soldier, was critical and delicate in the extreme. In the course of a few days, all his firmness and patriotism, all his sympathies as an officer, on the one side, and his fidelity to the government on the other, were severely tried. On the 10th of March, an anonymous address was circulated among the officers at Newburgh, calling a meeting of the general and field officers, and of one officer from each company, and one from the medical staff, to consider the late letter from their representatives at Philadelphia, and to determine what measures should be adopted to obtain that redress of grievances which they seemed to have solicited in vain. It was written with great ability and skill.174 It spoke the language of injured feeling; it pointed directly to the sword, as the remedy for injustice; and it spoke to men who were suffering keenly under public ingratitude and neglect. Its eloquence and its passion fell, therefore, upon hearts not insensible, and a dangerous explosion seemed to be at hand. Washington met the crisis with firmness, but also with conciliation. He issued orders forbidding an assemblage at the call of an anonymous paper, and directing the officers to assemble on Saturday, the 15th, to hear the report of their committee, and to deliberate what further measures ought to be adopted as most rational and best calculated to obtain the just and important object in view. The senior officer in rank present was directed to preside, and to report the result to the Commander-in-chief.
On the next day after these orders were issued, a second anonymous address appeared from the same writer. In this paper, he affected to consider the orders of General Washington, assuming the direction of the meeting, as a sanction of the whole proceeding which he had proposed. Washington saw, at once, that he must be present at the meeting himself, or that his name would be used to justify measures which he intended to discountenance and prevent. He therefore attended the meeting, and under his influence, seconded by that of Putnam, Knox, Brooks, and Howard, the result was the adoption of certain resolutions, in which the officers, after reasserting their grievances, and rebuking all attempts to seduce them from their civil allegiance, referred the whole subject of their claims again to the consideration of Congress.
Even at this distant day, the peril of that crisis can scarcely be contemplated without a shudder. Had the Commander-in-chief been other than Washington, had the leading officers by whom he was surrounded been less than the noblest of patriots, the land would have been deluged with the blood of a civil war. But men who had suffered what the great officers of the Revolution had suffered, had learned the lessons of self-control which suffering teaches. The hard school of adversity in which they had passed so many years made them sensible to an appeal which only such a chief as Washington could make; and, when he transmitted their resolves to Congress, he truly described them as "the last glorious proof of patriotism which could have been given by men who aspired to the distinction of a patriot army; not only confirming their claim to the justice, but increasing their title to the gratitude, of their country."175
The effect of these proceedings was the passage by Congress of certain resolves, on the 22d of March, 1783, commuting the half-pay for life to five years' full pay after the close of the war, to be received, at the option of Congress, in money, or in such securities as were given to other creditors of the United States.176 On the 4th of July, the accounts of the army were ordered to be made up and adjusted, and certificates of the sums due were required to be given in the form directed by the Superintendent of the Finances. On the 18th of October, a proclamation was issued, disbanding the army.
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From this time, the officers passed into the whole mass of the creditors of the United States; and although they continued to constitute a distinct class among those creditors, the history of their claims is to be pursued in connection with that of the other public debts of the country. The value of the votes which fixed their compensation, and paid them in public securities, depended, of course, upon the ability of the government to redeem the obligations which it issued. The general financial powers of the Union, therefore, under the Confederation, must now be considered.
CHAPTER II.
1781-1783.
Financial Difficulties of the Confederation.—Revolutionary Debt.—Revenue System of 1783.
It is not easy to ascertain the amount of the public debt of the United States, at the time when the Confederation went into operation. But on the 1st of January, 1783, it amounted to about forty-two millions of dollars. About eight millions were due on loans obtained in France and Holland, and the residue was due to citizens of the United States. The annual interest of the debt was a little more than two million four hundred thousand dollars.177
The Confederation had no sooner gone into operation, than it was perceived by many of the principal statesmen of the country, that its financial powers were so entirely defective, that Congress would never be able, under them, to pay even the interest on the public debt. Indeed, before the Confederation was finally ratified, so as to become obligatory upon all the States, on the 3d of February, 1781, Congress passed a resolve, recommending to the several States, as indispensably necessary, to vest a power in Congress to levy for the use of the United States a duty of five per cent. ad valorem, at the time and place of importation, upon all foreign goods and merchandise imported into any of the States; and that the money arising from such duties should be appropriated to the discharge of the principal and interest of the debts already then contracted, or which might be contracted, on the faith of the United States, for the support of the war; the duties to be continued until the debts should be fully and finally discharged.
It was at this time that the office of Superintendent of the Finances was established, and Robert Morris was unanimously elected by Congress to fill it. He was an eminent merchant of Philadelphia, of known financial skill, devoted to the cause of the country, and possessed of very considerable private resources, which he more than once sacrificed to the public service. Under his administration, it is more than probable that, if the States had complied with the requisitions of Congress, the war would have been brought to a close at an earlier period. But there was scarcely any compliance with those requisitions, and, contemporaneously with this neglect, the proposal to vest in Congress the power to levy duties met with serious opposition. On the 30th of October, 1781, Congress made a requisition upon the States for eight millions of dollars, to meet the service of the ensuing year. In January, 1783, one year and three months from the date of this requisition, less than half a million of this sum had been received into the treasury of the United States. After a delay of nearly two years, one State entirely refused its concurrence with the plan of vesting in Congress a power to levy duties, another withdrew the assent it had once given, and a third had returned no answer.
The State which refused to grant this power to Congress was Rhode Island. On the 6th of December, 1782, Congress determined to send a deputation to that State, to endeavor to procure its assent to this constitutional change. The increasing discontents of the army, the loud clamors of the public creditors, the extreme disproportion between the current means and the demands of the public service, and the impossibility of obtaining further loans in Europe unless some security could be held out to lenders, made it necessary for Congress to be especially urgent with the legislature of Rhode Island. But, at the moment when the deputation was about to depart on this mission, the intelligence was received that Virginia had repealed the act by which she had previously granted to Congress the power of laying duties, and the proposal was therefore abandoned for a time.178 But the leading persons then in Congress—who saw the ruin impending over the country; who were aware that the whole amount of money which Congress had received, to carry on the public business for the year then just expiring, was less than two millions of dollars,179 while the three branches of feeding, clothing, and paying the army exceeded five millions of dollars per annum, exclusive of all other departments of the public service; and who were equally aware that no means whatever existed of paying the interest on the public debts—resolved still to persevere in their endeavors to procure the establishment of revenues equal to the purpose of funding all the debts of the United States.
Among these persons, Hamilton and Madison were the most active; and the part which they took, at this period, in the measures for sustaining the sinking