line be drawn, beyond which no settlement or intrusion would be allowed. In the areas where the Indians lived inside or beyond the line and in which settlement was proposed, the whites should purchase the land, not seize it by force.
Such a possibility existed, for the Iroquois still lived in northern and western New York. Their expulsion would evoke a violent reaction leading to war, an expectation shared by both Philip Schuyler of New York and Washington.
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Washington’s ideas were recommendations, and in 1783 he could only announce them, not put them in place. What seems most impressive in them was his manifest desire to deal justly with the Indians and his proposal that whites enter into contracts with them. His arguments were clearly put, emphasizing the likelihood of bloodshed if old methods of aggressive seizure by whites were continued. He had seen too many of these blatant attempts—the most recent being the armed expedition into the West in 1779 that had destroyed Iroquois villages and tribesmen, a foray that he had opposed, though Congress backed it. Finding a way of settling the West that avoided such destruction, thus saving the lives of settlers as well as of Indians, had to be done quickly, he believed, or the new United States, with a border hundreds of miles away on the Mississippi, would plunge into a new, terrible war.
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After much effort, the British, their ships loaded with troops, loyalists, and blacks, sailed from New York in late December. Washington said nothing to them at the moment of their leaving. He was thinking of his own departure from the American army, a happy series of ruminations on the previous eight years dampened by worry over the men he had led—officers and enlisted soldiers. Of equal concern was the American nation, its condition and future.

Saying farewell to the officers and men of the army was necessary—for him and for them. Before he spoke to them, he urged Congress to give its thanks to the army for its service and suggested that the delegates send a committee to Newburgh, carrying formal appreciation for the sacrifices that ordinary men had made for their country. By this time—the second half of the year 1783—it was increasingly clear that Congress would not meet the army’s demands that officers who had served until the end of the war receive pensions. Congress, which had twisted and turned during the last years of the war, now approved action calling for an accounting of what was owed enlisted men. Officers, who had been counting on half pay for life, were now to receive
notes worth five years of pay—pensions, in effect, that would earn 6 percent interest per year. Washington declared his satisfaction at this promise but, concerned that money owed the officers would be slow in coming, proposed that at least three months of pay be given each officer leaving the service. Without such an advance in pay, officers would go home as paupers, and suffer the humiliation such men usually received.
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