I am pleased that our people are not unduly influenced by the press or academics. That’s why we will be celebrating the General’s birthday tomorrow with as much spirit as the Fourth of July. The people realize, as Congressman Fisher Ames wrote, that the General may have made errors in judgment, but there were no blemishes on his virtue. Of course, the politicians know where the people stand, and they constantly invoke the General’s name. Why, on the General’s last birthday, I read in our local newspaper how one of our state legislators, Abraham Lincoln, who is no fool, compared the General to the sun: “Washington is the mightiest name on earth—long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe we pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.”
Tomorrow Lincoln will probably show off his ring, which he claims contains a piece of the General’s hair. It’s amazing how many politicians wear rings they say contain a piece of his coffin or a lock of the General’s hair. I don’t blame them. It’s almost as many as the homes and hotels that claim “George Washington slept here.”
I don’t blame these politicians. They, like the people, sense the General was a great man. They know he resigned his General’s commission and declined to run for a third term as president, but I doubt many have ever heard of Newburgh and how the General refused power there. They do not know what temptations he must have faced. The General not only exercised power but turned away from power. Looking at some of our recent presidents, and what I expect will be the case with presidents to come, I think that is the rarest of qualities.
I believe the American people sense the greatness of someone who can seek fame and still turn away from power, but it is ironic that foreigners seem better able to voice their admiration for this supreme trait of the General. Perhaps this is because of their experience with absolute monarchs. On the way from Newburgh to the General’s resignation before Congress, we met with a Dutch businessman, Gerald Vogels, in Philadelphia. “Josiah,” he said, “I will write my wife that I just saw the greatest man who has appeared on the surface of this earth.” At the time I thought this a gross exaggeration, but with the exception of our Lord and Savior, I am not sure now that this was an exaggeration at all.
I don’t know if it is true, but I read that King George III asked the American painter Benjamin West what the General was going to do after resigning his commission, and West told him the General, instead of becoming king, only wanted to return to his farm. The king reportedly responded, “If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
And of course there’s that story of how Napoleon, who knew something about seeking both fame and power, said despairingly when imprisoned on St. Helena: “The people expected me to be another Washington.”
No wonder the English poet Lord Byron turned his “Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte” into an ode to the General.
the first—the last—the best—
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom Envy dared not hate.
Bequeath’d the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!
What these powerful Europeans knew and what many Americans sense is that the General did not seek power or riches. Instead, I have come to realize, all the General sought was the praise of his countrymen. He received that, and he deserves it.
While I was so proud of what the General did that day, I have reflected on whether I was wrong to doubt the General’s intentions that week. Many now assume in retrospect that the General, because he refused power, never was tempted. I don’t think so. I suspect the General himself had doubts as to what course he should or would follow. But if he had doubts, if he had temptations, does that not make him all the greater? I keep thinking of one of the General’s favorite lines from Cato: “’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more . . . we’ll deserve it.”
His countrymen may not be aware of what the General did at Newburgh that week, but they know about his turning back his sword to Congress and refusing to run for a third term as president. The poet Philip Freneau, although critical of some of the General’s policies as president during his second term, conveyed that feeling when he wrote:
O Washington!—thrice glorious name,
What due rewards can man decree—
Empires are far below thine aim,
And sceptres have no charm for thee;
Virtue alone has your regard,
And she must be your great reward.
I look forward to meeting with my great-grandchildren soon. I will answer their questions about what I did during the war, of course omitting my fear and avoidance of combat in close quarters. My great-grandchildren will ask me all sorts of questions about the General. I will try to answer them, but I also will tell them the story of Newburgh. I will focus on the General’s rather than my own role.
Yes, I will tell them that the General had flaws. Maybe our country will someday see a better general. Maybe someone else will bring delegates together to draft a new constitution. Maybe someday we will see a greater president. But after telling them the story of Newburgh, I will try to convey to my great-grandchildren that the General’s true greatness lay not so much in what he did but what he didn’t do. Then I will dig out and show them this 1791 news clipping from the Hartford Courant dug up and sent me by my old Connecticut colleague David Humphreys after the General’s death.
Many a private man might make a great President; but will there ever be a President who will make so great a man as WASHINGTON?
