Horatio Gates at Newburgh, 1783: A Misunderstood Role

Abstract

A great deal of effort has been expended by scholars of the American Revolutionary War in trying to understand the nature of the events that transpired in I783 in the Continental Army's encampment at Newburgh. latest attempt was an article by Richard H. Kohn, The Inside Story of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d'Etat, in the April I970 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.' Without questioning the broader aspects of civil-military relations that Kohn raised in his article, I must disagree with his conclusions about the role that Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates played in the army discontent at Newburgh. To understand his arguments about Gates, we must first view them in the broader perspective of his entire discussion. According to Kohn, the Newburgh conspiracy was an attempt by individuals in Congress and the military to use army discontent to bolster the power of the central government under the Articles of Confederation. In fact, some men were willing to risk a coup d'etat in order to achieve their aims. Money was the source of the greatest unhappiness in the army. Soldiers had not been reimbursed for weeks. But more importantly, there was a fear among many officers that Congress would disband the army without settling the issue of half pay, which had been promised to them in I780. officers realized that pressures from the civilian populace were being put on the legislators to deny them this reward, for the idea of giving salaries to unemployed soldiers was unpopular. Hence, in late I782 the officers, in a petition to Congress, declared their willingness to settle for commutation of half pay into a fixed sum to be given them at once. At the same time, they showed their irritation with congressional foot dragging on the issue by declaring that any further experiments on the patience of the troops may have