Those Who Have Borne the Battle (5 page)

 

 

 

 

O
N MARCH 15, 1783, a group of officers from the Continental army gathered in a newly constructed building at their winter encampment at Newburgh, New York. They had accomplished the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781. Now they waited, with British forces still occupying several colonial ports, for the commissioners meeting in Paris to secure a treaty in which England would acknowledge the independence that the colonies had declared in the summer of 1776.

Yet the officers' meeting at Newburgh was not a council of war. The agenda did not provide for any discussion of tactics, logistics, mobilization, or weapons. Nor was this to be a celebratory occasion. Hardened veterans would not think of celebrating until the British troops were fully removed from the colonies and the British naval blockade was withdrawn.

The officers gathering in the meetinghouse on that Saturday morning were frustrated and angry. The Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia had not authorized payment of the compensation that the officers thought they had negotiated with representatives of the legislative body in 1780—an agreement to provide officers serving in the Continental army a pension of half pay for life. Congress had subsequently failed to approve the terms and appropriate money for a compromise agreement that had been negotiated late in 1782—to provide the officers
full pay for five years following the war. The officers now met to discuss a point on which all agreed: that they would abide no more concessions.

As the officers understood all too well, they faced two fundamental problems. One was that a substantial number of the delegates in Philadelphia were hostile to the very idea of a national army. Second, and more immediately, Congress lacked money to meet even the expense of the army they already had and was without independent means of raising further funds for the national treasury. Yet rather than elicit sympathy from the officers, this frailty only intensified the frustration on the part of those who had answered the summons to serve on behalf of the rebellious colonies and who had sacrificed significantly over the years of combat.
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Now, they believed, it was time to stand up.

The meeting included a group of officers, led by Horatio Gates, who were working with some representatives of the Continental Congress and sought to challenge the civilian leadership in Philadelphia. The dissident officers were prepared to propose that if the Paris negotiations were successful and the war was over, the army would refuse to stand down until the Congress met the obligations to the soldiers. On the other hand, if the war was not concluded, they planned that the army would withdraw to the West and refuse to continue the fight. Some participants quietly assured their colleagues that these were simply threats intended to pressure Congress to act. Yet, political ploy or genuine threat, these dissidents presented ominous options, and through each the officers would flex their muscles, affirm their own independence, and extend a substantial challenge to a civilian leadership that already lacked much power and authority.

The key to the success of the military challenge was the commanding general, George Washington, already an icon. His loyalty to his troops had been confirmed over the dark years of the war; his loyalty to the revolutionary government had not wavered, despite his continuing frustrations with its weaknesses. With a group of officers whose personal fealty to him was unquestioned, Washington had followed all of the maneuvers of Gates and the others with increasing concern and distaste.

The meeting had barely begun when Washington suddenly and unexpectedly strode into the room. No one challenged him as he moved to
the front and declared that he wished to address his colleagues in arms. He pulled out and placed on his nose a pair of spectacles. No one in the room had ever seen him wear these on public occasions before. He then won their sympathy and a few tears when he said, “I have not only grown gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.”
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His very presence electrified the crowd, and few could dispute the message that he presented: “As you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the Military and National Character of America, to express Your utmost horror and detestation of the Man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our Country, and who wickedly attempts to open the flood Gates of Civil discord, and deluge our rising Empire in Blood.”
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No one questioned Washington's sacrifice, and no one in the room was prepared to challenge his open reprimand. He insisted that by stepping back from this threat, the officers, even though they had ample cause to be concerned, could be assured that “you will, by the dignity of your Conduct, afford occasion for Posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to Mankind, ‘had this day been wanting, the World had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.'” The officers adjourned, accepting Washington's assurance that he would continue to work to secure the payments they were due.
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This was not simply a bit of theater to disarm a rebellion; Washington's actions had long-term consequences. As historian Joseph Ellis observes, “In this culminating moment of his military career, Washington demonstrated that he was as immune to the seductions of dictatorial power as he was to smallpox.” Military historian Richard Kohn has likewise marveled at the consequences of this meeting: “The only precedent set, in fact, positively reaffirmed Anglo-American tradition: the first national army in American history explicitly rejected military interference and military independence from civilian control.”
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It is not clear if an officers'
coup
in 1783 could have been successful. It is clear that following the Newburgh meeting, the possibility was significantly lessened. Following the meeting, Thomas Jefferson, whose own relationship with Washington was at times cool, flatly stated that “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.”
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In any case, civilian control of the military would be a fundamental principle of the new republic, soon to be embedded in the Constitution before the end of the decade. Yet for all that, the divisions between a standing army and civilian control that threatened to explode into a coup in 1783 would continue to echo through the whole of American history.

 

 

For 230 years Americans have juggled a complicated and ambivalent relationship with their military. In the nineteenth century the military forces of the country were seldom visible, with the considerable exception of the Civil War. In contrast, the twentieth century was marked by a period of major international wars, involving large military forces. Times of wartime mobilization typically brought on periods of gratitude and warm regard for those in uniform. On the other hand, historically, Americans' views of the military in peacetime have been indifferent at best.

