The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel

by John Ripin Miller

  I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable; at the same time in justice to my own feelings I must add, that no man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice done to the Army than I do, and as far as my powers and influence, in a constitutional way extend, they shall be employed to the utmost of my abilities to effect it, should there be any occasion. Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself, or anyone else, a sentiment of the like nature. With esteem I am . . . (See The Writings of George Washington, 468.)

  While the sentiments ring true, it is doubtful, given previous entreaties, that Washington was truly surprised by Nicola’s letter. Feelings similar to Nicola’s sentiments of May 1782 were to reach Washington with more regularity as the week in Newburgh in March 1783 approached.

  THE OLD FOX, PAGE 55

  “The old fox” and “the old gray fox” were phrases Josiah rightly ascribes to the British during the war to describe Washington. Over the years, it became a term of respect as “bagging the old fox” became the all-consuming goal of British military strategy. The British increasingly became convinced that capturing cities and destroying armies, while helpful, was not as decisive a step toward victory as capturing the American commanding general. They may have underestimated the staying power of American forces in seeking shortcuts to victory, but the focus on Washington reflected their own, as well as Americans’ opinion of Washington’s central role in the conflict.

  CHAPTER THREE: DAY THREE, WEDNESDAY—THE THIRD ANONYMOUS LETTER

  JOSIAH DISCOVERS GATES’S AIDE, MAJOR JOHN ARMSTRONG JR., AS THE ANONYMOUS LETTER WRITER, PAGES 58-59, 61

  Although there was some uncertainly early on, there is not much controversy today among historians on who wrote the anonymous letters. While they may disagree on other issues concerning the Newburgh affair, such as General Horatio Gates’s and others’ roles, all seem to agree with Josiah that Major John Armstrong Jr., an aide to Gates, was the writer of all the anonymous letters. (For more on Armstrong’s role, see Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace, 268, 269; Richard H. Kohn, The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy; The William and Mary Quarterly, April 1970, 206.) Armstrong, twenty-four years old, was already known to be ambitious and an eloquent writer. After the Revolutionary War, his authorship then less well known and the Newburgh affair having receded into the background, Armstrong had a distinguished career, rising to become President Madison’s secretary of war during the War of 1812.

  THE THIRD ANONYMOUS LETTER, PAGES 60-61 (QUOTED IN FULL IN APPENDIX B, PAGES 278-280)

  Fearing that the officers would take General Washington’s order for a Saturday meeting as a rejection of the anonymous letter writer’s purpose, Major Armstrong cleverly argued that General Washington fully supported the mutineers’ goals espoused in Armstrong’s second letter or he would not have called a meeting at all.

  WASHINGTON’S LETTERS TO JONES AND HAMILTON, PAGES 62-63

  Washington’s letters to Jones and Hamilton are, along with several others, almost identical in purpose: pleading the army’s cause, warning of the danger of mutiny, and urging action by Congress to satisfy the army’s claims. But beyond these themes was Washington’s unconfirmed suspicion that Gates and Armstrong may not have been acting alone and that they had allies in the Congress.

  Historians have differed on this. Some believe that Congress’s role was minimal and that Gates and Armstrong acted largely on their own initiative. Some believe that a few congressmen were involved because they wished to strengthen the national government and pay off creditors. Others believe that, while a few congressmen may have been involved, they were bluffing. Still others believe that congressmen, seeking a strong national government that would pay its debts to creditors as well as the army, thought the threat of a mutiny would strengthen their hand with their colleagues either with or without a mutiny. (All these various theories were laid out in the 1970s in The William and Mary Quarterly, in articles by Richard H. Kohn, 1970, 187–220; Paul David Nelson, 1972, 143–58; and C. Edward Skeen and Richard H. Kohn, 1974, 273–98.) I incline to Kohn’s belief that Gates and Armstrong played the major role, and, regardless of the role of some congressmen, there is no doubt in my mind that Gates’s actions were real and the threat was real. None of the historians cited above speculate, as this novel and Josiah do, on the impact that all the pleas to Washington to lead a new government as a king or dictator must have had on the General.

  ALEXANDER HAMILTON, PAGES 64-65

  While the Founding Fathers (and mothers) were plentiful in their praise and sparing in their criticism of Washington, whom they looked on as a father figure, the reverse was true when commenting on their fraternal colleagues. In a letter to Abigail Adams, John Adams described Alexander Hamilton as “a proud Spirited, conceited, aspiring Mortal always pretending to Morality, with as debauched Morals as old Franklin who is more his Model than any one I know.”

  In later letters to her husband, Abigail described Hamilton “as ambitious as Julius Caesar . . . his thirst for fame is insatiable.” She stated further: “Beware of the spare Cassius [Hamilton], has always occurred to me when I have seen that cock sparrow” (Gore Vidal, Inventing a Nation, 133). While this correspondence took place later than Newburgh, such feelings by Hamilton’s military and political colleagues were commonplace, although they were definitely not shared by Washington, who always had a high opinion of Hamilton.

