The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  Many times I saw the General move audiences. I told you how he had done so prior to the second battle of Trenton with his plea for the troops to reenlist. Just months after Newburgh and the reoccupation of New York City, the General took leave of his closest officers—those who stood with him that week at Newburgh—at Fraunces Tavern near the Battery on Manhattan Island. He had not prepared any speech to my knowledge and had declined my offer to help. All he gave was a simple toast, but all of us who were there were moved to tears.

  “With a heart filled with love and gratitude I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

  The same emotions were evident that fall when he resigned his commission to the Congress, then housed in Annapolis in the hope that a more attractive city might attract more delegates. But only twenty representatives even bothered to show up to honor the man who had probably saved their positions and perhaps their lives. That was a speech I edited, although most of the words and thoughts were the General’s. After referring to the army, forged into a “band of brothers,” he went on, haltingly, “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 leave of all employments of public life.”

  The congressmen there, all of whom thought of themselves as more accomplished speakers than the General, wept, including the presiding officer, Congressman Mifflin, who had been part of the Conway Cabal plot to replace the General.

  And yet on the way out, I heard one congressman remark, “He is a great man; if only he was a great speaker.”

  Humphreys, Walker, and I returned from the Temple to Hasbrouck House that Saturday afternoon. We stood outside the General’s study, eager to deliver the great news.

  Finally, as the General’s chief aide, who the General had commissioned as the reporting scribe on the meeting, I tentatively knocked, and the General bid us enter. I opened the door to the study, where we found the General sitting at his desk calmly reading Henry Hume’s The Gentleman Farmer.

  “Well, Josiah,” said the General rising, “you took notes on the meeting?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Yes, Josiah,” he said, reaching out his hand.

  I turned over the notes, but I could no longer restrain myself. “Sir, the meeting ended most satisfactorily with the officers unanimously approving a resolution endorsing your sentiments. I wrote the text of the resolution for you to see,” I said, pointing to the notes.

  The General sat back down in his chair. As he read the resolution and my other notes, he handed me a draft of a letter to the president of the Congress to be sent the following day. After I corrected some misspellings and grammatical errors, it read as follows:

  I have the honor to inform your Excellency, for the satisfaction of the Congress, that the meeting of the Officers, which was mentioned in my last, has been held Yesterday; and that it has terminated in a manner, which I had reason to expect, from a knowledge of that good Sense and steady Patriotism of the Gentlemen of the Army, which, on frequent occasions, I have discovered. The report of the meeting, with the other papers, which will accompany it, I do myself the honor to transmit to Congress, as soon as they can possibly be prepared. With the highest respect, I have the honor to be your Excellency’s most obedient servant,

  George Washington

  That was it. It was as if nothing had happened, that the meeting I had just witnessed had been perfunctory. There was no mention of the General’s role or his amazing speech. Just the emphasis on the patriotism of the army. For a man I knew to be as concerned about his reputation as anyone, the letter read as if he had not even been present. Then I remembered the General had forwarded the mutinous letters to Congress earlier in the week. The Congress would know or would soon find out from the stories of others what had happened and give the General the credit he was due. For those looking at his note, the General’s reputation for modesty would reach new highs. “What a great man and so modest,” many would exclaim.

  But I knew that the General was as proud and as concerned with getting his due as Achilles. The General, I realized, capitalized on his reputation for being greater than he appeared. As I think back, I realize the General had mastered the art of masking his talents so as to seem less threatening and therefore more admirable. Even when it came to diplomacy, where he always opined to me that “I am no diplomat,” his finesse in handling the French generals and admirals would have made Franklin proud.

  Seeing my bewilderment, the General said, “Josiah, after reading your notes, we shall send a longer and more carefully drafted letter tomorrow or the next day with all the appropriate documents and make the case why the events of today should move Congress to action.” With that comment, he waved us away.

  We walked—or in my case, bounded—out of the General’s study when suddenly the question that had nagged at me since the meeting brought me up short: I thought to myself, Was the whole incident with the spectacles spontaneous or had it been planned?

  I was probably the only officer at the meeting who was even asking such a question. It had, I am sure, occurred to no one else in that room swirling with emotions, but then no one else had observed the General as actor the way I had during the last seven years.

  I was filled with sudden resolve. I must ask him, I thought. I turned, leaving my fellow aides behind, knocked again, and opened the door to his study.

  “Yes, Josiah. What is it?” he said, looking up and fixing me with a stare that indicated his impatience.

  I froze and suddenly I had trouble speaking. “Oh, nothing, sir,” I said, turned, and stumbled out the door.

  Two days later, the General, with my help, drafted a lengthy letter to Congress that flattered that body; extolled the army’s suffering, patriotism, and virtues; pointed to the army’s unanimous rejection of mutiny; and closed by asking for speedy action on the army’s petition. The letter not so subtly tried to shame the Congress, stating that the General could not believe Congress would refuse the army’s petition and leave unpaid Congress’s debt of gratitude. He borrowed from the anonymous letter, asking if “they [the army] are to grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt.”