General George Washington at Trenton
General George Washington before Yorktown
David Humphreys, aide to General Washington, later ambassador to Spain
Alexander Hamilton, aide to General Washington, later secretary of the treasury
John Laurens, aide to General Washington, unsuccessfully sought approval of South Carolina legislature to arm slaves
Major General Horatio Gates, alleged chief conspirator in nascent Newburgh mutiny
Major General James Varnum, writer of letter to General Washington urging absolute monarchy or military dictatorship
Phillis Wheatley, free black poet, wrote ode to General Washington and later met with him
Marquis de Lafayette, outstanding general, admirer and supporter of General Washington
Martha Washington, wife of General Washington and chief organizer of clothing repairs for army
AFTERWORD
This is a novel about George Washington and power, or rather, the greatest temptation to assume absolute power ever faced by any American leader. It is also a book about one of the least known but most momentous episodes in American history. As the reader has discovered, our first army—poorly fed and clothed, often unpaid, and with little hope of promised retirement benefits—while camped on the Hudson River in New York during a week in the last months of the Revolutionary War, faced a long-put-off decision: whether to gain what the army believed was its just due by marching on Philadelphia and taking over the civilian government. That decision would establish whether our country was to have civilian supremacy over the military or go the route followed by most revolutions toward a military dictatorship.
Any reader of an historical novel will find himself wondering what is fact and what is fiction—or speculation. What you have read here of that week in early 1783 in Newburgh and New Windsor, New York, is overwhelmingly factual, and the more surprising the information, the more likely it is to be factual. Where I suspect the reader will be surprised that something included in the novel is factual or may want more information, I have provided short background essays in Appendix A, which the reader may pursue at leisure.
I have also provided in Appendix B the full text of some of the key documents from that period, e.g., speeches, letters, resolutions, etc., that
convey the tensions and suspicions of that fateful week.
Looking into the supporting material in Appendixes A and B, the reader will see that even much of what is fiction is closely tied to fact. Josiah, the General’s aide, who narrates the story, and who I have come to know as well as any of my ancestors, is, alas, fictional. However, his duties and activities as an aide-de-camp of General Washington are based on those of the thirty-two men who served in that position during the war. The conversations are also imagined, but they are almost always based, sometimes in total, on letters, sometimes either of the characters quoted, or of others describing the characters. In all cases the views I have attributed to the characters, including Washington, are the views held by those characters during the late eighteenth century, although not necessarily on the precise date. I have limited myself to selected essays and documentation in the appendixes, because to cite every letter and source would take more pages than the novel itself.
The speculation in this novel centers on four questions: who was behind the incipient revolt; whether the revolt could have succeeded; whether Washington ever considered leading it; and if so, how he wrestled with the temptation of taking leadership of the revolt and setting up an American monarchy or military dictatorship.
Historians have espoused many views on who was behind the potential mutiny. Most point to officers at Newburgh led by General Horatio Gates, some point to members of Congress, and some point to both. There is little doubt, however, that Gates’s aide, Major John Armstrong Jr., wrote the letters that sparked the crises, and I do not believe Armstrong would have written such letters without General Gates’s approval.
On the question of whether the revolt might have succeeded, there are opposing views. Some historians say the revolt would have failed. Some see the revolt as partially successful with a passive mutiny leading the army to stop fighting the British and weakening civil authority. Still others believe that the revolt, particularly with General Washington’s leadership, would have overthrown the government, resulting in a coup d’état and a military government or monarchy.
The most speculative and pivotal parts of the book—and really the major reason for writing it as a novel—is how George Washington considered and was tempted to lead the revolt and set up an American monarchy or dictatorship. Most historians have ignored these questions, largely, I believe, because they assume that since Washington was a man of great character who did not take leadership of the revolt, he must not have been tempted. To the contrary, I believe that it would have been impossible for any person in that situation not to have considered such a course, as shown by the barrage of written and oral pleas to become king or dictator that Washington received, which we know to be factual, and which form an important part of this novel. Washington certainly knew that he alone had the ability to lead a new government in the perilous transition to peace. I believe his temptation and his triumph over that temptation, rather than diminishing Washington, enhance his greatness.