  While the founders were sparing in their criticism of Washington, on occasion feelings of jealousy toward the man who dominated the revolutionary cause did emerge. Perhaps because Washington, for the most part, stood above the jealousy of others, he was immune from exhibiting jealousy in return. It does not seem to have been part of his nature. As this novel brings out, Washington seemed more concerned with what the public and history thought of him than what his colleagues thought of him. His admiration for Hamilton was so well known that he was referred to as Hamilton’s surrogate father and even ridiculously rumored to be Hamilton’s real father, sired on a teenage trip by Washington to the West Indies. Because modern science has proved Jefferson’s siring of children with his slave, Sally Hemings, it is tempting these days to believe every juicy sexual rumor. Unfortunately for the prurient, Washington’s visit to the West Indies took place years before Hamilton’s known birth, thus showing this rumor, like many rumors about Washington’s sex life, to be implausible. What is likely is that Washington, despite their different circumstances of birth, saw a similarity in their backgrounds: they both lacked formal schooling as youths (Hamilton attended King’s College, now Columbia) and, while both depended on more fortunate elders for early advancement, they both were largely self-made men (Hamilton in law and Washington in surveying), with both considering themselves, perhaps surprisingly, outsiders. (For more on this intriguing connection, see Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 86, 87.)

  Although fulsome in his praise, Hamilton, while more immune from feelings of jealousy toward Washington than most of the Founding Fathers, did occasionally slip. In a letter to his father-in-law, Hamilton stated “all the world is offering incense” to Washington. (See Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 152.)

  THOMAS JEFFERSON, PAGES 65-68

  For a man of known broad tastes, Jefferson had some decidedly narrow views on certain subjects, which drew Josiah’s attention. According to Jefferson, permitting women to “mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men” could lead to a “depravation of morals” (Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty, 506). Women should not hold any government positions, including those they had already held, such as postmaster (see Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics i
n the Early American Republic, 159). One should suspect that “blacks . . . are inferior to the whites in endowments both of body and mind” (Wood, 539). Sane people do not turn voluntarily from farming to manufacturing (Wood, 627). Treatment of patients was all right in hospitals; medical research was not (Wood, 723). Chemists should ignore deep discoveries and concentrate on producing better bread and butter (Wood, 724). It is natural that someone of Josiah’s Quaker background would have found Jefferson’s above views peculiar and offensive, even in those times.

  Washington (or rather Josiah) was correct that the furor over Jefferson’s alleged cowardice as governor during the war would dissipate despite an attempt at censure by the Virginia Assembly. (For a sympathetic treatment of Jefferson’s woes as a wartime governor, which omits the alleged hiding by Jefferson in a tobacco barn, see Jefferson’s biography by Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, 357–68. For a more critical but balanced appraisal of Jefferson’s conduct, see John Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 478, 479.)

  Regarding the authorship of the Declaration of Independence, whose opening lines Josiah attributes to George Mason, Jefferson is not the only great writer in America in that period to be indebted to the prose of others. In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason writes “that all men . . . have certain inherent rights . . . namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Others in state declarations of human rights used some of Mason’s prose, just as Jefferson did, and Mason in turn was indebted to the Bill of Rights in 1689. Besides, one can argue that Jefferson’s version was more pithy and eloquent than Mason’s: “that all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  Many of Jefferson’s colleagues, while suppressing their criticism and for the most part their jealousy of Washington, were, as with Hamilton, more open about their ill feelings toward Jefferson. Along with praise, Adams said that “Jefferson thinks . . . to get a reputation as a humble, modest, meek man, wholly without ambition or vanity. He may even have deceived himself in this belief, but if the prospect opens, the world will see and he will feel that he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell” (Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 29).

  Jefferson replied in kind about his rival, Adams, comparing him to “poisonous weeds” and describing him as “vain, irritable, stubborn” and “endowed with excessive self-love” (David McCullough, John Adams, 318, 489).

  With Washington, Jefferson was unstinting in his praise through most of Jefferson’s career, especially when addressing Washington. “The moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish,” Jefferson wrote in 1784 (Richard Kohn, William and Mary Quarterly, 1970, 220). But as Jefferson tried to prepare for his own presidential accession in 1796, he started to let slip criticisms of Washington, among them that he believed Washington was lucky and overrated. He also ridiculously lumped Washington in with Jefferson’s opponents as a pro-English “apostate.” (Jefferson’s allies reprinted fake British letters accusing Washington of being a British sympathizer.) Jefferson, as Josiah notes, publicly avoided the ceremonies surrounding Washington’s funeral. (See Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 39, 55.) But after Washington’s death, Jefferson, influenced either by public opinion or his own more objective second thoughts, was saying that Washington “was a wise, a good, and a great man.” Jefferson visited Lady Washington at Mount Vernon to make amends; he also hung a painting of Washington and displayed a bust of the General at Monticello. (See Ron Chernow, Washington, 600.)

