American Crisis

by William M. Fowler Jr.

While no surviving evidence exists directly linking Morris’s and Hamilton’s letters, given their timing and purpose, and the fact that for months the two men had been working closely together, along with several other nationalist-minded members of Congress, to advance their political agenda, they clearly collaborated. Hamilton began his letter to Washington with soft words: “Flattering myself that your knowledge of me will induce you to receive the observations I make as dictated by a regard to the public good, I take the liberty to suggest to you my ideas on some matters of delicacy and importance.” The state of finances and the army were “critical.” “There has scarcely been a period of the revolution which called for more wisdom and decision in Congress.” Congress, however, was “not governed by reason [or] foresight, but by circumstances.” The circumstance Hamilton feared most was peace. “If peace should take place,” Congress would have “no necessity for [the army.]” Once the soldiers “lay down their arms, they part with the means of obtaining justice.” The army, he urged, could not lay down its arms. “The claims of the army urged with moderation, but with firmness may operate on those weak minds [Congress] which are influenced by their apprehensions more than by their judgments.” In making these observations, Hamilton realized that the army was a dangerous tool to be used against Congress. “The difficulty will be to keep a complaining and suffering army within the bounds of moderation.” “This Your Excellency’s influence must effect.” Washington was “not to discountenance their [the army’s] endeavors” but “to take the direction of them.” The commander in chief was to “guide the torrent.” Hamilton concluded his suggestive letter by striking a personal blow at his former commander. He hinted that his soldiers had lost faith in him. Rumors were circulating in the army, according to Hamilton, that the general, out of a concern for “delicacy,” had not been “espousing its interests with sufficient warmth.” He assured Washington, “The falsehood of this opinion no one can be better acquainted with than myself, but it is not the less mischievous for being false.” In the present crisis these suspicions would “impair that influence, which you may exert with advantage, should any commotions unhappily ensue.” Then, as if to suggest that Washington might need counsel from someone more in tune with the soldiers, Hamilton added a postscript to his letter, further evidence that he knew the contents of Morris’s letter to Knox. “General Knox has the confidence of the army and is a man of sense. I think he may safely be made use of.”46

  Neither Washington nor Knox responded immediately to their Philadelphia correspondents. It took Knox a week to conjure a reply. Washington took more than twice that time. Given Hamilton’s closing remark about Knox, to say nothing of the close relationship between Knox and the commander in chief, it is likely that the two generals conferred. Perhaps they even shared letters. In any case they almost certainly took counsel with Colonel Brooks, who had the “particulars.”47

  Precisely what Brooks might have advised Knox and Washington is not clear. Having sent him as their emissary, the nationalists must have expected that he would urge the two generals to support their efforts and use the army to pressure Congress directly. If this was Brooks’s mission, it failed. Brooks may have been unpersuasive, or more likely, perhaps he never did embrace the nationalist agenda and simply nodded agreement at the Philadelphia meetings, waiting to return to Newburgh and inform Washington of the plot afoot. Once beyond the noxious political fumes of Philadelphia, Brooks could have seen clearly the horror that would unfold should the army enter politics.

  Shortly after meeting with Knox and Washington, Brooks reported to the committee of officers who had dispatched him, McDougall, and Ogden. According to Timothy Pickering, who was present, all the colonel offered to the group was a “broken recitation of matters already mentioned in the letter with no mention of consequences,” a sanitized version of the situation in Philadelphia so as not to excite the officers to untoward action. Pickering later alleged that before Brooks met with the officers he had “closeted” with Washington and Knox and had committed “treachery” by revealing to the generals all that had gone on in Philadelphia.48 John Armstrong, an aide to General Gates, agreed, calling Brooks a “Villain.”49

  After meeting with Brooks, and perhaps consulting with Washington, Knox made his reply to Gouverneur Morris.50 It was a short and cool letter. The general made no attempt to respond directly to Morris’s condemnation of Congress or his call to action. Instead he referred to the politicians in Philadelphia as “good patriots” who, while gone astray, were yet redeemable and who could be “taught” by “proper authority.” He then turned the tables on Morris. Since “the present constitution is so defective,” he asked, “why do not you great men call the people together, and tell them so.” With remarkable prescience he went on to urge that the “great men” call the states to a convention to draft a better constitution. This undoubtedly is what he meant by “proper authority.”