  The General had emphasized that the recent meeting showed “the last glorious proof of patriotism which could have been given by men who aspired to the distinction of a patriot Army; and will not only confirm their claims to justice, but increase their title to the gratitude of their country.”

  The General again did not mention his own role in the Newburgh threat but alluded to his disinterestedness by reminding Congress that he, the General, who could afford it, had not taken any pay, implying that Congress could not ask such a sacrifice of the less well endowed. In case Congress could not understand his message, he directed me to include the copies of the army’s resolution and the anonymous letters imperiling Congress that he had sent earlier that week, as well as copies of many of his earlier pleas to Congress that it honor its promises to the army.

  As I think back, I recognize the General was using the same strategy on Congress he had used with the officers: conveying the assumption that, with such a glorious cause, the Congress would of course rise to the occasion and do the right thing.

  My other major letter that week was to Alexander Hamilton. I think the General harbored suspicions that Hamilton and Madison were trying to link the claims of the public creditors with the claims of the army. The General had no objections to the claims of public creditors, but he thought those claims should be second to those of the army. He did not like the financiers wrapping themselves in the protective popular cloak of the army.

  The General renewed his plea to Hamilton for action on the army’s petition but asked me to insert that “the Army was not something to be trifled with.” Did the General m
ean that Hamilton should not use the army to push the claims of creditors? Or was he threatening what might happen if the Congress did not act on the army’s claims?

  Perhaps the General—not so simple a man as people thought—chose his words so that Hamilton and his friends could reach both conclusions.

  I later heard that I was not the only one who doubted whether the General would confront the mutineers. John Adams and James Madison had their doubts too, but after the General’s stand, knowing they would retain their congressional powers, they rushed to extol the General’s virtue.

  Lastly, the General dictated a short letter to me for circulation to the whole army. He spoke of “the pleasing feelings which have been excited in his breast by the affectionate sentiments expressed toward him” at the Saturday meeting.

  The General did not come across to many as a feeling or affectionate man, but I do believe he meant those words, and I remember thinking at the time that for a British general to have expressed such feelings for and to his troops would have been considered unseemly and would never have happened. But then, no British general would have commanded such devotion from his troops as to be able to do what the General did at the Temple.

  Epilogue

  ’Tis not in mortals to command success,

  But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.

  —Portius, Cato, Act I, Scene 2

  We were reminded often in the succeeding weeks of how high the stakes were during that pivotal week in Newburgh. News of a peace treaty, albeit a preliminary one, soon reached us. Still another mutiny of the Pennsylvania militia erupted in June over Congress’s stinginess about pay. They were just a few hundred militia, many new recruits, but they drove the Congress out of Philadelphia all the way to Princeton. The General sent fifteen hundred troops, who easily dispersed them. Safe under the protection of the General, the Congress resumed its duties (the Congress still later moved on to Annapolis), and the General again minimized his role. In his letter to Congress, he dismissed the militia mutineers as “recruits and soldiers of a day,” in contrast to the glorious army that had suffered through the entire war. The Congress was oblivious, but I kept thinking what might have happened if those several hundred raw Pennsylvania militia had been seven thousand five hundred regulars led by hundreds of officers. And what if that force had been augmented and led by the General?

  Every day I kept thinking what might have happened if the week of March 9 had taken a different turn. I might have been in Philadelphia with Prescilla, helping the General govern the country. Or we might have been in a civil war, tempting the British to scuttle the preliminary treaty and reenter the fray.

  Even today in the 1840s I ponder where our country would be if the General had led a successful insurrection or even if the General had stood aside and been succeeded by a general less virtuous and noble. I read about these South American countries that gained independence from Spain in the 1820s. Now most of them are ruled by military juntas or generals, and I do not know if they have more liberties or fewer than under Spanish rule.

  The General’s strategy with Congress worked, up to a point. I drafted letter after letter to governors and congressmen, in which the General used the events at Newburgh to extol the glorious patriotism of the army and shame those officials into doing what was right. In April Congress fell short of the nine states needed to grant a decent benefits package—it was rejected by the New Englanders, who had urged other states to send troops to their aid back in 1775 and 1776. Incomprehensible!

  Finally, my recollection is that the General did get the Congress to give eighty dollars plus three or four months’ extra pay to enlisted men, five dollars per month to invalids for life, and a lump-sum payment of one-half of five years’ pay to the officers, with the latter payment delayed until the following January. That was something, although not all that the officers and troops had hoped for. The compensation was in Continental currency worth far less than its stated value and in notes that later might or might not be honored. The General urged the troops and officers as they left the army that spring to hold on to those notes, but most sold them way below value to speculators who, years later after the establishment of our government, profited handsomely. The General had hoped for more, but I suspect he doubted his own words that day in March about placing faith in the Congress.

