While Greene fed the men, Baron von Steuben drilled them into soldiers. Under von Steuben’s strict regimen troops of the Continental army mastered the art of maneuver and fire well enough to fit them to stand against British regulars.39
But this new model army would have been of little use if it were not led by the very men on the brink of abandoning the cause, experienced officers. Keeping this skilled cadre in service became a vital goal. In late November 1777 a delegation of disgruntled army officers, led by Colonel Theodorick Bland of Virginia, presented a series of astonishing recommendations to the commander in chief.40
The officers first called for the abolition of all state forces and the formation of a single “grand army” of sixty thousand soldiers under the command of a “captain general.” Subordinate general officers were to be nominated by the captain general and commissioned by Congress. To recognize the elevated status of high-ranking officers, “some order of knighthood and adequate pensions” were proposed. In the matter of pay, officers were thought to be entitled to half pay for life when retired and given the opportunity to sell their commissions. “An Army being modell’d and the officers thus selected, there would be little doubt that order, and regularity and discipline would take place, and that Slovenly dress, straggling, filth and their Concomitants, Sloth, desertion, and disease would be banished. [in] the camps of the American army.”41
Not wanting to offend his officers, but understanding that their proposals were completely out of touch with sentiments in Congress, Washington offered a brief measured response, noting simply that the gentlemen’s recommendations were not practical.42
Although not intended for the eyes of Congress, the officers’ memo found its way to the chamber, where it was greeted with disbelief and sarcasm. James Lovell of Massachusetts described it as the work of “the agitating genius of the Men of Leisure,” while the usual dour secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, fell to sarcasm and with a “roguish sneer” declared that with the adoption of Bland’s proposals “Order and Regularity and Discipline will immediately take place. Every soldier will be clean and neatly dressed, his head combed and powdered …; nay what is more, they will be well fed and their meat will be boiled instead of fried or broiled.”43
While members pummeled such unreasonable proposals, they could not dodge the very real problem of stopping the hemorrhaging of officers. On November 28 they dispatched Robert Morris, Elbridge Gerry, and Joseph Jones to headquarters for a private confidential consultation with General Washington. They met with him over several days in early December. On the tenth, before heading back to Congress, Morris shared the committee’s thoughts with the general.44 He told him that the committee was prepared to present to Congress a series of proposals aimed at making “a Commission a desirable object to the Officer,” including half pay, pensions for widows, and the right of officers to sell their commissions. Washington was skeptical. Because of its “enormous expense,” and the “disgust” it would “give to the people at large,” he told Morris that he doubted Congress would approve. Morris and the committee differed and assured him that they had every “reason to suppose” the measure would be “established.”45 Deferring to their political judgment, Washington came around and gave the measure his public support with the exception of selling commissions—on that point he was silent.46 With the commander in chief ’s endorsement Morris and his two colleagues returned to Philadelphia to present their recommendations to Congress, confident of approval.
“[It is a] design to put our military officers upon the footing of European,” wrote James Lovell, a Massachusetts delegate, to his friend Samuel Adams. “This was in the beginning a patriotic war.” Lovell railed at the idea that officers should be singled out for such an untoward reward, while ordinary soldiers, militiamen, and their widows got no recompense. Lovell reached a high pitch denouncing the plan as nothing less than a conspiracy brought on by “Extortioners” to reward a class of “haughty, idle, imperious” officers, sparing them the necessity to work at honest “labor.” He promised Adams that there would be no “half pay majority in Congress.”47
Lovell understood his colleagues better than Morris. Congress declined to support the committee and instead sent a second committee to visit with Washington. On March 26 Congress took up their report, which was little more than a rehash of the previous committee’s work.48 After considerable debate the report was recommitted to the committee. For the next two months in committee, in Congress, and “out of doors” debate raged. It was, according to the Connecticut delegates, the “most disagreeable question that hath ever been agitated in Congress.”49 To push their program, the pro-pension forces offered a concession: half pay would be for seven years rather than life. With this compromise in hand on May 15, 1778, Congress enacted the measure.50
Although they supported the compromise, nationalists, particularly Gouverneur Morris, remained unhappy. He lay in wait for a year; then on May 24, 1779, he rose and made a motion to provide half pay for life. The chair ruled the motion out of order.51 The indefatigable Morris pressed ahead. Later in the summer, while serving on a committee to review “allowance for the officers of the army,” he slipped into its report a resolution for half pay for life. This proposal got to the floor for debate, but on August 17, 1779, Congress voted to postpone consideration, at the same time recommending that the states grant their own pensions to officers and widows.52 Here the matter rested for several weeks until December 1, when a committee report written by Philip Schuyler recommended half pay for life. It went down to quick defeat.53
Half pay for life stayed in remission until the following October, when again it resurfaced unexpectedly. On October 3, 1780, in a surge of economy Congress decided to reorganize the army by eliminating sixteen regiments and incorporating the rank and file into already existing regiments “by the first day of January next.”54 Fewer regiments meant fewer officers. As of January 1, 1781, hundreds of veteran officers were to be “deranged.” To mollify the distressed officers, Congress resolved that the officers separated from the service “from the time the reform of the army takes place [January 1, 1781], be entitled to half pay for seven years.”55
