George Washington stopped coup d' etat

ONE OF THE most important dates in American history passed unnoticed last weekend. It was the 225th anniversary of the day we didn't become a banana republic. It ought to be a national holiday, right up there with July Fourth. But hardly anybody remembers it any more.

Trouble was, the army hadn't been paid during the war. They were promised that they'd get their money when the war was over; but now that the time had come, Congress was reneging on that pledge.

Resentment rippled through the ranks. About 200 of the highest-ranking officers in the army decided to march the troops to Philadelphia, overthrow the government, and set up a military dictatorship with George Washington as its figurehead -- if he was willing. If he wasn't, they'd do it over his dead body.

They scheduled a secret meeting in Newburgh, N.Y., to plan the final details of the coup d'etat.

But Washington got wind of the meeting and decided to crash it. He walked to the front of the room and started to speak. But the officers remained unmoved.

So he pulled a reassuring letter from a congressman out of his pocket and started to read it to them.

But something was wrong. He seemed confused. He stared helplessly at the paper, unable to make out the words. Every man in the room leaned forward, "their hearts constricting with anxiety," as historian James Thomas Flexner put it.

Then Washington did something none of them had ever seen him do before: He put on a pair of eyeglasses. "Gentlemen," he said, "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."

At those words, those battle-hardened veterans wept like babies. Sobs filled the room. The coup d'etat was over before it began.

A few months later, Washington appeared before the Congress in Philadelphia, handed in his resignation as head of the army, and went home.

It blew everyone's mind. They were all students of history, and they knew that people who start out as liberators almost always end up as tyrants.

It was true of Cromwell and Napoleon, and in our own time it was true of Lenin, Castro and Mao.

But not Washington. He simply walked away. In Star Wars terms, he resisted the temptation of the dark side of The Force.

When King George III heard what he had done, he gasped, "Why, he must be the greatest man in the world!"

And Thomas Jefferson said, "The moderation and virtue of a single character prevented this Revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."

Washington stayed home for the next four years, working on his estate and playing doting grandfather to his grandchildren, George Washington Parke Custis (known to the family as "Washy") and Nelly Custis (after whom I named my late cat).

He came out retirement twice -- in 1787, to chair the Constitutional Convention, and 1789, to become the first president of the United States.

But he refused to run for a third term, even though he would have won in a walk, because he didn't want to die in office. He wanted to hand it over to a fairly elected successor, to establish the democratic precedent.

As historian Gary Wills has observed, he spent his career giving up power, over and over again. But each time he gave it up, he gained something far more valuable: moral authority.

And that's why, when he died, Light Horse Harry Lee called him "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Winterthur has a large collection of the original GW plates that were apparently on the first ship from China for GW in 1784 - 1785.

GW had the Society of Cincinnati motifs painted on the whole shipment : hundreds of pieces.

Apparently, they were his prized porcelain service that he used in New York, Philadelphia...

His grandson then used the service at Arlington House, but Robert E. Lee lost them ...

The Smithsonian, the Dept. of State, White House, the Lee homes ...also have a few pieces.

They are wonderful.

IMO

At the time of this incident, it was time for the troops to go home, and they hadn't been paid in hard money. They had been paid in Continental Dollars, a paper fiat currency backed with the promise to pay in Spanish Milled Dollars. Unfortunately, the federal government had little in the way of Spanish Milled Dollars -- or anything else. As a result, the Continental Dollar began to get discounted by creditors even though the words "legal tender" (forced tender) were printed on them. During the war patriots had been willing to accept this paper currency because there was a war on. (Loyalists preferred British gold and silver.) Once the war was over, that patriotic sentiment was set aside because there were debts to be paid to creditors, and the troops, who were mostly yoeman farmers, were holding paper money that was now becoming worthless. The Confederation Congress was not up to the job of fixing what was wrong because the Articles of Confederation weren't up to the job.

Robert Morris, proprietor of the Bank of North America in Philadelphia, decided to act. With the assistance of Gouveneur Morris (not a relation) they approached Alexander Hamilton and asked him to approach Washington with a proposal. Washington was to take his army to Philadelphia, overthrow Congress and set himself up as King George of America. The nation's finances would be placed on a firm footing, and America would be ruled by a wise monarch. Many of Washington's officers at the Newburgh encampment thought this was a good idea, and Washington found himself with a budding fascist movement on his hands.

What happened next is described accurately in this article. But there was an aftermath.

In 1785, the Bank of North America collapsed, triggering the events that led to the final collapse of the Continental Dollar. The Pennsylvania Militia revolted and took over Philadelphia, forcing the Confederation Congress to flee to Princeton. Hamilton fulminated that Washington ought to return to the military and put down the rebellion in Philadelphia, but it all blew over rather quickly. What didn't blow over was the collapse of the basic currency unit.

At Newburgh, Hamilton had warned the Morrises that Washington would never go for the coup d'etat proposal. When the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia years later, Washington was having dinner in one of the better taverns in town with Hamilton and some other members of his old wartime staff. Robert Morris, now disgraced because of the loss of his bank, made himself scarce, but Gouveneur Morris happened to be dining at the same time. Morris asked Hamilton if he could approach His Excellency, and Hamilton, who knew very well Washington's low opinion of the man, smiled and suggested he try it. (Hamilton had a puckish sense of humor and was fond of practical jokes.) Morris clapped Waashington on the shoulder and gave him a loud welcome to Philadelphia. Washington turned and gave Morris a look that would have frozen brimstone, and Morris skedaddled out of the tavern as Hamilton laughed up his sleeve.

Here's a follow-up. The federal government was still in debt with no way out a decade later. Then they decided that all new territories would be federal land giving the government the right to sell off property and put the money in the federal treasury.

This book provides a history of how some of the early boundary disputes between the states were settled and how Ohio was surveyed and the subsequent retiring of the Revolutionary War debt and the strengthening of the federal government.

http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-America-Boundaries-National-Identity/dp/0802715338/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206154854&sr=8-2

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