George Washington | Pithy History

In January 1789, the newly elected President George Washington wrote to his dear friend, Marquis de Lafayette, the following words.

While you are quarreling among yourselves in Europe – while one King is running mad – and other acting as if they were already so, but cutting the throats of the subjects of their neighbours; I think you need not doubt, My Dear Marquis we shall continue in tranquility here – And that population will be progressive so long as there shall continue to be so many easy means for obtaining a subsistence, and so ample a field for the exertion of talents and industry.

Washington, like so many of his countrymen, saw the American abundance of land and resources as a way to ensure the avoidance of foreign chaos, specifically the chaos that derives from overcrowding and the ills such chaos inspires. He wrote, “I see a path, as clear and as direct as a ray of light…Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy people.”[1]

Men like Washington felt strongly that certain key moral principles would flourish in a land as abundantly blessed as America. As a leader of men for most of his adult life, he would not have been blind to the tendencies of human nature, but clearly he believed that those men dedicated to “industry and frugality” would prevail over those who sought slothful pursuits. The United States was predominantly agrarian during those early years. Commerce, especially the trade of raw materials for finished goods, may have dominated the sea side areas of the new nation, but industrialization had not yet lured workers from the fields and into cities. Subsistence farming was still both the predominant occupation and an occupation that did not tolerate slothful pursuits. Washington was able to envision generations of “tranquility” rather than the chaos that derived from congested cities and limited resources. However, he was not naive to the realities of human nature; he simply could not foresee how quickly the world would change once industrialization took hold.

[1] George Washington, George Washington: Writings, vol. 91, Library of America (New York: Library of America, 1997), 717 – 718.

In 1783 at the army camp located in Newburgh, New York rumors of revolt were quelled when General George Washington addressed his men. The rhetoric, which had grown from frustration with Congress over back pay, was effectively countered when Washington spoke, “…let me entreat you, Gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures, which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity, and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained…”[1] Scholars have argued over whether the crisis in Newburgh was one of rhetoric only, or if an actual conspiracy existed which threatened the stability and future of the United States.[2] Regardless, the Newburgh Affair highlights how political rhetoric can lead to crisis, and how calm leadership rather than dramatic action can be the solution.

Conspiracy theorists and politically motivated historians have inferred that orchestrated nationalist machinations were the cause of the rumors and implied threats that swirled around Newburgh in the fall and winter of 1782-83. Others argue that frustration at the lack of pay, and the worry of a post-conflict future, organically inspired the rhetoric Washington felt needed addressed on March 15, 1783. Pamphlets, newspapers, public meetings, and personal correspondence were the main vehicles for the spreading of news and the airing of grievances prior to the technological age. The years leading up to the outbreak of war proved that these were effective tools in rousing public opinion in order to force change. It stood to reason then that these same tools would be used when Congress ground to a standstill on the issue of military pay and veteran benefits.

Even in the days before technology transformed the ways in which the world communicated, rumors once started were difficult to suppress. Enflamed rhetoric was even harder to manage for often it was printed and preserved for posterity. Fortunately for the young republic, General Washington was a man who had learned that brash language and rash actions were counter-productive to stability and prosperity. While he understood the frustration[3] of his men, he also understood that a liberty so newly achieved could not withstand civil discord.[4] A nation built from the fire of revolution would have to learn how to handle and even embrace civil discord.; however, Washington was wise in objecting to discord created by “insidious design” and spread by rumor and extreme rhetoric.

Endnotes

[1] George Washington, George Washington: Writings, vol. 91, Library of America (New York: Library of America, 1997), 499.

[2] Edward C. Skeen, and Richard H. Kohn, “The Newburgh Conspiracy Reconsidered,” The William and Mary Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1974): 273–298.

[3] Mary Stockwell, “Newburgh Address,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, http://www.mountvernon.org/research-collections/digital-encyclopedia/article/newburgh-address/.

[4] Washington, 500.

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