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PAGES 68-69

  Benjamin Franklin, he whose electric rod transformed the earth; Patrick Henry, he who spoke “as Homer wrote”; and George Washington were probably the three most famous Americans at the time of the Revolution. As such, the first two seemed immune to any feelings of jealousy toward Washington, although Henry bore ill feelings toward Jefferson, which were reciprocated. (For two descriptions of this conflict, see Richard Beeman, Patrick Henry, 131 et seq., and Dumas Malone, Jefferson, The Virginian, 382.) One can attribute Franklin’s oft-expressed admiration of Washington to his diplomatic skills, but Franklin was quite capable of rendering balanced, critical judgments of many with whom he served. His portrayals of Adams were devastating. Franklin wrote to Washington after his Yorktown triumph that it will “brighten the glory that surrounds your name and that must accompany it to our latest posterity. No news could possibly make me more happy” (Thomas Fleming, Perils of Peace, 162).

  Franklin had become wary of representing a Congress that was held in low esteem by the French. While French generals considered Washington one of the “greatest captains” of the age, French ministers were contemptuous of a Congress that defaulted on its financial obligations and spent French loans not to secure military victory but to pay off domestic debts. Franklin realized that, with the possible exception of himself, Washington was the only American whose reputation was immune from attack by Americans or the French. Washington’s reputation, wrote Franklin, was “free from those little shades that the jealousy and envy of a man’s countrymen and contemporaries are ever endeavoring to cast over living merit” (Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 391).

  JOHN AND ABIGAIL ADAMS, PAGES 69-71

  John Adams, like George Washington, was much concerned about his reputation, perhaps even more so, and certainly more openly. This is a man who early in life said, “Reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and the aim of my behavior” and “How shall I gain a reputation . . . shall I look out for a cause to speak to, and exert all the soul and body I own to cut a flash? In short shall I walk a lingering, heavy pace or shall I take one bold determined leap?” (See Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 11, 13.)

  Unlike Washington, Adams, as Josiah observes, saw himself threatened by, and was jealous of, the reputation of others. Adams bemoaned the pain of seeing another “wear the laurels which I have sown” (Barry Schwartz, Washington: Making of an American Symbol, 22). Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, being the most famous Americans of the time, were natural wearers of the laurels and targets of Adams’s jealousy. Benjamin Rush’s words summed up Adams’s feelings:

  [T]he history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to another. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures and war. (See Barry Schwartz, George Washington, The Making of an American Symbol, 87)

  While Adams often praised Washington’s attributes, the praise was often mixed with apprehension of Washington’s potential power. Thus, Adams gloried “in the character of Washington because I know him to be the exemplification of the American character” yet belittled that character as “a character of convention” (Barry Schwartz, The Making of an American Symbol, 5, 179).

  Along with Jefferson, Adams disparaged the celebration of Washington’s birthday and what he believed was the idolizing of Washington. “Among the national sins of our country [is] the idolatrous worship paid to the name of George Washington . . . ascribed in scripture only to God and Jesus Christ” (Schwartz, 194).

  Adams attributed his own feelings of envy and fear toward Washington to sizable elements of the American people who he claimed joined him in wishing Washington would retire for fear he would otherwise be set up as king. Adams took very seriously the threat posed in this novel, and later wrote:

  It was a general sentiment in America that Washington must retire. Why? What is implied in this necessity? . . . Does not this idea of the necessity of his retiring, imply an opinion of danger to the public, from his continuing in public, a jealousy that he might become ambitious? And
does it not imply . . . a jealousy in the people of one another, a jealousy of one part of the people, that another part had grown too fond of him, and acquired habitually too much confidence in him, and that there would be a danger of setting him up for a king? Undoubtedly it does, and undoubtedly there were such suspicions; and grounds for them too. (See Works of John Adams, vol. 9, 541.)

  Abigail shared John’s praise of Washington but did not, at least openly, share his jealousy. While John and Abigail agreed on their evaluations of most of John’s contemporaries, with regard to Washington one detects a disagreement. John’s praise of Washington was at times qualified and stinting. Abigail’s praise, starting with her initial description of Washington in a letter to her husband, was unqualified. “You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of George Washington, but I thought the half was not told me. Dignity with ease and complacency, the gentleman and soldier, look agreeably blended in him.” Her later descriptions were equally unstinting: “A temple built by hands divine,” “the most amiable of men,” “a singular example of modesty and diffidence,” whose dignity and majesty far surpassed King George III, were all descriptions offered by Abigail of the General (Gore Vidal, Inventing a Nation, 72). Finally, upon Washington’s death, Abigail wrote in a private letter to her sister, “No man ever lived, more deservedly beloved and Respected . . . If we look through the whole tenor of his Life, History will not produce to us a Parallel” (Michael and Jana Novak, Washington’s God, 4, 5).

  Adams’s recognition of his own envy, and Washington’s lack of it, showed through in his remarks at Washington’s funeral. “Malice could never blast his honor, and Envy made him a singular exception to her universal rule” (Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, 92).