  The General certainly knew by the fall of 1783 what was happening.

  “Josiah, we have a Congress and states who will do just enough to escape the odium of the public’s wrath. Then we have those leeches who have sucked blood from our great band of brothers the whole war.”

  Still, despite the General’s and my disappointment at the inadequate congressional action, we are certainly better off than if we had gone through a civil war and a military dictatorship such as our neighbors to the south. The army received something, we do have an independent union, and it is a republic not run by caudillos or a Bonaparte.

  And what of the other officers so active in the army at Newburgh that winter in 1783? Laurens died in some useless skirmish down in Carolina well after the war had been decided. What a great loss. Hamilton became secretary of the treasury and later was killed in that lamentable duel with Aaron Burr. My fellow aide, Humphreys, became a diplomat for our new government, minister to Spain. My other fellow aide at Newburgh, Walker, became a congressman. Varick, the General’s record keeper, became mayor of New York City. Colonel Brooks, who helped draft the resolution, became governor of Massachusetts.

  And what of those who laid the groundwork for the potential insurrection? Gates ended up in the New York State legislature. I read that the General, as president, gave Armstrong a minor position in the New York port, which he parlayed later into a lengthy career in government ending as secretary of war under President Madison. I found this hard to understand. The General pretended as if nothing untoward had happened. He never evinced to me any resentment against the potential mutineers. Perhaps it was to make sure the public had no doubts about the honor of the army. Perhaps the General was following the strategy he had followed with General Lee and Continental Congress President Mifflin (who went from being a member of the Conway Cabal to president of the Continental Congress): he hoped to make those who opposed him turn into supporters because he ignored their transgressions. Ignored, but I doubt the General forgot. Any human being in that situation must have remembered and harbored resentments. I believe that the General held numerous grudges—he just believed that a leader should appear above such petty human emotions. And he was, as usual, successful in conveying the appearance he wished to make. I suppose this is another example of the General as actor. Then again, if you will yourself to overcome petty emotions, does this make you an actor? Or does it just make you someone who molds your personality so as to accent positive rather than negative traits?

  I returned to Philadelphia, married Prescilla, and went into the family merchant banking business, where I stayed until we moved to Illinois several years ago to be with our children and grandchildren. I was one of the few aides who did not go into politics. Three—Hamilton, Randolph, and McHenry—served in the Constitutional Convention. The General wrote several times to me after my service and was always gracious. He thanked me for sharing his troubles, giving wise counsel, and guiding his “official family,” the term he used to describe his aides.

  I remember the letter the General sent me in early 1784. He did not seem to show any regrets about his decision a year before at Newburgh. He told me, as he did others, “I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac and under the shadow of my own vine and fig tree.” Then, referring to our past conversations, he said, “I am no longer a soldier pursuing fame.” The letter made me chuckle. Thousands of Americans wished they were famous like the General, and he just wanted to live under his fig tree.

  I read the books and articles that come out on the General now. There seems to be a dichotomy between what some of these learned men think and what the majority of ou
r people think. While most biographies of the General are flattering, some perhaps too flattering, the views of the General that my great-grandchildren are getting from their teacher—that his generalship was overrated; that he was intellectually inferior to Adams, Jefferson, and the other founders; that he supported slavery because until the end of his life the General was a slaveholder; etc.—seem to be the start of an emerging trend, and we shall probably see more such assessments in the future.

  As my pen nears my final pages, I hope I have set the record straight on some of these matters, as I will try to do for my great-grandchildren next week.

  While you read pros and cons about the General, you never read about Newburgh and how we have a democratic government because of what the General didn’t do that week. There are plenty of books and articles about what he did, but none about what he didn’t do: seize power.

  After years I have come to realize that the General certainly was ambitious, but ambitious for the applause of his countrymen—not for power over his countrymen. Yes, the General cared about his public image and sought fame. Gouverneur Morris said the General’s greatest moral weakness was his “inordinate” love of fame. But so what? The General sought fame but not power. I will try to tell my great-grandchildren that there is a huge difference, and because of that difference, unlike our neighbors to the south, today we rule ourselves. Why, the whole balance between the executive and the legislative branches is due to the General. I read how Madison and Hamilton drafted the Constitution. But there never would have been a president included in that noble document if the delegates had not been looking at the General sitting right in front of them. They never would have allowed a chief executive if they had not known it would be the General.

  Of course, there are some doubts about our presidential-congressional system these days. The last presidential election would have mortified the General, decided by slogans like “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” and drawings of Harrison living in a log cabin when he really lived in a mansion. Still, almost 80 percent of us voted, which I’m told is the highest turnout ever. Now we have a president and Congress that can’t agree on anything. I don’t know how many votes Congress has taken on whether to have a national bank. The other day, a crowd burned President Tyler in effigy, threw rocks at the White House, and cried out for his impeachment. Still, all these European visitors come over here and tell us what a great system of government we have, and I suppose it’s better than any other.