  Carrying affairs to a new extreme, on February 12 McDougall, writing to Knox under the pseudonym “Brutus,” went so far as to touch on the possibility of an army mutiny and violence.51 Knox was thunderstruck. Lest there be any misunderstanding about where he stood, on the same day that he responded to Morris, Knox let loose a thunderous volley against any suggestion that the army should sully itself by meddling in politics. “I consider the reputation of the American Army as one of the most immaculate things on earth,” and “I hope to God [it] will never be directed than against the Enemies of the liberties of America.”52

  Rebuffed by Knox, the nationalists were running out of time. Congress would not be moved on either the impost or half pay.53 News from London added to their anxiety. The king had announced to Parliament that he had agreed to the independence of the American colonies. Peace was coming.54

  While hints of mutiny and violence were being recklessly tossed about, such actions were never likely nor intended. What the nationalists in Congress wanted was for the army, led hopefully by Washington and Knox, to take a stand and refuse to disband until paid. That, they believed, would provoke a crisis sufficient to push Congress to act. Having failed in that part of the plan, they worked to ferment fear within Congress, hoping that they might frighten enough members to tip the political scale in their favor. They even tried undermining Washington’s reputation. The commander in chief, according to Madison, had “become extremely unpopular amongst almost all ranks,” to the point that he might not be able to control the army.55 In a coded message Madison reported to Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, that Washington’s influence was “rapidly decreasing in the army insomuch that it is even in contemplation to substitute some less scrupulous guardian of their interests.”56 To further punctuate the crisis, Robert Morris asked permission to make public his intention to resign.57

  Thus far Washington had remained silent. He had not yet responded to Hamilton. Some interpreted his silence as a kind of consent to action. Hamilton did not share that view. Knox, he suspected, spoke for the commander in chief; indeed, it is likely that Washington may even have seen and approved the letter. Writing from Philadelphia, Baron von Steuben summed up the situation by stating that without Washington or Knox “we are lost.”58 Not everyone, however, was ready to give up. If neither Washington nor Knox would step forward, there remained Horatio Gates, whose turbulent past with Washington and ambition made him an ideal candidate to undermine the commander in chief. He was also the senior officer in command of the army at New Windsor.59

  Chapter Eleven

  Stoked by the disappointing report of the committee to Congress and Colonel Brooks’s “particulars,” the mood of the officers encamped along the Hudson had turned ever more sour. Most were convinced that Congress had turned its back on them and that the politicians in Philadelphia stood ready to heave them over the side at the first whiff of peace. The generals had even more reason for concern. The private letters from Gouverneur Morris and Hamilton, although kept close, worked unhappily on the minds of the two men who mattered most, Washington and
Knox. They now knew for certain that there were men in Congress who sought to use the army for political gain. Washington had faith that he could count on the ever loyal Knox to do his best to soothe discontent at West Point. He was not so certain about General Gates.

  Gates had read the committee’s report and heard most of Brooks’s “particulars,” but he also had his own informants in Philadelphia, among them Richard Peters. A member of a wealthy Philadelphia family with close ties to Pennsylvania’s Proprietary party, Peters abandoned his Tory friends and went over to the Whigs when the Revolution erupted. Recognizing his political and administrative skills, on June 13, 1776, Congress elected him secretary to the Board of War, a position he held for five years. From this perch he looked in the direction of the army, where he came to know every important officer, at the same time keeping a close gaze on Congress and the Pennsylvania Assembly. He and his fellow Philadelphian Gouverneur Morris were much alike: astute politicians, skilled bureaucrats, and avid nationalists. When he left his post as secretary Peters did not abandon politics. On November 12, 1782, the Pennsylvania Assembly elected him a delegate to Congress.1 Having experienced firsthand the dire consequences of a feeble Congress, Peters drew close to the nationalist faction, sometimes sharing his views over dinner and port in the company of the brace of the Morrises, Hamilton, Madison, and others. Madison in particular gave special weight to Peters’s judgment regarding the mood of the army.2