While the members of Congress thought that their actions were necessary and generous, the commander in chief suggested otherwise. When the president of Congress, Samuel Huntington, asked his opinion on the reduction and compensation, Washington was blunt. At a moment when officers were held by “the feeblest ties” and were “mouldering away by dayly resignations” Congress was doing too little. Even among those who stayed, he warned, this action would plant “durable seeds of discontent.”56 This “brings me,” he wrote, “to that which I have so frequently recommended as the most economical, the most politic and the most effectual that could be devised. A half pay for Life.”57
This time Congress’s rapidly shifting political winds blew in favor of Washington. There had been an almost complete turnover in the House since the last discussion of lifetime half pay.58 In the meantime, as Congress’s reputation soured, the nationalist coalition grew stronger while Washington’s personal reputation rode strong.59 The commander in chief was persuasive and persistent. On October 21, in a reversal of several previous votes, Congress approved 9 to 3 (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey voted no; Delaware was not present) “that the officers who shall continue in the service to the end of the war, shall also be entitled to half pay during life.”60
On January 1, 1781, the bills came due. Officers “deranged” by the October reform began to petition Congress for their promised pay. Whether the members of Congress passed the measure in October without thinking of January, or whether they simply crossed their fingers hoping money would show up in January, is uncertain. Indisputable, however, is the fact that Congress remained impoverished. When a contingent of officers from a Pennsylvania regiment sought their pensions, Congress responded that even though it had “the best opinion of their personal merits,” it was not “practicable to pay
any but those in actual service at this time and even those but partially.”61 Officers continued to press their demands without success. By the summer of 1782 the temper of demands had reached the point that Congress forwarded the petitions to the office of Robert Morris, who was quick to observe that the “dishonorable Neglect” of the states had left the Continental coffers empty.62 The issue came to a crisis over dinner at Morris’s home on July 3, 1782.
Morris had invited Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln, the Philadelphia merchant Pelatiah Webster, and Captain William Judd, a deranged officer of a Connecticut regiment. Conversation focused on a petition submitted recently to Congress by Judd and Webster on behalf of the Connecticut officers seeking their promised pay. This was hardly the first time that Morris had listened to such pleas, but Webster’s voice added a new urgency.63
A member of the class of 1746 at Yale College, Webster spent the early years of his career preaching in western Massachusetts. Finding the ministry not to be his calling and drawn by the promise and opportunity of America’s largest city, Webster moved to Philadelphia, where by the eve of the Revolution he had acquired a tidy fortune. A strong supporter of the Revolution, Webster was also a fierce “hard money” man.64 In a series of pamphlets published in Philadelphia between 1779 and 1783 he laid out a detailed plan for financial solvency that included retiring all paper money, an end to foreign loans, and a course of “general and heavy taxes” that would “give demand to our currency, animate the industry of our people and banish idleness, speculation and a thousand visionary projects.”65 Ironically, nothing could have been more visionary than Webster’s schemes. While professing respect for the states, he was an ardent nationalist and a true republican who with evangelical rhetoric preached a sermon of self-denial, simplicity, and a central government supported by heavy taxes. He abhorred borrowing from abroad. “What we can raise among ourselves is all that we can pay and we cannot attempt expenditures beyond this without bankruptcy.”66 Nor was he optimistic about an early peace since he was certain that the “war may last many years,” for Britain and France would fight to the very last. All the more reason, he argued forcefully, to establish a strong government and sound financial system for “a man who has a long race before him is mad if he exhausts all his strength in the first mile.”67 To float on its own bottom, the Congress needed regular and substantial national revenue.
Webster’s answer was a tax on domestic spirits, whiskey and rum, and imported luxury goods including wine, sugar, tea, and coffee. Such a tax offered the dual benefit of raising money while encouraging public virtue inasmuch as it “would admit a check on consumption.” It would also, according to Webster, only hit the “richer kind of people.” But even these taxes, he recognized, would not be sufficient to fill the public coffers, and so “a small duty of perhaps five per cent on all other imported goods” might be necessary.68 Without a strong competent central government with independent revenue, “our public union with all its blessings” would “dissolve and waste away into its original atoms.”69
Morris was well aware of Webster’s views and in agreement with them. Webster was equally impressed with Morris, once opining that “a good financier is as rare as a phoenix.”70 Undoubtedly the dinner conversation involved a philosophical discussion about public finance, but the main point of the evening was more practical: justice for officers of the Connecticut Line and other deranged Continental officers. The merits of the petition were clear. The question was not the justice of the claim, but rather where the money to satisfy it might be found. According to Morris, “after much Conversation it was agreed that the Secy at War should include the half pay of all deranged Officers in his Estimate of Expence for 1783 and that they should petition for some fund to be provided for paying the same.”71
Two weeks later, on July 17, Webster and Judd laid a petition before Congress, which referred it to the superintendent of finance, who then passed it to the secretary at war. Embedded in the petition was an explosive question. Was the expense of half pay to be born by the Congress or by the states?72 In all of its previous promises to pay pensions Congress had been careful to step back from identifying any specific source of payment. Now the question was squarely before that body. Raising this fundamental issue was part of the plan crafted at dinner. By putting the officers’ claims squarely in the lap of Congress, the nationalists sought to add the burden of half pay to the public debt, which would need to be funded by national taxes along lines suggested by Webster and supported by Morris. The nationalists were playing to the army as their ally.
