The Glorious Cause, page 73
The type of war the Americans fought, with its overriding political objective and its defensive strategy, called for a particular sort of commander. In a war of defense, patience was necessary, and so was prudence in using the army. But caution and the ability to wait were not enough. Both civilians and soldiers needed the action which sustains hope, hope that the war would end with America free. A general with imagination as well as judgment would see that daring might sometimes be necessary. George Washington was such a commander. In the course of the war he demonstrated that he had other qualities as well.
Washington’s judgment improved each year, as he assimilated the experience of the war. His confidence in himself also grew as he learned. When the war began he was full of concern that he would fail because his abilities were not of the first order. This belief persisted even though he also felt that he had been called by providence to lead the American army in the Revolution. By the end of 1776 with a year and a half of the war under his belt, and with the success at Trenton and Princeton, he was a much more confident commander. He was not arrogant, and he continued to consult his general officers before he made important decisions, but he no longer took advice against his better judgment, as he had, for example, in the autumn of 1776 on the Hudson.
Washington came to his post with a feeling for the technical side of his command. He seems always to have known about logistics, and he seems also to have understood immediately the complexity of actually moving an army from one place to another. In fact, whatever the impression his papers convey, his skills at these tasks probably improved just as hisstaff’s did. He was superb in taking the army out of danger at Brooklyn in 1776; his move to Trenton further demonstrated efficiency as well as his daring. And the march to Yorktown with its disguised beginnings and its transport of large numbers of men, artillery, and supplies was simply a superb achievement.
Washington also displayed wisdom in choosing men to assist him. Unfortunately the choice of subordinates did not always fall to him. Congress selected the senior officers and sometimes chose unwisely. Washington was able to make his wishes known, however, especially after the first year or two of the war. Nathanael Greene, for example, replaced Gates in the South on Washington’s suggestion to Congress. Washington’s “family,” as the eighteenth-century army staff was known, included several brilliant young officers; and virtually every member of this group possessed fine abilities.
Successful commanders usually have a sense of strategy. Washington recognized the problems of fighting a powerful enemy with a weak and poorly trained army. He did not like the defensive war he had to fight, but he pursued it with great skill. His tactical abilities, those involved in particular in planning for a battle, were less sure. His most common mistake was to make plans beyond the capacities of his army. This tendency cost him dearly at Germantown. At Kip’s Bay and at Brandywine he was outmaneuvered. His major tactical skill came from an ability to think clearly under fire. He did not flinch when disaster seemed about to overtake his army, as for example, at Monmouth Court House. Nor did he hesitate to seize his opportunities, again one thinks of Trenton and in a different sense—because larger—of Yorktown later.
As important as these talents were, Washington’s temperament and his character were even more important. His fidelity to the Revolution impressed everyone who knew him, and somehow conveyed itself to the American people. Washington did not seek popularity and did not become popular in an ordinary sense. Yet he inspired others, not perhaps so much through his actions, dramatic and stunning as they sometimes were, but through his determination, his refusal to give up, and his devotion to the cause of republican liberty.
That cause inspired the deepest American resistance. The unspoken question in America during the Revolution was “What holds us together as a people?” Before 1760 some sense of commonality with Britain existed, created perhaps from language, blood, kin, trade, liberty, and constitutionalism. Over the years before the Revolution an American experience had loosened the ties. Should Britain do anything that suggested that interests were not mutual, that values were not shared, that commonality had been compromised or did not exist, then resistance to acts impairing liberty was inevitable.
English ministries and Parliament brought on a confrontation. In the war that followed, Americans recognized the ties among themselves. The most important was what they came to call the glorious cause—the defense of republican freedom. This cause and the way it was understood—as a providential struggle of good against evil—expressed the values of American culture and armed Americans for war. The language of this culture, imbued with traditional religious meanings, made the conflict much simpler and much more clear-cut than it actually was. But perhaps simplicity of understanding was an advantage to a people who fought against enormous odds in a conflict that had few precedents in history.
There is no need to take a romantic view of these people. They often faltered, and they sometimes could not match the resoluteness of Washington, but finally they sustained him as he led them. They might have broken had their army surrendered, but they could not have been held down by an eighteenth-century army. Not only were they too many and spread over a large country, in the crisis that began in 1764 they had come to know themselves. And in the war they learned that though they might be defeated, they could not be subdued.
23
The Constitutional Movement
Caesar rode into Annapolis on December 19, 1783. At least some hoped—and others feared—that he was Caesar. He turned out to be George Washington, and as much as he may have admired Caesar he admired the republic more. He had come to Annapolis, where Congress sat, to surrender the commission he had accepted eight years before.