  Shortly after Brooks’s return to camp Gates wrote Peters: “The political pot in Philadelphia Boils so furiously,” he had been informed, “that I suppose as a stranger rides through their town They cry scaldings as they do on Ship board when the tea kettle is lugging fore and aft.” The “Boiling” kettle, thought Gates, might produce a useful brew. “What a Blessed prospect we Republicans have before us.” He closed with a cryptic comment, “The Financier has the prayers of the Army.”3

  Gates wrote from his headquarters at Ellison House east of the main cantonment. Although attractive, the building was not large. Gates took over the house late in 1782 with the unusual understanding that the family could remain. Soon he invited his wife, Elizabeth, to join him, telling her he had “a warm Stone House.”4 That would have been its only recommendation, however, as Ellison House was small and cramped. Gates described it as a “kennel.”5 The general had the only private chamber; the rest of the small rooms not occupied by the family were filled by numerous staff and aides whose constant comings and goings gave a sense of frenzy to the place. As if to remind these men, whose chief task was battling paperwork, of the real cost of the war, in the room below the general “a young officer of the cavalry,” suffering the consequences of a “shocking wound,” lay “dying by inches.” Small wonder that within a few weeks of his invitation to Elizabeth to join him, Gates told her not to come to camp.6

  Gates’s controversial career in the Revolution had earned him a legion of enemies, but whatever his critics’ opinion of him, his young aides at Ellison House, particularly Majors John Armstrong and William Barber and Captain Christopher Richmond, found the general likable, patriotic, and a goodhearted commander. Because of his wispy gray hair, a pronounced stoop, and spectacles hanging at the tip of his nose, they called him affectionately “Granny.”7

  Armstrong came from a well-connected Pennsylvania family. His father, John, had served in the French and Indian War and was remembered famously as the commander of the militia force that destroyed the Delaware village at Kittanning. Later in the same war he, along with Colonel George Washington of Virginia, marched with General John Forbes against Fort Duquesne. The two officers rekindled their friendship at the opening of the Revolution. Congress commissioned Armstrong brigadier general, and Pennsylvania promoted him to major general in the state militia. He served until 1778, when poor health forced him to retire from the field.

  With his father’s encouragement at the outbreak of the Revolution, John Armstrong Jr., barely eighteen years old, headed for New York seeking a commission. One of his father’s comrades from the days of Kittanning, General Hugh Mercer, obliged the ambitious young man and took him on as his brigade major and aide. When Mercer fell at the Battle of Princeton in January 1777, Armstrong lost his patron, but again his father interceded. The senior Armstrong not only had served with Washington and Mercer but also had marched during the war with a young British officer, Horatio Gates. Armed with a letter of introduction from his father, Armstrong found a new patron. Only a few weeks prior to taking command of the northern army in August 1777, Gates appointed him major and aide-de-camp, beginning a friendship that, despite the difference in ages, lasted a lifetime.8

  The thirty-nine-year-old English-born Captain Christopher Richmond entered the service as a lieutenant and paymaster in the Second Maryland Regiment. In April 1780 Washington ordered the regiment to the Carolinas as reinforcement for the southern army under the command of Gates. After Gates’s ignominious defeat at Camden in August 1780 and his subsequent replacement by Nathanael Greene, Richmond accompanied the deposed general to his Virginia home. In the fall of 1782 both men, under orders from Washington, “join[ed] the Army on the North River.”9

