He remembered every glorious day of victory and every awful day of defeat.
He drifted further back. Another memory; more pain. June 14, 1775. His good friend, John Adams, had introduced a motion in the Congress to adopt the army of Massachusetts and to appoint a commander in chief to lead it. Everyone knew who it would be. George Washington knew it, too. Despite the sincerity of his protests, despite the fact that he had begged a fellow Virginian to oppose his appointment, the motion to name him supreme commander was taken forward. As he had listened to his fellow delegates begin the debate, and not wanting to put them in the uncomfortable position of having to discuss him while he was in their midst, he had stood and walked out of the room.
The following day, he was given word: The vote had been unanimous. He was commander in chief of the continental army. To show their enormous gratitude for his service, the Congress had stipulated the ridiculously high salary of five hundred dollars a month.
Put in charge of an army that didn’t exist, given a salary he’d never accept, with few resources behind him and a violent enemy in his path, he accepted the task with a solemn sense of duty but not much optimism. All that Congress had asked him to do was to take a ragtag group of undisciplined and inexperienced farmers and craftsmen, men who had virtually no combat experience or military training, many of whom were without supplies or even weapons, men who were hungry, without uniforms or, in some cases, boots on their feet, and turn them into a fighting force that could defeat the most frightening army in the world.
It was an impossible task. Yet he knew he had no choice.
He thought back to the letter that he had sent to Martha soon after the commission had been placed on his shoulders. He didn’t remember every word, but the tone of his letter was impossible to forget. I do not want this! Far from seeking this appointment, I have used every power to avoid it! I would rather be home with you! I have been given a trust that is too great for me. But as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me in this service, then I must serve.
Unlike the letter he’d sent to Martha, he remembered with perfect clarity the words he had said to Congress upon his appointment, for he believed them with every ounce of his being: “I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”
He reviewed in his mind the terrible price they had already paid: 4,400 American men killed in battle; 6,200 wounded. Maybe ten thousand killed on British prison ships anchored in New York’s Hudson River.
Then, the most discouraging statistic of them all: sixty thousand American soldiers dead from hunger, exposure, or disease.
Sixty thousand soldiers! Dead from causes that could have been avoided if their civilian leaders had only done their jobs.
If they only had kept their promises.
It was, in fact, those broken promises that had brought them to this point; the most dangerous moment his infant nation might ever face. Another burden thrown upon his shoulders. Another crisis to navigate.
The general opened his eyes. How much time had passed, he did not know, but the red and orange embers had turned black, leaving white and gray rims around the charcoal’s edges. The room was dark, the night quiet. Knowing he had but one chance to change the outcome, he picked up a piece of paper and started writing.
ONE YEAR EARLIER
Colonel Lewis Nicola, commander of a group of wounded soldiers known as the Invalid Regiment, had had enough. The army had gone without adequate food and clothing for far too long. Starvation. Cold. Disease. Beyond the horrors of the battlefield, these were the indignities his men had been forced to suffer.
As hostilities were winding down, it became painfully obvious to Nicola that, once the army was disbanded, Congress would have little incentive to fulfill the promises they had once made: payment for their service, land, and a pension for the wounded. Every day that passed, the entire army—but especially the Invalid Regiment—found themselves less and less likely to be paid. Without help from Congress, his wounded soldiers would live a life of poverty and devastation.
The war would end, but their suffering would continue. His soldiers would be nothing but a footnote to history.
He would not let that happen. He could not let that happen. Not while there was a single breath inside his chest.
Nicola sat at his desk and began to write. The words came slowly at first, but soon they flowed out of him like blood from a dying soldier. He could not stop them even if he’d wanted to—this was his duty.
When he was done, he sealed the letter and called for a messenger. “For His Excellency, General Washington,” he directed as he placed the letter into the messenger’s hand.
LATER THAT DAY
The messenger stood quietly in the corner, his head down, his feet together, as if he were afraid to take up too much space.
George Washington glanced at him, then looked away. He was in a foul mood. But he could not blame the poor man who stood before him. It was not his fault.
Closing his eyes, he shook his head. What was Colonel Nicola thinking?
He tried to hide his anger, but the emotion burned like boiling water through his fingers and he quickly looked away.
If there’s one thing he had learned by sad experience it was the unpredictability of war. The constant uncertainty tossed his emotions about like a leaf in the wind. Up and down he was thrown, the smallest dose of good news filling his day with great pleasure, bad news tossing his heart into despair. Yet, because he understood that the long run was the only thing that mattered, he kept his emotions tightly contained, letting his men see him neither celebrate nor despair.