On July 25, 1782, Lincoln returned with his report. For the moment he dodged the question of who would pay, but he made it clear that there was a solemn promise to pay. “I beg leave to observe that by the resolves of Congress of the 3rd and 21st [sic] of October, 1780 [the Connecticut regiment] was reduced, by which many officers were deranged, to whom Congress promised half pay for life.”
Lincoln enclosed a list of Connecticut officers and gave his apologies that he did not have a complete list for the other regiments as well, but “returns from the different Lines have not been made to the War Office.”73 When (and if) they did arrive, there were likely to be hundreds more officers petitioning for pay. Congress sent Lincoln’s report to a three-member committee (Ezekiel Cornell, Thomas McKean, and Joseph Montgomery). They reported back on the thirtieth “that it is not expedient at this time to grant the prayer of the memorialists.”74 On that note the next day Jesse Root of Connecticut moved that
whereas Congress by their resolution of Oct. 20, 1780 did in consideration of the merit and sufferings of the officers of the army, grant to those who should continue in service to the end of the war or be deranged in pursuance of a resolve of the _____ day _____ of half pay for life:
And whereas application is made by some of those officers for an adjustment of their half pay and Congress having no funds provided for discharging the same;
Resolved, That it be recommended to the several States to carry into effect the resolution of Congress of the _____ day of October 1780 granting half pay for life in regard to the officers in the lines of their respective States; and every State which shall settle with the officers belonging to their respective lines in regard to their half pay aforesaid and cause the U. States to be exonerated there from shall be discharged from contributing any thing towards the half pay of officers in the line of any other state.
If accepted, Root’s motion would have undermined all that Morris and his nationalist allies had worked to create. Clearly, were Congress to direct officers to the states for pay, their loyalties would follow. Morris’s plan required the officer corps, the only viable national institution, to be tied to Congress. Dispersing half pay to local interests would fray the threads of union. There had to be a national army, a national debt, and national revenue.
Root’s motion set off a fierce debate. James Madison of Virginia, a consistent supporter of the impost tax, spoke most eloquently in support of national interests, arguing that “all charges of war are by the Confederation to be paid out of one treasury.”75 Others objected on principle, making the point “that no Country ever gave half pay for Life, which did not maintain a standing Army.”76 Such a measure would allow half pay officers to “strut about the streets” supported in their idleness by the labor of honest citizens.77 Better, they argued, to leave the matter to the “Wisdom and Justice” of the states. Abraham Clark of New Jersey went so far as to claim that Congress and states were not bound by the October 1780 act since it had been passed prior to ratification of the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781.78
Such “sophistical” arguments skirted the central argument.79 In a long letter to his friend John Lowell the Massachusetts delegate Samuel Osgood pinned the argument. “Whenever this is made a serious Question in Congress it will be warmly opposed; because some of the States are exceedingly in Favor of half pay and will do all they can to make the discharging of it a national Matter, from a Supposition, that
it will have a Tendency to cement the Union.”80
As the summer afternoon wore on, the debate became more intense and rancorous. Confident that they had enough votes to remand the issue to the states for settlement, the antipension forces moved the question. Facing certain defeat, supporters of congressional assumption, led by James Duane of New York, asked leave to postpone, arguing that the subject was of “too much importance to be decided in this hasty way.” Objections rose, but most members were happy to push the issue as far away as possible. Jesse Root, the delegate who had unleashed this debate, differed. Before the chair could call for a vote he rose to warn his colleagues, “The army in the field are watching.” If soldiers interpreted a postponement as their being “neglected or trifled with they will either quit the service immediately, or refuse to lay down their arms when the war is over.”81 Root’s caution went unheeded. Congress voted to delay consideration of half pay until “the first Wednesday in January next.”82
Congress’s pusillanimity disturbed Washington deeply. In early October he wrote to the secretary at war that his officers were being “turned into the World … without one farthing of money to carry them home.” They had “spent the flower of their days [and many of them their patrimonies] in establishing the freedom and Independence of their Country,” and now because of congressional inaction they faced nothing but “gloomy prospects.” The commander in chief recited a litany of wrongs done to these men. His army was on the edge of mutiny. “The patience and long sufferance of this Army are almost exhausted, and … there never was so great a spirit of Discontent as at this instant … I cannot be at ease, respecting the consequences. It is high time for peace.”83
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