The Most Dangerous Hour: How General George Washington Prevented a Military Coup

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With nothing but a pair of glasses and his matchless prestige, General George Washington prevented a military coup and saved the American Revolution from ruin at a tense meeting with the officers of the Continental Army in the Temple of Virtue, the officers’ assembly hall at the army’s encampment in the Newburgh-New Windsor area of New York on March 15, 1783.

The dawning of the year 1783 found the officers of the Continental Army on the verge of revolt against the Confederation Congress. For nearly eight trying years, despite facing chronic shortages of essential supplies like food and clothing, little or no pay for their service, and an endless number of other hardships, they had fought, sacrificed, and suffered beside their fellow soldiers in the struggle to secure American independence. “We have borne all that men can bear," stated a petition from army officers to Congress.1 Now, with the end of the conflict on the horizon as representatives of the warring powers hammered out terms to conclude the Revolutionary War, the officers of the army feared that they would never receive the back pay or pensions that they had earned for their service. As one anonymous “fellow officer” warned in a widely circulated address to his fellow officers, “If this, then, be your treatment while the swords you wear are necessary for the defense of America, what have you to expect from peace. . . . [?]”2

Despite the officers’ frustrations, Congress had been trying to find a solution to pay the army what it was owed. Doing so, however, proved exceedingly difficult. Congress was bankrupt and the country’s finances were in complete disarray. Part of the problem was that under the Articles of Confederation, which was the first American constitution, Congress did not have the power to tax the states. Instead, as one historian explains it, Congress was forced to rely “on irregular, voluntary payments from the states known as requisitions to raise revenue.”3 Between self-interestedness and dealing with problems of their own due to the country’s dire financial straits, the states’ record of providing Congress and thereby the army with the money and resources that they needed was slipshod at best. This futile arrangement made prosecuting the war against the most powerful empire in the world a desperately difficult challenge for General George Washington and the soldiers of the Continental Army.   

No one understood better than George Washington how much his officers and soldiers had struggled and sacrificed during the long war. He had been there by their sides from the very beginning, leading the way and sharing in their hardships across every trial and tribulation. “The patience, the fortitude, the long and great suffering of this army is unexampled in history,” wrote Washington to a congressman from Virginia.4 It frustrated the commander in chief that he could not do more for his men besides imploring Congress to honor its debts to them. With officers and soldiers soon set to return home while still being owed as much as six years’ back pay, Washington understood their fears and deeply sympathized with them. As he wrote about their unfair predicament, “without one farthing of money to carry them home, after having spent the flower of their days, and many of them their patrimonies, in establishing the freedom and independence of their country, and suffered everything human nature is capable of enduring on this side of death . . . without one thing to soothe their feelings or brighten the gloomy prospects, I cannot avoid apprehending that a train of evils will follow. . . .”5

George Washington was right. A dangerous plot was underway. In what is remembered to history as the Newburgh Conspiracy, some politicians and businessmen with their own economic interests were colluding with disgruntled officers in the army, hoping to use the threat of a military revolt to force Congress to pay up. Washington was approached about taking a leading role in the scheme in order to more safely “guide the torrent.”6 The commander in chief desperately wanted justice for his men, but participating in a cabal against the civilian authorities was something that he absolutely would not do. An earlier iteration of Congress had placed its supreme trust in Washington when it named him commander in chief of the Continental Army in June 1775. Washington considered that trust to be a sacred one. He hadn’t betrayed it during the darkest days of the war, and he certainly wasn’t going to do so now. Washington was also a firm believer in the republican principles for which the war against the British Crown was being waged. Part of the way that he demonstrated those beliefs was by always faithfully obeying the civilian authorities and ensuring that the military remained subordinate to their jurisdiction. As Washington had explained earlier in the conflict, “When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen. . . .”7 It was for all these reasons and more that Washington absolutely rejected participating in the plot and warned that his officers were “wavering on a tremendous precipice” above “a gulf of civil horror” that threatened to “deluge our rising empire in blood.”8

Matters came to a head in March 1783 when papers written by an anonymous “fellow officer” began circulating at the army’s encampment in the Newburgh-New Windsor area along the banks of the Hudson River in New York. The author encouraged his brother-officers to take bold steps in order to get what was owed to them by Congress. Those steps included threatening to disband the army, which would leave the country at the enemy’s mercy. Another option presented to the American officers essentially argued for a military takeover, proposing that even if the peace process was completed, terminating the war, they should refuse to lay down their arms and march on Congress. There was clearly much to discuss and the author called for the officers to assemble in a mass meeting on March 10.

With the fate of America’s future hanging in the balance, George Washington swiftly responded to the challenge. He denounced the proposed gathering as “irregular” and “disorderly.”9 Taking back control and giving the men a proper outlet for “mature deliberation,” the commander in chief proceeded to call for an official meeting of his own in the officers’ assembly hall known as the Temple of Virtue at noon on Saturday, March 15.10 Washington also implied that he would not be present at that meeting, setting the stage for a dramatic surprise.

Tensions were high as the officers gathered in the Temple of Virtue on the Ides of March, a famous date from the ancient Roman calendar when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, thereby associating it with misfortune and doom. Whereas Caesar and his contemporaries had contributed to the demise of the Roman Republic in the pursuit of personal power or for their own self-interest, however, the man who slipped through a side door into the crowded hall in New Windsor, New York sought to raise the American republic up and to use his immense power responsibly to affect that noble end. To the astonishment of the American officers assembled here, George Washington had entered the building.