Washington might simply have written a letter of resignation and enclosed his commission. The occasion offered too much of the dramatic and the symbolic to be passed by with such a flat performance, however, and Washington recognized the dramatic and symbolic importance of his resignation as commander in chief. The republic after all was barely on its way; its health was not yet robust; and it was surrounded by atmospheres heavy with monarchy and militarism. Hence he must seize the opportunity to reaffirm the uniqueness of a nation in which a congress, a representative body, held a weightier authority than the military.
Earlier in the year, in March, at Newburgh, New York, a small number of officers, spurred on by a handful of representatives in Congress, had seemed about ready to attempt a coup. These officers, like most in the army, felt outraged that their pay was months in arrears and that Congress opposed pensions for them. In and out of Congress a small, shadowy group resolved to tap this discontent in order to force through an accretion to the powers of Congress. Just how far each group was prepared to go is not clear—and probably was not clear at the time to either one. The officers seem not to have realized that they were being used, and the group in Philadelphia, where Congress then met, may not have known how dangerous the game was. Those in Philadelphia counted Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton in their number; those at Newburgh had the sympathy, but probably not the support, of Horatio Gates.1
The army officers wanted money more than power. Washington knew of their need and had long urged that Congress come to their aid. He knew nothing of the beginnings of the plot in Philadelphia to use the army to threaten military action unless the states granted Congress the authority to tax. When he learned of what was going on, he waited until just the right moment and then confronted the officers in such a way as to bring home to them the enormity of what they seemed prepared to do. That moment occurred in a meeting at Newburgh at which Washington appeared before the officers and made clear his opposition to any military action against civilian authority. In a speech which suggested that the Revolution itself was at stake, Washington urged the officers “to rely on the plighted faith of your Country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress. . . . And let me conjure you, in the name of our common Country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the Military and National character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the Man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our Country, and who wickedly attempts to open the flood Gates of Civil discord, and deluge our rising Empire in blood.”2
This appeal and the example of their commander’s own selflessness restrained the hotheads in the army at Newburgh. Shortly afterward news of peace arrived. With the end of the war the worst of the threat against civil government disappeared, but Washington and others, especially those in Congress, remained uneasy. That anxiety no doubt contributed to the scene played at Annapolis in December.3
And a telling scene it was. After careful preparations ensuring that all knew their parts, General Washington appeared before Congress and galleries crowded with Annapolis gentry at noon, Tuesday, December 23. The secretary announced him and then seated him opposite the president. After the crowd quieted, President Mifflin addressed Washington in the following words, “Congress sir are prepared to receive your communications.” Washington rose, bowed to Congress, who uncovered but did not bow. He then read his speech in a manner that, according to contemporary observers, brought tears to many eyes. Washington himself felt deep emotion—his hand holding the speech trembled throughout, and when he spoke of his aides, those dear members of his military “family,” he gripped the paper with both hands. His deepest feeling, however, was reserved for an even finer moment—when, commending “the Interests of our dearest Country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them, to his holy keeping,” he faltered and was almost unable to continue. He managed the final sentence with greater strength: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”4
Mifflin’s reply on behalf of Congress was composed by a delegate with a skillful pen and full awareness of the symbolic significance of this occasion. That delegate, Thomas Jefferson, put the following sentence in Mifflin’s mouth, which underscored the importance of all that had taken place between the General and the Congress over the preceding eight years—”You have,” Mifflin told Washington, “conducted the great military contest with wisdom and fortitude invariably regarding the rights of the civil power through all disasters and changes.”5
II
That the civil power survived the Revolution as well as it did must in part be credited to Washington. But Congress itself could also claim much credit. It was a jealous body reflecting the suspicions most Americans had long felt of the military. Some of these feelings must have helped shape Congressional attitudes toward demobilization of the army, attitudes that to veterans seemed little more than mean-spirited niggardliness.
The problem for the army and the Congress was not unusual. The army had not been paid, and many of its men faced civilian life with no resources. Officers felt especially badly treated. Three years earlier the Congress had promised half-pay for life to officers who served for the duration. Since then, Congress had slowly retreated from what was widely regarded as both a foolish extravagance and an importation of a European practice inappropriate to a republic. Late in the month of the Newburgh conspiracy, Congress, still frightened, approved commutation of half-pay for life to full pay for five years. And over the next three months most of the army, unpaid as yet, was either furloughed or discharged. A bad moment in the life of the young republic had passed.6
Equally dangerous times lay just ahead. The national debt and the lack of a revenue promised the worst. The size of the debt remained a mystery. One sort of public obligation could be calculated fairly accurately, even though it had been incurred during the war in various currencies, virtually all of which had depreciated. This debt, called “liquidated,” consisted of army pay and the principal of and interest on loan office certificates and foreign loans. The size of the second sort, “unliquidated” debt, owed for money, goods, or services supplied by citizens or the states, could not be accurately determined. The evidence for this debt was not always clear—besides vouchers, claims based on lost or destroyed vouchers and even more shaky testimony were made.7
What the national government needed to meet its annual expenses was not known either. Early in 1783, the best estimates had it that meeting the calls of soldiers’ pay, interest on loans, and day-to-day operating expenses amounted to around three million dollars. Raising this sum through requisitions once news of peace arrived was impossible. The nationalists, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison among them, argued that another attempt to secure a 5 percent impost on imports was worth a try. (The first had been made in 1781—and failed.) But with peace, suspicions of central authority rose again, and the measure Congress passed in April carried severe restrictions on the use of the revenue—provided of course that the states approved it. The impost of 1783 was to be in effect for twenty-five years; the revenues could be applied only toward the payment of the debt; and the states would appoint the collectors.
