Thank you for that excellent history and references!
George Washington was truly the “Indispensable Man”. He commanded a consistently ragged, underfed, seldom paid, often mutinous amalgam of regulars and militia through over eight years of war. Toward the end after Yorktown but before the peace treaty, his officers in March 1783 were determined to confront the Continental Congress with a list of truly legitimate, morally imperative grievances this body had ignored.
Washington opposed this initiative, which for him was brought into focus by publication in 1775 of the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He foresaw in this undertaking an outcome similar to successful generals leading their legions to destroy meaningful expressions of the Roman Republic. They were replaced with a never-ending succession of Emperors confirmed by a submissive and impotent senate that could place few if any limits on the powers the generals assumed. The officers agreed at least to assemble to hear him once more. His biographer James Thomas Flexner relates what happened next.
“The commander in chief expressed ‘disapprobation of such disorderly proceedings’ (ad hoc mass meeting of officers) as the illegally called meeting. He summoned a meeting of his own for the following Saturday, March 15, 1783. This was probably the most important single gathering ever held in the United States. Supposing, as seemed only too possible, Washington should fail to prevent military intervention in civil government?”
“As he looked at his command, Washington appeared ‘sensibly agitated.’ For the first time since he had won the heart of the army at Cambridge, Washington saw in the faces of his officers not affection, not pleasure in his being present, but resentment, embarrassment, and in some cases anger.”,P. “‘If my conduct,’ Washington said, ‘heretofore had not evinced to you that I have been a faithful friend to the army, my declaration of it at this time would be equally unavailing and improper. 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 common companion and witness of your distresses, 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 risen when the mouth of distraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this late stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests.’ Washington paused to examine the faces before him: they were unmoved.”
“Washington then assured his hearers that it was ‘My decided opinion’ that Congress entertained ‘exalted sentiments of the services of the army’ and would, despite the slowness inherent in deliberative bodies, act justly. He urged the officers ‘ not to open the floodgates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood…..you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of this 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.’”
“Washington had finished his speech, but the chill in the Temple had not thawed. He reached in his pocket for a letter from a member of Congress that showed what the body was trying to do…..The officers stirred impatiently in their seats, and then suddenly every heart missed a beat. Something was the matter with His Excellency. He seemed unable to read the paper. He paused in bewilderment. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. And then he pulled out something that only his intimates had seen him wear, a pair of glasses. With infinite sweetness and melancholy, he explained, ‘Gentlemen you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown grey but almost blind in service to my country.’”
“This simple statement achieved what all Washington’s rhetoric and all his arguments had been unable to achieve. The officers were instantly in tears, and, from behind shining drops, their eyes looked with love at the commander who had led them so far. Washington had saved the United States from tyranny and civil discord. As Jefferson was later to comment, ‘The moderation and virtue of a single character probably prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others had been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish’.”
Americans can never be adequately grateful that George Washington possessed the power and the will to intervene effectively in what may well have been the most dangerous hour the United States has ever known.