A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution by David Head

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution by David Head Michael S. McGurty (bio) A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution By David Head. New York: Pegasus Books, 2019. 400 pages, 6" x 9". $28.95 cloth, $18.99 ebook. The impetus for the two anonymous letters, written in the Continental Army winter encampment at New Windsor, New York, in March 1783, inciting the Newburgh Conspiracy, continues to confound historians trying to dissect the crisis. The "fellow-soldier, whose interest and affection bind him strongly to you—whose past sufferings have been as great, and whose future fortunes may be as desperate as yours," urged his officer corps colleagues, in those fiery missives distributed in camp, to stop prostrating themselves before the Continental Congress and start to demand that the national legislators find the money for their back pay and subsistence and to fund the officer pension promised earlier in the conflict. Always at the bottom of the priority list of the nation's creditors, the army was determined to realize its due, and its anger might have been exploited by nationalists in their scheme to vest the national government with the power to tax. David Head in his A Crisis of Peace George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution offers a compelling story of the people associated with the incident and the dispassionate response by the commander-in-chief. Written by Major John Armstrong, a twenty-four-year-old aide to Major General Horatio Gates and son of Pennsylvania militia Major General John Armstrong, Head argues that his able pen captured the wrath of a small group of midlevel officers frustrated by the army leadership's weak attempts to petition Congress. While talking tough, the general officers hesitated to take a stronger stance, and these firebrands sought to force them into one. Unwilling to challenge civilian authority, Washington remained aloof, until the actions of the conspiring officers forced him to obliquely advocate for redress of the army's grievances. Head illuminates the characters closely associated with this event and, finding little evidence, dismisses most of the figures' involvement in any conspiracy. Considering the very nature of plots, however, participants are not normally inclined to reveal their participation, especially in ones that failed. If anything, they try to minimize any involvement and discount any accusations about their machinations. Following the money, he details the fiscal irresponsibility behind nearly all of America's problems. The major source of operational funds was the appropriations from the French government. Despite substantially overspending French loans, U.S. representatives in Paris had the gall to still solicit further [End Page 217] financial assistance, knowing that Louis XVI, having already invested so much, would not want to see the young republic founder. Raising substantial revenue in the country was prevented by Congress having no authority to tax. A 5 percent national tax on imports, the Impost, proposed in 1781, was blocked by Rhode Island, and when Virginia repealed its assent, at the end of 1782, it was a dead letter. The states received requisitions annually for their share of the cost of operating the national government, but the responses were disappointing. Every governor and legislature pled poverty. With people at the time, and in any age for that matter, susceptible to conspiracy theories, David Head challenges the assumption made at the time and by subsequent historians that nationalists in the Continental Congress and its administrative bodies were actually pulling the strings. Chief among the believers in the Philadelphia origins of the intrigue, Washington was incredulous that the officers and men of the army "are to be made use of as mere Puppets to establish Continental funds." Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, his assistant, the transplanted New Yorker Gouverneur Morris, and New York Congressional delegate Alexander Hamilton are generally considered the chief architects of the Newburgh Conspiracy. The Morrises' well-known advocacy for uniting the lobbying power of both the public and private creditors to force the states to either fully remit the annual allocations made on them for the operation of...