  Unlike Armstrong and Richmond, Major William Barber was not a member of Gates’s official family. He was, nonetheless, close to those at Ellison House. Like his two colleagues, he had spent the entire war as a staff officer. Appointed an ensign in the Second New Jersey Regiment, he became aide-de-camp to its commander, Brigadier General William Maxwell. After Maxwell left the service in 1777, Barber took a post with another New Jersey general, William Alexander, Lord Stirling. Early in 1781, when the British invaded Virginia, he went south to join Lafayette’s light infantry as division inspector. Grazed by a cannonball at Yorktown, he took some weeks to recover from his injuries. In January 1782 Inspector General von Steuben appointed Barber assistant inspector of the northern army to serve under the northern army’s Inspector Colonel Walter Stewart.10

  Nicknamed “the boy colonel,” Stewart was reputed to be the “handsomest officer in the Continental army.” He was a well-connected Ulsterman and a prominent Philadelphian.11 As inspector of the army, Stewart was supposed to stay with Washington and the army. Much to the commander in chief ’s annoyance, however, like Quartermaster General Pickering, the colonel seemed unable to pry himself loose from Philadelphia. Stewart pled illness as his excuse for remaining in the city and away from his post, but his recent marriage to the beautiful eighteen-year-old Deborah McClenachan and the arrival of an infant son gave Washington cause to suspect his motives. The commander in chief lumped the young colonel in with a growing list of officers who were doing all that they could to avoid the rigors of a winter camp. He also knew Stewart to be an intriguer and a close friend of both Robert Morris and Horatio Gates.12

  While Stewart dallied in Philadelphia, his assistant Barber took charge of the inspector’s duties at Newburgh. These powers included maintaining all rosters, regulating “the details of the formation and march of all the guards, detachments, etc,” and although he did not ordinarily distribute orders—that was the function of the adjutant general—as inspector he could examine everything. Barber’s position gave him extraordinary independence to collect and communicate information.13

  While we can only speculate about conversations among officers in the crowded quarters at Ellison House during the bleak winter of 1782–83, there can be little doubt that anger and frustration flowed freely. Aside from Gates, all the others were “young men of the Revolution.”14 Most had been in the army from the very beginning of the struggle. They had experienced the humiliation of defeat at New York, depravation at Valley Forge, victory at Yorktown, as well as exhausting marches and endless days of sheer boredom punctuated by the terror of combat. There was no emotion that they had not felt. The ebb and flow of the war had carried them to all parts of America. No longer did they simply know villages and farms of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or New York. They had been to the other colonies, now states, where citizens we
re finding it increasingly comfortable to call themselves “Americans.” They sensed that the Revolution, at least the military aspect of it, was nearly over and hence their usefulness. When they should have been celebrating and wearing garlands of victory, their overriding sentiment was not jubilation but a gnawing sense of abandonment by Congress and country.

  Having finally recovered from his “illness,” Stewart arrived in camp on March 8. He stopped first at Hasbrouck House to pay his respects to the commander in chief. Still annoyed at his long absence, which had added to their own administrative burden, the general and his aides gave him a chilly reception. After the usual formalities Stewart rode to Ellison House.

  Gates and his staff were eager to hear Stewart’s latest news from Philadelphia. His long sojourn in the city had coincided with the intense and fruitless debates in Congress over army pay. Because he was inspector of the northern army, Stewart’s opinion counted, and it was likely sought. His military rank and social standing gave him easy access to the principal players in government, including Robert Morris. There is little reason to think that these men in Philadelphia did not share with the inspector their own opinions on the crisis to the point of divulging confidential information. They would have done so with comfort because they knew Stewart was on their side.15

  In discussing Stewart’s arrival and his role, Gates described him as “a kind of agent from our friends in congress and in the administration.”16 In all likelihood Stewart brought with him the same entreaty that these “friends” had made to Knox, which he had rejected: if the army would carry “the Post the public creditors will garrison it for you.”17 The nationalists’ only hope was an army “in being,” a force remaining in place on the Hudson that could hover and by its presence “intimidate” the states and force Congress into action. Peters told Gates in early March that Congress was on the edge of approving half pay: “We want only one state to get it through.”18 For this to happen, however, the army had to remain intact, refuse any orders to retire, and not allow itself to be dispersed by Congress. Washington and Knox had already made their position clear: they would not defy Congress. Gates was the nationalists’ last best hope.