For those seeking to read more about our country’s first leader, there have been hundreds of biographies, too many to read or list. Just about all focus on his early life, his generalship, his bringing about of the Constitutional Convention, and his role as our first president. There are few that devote more than several pages to the week at Newburgh in 1783. I believe one of the most underrated and unread biographies of Washington is the first one written, The Life of Washington by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, published soon after Washington’s death. Marshall’s five-volume (and later one-volume) biography has the disadvantage of being both overly long and written so soon after Washington’s life that it does not benefit from years of research and perspective. It has the advantage, however, of being written when memories were fresh by one who knew Washington. The latest biography, by Ron Chernow, Washington, is easier to digest, as are biographies by John Ferling, James Flexner, and Richard Norton Smith. To grasp Washington’s character and his incredible hold on the American people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the best books are Barry Schwartz’s pathbreaking George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, Joseph J. Ellis’s penetrating His Excellency (where Ellis writes of the General’s “Last Temptation”), and Richard Brookhiser’s thoughtful Founding Father, as well as Gary Wills’s Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment: Images of Power in Early America and Edward G. Lengel’s Inventing George Washington. I found the best histories of Washington’s generalship during the Revolutionary War to be David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing and John Ferling’s Almost a Miracle. Very little has been written about the critical period after Yorktown and before the signing of the peace treaty—the period when the week at Newburgh takes place—but two books have remedied this: Thomas Fleming’s The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival after Yorktown, 1781–1783 and William M. Fowler Jr.’s American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781–1783.
For those interested in pursuing Martha Washington’s life and twisted family background, Martha Washington, First Lady of Liberty by Helen Bryan contains much information. For books about the founders’ attitudes about slavery, there are Henry Wiencek’s books on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well as his exploration of the subject in the October 2012 issue of Smithsonian magazine. There have been many books on Washington’s colleagues during the Revolution, but for sheer reading pleasure few rival Harlow Giles Unger’s Lafayette.
To all the authors listed above and many others, I am indebted. Without their historical research, I would not have been able to construct this novel.
I wish to thank William Ferraro and his colleagues at the Washington Papers of the University of Virginia, who are compiling the foremost collection of Washington’s papers and provided me with copies of those written during the eventful week at Newburgh, as well as many excellent suggestions. Editor-in-Chief Ferraro was also invaluable in checking for historical inaccuracies. Also of inestimable help were Kathleen Mitchell, Aaron Robinson, and Lynette Scherer at Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site, Chad Johnson at the New Windsor Cantonment State Historical Site, and Joan Stahl at the Mount Vernon estate and gardens, as well as the Library of Congress and the Massachusetts Historical Society. I have benefited from the help of Nick Robinson, librarian at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies, where, as a visiting scholar, I wrote and researched much of this book. Without Nick’s help, this techno-peasant would not have been able to navigate through computers to many crucial sources. Linda Bennett of the Marin Public Library also helped track down sources, and Joseph Escalle provided almost weekly help with computer challenges.
To B. Gerald Johnson, a friend and colleague in an earlier political life, I am indebted for suggesting that the story be told through the eyes of the aide, Josiah. Debra Saunders and Wesley Smith gave great encouragement and ideas about structuring, which have been gratefully adopted.
To the late William Safire, author of the historical novel Freedom about Abraham Lincoln’s role in the Civil War, I owe the idea of explaining in the notes in Appendix A much of what is real and what little is fictional.
There is a time in the writing of every book when someone steps forward and stimulates the author’s lagging spirits. That person was Louisa Gilder, who for almost two years patiently edited and improved this book, asking questions that needed to be answered and suggesting scores of improvements in the style and language.
Later, Carmen Johnson, David Blum, and Jeff Belle of my publisher, Amazon, all stepped in to provide much help.
For proofreading I owe thanks to many for spotting grammatical, spelling, duplication, and just plain mistakes: Editor-in-Chief William Ferraro, the late Paul Kraabel, Stuart Wagner, June Miller, Stephanie Brown, and Sidney Saltz.
A special thanks is due to the anonymous elderly lady who sat next to me when, as a congressman back in the 1980s, I attended a Daughters of the American Revolutio
n observance of Washington’s birthday alongside the statue of the General on the University of Washington campus. Following a long speech about Washington’s deeds in winning the Revolutionary War, organizing the Constitutional Convention, and serving as our first president, she leaned over and said, “Congressman, they always talk about what he did and never about what he didn’t do.” When I asked what she meant, she responded, “He didn’t seize power when the troops wanted to revolt in 1783 at Newburgh.” Being totally unaware of the events of that week, I was interested by her remark, which resulted in decades of off-and-on research and the writing of this book.
Lastly, I thank my partner and friend, Stephanie Brown, who has encouraged, supported, and tolerated this effort for almost six years.
The author takes responsibility for all errors, as well as the opinions expressed on how General Washington surmounted the challenges that fateful 1783 week in Newburgh. I further take responsibility for the moral convictions expressed justifying the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant’s words in the 1790s quoted at the end of this novel as to why, no matter what has happened in the past or may happen in the future, George Washington may be esteemed the greatest figure in American history.
APPENDIX A: NOTES
The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel Page 19