But he was growing tired now. The war was dragging on, its ending prolonged, its final passage painful and slow. He wanted it finished! He wanted to go home! He wanted to get on with the life that he had put on hold.
Washington glanced down at the letter once again, jumping quickly from paragraph to paragraph, wanting to make certain that he had not misread or misunderstood Nicola’s words.
Sir:
The injuries the troops have received in their pecuniary rights have been, & still continue to be too obvious to require a particular detail, or to have escaped your Excellencies notice.
This gives us a dismal prospect for the time to come, & much reason to fear the future provision promised to officers by Congress.
We who have born the heat & labour of the day will be forgot and neglected by such as reap the benefits without suffering any of the hardships.
We have no doubt of Congresses intention to act uprightly, but greatly fear that, by the interested voices of others, their abilities will not be equal to the task.
I own I am not that violent admirer of a republican form of government as numbers in this country are; this is not owing to caprice, but reason & experience.
Congress has promised all those that continue in the service certain tracts of land, agreeable to their grades. Some States have done the same, others have not, probably owing to their not having lands to give, but as all the military have equal merits so have they equal claims to such rewards, therefore, they ought all to be put on a footing by the united States.
This war must have shown to all, but to military men in particular the weakness of republicks, and the exertions of the army has been able to make by being under a proper head.
Some people have so connected the ideas of tyranny and monarchy as to find it very difficult to separate them, it may therefore be requisite to give the head of such a constitution as I propose, some title apparently more moderate, but if all other things were once adjusted I believe strong argument might be produced for admitting the title of king, which I conceive would be attended with some material advantages.
Republican bigots will certainly consider my opinions as heterodox, and the maintainer thereof as meriting fire and faggots, I have therefore hitherto kept them within my own breast. By freely communicating them to your Excellency I am persuaded I own no risk, & that, this disapproved of, I need not apprehend thei
r ever being disclosed to my prejudice.
—Col. Nicola
Colonel Nicola had come to an obvious conclusion: Congress was the problem. They were too weak. They had no power. All they could do was beg from the states. A republic would never have adequate power to administer such a vast and unyielding group of colonies.
The solution Nicola had come to was equally as obvious, though exceedingly dangerous: a monarchy.
How could this man not see the truth? Didn’t he know what they were fighting for? Didn’t he understand the great experiment they were seeking to achieve? Couldn’t he see the bitter irony of his proposal: fight their British masters for no reason other than to implement another king?
All through the afternoon he suffered. His restlessness continued deep into the night. Finally, knowing that sleep would not come until he had addressed the colonel’s letter, he got up and penned a response to the man who had caused him such despair. His response was severe and uncompromising.
“No occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army, … and [these] I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity. [Your ideas are] the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country.
“You could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. If you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or your posterity, or respect for me … banish these thoughts from your mind.”
Calling for the messenger, General Washington sent his response back to the Colonel. He expected that the matter would be dropped and not brought up again—and he was right. Nicola accepted the response reluctantly, but with genuine humility.
Unfortunately, whether expressed openly or suppressed into the deepest regions of the souls, the sentiments that Nicola had put into writing—and that were shared among many—would not go away quite so easily.
March 15, 1783
General Washington’s Headquarters
Newburgh
Nearly a year after Washington had curtly denied Colonel Nicola’s plea, the condition of the army had not improved.
For the previous year, the resentment of the troops and officers had simmered.
In December 1782, the British fleet sailed out of New York harbor. Though it was an uncertain situation—there were still a significant number of British soldiers in the city—General Washington was confident that the winter would be as tranquil as the summer had been before. With hostilities winding down, he hoped to spend the winter at his home in Mount Vernon.
But the army didn’t disband. They realized that maintaining a united front was their best, and probably only, chance of pressuring Congress to follow through on their promises. It was a recipe for disaster: an angry and rebuffed army, their demands ignored and unmet, festering in a winter camp with no more war to fight except against the men who had betrayed them through their false promises and lies.
The building anger of the army was too much to ignore. Washington knew he could not leave them to their own devices so, despite his yearning to return to Martha and Mount Vernon, he decided to quarter with his army for the winter in Newburgh. He believed that if he stayed with them, rode among them, talked with them every day, if they saw him and felt his presence, he could keep them under his control. He could stop their anger from boiling over into rage.
“The temper of the army is much soured,” he wrote in December, noting that they were “more irritable” than at any time since the war had began.
The general was very fearful of a mass mutiny, or worse. Would the army rise up against their government! Would they resort to the sword “to procure justice?” He knew they might. And they certainly had the power; he had helped forge them into an expert fighting force.
The thought was like a dagger to his heart.