For the next two years the Congress lived in the expectation that the states would approve the impost. Nine did approve fairly soon after its passage, and by 1786 only New York and Pennsylvania had not. In that year New York approved but with such paralyzing conditions that the Congress declined its terms. Pennsylvania had also imposed rigid terms and in effect was relieved of compliance by New York’s action. By 1787 there clearly was no hope that the impost would win approval by all the states.8
The failure of the impost disappointed the nationalists in the Congress. The failure of the Congress to achieve American sovereignty in the West disappointed almost all its members—and most Americans. By far the greatest expanse of this territory conceded to the United States by the treaty of peace lay more or less under American control. The British army, however, continued to hold strategically located posts along the Lakes from which the fur trade could be managed. Though unstated, the British claim to trade and land seemed clear.
South of the Ohio River, the territory east of the Mississippi also threatened to be lifted from American control. Here Spain, which had not recognized the cession of this land to the United States in the treaty of peace, supplied the threat. The year following peace saw the Spanish close the lower Mississippi to American navigation. The Spanish expected, or at least hoped, that the settlers in what later became Kentucky and Tennessee would give up their American citizenship in favor of a Spanish connection which would allow them to do business through New Orleans. Secession from the United States was a possibility—these settlers felt neglected by Congress and the East.9
When news of the disaffection in the Southwest filtered back to Congress, it ordered John Jay, who had succeeded Robert Livingston as secretary of foreign affairs, to negotiate a treaty with Don Diego de Gardoqui of Spain, who had been sent to convince Congress to ratify the closing of the Mississippi. Jay’s instructions were composed by a committee headed by James Monroe of Virginia. Monroe felt no sympathy for the Spanish case, and he was determined to placate the Southwest. The instructions he and his committee gave Jay took the commonsense line that the treaty of peace with Britain justly represented American interest. Hence Jay was “to stipulate the right of the United States to their territorial bounds, and the free navigation of the Mississippi, from the source to the ocean, as established in their Treaties with Great Britain.” Gardoqui came with firm instructions to stipulate Spain’s claim to the territory east of the Mississippi and to the exclusive right to navigation of the river. The two diplomats had not discussed the conflicting claims very long when Jay decided that there was little chance of altering the Spanish position. Gardoqui insisted that the United States concede the validity of the Spanish claims—in return Spain would agree to a commercial treaty.
Although the Spanish really offered very little in the commercial treaty, Jay proved willing to talk about it before turning to the details of navigation of the Mississippi. And before the negotiations were old, he had virtually agreed to a commercial treaty on Gardoqui’s terms. Jay, like many easterners, feared western growth, which he thought would come at the expense of the old established regions of the seaboard. He also argued in his explanations to Congress that, in event of a showdown with Spain, France would most likely oppose the United States.
Watching Jay in action, Monroe soon came to suspect that he was not following instructions. Jay confirmed these suspicions when he asked for a new commission which would permit him to agree to a treaty giving up the American rights of navigation to the Mississippi for at least twenty-five years. Monroe fought off this request in Congress but not without antagonizing colleagues from New England and New York who sought to protect eastern interests. Rufus King of Massachusetts may have felt especially bitter over Monroe’s opposition. For Monroe accused him of favoring the treaty—and favoring the exclusion of the West from the Mississippi—because of his marriage to “a woman of fortune in New York so that if he secures a market for fish and turns the commerce of the western country down this river [the Mohawk and Hudson] he obtains his object.” Whatever the sources of King’s convictions, he was eager to aid the fisheries, for as he wrote Elbridge Gerry in August 1786, “our fish, and every article we sell in Spain, is sold upon the footing of the most favored nation in that country—this is favor, and not right. Should we embarrass ourselves in the attempts of imprudent men to navigate the Mississippi below the northern boundary of Florida, we can expect no favors from the Spanish government. England is our Rival in the Fisheries, France does not wish us prosperity in this branch of commerce. If we embroil ourselves with Spain, what have we to expect on this subject?”10