From the outset Americans have juggled a clear need for military defenses with political concerns and objections to those forces' power and cost. Most recognized that an army and navy were necessary to accomplish independence and thereafter to protect shipping lanes, ports, and frontiers. Yet this acknowledged need was tempered by a fear of the potential for mischief from these forces and a deep unease with the expense of a professional standing army.

The political fears of the revolutionary generation lessened in the nineteenth century, but the cultural and intellectual indifference toward a peacetime military fueled an ongoing unease with a standing army. In an economically prudent culture, this indifference became opposition in light of mounting concern about the cost of an army having no military assignment. The military had few political advocates except when there seemed to be a threat. Even veterans, who would in the twentieth century generally champion military strength, saw little need for a peacetime army draining resources from other needs, including their own.

Despite this enduring concern about the threat, the need, or the cost of the military, Americans obviously have not historically been pacifist. International threats, real or imagined, have typically been met with popular saber rattling. The prevailing narrative in American history has featured the ready militia—the citizen soldier—as the bulwark of the nation's independence and the affirmation of a democracy. This army, mobilized only when necessary, posed no real threat to republican institutions—and as a significant bonus was far less expensive than a standing force.

Jefferson's declaration of July 4, 1776, despite its revolutionary assertions insisting upon the consent of the governed and of “unalienable Rights,” was also a bill of particulars, describing the colonies' case against the Crown. An unease with the British military occupation of the colonies was a central element of complaints directed at the king and Parliament: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.” Furthermore, “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” These fundamental principles, having to do with control of the military—and, indeed, with the prior question regarding the need and role of a standing military force in peacetime—were to echo in many of the debates that would mark the next century and a half. The republican theory that opposed standing armies also recognized the occasional need to fight a war, so those who feared a professional army depended upon a contrary ideology and sustaining narrative about the role of citizen soldiers as the always-ready armed defenders of the republic.

Many American political activists of the revolutionary generation had been influenced by English Whig resistance to authoritarian rule. This tradition voiced a deep concern about a standing army, led by calculating officers and manned by mercenaries, that could serve as a ready tool, enabling despotic government.
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The Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired into a threatening crowd, killing five, intensified New England's resistance to a standing army.

At the same time, however, there was a
necessary
presumption dating back to colonial days that a force of citizen soldiers must be at the ready to provide protection and represent the values of the citizenry. Many in the founding generation balanced their fear of military professionals with
their confidence in sometime soldiers. By one estimate, more than one-third of the eligible Massachusetts citizens had served in the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War) from 1756 to 1763. Furthermore, the conduct of the minutemen and other Massachusetts militia at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775—as well as their subsequent bravery at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June—seemed to affirm that a militia force of citizen soldiers was both a confirmation of republican values and a military advantage.
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However, the colonial celebration of a mobilized citizenry did not mean that the militia could successfully carry on a war on its own. Militia units were often sources of enthusiastic manpower in the early stages of the war when defending their own homes and neighborhoods. But with few exceptions, such as Ticonderoga and for a time during the siege of Quebec, these organizations did not provide the armies in the field that were necessary for success in the sustained war in which the colonies found themselves engaged. Militia were always eager to return to families, fields, and shops. The successful Massachusetts militia experience during the Seven Years' War was misleading in some ways, since it was at a time when a good many young men in the Bay Colony were looking for economic options; the bonuses and other payments for militia service were financially quite attractive to them, so they turned out in great numbers.
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Experience with ad hoc militias bred distrust in their abilities and staying power. Even as fiery a revolutionary as Sam Adams, with his strong suspicion of a standing army, asked, “Would any Man in his Senses, who wishes the War may be carried on with Vigor, prefer the temporary and expensive Drafts of Militia, to a permanent and well appointed Army!” A frustrated George Washington observed late in 1776, “To place any dependence upon the militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff.”
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As one student of the war noted, “Before 1776 was over, the revolutionaries showed that they felt much less enthusiasm for war than for independence. Their celebration of the fighting virtues of freemen could not dispel their fear that freemen's conduct might prove less reliable than the discipline of mercenaries.”
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As the conflict began in 1775, many colonists shared a passion for and a commitment to armed revolt as a means to independence. This mood
was especially strong in New England. In the long war for independence, however, the citizens of the colonies simply did not enlist at the level that military needs required. According to a letter from a Philadelphian written in 1775, “The Rage Militaire, as the French call a passion for arms, has taken possession of the whole Continent.” However, as historians have observed, though the enthusiasm for independence never abated, that
rage militaire
had largely vanished by the end of 1776. By the late 1770s, many colonists felt a general weariness with the war—and shared an optimistic sense that it would soon be resolved by a negotiated English acknowledgment of independence.
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The states had trouble providing the Continental (regular) army with the volunteer regiments they were allocated. “The harsh reality of the war years was that too few men were willing to fight.”
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The ranks of the army were often filled with soldiers who were enticed by the bonuses and bounties provided them. When the several colonies resorted to conscription to meet their quotas, those who were summoned often hired substitutes to serve in their place. As a result, many who finally served in the Continental army, ironically, were men who were exempt from militia service because of their “race, condition of servitude, or poverty.”
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In the end, to encourage citizens to surrender their personal liberty for the good of the Republic, the revolutionary generation relied on payments or promises of money. Enlistment for many was not simply an affirmation of civic sacrifice.
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