Throughout the following months, Washington expressed his concerns in a series of letters. He was direct in his appraisal of the injustices with which his army had been treated—and in his appraisal that, without intervention, these injustices would soon turn into violence. To Congressman McHenry he wrote, “The patience, the fortitude, the long and great suffering of this army is unexampled in history. But there is an end to all things, and I fear we are very near to this.”
On the long winter nights, he often had to wonder: What shame is about to fall upon the colonies! Is the great experiment of building a republic based on freedom about to come to a disgraceful end, the army not even waiting until the British army had withdrawn before turning on their own government?
What will the British think! Indeed, the same question would sweep through all of Europe. Are the colonies about to shame themselves before the entire world?
Alexander Hamilton was even more pessimistic, feeling that an uprising was inevitable. Open revolt, he thought, was the only way the army could claim their just rewards. He also recognized that some within the army thought that Washington had failed them, unable to secure what they had been promised from the Congress. In one particularly troubling exchange, he even encouraged General Washington not to stand against the army, but to “take the direction from them.”
Washington stewed over Hamilton’s letter for days, before rejecting it completely. He knew that if he and his army became the arbiters of justice, it would lead to a disaster.
Then, on March 10, he had received the final blow. Very discreetly, he was handed a covert memo that he was not supposed to see. A group of senior officers had scheduled a secret meeting. It was time, they had concluded, for the army to take things into their own hands. How many of his officers were involved, he did not know. But he feared that it was many. And maybe every single one of them.
The meeting had been scheduled to take place the very next day. It took all of Washington’s efforts, and all of the goodwill he’d built up over the years, to convince his men to postpone it. He needed time to prepare an answer equal to their complaints.
George Washington had always thought that Alexander Hamilton was being a bit dramatic about discord among the officers. But now, after seeing the truth spelled out on that awful circular, he knew that Hamilton was right.
After spending several hours thinking about what message to send back to Hamilton in Philadelphia, Washington retired to his office to put the words on paper.
Dear Sir,
When I wrote to you last we were in a state of tranquility, but after the arrival of a certain Gentleman, who shall be nameless at present, from Philadelphia, a storm very suddenly arose with unfavorable prognostics; which though diverted for a moment is not yet blown over, nor is it in my power to point to the issue.
There is something very mysterious in this business. It appears, reports have been propagated in Philadelphia, that dangerous combinations were forming in the Army; and this at a time when there was not a syllable of the kind in agitation in Camp.
From this, and a variety of other considerations, it is firmly believed, by some, the scheme was not only planned but also digested and matured in Philadelphia; but in my opinion shall be suspended till I have a better ground to found one on. The matter was managed with great art; for as soon as the Minds of the Officers were thought to be prepared for the transaction, the anonymous invitations and address to the Officers were put in circulation, through every state line in the army. I was obliged therefore, in order to arrest on the spot, the foot that stood wavering on a tremendous precipice; to prevent the Officers from being taken by surprise while the passions were all inflamed, and to rescue them from plunging themselves into a gulf of Civil horror from which there might be no receding, to issue the order of the 11th. This was done upon the principle that it is easier to divert from a wrong, and point to a right path, than it is to recall the hasty and fatal steps which have been already taken.
Let me beseech you therefore, my good Sir, to urge this matter earnestly, and without further delay. The situation of these Gentlemen I do verily believe, is distressing beyond description…. If any
disastrous consequences should follow, by reason of their delinquency, that they must be answerable to God & their Country for the ineffable horrors which may be occasioned thereby.
I am Dear Sir Your Most Obedient Servant.
Washington sealed the letter and said a silent prayer. He would soon point his men to the right path he had written about—he just hoped they would listen.
March 15, 1783
General Washington’s Headquarters
Newburgh
It had been an awful few days.
After reading the letter announcing the secret meeting of his officers, Washington had tried to stay out of sight. He knew he had to talk to his men, but he didn’t yet know what to say.
The previous night had been sleepless, but productive. The speech he would give to his men had come to him, slowly at first, and then rapidly, as though they were not his words at all. In the dim predawn light, he wrote them down on rough, off-colored paper with uneven edges and rounded corners. Slightly damp with sweat, the ink had smeared some of the words together. In his pocket, he had a letter from a member of the Congress who had pledged to support the army, further evidence of the argument he had to put forward on this day.
He was exhausted. His eyes were bleary and his chest was wire tight. But his mind was sharp and clear, focused as a beam of sunlight shining through a portal window. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind what the right thing to do was; the only question was whether his army would listen. Would the reputation he’d built up over years of sacrifice afford him the dignity of a true debate, or would his officers consider him to be a simple figurehead for the Congress whose words counted for nothing?