Standing before a sullen and hostile crowd, a fiery George Washington embarked upon one of the most important speeches of his life. In an excellent summation of what became known as the Newburgh Address, Washington biographer John Rhodehamel writes that the commander in chief reminded his “officers of the true meaning of their Revolution. The Continental Army had fought not only to preserve American liberties from a perceived threat of tyranny. They had fought a revolution to create a republican society. A republic’s vital spark was the virtue of its people. The survival of a republic required that those citizens with ambition and talent sacrifice their own interests to the greater good of their country. This the army had done for eight years. For the officers to repudiate their selflessness in the final passage of the great struggle would” be the ultimate betrayal of virtue and all they had fought for.11 As Washington said himself, by abandoning their plot against Congress and completing the great work they had fought and struggled so much for, “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.’”12 Washington ultimately implored the men to remain patient and trust that Congress would do right by them in the end.    

Despite Washington’s powerful plea, many of the officers still seemed unmoved by their commander in chief. Then came the magical moment. In an hour that could make or break the American Revolution, Washington reached into his pocket to retrieve a letter from Virginia Congressman Joseph Jones, who had pledged his support to helping find justice for the army. As Washington began to read that letter to the men, he struggled and stumbled, forcing him to reach into his pocket again for a new pair of spectacles. The sight of a bespectacled George Washington was something that almost no one in the room had seen before. Prior to this meeting, Washington had only worn them around his closest military aides. After slowly putting them on, Washington said, “Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in the service of my country and now find myself growing blind.”13 Washington proceeded with reading the letter and then left the hall without saying another word.

The final act of Washington’s Newburgh Address changed everything, opening up the hearts and minds of his men. Everything their commander in chief had been talking about in his speech really hit home now. Washington had been “among the first who embarked in the cause of our common country,” he had never left their “side one moment, but when called from [them] on public duty,” and he had been their “constant companion,” witnessing and sharing in their many hardships throughout the war.14 George Washington truly had always been there for his men, sacrificing more than anyone, and setting the most upright example along the way. How could his officers abandon him and their worthy cause now? Strong emotions gave way and Washington’s officers began to openly weep. As Major Samuel Shaw reflected, “[Washington] spoke - every doubt was dispelled, and the tide of patriotism rolled again in its wonted course. Illustrious man! What he says of the army may with equal justice be applied to his own character. ‘Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’”15 Having found their way back to the light, Washington’s officers immediately passed a resolution declaring their loyalty to civilian government. The threat of a military coup was over. George Washington had done it again, saving America from ruin at another crucial moment in its young history.

Following his Newburgh Address, as Washington had promised his officers, he continued to urge Congress to compensate them for their service. Congress did ultimately grant them a lump sum of five years’ full pay. More good news also arrived shortly after. On March 26, Washington learned that a preliminary peace treaty had been signed in Paris earlier that year. A proclamation of a cessation of hostilities followed soon after and operations would continue to wind down until the final peace treaty was signed later that fall, ending the Revolutionary War and formally recognizing the United States an an independent nation. Because of George Washington’s strong stand to prevent a military coup, America could go on to enjoy that independence and take its place on the world stage as a beacon of personal liberty, a refuge for the downtrodden, and a land of hope for “unborn millions.”16

As the great Washington biographer James Thomas Flexner once wrote, “American’s 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.”17 America’s revolutionary generation certainly understood and never forgot the magnitude of Washington’s Newburgh Address. That generation knew that the storybook of mankind was replete with examples of ambitious men who took advantage of unique moments in history to seize power for themselves and to never give it up. With the massive popularity and power that he wielded, it would have been easy for Washington to exploit his officers’ discontent, using his army to seize power from Congress, and setting himself up as a king. Given the seriousness of the Newburgh Conspiracy, America’s founders recognized that the Revolution might have ended very differently without someone as trustworthy as Washington in command. As Thomas Jefferson later wrote about the significance of Washington’s admirable leadership in that perilous moment, “the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.”18

Notes:

1. Richard Brookhiser, James Madison (Basic Books, 2013), 33.

2. Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (Simon & Schuster, 1997), 42.

3. Michael Hattem, "Newburgh Conspiracy," George Washington's Mount Vernon.

4. Jay A. Parry, et al, The Real George Washington (National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2009), 377.

5. "From George Washington to Benjamin Lincoln, 2 October 1782," Founders Online, National Archives.

6. John Rhodehamel, George Washington the Wonder of the Age (Yale University Press, 2020), 187.

7. "Address to the New York Provincial Congress, 26 June 1775," Founders Online, National Archives.

8. Rhodehamel, 187.

9. "General Orders, 11 March 1783," Founders Online, National Archives.

10. Ibid.

11. Rhodehamel, 187-188.

12. "From George Washington to Officers of the Army, 15 March 1783," Founders Online, National Archives.

13. Rhodehamel, 188.

14. "From George Washington to Officers of the Army, 15 March 1783," Founders Online, National Archives.

15. Parry, et al, 385.

16. "General Orders, 2 July 1776," Founders Online, National Archives.

17. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington In the American Revolution (Little, Brown and Company, 1968), 508.

18. Rhodehamel, 192.

Bibliography:

Bobrick, Benson. Angel in the Whirlwind. Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Brookhiser, Richard. Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Brookhiser, Richard. James Madison. Basic Books, 2013.

New Windsor Cantonment | George Washington’s Mount Vernon, www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/new-windsor-cantonment.

Newburgh Address | George Washington’s Mount Vernon, www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/newburgh-address.

Newburgh Conspiracy | George Washington’s Mount Vernon, www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/newburgh-conspiracy.

Parry, Jay A., et al. The Real George Washington. National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2009.

Rhodehamel, John. George Washington the Wonder of the Age. Yale University Press, 2020.

Photo Credit: painting by Jane Sutherland/George Washington's Mount Vernon